{"id":6815,"date":"2014-03-21T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T05:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6815"},"modified":"2014-03-21T10:47:22","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T14:47:22","slug":"count-bitchula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/count-bitchula\/","title":{"rendered":"Count Bitchula"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CountBitchula\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The band was practicing here for the first time, three of us in my living room, when grunge was all the rage. We called ourselves Count Bitchula. People likened our sound to a brutally overdriven version of Violent Femmes. They associated us with the Melvins, Nirvana. I didn\u2019t mind the comparisons. I would\u2019ve personally thanked Kurt Cobain for ending the reign of hair metal if I could have. Incidentally, Kurt Cobain and I were both twenty-seven that year, and I felt an odd kinship with him every time I put on a Nirvana record. This was somebody who never bought into the lies, somebody who\u2019d figured things out, who knew that idiots ruled our planet and he was having no part of it.<\/p>\n

The three of us shook the little house I was renting, a single bedroom off Pecan Street, with our own rendition of Kiss\u2019s \u201cAlmost Human\u201d and a number I wrote called, \u201cA Fistful of Mildred\u2019s Dollars.\u201d Our bassman could really drive the groove and looked like he\u2019d done time in prison. He\u2019d shaved his head and wore a nose ring like a bull, a Dracula tattoo on his shoulder, and he dressed in dark t-shirts and black denim. He was also the singer. He sang like Cookie Monster. He also used a bullhorn on a couple of tunes for effect. We called him Fester Hopwood.<\/p>\n

The drummer was a high school horticulture teacher who could\u2019ve been Alice Cooper\u2019s Amish cousin, wearing a Mack truck ballcap. His drumming was frantic, and the shells of his four piece kit were coated in a jazzy, pearly finish and the cymbals sounded like trash can lids.<\/p>\n

As for me, I lacked basic furniture and a television but held an impressive collection of albums, a fine stereo, a tube amp, and an arctic white Fender Telecaster that was worth more than my car.<\/p>\n

We ran through maybe four numbers and then, right in the middle of a song, I noticed this cop standing in the middle of my living room. The cop was rawboned and convincingly hillbillyish with a holstered gun and a Jimmy Carter smile. He seemed to be enjoying himself. The musical pulse in the room weakened, wilted, came to a complete stop in his presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit too loud,\u201d the cop said. He hollered in a tinny voice like he was talking to old people. He might\u2019ve been new to the cop business because he said too much, narrowed things down for us. Some lady up the road had called the police station, he said, complaining about the noise, saying she just couldn\u2019t take it anymore.<\/p>\n

When the cop left, our drummer packed up and went home to his wife. Fester and I didn\u2019t know what to do with ourselves. The cop had suggested a lower volume. He didn\u2019t know much. We were a rock band. We uttered profanities and drank. Fester had stashed some Rolling Rock in the fridge. He put away beers like it was nothing, guzzling three in the time it took me to drink one.<\/p>\n

Fester had been staying with me lately. Every morning he left for a five-mile run and returned with a six-pack and a bag of Washington apples. He sanded furniture in a shop for several hours a day, and in the late afternoons he played tennis in his blue jeans with an English professor. He drank beer like the world was ending, but he looked like a champion boxer.<\/p>\n

Neither of us had done too well with marriage. My wife left me over a guitar. Our Chrysler needed new tires, but someone offered me a deal on an American-made Telecaster, which made me feel very American, and Mildred concluded she\u2019d married a child.<\/p>\n

Now that Count Bitchula\u2019s jam session was irrecoverable, Fester and I discussed how much we hated this town.<\/p>\n

\u201cFull of worthless pricks,\u201d was how he put it. Fester looked like somebody you\u2019d hire to deal with difficult people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need people like you in positions of authority,\u201d I said to him. \u201cPeople who scare people.\u201d<\/p>\n

We decided the town motto should be, \u201cTurn that shit down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The more I thought about that cop showing up, the more resentful I became. I demanded to know who called the police. A cluster of houses was a half-mile away, and between us was a timbered area, hemmed in by the main road, and a medium-sized Methodist church.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we ought to do,\u201d I said, \u201cis go scare the shit out of that lady, really do a number. Teach her what happens when you bitch about our music.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know who the lady was or where she lived. I knew nothing about people on this street. Our plan was to search for a house with a polished yard, like something out of a magazine, reasoning that anyone who would be that uptight about their yard would be pretty self-absorbed. But I had no idea what we\u2019d do when we found it. I hadn\u2019t thought things through.<\/p>\n

We grabbed another beer and cut through the woods, which made more sense than driving since stealth was a factor here and my Chrysler needed a new muffler. Dusk was quickening into night as we set out. Thinking back on it now, we probably weren\u2019t in the best frame of mind, walking around at night, toting beer bottles, angry. I feel it\u2019s important to mention, though, that Fester bringing his bullhorn along on this walk was not my idea.<\/p>\n

