Born to Rock

  While I was telling him all this, it dawned on me that I was enjoying talking about it. I mean, living it was no fun. But it was cool to be the guy with all the great stories. Even more amazing, I was enjoying talking about it with Owen.

  Maybe it was because if I hadn’t been talking to Owen, I would have been talking to myself. With every juicy tidbit, I could see Melinda becoming more stiff-lipped, stiff-necked, and stiff-rumped behind the wheel.

  “So you know Pete Vukovich, too,” she said icily.

  “What about King?” Owen enthused. “You’ve told us about everybody but him.”

  That was the thing. I was getting to know everybody except King. I couldn’t tell if his schedule was the problem, or if he was just avoiding me. It was probably a little of both. Either way, it wasn’t something I wanted to discuss in an open forum.

  “It’s kind of personal. You know, meeting your—” The words caught in my throat. I’d been about to say long-lost father in front of someone whose father really was long lost.

  Owen didn’t press the point. He was happy to blab on and on about Concussed. Apparently, he and Melinda had always been planning to make it to a couple of East Coast shows. But when Purge had announced their comeback, the two had decided to follow the tour from city to city, until they ran out of either money or summer.

  Owen smiled endearingly. “I guess it doesn’t sound very Republican. But it’s our last hurrah before college.”

  Ouch. It brought home my own predicament. When the summer was over, I wouldn’t know King any better than I had when he was nothing more than a wild animal on a CD cover. Would I really be in a position to ask him to front me forty G’s for college?

  Aloud, I said, “The roadie life isn’t very Republican either.”

  “I disagree,” put in Melinda, who hadn’t opened her mouth for the past fifty miles. “What could be more Republican than a cushy job going to the guy with the best connections? P.S.—we’re stopping at the first Internet café we pass in Phoenix.”

  So that was how KafkaDreams was continuing her secret online life while living in a tent. “Well,” I began, “I really shouldn’t keep King waiting—”

  “King waited seventeen years to learn that you even exist. He can chill out for another hour.” Black-ringed eyes flashed at me in the rearview mirror.

  It was after seven when we finally found our way to the campground where the Concussed nomads were setting up shop.

  That was when I discovered I was traveling a little lighter than I’d expected. Somewhere between Las Vegas and here, one of my two big suitcases had parted company with the Subaru’s roof rack at eighty miles per hour. Apparently, some of the IQ points that had disappeared since the days of Owen’s 180 were the ones that carried a knowledge of bungee cords. A good half of my clothes were gone.

  “You were due for a makeover anyway,” was Owen’s apology. I’ll bet even Queer Eye for the Straight Guy never thought of such a novel way to get rid of someone’s outdated wardrobe.

  Maybe I was just bitter because I now had no underwear.

  What could I do? I thanked them for the ride.

  [16]

  PHOENIX WAS A SWEATBOX—A HIGH OF one hundred twelve. The city council begged Concussed to call off the festival, but the show went on anyway. The vendors ran out of bottled water halfway through Skatology’s set. All day, paramedics were dragging people out of the crowd who were suffering from dehydration and heatstroke.

  The roadies were sweat-drenched and fighting among themselves. The band members were irritable. I should have known from the beginning that something was going to happen.

  I’d gotten Melinda and Owen backstage passes as a thank-you for dragging me and most of my stuff to Phoenix. I made a lot of points with them, particularly with Melinda. Even I thought backstage was pretty cool, and I wasn’t even a fan of this music. For Melinda, the chance to be behind the scenes, seeing the musicians close-up, was Disney World times fifty. And the gut-churning roar of a hundred thousand watts of punk at point-blank range was soothing to her soul. When King Maggot arrived sometime after sundown, I thought she was going to pass out. She wouldn’t have been the first, even though the mercury had dipped to a moderate ninety-nine.

  In the break between Lethal Injection and Purge, I got called away to where Max was personally supervising the unloading of his drum set. He hadn’t allowed us to bring it over with the other equipment earlier in the day. He was getting really particular about his stuff. But his instructions to the roadies had nothing to do with drums.

