Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

When she’s finished reading she snaps the journal closed and flips it face out, lifts it with both hands like a trophy up above her head, amid scattered whistles and claps. People are glancing around, curious to see who looks wholehearted and who is hedging, not yet ready themselves to commit. But the inertia of crowds is at work here, or else the Holy Spirit is, and before they know it they can feel the feather-light sting of their own palms beating together.

Is that my voice I feel rising up inside me like a water jet, spouting forth Hallelujah ? Shouting Glory in the Name ? Is that me with my arms around these brother and sister strangers, my me-ness dissolving into us-ness, oceanic, and everyone so glad to be free of everything, not least of all ourselves, as we join arm in arm in arm together, every soul-sick idea about limit swept away?

It’s a lot of them, all right, but not Thomas. And not Owl and Selah, either. He sees them at the far end of the yard, their backs to the scene, slipping away around the side of the house. Too much even for them, apparently, which truly says something — says everything, really.

So what happens now?

The ululation tapers and is soon enough replaced with genial chatter as people become themselves again. Hey, good to see you. Yeah, you too. How’s it going? Katy heads inside with the notebook. It’d be nice to think of it out there in the tent, enshrined and accessible, but the humidity would destroy it in a week. Liz asks if anyone can help her move a few cases of beer, and someone says sure, yeah, that’d be cool.

They have a guy — congregant? parishioner? comrade? lover? friend? whatever; they have a guy — who works at the Publix grocery store on Thirty-fourth Street. He tips them off when good shit is being tossed out. The Publix dumpster fills up almost nightly with more technically-expired-but-totally-consumable food and drink than they could ever possibly make use of. Some nights there’s enough to fill Owl’s bus twice over, though usually they ride out there on their bikes, fill their backpacks and their baskets, leave the rest behind for the next enterprising troupe of young bums. But nights when they hold services are different — reveries, blowouts — and so they always start stocking up a few days in advance.

In addition to the several cases of beer, they also have the following: eight loaves of bread (white, whole wheat, seven-grain, raisin; take your pick), a crate of oranges, five boxes of Frosted Flakes, four grab-n-go rotisserie chickens in microwave-safe warming bags, a few blocks of extra sharp cheddar, six jars of chunky salsa (mild and hot, but no medium), a cardboard box entirely full of heads of lettuce, several bunches of bananas too mushy to eat but perfect for making smoothies with (though they have no blender), some half-thawed frozen steaks they’re not entirely sure about (but are hesitant to chuck, since they’re expensive as hell, besides which something died to make them), three family-size bags of baked tortilla chips (perfect complement to the salsa — praise be to the dumpster God), and two buttercream-frosted birthday cakes. All they had to steal was the bag of paper plates.

Katy’s in her favorite spot in the living room, the armchair, showing the notebook to some of the more zealous among her flock, but Thomas notices that there are only a few of these. Everyone else has had their fix and fill; they’re ready to get on with their night. Not even Liz is over there (though David is); she’s in the kitchen sipping a bottle of expired High Life and watching as a buzz-cut-sporting girl Thomas thinks is named Cindy slices up one of the cakes with a fine shining knife from David’s salvaged block.

Cindy — or whatever her name is — hands Liz a yellow paper plate with a fat slice of cake on it. The cake is dark chocolate and the icing is bright white, a snowdrift in full sun, save for a single red rose of frosting. “That looks good,” Thomas says. “Can I have one?”

“Sure, man,” maybe-Cindy says. “Anyone good coming up at Clasen’s?”

“This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb,” Thomas says. “And hopefully the Dust Biters, but I’m not sure when.”

“Well, cool. You should let me know. Maybe we could meet up there or something.”

“Yeah, maybe, sure.”

Thomas’s plate is blue. He passes through the kitchen, grabs three beers from the case in the fridge — all with his left hand, the bottlenecks between his fingers — and takes his spoils back to his room, hip-bumping the cracked door wide, then nudging it closed behind himself with a foot. He puts everything down except for one beer, twists the cap off, and lets the little puckered button fall. He turns his stereo on, punches PLAY on the tape deck, and sort of half sits half drops to his own floor while the speakers hiss. He leans his back against his bed, reaches up behind his head and feels around for the plate. Maybe-Cindy didn’t give him a fork. Ah fuck it. Poison Idea is singing “Death Wish Kids” at stun-gun volume and Thomas is eating liberated cake with his bare hands.

But the Poison Idea album’s only like twenty-five minutes long, and he started it in the middle, so it’s over way too soon. He thinks about rewinding the tape and starting from the beginning, but maybe better to see what comes on next.

“There’s a fire in the Western world!”

Oh fuck it’s Dead Moon! They’re this amazing lo-fi punk trio from — where are they from? Oregon somewhere, but not Portland, which is where Poison Idea comes from. Somewhere up there. What a weird album this is, Strange Pray Tell . Like it’ll be raging one minute, really calling the thunder down, but then there’ll be a weepie like “Can’t Do That,” which but for want of a synthesizer and a cheesy big drum would fit comfortably on any Elvis Costello record between, say, Armed Forces and now. And then what do they follow that up with? “13 Going on 21,” with the woman — the bass player — singing in this growl like Courtney Love without the sinus problems. Actually, the whole record sounds sort of like a bootlegged Nirvana demo. Didn’t this come out around the same time as Nevermind ? Close, anyway. Must have been. The Great Northwest. Jesus Christ. What he wouldn’t give to have been able to be there then, know those guys, witness everything firsthand, be part of it. He was a kid, of course, still in high school when Kurt made his big decision. After Kurt died the whole scene imploded. The replicas swept in — vulturous scum like that band Bush, and then all that hideous pop-punk that still dominates today. NOFX and all that shit. Ugh. The whole Fat Wreck Chords catalog should just die already — except for Propagandhi of course. Because those guys come from a metal background, and their politics are A fucking plus.

This album’s really not that punk at all, actually. At least not soundwise. Closer to country music and, like, the Replacements or something. But that’s the whole thing about punk, isn’t it? What bands like Blink-182 can’t understand — punk isn’t a sound, it’s an idea. It’s a posture, if there’s a way in which saying that can be a not-pejorative thing to say. Or, if there isn’t, then put it another way: it’s a philosophy, not a formula.

Fuck, but he sounds like Parker, doesn’t he? This is fortune cookie logic. Enough, enough. Think about something useful , man. You don’t want to be like them.

So he thinks about Seattle, and how the New World Order is coming. They’ll gather at the end of November, to eat caviar and suck each other off. Unpayable bank loans for the third world; economic slavery as the new face of imperialism. Indian villages drowned by dam projects. Whole forests wiped out so Americans can wipe their asses with two-ply. Countless species vanishing, and the seas rising, and this ragged hole in the atmosphere widening, and skin cancer rates skyrocketing, and a million other things besides. But these guys and their Armani suits. Their silk ties. Filet mignon. Death merchants. Capitalists. Their private cars and mobile phones.