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Excerpt From Days Of No Consequences
Later that week, I was sitting in my front room, changing strings on my guitar. I heard a knock on the door.
"Are you Paul?" a short, hairy looking kid asked me. He had on a knit hat pulled down over his long, bushy hair.
"Yeah," I said skeptically, "And you are?"
"Mark." He stuck out his hand. I shook it and it felt limp in mine. I let go as quick as I could.
"Come in, Mark." I stepped aside and motioned him in.
"Gee, thanks, Paul. I heard you’re looking for a bass player." Mark looked over my guitars and amps and microphones with an approving eye.
"Yeah, we’ve got just the two of us in a band right now, and we’re both more guitar players." I sat down and resumed threading my strings. His face showed the effects of acne, and he hadn’t shaved for a few days.
"A Guild, huh?" Mark said, noticing my guitar. "What kind of speakers do you have in your amp?"
"Speakers?" I questioned. "I don’t know. Speakers … just, you know, speakers."
"Yeah, but JBL’s, now them will blow the doors off regular speakers." Mark said. He had a lisp and his droopy moustache danced comically when he spoke. "I got JBL’s in my amp."
"Let me look," I said turning my guitar amp around. "JBL’s." I read.
"All right!" Mark said. "You want some beer?"
"No, that’s okay," I said.
"Really? I brought a six pack." Mark turned and stepped out on the porch. He came in with a six pack of Busch. "Can I put it in your refrigerator?"
"Uh, sure, why not." I said. I began tuning my guitar with the new strings.
"I brought my bass, too." Mark said. "It’s in my car, should I bring it in?"
"Why not?" I said. I turned on my amp and kept tuning my guitar. He didn’t look like the kind of guy I imagined when somebody said rock and roll musician, but then again, nobody else wanted the job.
A few minutes later Mark pulled a heavy bass amp and bass guitar through the front door. "It’s heavy, but it’ll blow the doors off most amps."
Mark opened a can of beer and set it on top of his amp. "Where can I plug it in?"
"Behind you," I said without looking up. "There’s an extension cord."
"I see it," Mark said. He pulled out a pack of Camels. "Mind if I smoke?"
"Naw," I said.
He lit up his cigarette and stuck it under a string on the head of his bass. He took a swallow of beer.
"Shall we tune up?"
I played a note for him. "How’s this?" He played his bass. "Sounds close enough to me." I said.
"Hey we’re in tune. What shall we play?" he asked as he took a drag on his cigarette.
"Let’s do some bluesy thing," I said. Mark shrugged his shoulders and took a drink of his beer.
"I’ll follow."
I started playing a song I had just written with Art, called King Zex. Mark followed along and did a bit of a jig while he played. He wasn’t too bad, but he didn’t quite know how to do the bass runs.
"Mark, don’t play it like that," I said, "Watch, go up like this." His style of playing got on my nerves.
"Got it." He said, but he played it the same as he did before. I gave up and let him play it his way. But I didn’t like how it made my song sound.
We played another twenty minutes and decided to take a break. "What do you think?" Mark asked me.
"Well, I don’t know, you sound okay, but we need to see what Art thinks."
"Is he coming?" I nodded my head. "When will he be here?" Mark asked.
"I don’t know. He’s coming today, I think." I said, "Sometimes you just don’t know with Art."
"Well, how about a beer, then?" Mark said.
"Might as well."
He handed me a beer and offered me a cigarette. "No thanks." I said. "I don’t smoke." I had never drunk his brand of beer before. It seemed a little slimy going down. I really didn’t like beer.
"Maybe later we could get something to eat together," Mark said. "You like pasta?"
"Yeah, sure." I answered him.
"Put ‘er there friend!" Mark said, sticking out his hand. He limply shook my hand again. "I practically live on pasta. I got bad teeth, you know." I didn’t think the women would go wild for him, but maybe they’d pay more attention to me. I was trying to think positively.
I stared at the brown-eyed man. I began to wonder where Art was myself.
