L.S. Hawker's Blog, page 7

Used Soap

After college, I lived in Manhattan, Kansas, and worked at radio station KQLA-FM. During that time, I was so poor that at one point all I had to eat for six weeks was frozen English muffins. I was so poor I qualified for government cheese, but I didn’t know where to get it. I was so poor that whenever I (or anyone else) stubbed out a cigarette, I would carefully roll out whatever was left in the butt, save it in a bag, and roll my own from this righteous blend of fine tobaccos. I was so poor, my sister likes to say, that I had to buy used soap.

I was so poor…I actually sold some of my vinyl.

That’s how desperate for cash I was. It was a dark, dark day. I agonized over what I could possibly live without and finally settled on ten record albums from my beloved stacks. These I wrapped up in a garbage bag and set out for the used-record store.

Since it only got 8 miles to the gallon, my 1976 Lincoln Town Car was out of commission, so I had to walk the mile and a half with my bag o’ music in tow. This is about a six-pound bundle of unwieldiness, so I tried to hold it like a baby, but it was slippery and awkward and I couldn’t keep it up. So I stacked the albums on my head.

Now, this is not the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, not by a long shot. But from the outraged stares up and down Poyntz Avenue, you’d have thought I was dragging a burning puppy behind me. People shouted at me to cut it out and knock it off, and who did I think I was and what did I think I was doing.

Before all the stares and jeers, I’d been about to take them off my head because it wasn’t as easy as it looked in National Geographic. But once the cacophony of indignation started up, I stubbornly left the stack on my head. My neck hurt. Sweat poured down my face. My hands swelled. But I would not give these yahoos the satisfaction of acquiescing to their goofy demands.

One guy in a pickup truck took it upon himself to make me take them off my head. He drove around the block a couple of times, and then with each successive pass, he revved his engine and gunned it toward me, screeching his brakes just before hitting the curb. I must confess, it almost worked, especially that first time when I wasn’t expecting it.

I finally made it to the record store, sweaty, exhausted, sore, yet triumphant.

Then this weird thing happened. I got all shaky and hyperventilatey. I couldn’t do it. I could only make myself sell two of the ten.

After all, how many copies of The Wall does one actually need?

Big Announcement: Three-Book Deal with HarperCollins

A big, grateful “thank you” to my brilliant, talented agent Michelle Johnson, who made all this happen in just nine weeks. To quote William Hurt in Broadcast News, “What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?”

Wacky Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of my arrest.

Let me explain.

My sophomore year of college, I took a semester off to work at a Colorado mountain resort so I could enjoy my latest existential crisis at altitude. I would get to live the dream: earn $3.35 an hour, sleep in what amounted to a broom closet with bunk beds, and ski during my free time.

Sometimes, after the tourists vamoosed, the staff would have keg parties up at the top of the mountain and ski down after midnight by moonlight. On sunny days, we’d ski to a top-secret clearing in the heart of the forest and stick our skis in the snow for chair backs, catch some rays and maybe imbibe a little.

In exchange for these privileges, I worked the cash register at the mountain base warming house. One Friday afternoon at the end of the shift, I went up to the office to cash out. The restaurant’s assistant manager, Fred, an oily, pornstachioed guy in his thirties, said he needed to speak with me in the manager’s office. I followed him in, impatient to get in a couple of runs before the lifts closed.

A uniformed policeman with a comb-over was in the office along with the manager, the resort general manager, the head of security and two of his lackeys, and Fred. All eyes were on me, as if I’d just jumped out of a cake.

The cop said, “I understand your drawer was short.”

Wow. They were real sticklers about reconciling their cash up here. I started to get a little concerned.

Officer Comb-Over said, “We have a sworn affidavit that says you purposely under-ring items and pocket the difference.” (Sworn out, I learned later, by a tourist from Iowa. He is the personification of why folks say that IOWA stands for Idiots Out Walking Around*.)

My jaw hit the floor.

The managers stared hard at me, nodding a little, as if they’d expected this sort of behavior out of me all along, or like they were inspecting cured meats.

