By the time he returned to the Crossroad, the police had blocked it off and shut it down. But somehow he sweet-talked his way into
1) befriending a cop
2) figuring out what had happened
3) getting into the Crossroad and looking for us in there
4) walking out of the Crossroad with both our guitars and Ash’s pedals and everything
WES: holy fucking shit
ASH: corey how the fuck did you do all of that
COREY: the usual dickload of lying
WES: wow
ASH: what did you say
COREY: i said i was deebo harrison’s drummer and he sent me back to make sure he didn’t forget anything and he was probably gonna fire me if i didn’t get in there, so please, officer, my job’s on the line
WES: oh wow
ASH: that’s fucking awesome
WES: you probably could have just told the truth but i am still so proud of you right now
COREY: i gave myself a fake name
WES: no you didn’t
COREY: “bone wilson”
ASH: NO
COREY: i swear to god i was like, excuse me, officer, i’m bone wilson, deebo’s drummer, and he was like, well hello there, bone, what can i do for you
Like I said, the vibe was incredible.
Then it kind of changed in a hurry.
COREY: so ash where can we drop you off
ASH:
WES: no no no ash is still touring with us. we’re gonna go play a show tomorrow
COREY:
WES:
COREY: nnnnnnope
WES: come on, man. we can still play a great show
COREY: i’m not playing with her. sorry
ASH: corey, i’m sorry
COREY: oh yeah?
ASH: yes. i’m really sorry. i panicked, and i did the wrong thing, and i hurt you guys and sold myself out, and i have to live with that, and it feels shitty
COREY:
ASH: so i’m sorry
COREY: apology accepted, but i’m not gonna play with you anymore
WES: corey, come on, man
COREY: it’s not happening
WES: she said she was sorry
COREY: i heard. great. still not happening. i’m not playing with her
ASH: corey, what do you need me to say
COREY: ash, there isn’t anything you can say, because bottom line you don’t think i’m good enough to play with you. there’s no way around it. and i don’t feel like trying to change your mind anymore. so i’m dropping you off and wes and i are driving home
ASH: in what car.
The way she said this roughly doubled the Vibe Terribleness Quotient.
COREY: clearly, this car
ASH: you mean my car?
WES: guys
COREY: i mean the band car, the car of the band, a band which you are no longer in because you left the band tonight
ASH: uh you left the fucking band, including your best friend who had to stay behind and deal with a guy with a fucking gun
WES: guys can we jus
COREY: sure, yeah, because you became best friends with a super-herb who goes around herbaceously making enemies with dudes who have guns
ASH: oh that’s a great fucking point, i wonder if i did that because my drummer sabotaged my last show by pretending to be a fucking ape
COREY: well maybe that’s bec
WES: I WILL HEADBUTT BOTH OF YOU IN THE FACE IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP
At that point mostly I just felt incredulous that I was still dealing with this shit.
WES: here’s the deal. tonight i headbutted a guy in the face. yesterday i got out on a roof and had to deal with corey going insane from drugs. i’ve also talked down a guy with a shotgun and cut open my hand on diseased highway glass. we’ve all made some sacrifices on this trip. but i probably have a concussion and the wound on my hand is definitely infected. so i’m gonna need you guys to drop it
COREY AND ASH:
WES: corey, we’re not driving back to pittsburgh. we’re driving to new orleans. if you still don’t want to play with ash once we get there, that’s fine. but you have to drive us there. or shut up while someone else drives. and ash, you have to be cool with whatever corey decides once we do get there. and that’s what’s gonna happen
COREY AND ASH:
WES: that’s what’s gonna happen or i’m gonna headbutt you both in the face. i don’t give a fuck anymore. i’ve been through too much shit. all right?
COREY:
ASH:
COREY: oh SHIT
ASH: FUCK
WES: NO. NO NO NO
COREY: FUUUUUUUUUUUUU
There was a deer in the headlights.
