We sit in the air-conditioned car a while as the parking lot empties and debate what we could do next. Victo wants to go to NYC the next night even the show's been sold out for months. She says we might be able to get tickets on the street for some insane markup. I'm not sure I can pay for that. She says she'll loan me the money but I'm still uncertain, more about whether it's worth the effort to forestall defeat after driving 12 hours for nothing. We get out of the car.
Though Victo has been talking over cel with Angela (guitarist of DC band Partyline; Anne and Victo opened for them a week or two ago) who we're supposed to stay with, we haven't actually met up with her yet. We file out to the area near the front of the club (though the street in front is full of firetrucks and fire marshal people directing people away) and take a seat on a curb, four of us in a row, chins in hands, looking as dejected as we feel. We see Ian MacKaye and Guy Piccioto walk by, also looking unimpressed with the situation. Then a cheery looking fellow rolls up on a bicycle.
"Hey guys," he says, "What's going on with the show? Is it over? What's with all the firetrucks?"
Victo looks up and says, "Jerry?" At this point I realize that I've seen this guy's band before-- he's in French Toast with James Canty and I recall their show at Casa in 2002 descending into an all-out dance party which they extended by improvising jams when they ran out of songs: a fine time. I find out around about 30 hours later that he was also the unofficial fifth member of Fugazi. Cool. French Toast had played earlier this winter but I skipped the show for dumb reasons-- however, Victo and Anne's band opened for them and put them up that evening. Jerry says, "Victoria?! What are you doing here?"
We're introduced. Victo tells our sad story and Jerry agrees that this is, indeed, a stone-cold bummer. He also explains that DC's built in a swamp, which guarantees that even in the evening, the crushing summer humidity never breaks ("And the winters suck too, but you should see this place in the spring and fall!" he assures us). We're noticing this. It's 11pm and it's still hotter than I've been all year. But more importantly, when Victo tells Jerry that we're considering NYC (which I, secretly, am not), he says, "Listen. Give me your cel phone numbers. I don't want to guarantee you anything at all, but I'd like to see if I can try to do something for you. I've known the band for years and years and they're great people, so I'd like to find out if there's any chance at all they could maybe put you on the guest list for the New York show. It's a shame that you'd come all this way and not even see them." We are incredibly grateful for this, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing that'd work out. Jerry heads off and we're fully appreciative of him, but we're feeling pretty bummed.
Finally we meet Angela, who is, frankly, kind of bizarre, but in a very friendly and welcoming way. We cram her into the back seat with Anne and Victo and head back to her apartment, about five or six blocks away. It's an interesting area, and I can't get a grasp on it. There are a lot of houses and apartments that look nicely-maintained, but as I look more carefully I realize there are also a lot that are boarded up or totally overgrown and falling down. I'm always a little on edge when I'm in big US cities and I'm never sure if that's justified or not-- we talked this over in the car later and concluded that we're just not used to being places where guns may be a part of the equation, so we assume there are guns everywhere and freak out accordingly. The area looks okay, more or less, though-- there are some friendly looking folks out walking dogs and generally not seeming frightening, so I figure I'm overreacting.
We go into Angela's apartment building and I'm desperate for the relief of air conditioning. So when she opens her door and we discover her apartment's about 10 degrees hotter than outside, I'm perplexed to the point that my brain almost shuts down from the confusion. Doesn't everyone in an absurdly hot climate live in air conditioning? Even the rougher looking houses on the street all seemed to have air conditioners in the windows. Angela, it turns out, has an air conditioner after all-- it's just cheap and doesn't work, but in honour of helping it try, she's shut all the windows (or they may be sealed-- we're not sure). She doesn't have ANY OTHER FANS. All she's got is one air conditioner dribbling lukewarm air that is indeed colder than the air in her 4-room apartment, but then most things would be.
We decide to go to the Black Cat club to have something to do, but when we get there our mood does not improve, particularly since some jerk figures it's funny to put all of Dig Me Out on the jukebox. Angela's off talking to friends and the four of us are glumly staring at the wall, so we decide to head back. Walking back up some large street that looks like it'd be pretty safe during the daytime, we're unsure of how safe we actually are. A family of six or seven is making their way towards us pushing shopping carts and carrying bags full of belongings-- my thought is they're homeless, but Ang figures since it's the 1st, they're moving (at 1:30am). This further drives home the fact that our problems are indeed of the first-world variety: driving 13 hours to go to a concert that gets canceled seems a ridiculous concern compared to the apparent lots of some people we're seeing on the street.
