bury me — r&v / in every universe
May 14, 2024 0:12:21 GMT -5
Post by tick 12a / calla on May 14, 2024 0:12:21 GMT -5
Five songs down. Roe stares down at the plastic casing hard enough to burn a hole through it.
Stupid to look at it now. Stupid to start it so carelessly in the first place, because it doesn't quite flow right now, not with Zeppelin right after Aerosmith like that. He might as well have picked the tracks blind out of a hat. Deaf too. Seemed right in the moment, but in the daylight the pen marks on the back all look too damning.
No one even likes Yellow Raven. Shit. Why the hell didn't he put Virgin Killer on instead? Same album, 3 tracks apart, right there. Everyone likes Virgin Killer. Answer to my yearning. Corny shit. He's a virgin killer, you're a demon's desire. That's real.
So much for furthering Vin's musical education. Maybe it was hopeless to being with - Roe can't even save Mateo. Because, really, truly, Mat's taste starts to go to shit. Not just the people he hangs around, it's spread to the music too. Dissolution of the decade.
He finds a discounted vinyl at his cousin's place, slashed down because the company that sent it out is some's independent label. Mat pulls it purely for the cover and then makes everyone sit through the whole album in the name of discovery.
There's 43 fucking tracks on the thing. None of them over three minutes.
There's one that's just forty seconds of an engine revving.
Apparently that's avant garde. Apparently that's got some greater, more intense meaning that Roe's too stupid to clue in on. He's not evolved enough, not like the oh-so-elite bunch that Mateo's determined to suck up to now. Mat got taller and suddenly that means he's better than everyone else now. Means he can talk to girls now. Like Maia. The earnestness, it's nauseating. He plays the stupid car sounds twice, loops back to track 8, my words are war, Double Nickels on the Dime. Jesus Christ. Roe decides that if he ever meets the Minutemen he's beating the shit out of them for an hour and thirteen minutes.
It's so bad.
It's so unbelievably bad.
Except when Roe complains a little too loud, when he kicks up a fuss about the noise because Vin is trying to condense down Friday's English lecture on something Roe can actually understand, Mateo stops with his hand over the needle of the JVC. He looks up, eyes narrowed, and Roe glares back at him over Vin's shoulder. They're patiently circling something on the papers they've got spread out on the table, their back is to where Mateo's sprawled with the vinyl jacket.
Maybe that alone is proof of God, that Vin can't see when Mateo looks very steadily at Roe, then when he looks at Vin, raises his eyebrows.
Roe scowls, feels his stomach drop a little as he restrains himself from flipping him off because he knows how much of a petty little bitch Mateo can be when he wants to. Those three inches, now he's acting like he rules the world. Roe's going to throw the pencil right at his head and watch it break in half because of his ridiculously thick skull.
Mat goes to turn the record over for the third time and Roe tells Vin he needs a break, needs to go for a smoke so bring the lighter and c'mon.
He confiscates Mat's Echo & the Bunnymen tape from the pile on the way.
The problem doesn't get much better outside. Vin follows Roe when he walks down past the garage instead of sitting on the front stoop.
Something about the way they step around the puddle stretched across the sidewalk. Something about the way they'd touched the crash. Maybe on that very first day, when they held the tempo so steady under Roe, when they just sat there and watched him try to bait them, watched him try the same tricks for nearly a year before he gave in and threw his hands up and called them a freak and it was like it finally broken something that needed to be broken, let something else flow.
Fucking. Metaphors. Something.
Something about the way the light comes through the oak in the front yard and then hits them at a right angle. Something about the backlight glow, the pit in Roe's chest, be not afraid, the One Way. Roe pulls out a Newport and Vin pulls out the Zippo. They get the spark on the first try, cupping the metal for Roe to lean closer.
Do they know that, in the garage, Roe can feel the bass drum through his heels, through the soles of his shoes, up in the tendons, as leg-shaking as all the songs say.
They fill the spaces Roe leaves on the fret now. They gripe at him now. He's made them roll their eyes twice, because that's something Roe's keeping count of, for some reason. They get away with saying things in a way that Mat never really did. Mat gets hit for the real nasty shit he says, or at least pushed, or jostled into a headlock when Roe didn't have to reach as far. There's another difference there. Roe doesn't touch Vin. For some reason.