I wanted to smoke a joint, but I didn’t want to with Mark there, so I waited. I had him listen to my ZZ Top album. "You’re as good as their guitar player is," Mark said smiling.
"You think so?" I asked him. "I don’t think I’m that good."
"Oh, yeah, you are." Mark assured me. "You could blow his doors off."
Someone was coming through the door and it was Art. He had a nervous looking black guy with him.
Immediately I felt better. Art always made me feel better.
"Who’s this?" I asked Art.
"Irvine," Art said. "He wants to hear us play. I told him we did a lot of old Hank Snow tunes"
Art grinned at me.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "Hank Snow. Right."
"He sold me some Colombian stuff. It’s pretty good." Art held out his pipe. I took a toke.
Soon, Art, Mark and I were playing together. Art ran his guitar through a wah-wah pedal. He had never done that before. The three of us made a lot of noise and Irvine seemed to enjoy it. He smoked one cigarette after another and drank a can of Mark’s beer.
"Man, you guys sound fine." He said. His eyes shifted constantly. "You guys are good."
"Thanks, man." Art said.
We played a few more songs, then Mark announced we were out of beer. Art and I looked at each other and shrugged. "I’ll go get another six pack," Mark said. "Be right back."
"What do you think of Mark?" I asked Art, when he had left.
"Hell, I don’t know," Art said. "Is this his amp?"
"Yeah, he’s got some other stuff, too, he said. I don’t know for sure what, though."
"Maybe we ought to let him in and see what we can take from him, then kick him out."
"Oh, I don’t know, Art." I laughed. "Yeah, maybe we should."
Irvine lit up a joint. "You guys want some?" he asked.
"Sure, Irvine." Art answered him.
We played some more without Mark. Irvine said we sounded "sort of like the Rolling Stones. Especially when you sing, Paul." I didn’t know if I liked the comparison.
Mark walked in a bit later with two younger looking kids. "These guys want to hear how we sound."
The young guys watched us closely as we began to play a couple of songs. I noticed their eyes light up when Irvine offered them a toke on his joint. Mark let them drink some of his beer, too. I began to worry about all of us being in the house. It was starting to look like a big get together.
One of the young guys said, "You guys are pretty good." The other nodded in agreement. I figured they were more interested in the beer and marijuana than the music. I decided to just ignore them.
I had been playing for about three hours straight and was getting tired. My fingers were sore from the strings. "I think I got to quit for awhile." I said.
"Yeah, me too." Mark said. His bass playing was sloppy and elementary. But he had his own equipment.
"You can keep the rest of the beer. I got to get these guys home." Mark left and Irvine said he had to go, too.
"I told Irvine, you’d give me a ride home," Art said. Irvine left and Art and I sat down and listened to the ZZ Top album. Art took one of Mark’s beers.
"I thought of a name," Art said. "Hott Soxx." He spelled it out for me. "Only it’s h-o-t-t s-o-x-x."
"Hey! I like that," I said. "That sounds good! How’d you think of that?"
"Old time rock and roll makes you think of socks and then Mark said something about blowing the doors off something, but I thought he was going to say blow the socks off, so then it hit me, Hott Soxx. But we spell it different to be, well you know, cool."
"Cool!" I said. "We gonna let Mark in, then?"
"For awhile, I guess. I got to get my car running." Art said. "There’s a party coming up, You want to go?"
"When is it?" I asked.
"Saturday night," Art said.
"I guess so. I don’t know."
"Come on, Paul. There’ll be girls there!" I hated the thought of trying to mingle with strangers, even if they were girls.
"All right, then." I said. I thought I might get too nervous to go, but I didn’t know how to tell Art that. Sometimes, since doing the mescaline, I just wanted to be alone. It was depression coming over me again.
"Besides, I’m getting dusted."
"What?"
"Dusted. Angel dust. I’m getting some angel dust, you know, PCP, on Saturday."
"What’s that?" I asked.
"It’s nice. Kind of a nice high. You should try it."
"I don’t know, maybe." I thought about the mescaline. I wasn’t sure I wanted to try anything else.
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