The Haters (10 page)

But João took it worse. He frowned and nodded and got kind of cold and formal and told her if that's what she wanted to do, then that's what she wanted to do, and there was nothing he could do about it, because she was her own person, and he respected that, and perhaps it was best if she moved in with her mother. So Ash moved in with Clotilde on the Upper West Side and started going to a high school and more or less never saw her dad again. He paid off her credit cards every month and made a point of dancing with her at his next wedding but that was about it.

Meanwhile, Clotilde was sort of supportive, but not really a mom. She was preoccupied with her fashion label and going out most nights and having rich boyfriends and abruptly being in Rome or Buenos Aires without telling anyone.

So Ash was alone. For a while she had Onnie, who gave her secret guitar lessons for two years, but then he left to start a restaurant in New Orleans, and then she had no one at all.

She spent all her time outside of school shredding guitar alone in Clotilde's apartment and writing songs and listening to music constantly and sometimes going to shows and thinking about the band she would start but not having anyone to start it with.

Also she briefly was the underage girlfriend of a member of Animal Collective. She refused to say who because he could get in big trouble.

So that brought us pretty much up to date.

“So how old are you,” I asked.

“Nineteen,” she said. “I got my ID from the equipment manager of the New York Knicks.”

I sort of wanted to hear more about that, but mostly didn't.

“Did you graduate?”

“Yeah. In June.”

“Are you going to college?”

“Taking a year off.”

“To play music or what?”

“I physically can't talk about myself anymore,” she said, and we left the room and the hotel and spent the afternoon staggering red-eyed and jittery around Knoxville looking for a place to play that night, like jazz-camp-escaped zombies.

13.
THE ASH RAMOS THREE BOOKS THE PERFECT TASTE

It took us five hours to find a place that we could book. It was an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant called Perfect Taste in a strip mall on Route 70, and it had no stage or sound system. So there were some clear early signs that it wasn't going to be the smoothest possible beginning to the tour. Also a lack of sleep paired with a diet of Coke and Airheads had made us all temporarily psychotic.

How did we find Perfect Taste? Basically, a huge amount of getting rejected by actual music venues, followed by an even huger amount of random driving around.

The rejections were uniformly swift and impervious to whatever script we used:

1.
Hi. We're a band called the Ash Ramos Three. Can we play here tonight? Oh. Okay. Well, uh . . . okay. Thanks. Actually, why are we thanking you.

2.
Hi. We're a band called the Ash Ramos Three. Can we play here tonight? Oh. Then can we talk to the guy who does the booking? Oh. Well, what hours is he in here? Wow. That's a cushy job. Honestly, it sounds like you don't even need him. You should
just do the booking yourself! Just book us and maybe your boss will give you a raise and a new title. And then you've truly begun your ascent up the corporate ladder. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. No, we don't want a table. We're obviously not here for a table. We're here to play a life-changing show that you can use to catapult your career into places you've never even thought possible. Well, fine. Bye. Enjoy never having a good job. Sorry, we didn't mean that, we're just stressed out because Corey ate the entire bag of Dale's BEEF potato chips and now he won't stop burping.

3.
Hi. We're the Ash Ramos Three and our manager told us he had a gig booked here, but it turns out he was lying about that and a bunch of other stuff, so we fired him, and now we're seeing if we—yeah, it's just us. We fired him. Yeah, we're all twenty-one. Blues, punk, like a blues punk roots power trio, but really a lot of critics say we transcend genre. Unfortunately we have nothing you can listen to because our manager stole all our CDs for no reason other than he's vindictive. Well, also Ash stabbed him in the dick. The foreskin. He's fine. We're pretty sure he's a rapist. Can we just play here tonight? We don't have anywhere to play. We can play after the other bands are done. We'll seriously go on whenever. Okay. Sure. Bye. If you see a guy with a bloody dick, then you'll know. Although, you guys are probably already best friends.

4.
Hi. We're Meatflower, and we're here for soundcheck. Meatflower who you booked for tonight like it says out front. Our slot's at ten after Fangs of the Mutant. Ugggh. Look. Yeah. I can't believe they keep doing this. Those guys from earlier
weren't
the Meatflower that booked this gig
. WE'RE Meatflower. Those fucking guys are just a bunch of assholes who call themselves Meatflower so they can steal our shows! We went to high school with them, Corey stole one of their girlfriends, and now we're mortal enemies and they've been fucking with us the entire tour. But we're the real Meatflower! Don't let them back in here. Okay, fine. We'll wait here until they come back. Sure. We'll just wait right here. Okay. Hey. Look. We're not Meatflower. But fuck Meatflower. We're definitely better than them. Just let us play instead. Okay. Chill out for just one second. We haven't even done anything.

5.
Hi. If we pay you one thousand dollars, can we play here tonight instead of Coach Nasty Cat? A thousand bucks in cash. Hmmm. Okay. Well, look. It was worth a shot. Where would it even say in the legal code that this is illegal. Oh.

Eventually we found ourselves just driving around, not really saying a lot, and on Route 70, without asking us, Ash pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall that Perfect Taste was in.

“Fuck it,” she said.

The cashier of Perfect Taste was also the owner, a woman named Lucy with enormous permed hair, and she seemed delighted and amused that a band wanted to play at her restaurant.

“What kind of music?” Lucy wanted to know.

“We're a blues roots punk power trio,” said Corey.

“Oh!” she said. “That's a lot of things!”

“Yeah,” Corey agreed.

There was kind of a standoff where she smiled intensely at each of us.

“I like the blues,” she announced eventually. She had one of those smiles that made you feel great about yourself. “We get most people around five-thirty, six
P.M.
You can play then. Play blues music.”

It was already four. We had a band meeting out in the parking lot.

