I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It

I KISSED A ZOMBIE AND I LIKED IT!
by Adam Selzer

CHAPTER ONE

     Watching a vampire make out with an idiot is kind of like going to the farmers' market and noticing just how many farmers have lost fingers in on-the-job accidents. Even though it's kind of disturbing, it's impossible to look away.

     Right now, two lunch tables over from mine, Fred (a vampire) is making out with Michelle (an idiot). And everyone in the cafeteria is watching the show.

     "My God," says my friend Trinity. "It's like he thinks her head is a Tootsie Pop."

     "Keep watching," I say. "Maybe we can finally find out how many licks it takes to get to the candy center."

     I'm not just being my usual, devastatingly witty self here. I actually think that the only thing between Michelle's ears might be some sort of chewy candy.

     "I've lost count already," says Peter. "He must be about halfway through her skin by now. You'd think he'd just bite her and get it over with. That's what I always do with Tootsie Pops."

     "They don't really bite people," says Sadie. "Not anymore."

     "So what does he have to do to make her into a vampire?" asks Peter.

     "It's a secret, but it's probably nothing he can do in a high school cafeteria," says Sadie.

     They're already doing several things they aren't supposed do in a high school cafeteria, but the lunch room monitors are all too chicken to tell a vampire to knock it off, even though everyone knows they're not really dangerous by now.

     It was quite a scandal a few years back when it turned out that Megamart was bringing corpses back to life to work as zombie slaves in their stock rooms. When word got out, all of the OTHER post-humans (vampires, werewolves and all the undead types that turned out to have been living among us for centuries) got really offended and decided to "come out of the coffin" to lobby congress to close all the loopholes that let Megamart get away with that.

     There was wall to wall coverage of the "vampire revelation" in the media for months. Every news station had a stories like "How the Vampire Invasion is Threatening Your Family" and "How to Protect Your Newborn from Werewolves." But after a while, everyone figured out that nothing had really changed --- vampires and stuff have always around. Now, we just know about it. And they aren't nearly as scary as they'd been made out to be; they're a lot faster and stronger than regular people, and they're apparently more-or-less immortal, but they don't really drink blood anymore (there's some kind of vegetable compound that's more satisfying and easier to get) and they don't get their "powers" from anything supernatural (it's something to do with protein mutation or something. I forget). Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies turned out to be regular scientific phenomena, and life went pretty much back to normal.

     The teenage vampires are a pain in the ass (they never actually mature, no matter how old they get, since their pituitary glands are sort of frozen in time), but dating one has become the ultimate status symbol. Most girls in school dream of having a loser like Fred fall in love with them and turn them into a vampire. I guess living in Iowa does make life as a corpse seem exciting.

     "Dead people have no reason to live," I say. "Shouldn't we have stopped thinking vampires were awesome when we found out they spend most of their time acting all emo?"

     "You're just jealous, Alley," says Marie. "Can you honestly tell me that if some guy rose from the grave and spent a hundred lonely years looking for just the right person, then fell for you, you wouldn't think that was totally romantic?"

     "I'd think he was a stalker," I say.

     "It's true love!" says Marie.

     "Get real," says Sadie. "It's hot, but it's just lust. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

     Sadie is my oldest friend. She kind of falls for the whole "vampire" thing, but at least she's realistic. She likes dead guys, just like every other girl in school, but Marie loves them. She isn't even interested in dating living guys. She's, like, necrosexual.

      "You guys are just prejudiced," says Marie. "I would kill to date a vampire. I mean, he's crazy strong, but not strong enough to stay away from her. How romantic can you get?"

     "Right," says Peter. "I think that's on page one of How to Get Teenage Girls to Fall in Love With You."

     "And her parents probably think he's a monster, but she truly understands him," I chime in.

     "See?" asks Peter. "Textbook."

