2 :: veteran of disorder ::
[posted 9/26/00]
One hundred. She has finished counting out the drawer; she slots it into the register. They open in half an hour.
—Anything you want to hear? she calls to Don, her manager, as he walks by.
—Whatever, Don says, and he disappears into the back.
She rifles through the racks and selects Royal Trux's Veterans of Disorder, slaps it down on the store's turntable and fills the air with the sounds of retarded Glam guitar. Freya mouths the lyrics that Jennifer Herrema croaks out: I wanna go to the waterpark. The water's cold but the sun is hot.
Not quite apropos for the moment. The Chicago air has begun to turn chilly, and she's squandered any opportunity for mayhem that the summer may have held. She didn't spend a trashy day at a waterpark; she didn't get a new tattoo; she didn't drink enough to fall down; she didn't even make out with anybody. What the hell did she do all summer? She looks back over it: she sees herself working here, filing records, ringing up customers; sees herself at home, cooking stuff, paying bills, sorting laundry; sees herself out at a few shows, a few bars. You know, everyday life kind of stuff. She's 27, and she wonders whether her days of disorder are finally behind her. It would be a mixed blessing.
Disorder. She thinks of Mayor Richard Daley, the old Daley, his famous quote from '68: the police are not here to cause disorder, they are here to preserve disorder. She would have liked to have seen those days. She's seen the photos—an army of dirty hippies lined up along a police barricade, hollering taunts. Maybe hippies isn't the right word. Yippies. A good bit more muscular than your average hippie boy. Thuggier. Dumber. But smarter, too, in their particular way.
She thinks of the Stooges and a few lines by Iggy Pop float through her mind: Well it's 1969 OK. War across the USA. She thinks of the MC5, thinks of Detroit in the Sixties. A ruin even then, a wasteland of garages, a factory creating tough boys as its product. Welders and hockey players and guys who know how to use wrenches. She'd like to see more guys like that come into the store, instead of the endless stream of twee indie guys with ugly glasses. She sees dozens of thrift-store sweaters every day.
Coffee. She heads into the break room, pulls her coffeecup out of her locker. She's still thinking about 1968. She would have been negative six. Now she is the shift supervisor at a record store. There is no tear gas in the streets.
Iggy: Another year with nothin to do. From the floor Neil Hagerty sings: but then you look at it, and then you stop. She brings her unwashed cup over to the sink, but peers into it before she rinses it out. The residue in the bottom is beautiful. A nebula.
::
