Read Online The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich - Free Book Online Page A

there we happened upon a free show at the teen center. It seemed like the same bag of bagels was following us all over town. The show was put together by friends of those riot grrrls Josh and Knowles picked up in Olympia last month, the book-smart ones with sour old letterman jackets. The door was open to all walks of life: panhandlers, veterans, Vag Warriors. Pamphlets were piled next to uneven glances at the door. We paused underneath a sign proclaiming “Ladies! Chart Your Mucus!” over a crude pictogram showing four skirted stick figures dancing in an agrarian netherworld of crosshatched crops. Murph wrinkled his nose, “Too much information!” A woman in a paisley vest came up behind them. “Bite the apple, babe,” she said, not stopping as she walked by. “Ooh, seeecret knowledge,” Josh hissed. Too much info , too much info they chanted in unison.

    Those two riot grrrls weren’t even there but their friend’s band, Touch Boob was. (About Touch Boob: Totally chilling all the time up in Tumwater, they spoke often of life “in the middle of [their] new magical, mysterious, mind-blowing bio-dome. It’s full of various independent stoner-friendly ecosystems. Some are jungle habitats, [others are] enchanted forests filled with endangered mythical beasts and/or creatures… we smoke weed.”) They sucked and it looked like it was going to be a long, tedious evening, so we poked around in the storage rooms in the rear of the hall, filling our pockets with small stuff that caught our eye, only to return to see a band called the Slaves in pressed street clothes, sticky blooms of sweat heaving, gobbling at the air cuz they could barely breathe. The singer was all laid out on a giant platter at the base of the stage. It was clear that something strange was going on. Sure they were from the same school of overcompensating, guilt-tinged showmanship as the DC scene, where efforts to make a safe haven turned rock shows into public displays of group ecstasy, but something bright and adorable shone in their eyes. When he looked down at me I felt sure I was not returning the gaze to anything alive. He seemed shut down for the duration, and that made it okay okay to do or say or think all sorts of strange things.

    All the girls piled up in front of the stage to face the spectacular god of rock presenting himself like a stuffed, glory-basted offering in front of them. They hit him and kissed him and toyed with his cock and balls. After the band finished their set, in a silence like death, drenched in sweat he finally lay: on the floor, on whatever , lay pretty much passed out while the girls did whatever they wanted to do to him; he was a passive observer to his own evisceration, spread before a haunted, hunted clutch of demon pervs, girlvert witches. They just dug in. Took his shorts off, had sex with every part of him, whatever. He “slept” through it, locked in a post-gig trance, his body a human sweat lodge fueled by self-pity. Numb to all the voices but his own, the pounding in his head, stained voices of headache after headache. He had beaten so many, pummeled them with his fists: “You wanted me, this is me,” he said… The riot grrrls ran around yanking down banners and sweaty shit, chanting I see a punk club, he sees a strip bar! over and over again. Okay okay, I understand that the stage can be a very strange place to be a girl. I thought originally that this is what men talked about when they waded around with that stabby-serene look at the girls on stage with no clothes on. I will never be able to get my mind around strippers and their kind — they are intangible beings. But if you’re not, if you’re a boy up there on stage rocking out, well then I might perv out on you. Don’t be scared it doesn’t hurt. It’s just me looking, eyes as big as dinner plates… I see a punk club and I see a strip bar. (Rock ’n roll is stripping for girls; DUH! it’s the secret history of rock.) Take for instance: Seth