The Career Breakthrough by Ira Parnes
I had a career breakthrough. I was doing a solo piano act in a run-down theatre in Portland. It was wintertime and the roof leaked. The ceiling plaster was falling off in dinner plate-sized chunks, and rain was pouring in through the light fixtures, cascading down in streams onto the stage, and splashing over the old velvet seats and running in rivulets down the worn carpeting of the isles. The seats were largely empty except for a bunch of soaking wet gutter punks who were probably just there to get out of the rain. They were all drinking Schmidt’s Animal beer, each out of his own twelve pack and they were throwing the empty cans over the orchestra pit onto the stage. The punks were all dressed in filthy jeans that were super tight at the ankles and jean jackets with leopard spot fabric and pieces of t-shirts sewn on everywhere. They smelled like old hangover and wet dog, even from far away, but they were my audience and I was glad to have them out there.
The headlining band for the evening was supposed to be Queen, which was odd because the year was 2004, and I hadn’t actually seen them backstage yet or anywhere else for that matter, but I didn’t ask questions, I just took the gig.
I started out by playing a few jazz standards like “Lady is a Tramp” and “Summertime”, but I eventually settled into a 70’s thing with songs like “Gangsters’ Paradise” by Stevie Wonder and throwing in some weird stuff like “Changes” - a depressed ballad by Black Sabbath. The whole thing was super weird and surreal because of the rain leaking in and the pieces of plaster shattering like artillery shells - I was waiting for one to come down on my head and knock me unconscious, after which I imagined I would wake up on one of the Chinese container ships down at the port with some Chinese guy yelling in my face that I had been sold by the concert promoter as a deckhand or something. The Chinese guy would have a bill of sale, of course, written on a coaster from like, the Marriot Hotel Lounge or something predictable like that.
I remember leaving my piano and jumping down off the stage at some point because my friend, Jeffrey, was getting kicked out by the giant Samoan security guys, who were really nice, compared to like, I don’t know – train yard cops in South Detroit. Anyway, he was just causing trouble, walking around with his dick hanging out and screaming like a woman in a horror movie so these mooks would grab him and throw him out one of the exit doors and he would just kind of talk his way back in with the ticket girls at the front or he would find a side door that wasn’t locked. All in all, I watched him get kicked out several times until finally I could just tell that this one time was going to be the last; three or four security guys had him and a couple of kids who looked like Gary Oldman and the broad who played Nancy from Sid and Nancy, whoever the hell she was. So they had these three supposed offenders by the arms. They had caught Sid and Nancy in the full-on sex act, up against the wall in the corner and Jeffrey had flicked a cigarette at the guy who was busting them, and was like “Leave ‘em alone, you fat faggot!” so they grabbed him too and then they had summoned the promoter like he was the dad and they were the bad kids or something and this promoter, (the guy who had hired me) was going to pass judgment on these two punks and this grey haired thirty year old surfer, who was Jeffrey, who looked basically like one of Hitler’s crew from the forties but he was really nice except when he was drunk - which he always was. But he was one of my best friends so I stopped playing and jumped down there before the promoter could say anything to anybody and I was like “Please! Please! Just hear me out, okay?”
The promoter, who was this sixty-year-old fat guy with like some kind of almost-totally-bald-but-still-had-dreads-down-to-his-waist-kind-of-war-zone-of-hair-going-on-white-dude, just said “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen... wait, okay, what do you have to say?”
I said, “Listen, my friend here, he just gets like this okay? If we leave now, for like, an hour, can we come back when Queen goes on?”
The promoter was just like “Hmm...” I saw the Sid and Nancy kids getting thrown violently out a side door by two Samoans. “Okay,” the promoter said, flipping his dreadlock thingie, “How about this; you guys get kicked out now, and...” he scratched his chin. Then he snapped his fingers. “I got it!” he said. “You can come back tomorrow for a free show, on me. What do you say?”
“Well, who’s playing?” I asked, genuinely interested.
He looked at this big butch broad in head-to-toe denim who was one of the Samoan security people holding Jeffrey. “Do you know who’s playing tomorrow?” he asked her.
She shook her head and just looked at him like, duh, we don’t have a fucking show tomorrow. “I don’t think we have a show tomorrow,” she said evenly, raising her eyebrows just a little.
The promoter kind of winced, “Oh-kay!” he said, clasping his hands together, trying to think of what to do next.
I butted in. “Listen. We want to see Queen. We need to see Queen. Just let us go now, we’ll go have some cocktails and mellow out, and we’ll be back in an hour.” I held one hand over my heart “Straight up,” I said “We will not bother you again.”