Now, I’m no angel, of course, but my evil-doing is more of the self-destructive variety. I was never ambitious enough to steal, and I definitely am not mathy enough to calculate, like, numbers in my head while pulling off such a scheme.

“Would you empty your pockets, please,” the cop said.

All I had was a quarter, which, to my shame, I threw at him. By this time I was about halfway between berserk, panic-stricken hysterics and DEFCON 1, so I was swiftly losing control of my gross motor skills.

He picked the coin up and turned it over in his hand like it was the Great Star of Africa, as if this confirmed the allegations.

“The witness said you took a roll of bills out of the register, held it up and said, ‘I got a tip!’ and shoved it in your pocket.”

Incredulous. Stupefied. No verbs.

“We’re going to search your locker.”

They went through my coat and boots, and of course, there was nothing there ($3.35 an hour, remember?). We went back in the office. Once inside, Fred locked the door. Me and seven men in a locked room.

“We have a new theory,” Officer Comb-Over said, his hands clasped behind him, pacing.

A new theory. Like they have teams of detectives in a race against time to crack the code of my evil genius. One minute I’m a nineteen-year-old slacker ski bunny, the next a criminal mastermind about whom police have “theories.”

He whirled around and stabbed a finger in the air. “Who are you working with?”

If I hadn’t been slobbering, jabbering terrified, I would have busted out some 1930s underworld slang. “Me and this bird, see, was bumping gums on the blower about a box job, see, because we was out of cabbage, but I don’t want to end up in no Chicago overcoat, see…” Something like that.

“Who’d you give the money to?”

The area manager, a toothpick of a man, steepled his fingers and said, “If you’ll give the money back, we’ll drop the charges.”

“But I don’t have anything to give you,” I said, although in my delirious state I imagine it sounded more like buh ahdone havnithin duhgivya.

The seven men, my judge and jury, conferred.

“We’re going to bring a matron in here to strip search you,” the cop said.

All the air went out of me. I forgot how to inhale. I was shocked to find I hadn’t wet myself.

The matron arrived and took me into an adjacent attic-like room with no heat. I took off my clothes and she poked through them while I shivered and blubbered. (Note: this is the real reason you should always wear new underwear. Every day. Forever.)

She found nothing, and the disappointment on the gathered faces in the next room! They dismissed the matron, locked the door again, and the seven men interrogated me for another three hours. Officer Comb-Over tried to wear me down, tried to trip me up in my web of lies. Asked me the same questions over and over. Made it clear I was going down no matter what. No more skiing for me. No more college. Prison. Getting shanked in the shower as I reached for the soap on a rope. I’d watched enough teenage jail movies to know what happened Inside.

Finally, they all realized it was Friday night, time to party, and they wanted to get home, or to the bar, or to the Nautilus machines. So they told me to show up at the county police station on Monday morning for a polygraph test. If I passed it, I’d still be under investigation. If I failed, I would go straight to jail.

“And don’t tell anybody about this,” the president of the company said to me. “For your protection, of course.”

Of course.

I went back to the dorm. “You are not going to believe what happened today,” I said to the first person I saw, a stoner named Dave.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “They found John Belushi dead.”

Well, that bit of news capped off this perfect day. The rock star of comedy had met an untimely end, as had my wide-eyed innocence.

I called my folks and they told me to come right home. Needless to say, I didn’t go back to my cashier job. I didn’t go back to the ski area. I went to work in a factory in Denver, assembling electronic digital thermometers, which eradicated my ambivalence about returning to college.

I sued the ski resort, the county, Officer Comb-Over, and the Iowegian affidavit swearer-outer. Three years later, I got a cash settlement, one-tenth of the original amount. But I never actually got the money, so it didn’t really matter.

But that’s a story for another time.

*Forgive me, o Iowegian friends, for pulling that one out of the sack. I know you’re not idiots. But that guy most certainly was.

Click the play button above to hear my prison-themed playlist.