  “Never get married, you guys. It’s like signing up for your own personal Saddam Hussein. Then, when she’s through torturing you, she takes everything you’ve slaved for and runs off to Rio with some doctor who spends his days looking up people’s butts, but is too blind to notice that hers is eight feet across. Poor slob. He’ll be next.”

  Cam tried to be encouraging. “Max, you’re a legend. You can do way better than Penelope.”

  “It was Halloween the night she walked out,” he mumbled resentfully. “When I got home from the Masonic lodge, even the Tootsie Rolls were gone.”

  The heat was an accelerant for many incendiary tempers. Bernie was snapping at everybody, especially Zach, who was inhaling potato chips because “In this weather, you’ve got to fight salt depletion.”

  “Let’s fight obesity first,” the manager muttered, “and let salt depletion look after itself.”

  He was even snippy to the press, which was totally out of character. He normally made certain that all members of the media were welcomed with open arms. There was one reporter in particular—Rossi, from Phoenix Nightlife Weekly—who was pushing his luck backstage. There was an unwritten rule that newspeople didn’t interfere with the bands and crew. But this guy Rossi couldn’t seem to stay out of everybody’s face.

  “Listen,” Bernie told him, “the show isn’t a forum for your interview. We allow you to watch. It’s a courtesy. And whatever you do, stay away from King. You don’t want to get too close to him when he’s preparing for a set.”

  Anyone else would have considered it friendly advice. To this bonehead Rossi, it was a challenge. He went up to King, who was in his preperformance mode, fingers steepled, preparing for the Vulcan mind meld.

  “Hey, King. Chuck Rossi, Phoenix Nightlife Weekly—” At that point, the reporter’s hand made contact with the Purge front man’s shoulder.

  The reaction was instantaneous. King wheeled and hit him with a haymaker that left an arc of burnt air behind it. The reporter went down like a ton of bricks and stayed down.

  Bernie rolled his eyes in a here-we-go-again expression. “Flag the paramedics,” he told Cam. “We’ve got another case of heatstroke.”

  I gawked. “But Bernie, his nose is bleeding! It could be broken!”

  He nodded. “Poor guy hit the floor pretty hard.”

  I caught a glimpse of Melinda’s face during all this. Rapture was the only way to describe it. I thought back to her project, “Poets of Rage.” Among his other sterling qualities, King Maggot was known to have the hardest punch in punk. In Melinda’s eyes, she was watching history being made.

  So the full-frontal assault of “Bomb Mars Now” formed an apocalyptic sound track for the ambulance personnel as they loaded up Chuck Rossi.

  If anything, the substitution of Pete Vukovich made Purge’s music louder, rawer, and more explosive than ever before. In his hands, the Fender Stratocaster was practically alive. The once-venerated name of Neb Nezzer was hardly ever mentioned anymore.

  But the heart and soul of Purge was still King. I’d wondered if the fact that he’d just put somebody in the hospital might affect my bio-dad onstage. Not a single iota.

  Every time King picked up a microphone, it was like he had an exploding sun trapped inside him and the only way to let it out was by screaming. He was spectacular, devastating, tectonic. He was such a dynamic performer that he could get a 2006 audience all worked up about Grenada.

 
The Arizona crowd, parboiled by the heat, went berserk in their appreciation. Backstage, Owen was pumping his head hard enough to scramble the Connecticut Department of Education’s most cherished brains. Beside him, Melinda was frozen in intense concentration, determined not to miss a single drumbeat, guitar riff, or caterwaul.

  The progression of songs was becoming familiar by now: “Bomb Mars Now” led into “Filthy/Ugly/Sick,” followed by “Bored Ballistic,” and “The Supreme Court Makes Me Barf.” It was during the guitar solo in “Repo Momma” that they came. The cops.

  You couldn’t hear the sirens over the music, and the flashers were obscured by the strobes. But people got the idea when two uniformed officers stormed the stage, flanked King Maggot, and slapped a set of handcuffs on him. The microphone hit the stage, producing a blast of feedback that was every bit as musical as the song it interrupted.

