It’s white-out conditions through Donner Pass, we don’t have tire chains and I can’t stop thinking about the gun in the glove box. No heater, obviously, right? So the windows are up and the air is heavy with weed smoke or steam from our breaths or some secret third thing. We’re all bundled in sweatshirts and jackets and beanies, hunched into ourselves, and I feel like I’m shivering along to the music: Darkthrone’s “A Blaze in the Northern Sky” on cassette but the speakers are so tinny and blown-out that it’s a single continuous hiss, saw-tooth static just hacking us to pieces.
The whole scene would feel like a real vibe, almost spiritual, if it wasn’t for the gun.
It’s dark when we finally make it to Reno. We pull the Honda Odyssey into a convenience store parking lot somewhere off the strip and Kenny is standing there in a t-shirt and what appear to be swim trunks, no shoes. He’s holding an Ol’ Glory energy drink. The can has an American flag and ninety-nine-cent logo stamped in red.
He’s excited to see us and holds his hugs for too long, which I don’t mind. No one mentions that he’s barefoot. Instead we just buy a thirty-rack at the store and get back in the van to drop our gear at his house and figure out the rest of the night.
Kenny “lives” in a quiet residential zone on the outskirts of town. The house is big and empty and somehow colder inside than out, and he explains that it’s his mom’s house, that it’s empty because she’s selling it, and no, she doesn’t know he’s “living there” but it’s all good. No one seems to care except me because I remember hearing about Kenny’s mom and I don’t wanna go to jail in Reno.
“It’s fine, dude, like as long as we keep it low-key there’s no way she’ll know.” Kenny gives me that toothy, squinty-eyed smile, the goof, the ol’ ragamuffin, and I’m not too worried anymore.
#
We’re in the middle of the street outside Kenny’s house, ghostriding the whip to Lazarus’ “Goodbye Horses,” which is blasting from the Odyssey speakers. Someone falls off the hood and rolls across the pavement, and someone else fires the gun into the air.
#
I wake up technically free but psychically shackled by a hangover. We’re all sprawled out across the hardwood floor along with empty beer cans and cigarette butts, piles of amps and drums, whiskey I kind of remember drinking. I count the bodies and it’s only three, including myself. David and Skinny Dave are huddled together for warmth and one or both of them is/are snoring. My joints are swollen, knuckles like marbles and all scraped up because I guess I was the one who fell off the hood of the car. I open and close my hands and each time I do they creak a little less so I think I’ll be okay enough to play guitar tonight.
The gun is sitting in the middle of the floor. I stagger to my feet and pick it up, turn it over in my hands, put it in Skinny Dave’s backpack.
Josephine and Kenny are in the back yard with beers playing Mumbley Peg. I only know what that is because of our last Reno trip, equally uncomfortable but in the opposite way, sun kicking at us like dogs as we hiked up the mountains outside of Verdi to ride the hydroelectric flumes. Kenny was dressed the same then, and this morning he is, too, in the backyard as he balances the tip of a hunting knife on his elbow. The goal is to flip it off your body into the dirt and I watch through the sliding glass door as it misses the dirt and pierces the top of his foot instead. He jumps up and down on one leg and I can’t hear him but those chubby cheeks are pushed all the way up and his pearly yellows are gnashing. Josephine’s laughing too.
#
We drive to a casino for breakfast, $4.99 steak and eggs in a carpeted dining room that smells like cigarettes and industrial cleaning supplies. It’s unsettlingly cheap but we still split two plates between the five of us.
I’m zoning out and my eyes are wandering through the casino crowd. There’s a man with a beer gut and a limp wearing a t-shirt that says “Don’t Tread on Me” and a hat that says “Back the Blue” and I try to do the math there but it doesn’t quite add up. Beyond him is an elderly woman in a wheelchair with a Geek Bar and a Virginia slim, just alternating back and forth, left and right, and the man pushing her seems a little too well-dressed in his cowboy hat and bolo tie. And across the dining room at an opposite table there’s a big white dude and a little black dude and they’re both wearing durags and they’re not talking, just zonked out in parallel anguish. And I love it here, I really do, because in this sea of kooks we don’t stick out with our stupid hair and pierced faces, we’re just kooks among the kooks among the kooks.
#
I’m throwing up into the snow. The sun is setting behind the mountains to the East, sky all amber and butterscotch brown. “She Neva Seen” by Mac Dre is bumping out of Skinny Dave’s Bluetooth speaker and it’s a really beautiful moment. I don’t think I’m that drunk, I think the casino steak might have done me wrong but if I didn’t throw up in Reno I’d leave disappointed.