Jailbreak – Thin Lizzy, 1976
I Fought the Law – The Clash, 1979
Lawyers, Guns and Money – The Wallflowers, 2004
Holloway Jail – The Kinks, 1971
Follow the Cops Back Home – Placebo, 2006
Police Story – Black Flag, 1981
Rusty Cage – Johnny Cash, 1996
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos – Public Enemy, 1988
30 Days in the Hole – Humble Pie, 1972
Back on the Chain Gang – The Pretenders, 1984
Prison Grove – Warren Zevon, 2003
Jailhouse – Sublime, 1996
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine – The Killers, 2004
Hurricane – Bob Dylan, 1976
The Well and the Lighthouse – Arcade Fire, 2007
Jailbreak – AC/DC, 1976

Blame it on the Boomtown Rats

In my second senior year of college at KU (long story), I lived in an ancient studio apartment building across from the Beta and ATO frat houses on Tennessee Street. It was so old it had dumbwaiters in the halls and murphy beds in the apartments. The closet was only three feet wide, and the bathroom had a claw-foot tub and no shower. Immense gleaming purple slugs patrolled the crumbling sidewalk out front. The first night I moved in, some guy had an LSD freakout and cannonballed through a window.

But once I got rid of the cockroaches* and scoured the place, I loved it. The branches of oaks and sycamores filled my windows, sunshine through the leaves painting my walls brilliant green in the spring and summer, and apricot and scarlet in the fall. In wintertime, the strong black branches cast vigilant shadows and supplied pedestals for fantastical snow sculptures.

This guy.

I had a night class fall semester, and walking home one night, I heard a bicycle approaching me from behind. I turned to look. A forty-something dude about my height who looked like a creepier version of Michael J. Pollard was pushing the bike, not riding. Apropos of nothing, he let out a nervous, Peter Lorre-type laugh. In my mind, I heard the eerie opening strains of  the Dead Kennedys’ “The Prey.” I walked faster.

By the time I got to the front walk of the apartment building, his giggles had climbed the lunatic scale to near hysteria. My pace had escalated to a run, and he was right behind me, giggling madly. As I raced him to the door, he rolled his bicycle over three of the fat slugs, bisecting them with a wet squish, and up the steps. I sprinted down the hall and fumbled with my door key, ready to yell for help. But as I turned toward him, he disappeared down the staircase, bike and all, to the basement. I heard a door open and shut down there.

Okay, so a weirdo lived below me, who I discovered later had an equally weird Al Capone-lookalike roommate. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The rent was super cheap, it was just down Mount Oread from campus and three blocks from downtown, and it was a couple of blocks from Bullwinkle’s, a tiny dive bar that wasn’t much more than a lean-to with a tap and a kick-ass jukebox. At least my totally BA upstairs neighbor, Lori Elliott, had been followed by the bike-pusher too. We agreed to do laundry together in the basement to make the giggling and doorway-lurking bearable.

This one.

One Saturday night, I skipped the bars and stayed at home to listen to a Boomtown Rats album I’d just bought from Exile Records and Tapes, the local used-music and head shop**. I sat on the floor, ready to drop the needle on track one, side one. But just as I lifted the tone arm, I heard moaning directly below me. I froze and listened, the needle poised above “Mood Mambo.” The moaning voice belonged to Michael J. Lorre. I replaced the stylus in its cradle and pressed my ear to the floor.

The noise that surged from the basement sounded like the bawling of a wounded calf. And above that disturbing noise came the roommate’s voice.

“Come out of him!” shouted Al Capone Junior. “Come out of him now!”

Come out of him? Just what the actual hell was going on down there?

“Get thee behind me, Satan! I command you to come out of him!”

Holy shinola. What I was listening to was an exorcism.

And then the wild rumpus really got started. There were shrieks and shouts, dishes crashing, glasses shattering, furniture splintering. There was repeated hollering for Satan to come out, and then little Michael J. Lorre started babbling at the top of his voice. Al Capone Junior joined in.

They were, I realized, speaking in tongues. They sounded like a couple of liquored- and coked-up auctioneers having an epic rap battle. This went on long enough for me to pour two fingers of Jack Daniel’s into a glass and re-seat myself on the floor.

After one final crash, Michael J. Lorre laughed and cried with relief. I imagined ACJ untying him from a chair, and the two of them hugging and crying.

It was over. Satan had left the building.

