Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

The following stories have appeared elsewhere, often in different form. “Nick in Nine (9) Movements” in Litro Magazine . “Hey Monkey Chow” in Bat City Review . “D.C. Metro” in The Nervous Breakdown . “All Dreams Are Night Dreams” in Narrative Magazine . “And Now Let’s Have Some Fun” in Identity Theory . “Tiffany Marzano’s Got a Record” in Redivide r. “Comedy Hour” in Another Chicago Magazine . “Exposure” in Instant City . “Welcome Thieves” in Glimmer Train .

Nick becomes Nikki, Duff was always Duff. They start playing in ninth grade because Duff’s stepbrother is in a band called Lewinsky Rescue and sometimes the stepbrother gets laid, so why not? But mostly they drink and wear tube socks and have a van. It’s fun. They come up with a name, Torrentials, and play hardcore, which is not punk and so involves constantly correcting people. Duff says, “Hardcore is to a pickax what punk is to lipstick.”

There are some fights.

Duff wears an earring and a Gibson SG, has natural rhythm and easy chops. Shaves his head. Kicks who needs kicking. Nikki’s too pretty to pretend that everything sucks, but tries. Gets an E-string tattoo, tags deli Dumpsters, parties with that drummer with the infected toe. Still, he’s always a beat behind, a measure off, up in his room running scales every second he’s not being yelled at by the guy who isn’t Dad but moved in anyway.

Some equipment must be acquired.

Duff says they should rip off a dance band. Or cut a hole in the roof of Kane’s Guitars, lower a rope, and haul up Johnny Ramone’s Strat. “Good idea, tier boss,” Nikki says, gets two jobs, quits two jobs, finally snags an off-brand bass on layaway. No label, no logo, made in Seoul. It’s called “Bass.” The plastic case is lined with fake pink fur that Duff says smells like pussy, which makes Nikki think Duff was lying about all those cheerleaders because it smells nothing like pussy and Nikki would know since he’s been hanging out at Dana Goldstein’s for months, especially on Sunday nights when both her parents work and they can listen to Agnostic Front on the futon.

Some glue is sniffed.

Torrentials play their first show, eight bands all ages mosh pits low ceilings. Sharpie Xs and studded belts. Aiming for Fugazi while pretending not to. But it works. The skinheads gob less than usual, say, Eh, yer okay. The girls in leather skirts nod in time to the beat, in time to each other, gaze over Wayfarers at Nikki’s low rumble.

Some gas is huffed.

The next day Duff decides he doesn’t like their name anymore, wants to change to November Regions. Nikki thinks November Regions is the lamest fucking name in the history of lame fucking names.

It sounds like a tampon commercial.

It sounds like a free U2 download.

Which means it’s perfect, since Nikki secretly wants to be huge. Wants to bend over like Green Day, get corporate-label famous, a ruinous admission he covers by pretending to be pissed, punches an amp, cracks two knuckles.

Duff apologizes by spray painting the wall of the practice space JESUS LOVES TORRENTIALS. There’s an anarchy circle around the A. Nikki has zero clue what anarchy is, or even wants to be. Something about wallet chains and waiters getting more per hour, plus tips. The band rounds out. A kid named Drew takes over drums, too good for his own good, runs jazz patterns in the middle of songs. Max Verbal is lead screamer, has a pompadour, brings sixers of Bud Light and refuses to share. He looks sort of like fat Morrissey, which Nikki knows because he stood lookout while Duff five-fingered Meat Is Murder from Record World.

Torrentials have four songs. Three originals, which suck, and a cover of Thompson Twins’s “Hold Me Now,” which sucks. Max Verbal keeps not sharing his beer and going, “Besides, they’re not really even twins.” Nikki transposes half a Doobie Brothers just so Verbal can go, “Besides, they’re not really even brothers.”

They play a couple parties and then a battle of the bands in the school auditorium. After the last song Duff smashes someone else’s guitar.

The audience goes crazy.

The kid holds his broken neck, his snapped strings.

Torrentials get the most votes, don’t win.

There are some fights.

PROM IS FOR SUCKERS, cap and gown for fags. Except hardcore is about inclusivity and subverting exactly the sort of culture that continues to validate such a word. Fine, Duff says, but insists there’s no way he’s wearing a blue smock, even though he failed chemistry and isn’t graduating anyway.

The after-party is lame, so they steal a bottle of wine and climb a tree, take turns reading the first twenty pages of Tropic of Cancer by flashlight.

“We gotta hit Europe, yo,” Duff says, currently working yo and kid into every other sentence. “Which means we gotta get paid, kid.”

They land the same telemarket job downtown, sit across from each other at a folding table full of dial-up phones, give away free passes to a health club. You need to get in shape, yo? You like to push iron, kid? Almost everyone hangs up immediately. Then a girl at the next table figures out how to dial Japan, for a week the whole room calling Tokyo porn lines and asking confused housewives if they’re Yakuza, do they want to win a free pinkie finger?

They quit after the second paycheck, sleep three nights at LaGuardia on standby, get seats on a cargo flight with no seats. Nikki couldn’t cram Bass into his ancient JanSport, so he bought a harmonica. Not very hardcore but easy to hit the three notes that matter. They land in Berlin, follow the same route Von Clausewitz used to subjugate Poland. Or maybe it was the other direction. Duff grows his hair out. Nikki reaches for a mustache. They stand in the middle of squares and the front of cafés, mostly do blues in E since any other key means drowning in that chordy Dylan routine even Dylan only pulls off half the time.

People stop, watch, walk away.

There are some pigeons.

There is some change.

Duff and Nikki become known as Der Witzel-something , which everyone swears is a compliment, but then Klink gets wind and keeps sending Schultz to disperse the crowd. The Euro-hipsters boo, but not too much, since Euro-cops carry machine guns and aren’t shy with the boot. In Hamburg, Duff scores a Gretel who gives them a floor and then a week later a ride north. She’s on her way to some protest, which basically means smoke pot, wear an Arafat scarf, and chant about not building one thing in favor of building another, better thing.

On the streets of Stockholm a guy in a business suit listens for a minute and then yells, “You know nothing about the blues! Go find another hobby!”

Duff wants to follow the dude, get into it.

“It’s bad luck to punch a Swede,” Nikki says, which probably isn’t true, but keeps them from spending July in Stockholm Rikers.

THEY’VE BEEN BACK four months. Duff’s got the clap and three new tattoos. GORE CLUB and PSYCHIC TV and AVAIL. His cousin paints houses on Nantucket, knows a guy who knows a guy. Plus tetracycline. Duff takes Nikki’s suitcase more than borrows it, grubs twelve bucks in change, ready to hit the road.

There are some hugs.

Nikki fills out three forms, waits, almost throws away the envelope that says he’s won a partial scholarship to a place in Ohio no one has ever heard of. Something State. Dude name of Pell good for a grant. Nikki flags the Greyhound with a Hefty bag full of socks and a well-thumbed Genet. Thirteen hours later a cute girl finally gets on, sits by the window, snores. At school an index card on the message board says CHEAP SAX LESSONS. Nikki buys a 1941 Conn alto for a hundred Pell-bucks and squonks away behind the dorm for weeks before producing a single pure note. It’s fantastic. The sax teacher is called Tumast. No last name. Tumast refuses to come on campus, says, “Too many white girls without bras make me nervous.” Nikki skates over to his place, more a barn than a shack. More one big room with no kitchen than a place you’d be cool going barefoot. Tumast has three enormous gleaming tenors lined against the wall, tries to sell Nikki the dented one.