“You ready for tonight?” David asks.
I wipe my mouth on the sleeve of my jacket. “What? Yeah, whatever. It’s just a shitty house show, right?”
He looks at me all stern, brow low and face wide like a pit bull. “I’m not talking about the show.”
I just nod because while I’m not sure what he means, I think I’m probably ready enough.
#
We pull the Odyssey up to a house with chipping paint and rotten front steps. Me and Josephine get out to check the situation since we’re the people-persons of the group. A guy with a braided beard and gold hoop earrings introduces himself as Wrath Scallywag and tells us to pull around back to load our gear into the basement. Wrath Scallywag smells like rum and clove cigarettes which brings me way back to eighth grade, the last time I even thought about clove cigarettes.
The stairs are narrow and slippery concrete but we manage to get everything in. It’s a true scumbag shitstain punk house, just how we like it, with forehead-sized holes in the walls and blood stains on the low, low ceilings.
“Anarcho punk collective.” Wrath Scallywag twirls his moustache and prattles as we grunt and hoist amp cabs and kick drums into stacks on the crusty carpet. “Anti-cop, anti-capitalist, anti-colonizer, anti-Zionist, anti-…” and I’m wishing he was anti-yapping because the smell in the basement is making me nauseous again and we could really use a hand with the gear. When it’s all said and done we go back outside to smoke a spliff while the first band sets up. I’m starting to get nervous, not about the show but about whatever’s gonna happen after the show, about the revolver that’s either in Skinny Dave’s backpack or the glovebox or maybe wrapped in a sweatshirt in the kick drum.
#
“Five bucks,” Wrath Scallywag says to Kenny at the door.
“It’s cool, he’s with us,” Josephine says.
“No plus-ones. Five bucks.” He holds up a flyer for the show and points to the Venmo QR code.
“It says NOTAFLOF. Literally right there.”
Wrath Scallywag frowns, then looks pissed. “It’s only five bucks. If you don’t wanna support our community space, then…” I wanna punch him so bad, and I know that if I don’t Joesphine will, because you don’t charge Kenny, Kenny gets in for free, Kenny’s the reason for the season. We push past him instead.
I’m a little confused when I hear the sounds the first band is making and even more so when I see them. They’re wearing pirate hats and ruffled shirts and the washboard player keeps clicking his heels and winking at the crowd. I didn’t know pirate punk was still a thing. I look over at Josephine and she’s stifling a laugh, then over at David and Skinny Dave and they’re not stifling anything. Kenny, bless his heart, is dancing and even singing along. “Ahoy” this and “Avast” that and “Dead Men Tell No” blah blah blah. The singer ends the set with a rant about how we all need to support each other and love each other and without unity, we have nothing. I’m not sure who “we” is.
And then it’s our turn, so we set up quick and start our set because we all just want to get it over with. Halfway through the first song it’s clear that our brand of beat-down hardcore is not going over well and by the second song I see the other band slinking out of the room, trying not to bump their pirate hats on the doorframe. The more uncomfortable the crowd looks the more excited we get because we thrive on this shit, we love it when they hate us and soon David is grabbing kids by their shirts and tossing them to the ground, screaming in their faces and bashing the microphone against his forehead until the skin splits and blood paints his face. I throw myself into the wall, feel a crack against my temple and I’m sure Josephine hit me with the head of her bass. And then just as the song’s about to end a clean pop rattles the air, separate from the torrent of noise, and when I look up David is holding the gun straight up and drywall is sprinkling down onto his bald head like pixie dust or cocaine.
There are only a few people left in the room at that point and they’re all shook. Except for Kenny. He’s having a blast.
#
We’re sitting in the van listening to Chief Keef, shot-gunning beers trying to keep the hype train toot-tooting down the track. The night is young, the lights are bright, and we got things to do. The gun is glistening on the dashboard. I’m starting to feel something good.
#
The frat guy sitting next to me in the emergency room is blackout drunk and keeps screaming Drake lyrics at the top of his lungs, and there’s a stripper with a likely-broken arm on my other side yelling at him to shut the fuck up. I have a dirty bandana tied around my leg and I don’t want to be here. It was just a graze, a silly little nick, but the thing just kept bleeding and everyone was freaking out. Now the blood has dried, the bandana’s crusty and I’m too drunk to care about the pain.
The rest of the band is probably hiding out back at Kenny’s, drinking beer and listening to Cro Mags, enjoying their plunder and booty. Not Kenny though. He threw my arm over his shoulder and walked me here (barefoot through the snow, I might add), and made sure I got safely through the door before kissing me on the cheek and disappearing into the night.
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