El Paso

    El Paso is just a giant strip mall on the side of an interstate highway. It's weird because you've been driving for days in a desert and then all of a sudden there are lights for miles on both sides of the highway. We get off and drive out to our contact, a house in a little residential district. There are pale sunblasted ranch houses all over. And right away I feel trapped. We're sitting on the floor of some guy's bedroom - the promoter, I think. And we're all waiting for the shower. We're crowded into this room with another band called the National Guard or Anarchist Army or something like that. There must be twenty of them including their friends, road crew and their obnoxious manager. Her name is Sharon and she seems to be their den mother or something. Anyway, she won't shut the fuck up.  She keeps talking about some cable TV show she hosts on the E! channel or FU! channel or Disney or whatever. On and on. Who cares? The rest of them pander to her ego and keep telling her how great it is that she's taken them under her wing.

    "So what type of core do you guys play?" she asks. And I'm clueless.

    "Core?" I say. "Will, what the fuck are we talking about?"

    "Got me," William says.

    "Core," she insists. "Like what kind of hardcore do you play? Are you homocore, politicore, newcore, multicore? What's your style?"

    "Shit," I say. "We're just a punk band."

    "Well what other bands do you sound like?" she asks.

    "I have no idea," I say. "I hate music and I don't listen to it." And okay, I realize I'm being an asshole now.

    "So what kind of core are you?" I ask.

    "We are an old school politicore band in the style of hardcore when hardcore really meant something," she replies.

    "Well," William says. "I guess that means the Dirtbombs are a fuck you punk band in the style of punk when punk didn't mean a fuckin' thing."

    "How long have you guys been on the road?" I ask.

    "Three months," she replies. 

    God damn. Have they been licking her butt like this for three months? How do they stand themselves? But everything changes as a group of drunken wild men explodes into the bedroom. Suddenly there's whooping and hollering and drunken yelling what-the-fuck? It's another band called the Turds and they're from Mississippi. Staggering and laughing with their arms on our shoulders like brothers, they tear into the bedroom and everything is suddenly great.

    "We just got back from them titty bars 'cross the border. Sheeeee-it they got them some nice little titties over there in Mexi-fuckin'-co! Holy god damn I have never been so drunk for so cheap in all of my life. Whoopee fuckin' day!" They reek of fresh liquor and horse shit. They're falling all over themselves. And when the cable queen lays her ego trip on them they just laugh bollocks right in her face and say, "If y'all try to put us on yer lame-ass cable Tee Vee show, we're jus' gunna strip our butts nekkid and show you somethin' you never seen!" And I'm starting to really love these guys - obnoxious as they are.

    The venue is just an old industrial garage that's been stripped bare and spray painted with band names and swear words. The cable queen's band goes on first. Their singer says his name is General Anarchy or some such idiotic name and he spends the whole set telling us how we should think for ourselves and blow shit up. Okay, whatever. And the cable queen is videotaping everything. Then the Turds get on stage and sure enough she keeps on videotaping. And sure enough, they strip down to their inbred ugly-assed skins. "Fuck you," the singer yells. "I'm not inbred. My parents were identical twins." And I'm amazed to find that what they sound like is nothing if not exactly like us. It's actually a little freaky like I'm watching someone else play my songs with different lyrics. And naked at that. So now I REALLY like these guys. They're drunk and staggering all over the stage and all over each other. They're so drunk they can't even fall down. At the end of their set, the singer falls over foreward onto the shoulders of a girl in the audience and says, "We're goin' back to Mex-eee-co and get druuuuunk!" And I'm thinking, "get" drunk? So when they are done I strip off my clothes and plug in my guitar. Bare-assed naked and dingle dangling I start beating out power chords as we start breaking the stage. The Turds decide to stay awhile and are all right in the front of the crowd yelling at us and spitting beer and talking shit and we start to go completely mad. William is leaping and yelling wildly like a shaman on a bad peyote trip propelling the crowd to new levels of complete mayhem. The Turds are right in our faces and pushing us further, taunting us, daring us to out-punk them. Some ugly-assed Turd gets right up to my face and grabs my microphone. He starts yelling shit all over the place. Another one pours a whole pitcher of beer down my naked body and drenches my guitar - with an electrical chord going directly back to my amplifier.  Then I look over and see that the cable queen is STILL videotaping. Jesus Goddamned Mother Fucking Christ! So I grab my microphone from the ranting Turd and yell, "Shut the fucking cameras off! The revolution will not be fucking televised!" Someone in the crowd raises his fist and yells, "Right on! Fuckin' A yeah!" And this finally seems to work. She shuts off the camera and goes to the back of the room to interview her friends. Meanwhile the Turds are staggering around, beating the shit out of each other and pig-piling all over. They're leaping and yelling and there is no longer any difference between the performers and the audience. The stage is full of people and William is roaming around the room. I think some teenage boy has stolen his microphone. Who cares? Everybody is laughing and gagging and falling down. The Turds are so drunk they can't feel anything anymore. So they start kicking each other in the head. And I can't even take it anymore. I just can't. When we've run out of songs to play, we just stop and stand around. And the Turds are off in a flash - out to "get back to them titty bars and get druuuunk!" And they're gone. Wooosh.