  There was a flash of pale skin and black clothing as Melinda Rapaport ran out and hurled herself onto the back of one of the arresting officers.

  Well, I had to get her away from there, didn’t I? She was attacking a cop. It was my fault she was on that stage to begin with. As I ran out into the lights, braving the barrage of spittle and clods of earth coming in from the audience, I found Owen running next to me. Between us, we managed to detach her from the cop and drag her kicking and screaming into the wings.

  “Gotta help King!” she shrieked over the noise of the agitated crowd.

  A few would-be rioters burst through the barriers and climbed onto the stage. But the arrival of several more officers brandishing billy clubs seemed to dampen their enthusiasm. It was too hot for civil disobedience.

  King didn’t resist arrest, but he wasn’t going along quietly either. He made them drag him through the entire backstage area to a waiting squad car. I caught a glimpse of him as they ducked his head in through the rear door.

  His expression was unreadable.

  According to Bernie, everything was under control.

  As soon as King had decked that reporter, the manager had made some cell phone inquiries, putting a local law firm on alert. They would probably be at the precinct house to greet King when he arrived.

  I was distraught. “You knew this was going to happen?”

  “This is how I spent the eighties, Cuz. You think this is the first time some pushy reporter came to and remembered who hit him?”

  “I saw the whole thing,” I insisted. “That reporter had it coming! I’ll testify to that.”

  “There isn’t going to be any testifying,” Bernie told me. “Just stating names and releasing on bail. We’ll get it all kicked long before a trial date can come up. That idiot Rossi only wants to see himself on TV.”

  I wasn’t comforted. “Just let me ride with you to the police station.”

  He looked surprised. “I’m not going. That’s why we pay lawyers—so people like you and me can go back to the hotel and get some shut-eye.”

  So I went with him. But the promised shut-eye would not come. The hotel was built around a central atrium, and my window overlooked the front door. I sat there until three A.M., watching.

  Cam came home, smelling faintly of beer, and combative as usual. “God, butt-wipe—how am I ever going to get any action if you’re always sitting around here waiting for Santa Claus?”

  “King still isn’t back from the police station.”

  He looked at me pityingly. “Duh! They probably want him to spend the night in the can. The cops love doing that with celebrities.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. So I did what I should have done hours ago—I called Bernie.

  He was not pleased to hear from me. “I’m going to start checking into hotels under an alias!”

  I could hear female whispering in the background, which meant the manager wasn’t getting any shut-eye either. If picking up women was so important to Cam, he needed to start hanging out with Bernie.

  “King isn’t back yet,” I reported anxiously.

  “Yeah, I know. They don’t want to wake up a judge, so he can’t be arraigned until morning. Standard stuff—justice is blind, no special treatment, yada, yada, yada.”

  “You said he’d be back tonight,” I protested.

  “What difference does it make—tonight, tomorrow. It’s already tomorrow. Go to bed.” He hung up on me.

  Completely agitated, I turned the TV on low. Nothing was going to disturb Cam, who lay on his bed, fully dressed, snoring like a buzz saw. CNN was running a documentary on covered bridges in Vermont. But on the scrolling headlines under “Entertainment,” I read: “SHOCK ROCKER KING MAGGOT ARRESTED FOR ASSAULT IN AZ. COULD FACE 7 YRS IF CONVICTED.”

  I called Bernie again, and got the hotel’s voice mail system. This was crazy! How could Bernie and Cam act like it was nothing when King could go to jail for seven years? Even if they didn’t care about him as a person, weren’t they worried about the tour? The band? Maybe Neb could be replaced, but never King.

  The reason why Bernie and Cam were taking this so lightly was because King wasn’t their father. But he was mine. Total stranger or not, he was entitled to my support.

  I grabbed my wallet and headed for the taxi line outside of the hotel.

  “Where would the police take somebody to spend the night and be arraigned in the morning?” I asked the cabbie.

  “Downtown—central booking.”

  It was a big, old stone building, more like an East Coast police station than what you’d expect in Phoenix. The runaround I got was reminiscent of big city police stations too. But of course, my experience was limited to cop shows on TV.

