I didn’t even want to do it, you know.
But Stephen — or Steve, that’s his “stage name”: Steve Gash, instead of Gallatino. Stephen, he needed the money. I sure as Hell didn’t — yeah, I bought a nice car, but at least I know what a bank is. Steven, poor guy, he blew too much of it on drugs, too much more lost in that haze. He went to rehab, and then we started talking again, but by that point it was too late and the band had been broken up for a good four years.
Steve wanted it to happen, but Dominic was the one who convinced me. Poor guy, he was always the one who cared the most about the band. He liked having friends or something. I mean, I don’t blame him. It’s just that we weren’t exactly the best friends to have.
The other guys, they all love the music. That’s enough to sustain them on this tour. Well, that and the money. I do too, it’s just that I never planned to be touring past 45. I mean, I’m not a romantic, but you’re supposed to have settled down by then, right? With a family. And God, now I’m nearly closer to 60… it’s a cruel, cruel world.
This is our first show back together, so of course it’s gotta be long and of course it’s gotta be in L-freaking-A. I wonder if the audience reads it like we’re straining to get the songs out. Because we aren’t, I’ll have you know. That’s just how Steve sings, after the smoking and all. I mean, I’d rather be sitting right now, but I’m going to survive and all. Montana, lucky bastard, is sitting at the drums.
But Steve looks healthy now. Me, I look the same as I always have: big, and a bit too ugly to be a rock star. So I play rhythm guitar, and it’s a nice gig. Most of the songs, I can get into it and stay there, switching between a few cords and hitting accents when they’re needed. I mean, it is rhythmic.
Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-da-dun. “Midday Monsters” is a real hitter. See, the song is framed about horror, all godzilla and frankenstein, but it’s actually about the cops. “Red and blue, they’re coming for you” and all. The guitar lines are pure Maz genius, but Steve wrote the lyrics all himself, and it turned out pretty good. I mean, for Dust.
He was the one that got caught up in those things, Stephen. Dominic refused to try any of the harder ones, but he’d bring around weed to make up for it. Maz would only do the weed, and Montana’s parents told him the US government was trying to mind control him through drugs and it’s not like he believed it but it’s not like he could reject them either. Me, I tried a few, but, well, Stephen did them first and I didn’t want to get like him.
I didn’t get a family, I’ll have you know. I had a wife for a while — or really, partner, because I never had the guts to propose. That’s not why she left me, she just found someone she could love more. And it’s not like I could really object, having realized I didn’t really love her once things settled in. It was like a stable marriage, that way, and honestly, I think all marriages should work like that and everyone would turn out happier if they could just move on when they needed to move on. We still call every once and while. Facebook friends.
I hope the audience can’t tell by my occasional backing vocals that some part of me is bitter now. I don’t know why. It’s the old age. I was already ready to move on, you know. I’ll have you know I had moved on — I didn’t do much with my days, but I didn’t think about the band that much. Took up woodworking. Jammed with some local dudes — never a single show or recording, we’re just guys doing it for fun.
Well, actually James became Jennifer and all the more power to her, so old guys and an old gal. Sometimes these ex-riotgrrls would come in too. See, I’ve tried to be less misogynist or sexist or whatever they call us now. Honestly, we only had a few songs about relationship struggles — Steve was already too busy hating everything to hate the women who wouldn’t agree to a date in particular. Me and the dudes, and Jennifer, we’re cool with them, the riot grrrls.
I don’t really think of myself as lonely, but the same time I know I am. It’s just that there’s nothing I’d like to do about it.
Honestly, I think some people are simply meant to end up like this. Sometimes you don’t need the family, you know? You have your people, and they may live outside your home, but they’re there for you.
See, that’s the thing about the band. We fit as young dudes barely out of our teens. Now, not so much. Dominic got married and then divorced her, for no good reason. Or what would I know, anyways, it was her reason that was plenty fine. He’s got a little girl and a little boy now though, I hear, and he and his wife are on good terms. I think she really didn’t want to live in a cabin in the woods with him, because that’s what he does. He’s a bit of a recluse. He’s always unhappy alone, though — I don’t understand him.
Montana was there for the music and he loved the music. He did drums as much as he could. Just stayed in the scene, really. Married into the scene too. Some sweet guitarist who didn’t get to play lead until he put together a band that would let her. A real rocker — I’ve listened to their stuff, she shreds heavy.
Stephen, he had his druggie act. Then he had his therapy act. I think he fell in love once or twice. Mutually. But the girl would never commit to his disaster and I just thank the gods that he wasn’t the kind of mess to turn into a creep from that. I just hope going back into the scene doesn’t mess him up again.
