Lost and Found (Chapter Six)

The club seemed almost to be a deja vu throwback to my days in hell. The air was pumping with energy and the vague smell of sweat was hard to escape in the close confines. The styling of the worn down youth center reminded me of the time I had seen False Cause and Guilty By Association in a used up civic center on the outskirts of hell. After the show I was introduced to a bootleg cd by 7 Seconds, one of Nevada's founding hardcore punk groups in the eighties. Not the best stuff I've ever heard but you have appreciate your roots. Either way, the CD was good enough for me to play from time to time when I was in the mood to listen to it.

Perhaps the one true difference in the two places was the apparent lack of DIY ethic among the crowd members. Clothing was mass produced and labeled by sellout bands that played on MTV. Several times in hell we had gone out of our way to get tee's from the loudest, sludgiest bands possible and usually the shirts were so poorly made the logo's started falling off within three washes. And what we couldn't buy out of the backs of band members box vans we just made ourselves with sharpies and highlighters.

Conformity seemed to be the buzzword here despite the "straight out of the hell" surroundings. In a sense it all just seemed faked. And right in the middle of this organized ruckus was Kitty, bobbing up and down in the crowd, looking like a punk Mary Jane Watson calling for my attention. I couldn't hear a word she was screaming so it was her flailing arms that grabbed my focus. A subtly aggressive and confident mien parted the crowd for me as I walked to her. The bands were only now warming up and the first band, Damned and Bleeding, announced the would be starting as soon as they could find their snare drum at which point the drummer came forward and grabbed the mic.

"F**k it, start the show." And the guitarist started playing even before the drummer could hand over the mic and make it back to his set. The vocalist just screamed all the harder in absence of his mic and when it was back in his hands the PA boomed with with the half barking overtones of his voice. He sounded like a junkyard dog trying to get to a piece of meat behind a glass wall, and from the sound of it he would come crashing through any moment now. And roughly thirty seconds after the drummer had started the song it was over, in true punk style. The singer introduced his band, his voice shocking melodic and entrancing despite his screaming vocal style.

"What a rush." Kitty hugged me as she spoke, her back was hot, almost feverish. After a lingering stare into my eyes, her face growing gradually closer every second our eyes locked, she backed up. "Excuse me." She parted the crowd as the singer spoke on and on, making her way to the bathroom.

The singer continued as she was gone, this was their first public show. I found that surprising considering their intense crowd control and uncanny ability to instill emotions in otherwise grungy music. I considered that a good band could come from half-hearted scene. For a second, it occured to me that even a half-hearted scene could be a good one, or at the very least, a fun one.

It was on the monday of that week that Kitty had invited me to come to this show. Her brother was the frontman for Straight Up Pricks and she thought I might enjoy his style of more concise and old-school hardcore punk. So, here I was at the Thursday show.

Kitty arrived just in time for the start of the second song. I would've bet money that the frontman had been stalling so that the drummer could borrow a snare from another act as they had one for the song as if it had magically appeared while he was talking.

I pulled Kitty close as the song began with a fast but incredibly delicate guitar intro reminiscent of "Wasted Words" by Death by Stereo. The slow, sensual fretwork making a soundtrack to our two bodies moving against one another. Looking around, I noticed that we weren't the only ones with this idea. Her lips moved slowly to their own beat, forming her own instinctive lyrics, speaking softly yet without sound.

As the drums cut in subtly and I began to feel the bass and vocals drawing closer I realized that it was Wasted Words. I jumped and cheered at this realization. I was alone in this reverie. Looking over the so called punks in the crowd I realized that most of them probably hadn't heard of Death by Stereo, much less heard them play live, as I had. In hell I had taken a road trip with Leslie, Tripp, and Murder (otherwise known as Murphey) to Reno to see them play. It was at that show that I had been introduced to Downset (sounding like a subtle mix of gangsta rap, ala Snoop Dogg's 187, and LA hardcore).

Vocals and bass cutting in just where I had thought they would and the guitar and drums raising to near ear bleeding levels, the hypnotized listeners grew silent and began jumping and bouncing off of each other like deranged pinballs. Mosh pits formed in the blink of an eye, seeming almost like an instinctive action. There were three that I could easily see.

Kitty began to grind against me, the sweet friction making me want to throw her against the wall and have her right there. Usually, such carnal desires were easily suppressed, but the music was moving me with wild, unrelenting energy, and it was moving me against her.

