Observations of the Creepy Crawl and Other Incidents

“Aw, man! I’m sorry, guys,” he moaned. “Are you going to be embarrassed being around a guy with a wet crotch all night?”

And then they went on their way. The Creepy Crawl was a hole in the wall down near Union Station. It must have once been a shop or a small warehouse and it spoke of grudge and dirt and cloves – posters and labels were plastered all over the walls with a hodge-podge of ceiling tiles, red lights, soft foam pieces nailed to the ceiling in clusters, and ratty crystal chandeliers. The floor was worn and pocked with old black bubblegum and traces of labels which had long since been torn away, although one still remained in black and red which said: Murder Happens. The usual flux of city folk were there – Asians in dreadlocks and fuzzy colored knit caps, a few Hispanics, the usual rock crowd, and some neatly groomed more classy-looking girls. The bar counter was rather small with a rack of DVDs behind it and several fridges of beers and sodas and energy drinks. Small packages of chips hung from another rack from the ceiling. And the stage was lit against the cigarette smoke with red, blue, and yellow lights. There was no seating, of course, and somehow the dirtiness and the frayed edges added to the (in some ways) “charm” of the hang-out.

Five bands played that night, and as usual, Collette found something interesting about one to two people in each of them. They all had their own character and beat. And Collette found herself realizing that she knew practically nothing about the intricacies of rock bands. While the sound was deafening and there seemed to be trouble with the vocals (as the microphones weren’t quite right for the first two bands), she found herself enjoying the experience, watching the different techniques of each band member, whether she appreciated the music or not. Their dress, mannerisms, and the way they used their instruments and kept their bodies in rhythm to the music were quite fascinating. Besides, there was something inherently satisfying about a beat so deep that it shook a great thump in one’s core near the heart and left the rest of one’s appendages shivering, rather like fir trees on a windy day – the only way she could think to describe it. And although she was quite ready to leave after the first two bands, it was primarily because she could hardly stand up any longer.

Micahveil, the band in which Gavin played, was second, and everyone pretty much seemed to agree that they enjoyed the music itself. And then a band without vocals, Octopus Project, performed from Austin, Texas, before a sharper (more clear-toned) band came on from New York. The final band, Thunderbirds are Now, came on from Detroit at the end, and Collette found that all of them were quite entertaining. The tall Asian bass was cool, they all agreed, who kept such a fast rhythm with his leg that Magnus thought it must have been twice the size of the other one, having exercised it so much. The primary vocalist was a short, rather stocky gay kid with blond hair and glasses, although he must have been over 21. And the guy on the keyboard, who looked a little like Gavin, tore up the stage. Everyone suspected he was on something, but he certainly showed up any tambourine-playing Jars of Clay could ever muster. He banged that thing so hard, sent it spinning up into the air into the ceiling, crashing himself all over the stage like a banshee, that Collette rather thought he would take out the entire band. Not to mention that he came near to knocking himself out on the keyboard at least sixty times while banging his head and throwing his hair in frenzy-nous circles. He even wore the tambourine as a crown before his fellow blond-haired band member took a ride around the crowd on the shoulders of some dude in a red shirt.

But in the Octopus Project the drummer reminded her of someone on whom she had not thought in a good while. Short black hair, olive-skinned, medium height, and dark eyes, from what she could tell. He even wore a tie and a collared white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. It was somewhat like seeing Janos Ujvary all over again – the 23 year-old Hungarian whom Diana was positively certain Collette had fallen for during their visit to Budapest five summers earlier, when Collette was sixteen and very shy.

“Oh, man,” Diana said to her as they walked down the Gellert Hotel hallway one day, “That’s so cool. I wish I had fallen in love with a foreigner too.”

And Collette just had to laugh.

Wednesday morning Collette woke up to a nosebleed over a banana. And the snow still lay in frosting patches on the tree branches in the sparkling sun, oddly enough after the pinkful-white blossoms of the same trees had already bloomed the week before, along with the early daffodils.

Back at the house, Collette prepared cinnamon toast and oranges for Joe and Rose for breakfast while they watched another history lecture with their professor dressed as John Smith, complete with sword. And the fading blue-ish purple of her hand stamp from the concert was beginning to remind her of an ancient tattoo, the ones which were found on bog bodies, preserved over thousands of years in the silt and thick black of the Northern bogs. And Collette caught Rose in the act of eating playdough, a little secret past time that she had, apparently, never quite ceased in partaking.

“I think I ate a hair,” Rose grimaced.

“Rose, you cannot eat anymore playdough,” Collette walked over to the coffee table to confiscate the remaining wad of bright red.

“No!” Rose exclaimed, and threw the wad across the room, as if that would save it.

Later, Rose washed trinkets while squashing the invasion of the kitchen ants with her school pencil. She warned Collette:

“So don’t touch the eraser. Man, I hate killing them; it’s so mean.”

And unfortunately, while she was attending to the trinkets, a small piece rolled onto the kitchen floor, unnoticed, and after Collette heard the sickening crunch under her shoe, she pulled up the piece now in four pieces and lost her temper at Rose for leaving the piece in such a precarious position as to fall on the floor. It had been a miniature red pouch from India or somewhere near there, hard (as though it were resin) and had at one end a cap on the top which wedged into the pouch and was detailed with an elephant carving. Inside the tiny pouch had once lived a number of small flat elephants carved of ivory, so tiny, they would blow away with a poof of wind. The elephants and the cap had already been lost and now the pouch was good for nothing as well. When Rose came back into the kitchen to retrieve the remainder of the trinkets from the sink, Collette said, trying not to laugh:

“Well, seeing as you also broke Great Grandpa’s old railroad pocket watch, Joe and I were just agreeing that you could never be a keeper of historical artifacts. You would probably decide to soak the Mona Lisa in a bathtub to clean it.”