Boring Girls(89)

We’d landed in London but the first show was in Manchester, a few hours’ drive northwest. At least we could try to sleep in the van as Richard drove. I sat next to the window with Fern beside me. She stared out the window and I stared at her. Her cheeks were hollowed, and I realized how much weight she had lost. Socks and Edgar were excited about being in England, chatting with Richard about how the buildings looked different and laughing about different shops’ names. I was dimly aware that we were in another country and it was totally interesting and different and exciting, but for some reason I couldn’t stop staring at the sharp jut of Fern’s cheekbone. My stomach lurched at the thought of how unfair it was, at how she couldn’t enjoy what was happening as much as she should have been able to. So I closed my eyes and tried to calm my racing heart by thinking instead about how every mile that passed, every step forward, was taking us closer to our new goal. We would get a tour with DED. It would happen.

xXx

A few things became clear as the tour began: one was that the guys in Goreceps were pretty nice, which was a relief. Two was that some people in the U.K. knew our music, and the only explanation was that they’d heard it on the internet. This pissed Socks off especially — we hadn’t mailed many CDs over here, and he was frustrated that we’d lost potential sales. It was a weird double-edged sword — people liked our band over here and it was surreal to see people singing along in a foreign country, but they clearly hadn’t bought the CD.

The third thing was that our reputation had preceded us. A lot of people at the shows had the perception that we were “insane.” Certainly most of the people at the shows were impatient for our act to finish so Goreceps could take the stage, which made sense, and a lot of those people were guys who had no interest in our band, especially with two girls onstage. But the story of my vomiting had gotten around, and to my dismay it seemed I was expected to provide some sort of shocking performance.

I was already prepared to steel myself against aggressive metal guys at the front of the stage and was becoming pretty good at ignoring taunts and jeers and bullshit sexual gestures. But over here it seemed to take on a new intensity.

At one of the first shows, there were about four guys pressed against the stage as we played, and they openly tried to intimidate me. “Try puking on me, bitch,” one of them kept jeering. I tried to ignore them, and Edgar positioned himself in front of them in hopes of shutting them up, but between songs they’d spread their arms wide, calling to me, daring me to do something. I hoped they’d get bored, but they seemed determined, and despite the overall positive reaction from the crowd, I was having trouble ignoring them. I could feel their eyes on me and it unsettled me, which in turn made me furious at myself for allowing them to intimidate me.

When we had only two songs left, they finally cut it out. I was relieved, but then I saw that they had turned their attention to Fern. She was focused entirely on her guitar and her fingers moved quickly, gliding up and down its neck. Sweat dripped from her face, and her mascara had melted into dark circles under her eyes. Above her, a red spotlight glowed, bathing her in scarlet light, making her white hair appear pink. She looked so beautiful in that moment.

And I saw one of the guys had pushed his way to position himself in front of her, and his arm reached up towards her. It reminded me of the video I had seen of Marie-Lise so long ago, where the * in the crowd reaches up and is thrown back by her violent kick. I watched this guy’s hand grab the hem of her skirt and tug her forward. She stumbled, catching herself before she fell, but raising her hands from the guitar.

I froze as I watched the panic strike her face, her hands immediately flying to clutch her skirt protectively. I dropped the microphone as the guy continued to yank on her, his lips drawn back from his teeth as he laughed. His gums looked purple and diseased in the red light.

Socks and Edgar continued to play and the microphone began squealing, feeding back, cutting through my stupor and causing the people in the crowd to recoil with its piercing shriek. I grabbed the microphone back up, stopping the noise, and leaped towards the guy, raising it above my head like a baseball bat.

There was a loud, intense thump as I brought the micro-phone down on the guy’s head. Immediately it began to feed back again, but I ignored the grating sound. I don’t know if Socks and Edgar stopped playing. I was unaware of any noise except the shriek of the microphone and the booming as I brought it down against this creep’s head again and again. It sounded like a giant, overwhelming heartbeat, thudding and soul shaking, and I was dimly aware that the guy’s yells of pain were also amplified by the microphone.