Skanking with the Stars

Passing in between the twin stars of a solar system unknown to us, the creatures in the hold clamored for freedom. Many were violent with rage, though most had fallen into despondency, some having been there for centuries. Others, beings with shorter lifespans, had never known life outside the the vessel. Generation upon generation spawned in its metallic depths. Like a semi-conscious drunk tossed into a cab, these assembled beings knew not where they were headed.

As the ship hurtled onward through the universe as if powered by a science fiction cliche, the ska band Fruit on my Boots set up for their fourth official show. Of course, they had played many more than four shows, but Brian, their cocky lead singer with an eye toward marketing, thought to rebrand them as a newer, hipper act. For him all those performances in front of their moms did not count. Neither did that time when they played in the TCBY parking lot. That was for charity, even though they received two scoops of ice cream as compensation. His vision for the band extended far beyond the myopic desires of his bandmates (which, generally speaking, were cute girls and drink tickets for virgin pina coladas). They were merely a means to an end, instruments in constructing an otherworldly persona that would dominate pop culture for years to come, a sort of Drake meets Kenny G with hints of Ciara. From the lofty perch of his bass amp, Brian looked on his bandmates with disdain. He watched as Kristen, ostensibly the coolest member as she had been in multiple bands and was the only one of legal age to drink, flirted with some dudes. She had gotten them this show, in part by blackmailing the owner of the bar. Kristen had "seen things" a fact which everyone knew and dared not test. 

The trumpeter, Will, a meek sixteen year old with a dirt stache, busied himself with the set design. The checkered backdrop and checkered carpet had to be immaculate. With an attention detail befitting a psychotic, Will placed fruits on the floor strategically so at points during the show they could stomp on them. This, he thought, was the sort of Gallagher-esque type of high concept performance that would win them acclaim. As such, he had spent weeks curating his fruit choices, carefully weighing the philosophical merits of each. The deliberation was historic, a veritable Congress of Vienna, but after much acrimony Will had chosen bananas, tomatoes, and star fruits as his props. He figured that even if this band never took off, he could always make a career in set design. Alongside Will were Jessica and Kyle, the drummer and lead guitarist respectively. Together they spoke with a reporter from their high school newspaper, the The Sack, so deemed for its gallimaufry of topics. When questioned about whether the band name Fruit on my Boots was, in fact, a derogatory reference to violence against homosexuals, the two fell silent. Luckily, Brian was there to answer for them. Fruit on my Boots, he interrupted, was nothing more than an inside joke between his friends. Someone, who shall remain nameless to protect their identity, once stepped on a grape and started crying. They never let the poor bastard live it down and to this day they filled their awkward teenage silences with references to that hilarious inciting incident.

After a three and a half hour sound check, which the sound guy declared "entirely unprofessional and wildly unbecoming of any ska act", Fruit on my Boots was ready to take the stage. The crowd was sparse but eager, populated, largely, by friends of the band, other bands performing later, and some townies, most notable among them Reggie, the celebrated drunk. With mild fan fair, each member assumed their instrument and began their set. They opened with Reenage Tockstar an autobiographical, if entirely false, summation of their band history. Diving further into their own vanity, their next song was Backseat Banging, an ode to their collective sexual experiences which amounted to little more than fumbling with bra straps and chipped teeth from overly aggressive make outs. The crowd went wild in the sense that they stood very still and listened patiently, endured even. By this point, Brian was getting restless. The owner threw up his hands with his fingers spread out, indicating that they only had ten minutes left on stage. Brian huddled his band on stage just as they were about to being their next song. It was imperative that they reel the crowd in now! To heck with the set list! If Fruit on my Boots was ever going to make it big they needed to take their shot. With the audacity of some guy in a movie that really doesn't give a damn what other people think, Brian suggested they play their rocking-est song, Magnolia in Bloom, which was supposed to be their closer. They assented and Brian kicked it off with a bass solo that was, quite frankly, at least ten degrees above and beyond bitching. The energy in the room was palpable. It seemed to hum with the raw force of ska.