The promoter looked at his right hand man, kind of a younger version of himself, dreads and all, who also had one hand on Jeffrey. “Did you throw that couple out?” The promoter asked the guy. “The ones who were fucking?”
“Yea,” the right hand man said. He was wearing aviator sunglasses. His teeth were totally brown.
The promoter looked at him, suddenly gravely serious, “If I see those two in here again, tonight, you’re fired. I mean it.”
The guy nodded. “No problem,” he said. “They’re not coming back.”
The promoter pointed his finger like a gun at the guy. “Serious,” he said. “I’ll shoot you in the face. And you know I will.”
The guy just kept nodding, cool as could be.
“Okay,” the promoter clapped his hands like a football coach, “You guys can go. And we’ll see you later on, okay?”
I grabbed Jeffrey and we ran through the back stage door, grabbed some black wigs on the way out from a cardboard box on the floor.
This is awesome, I thought. Queen should be just starting by the time the hour’s up! Fuck yea! All we’ll miss is the fucking opening band and we always miss the opening band. I mean we try to miss the opening band so it was going to work out perfectly! Yes!
Then I realized that I was the opening band. But by that time we were already walking down the street, Jeffrey and I, wearing the black wigs, headed towards a sign that said, “Cocktails”.
“Dude,” I said. “I totally saved the day! We still get to see Queen!”
Jeffrey was like, “That’s who’s playing tonight? Queen? But the dude’s dead. How can they be playing without him?”
“I have no fucking idea,” I said.
Just then a guy rode by on a bike, said, “They got some girl now, I forget who. Maybe like, Anne Wilson from Heart, or somebody.”
Me and Jeffrey just looked at each other like, “That’s fucking gay!”
The guy on the bike yelled back as he rode away, “Don’t go. It’s going to be terrible.” Then he disappeared into the light rain and mist.
We opened the door and walked into the cocktail lounge. It was smoky and heavy with perfume. Patsy Cline was playing on the juke box and there were a few half decent looking girls and a bunch of guys with army hats and tattoos. Everyone was getting loud and laughing and strutting around, loaded. I flipped my black hair and lit a smoke. It felt good to be out of the rain.
There was a kid who looked like Brad Pitt sitting at a table with three girls. He was rocking back in his chair, drinking a bottle of beer, looking full of himself and pretty, like a Hollywood model boy. Jeffrey just walked right up to the guy and kicked his chair over. The guy hit the floor awkwardly. That was Jeffrey’s specialty, random violence. “Ladies,” he said, addressing the table formally, taking a bow, clearly proud of himself. The guy on the floor just kind of rolled on his side. I clapped my hands, “Sabu! Vodka, now! Bring the bottle!” The bartender gave me the finger.
“You’re an A-hole!” a girl said as she stood up from the table. She looked like Betty Page. She was one of the Brad Pitt fan club.
“Nice look”, I said to her. “That’s really original. Did you put that together yourself or...” She shook her head at me, dismissively like a spoiled little bitch, started helping Brad up off the floor and walked away with him. He was holding his elbow. The other two girls didn’t get up. In fact, they looked mildly amused. “We just opened up for Queen,” I said. “Do you want to fuck or what?” Jeffrey came back with drinks. We sat down. Things were off to a good start.
“Where are you guys from?” The girl was asking me, and she was cute; shaggy 80’s hair, cheeks and big earrings. “Ah, we’re actually from New York. City, New York State. New York, New York is what we call it. Rough town, but we do all right.”
“Really?” the cute girl said, “I lived in Manhattan for five years! What borough did you live in?”
Suddenly Jeffrey spoke up, “We’re big game hunters!”
“What? That’s gross!” the other girl whined. She was a little too skinny for my taste. And pale. She was obviously a vegetarian.
“Highly commendable,” I said. “You both passed our little screen test. You are obviously of a caliber worthy of going back stage with us at the Queen show later.”
“Queen? That’s totally dumb! How old are you guys, anyway?” the vegetarian whined. But I could see by the way she kept glancing at Jeffrey that she had already taken a shine to my comrade’s fascist surfer good looks.
The Manhattan girl with the adorable face was like, “That sounds fun. We should totally go!”
It turned out that Queen had gotten John Danzig, who evidently was Glenn Danzig’s older brother, to sing for them. The whole thing had a really interesting flavor. We watched the show from the VIP room with the two girls, along with Duff from Velvet Revolver (who’s always in the VIP room, everywhere), his girlfriend and some lady in a track suit who kept talking to herself and didn’t seem to know anyone. The VIP room was nice. And it had way less water pouring in through the light fixtures than the rest of the theater. Queen was going through all the classics as well as a few songs off their new internet release, which for some reason I hadn’t heard about. At all.