There are a lot of dudes just kind of hanging around and staring what feels like aggressively and I'm not sure whether this should or shouldn't be unsettling. People seem to just hang around much more in the states than in Montreal-- it's rare to walk around a major intersection at home and see five or ten or fifteen dudes just leaning against buildings, utility posts, or mailboxes, watching people go by. It might not be threatening at all to get stared down by some of these guys, but I'm just not sure. We go to a 7-11 that's entirely out of bottled water and are walking towards Angela's place when we pass a homeless dude who's drunkenly yelling, "I'm half white! I'm not dangerous." This is half-directed at us, but the guy's kind of ranting, so Ang and Victo and Anne walk past him. As I pass him he says something to me, so I respond by asking him how he's doing. He says, "I'm homeless, I'm harmless, and you're the first person who's talked to me all day." I say, "I'm real sorry to hear that, man." He says, "I'm half white." I say, "Doesn't matter what colour you are, so long as you're a decent person." He extends his hand and we shake. "You're right. You're a nice guy. It's real nice of you to talk to me," he says. "My name's Pierre. I'm a person." He pulls out his state ID and shows me. "See," he says, "I'm just a guy. How come your friends all just walked by me?" I said, "I don't think they thought you were talking to them." He says, "That's very rude, just walk by someone like that. You're a good person, but they aren't." He's starting to be more aggressive. I say, "Hey, they're good people. We've had a real long day and things aren't going very well for us." Pierre is annoyed at this and getting more aggressive about why people might not respond to him. I try again to explain that we've had a rough day and he says, "Your day's rough? I'm homeless!" which we concede is, by all means, a great deal rougher than we've had it. Pierre starts demanding to know why Ang and Anne and Victo didn't talk to him and they say they're sorry, tired, etc. So he starts demanding that each of us give him fifty cents. I dig in my pocket and give him what little change than I have, as does everyone, just hoping we can walk away before he gets more aggressive than he's becoming. We don't have much money between us and he's not impressed with his. He starts making comments about "rating" the kindness of each person, all the while telling me, "Not you, you're a nice guy, but these people...", which makes none of us comfortable. The whole scene is bizarre. We really just want to get back to where we know where we are.
Pierre lets us go, muttering that we make him ashamed to be half-white, and we turn down the street where we're heading to discover that the smoke we've been smelling the last couple of minutes is a car on fire in the middle of the street at the end of the block. There's a group of unfriendly-looking toughs around it, tending to it somehow. Anne and Victo begin saying, "We'd better go check that our car's okay," to which I reply, "No way, man. Our car's three blocks away and around that corner. It's fine." They say, "Let's just go check." I say, "Those dudes down there don't look very welcoming and whatever the deal with the car is, whether they're starting it or putting it out, they've got it under control. They don't need our help." Ang agrees with me, and Victo and Anne decide maybe we're right, so we let ourselves back into Angela's strange apartment, the sparse decor of which has been chosen out of the absolute ugliest of Salvation Army cast-offs. There are only two chairs in the apartment and it's the least welcoming home I've ever seen. Yet it's a place to stay, generously offered by someone who's nearly a stranger, and I'm sure glad we're not sleeping in the car.