Because this was the first Saturday night I’d stayed home since moving in, I wondered if getting in front of the devil was a weekly event in Chez Lorre-Capone. But I was too interested in unleashing Bob Geldof and the Rats to ponder this for long. I once again raised the tone arm, but my downstairs neighbors beat me to it. I heard a needle fall on a very scratchy vinyl record. And then a familiar Welsh voice silenced me and my 36-inch speakers for the night.

Tom Jones. Singing “Delilah” at top volume.

Well, of course. This explained everything. The guy who crashed through the window wasn’t on LSD after all.

He was on Tom Jones.

*Powdered boric acid sprinkled liberally around every baseboard and crack in the apartment does the trick. The roaches walk through the powder, and it sticks to their legs. They carry it back to their nests, and the boric acid dissolves the eggs. Gross but effective.

**My 21-year-old daughter Chloe was confused by the term “head shop.” If you’re also confused, it means “drug paraphernalia shop.” Back in the day, stoners were known as “heads.”

Below you can listen to a playlist with the songs mentioned in this post, as well as some extra goodies. The first one to guess why I included “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” wins a prize.

My Music Collection

My music collection

Here’s a Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from me to you: a list of my music collection in a sortable Excel spreadsheet.

Enjoy!

file upload

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere Soundtrack

Today
3:20
Smashing Pumpkins
Siamese Dream
1993


Waffle Stomp
3:45
Joe Walsh
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Soundtrack
1980


Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues
3:34
The Kinks
Muswell Hillbillies
1971


Hot for Teacher
4:45
Van Halen
1984
1984


Working Man
7:12
Rush
Rush
1974


Drivin’ South
5:04
Chris Duarte
Tailspin Headwhack
1997


Nightclubbing
6:21
Iggy Pop
TV Eye Live
1977


It’s Not My Cross to Bear
5:00
The Allman Brothers Band
The Road Goes on Forever
1975


Straight To Hell
5:29
The Clash
Combat Rock
1982


Temporary Beauty
3:54
Graham Parker
Another Grey Area
1982


Bodhisattva
5:19
Steely Dan
Countdown To Ecstasy
1973


Strong Chemistry
3:29
Wilcox, David
Big Horizon
1994


Are You Experienced?
4:16
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Are You Experienced?
1967


Don’t Look Back
5:20
Peter Tosh
Bush Doctor
1981


The Real Me
3:21
The Who
Quadrophenia
1973


I’ll Get By
3:14
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse
1971


Across The Universe
5:06
Fiona Apple
Pleasantville [Original Soundtrack]
1998


Icarus (Borne On Wings Of Steel)
6:04
Kansas
Masque
1975


Love Is Strong
3:50
The Rolling Stones
Voodoo Lounge
1994


Breakdown
3:11
Tantric
Tantric
2001


Superman
2:53
R.E.M.
Lifes Rich Pageant
1986


Put Your Lights On
4:45
Santana
Supernatural
1999


Lawyers, Guns and Money
3:30
Warren Zevon
Excitable Boy
1978


Predictable
3:21
The Kinks
Give the people what they want
1981


30 Days In The Hole
3:57
Humble Pie
Smokin’
1972


Swamp
5:16
Talking Heads
Speaking in Tongues
1983


Beaten to the Punch
1:49
Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Get Happy!!
1980


Determination
3:12
Todd Rundgren
Hermit of Mink Hollow
1978


Mama Told Me (Not To Come)
3:22
Three Dog Night
It Ain’t Easy
1970


Presence Of The Lord
4:51
Blind Faith
Blind Faith
1968


Damn Good
5:52
David Lee Roth
Skyscraper
1988


Hold On
3:50
Kansas
Audio Visions
1980


Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
7:16
The Rolling Stones
Sticky Fingers
1971


Ripple
4:10
The Grateful Dead
American Beauty
1970


The Prey
3:48
Dead Kennedys
Too Drunk to Fuck EP
1981


Dead Flowers
3:58
New Riders Of The Purple Sage
New Riders
1976


Gone at Last
3:41
Paul Simon and Phoebe Snow
Still Crazy After All These Years
1975


MLK
2:34
U2
The Unforgettable Fire
1984


Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
2:29
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
1969