     Everyone at my table is on the staff of the school paper. Trinity Pearl, who sits to my right, is the editor in chief. She's wearing a formal ball gown (she's into tango) covered in safety pins (she's also into punk). Next to her is Peter Woolcott, the most transparently gay teenager in the greater Des Moines area. On the other side of him is Marie Beecher, the necrosexual fashion editor who doubles as our pet idiot, then Ryan Dearborn the film critic, then Sadie, who covers local news (she drew the short straw). Peter's gossip column, "No Siree," is really just a report of all the witty things we say at lunch (and, occasionally, the dumb things Marie says. She's a little dim, but we love her anyway). Our skill at making fun of things has made our table sort of famous; around school, they call us The Vicious Circle.

     Two tables over, Michelle is making noises that sound like they're coming from a wounded animal and saying "Oh, Friedrich, Friedrich" loudly enough to make sure we all hear her. It's kind of annoying. I mean, if you so much as hold hands with someone who isn't a vampire, you get detention for public display of affection. It's a total double standard.

     "God, if I ever get like that, just drive a stake through my heart or something, okay?" I ask.

     "No danger of that," says Peter. "Eight days til prom and you've still never had a second date?"

      "Who needs a second one when you get everything you want on the first?" I ask. And I give him my most self-satisfied smirk.

     It's not that I'm inexperienced; I've made out with plenty of guys. But I just make out with them, send them on their way, and then make fun of them without naming names later on. It's not very nice, I know, but guys know what they're getting into when they make out with Alley Rhodes, the Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle.

     A lot of people think I hate guys or something. I don't, really; I just hate the idea of getting stuck in this town, so I don't have any desire to get involved with a guy who lives here. And it's not that I don't want to go to the prom, but there's only a month til graduation, and three months til I'm outta here altogether. No point complicating things by having a big, expensive date. I'm just going to go with Sadie and make fun of everyone else.

     "Doesn't anyone remember what a loser Fred was before people knew he was a vampire?" Peter asks, as Fred slides his hand up Michelle's leg under the table. I swear I see Fred glance around to make sure people are watching.

     "He was my lab partner for a while," Trinity says. "He'd act like a jerk half the time, and mope around the rest."

     "Yeah," I say. "I didn't think it was possible, but the guy is both a wiener and a dick."

     "Yeah," says Trinity. "Kind of cocky, too."
Peter scribbles that down for his column.

     When I was a freshman, back when everyone except a handful of conspiracy theorists thought vampires were just fictional characters, our cafeteria was like any other. There was the jock table, the prep table, the drama table, the band geek table, and a table full of kids who were into role-playing games. But now it's just one goth table after another. When the guys saw how the girls just melted over the vampires, they all started trying to be goths. It makes our yearbooks really depressing. Looking across the cafeteria today, there're so many people in black that you'd think Cornersville Trace High School was a Transylvanian biker bar or something. But we're just another school in the post-human era.

     That's what we're living in, by the way, according to all the news blogs. The early Post Human era. I suppose that it beats living in the Disco era.

     But as for me, I'm only into one dead guy: Cole Porter, the greatest songwriter who ever lived. He wrote showtunes like "I Get a Kick Out Of You," "It's De-Lovely" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" back in the 1930s, when guys really had style. I'd totally have his babies if he wasn't dead and gay and staying both ways, as far as I know. I sang his song "Love For Sale" at a talent show when I was six. I lost, but at least I lost with style.

     "Uh oh," says Marie. "Show's over. Here comes Smollet."

     Mrs. Smollet, the guidance counselor, wanders up, making a face like she's sucking on about nine lemons, and taps Fred on the shoulder. She can deal with him better than the other teachers, since she's a vampire herself.
Fred pulls his hand up from under the table and he and Michelle straighten themselves out. Most girls would probably blush if they found out that everyone, including a teacher, had been watching her getting felt up, but Michelle just looks around proudly, soaking up the jealous glares.

     Mrs. Smollet is one of those guidance counselors who go on and on about abstinence and "old fashioned values." I was shocked when it turned out she was a vampire, but I guess it makes sense, if you think about it. Women in the Victorian era, when she grew up, couldn't even say the word "toes" out loud without blushing unless they were hookers, so it's no wonder that she gets freaked out by anything remotely related to sex. She was the one who made the school change the name of my music column from "Going Down a Dark Alley," which she thought was "too suggestive and urban," to "On the Beat with Alley Rhodes." Lame.

