Roche - Wayward Saints

for Meg

Ma & Dad

Lucy & Stewart & Funque

What

Would

Happen if God leaned down

And gave you a full wet

Kiss...

...You would surely start

Reciting all day, inebriated,

Rogue-poems

Like

This

Hafiz

from The Gift

by Daniel Ladinsky

Contents

It was a Tuesday night at Crud, a club on the outskirts of the city, and the place was packed with skinheads and their girlfriends. Donal Hogan had said it was a bit dungeonesque, but worse than that, it was a piss-hole toilet. Mary Saint stood behind the curtain by the side of the stage peeking out into the audience and cursed him. What was he thinking? This is a fucking shit sandwich Yer goona have ta troost me, Mary, next time you play in Glasgoo itll be at Gustavs, fooking sold out.

Sliced Ham had been all over England, blowing rooms away, mostly playing for college kids and hipsters, and Mary knew these werent her people; they were savagesmaybe even violentthey would eat the band alive. She noticed one goon in particular, his arms sticking out like legs of lamb, stained with tattoos. He was leaning on the edge of the stage with a whole line of other freaks, but he didnt seem to be hanging out with any of them. He scowled at the microphone where Mary was going to be standing, and every couple of minutes hed say something to it. Christ, get me out of here, she thought. Who do these people think we are? Her legs were shaking with fear, and she was having trouble catching her breath. She held on to the red velvet curtain that was burned with cigarette holes and rubbed her lips up against it, trying to calm her nerves, as if it were a baby blanket.

If only she hadnt left the bottle of tequila in the dressing room. It was too close to showtime to run down to the basement and take another swig. She nervously checked her bra to see if her guitar picks were there and pulled up her indigo stockings, which were streaked with runs. Then, shaking her head back and forth, she bunched up her hair with her fingers, making sure not to disturb the bluebird feather she had pinned into a curl. It was a gift from the new bass player. Hed slipped it to her after the sound check, saying, Im an expat, too. What the hell, shed wear it for the show.

Impatient, she spit on the floor, which was sticky from the fat-fuck-monitor-mans beef stew that hed eaten half ofcoldout of the can. It had been knocked over in the sound check, and left there. She kicked at it with her high-heeled shoes like a wild horse, as if to say, Lets get this thing going before I bolt. Where the fuck was the band?

One by one they came up from the dressing room, heads drooping, shifting from foot to foot; the drummer flicked his cigarette down to the floor, and they all waited in a line in the tiny backstage area. The gray concrete wall by the stage was signed by some of the bands that had played there: the Four Broke Blokes, the Dont Ask Mes, Jed Syringe and the Shoot Ups. The Shoot Ups had left an illustration, somebodys idea of a masterpiece: an intricate pencil drawing of a couple of faceless vaginas with stick figure arms and legs that were dancing like chorus girls, in front of an audience of penises. The artist had given the penises eyes, noses, and in some cases beards. There were also assorted asses, tits, and guitars, scribbles and flowers, swastikas, hearts, and messages like BIG BARF BAG LOVES SHEENA and BOINK ME, BITCH. Mary leaned her head up against the wall, covered her face with her arm, and tried to breathe slowly to calm her heart. I need help with this, she whispered to the wall.

The lights went down and the crowd raised its collective voice into a scream. Mary looked behind her to see if the band was ready.

Go, she said as if she was the only soldier, leading unsuspecting farmers into a battle that she knew they couldnt win.

They stomped onto the stage and picked up their instruments. Marys red electric guitar threw refracted light across the audience, which was packed into the dark cellar; she strummed down hard, and the crowd went dumb. Her voice was creamy and clear, spiked with agony, and like a hatchet it cut into their brains.

You wanna fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck me...

She couldnt hear herself. She turned to the monitor guy and yelled, Turn it up, asshole! The crowd screeched praise, and the magic of Mary Saint exploded over them.

Mary wasnt pretty; she was exotically beautiful, and she had no idea. She thought she was plain as a paper lunch bag. Her hair, a nest of black loose curls, flew around her wide face, her skin was pale and smooth, and her cheeks had a natural tint. She could have been a breakable china doll, except for her dark raccoon eyes, which marked her expression with perpetual melancholy, giving her the look of an abandoned child. Her eyelids were painted with too much sparkling raspberry goop, and her lips were wide and full, glistening with red. Shed glued a tiny silver star below her left eye.

The spotlight and the specials were on her, and they created a halo around her head in the smoky haze. She looked toward heaven, crazily, like a bird whose wing was hooked into a gate. Her breasts were large, too large for such a small-boned girl, and she offered them up to the room. She could have been a teenage hooker who was being forced to dance for old men. Standing tall on her skinny legs, her full hips swaying underneath satin boxer shorts, she let her hands explore her body; they went between her legs, they caressed her arms and face and breasts, and they danced in the sacred space around her, like everyone in the room wished they could do.

The skinheads and their girlfriends were hard to pull in; she had to work for it, and in the guitar break during the second song, I Pee Like a Girl, she knelt down in front of the guy with the leg of lamb arms, and spoke to him, nothing he could possibly hear, but she touched her wet lips to the rim of his ear, and the crowd went nuts. It turned out that they were her people after all, they already knew her songs, and had memorized them. They wanted to be loved, and once they saw her look upon them with desire, they surrendered like kids lost in a fairy tale, swaying back and forth, their porcupine hairdos, skull rings, and pierced lips fluttered in the shadowy shift of red and blue lights. They might have even sucked their thumbs if theyd been alone. Careful not to make noise until a song was done, many of them mouthed her words, and then, at the close of every tune, they rose together in a collective moan to ask for more; raising their fists into the air, they chanted, Ma-ry! Ma-ry! She led them through the wilderness of her songs, allowing the lines of the lead guitar to carry her deep into the obliteration of her self. At one point, she looked out into the crowd and said, Oh, there you are, and everybody thought she was their new best friend. But good-bye was what she was thinking. Good-bye. She opened her mouth and sang with the shattered heart she knew she had, its splinters flew from the stage. I sing for you, I sing for you...

Later, she remembered the vague feeling of surprise theyre actually letting me fly she could pinpoint the exact instant when she dove into the void, a place that she had visited many times in her mind, in her dreams, in her moments of clear sadness, a pool where angels swam without their wings, where devils were free to stab and boil children. It all happened in a flash of stunned silence, after the last chord came crashing down on The Back of My Ass, when nobody clapped and nobody screamed. It passed quickly, but for Mary, it was the heart of her triumph. Im home, she thought. The fans followed her as far as they could, their eyes teary and stoned with reverence, but she went beyond, leaving them aching, their hearts melted and their brains branded. Shed had to pay a price, something private, unknown to them, so lonely, and yet she drove herselfon their backsinto her own oblivion.