This was it, thought Brian. No doubt some big shot music industry type was disguised in the crowd as a tween, looking for the next big thing and Fruit on my Boots was undeniably it. No one could resist the sensuous horn blasts and sleek riffs of Magnolia in Bloom. Even if a human theoretically could, no one, assuredly, would be immune to the lyrical foreplay of the song. Fruit on my Boots was about to get laid, metaphorically speaking. All they had to do at this point was roll the condom down over the cock of the music industry, which was really just a formality at this point. People in the crowd began to look around at one another in pure amazement. Fruit on my Boots was clicking like never before. It was electric. Brian even thought he might break into a second bass solo. A bit baroque perhaps, but was it really up to him, a mere mortal, to deprive the people of literal bass nectar? All this, unfortunately, was a vastly incorrect and perhaps willfully ignorant interpretation of what was happening at the show that night.

A young boy with frosted tips and braces stepped toward the stage clapping and stomping to the rhythm. Fruit on my Boots perceived their first superfan. In a sense he was. The boy suddenly jammed his fingers into his own throat and with one great upward motion tore his face off. He swung the rent flesh above his head and tossed it onto the stage as if it were a bra. The pimply visage floated down onto the crash cymbal. Behind the flesh was an inhuman form. The head was spherical, almost perfectly so, and arranged symmetrically with tiny slits, each filled with a pinkish goo, both laterally and vertically around the sphere. It held out its hand and twisted a strange device around its left index finger. Instantaneously, the band and the creature were encapsulated in a faint blue light. The ambient energy that bristled throughout the bar all night increased ten fold, being not the awesome power of ska but rather strange vibrations of an unknown origin. Fruit on my Boots, their instruments, and the creature all dematerialized before the eyes of the crowd. Nothing was left. They roared with applause.

As if on the last leg of a drug addled super tour, Fruit on my Boots found themselves on stage once more but without any clue as to how they got there. The room was painted in a checker board print and bare but for an dual trumpet and checkered tie rack. They looked around at one another befuddled and befogged, and then forward, out through a wide portal that was translucent but bristled with static every few moments. They watched as two creatures interacted on the other side of the portal. They did not comprehend their language, but having argued over how to split their meager cover proceeds before, they understood well enough the gist of what was happening. One creature, a small, squat, and toadish thing, extended a tentacle and placed into the hand of the tween superfan a small sack. It nodded obsequiously and walked off.

The toad creature then turned to Fruit on my Boots and approached the portal. He rested his tentacle against it, clearly supporting himself against the surface as his body inclined forward slightly. "You are here because you are the last of your kind. Something you share with all the other beings aboard this vessel. I have brought you here to preserve you and your memory for the knowledge of the universe." The toad alien intoned with great reverence for himself. Will raised his hand. "Yes, you with trumpet and checkered pocket square." He was incredulous. There was no possible way Fruit on my Boots could be the last ska band on earth. The toad alien explained them that they indeed were. Kristen asked what would happen if some other youngsters decided to form a ska band at some point in the future. The toad alien assured them that would never happen. "You will live the rest of your lives in this enclosure playing ska until your deaths. At such point you will either be cloned and your clones will be taught the ways of ska, or" the alien hesitated, "you will be asked to reproduce, thus creating a new generation of ska-dom." Will and Brian high-fived. Kristen puked.

The gaze of each member of Fruit on my Boots drifted to the floor, drawn down by the weight of the realization that this was their eternal, checkered prison. The toad alien rubbed his tentacles together in delight. "If you have any questions feel free to scream incessantly. A robot stewardess comes round several times a day and will try to accommodate your needs. Also, I've stocked your environment with several copies of No Exit by your earth author Sartre. If you like, I can get him to sign a copy for you just as long as he isn't feeling too cranky." With all his tentacles at once, the toad alien waved goodbye and sauntered off down, from what Fruit on my Boots could tell, was an endless corridor of similar portals filled with rare and extinct creatures. Forlorn and distraught, Will played the military taps, an adequate approximation of the group's mood. Kristen sat on her trombone. Kyle restrung his guitar as if he were braiding dreads into his own decapitated head.