Of all of them, I really actually kept up with Maz the most, past five years or so. He was doing guitar videos on the Youtube. We chat ‘cause we both get that the music we made with the band, it ain’t perfect, and it ain’t really good, but it’s great, in a way. But he’s chill. Always been chill. I’m close with Dominic after him, and then Stephen in the most paternal way I get — man, we’re so old and I still worry about Stephen like he’s my own brother.
Me, I became normal. Fuckin’ normal, you know? I was actually like in the bad way, for a while, when we were young. “Oh, no girl wants me, oh, I’m unlovable, oh, women are cruel.” It was real pathetic, real fucking pathetic. It was Montana who set me straight, told me no girl would love a guy who hated her before he gave her a chance to fall in love. He was right. There was one solid girl, and then there was Katy, my ex-“wife”, and then there was only Katy. And then there was no one, but by that time I was better and all. I’ll tell ya, it’s not a wife that makes a home, it’s the front door. I hear they always want a different temperature too, anyways. With no wife, I keep the house as cold as I want.
I learned the thing about the front door from this boy who lives nearby. I had big house, a “famous musician” mansion, for a while, but then after Katy and after the dog died it got too small, so I set up in the suburbs. It doesn’t make any sense, I know, but you go back to what you know, I suppose, and my parents’ place had long changed hands. My dad, cancer in ’09. My mom, a bad goddamn fall, two years later. Technically there was something else, but we all know it was the fall that did her in.
Anyways, I host barbecues and stuff so people don’t think I’m a creep, and the neighbors actually let their kids hang out with me sometimes. I think they feel sorry for me, that I never had any. And honestly, yeah. I said I didn’t need a family, and that was the truth, but it would have been nice to have kids, yeah?
My brother, he lives out on the East Coast still. He has a nice little family. The kids like me. They’re kinda grown-up now, though. I think his oldest just became an architect or something. They’ll be out to see us when we hit the East Coast. Tonight, that boy I mentioned is in the audience, and to make a long story short, he showed me this game where you need a front door to really finish a house, and I just thought that rang true, you know. His name’s Julian. He’s brown, adopted from Guatemala, but that doesn’t bother me none. I’m no racist. Well, I try. That’s the best anybody can do, or else they’re lying.
Another of my favorites is Maya because she’s learning the guitar too. The music kids like these days, it’s real different, but she’s trying to learn our songs too. The ones I wrote with the band. I get all smiley when I think about that, I don’t know why. It ain’t dead, I guess, rock ain’t dead.
We’re playing “AsteriX” right now. Probably one of our best songs, because it’s one of the only ones that means anything. Anything important, you know. It’s a song about all the different qualifications society has on acceptance. “We only like you if you look right, talk right, walk right.” Apparently there’s a French comic; it’s not about that. “We only like you if you’re like us.”
The story is that Steve came to us fuming in the studio one day, spewing slurs. He was talking on about how he’d been bullied all his life just for liking his hair a little longer, tolerating girly stuff a little more, you know, stuff like that. And Steve was a real rocker man, he had the range, even back then, in his taste, but kids, they don’t accept that. So he was branded the homo and he was sick of all the hate. He was talking about the Blacks and the Jews and the injustice they face. My dad was Jewish and I had been Stephen’s real good friend all our lives so we knew all about that one. And then Montana said he had a cousin who married Chinese — a Chinese person, I mean — and that there had been some sort of law her parents barely managed to get past — she was actually born here, you see. We had to go to the library for that one, but we put in a line about that. Mostly it was about masculinity though, because that was what we understood. “Men don’t cry, but little boys do. I thought it would stop hurting, but turns out you took the tears from my eyes.” None of us were the macho archetype. I mean, I’m proud of Steve for never being in any domestic violence case. Guys in our scene, it’s a bit too common, you know.
And I think we all kinda toned that down, you know, to fit in with what we wanted to fit in with. We wanted to be rock stars, but we wanted to be men, and we wanted to be metal, and we weren’t gonna be pop sissies. Well, the long hair got cool at least. But still, we were kinda half-in and half-out of the scene proper. So like, the people liked that we were different but we were afraid of being too different. Too different and your appeal becomes niche you know, that’s just the way it is. We wanted to be normal in a way, for rockers, yeah? All a paradox, but we were just looking for simplicity.