The three of them stretched out on the living room floor to watch Live-Aid in July. Before the drive-in. Mateo was doing the clap-chant along to Radio Gaga and Roe was ribbing him for it, then ended up wrestling him to the side when he didn't stop, got his arm behind him and pinned him there. Then he laughed at how red Mateo got as he squirmed and tried to kick Roe in the head. When he glanced over, Vin was coughing, smiling behind their fist.
Something about that too. At some point, after some key moment, Roe started glancing over. The assurance, the approval, the simple fact of wanting to look.
There's something specific, in the way Roe watches them play, and then when they look up to lock in. When their gaze flicks from his hands to his face and they realize he's already staring. Not at the snare, not even at the sticks, but at some point near the corner of their eye, or where the cotton of their shirt rests against their neck, where the hair curls around the bottom of their ear. Roe's lungs go strange. Feels like the funniest sort of pneumonia, too much fluid, must be because of the rain.
Even by the time October creeps around, the ditches are still full. The temperature's still lukewarm, no risk of freezing yet, and it rains so much that the water stays stagnant and turns into rust in the cradles of grass and mud and splitting culverts.
There's an accident on Jackson that Roe passes on his way to work. Some poor asshole went skidding off the road and into the ditch, his cab ended up filling with water and he nearly drowned before he finally got himself out through the driver's window.
The cleanup diverts traffic further east and it makes Roe late on his way back. Vin's already packing up, if they got any work done at all, which Roe doubts based on the way Mateo's slumped on the couch watching the tape of Bowie's VMA performance again.
It's their birthday this week. Mateo waves distractedly as Roe idles, stepping between the foyer and the hall and the foyer again. Vin's putting their shoes on when Roe holds up a book, says you forgot this one.
They hold their hand out, but Roe goes for the bag himself because he's got the tape hiding under the book and he's only got once chance to pull this off before it blows up in his face and he never lives it down.
He tucks the tape into their bag, under the book, damning handwriting face down.
1 Rock You Like a Hurricane - Scorpions
2 Unchained - Van Halen
3 Sick As A Dog - Aerosmith
4 I'm Gonna Crawl - Led Zeppelin
5 Yellow Raven - Scorpions
6 The Killing Moon - Echo & the Bunnymen
7 Sylvia's Mother - Dr. Hook
8 New York Mining Incident 1941 - Bee Gees
He only says a Happy Birthday by the way, when they're already half out the door. They still stop. They smile at him. They step around the puddle on the sidewalk and the last bit of dying light hits them and Roe feels the ditch water crowd his lungs.
Stupid to look at it now. Stupid to start it so carelessly in the first place, because it doesn't quite flow right now, not with Zeppelin right after Aerosmith like that. He might as well have picked the tracks blind out of a hat. Deaf too. Seemed right in the moment, but in the daylight the pen marks on the back all look too damning.
No one even likes Yellow Raven. Shit. Why the hell didn't he put Virgin Killer on instead? Same album, 3 tracks apart, right there. Everyone likes Virgin Killer. Answer to my yearning. Corny shit. He's a virgin killer, you're a demon's desire. That's real.
So much for furthering Vin's musical education. Maybe it was hopeless to being with - Roe can't even save Mateo. Because, really, truly, Mat's taste starts to go to shit. Not just the people he hangs around, it's spread to the music too. Dissolution of the decade.
He finds a discounted vinyl at his cousin's place, slashed down because the company that sent it out is some's independent label. Mat pulls it purely for the cover and then makes everyone sit through the whole album in the name of discovery.
There's 43 fucking tracks on the thing. None of them over three minutes.
There's one that's just forty seconds of an engine revving.
Apparently that's avant garde. Apparently that's got some greater, more intense meaning that Roe's too stupid to clue in on. He's not evolved enough, not like the oh-so-elite bunch that Mateo's determined to suck up to now. Mat got taller and suddenly that means he's better than everyone else now. Means he can talk to girls now. Like Maia. The earnestness, it's nauseating. He plays the stupid car sounds twice, loops back to track 8, my words are war, Double Nickels on the Dime. Jesus Christ. Roe decides that if he ever meets the Minutemen he's beating the shit out of them for an hour and thirteen minutes.
It's so bad.
It's so unbelievably bad.
Except when Roe complains a little too loud, when he kicks up a fuss about the noise because Vin is trying to condense down Friday's English lecture on something Roe can actually understand, Mateo stops with his hand over the needle of the JVC. He looks up, eyes narrowed, and Roe glares back at him over Vin's shoulder. They're patiently circling something on the papers they've got spread out on the table, their back is to where Mateo's sprawled with the vinyl jacket.