Inside, it's no cooler than it was. We're spreading sleeping bags out on small available area of the floor to give us something to lie on and lie down as Angela arrives home. She's sleeping in her bedroom with the window sealed, no fan, nothing. I can't believe it. It's very giving of her not to stick us in there, but it's not that much cooler where we are. Somehow I manage to fall asleep-- having been awake since 6am on three hours sleep helps, but within an hour I wake up, absolutely certain I'm about to throw up. There are streams of sweat all over me and I've been asleep-- I"ve never been this hot in my life. I get up and stand in front of the air conditioner, which allows me to get a full lungful of cooler air, but I still feel sick. Finally I stagger through Angela's room into the bathroom, where my body decides that maybe I don't need to puke after all. I stagger back into the room where we're sleeping, lie down, and am immediately on the edge of vomiting again. I consider my options: garbage pail in our room, the smell of which would make sleep impossible for all. Bathroom, waking Angela-- faux pas. Kitchen sink: might not be able to wash it down. These thoughts do not temper my nausea. I stand in front of the air conditioner again considering it and see that Ang's awake. I tell her I'm sick and she gives me a bottle of water that's remained hot from being in the car. It makes me feel a little better, pushes back the lump of bile-infused matter that's rising in my esophagus, but doesn't take the nausea away. I say, dramatically "This is about the worst night I've ever had." She says, "Me too." I don't say it, but all I want to do is leave, get in the car, drive to a cheap motel with air conditioning, and shovel the four of us into one room-- except I don't feel safe enough outside to walk to the car with all our knapsacks and sleeping bags and pillows. There's a police helicopter circling around and around above us, spotlight trained all over, and it doesn't make me feel any safer. It's the strangest feeling of being trapped, one that I realize at the time i was probably overstating, but nonetheless I don't't feel good choosing between fear and advanced discomfort. Finally I manage to fall asleep and miraculously sleep until after eight.
After Angela leaves in the morning (she is truly kind, after all, and she's been as helpful as she could), we unanimously decide to leave DC forever as soon as we can. Turns out we all had the motel idea; we all didn't say it both for fear of offending Angela, and fear of going outside to where hard-looking dudes were setting cars on fire. We end up arguing over whether or not we should immediately try to get money back for our tickets. I say we should wait until we're home, but Anne wants to work it out while we're there. Everybody snaps at one another, fuelled by hunger, exhaustion, crankiness, and anxiety. Finally we go out for breakfast and when we have food in us we start to feel a little better. We agree that the best thing is to go straight home to Montreal, cut our losses, not mess around with NYC, and chalk it up to an experience we can learn from.
[incidentally, three months later I notice that Partyline has filmed portions of a video in the room where we slept (the parts where they seem to be playing in a house). All of the musical equipment visible was in place when we stayed there, leaving us only a tiny portion of floor in front of it all. That's no complaint-- Angela not only gave us a place to sleep, but offered us the room with the air conditioner in it, which makes her damned kind in my book. But it did make the accommodations a little cramped.]
We finish our breakfasts and wait until noon in the sweet coffee shop that's playing some sort of classic soul radio station (I could stay there for a long ass time), hit up a drugstore so Ang can get some migraine medication we don't have at home and I can get some hard-to-find pomade, and roll over to the 9:30 club, where we do, in fact, get our ticket money back. Huh. We get in the car and away we go, on the road, heading home. We're feeling a lot better with full bellies and the knowledge we'll be home soon enough.
Just past our first rest stop (we're making pretty sweet time), my cel rings. I pick it up (I NEVER do this while i'm driving, and felt bad, but I wanted to make sure we got it). It's Jerry. He says, "Where are you guys? What's the plan?" I say, "Were somewhere in Maryland and we're heading back to Montreal." He says, "You don't feel like risking it in NYC?" I say, "Well, we didn't know what the odds were, and i have to work tomorrow afternoon, plus we have to have the car back by seven."
Jerry says, "Because I just got off the phone with Carrie, and it actually looks pretty good for New York." I said, "What? Really?" He says, "Yeah, she really wants to help you guys, but she's not sure if she can. Chances are pretty good, but it's a matter of whether she can add four extras to their guest list. They filled it up a long time ago so she needs to get in touch with club and find out whether this will mess with capacity, but she's going to try. Does that change your mind at all?" I say, "There's a good chance of that. Can I ask the car?" He says, "Sure, call me back." Two minutes later we call back and tell him we're going to New York. He says, "What about getting back tomorrow?" We say, "We'll drive all night, it's fine." We figure that if we get there at 8:00 and we're not on the list, it'll only take us until 4am to get home. He says he should know even within a couple of hours, so we could be home earlier than that if it doesn't work out. On we go.