    We leave the garage and follow some hand-written directions to another band's house in a local suburb. They're high school kids and their parents are away on vacation. We stagger in sweaty and smelling of spilled Turd beer to find oak kitchen cabinets and plush carpets with trophies above the piano. Suburban teenagers are all around - mostly young boys trying to convince the one girl in the house to take her clothes off. They twist little tiny joints and go outside on the patio to get a little high - very little. They're playing shitty rock music on the stereo really loud and pretending to like it. Aw man, how do they listen to this shit? I go into the bathroom and wash off the show. Then I walk to an empty bedroom and fall asleep right on the carpet - beige, I think, with a deep pile. So weird.

    The next morning at breakfast Sean asks, "What do you think the Cable Queen will say about us on her show?"

    "I don't know. She'll probably say we were assholes," I reply. "That's what she said to me."

    "That's the best thing you can say about a punk band," Dave adds. "I wonder if she realizes that?"

    The next day is spent entirely in the desert. We drive through all kinds of Wild West landscapes pretending to shoot at everything through the windows of the van. We see all the Road Runner rock cliffs and stick 'em up cactuses and pale red clay mountains. It's all fucking empty until after sunset when we reach Pheonix, Arizona. And Pheonix is nothing like the old western movies. Pheonix is like a fucking hive. Alien life forms. Pods. I don't know. Logan's Run or something. The streets are polished asphalt, everything is spotless and fascist. It's a fucking stepford city. At 9 pm there is no visible sign of human habitation. It's like they built the city and nobody moved in. The bed sheets are all white and unwrinkled. The streets have no tire marks. The cars have no dents and their tires show no wear. The clothes in the closet have never been worn. What if they built a city and no-one came? But I know there are people who live here. I just don't see them. Off the interstate, it's a world of adobe strip malls and inconvenience stores, harsh flourescant lights, bullet proof glass. So I get back in the driver's seat without my coffee and head directly towards California and the west coast.

    We reach the ocean at half past three in the morning and stumble out of the van drunken sailor style - planning to stand at the water's edge and wiggle our toes in the endless summer sands. But instead, we go goofy goof-a-bonic and leap headlong into the air and flex our biceps super-hero style like funnycar space rockets blasting out into orbit and leaping and pogoing pinheads up into the air - yelling and taunting the booming ocean that we can't even see in the midnight mysting. Sand in our hair. Sand in my mouth and salting my eyes. We're all alone in the universe and loving it. The ocean talks back. Ka-Crash, Ka-Coom. Fuck it. Fuck you. Hah!

    But in the sleeping groggy morning there's sweat between my legs and hot blasts of air coming in through the open windows with little girl giggling "Oh no really!" and screaming and heat. And outside the windows is skin. Sex and skin in supreme adolescent nirvanas that slip past our van in rippling pools of semen and cocoa butter brown thighs and stringy nothings.

    "Oh my God," I say so low I can't even hear it. Because this isn't the beach of last night's ravings. We're not alone with our genius one-liners anymore. No - there are people everywhere. There are women everywhere. Steaming past. Yellow hair. Touching their bodies just as I'd touch them if only I could. Walking and rolling by. Wet skin. Casual. On vacation. Killing me as if it were nothing. William is sitting in the driver seat wrapped in a towel like a monk. A mad and horny monk. He's staring out the windshield - but he can't see a thing. He's already seen too much. Way too much. He can't see anything else. He's gone blind.

    "Oh my God," I say.