Fire in the Belly - Act 7: Rock Yer Block Off!
We threw a party. A party of epic proportions. A party people talked about for years. And we threw that party, at least indirectly, because I was growing dissatisfied with the studio arrangement. I no longer felt that Roger was showing me the appreciation or respect I deserved, and he was starting to take over the studio. He took to painting these giant portraits. “Urban Baroque” he called this new style. The canvases were 8 to 10 feet on a side. They were stretched around two by fours. He would move them around, and there were at least a dozen of these works in process. He’d lay them on the floor, lean then against walls and stack them. He really got quite good at it, setting one end on my skateboard, steering form the other end. He’d gotten pretty burly, which only added to his similarity to Fred Flintstone. The likeness was arresting.
The canvases were always in transit; I’d never know from one day to the next just what state the studio would be in when I got there. He even started moving my workbench! No one can be expected to sit by passively for this type of abuse. I tried to talk to him. He looked at me as if I’d expressed an interest in painting on his canvases myself.
“Whoa.” He took a step back, pushing his hands away at belt level.
“Why is that a problem?”
“Do you know what you’re asking of me? You’re stepping on private and personal territory dude.”
“We’re sharing this space, Roger!”
“Come on.”
“‘Come on’ what?”
“You know?”
“I do?”
“We both know who makes best use of this space.”
“Huh?”
“You’re barely ever here.” He paused. “When’s the last time you finished a piece?”
“What are you talking about?” I arced my arm wide behind me, toward my bench. “What do you call those?”
He smirked and rocked on his heels, stifling laughter. An eyebrow bumped up and down.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“What?”
“I guess we just have differing understandings of the word finished.”
“Fuck off.”
“Okay. Alright.” he was backing away casually. “Forget I said anything, you’re right.”
I stewed for a week, and made it a point to be there every night past midnight. I brought a Walkman and I turned it up. We didn’t talk that whole week, and it was into the following week before we had something resembling a conversation.
“Let’s have a bash.”
“A bash.”
“Yeah,” he said, “we should have a bash. Melanie’s band could play.”
“Jesus Roger, I think I know that Mel’s band could play. Hello?”
“Don’t get territorial,” he showed me his teeth, “we should throw a bash.”
So we threw a big, big party. I drew flyers, and printed 500 copies at Kinko’s. We billed it as “Rock Yer Block Off.” We went way overboard, and it got out of hand. Melanie was furious because we couldn’t turn off the fluorescent lights, so the performance aspect of the night had a weird vibe. Melanie and her bandmates were bathed in a sickly blue light that was far too bright. They were unhappy about it, and I understood why, although we couldn’t have predicted it. There’s a certain amount of anonymity required in order to really lose yourself in live music, and that’s made easier when you’re in a dark club. No Faux, Mel’s band, was exposed to the focused attention of hundreds of visible eyes, and what made it worse was that they were standing on the same level. The whole thing was awkward and weird, and I think it’s part of the reason things got out of hand.
I drank tequila all night and collected one dollar bills from kids who couldn’t have been older than 18. They got warm Schlitz in return for their hard won bucks. By 2:00 am the kids were bored and restless. They broke our work benches and pieces of art. They stole tools and roamed The Belly looking for entertainment. The landlord called to kick us out the next morning, but neither of us were home to take the call. We were up the tower, watching the sun come up and drinking. We smoked joints and watched the traffic swell. We got too blasted to get down.
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Next week: Act 8: Wherein the Author is Humbled, and Offers Several Mea Culpas
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