LUDIC LOG

Price Western has broken down, and he didn't need any help. It's just him and his squeeze box and a mike for the vocals, so he's already sitting on the cubbyholed couch near the stage, smoking a cigarette and chatting up a young woman with 'Sun Angels Cheer Squad' written across the front of her sweatshirt. The collegiate sorority-girl uniform is unchangeable: never mind the weather, it's oversized sweatshirt and cutoff jeans. Price has played out this same scene enough times to effortlessly disguise his contempt; it doesn't matter anyway. The sweatshirt will be off soon enough. The girl offers to buy him a beer. He doesn't want one.

"Can you hold my seat though? I gotta go, I'll be right back."

"Sure!"

"Wait here, okay? Don't go."

"Promise."

Price preens in the bathroom. Patchouli oil scent blends poorly with urine, old sweat, and beer, beer, always beer. The smell of beer, the smell of the streets of Milwaukee, that ill heavy smell of flies and inebriation is never quite gotten used to even by those who spend all their time in bars. Price does not drink (his sobriety will be shattered by bigger and better things than alcohol) and the beer smell, the beer taste, the beer slick that turns every flat surface in the place to flypaper makes him queasy. He plays with his hair absently and wonders if the girl on the couch drops acid. He likes to take it after he's had sex; or rather, he likes to take it after he's had sex even more than he likes to take it at any other time.

Leaving the can Price nods hello to Fat Eric the bouncer (today is Fat Eric's birthday; everyone had a go-round and bought him a big package of porkchops -- Fat Eric eats pork with every meal, pork chops pork rinds pork sausage pork pies bacon ham sandwiches pig's feet even pig brains and scrambled eggs) and enters the bar. He orders a strawberry kiwi fruit concoction.

"You didn't play long tonight, man. You staying to see LI?" asks big, football-shaped Danny.

"Just the first few...I want to get out early tonight. They're showing M on PBS."

"What's that?"

His fruit juice and sugar water thing is almost gone now; Price can drink very quickly when he has the mind to.

"Peter Lorre movie."

"Oh yeah, that guy from The Maltese Falcon."

Price counts among his many obsessions Peter Lorre. He is intrigued with the actor, and watches his movies whenever he has the opportunity. He keeps a steno pad which he fills with notes about each movie as he sees them. Fat Lorre (Version I) is his favorite; this includes M, of course. A young man who mostly appears in arty German films playing some sort of madman or creep, imposing and chubby, poignant while still abhorrent. Thin Lorre comes next, covering the well-known films; The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, a wiry, swarthy, seemingly shorter man, easily agitated, cunning, more intelligent perhaps but less sympathetic, with great lines and a propensity to play outright villains and criminals rather than maniacs or fiends. Then finally Fat Lorre (Version II), the campy sad creature of The Raven and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, hunched over and corpulent, face bloated with age, now played for laughs as a comic and harmless antagonist, each movie bringing him one step closer to death. Price is utterly taken with Lorre and will breezily cancel any gig that interferes with the leisurely viewing of one.

Price slips in between bodies heading back to the couch (a couch much beloved by Hair of the Dog's clientele, and a couch which virtually screams "I was found on a street corner"), slowly making his way to his awaiting college girl. She smiles a welcoming smile, and the look in her eyes gives him the answer to at least one of the questions he has about life. He sits down and she moves in close, forming a warm if temporary barrier between him and the long nothing that forms much of his life.

Percy McJizz is sprawled in a corner, making minute and fussy adjustments to the bass amp. He is annoyed, as he always is in such situations, with Nick. It's not so much that Nick isn't here yet; they are, after all, about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. It's why he isn't here that bothers Percy: he is across the street at the Beast, buying heroin. Percy's advocacy of drug legalization and dislike for the demonization of narcotics is pushed to the very limits by Nick's fondness for opiates. It is not just that he takes heroin, but that he steadfastly refuses to be destroyed by it, thus denying Percy the opportunity to be self-righteous about his own refusal to take drugs. Bastard, he thinks, and twists a knob on the yellow-leather-coated bass cabinet; he twangs a string experimentally, and the resulting loud, bloated splat that issues from the amp puts him right back to work.

From side door emerges Nicky Bloodhead. As does everyone who has something hidden in their pocket that they don't want anyone to know about, his hands constantly search out the packet of heroin, seeking to assure his nervous mind that it's still there. It is.

Soon enough, on the stage, away from the mikes, words and looks are exchanged in the secret language of musicians, words which would seem as alien as Aramaic to those not of the band, and adjustments are made, until:

"Hi. We're Lethal Injection, thanks to Price Western who opened for us, this song is called 'Angela Blind'."

A loud blast of electrically amplified rock music and we're off: each person in the small dark smoke lodge conjures up their own vision. See Nicky Bloodhead, there, throttling the neck of his Les Paul knockoff like he was trying to stop it from doing the same thing to him. He doesn't really think about much; old girlfriends, pet peeves, dreams, and other demons of the past are exorcised by means of his voice and his hands all over a roomful of drunks. When he does think, when his mind strays from the blank autopilot mode well-known to anyone who does a familiar task over and over, his thoughts are for the packet of Mexican brown in the left sidekick of his St. Vincent DePaul tattered blues, and the young woman at the far end of the bar near the beer cooler, and how he might, by the end of the night, have to hit her, and that if he does, he's going to hit her very very hard, this time.