At some point in the show, the adorable girl started holding my hand. Then, during “Somebody to Love” I leaned over and started kissing her. She kissed me back, hard. And grabbed a fistful of my black wig. The thing just came off in her hand. She threw it on the floor and kissed me even harder. I took her hand and led her out the back door of the VIP room, into the alley. It was pouring rain. I put her up against the cinderblock wall of the theater and we started grinding and groping each other under our clothes. She unzipped my fly, took my dick in her hand, but for some reason, it wasn’t getting hard. “What’re you, fucking gay?” She gasped. She let go of my dick like it was on fire, covered her face with her hands and started sobbing. “I always get the queer one! Why? Why, me? What’s wrong with me?”
“This has never happened to me before,” I said. “Never! It must be you; something... wrong... with-” Just then a beer bottle exploded against the side of my head. It was the kid who looked like Brad Pitt. He had three other guys with him. They all looked like male models in spiked chokers and eye makeup. They looked like a California surf-punk band off of MTV.
“Show’s cancelled, dickhead!” Brad said through gritted teeth as he put a hard right into my gut.
“Time to die, you little bitch!” said one of the other pretty boys. He stepped up and tried to John Wayne punch me in the face. I moved my head at the last second and his fist hit the cinderblock wall of the theater. He screamed and doubled over crying and holding his hand.
“Fucking house-punks,” I said, trying to zip my fly. But while I was looking down the other two male models rushed me. One of them, who looked like he was in Creed or something, karate chopped me in the neck, hard. I couldn’t see for a second. Everything looked like white light and then somebody punched me right in the nose. Then somebody punched me in the neck again.
I heard the girl scream, “Fucking assholes! At least let him zip up his fly! You guys fight like fucking pussies!”
I remember thinking, “What a cool-ass girl! I think I’m in love with her!” I touched the side of my head. I could feel broken glass all stuck in there from the bottle. Then I just fell over. I rolled onto my back. I was laying in a puddle, looking up at the purple night sky with grey clouds. The raindrops were falling straight down at me through the light from a street lamp. Then I saw the Brad Pitt kid and the other three standing over me, staring down. They looked a little concerned. “Dude, are you all right?” they asked.
“I’m fine.” I said, picking a piece of glass out of the side of my head and inspecting it.
“Well, you’re a fucking dick,” the Creed guy said. Then he kicked me in the neck with a brand new combat boot and took off down the alley.
“No more with the fucking neck!” I screamed. “I will kill you!”
Then it was the kid who had tried to John Wayne punch me. He was sneering, looking down at me. His eye makeup was really streaked from crying. “Fuck with the best - die like the rest, douche-bag,” he said, trying to sound tough.
I covered my nuts with both hands, braced myself, closed my eyes. He kicked me in the shoulder and ran away down the alley. I barely felt it. I started to get up. The last male model didn’t even try to get a shot in, he just ran away. As he ran he shouted, “We’re not house-punks! We live in a real fucking squat, so fuck you. And by the way, you suck as a piano player!”
I managed to stand all the way up and went back to picking broken glass out of the side of my head. Just then Jeffrey kicked open the door leading from the VIP room. “Big Game Hunters!” he screamed. He was carrying the girl who was a vegetarian in his arms like they just got married. She had an empty bottle of Jagermeister in one hand. He looked at me and he went, “Dude, there’s a dude in there who looks just like Brad Pitt! He’s cool as fuck too. We were totally drinking with him.”
I went, “What about the girl I came here with? The one with the adorable face?”
Jeffrey was all, “Oh her, she’s coming. She just went back in to get her coat. I think she totally likes you, dude.”
Just then the girl came out the VIP room door. She looked at me, smiled kind of shyly. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said. I wiped some blood off the side of my face. I felt all warm inside. I had a cute girl who actually liked me. There’s no better feeling than that. Plus I had one of my best friends with me and he had his own date so he wouldn’t start molesting mine like he usually did. It was a sweet moment. The misty air felt good in my lungs. And the rain started really coming down.
We all walked down the alley together singing “Weee Will, weee will - Rock You!”
The girl and I held hands. It was actually still pretty early. Last call wasn’t for like, forty five minutes or something.
Ira was born in New York City in 1973. He has worked as a cheesesteak cook, dishwasher, helicopter mechanic, bass player, bodyguard, roofer and bartender. Mr. Parnes is known for his prying and relentless journey down the barrell of American shame. He has had two collections of poetry published; Olympian Lowroad. c.2000 Somanybirds Publishing. Seattle, Wa and Fever Dream. c.2005 by Spankstra Press. Seattle, Wa.