Maybe that alone is proof of God, that Vin can't see when Mateo looks very steadily at Roe, then when he looks at Vin, raises his eyebrows.
Roe scowls, feels his stomach drop a little as he restrains himself from flipping him off because he knows how much of a petty little bitch Mateo can be when he wants to. Those three inches, now he's acting like he rules the world. Roe's going to throw the pencil right at his head and watch it break in half because of his ridiculously thick skull.
Mat goes to turn the record over for the third time and Roe tells Vin he needs a break, needs to go for a smoke so bring the lighter and c'mon.
He confiscates Mat's Echo & the Bunnymen tape from the pile on the way.
The problem doesn't get much better outside. Vin follows Roe when he walks down past the garage instead of sitting on the front stoop.
Something about the way they step around the puddle stretched across the sidewalk. Something about the way they'd touched the crash. Maybe on that very first day, when they held the tempo so steady under Roe, when they just sat there and watched him try to bait them, watched him try the same tricks for nearly a year before he gave in and threw his hands up and called them a freak and it was like it finally broken something that needed to be broken, let something else flow.
Fucking. Metaphors. Something.
Something about the way the light comes through the oak in the front yard and then hits them at a right angle. Something about the backlight glow, the pit in Roe's chest, be not afraid, the One Way. Roe pulls out a Newport and Vin pulls out the Zippo. They get the spark on the first try, cupping the metal for Roe to lean closer.
Do they know that, in the garage, Roe can feel the bass drum through his heels, through the soles of his shoes, up in the tendons, as leg-shaking as all the songs say.
They fill the spaces Roe leaves on the fret now. They gripe at him now. He's made them roll their eyes twice, because that's something Roe's keeping count of, for some reason. They get away with saying things in a way that Mat never really did. Mat gets hit for the real nasty shit he says, or at least pushed, or jostled into a headlock when Roe didn't have to reach as far. There's another difference there. Roe doesn't touch Vin. For some reason.
The three of them stretched out on the living room floor to watch Live-Aid in July. Before the drive-in. Mateo was doing the clap-chant along to Radio Gaga and Roe was ribbing him for it, then ended up wrestling him to the side when he didn't stop, got his arm behind him and pinned him there. Then he laughed at how red Mateo got as he squirmed and tried to kick Roe in the head. When he glanced over, Vin was coughing, smiling behind their fist.
Something about that too. At some point, after some key moment, Roe started glancing over. The assurance, the approval, the simple fact of wanting to look.
There's something specific, in the way Roe watches them play, and then when they look up to lock in. When their gaze flicks from his hands to his face and they realize he's already staring. Not at the snare, not even at the sticks, but at some point near the corner of their eye, or where the cotton of their shirt rests against their neck, where the hair curls around the bottom of their ear. Roe's lungs go strange. Feels like the funniest sort of pneumonia, too much fluid, must be because of the rain.
Even by the time October creeps around, the ditches are still full. The temperature's still lukewarm, no risk of freezing yet, and it rains so much that the water stays stagnant and turns into rust in the cradles of grass and mud and splitting culverts.
There's an accident on Jackson that Roe passes on his way to work. Some poor asshole went skidding off the road and into the ditch, his cab ended up filling with water and he nearly drowned before he finally got himself out through the driver's window.
The cleanup diverts traffic further east and it makes Roe late on his way back. Vin's already packing up, if they got any work done at all, which Roe doubts based on the way Mateo's slumped on the couch watching the tape of Bowie's VMA performance again.
It's their birthday this week. Mateo waves distractedly as Roe idles, stepping between the foyer and the hall and the foyer again. Vin's putting their shoes on when Roe holds up a book, says you forgot this one.
They hold their hand out, but Roe goes for the bag himself because he's got the tape hiding under the book and he's only got once chance to pull this off before it blows up in his face and he never lives it down.
He tucks the tape into their bag, under the book, damning handwriting face down.
1 Rock You Like a Hurricane - Scorpions
2 Unchained - Van Halen
3 Sick As A Dog - Aerosmith
4 I'm Gonna Crawl - Led Zeppelin
5 Yellow Raven - Scorpions
6 The Killing Moon - Echo & the Bunnymen
7 Sylvia's Mother - Dr. Hook
8 New York Mining Incident 1941 - Bee Gees
He only says a Happy Birthday by the way, when they're already half out the door. They still stop. They smile at him. They step around the puddle on the sidewalk and the last bit of dying light hits them and Roe feels the ditch water crowd his lungs.