"Hey! Heyyyyyy!" A greasy alien whose mass appeared mostly to be composed of coarse yellow hair attempted to get their attention. His cell was directly across from theirs. "I dig your sound. Kind of a Juriptoka meets Ceeeeelgut. You guys would be a hit on Fragatel. Hell, I would sign you up for tour right now if it weren't for...well, you know." He gestured to the ship in which they were all incarcerated. Brian's eyes lit up. This was exactly the break they were looking for. He corralled the band. Now was not the time to brood about certain the impending eternity of their hellish captivity. Now was the time, if there ever were one, to skank. With the grace of drunken teenage Scotsman, Brian produced a black and white checkered kilt from his bass case and clasped it on to his hips. He pointed to Jessica who began to tap out their, as of yet, never performed live power ballad "Kiss Me Skankly". Their horns blared. Bending toward a new destination on the rumor of some dying species in a distant galaxy, the ship seemed to skank through space.

A Dark-ish Passage

The America highway system is an ocean, a diverse and violent ecosystem supporting all walks of life from PT Cruisers to vegetable oil powered crust punk VW buses. There is a delicate balance here, one that can only be adequately captured by the mellifluous grunting of David Attenborough. So when my friends decided to travel cross country on a road trip, I knew we wouldn't be returning as we had left, if we should return at all. First among us, our leader, our captain, was Mila. Beautiful and trenchant with hair so long you could sit on it. She was at one and the same too much in her senses for Twitter and yet too little in them for Tumblr. Her gaze was cold and she had about her a certain fixation, not unlike the obsessive mania of a meth user, that compelled her through a given task. In the absence of any protest, there were only mild complaints about the regularity of bathroom breaks, Mila was the exceptionally prickly glue that held our group together. Unfortunately, no matter how much you sniffed her, you would never get high.

Next in the totem pole was Alex. A longish, leanish, lamish young Atlantian, not unnameable, on certain sides, to this classification. He would brook no interruption to the inner machinations of his mind, but for communiques with Brook, his girlfriend, with whom, in the sometimes pathetic sometimes triumphant way the sick learn to live with their disease, he cohabitated. She did not approve of this voyage, seeing it a world of temptation for her man. Sexy hitchhiker sirens and lusty motel tramps waiting to pounce on the bristling desires of a nice young Jewish boy cooped up with gentiles for 18 hours a day. After him was Rachel, visibly absentminded and irregularly clever. The progenitor of wantonness for the crew, always exhorting the recreational use of substances and the substantial use of recreation. When distressed, Rachel would cycle through a series of ticks ranging from benign to vile. To the displeasure of her compatriots, driving was one of her great anxieties.

Last among us was me, the silent helmsman. I have no idea why I was tasked with this job, as I have the sense of direction of a worm that has just bored through peyote. Nevertheless, I sat calmly behind, or rather underneath, the wheel in a constant row with myself about the direction we were headed. We had just left the Natural Bridge, one of nature's more impressive holes, and were on our way to Colonial Williamsburg. The running joke among us was that this place was an experiment in what would happen if hipsters had been the original European colonists. We mused that it would largely have been the same, but Native American fashion would have been appropriated much faster. In my mind, colonialism seemed the ironically cool dad to the irreverent son of gentrification.

Stricken by a bout of hunger, however, we decided to stop at a roadside fast food establishment (I say establishment because restaurant seems disingenuous). Though limited, the options presented to us were strangely divisive, inciting a contentious debate about the value of each food place. Much was said, things that, without embellishment, shook the foundation of our friendship and called into question our respective humanity. Mila declared Bojangles "facile and iniquitous", which seemed like a low blow, especially from someone championing the merits of Subway. Meanwhile, Alex, who had been very reticent up to this point, laid at our feet an ultimatum. Due to some un-explicated childhood trauma, he would rather walk home than set foot in Wendy's. I veered off the highway with this miniature House of Commons in tow.

After much acrimony, we decided to go to Bojangles. Biscuits proved our saving grace. I parked the car and like some touring K pop group, dressed to the twos and moving in synchronous geometric formation, we entered. There is no place quite like the middle-of-nowhere, roadside fast food establishment. It's physical attributes are disturbing: oddly eroded and stained with little evidence of human habitation, filled with non euclidean plastic furniture that looks more like torture devices meant to induce stress positions than to accommodate the human ass, long, winding queues that have never been filled but are demarcated by bright and hideous railings. All this wrapped in the a box of corporate architecture that somehow resembles the to-go bags of the chain. This is all ancillary to the temporal effect of the place. It seems a lost and forgotten realm, abandoned by time itself. The experience of it is akin to time dilation where those under the influence of, say, a roadside Arby's, watch time outside of its confines slow down as they themselves age more rapidly. Of course, the inverse may happen as well with time accelerating in the outside world and time within grinding to a halt, preserving those souls in a temporal formaldehyde. Were a given Star Trek crew every transported into one of these places, they would within minutes be ensconced in its mystery, searching, no doubt, for chronoton particles and answers.