  Either out of ignorance or police policy, nobody would tell me whether or not King was even being held there. But eventually, some clerk let on that a Marion X. McMurphy was slated to be arraigned in Courtroom 12 at nine A.M., just about four hours away.

  McMurphy. A large part of my life had been dedicated to keeping McMurphy locked away. And now that somebody had actually done it, all I could think of was getting him out. A famous person wouldn’t be safe in there with gang members and lowlifes. Or maybe the gang members and lowlifes were the ones who had to worry.

  No. Not funny.

  I didn’t go back to the hotel. What would have been the point? I wouldn’t have slept anyway. Instead, I found Courtroom 12 and parked myself in the hall outside, waiting for it to open. I passed the remainder of the night there, worrying and dozing. I might have gotten some decent rest, except three times passing cops woke me and patted me down for weapons.

  “I’m waiting for my father’s hearing,” I explained myself to the third officer. “King Maggot, the singer.”

  He patted me down a second time.

  All night, the place had been as quiet as a tomb. Around eight the next morning, people began to arrive. I thought it was the start of a normal workday. But by eight-thirty, the rest of the building was still quiet, and the hall outside Courtroom 12 was a zoo. Reporters, photographers, cameramen, sound people. The piece of real estate I’d had to myself for the past four hours had become ground zero for the next chapter of the Purge comeback saga.

  It got so crowded that if Bernie hadn’t shown up with a battery of lawyers, I don’t think I would have made it into Courtroom 12. Obviously, the Arizona judicial system doesn’t believe in the principle of first come, first served.

  They dragged it out, too. Every public nuisance and shoplifter, and a guy who exposed himself to a group of nuns, came up before the bailiff announced The People v. Marion McMurphy.

  Camera flashes and floods lit the courtroom as brightly as the Concussed stage. Suddenly, there he was, my bio-dad, still dressed in leather and noose from last night, but otherwise looking as relaxed and well rested as I’d ever seen him.

  The hearing was thirty seconds of mumbling and a gavel crack. King was released into the bosom of the media. I couldn’t get near him. That didn’t matter, because he never once glanced in my direction.

  The judge wasn’t thrilled about King using
her courtroom to hold a press conference. So the media scrum oozed down the hall and out into the parking lot, like a giant amoeba, with King, its nucleus, giving his usual smart-ass answers:

  “Hey, King, how’d you knock him out with one punch?”

  King leered. “Come closer, and I’ll show you.”

  I sat on a hot concrete curbstone, watching from a distance. I felt like the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. Why would I sit up all night on a hard floor, worrying about King Maggot? What the hell was I thinking? That I had a special connection to this man? He barely even knew I was alive!

  Eventually, the exhaustion and emotional upset caught up with me, and I must have drifted into a light sleep. The next thing I knew, the reporters were gone, and someone was shaking me by the shoulder. I looked up to find King standing over me.

  He said, “Are you coming?”

  I swear, I almost told him I’d decided to call it quits and go back to Connecticut. That was the way I felt right then.

  Instead, I got up and allowed him to lead me to the waiting limo.

  “You look like you’re the one who spent the night in the can,” King commented.

  “He did,” Bernie supplied. “When we got here, we found him sitting outside the courtroom door.”

  King wheeled on his cousin. “What’s the matter with you? We promised his old man we’d keep him away from things like this!”

  The manager shrugged. “You want me to nail him to his bed?”

  I spoke up. “On CNN they said you could get seven years—”

  My voice broke. Not that I could actually cry over this. But I’d been on a roller coaster ever since I’d arrived at the L.A. airport—by bus—eleven hours late. I guess it all caught up with me at that one moment. I’d have given anything for them not to have noticed.

  King stopped and scrutinized me. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like forever. I knew my cheeks were purple.

  “A word to the wise,” he told me, not unkindly. “Bernie and I, we know what we’re doing. We were doing it before you were born. I’m not going to get seven years; I’m not going to get seven minutes. So when Bernie says don’t sweat it, don’t sweat it.”