I should mention I'm doing all the driving because Anne doesn't like to drive and I'm more comfortable in urban areas. Plus I've slept better than anyone else, miraculously. We arrive in NYC via the Holland Tunnel in rush hour-- we're right downtown, following instructions Ang's copied off of Mapquest, in the most intense traffid I've ever seen. Stuck at an intersection, we see three plainclothes security dudes holding plastic handcuffs chasing another guy out of some brand-flagship store through four lanes of traffic. They tag him in a gas station, but he somehow gets away, and they're all running, only in the heat they seem only capable of a slow jog. It's unreal: they look like they're play-chasing him or reliving a scene from memory in slow-motion. We turn the corner, make another couple of turns, jockeying for position with cabbies who make Montreal taxis look like paragons of etiquette, find the club, and finally locate a place to stop behind it. We still haven't heard from Jerry, so Victo calls him. We listen to the conversation-- it starts out kind of sad and uncertain, and she's asking if he thinks we should pay to park the car if we're not sure we'll be able to get in. Halfway through her mood lifts and suddenly she's cheery, and she ends the conversation by saying that he's doing the nicest thing anyone's done for her all year. Turns out halfway through the conversation, James, Jerry's bandmate, got a text message from Carrie saying, "You're on-- 4 peeps on list!" We don't know this yet, but everyone in the car is yelling at the phone, saying, "Thank you Jerry for whatever it is Victoria's so happy about!"
Following this we find an great parking spot, leave the car, find an auxiliary cable for Victo's ipod that allows her to connect it to the car stereo (which she's been coveting for the entire trip, and pleases her greatly), and head through Tompkins Square Park to Kate's Joint, this tremendous vegetarian diner that Philippe had told me about ages back, where I get a non-turkey club sandwich and Ang gets fried unchicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy. It's fantastic.
We walk to the venue, get to go to the head of a huge long line, and go directly to the front left of the stage in front of Carrie's amps. We could have done without the Rogers Sisters again, and the wait for SK is long, but when they come on stage it's all amazing. They open with "Start Together" and the whole floor is bouncing up and down with the crowd. We're in front of the PA, so we hear the band largely from being directly in front of the equipment, and I realize from our proximity to Carrie's amps that she's responsible for all of my favourite guitar lines in all my favourite songs. I'm in awe of her ability-- she takes risks with open strings and notes just on the edge of being in key that she pulls off masterfully. Her playing has the effortless perfect expression of Mike Watt's bass playing or Richard Lloyd when I saw him with Rocket From the Tombs. It's phenomenal. They're dying on stage with the heat and we are too-- Carrie says at one point that the whole room is like a sauna minus the flipflops and strange men in towels. It only gets hotter-- I'm wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt that I'm progressively unbuttoning and i notice toward the end that the three pieces of paper in the breast pocket have turned to pulp from my sweat. I'm dizzy and keep thinking that I have to be able to get us out of NYC and should take it easy, but the show is too damned good-- they play every single song I want to hear except for "The End of You," which I can see is actually listed on the set list for their 9-song encore, but they leave out, assumedly because it's just too fucking hot. Carrie looks like she's lost about ten pounds by the end, and it's not like she's got a lot to lose to begin with. There's an atmosphere of ecstasy in the crowd-- the spontaneous handclaps in the choruus of "Turn It On" are mindblowing and I feel high with the music and the insanity of the previous two days, thinking back to Victo saying that something good had to happen and thinking, "did it ever."
We stagger outside, and my legs and feet are cramped to the point of limping from standing for four hours. At a food market I get a bottle of "vitamin water" with caffeine, a can of Rock Star "energy drink," and a bottle of water. For some reason I don't drink the water, but gulp back the caffeine-and-flavour water and the horrible "energy drink," which is just dumb, a decision that I'll regret when I'm throwing up at dawn into a ditch behind an 18-wheeler at a Robert-Frost-picturesque rest stop in northern new york (poor diet, exhaustion, and carsick from moving to the back seat when Anne was driving). We follow mapquest directions given to us over the phone by Kate who used to live in Montreal, get a little lost, but make it out of the NYC, get significantly more lost but eventually also make it out of New Jersey. I cede the wheel to Anne sometime between four and five when I'm seeing trails off of every lit in front of me. At 8am, we arrive back in Montreal, slurring our words and staggering tired, exactly 48 hours after we left. Whoa.
Happy to be home to our cat and our lovely, welcoming house, Ang and I fall asleep around nine. The end.
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