“That buffet looked rock-solid to
me
,” I said, trying to be positive.

“I probably shouldn't eat any of it because I don't have my EpiPen,” said Corey.

“Fierce,” I said.

“Ash,” said Corey. “Is this really a place where bands could play.”

“We just booked it, so yeah,” said Ash.

“We might be playing for zero people, though,” said Corey.

“She told us we were gonna play when they get the most people,” said Ash.

“I do worry a little that the acoustics are a giant bucket of dick,” said Corey.

“Shut the fuck up and listen,” said Ash, suddenly losing all patience. “Good. I
want
to play here. I
want
to play for strangers in basically a Chinese prison cafeteria. Because that's how you become a great band. Okay? This is exactly the shit I'm talking about. We have to play at
tough places to play
. If we can play a great show here, we can play a great show anywhere. So I'm fucking excited about this shit.”

Corey did a Robert De Niro–type face scrunch. He was pissed
off because on the one hand he hated being told what to do, but on the other hand he did not want to be the one who was anti-greatness.

“All right all right,” I said, attempting to build consensus. “All right all right all right.”

“Let's fucking do it then,” said Corey.

“We're gonna play a great fucking show,” said Ash.

“Let's play the
fuck
out of the Perfect Goddamned Taste.”

“We're gonna rock the shit out of it.”

“We're gonna rock it so hard they have to shut it down. For safety reasons.”

“We are going to fuck this place with our guitar dicks,” I said, and then immediately made eye contact with a nearby man who was bringing his two young children out of a FedEx.

Anyway, as it turned out, we did not play the fuck out of a great show. Instead, we found ourselves playing a show that was epically terrible.

First, the only place to set up with electric outlets was a little rectangle of space crammed in next to the buffet itself. So we had to wedge Corey in next to the combination egg rolls and spare ribs tray and then set up directly in front of him. We couldn't see him, and he couldn't hear us, and also we were in the way of anyone who wanted egg rolls or spare ribs, which literally everyone at a Chinese buffet wants.

Second, the audience came and went but was never more than twelve people, all of which were old or families. So they did not constitute the ideal audience for loud warlike songs about eating Roger Federer and fucking your dog. The acoustics were bad enough that it was impossible to tell what Ash was saying, but her intent was still clear.
Every single person in the restaurant chose to sit as far away from us as possible, and either tried to behave as though we were not there or just sat there munching and glaring at us like resentful cows.

Third, as a band, we sucked.

We sucked in every way. Ash's guitar was out of tune. My bass sounded like you were hearing it through a mattress, except still loud and in fact way too loud. Corey's bass drum kept sliding away from him. I forgot entire parts of songs. Corey forgot even more entire parts of songs and kept panicking and switching to super fast disco, first as a joke but then increasingly as a kind of nihilistic statement about the bleak absurdity of what we were doing. Ash apparently got bored of singing actual notes and switched to a combination of retching and shrieking. We were physically incapable of all ending a song at the same time. In fact, we couldn't do
anything
at the same time. We were an animal with three different kinds of leg. We were the soundtrack to a mental illness.

We probably should have stopped after our first song. We definitely should have stopped after a completely improvised fifteen-minute blues during which two different children started crying. And we even more should have stopped when an angry old dude came over during “Sex Plague” and yelled at us over and over, for two entire choruses and a verse, “This isn't music!! THIS ISN'T MUSIC!!!”

So it was a traumatizing forty-five minutes. For the audience, sure, but I think even more for us. When it was over, no one applauded and multiple people loudly thanked God.

“I just came here for my moo shu,” yelled the old dude, aiming his head around in search of people who agreed with him. “I didn't come here for
that
. I came for the moo shu and that's
it
.”

The only person who thought we were any good was Lucy, and actually in retrospect she was almost definitely just fucking with us.

“You kids have real talent!” she came over to tell us as we were packing up. “Real emotion! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

But she also gave us a three-for-two deal at the buffet. So we hung around for twenty minutes, eating noodles and General Gao's chicken and saying little. Ash was stony-faced. Corey kept sighing miserably.

At least it felt like Ash was one of us again.

ASH: wes

WES: what

ASH: stop saying that

COREY: for real

WES: stop saying what

ASH: “all right all right”

COREY: yeah you're muttering it like an insane person

WES: oh

ASH: you've said it like a billion times

WES: i wasn't even aware that i was saying anything

ASH: well you were so stop

COREY: why the fuck were you saying it so much

WES: i guess it's a reflex

COREY: why would you have that as a reflex though

WES: it's just like a thing to say to make peace or build consensus

COREY:

ASH:

WES: like in times of difficulty

COREY: i am going to kill myself

We loaded up Ash's car and managed to drive back to the hotel without getting lost or having a horrific accident.

It would make sense if we were all consumed with terrible shame upon entering our over-the-top lavish hotel room, with its hot tub and very rich-feeling carpet and enormous bed and panoramic views. Shame about how little we had done to earn this. But what I felt, at least, was relief. Who even knows why. It was somehow a big relief to get to hang out in this incredible room with a hot tub. I walked over and stared at the hot tub for a while.

“Fuck it,” I said, I think out loud, and without asking permission or guidance or anything, I turned on the hot tub, and it started roiling and foaming, and I stripped to my boxers while trying not to be weird about it. And after a while the water was hot, and I got in there and sat there for a while.

Obviously, on some level I was hoping that Ash was going to get in there, too. Maybe on most levels. If that meant Corey was getting in, fine. He would also be in there. I mean, getting in the hot tub wasn't like a
move
. I didn't think it was going to lead to me hooking up or anything. I just thought at least it was a chance to be in a hot tub in my underwear with a girl in her underwear, and that would be something.

But within a few minutes it was a moot point because I had passed out.