I remember the time because seven days ago had been Good Friday. The part of Christianity that makes sense to me is the crucifixion. Virgin births and resurrections are one thing, but I\u2019ve never had trouble believing that someone like Jesus wouldn\u2019t last long on this planet. This world enjoys silencing people like Jesus and sending cops to your house to tell you the music\u2019s too loud.<\/p>\n

Fester and I searched for a yard with pomposity written all over it. The problem though, was that every yard looked pompous\u2014stone walkways, gazebos, junipers, mulch smells, azaleas, and expertly groomed Kentucky bluegrass lawns, chemically enhanced, and American flags flapping in the night breeze. The flags were interesting because Fester had been in the army, some covert operation in Central America back in Reagan\u2019s time. Not a real war, he said. You couldn\u2019t buy a Time-Life<\/i> collection on it.<\/p>\n

Fester mentioned us going to the Red Devil Inn for a hamburger. His interest in retribution was waning, I could tell. That\u2019s when the Methodist church came into view. Two streetlamps provided scarce light. The church building looked like a fine motel, all the brick. There\u2019d been the usual Easter hubbub around here last weekend. Now, the church was tomblike. On the dark side of the building, bordering more woods, the church bus was parked, the color of a robin\u2019s egg, at the edge of the lot beneath a sovereign, corrugated metal awning, as if the bus were in its own temple. A passing car would never see the bus from the road.<\/p>\n

Our beers were still cold. We\u2019d yet to open them, so we sat at some picnic tables beneath an unlit tin roof pavilion in view of the bus and drank them, expecting that someone would appear and run us off.<\/p>\n

We got into talking about our parents. How this happened is that Fester had read a magazine article about how pathetic our generation was\u2014how jaundiced we were, how we lacked direction, how we\u2019d never accomplish anything because we were too busy being alienated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho wrote the article?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody our parents\u2019 age,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

My dad was an auto-mechanic, I told him. My dad used to speak on how on the rising price of gas brought this country great ruin because the day that gas hit a dollar a gallon people started driving cars from Japan that were rather plain-looking, and in no time American cars started looking pretty damn ugly, all in the name of fuel efficiency, a phrase that we\u2014meaning me and my deplorable generation\u2014heard on commercials. Among the cars my dad had at one stretch or another was a Pontiac Trans-Am like Burt Reynolds drove in Smokey and the Bandit<\/i>, except that it was piss yellow, which is probably why he could afford it. One time, my parents argued about a Chevy Nova my father bought after he saw a movie with a Chevy Nova in it. My mom said we need something fuel-efficient, like a Toyota. They argued about money endlessly.<\/p>\n

Fester\u2019s story was a bit gloomier than mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy old man used to put me in the car at night and go searching for my mom,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d be lying in the back seat, and he\u2019d drive all over the place, looking for her car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the rain?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be raining like a sonofabitch, and he\u2019d go looking for her,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Right out of the army he went to college, and right out of college he married a redhead who was into David Bowie, except that she held no awareness of David Bowie. She\u2019d never heard Ziggy Stardust<\/i> or Diamond Dogs<\/i>. Her sole knowledge of Bowie was Let\u2019s Dance<\/i> and the soundtrack to Labyrinth<\/i>, which irritated Fester to no end, so he considered her an idiot. That was the least of his problems. He found his wife\u2019s Corolla parked at a Howard Johnson\u2019s. She was having a fling with a man who owned a lot of Johnny Mathis records.<\/p>\n

Now, Fester and I noticed something at the same time, a stirring inside that church bus. There was blurring, familiar movement. On the other side of those windows, two nymphos went at it in the rear seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cRomantic as hell,\u201d Fester said.<\/p>\n

The scene caused me to become bitter about my wife, over the way she’d talked down to me and how she needed a break, calling me immature because I spent money on music equipment but didn’t have a career. I had a degree in the fine arts, which was supposedly good for the soul, but otherwise useless. That\u2019s the way she put it. I wanted to be happy in my work, I told her. She said, \u201cPeople don’t pay you to be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fester and I were still in view of the bus and its current occupants when I said, \u201cLet\u2019s make them think the cops are here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fester said we should loop the building, come out the other side, and we\u2019d be right at the bus. Otherwise, we\u2019d walk into the light and they\u2019d see us coming.<\/p>\n

What I had in mind was a mild prank. Fester would say something officious through the bullhorn, like, \u201cThis is the police.\u201d Give them a scare. We\u2019d hide, watch their clothes fly around. The couple would evacuate and haul ass. That’s what I thought would happen.<\/p>\n

Fester, though, smiled like he was about to take over the world. We came around the corner, right upon the vehicle yet cloaked in blackness. He flipped the bullhorn switch and a deafening shrill penetrated the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the police and we\u2019ve got the place surrounded,\u201d he said. \u201cPut your hands on your head and exit the vehicle immediately.\u201d He sounded like the real deal.<\/p>\n