Apparently, she shared this idea, forcing me through the wildly ricocheting crowd and without any warning shoving my back into the hard brick wall. Her unrestrained kisses forcibally made work of my mouth as I flattened against the wall. My hands ran up and down her back grasping, longing. Her fingernails carved a path down my forearm and she took my hand in hers. Careening through the violently thrashing crowd she pulled me to the other side of the small room. I could already see where this was headed; the bathroom.

The two of us stormed into the unisex bathroom which was empty whenever music was playing outside, perfect for privacy. Even in there I could still hear the vocalist barking the lyrics in a style admirably his own, or at least fairly different from the original. Slamming me into the far wall Kitty ran her fingers over my hard chest, almost whimpering at the feel of my skin.

"Hold on." She said, making her way to the dingy faux porcelain countertop. From her purse she produced a drivers license, a short length of thin metal pipe, and a packet of white powder. Cocaine. The pipe was a more durable version of a coke straw, intended for more hardcore addicts who didn't want to constantly be rolling up dollar bills of producing plastic straws. Briefly, I contemplated stopping her. I had seen the hell that drug could turn people's lives into. It took alot of will to keep from stopping her. I told myself that I wasn't the type to tell people what not to do regarding their own lives. This was true, one of my guiding principals, in fact. Still, judgment was almost irresistible in this case. So, I just watched at she cut out a line and snorted it off of the grime covered counter.

Still, I think she got the message from the look on my face when she dropped the straw and looked up at me.

"Now, we can party!" Her face, observing mine, soured. "Don't you f*****g judge me!" Her tone was suddenly violent, yet a tinge of hurt shone clearly through the anger.

"I... no." It was all I could do to stammer a startled series of gasps.

"F**k you Dean. I know your type, all out for the party, you love the end result. Why do you hate the process?"

Already, blood was pooling at the bottom of her left nostril. I knew this wasn't how she saw herself, as I did, a coked up, sad little girl, bleeding. In way I couldn't completely understand, she reminded me of Rosemary. In a flash, I remembered Rosemary, framed by the doorway on the night we left. The blood; I had to save her. Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed her by her shoulders.

"Get your f*****g hands off me, Dean. Don't you f*****g touch me, you b*****d." Her attempts to free herself from my grasp came out as a series of tortured spasms and scratches of her fingernails on whatever of my skin her hands could find, wholly ineffective as I tightened my grip on her shoulders, fingertips digging frighteningly deep into the skin exposed by her spaghetti straps.

"Listen d****t," I bellowed, "look at what you've become. You're hurting yourself, goddamnit, you're bleeding."

"Get the f**k away from me." She paused, a calm and cocky air coming over her. "You didn't seem to mind the coke when I was dancing with you." Again, her mood changed abruptly. "F*****g hypocrite."

"How much have you done?" Mentally, I answered my own question. She had seemed a little off when I arrived and she went to the bathroom first and second songs, and now. That came to at least three lines in under fifteen minutes. She began to yell wildly and undiscernibly in response to my accusation.

There was only one way for her to see what she had done to herself. Take the direct approach. The last ditch effort and the hardest way of all. Force her to see.

My hand moved quickly from her right shoulder to her face. In a combination of heightened speed and instinct, she pulled nearly free of my remaining hand. If only by reflex built on the streets of hell, I maintained my grip on her, moving quickly with her body, not allowing her to pull away from me. Desperate, she tried to throw herself to the cruddy tile floor and with a pulse of adrenaline and the whole of my upper body strength I pulled her up and slung her to the mirror. Hand gripping her hair I controlled her movement, momentum almost overcoming me, her face nearly met the glass, pulling a surprised yelp from her. Outside, the music died in a sudden thrash.

Long and hard she studied her face in the mirror. When finally she looked back to me her eyes were full of tears. "I'm sorry," she cried, pain now easily permeating her voice. In the mirror I could see the blood clearly running down her upper lip. I relaxed my grip on her, letting her stand free and see clearly what she had become. In a crimson drop, blood fell to further taint the countertop.

With a shuddering creak, the bathroom door opened. Kitty turned in a flash, the speed of her movement sent fledgling tears flying wide. Their faces look to her then me, and with me their pity turned to anger.

Embarrassment consumed her and she ran swiftly through them. I followed through the hole she cut, after seeing the looks on their faces I feared a lynching if I had stayed to try and plead my case. Besides, in the coming hours she would need a shoulder to cry on and there was none better than mine, even though I was the one who had forced her into tears.

Exiting the club through it's front doors, the cold yet muggy air hit me hard, my body now reeling from the aftereffects of spent adrenaline. But, more importantly than how I felt, was what I saw. Empty streets in front of me; she had vanished.