Kristin Hersh - Rat Girl

“They’re big,” answers Leslie.

I hold up the magic marker I’m using, sideways. “What, like, this big?” She swings her waist-length dreads over her shoulder and puts her hands in front of my face about a foot away from each other. “No!” Cool. “And they attack you?”

“They attacked me, ” she says.

“Wait a minute—” I begin.

My sister, Tea, interrupts. “But how fast are they? And what could a slug do to you even if it could catch you?” She talks to the ceiling because she’s lying on a Universal Couch, the disgusting old sofa covered in stains, gum and cigarette burns that’s common to all dressing rooms. We think this is how aliens’ll colonize earth: in the form of unassuming, filthy sofas. They’re everywhere. Everywhere we go, anyway.

“Yeah, Les,” I say, “are they poisonous or something?”

Leslie shrugs. “They’re really gross.”

“Do the one about your hair in the pool drain,” says Tea.

“Yeah.” I love that one. “When you almost drowned. And make it suspenseful.”

“How can I make it suspenseful?” asks Leslie. “You already know the ending.”

“We figured out the ending to the banana slug story, too,” says Tea.

“Yeah. You live.” I start another set list. “Do the pool one, it’s my favorite.”

“ Well,” Leslie begins dramatically, when an elderly woman carrying a chafing dish bangs open the dressing room door and slams the dish down on a table next to a pitcher of warm orange soda. We thank her brightly. She ignores us and leaves.

“Bye!” we call after her, watching the door swing back and forth.

“Who was that?” asks Tea, lifting her head.

“I don’t know. Club lady, I guess.” The three of us continue to watch the door swing back and forth as if it might explain who the old lady was.

“She was like, a hundred and ten years old,” says Leslie.

“Maybe she was thirty,” I answer, still watching the door. “And just in bad shape.”

“I guess that’s what we’d look like if we lived here,” says Leslie thoughtfully.

Tea sits up. “We do live here.”

It is unfortunate that we spend so much time in rock clubs. Sticky, beer-soaked floors, stale cigarette smoke and scuz dripping off walls covered in Sharpie drawings of naked ladies… it can hurt your feelings after a while. Leslie walks over to the table, lifts the cover of the chafing dish and squints into it. “What is it?” I ask her.

“Looks like horse,” she says carelessly.

“Horse in gravy?” asks Tea.

“Yep. Could be goat.” Leslie’s a vegetarian, so she thinks all meat is funny. “There is no love in this food,” she murmurs. Carrying the chafing dish over to me, she shoves it under my nose and lifts the lid. “Here,” she says. “I got this for you.”

I pull my face away. “Stop that.”

Tea gets up slowly. “Beer for dinner,” she says, and walks out of the room. Tea and I are stepsisters—we introduced my mother to her father and they got married, of all things—but even though there’s no blood between us, we look very much alike: puny little dishwater blonds. When people ask us if we’re twins, she tells them we’re “ step -twins” and they always nod, like they know what she’s talking about. Tea also says this about us: “It’s good that we’re ugly—it makes us funny.” Of course, we think ugly is beautiful.

Leslie yawns and stretches. “Where’s Dave?”

I look around the empty dressing room. “Lost?”

“You lost him?”

“ I didn’t lose him, he just got lost. I’m not my drummer’s keeper.”

She studies the chafing dish. “I wanna show him the horse-goat.”

When I finish the set lists, I stack them on the table, then notice that the bottom one’s stuck to a wad of bright green gum. Peeling it away from the gum, I look at Leslie. “She shouldn’t eat beer for dinner, it’s too sad. Let’s grab her and go out.” Leslie nods, puts on her jacket, then leaves, calling Tea.

Dropping the set lists back down on the gum, I grab my hat and follow her out to the bar where Tea’s talking to the soundman. The soundman’s laughing, but Tea looks annoyed. “That doesn’t make sense,” she’s saying as we walk up. He turns his back on us and walks away before she can finish. “What a dick,” she says, shaking her head.

“What’s the matter?” Leslie asks.

“He said our equipment sucks.”

I look back at him, then at Tea. “Our equipment does suck.”

“Yeah, but he called us ‘rich kids from Newport.’”

“But if we were rich, we’d have good equipment.”

“That’s what I told him. He just laughed. He thinks we’re too dumb to have good equipment.”

“Dick,” mutters Leslie.

“He wouldn’t put kick and snare in my monitors, either,” I bitch. “He just kept saying he was doing it. Too lazy to push a fader.”

“He thinks you can’t tell the difference,” says Leslie. “C’mon, let’s go find food.” The three of us walk slowly toward the open doors of the club. “What the hell makes people think bad shit doesn’t happen in Newport?” she grumbles. “Bad shit happens in every city.”

“Well, to be fair,” I say, “the only bad shit we have in Newport is tourists.”

“Yeah, but I’ll take a mugger over a tourist any day.”

I nod. “Muggers are at work, tourists are insane.”

Tea sighs. “We can’t win. It’s ’cause we look like little kids. Nobody listens when we talk.”

“Did he say you can’t play guitar ’cause you don’t have a penis?” asks Leslie.

“No.”

I look at her. “That’s something, anyway.”

“Some- thing ,” corrects Tea. “Not some- thang. ”

“Some- theeng ,” I repeat. Tea’s been helping me kill the vestiges of my Southern accent for years.

When we reach the entrance, Leslie looks at me. “Think we can get back in?” We’ve been playing shows since we were fourteen, but won’t legally be allowed in clubs for three more years. And we all look much younger than we are, so if we leave after sound check, door guys don’t let us back in. Even though we always leave very carefully. “I’ll do the talking,” says Leslie, as we approach the door man. “I look the most like a grown-up.” She looks at me. “And you make up words.”

“I don’t make up any more words than y’all do.” Leslie rolls her eyes at Tea, who looks at me like I should know better. I look from one to the other. “But you can still do the talking,” I add. “You’re the tallest. Just don’t get flitchy. Be cool.”

The door guy is an oily, tattooed man in leather with many piercings—door guys always dress the part. He’s sitting on a stool by the entrance with his back to us, writing on a clipboard, so we stand a respectful distance and stare at him, waiting for him to notice us. “If you don’t want people to know you’re Southern,” Leslie says to me, “maybe you should stop saying y’all. ”

“Well, I didn’t make up that word. You yankees don’t have a second person plural.”

“You could try vous instead,” suggests Tea. “It sounds more cultured, less Gomer.”

“Okay. Vous don’t have a second person plural. Hey, that is better!”

Leslie chuckles. The door guy hears her, turns around and looks at us, bored, then goes back to his clipboard. “ He’s so grody ,” she whispers.

“If you don’t want people to know you’re from California,” I say to her, “maybe you should stop saying grody .”