I had always thought that deer-in-the-headlights thing was a myth. But this deer was in our headlights, and he was definitely just standing there staring at us, and it seemed like it did not even occur to him that he could get out of the way.
We were all screaming at him. He did not hear us or care. For some reason Corey was not braking. We got close enough that we could see the deer’s entire facial expression. It was the panicky bug-eyed expression of someone who is watching a movie that he doesn’t even a little bit understand. It was basically the face of my mom after she made me explain Snapchat to her. Actually, it was an expression I recognized from Dad Junior.
We did not end up hitting the deer. Not because he moved. We missed the deer because Corey steered us off the road.
We rattled into the shoulder. The car juddered and heaved and bounced up and down. The right wheels dipped into a ditch. There was a horrible RRRRRRRTTTCCCHH scraping noise on the underside of the car. Everyone was screaming. Corey pulled us out of the ditch and BOCK something smacked the side of the car right next to me. It was a fencepost hitting the right side mirror and KKSSHH I heard it explode and shatter into a million pieces. Everyone continued to scream. We lurched away from the fence. We lurched right back toward it and BEERRKK a different fencepost punched a huge gash into the side panels including the door that I was gripping and I felt it groaning like a living thing.
We lurched all the way back onto the road. It took a few minutes to realize we were driving again. The car was making a few more noises than before. But it was still a functional car, and we kept driving it.
Ash was the first to start laughing and then Corey started in and pretty soon we were all laughing like maniacs, and after that things were fine.
34.
SOMEHOW WE NO LONGER EVEN WORRIED ABOUT GETTING PULLED OVER EVEN THOUGH WE HAD VISIBLY BEEN IN AN ACCIDENT AND HAD NO RIGHT SIDE MIRROR
Suddenly anyone could just say anything and it was not a problem.
ASH: you know i did think i was better on my instrument than you guys
COREY: knew it
ASH: i didn’t even realize that i was thinking it though. i just assumed it
WES: huh
ASH: honestly, i’m probably the worst one in this car
COREY: you definitely are at jazz
WES: you’re worse in the sense of more limited
ASH: mmm
COREY: yeah wes and i can do a bunch of things pretty well and you can only do like four things
WES: four to six things
COREY: but you’re fierce at those things, so don’t worry about it
ASH: i’m not fierce at anything
COREY: look, you’d have to be, because otherwise we and our dicks would have fled from you many days ago
ASH: thanks dickhead
I mean, anyone could really say anything.
ASH: corey, can we talk oral sex technique a little
COREY: i’m never gonna improve without feedback so please give it to me straight
ASH: you gotta slow it down and i mean way down
COREY: ok
ASH: just really simplify what you’re doing. in general try to make circles with your tongue
COREY: got it, got it
ASH: and no matter what happens, yo
u need to be out of there after five minutes, good or bad
WES: huh that’s interesting
ASH: there’s nothing worse than knowing a guy is trying to get you to come, like he thinks your cooz is candy crush and he’s trying to get three stars or some shit
COREY: it would have been great to know this approximately four days ago
ASH: you’re telling me
Even when they turned on me, I was fine with it.
ASH: wes you didn’t go down on me but i think you’d be even worse at it
WES: please explain
ASH: you’d just sit there completely still with your mouth open and hope that i would start fucking your face and you wouldn’t have to do anything
WES: actually yeah that sounds ideal
COREY: no no no that’s not wes. here’s wes
ASH: i listened to him have sex for more than an hour. he basically just lets himself be a sex prop
COREY: no no no here’s wes going down on you: lick lick lick . . . “all right all right all right”
ASH: oh yeah because he wants to achieve consensus!
COREY: his finishing move is making a spaceship noise into your cooz and then asking you if he’s getting an A
ASH: hahahaha
WES: i will headbutt every face in this car
I gave Ash more band names to consider. And pretty soon Corey couldn’t help himself and started going along with it, too.