“AsteriX” was one of our last songs. Mazzy had already left the band, but he told us he liked it. Some people didn’t — even though it was a mad song, a brutal song, the “lyrics weren’t made for rock” or whatever — too emotional. They were saying all the things the song was against! Eff that! So we went down to the library and found some girly poetry — I mean, flowery and emotional, though we did look for women poets just to stick it to everybody — and set that to music, and that song was on the last EP. We called it “The Last EP” and everyone thought we were joking, but we weren’t. The band couldn’t stay together. It couldn’t. Dominic had his lady, Stephen had his drugs, and I had my exhaustion with the life. Maz had already left the band, couldn’t take the rest of us. Montana, he just got weirder. We were never as close with him anyways. Well, I wasn’t, I think he and Dominic had an understanding — I always found him too weird, like what is his ideology inside his head?
This crowd’s a little different than the ones we played back then. More young people than I expected — not a lot, but I didn’t expect a lot. Some of them, young and old, aren’t white too. You can see them really get into “AsteriX”, screaming about the injustice of it all. I’m glad its got an audience now.
I can see Steve smiling too. He’s had his times, Stephen Gallatino, but he’s alive and happy, man. He can’t really dance around stage, but he’s screaming as hard as he can. Maz, his fingers are flying. Legend, I always knew it. Steve was the one who did all those things he shouldn’t have; sometimes it felt like his band and the rest of us were just along for the ride. But goddamn, Maz wrote half of our songs. He deserves more than he’s got.
I swing a glance behind me, feel my heart pound. Montana’s playing as good as ever. And Dominic on the bass, always just to my left. He wanted to be in the center of things.
We all told him he should pick a different name. Back when we made the very first EP, we asked him. He was too shy to go by “Dom” and refused to pick any of our other suggestions. “Dominic Wilson.” What an un-rock name. Stephen dropped the ’n’ to stop being a nerd and changed the ‘ph’ to a ‘v’ for the cool factor. Patrick kept his name but he left in a few months. Smart guy, getting out while he could. Then we had Montana, replacing him on drums. His parents were frickin’ weirdos, man, naming him like that. No stage name needed. Apparently they lived a “nomadic” lifestyle and it was where he was born. Maz, he said what he was doing was British, shortening his name with a ‘z’. We all rolled our eyes, but it was cool, so Martin Kobliska became Mazzy and only kept his last initial. Mazzy K. People thought we made him up when we brought him to shows. And when he played— boy, did they ever think he wasn’t real them.
And me, Arnold Peck, I became Arnie Heck. Just obvious enough that it’s a stage name without being too ridiculous, trying to do what Steve did.
It was a fucking stupid-ass name, but once we printed that EP, we couldn’t change it. I mean, we could, but like, we couldn’t.
I can feel the sweat on my back. My T-shirt is sticking to me.
God, remembering being 17, 18, 19 — God, it feels like I should remember better. The beginnings of the band. Stephen tells me he’s met an epic guitar player — Martin Kobliska. We invite that Dominic kid who’s our friend but not as close. I ask Patrick, and then when he doesn’t work out, we meet Montana at some weirdo venue when he plays drums that are too heavy for the shoegazers he’s with. So he signs on, and for the next decade, that’s the band. We’re the band. Well, not the band — we’re never number one, but that’s us. Dust. God, I regret suggesting that. Montana wanted to be the Nextdoor Clovers, but that didn’t match the scene, and no one had a better idea. (Steve had worse ideas.) At least we’ve been able to make good use of that ‘D’, typographically, on the album covers. Some people called us The Dust. That made us sound cooler, but it was always just “Dust”. “We are Dust,” not “We are the Dust.”
But then after nine and a half years, Maz leaves the band. We continue on for another three, but he was always the best of us, musically. I mean, Steve has skill and soul, but Maz, I never understood why he didn't join another band. I just don't.
Maybe it’s the bright lights, but I can’t see. Everything’s kinda looking grainy and gray.
I collapse in the middle of “Acidic” and my first thought — my last thought — my only thought — is did any other famous person die in such an embarrassing way?
It just gets worse when I wake up again.
Some kid, the Jerry guy whose handling our “online image”, tweets that I’m awake. Flat-out tweets. Like his life depends on it.
God, why did I ever even get a phone.
The doctors tell me I gotta drink more water onstage. Okay, fine. And I can’t play such long sets — well, this was our longest planned. And also I gotta sit down if I have to. And remember to eat. And breathe deeply. And drink more water. That much more? Okay, fine.
The guys are all hanging around my hospital bed, nodding along. I'm touched. Metaphorically. Well, literally too — they give me hugs. It's nice. Sometimes the other old-timers I jam with exchange bro hugs, but this is a hefty hug. A telling someone they're important to you hug.
So maybe I was a little lonely. Maybe I have been struggling too, without the band, the people I became an adult with. It's whatever, or it's important, or it's just rock. I dunno. I count my blessings, man, I'm rich. I'm just alive and with the guys and boy does that make me wealthy. Literally too.