Grunge in the Pipes
Short Fiction for the SUM FLUX Volume 3 Open Call
This was written as an Open Call submission for Volume 3 of SUM FLUX, a Substack zine that you can and should check out for work by many excellent artists.
Whenever I take a shower, I think about how love hurts.
They say love hurts anyway, but that’s one of those sayings that sounds so true that you never really consider what it means. They must be talking about real love–the passionate, unconditional kind. 'Cause I've said I love people before, and it didn't hurt.
Except I was only saying it, wasn't I? And slangifying the words to keep it casual, 'cause what I meant was that I like them more than I don't. Real love probably means liking someone a whole lot especially when you don’t.
So I imagine it's like a shower. Like how when I first get in, before my body is used to the temperature, and the hot water stings and soothes at the same time. It’s kind of scary. I worry that I’ve done some real damage giving myself to the water so completely. Then it feels amazing to be cradled inside it. Feel that warmth that shoots all the way to your core. Is that what real love is like?
I think about a lot of things like that in the shower. My brain doesn’t work so good usually. Something about the water, though. Reminds me of baptism. The River Jordan streaming out of my shower head, and my waterlogged ears can just make out thumps from Uncle Rusty’s hand on his bible. He says all the bad’s been washed away. When sacred steam blooms to the ceiling, carries my filth away on plumes of Irish Spring, then pools and slides down the drain, my thoughts finally run clear.
Only, I’ve got to think about bad things sometimes. You make it to 47 and they pile up, so you’ve got to consider them. More gets added to the pile every year. It’s—what’s that word, that math word? Expa…? Exponential! I think that’s it. When the bad things pile up high, the water level in the tub rises with them.
‘Cause, see, I’ve got this hair.
Rockerboy hair I grew out to look like Kurt Cobain so promoters would know I was serious about my music. But this was early ‘95; clubs weren’t as keen on the style any more. Grunge songs seemed like funeral dirges. A drum beat hard enough could put a whole crowd of people right there in the room with Kurt and the shotgun. I kept the look anyway, as a tribute, even if it put people off to see the death mask of a legend.
I offer up that hair as a different kind of tribute these days, when the pile gets too big. Sacrifices to retched lead-gods of drainage that leave raw, red patches on my scalp. As a reward, the baptismal pool beneath me fills with backwash up to the shins.
Today is all good, though. No sacrifice required. We got a great gig lined up that could be the breakthrough, it could all happen for us. I’m trying not to expect too much, play it cool, y’know? Treat it like any other gig. I just hate Home Depot so much.
And I like Suze. More than I don’t, for sure. Told me to call her Susan, but she’s British so in my head she’s Suze. Always smells like the freshest laundry. She’s always got smart things to say, she graduates college soon. We were hanging around Kitchen and Bath a few weeks ago, and she said she’d let me finger her right in one of the tubs if the band got a big enough gig. Do you think she meant it?
My cellphone rings the intro of “Wake Up” by Rage so loud I freak and slip. Bruised my tailbone, I can feel it. Head missed the faucet by centimeters. Zack shouts for me to come on, and I’m a wet mess bursting through the shower curtain to answer the call.
Hello? Hey, pops. It’s just the shower. No, I just got in. I’m not lying, I swear. It doesn’t raise the water bill that much. I get paid Friday, you’ll get your money then. Can’t you get those with what I give you Friday? Stop yelling. Fine, I’ll get liquor and smokes too, just stop yelling. Hey, Dad? My band got a gig at the Stone Pony in a week, isn’t that cool? No, it’s cool! This is the big one, Dad, I know it! Don’t call me that. I’m not retarded! That’s not true. She left ‘cause you’re a drunk! Try it, old man! No, I’m a star! I’m gonna play the Stone Pony and hit it big and Suze is going let me finger her! Yeah, and it’ll be the last money you ever get from me! Dad?