All of Them Knew They Were Robots: “Okay. It sucks because this is the first good name either of you has ever come up with, but there’s just no way this isn’t a Mr. Bungle tribute band. Everyone in this band has given up on writing their own music and instead they just play note-for-note-faithful Mr. Bungle covers once a month at the same bar in Houston because they all work at NASA, and this is how they blow off steam on the weekends, and their spouses are all pretty sick of it, except for the lesbian girlfriend of the glockenspiel player, because she’s the only cool one.”
Meow Meow Kitty: “Pros: Regardless of how good this band actually is, it automatically gets everyone’s attention. Everyone instinctively YouTubes the shit out of them. Because everyone is obsessed with cats. Cons: This band is three lip-syncing Japanese girls in miniskirts, and literally nothing would be worse than having their fans.”
Jennifer Lawrence’s Armpit: “Here’s a thought experiment. What happens if this band becomes successful to the point where someday you meet Jennifer Lawrence? Is there even a 10 percent chance you would manage to be cool about it? No. There is a zero percent chance that neither of you would go insane and do something antisocial. Pick someone you’d be cool around and maybe I’ll consider this.”
Padma Lakshmi from Top Chef’s Armpit: “That’s sort of better, except, okay, then, who is this band. Answer: This band is four super pimply fifteen-year-old part-time stoners who are either trying to rip off Phish and like String Cheese Incident or instead Slayer and Gojira and like Hatebeak, and either way it’s just sloppy chaos. You guys don’t know Hatebeak? Hatebeak is a hardcore band whose lead singer is a parrot. Look. Wes. Corey. None of these names have anything to do with us. Come up with some names that are about us.”
Cookie’s Gruesome Death: “Okay. That’s two good names you guys have come up with. But way too close to Death Cab for Cutie. But you guys are starting to get okay at this.”
Perfect Taste: “Jesus. No. That name literally means nothing. That band plays acoustic college rock and their lyrics are the worst thing you can possibly imagine. They’re what happens when three fratty hetero dudes sit in a room and try to imagine what it would be like to be a sensitive poet. Just thinking about this makes me never want to play music again.”
Charlize and the Eds: “I do like the idea of calling myself Charlize, but I’m not gonna tell you again about Name and the Somethings.”
The Haters: “It’s too, uh.”
“. . .”
“It makes me think of, um . . .”
“. . .”
“Well, let me sit with that one.”
We weren’t even halfway to New Orleans when Corey let us know that he was deciding not to leave after all.
COREY: so can we talk about our set tonight
[ash just grins at him]
WES: yeah what are you thinking
COREY: i dunno i had a few ideas
And after Ash putting him in a hug stranglehold from the backseat that almost made him drive off the road again, he told us his ideas, which were mostly just the idea to maybe throw in a few covers of bands we liked. We could punk them up and dumb them down and make them our own. Because it’s not the end of the world if people know what bands we listen to. Actually it’s kind of good.
ASH: what bands were you thinking
COREY: well
WES:
ASH:
COREY: i was thinking the shins
ASH: why the shins
COREY: because they’re what i listen to when i just don’t give a fuck anymore
ASH:
COREY:
ASH: well that’s a great reason to listen to shit
WES: corey knows i’m into it
COREY: yeah wes and i can’t get enough of that delicate sensitive ass shit
ASH: then let’s do the fucking shins. i think a shins cover could be really good
COREY: YEAH BITCH
WES: ash who are you into when you’ve run out of fucks to give
ASH:
COREY:
ASH: ok. you guys want to know? for real?
WES: yes
COREY: YES
ASH: when i no longer give a fuck, sometimes i listen to . . . the sad ass stylings of . . .