Upon entering, I felt the dread of the entire trip grip me. Perhaps it was the fluorescent lights or the mumbling drifter erecting a makeshift dwelling in one of the booths, I couldn't be certain. Regardless, I felt the overwhelming urge to flee. While my friends ordered, I trotted to the bathroom in an attempt to deal with my emotions. I went in and tip toed across the brown tiled floor. The murky mirror reflected my blood shot eyes back at me and a sonorous stream of piss resonated from the solitary stall. As I contemplated, a man emerged from the stall, a grizzled fellow with a glint of glintiness in his eye. He wore a surgical mask and latex gloves, which, although probably not the worst idea in this cesspool, seemed quite odd to me. I stepped aside and granted the man access to the sink. He removed his gloves and methodically washed his hands before turning to face me. "Another satisfied customer." At first I thought he was talking about the toilet in which he relieved himself, but then, to my astonishment, another man emerged from the stall. His face was wrapped in toilet paper and he had the distinctive grin of someone whose flesh had just been lacerated. He gave his stall mate a warm and approving thumbs up before sauntering out of the bathroom.

Their exchange was disquieting to me, not in the least bit because, despite my better instincts, I could not help but imagine the what really had taken place in that Bojangles stall. Some intersection of gay sex, body modification, world weariness, and cajun fries presumably. My fears, however, were quickly allayed. "My urinal side manner is telling me I have a patient in distress." This was addressed to me. Apparently, the man was a wandering plastic surgeon, barred from the American Medical Association years earlier for allegedly grafting a half dead cat onto the back of her loving and obsessed cat mother. The operation was a success, but the cat sued for damages, bankrupting Fred in the process and forcing him into this itinerant lifestyle. Fred confessed to me that it wasn't all bad, though. He was no longer beholden to the rules and "ethics" of such trite and self-important institutions as the Hippocratic Oath. He could now pursue his passion which, seemingly, was pro bono cosmetic surgery to insecure, and often pee shy, restroom goers the nation over. My interest evidently piqued, Fred showed me his portfolio, a black binder filled with his greatest triumphs: face grafts of unimaginable complexity and questionable taste, experimental collagen injections, face lifts, butt lifts, nipple drops, eye brow reversals, and even some crude tattoo work. It occurred to me then that, much like an aging trophy wife, my salvation would come through plastic surgery.

I texted Mila. "Huge bowel movement. Eat without me. I'll get something to-go." Fred nodded at me knowingly and ushered me to his operating room, the fetid bathroom stall. He rigged the toilet seat to recline like a dentist chair so that I might have some modicum of comfort while he tore off my face. "Any requests?" He was referring to what face I might want. "I have some wonderful One Direction visages. They're very in this season." "Surprise me" I said. Fred winked and wiped out a small radio. He turned on NPR and giggled with glee when he realized "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" was playing. Together, we listened intently and just as I was about to answer a question about the sexual orientation of Obama's dogs, Fred blew a cloud of ketamine into my face. Almost immediately, I blacked out.

I awoke with a start, my face wrapped in toilet paper and bleeding from a new series of orifices. Fred stood over me, admiring his work. "You're going to want to put some ice on that when you get a chance, and some Gold Bond." "For my face?" "No, for your balls. I had some leftover skin, so I threw in a little something extra. Compliments of the house. It's damn fine work, if I do say so myself." I shook Fred's hand in gratitude and clambered off the toilet. He smiled and nodded once at me as I left the bathroom. The world felt new, everything seemed different. Even my gait, which before was a kind of club footed electric slide, changed into a flamboyant geriatric shuffle. I passed my friends who were gabbing and eating at a table. Rachel was building a siege tower out of french fries and Alex lamented the loss of high browbeating someone into reading the New Yorker. In stride, I espied them and walked out of that Bojangles. I knew I would not see them again. As I approached the road, I thought of my new life, what mysteries and sorrows it might contain. I did not know. I just hoped Fred had made my face look like Jeff Goldblum.