My cellphone clatters in the sink basin, kicks up old mustache trimmings. Hot water laps against calves weak from years of avoiding gyms for guitar stores and now holding my modest manhood steady but dangling over the bathroom trash. Porcelain needles the elbow I’m using as a kickstand on the toilet, driving it to numbness then stabbing again when I try to roll it to more comfortable positions. I stay like that for as long as I’m able, posed like some accidental Renaissance porno.
The lead-gods start calling. They demand their due. I obey. Rip. Tear. Whimper when water scorches traumatized dermis. Collapse to my knees to repent, splashing dirty, rising water everywhere.
It keeps coming, more than usual. The drain is clogged bad this time. If it keeps coming, it will spill over the side. I can’t afford to lose my security deposit to water damage. Leaning against the wall outside the tub there is a crusty metal clothes hanger of the kind they don’t make anymore stretched out long except for a hook at the end. I call it Old Faithful.
Old Faithful threads deeper and deeper down the pipe, kinks to get around bends. Then I can tell it’s hit the blockage. Hook, snag, and pull.
And pull.
And pull…
And pull?
And pull?!
I was afraid I’d never stop pulling. Now half the tub is tangled in a dirty blonde thicket heavy with soap scum. It stands as tall as my bellybutton. This can’t all be mine.
But there are the bits of flesh wrenched from my crown, dotting the growth like berries.
I think I’ve stared at it for hours. Fingers and toes are pruned, cracked, and screaming. I’ve been examining the strands for the memories of what culled them.
Pawning my football gear for a beat-up Univox Hi-Flier. Mom setting money aside for private lessons. The night Salt Nest debuted at the school talent show. Mom surprising me with a trip upstate, and the police bringing me back down without her. Going on our first and last national tour. Spreading Mom’s ashes in the forest she played in as a child. The Stone Pony gig.
All there, all accounted for and then some. A mangle of tragedies joined in the snarl. The longer I look, the more I see Dad’s face too. Furrows and bulges lay just right, and it looks so like him.
These locks always belonged to him, didn’t they? From the moment they grew past my earlobes. He swore he’d beat the hippie out of me if I didn’t get a high and tight. Which I didn’t do, ‘cause I found a violent shortcut to penance he accepted. After that, my hair was his to cut with nothing but an unkind word.
Kurt would have rebelled. Would have copped beatings to keep the hair if it pissed someone off, ‘cause he knew the only escape from a broken home is through the cracks. That’s why he made it to 27, and I didn’t.
I dig wrinkled fingertips into the mound, deeper and deeper, until I'm sunk in up to the shoulders. Mix up his face beyond recognition. Keratin barbed wire scratches and shreds my skin. Scratching becomes more like seeping. Stinging then soothing. I feel it writhing, taking root wherever it can.
This was a gift from the lead-gods, after all. Repayment for decades of devotion. To purge his spoiled blood and replace it with something better.
Something mine.
I don’t know how long I spent teasing and styling. Long enough for a Where are you? voicemail from Manager Amin.
You’re late for your shift.
Call me back, now.
Last chance, it’s been days.
Your services are no longer required.
You’re no longer required, Amin. Not after the gig, you’ll see.
My bandmates are speechless at the sight of me. They are stunned by the legacy of Rock that coats me like armor. Whispers pass between them, and I can’t hear them but I know what they are saying.
We’re going to blow the roof off the place.
I’m on stage now, Suze. Did you come? I can’t see you ‘cause the lights are so bright, and all the people look the same. Obsessed shadows with their eyes on me. I’m warming up my fingers on these strings for you, Suze. I hope you come.
Fiery lick after fiery lick, blazing-hot riffs the best I’ve ever played. The band can’t even keep up, they’re dropping rhythms and hitting sour notes. Crowd is quiet, totally under the thumb of my talent. They love me, really love me. I feel the warmth shooting to my core. I smell the love too, strong and sulfurous. The lights grow brighter. I can see their faces now, contorted in anguish ‘cause love hurts. It hurts so bad.
I told you, Dad.
I’m a star.
Love the emotional arc