WES AND COREY:
ASH: mariah carey
COREY: OH MY GOD
WES: MIMI
ASH: shut up shut up shut up
WES: i think what you’re trying to say is shoo doo doop
COREY: WE BELONG TOGETHERRRRR
WES: you’ll always be my ba-a-a-abyyyy
ASH: SHUT UP WES’S TURN
WES: oh that’s easy. my go-to is the original triple threat: singer, bandleader, and one hell of a bassist
COREY: oh no
WES: a living legend out of jersey city named robert bell . . . but you might know him better as . . . kool
ASH: oof
COREY: no
WES: I’M TALKING ABOUT KOOL AND ALLLLLL HIS FRIENDS A.K.A.
ASH: stop with this shit
COREY: wes what are you doing
WES: “THE GANG” LET ME HEAR YOU SAY KOOL & THE GANG
COREY: i will never say it
Just in case you are thinking everyone was pissed: No one was pissed. Everyone was amped. The sun was about to come up. We were three hours outside of New Orleans, we smelled like a horror movie, and we were a band. We were the Haters.
WES: ash it’s pretty cool that this whole time you were secretly the girliest girl in america
ASH: you’re a dork and corey’s a pussy
COREY: each time you say the word “pussy” i know it should give me a boner but somehow it doesn’t
ASH: pussy
COREY: yeah all that’s happening is my dick is achieving inhuman levels of floppiness
WES: i’m rock hard but it’s for kool & the gang
35.
WE AWOKE TO A MONKLIKE, SHAVEN-HEADED MAN TAPPING THE DRIVER’S-SIDE WINDOW
We got to Lime Tree a little before nine, and no one was there, so we parked in a shady corner of the employee parking lot and opened the windows halfway and we all fell asleep in the car, and the guy who woke us up was Onnie himself.
It was around noon. He was a small older dude in a tight-fitting black T-shirt that said GEAUX SHORTY on it. His eyes were black and crinkly and he carried himself kind of like a ballet dancer and kind of like a pigeon.
“Oh my God,” said Ash, “ONNIE,” and she jumped out of the car and wrapped him in a hug, and Corey and I stumbled out of the car and blinked and squinted and tried
to be respectful of what was clearly a high-level sacred teacher-student bond.
“It gives me a lot of joy to see you,” Onnie told her, gripping her shoulders. His voice was round and precise.
She kind of hung her head bashfully.
“You’ve come a long way and you’ve followed your heart and it gives me tremendous joy.”
“Well, don’t say that until you hear me play something.”
“You’ll always be my favorite student and I’m prouder of you than you can know.”
“Well, I just hope we don’t suck tonight.”
“You won’t,” he said. “You won’t suck.” He looked at us. “Nice band,” he said. “Golly. Look at the three of you.”
“Were you for real in Slayer,” Corey asked him.
“Ah,” he said. “For the briefest of moments. Just filling in as a favor to Tom.”
“Oh damn,” said Corey. “That must have been, uh.”
We waited for Corey to find an adjective.
“I just hope one day I’m in a band even half as sick as that,” said Corey finally.
Onnie did the slowest blink I have ever seen, and smiled.
“Do me a kindness,” he said. “Cherish this part. Before the triumph and the failure. Now, when you’re too young to win or lose. Before you know what winning or losing would even mean. Try to be here, now, and cherish it. All right?”
He took us across town to a narrow airy little house with flood damage still visible on the outside, and he gave us some towels and robes, and we each put our clothes in the washing machine and showered up. The shower felt unbelievable. It felt like I was molting my skin like a snake.
Onnie made super basic sandwiches for us on incredible bread, and he told us we could practice in the basement if we needed, or go out into the city, just be sure to lock up behind ourselves, and come to the restaurant for dinner at six, and then we’d play afterward. We nodded and said goodbye, and he left. We sat there with clean skin and hair in his coarse plaid robes eating the sandwiches, and it was hard not to feel like in some way the tour was already over.
We spent about an hour running through covers. We did “Gone for Good” (the Shins) and we did “Vision of Love” (Mariah), and we did “Funky Stuff” (Kool & the Gang). We pared them down and roughed them up and flattened them out and slowed them down and sped them up, and each one was definitely a Haters song by the end.