The culprits were frozen in their sexual commerce, immobilized in their raunchiness. The universe paused. I\u2019d nearly dissolved into excruciating laughter, but Fester held a stern expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cExit the vehicle at this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now there was panicky movement inside the bus. Apparently the sinners were gathering clothes, intent on dressing themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeave your clothes behind and get out of the damn bus,\u201d Fester said. The reverberation of the megaphone somehow lent authority to the illusion that the bus was indeed surrounded by a throng of uniformed people.<\/p>\n

The wrongdoers deliberated and plodded out as though wearing leg irons. The boy was a teenager, maybe a point guard on the school basketball team. His doo-hickey was still engorged, his hands held above his head like this was a stick-up. He was fossilized in his terror.<\/p>\n

\u201cFace down on the ground, John-boy,\u201d Fester said. He and I remained in the shadows. Our faces were unseen.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way the poor kid could\u2019ve known what was really happening. He noted his swollen member and followed orders best he could, his elbows down first, facing the cool, damp blacktop.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sorry sir,\u201d the boy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t ask you a gawddamn thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The girl came out of the bus sobbing, her arms folded over her breasts. She was high cheekboned and full-lipped with an enormous tumbleweed of ruby hair. Her hair was an event.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh gawd,\u201d she kept saying, facing the ground in the manner of her cohort. She had the honeyed, rounded flesh of a Pre-Raphaelite. I couldn\u2019t blame the guy for giving her the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cFornication on a church bus is a serious offense.\u201d Fester now moved out of the blackness and stood over them in his Doc Martens like a tyrant, their backs to him. I stayed put, clinging to the corner of the brick building, hidden.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes this seem funny to you?\u201d Fester said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo sir.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I ought to do is scar you like Cain.\u201d Fester was a hutch of beastliness with a rising distaste for humanity in his voice. He ogled at the girl like he both needed and reviled her.<\/p>\n

Naked and ashamed, the couple stared at the blacktop, some nihilistic Adam and Eve sculpture. They woke up that morning with no idea as to what was coming. Down to the essence of my bones, I was nearly paralytic with interest in how easy it was to degrade a person, change how they saw the world, put an imprint on how they dealt with things. I\u2019d witnessed something disturbing here.<\/p>\n

Fester backed out of there, crept away from the bus, back toward where I stood. The couple, still facing the blacktop, probably figured he was there, but we left them to resolve things on their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s get the hell out of here,\u201d Fester said. We circled back and cut into the woods and sprinted until we found the main road where he bent over in laughter, reverting into the congenial Fester that everyone loved. He retold the event, as though I\u2019d missed it, all the way to the Red Devil Inn, which was a mile away. We walked the edge of the road and every time a car passed, I thought it was those nymphos.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

The Red Devil Inn was dank, very dark. It had bars on the windows. At least once a week, there\u2019d be a fight. There wasn\u2019t much happening tonight, though, other than a few people watching a basketball game on a Zenith with the volume way down, and Jim Morrison singing about strange people from the jukebox. I ordered a Rolling Rock, and Fester, the affable sort, chatted with the bartender.<\/p>\n

Fester came back a few minutes later and told me that Kurt Cobain had committed suicide. An electrician in Seattle found his body that morning. Kurt shot himself.<\/p>\n

At first I figured somebody was lying. Then I knew they weren\u2019t, because this kind of shit was always happening to me. It was like a brother I\u2019d never met had died. It\u2019s immoral that things like this happen.<\/p>\n

What I might\u2019ve said to Kurt. I imagined him coming to my house, wearing his gray, thrift-store cardigan and go-to-hell blue jeans. He wouldn\u2019t care that I didn\u2019t have furniture. He was never superficial. He\u2019d squat on the floor, against the wall. I\u2019d offer an apple.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t stand things anymore,\u201d Kurt would\u2019ve told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a shitty time in history to be twenty-seven years old,\u201d I would\u2019ve said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the only one who understands me,\u201d he\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

I could\u2019ve talked him out of it.<\/p>\n

Fester was already on his third beer. This is why people drink, I knew.<\/p>\n

I felt as though something had really ended and I didn\u2019t know what to call it, how to mark it\u2014as though the planet was truly getting worse, dumber, meaner; as if my future had been derailed, whatever future I had. People would now start using idiotic phrases like, \u201cpost-grunge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that moment, I knew that interesting music had ceased to exist.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

END<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Matthew McEver holds the MFA in Creative Writing from Converse College\u00a0in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and his fiction was nominated for the 2014 AWP Intro Award. He currently lives in northeast Georgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The band was practicing here for the first time, three of us in my living room, when grunge was all the rage. We called ourselves Count Bitchula. People likened our sound to a brutally overdriven version of Violent Femmes. They associated us with the Melvins, Nirvana. I didn\u2019t mind the comparisons. I would\u2019ve personally thanked Kurt Cobain for ending the reign of hair metal if I could have. Incidentally, Kurt Cobain and I were both twenty-seven that year, and I felt an odd kinship with him every time I put on a Nirvana record. This was somebody who never bought into the lies, somebody who\u2019d figured things out, who knew that idiots ruled our planet and he was having no part of it. <\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":6942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,200,219],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6815"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6943,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions\/6943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}