     "Okay," says Trinity. "Now that the show's over, we have stuff to cover. Peter, do you have your column ready?"

     "Almost," he answers. "I just need to throw in Alley's line about someone being both a wiener and a dick at the same time, and her thing about dead people having no reason to live."

     I smile proudly. Two in one column! None of us want to admit that we don't make up our one-liners on the spot, but I've been waiting to use that "dead people have no reason to live" line for days.

     "And Alley," Trinity continues, "I hate to tell you this. . . but you're going to have to cover The Sorry Marios tonight."

     "I knew it," I say with a groan.

     "It's big news," says Trinity. "They just hired Will to play drums."

     The Sorry Marios are a bad local band featuring Nat Watson, the star of the basketball team, as lead singer and guitarist. Nat's not a bad guy, but he is a bad singer. And Will is one of the other vampires in school. He's an even bigger jerk than Fred.

     "I understand," I say. "But I'm not happy about it. They suck."

     "Maybe they'll be better with a vampire on drums," says Sadie. "Aren't vampires, like, musically gifted?"

     "Some are," says Marie.

     "It'll take more than that to get them not to suck," I say.

     "Well, skewer them if you have to," says Trinity, "just make it funny. It's not like you aren't at the Cage every other Friday night, anyway."

     "Anyone want to go with me?" I ask.

     "I'm going with a bunch of other people," says Marie. "Will doesn't have a prom date yet."

     Marie goes to every event in town that might have a post-human present. If she thought a vampire would be there, she'd go to the opening of an applesauce jar.

     "I'll go with you," says Sadie. "Are you getting in without paying the cover?"

     I look up at Trinity.

     "You took care of that, right?"

     She nods. "You and a guest are on the list, and you get free pizza. Eddie promised me."

     Another sigh. "Somehow, the idea of free pizza at The Cage doesn't make this sound any easier."

     "Live with it," said Trinity. "And bring your laptop with you. I'll need your review by nine tonight."

     "Fine," I say.

     We're still called the "newspaper" staff, even though the whole thing was moved online last year. It's just a blog, really. But we still have deadlines and stuff.

     I'm already writing the review in my head. Maybe I'll open by saying "The Sorry Marios should really be called The Sorry Excuse for a Band." Or maybe "There's never been a ‘scene' here. No one talks about ‘The Des Moines Sound.' And on the basis of the Sorry Marios, I suppose it's just as well."

     Suburban Des Moines isn't really all that bad, honestly. I've been to worse places. Like Nebraska.

     But once I graduate, all that's going to be left of me here will be an Alley-shaped hole in the door, and a collection of witty zingers that will stay online and make me and my friends legends in Cornersville Trace for years to come.

     The pool of datable guys is sure to be much larger in Seattle, where I'm going to college.

     I'll only have to be this lonely for a few more months.


CHAPTER TWO


     I think it's kind of cool when people have names that they can easily change. Like, if a girl named Jennifer gets tired of being herself, she can start going by Jenny or Jen and turn herself into a whole different person.

     I actually have about five variations to choose from:

     1. Algonquin. This is my real name, believe it or not. My mom gave it to me because I'm, like, 1/64th Native American, and she thought it would be really "empowering" for me to have a name that reflected my 1/64th share of heritage. She's really into things that are empowering.

     2. Alley. This is what most people call me. It's what I put on the top of math worksheets and stuff. Sometimes people try to spell it "Ali," which is okay, but I prefer "Alley." It's very urban, in a way. And, anyway, there are four Alis in the senior class already.

     3. Al. Some people call me this. I usually let them, unless they start calling me Weird Al. Then, action is required.

     4. Quinn. Another short version of Algonquin, taken off the end instead of the beginning. This one doesn't come up much, but it's nice to know it's there.

     5. Gonk. The middle part of Algonquin. Mom thinks this one is empowering, too, because "Gonk" is the noise you hear when a woman beams her abusive husband over the head with a rolling pin.

     No one really calls me "Gonk" except Sadie, though. She was the first one ever to use it, back when we first became friends at age nine. We met at Take Your Daughter to Work day, back when my Dad still worked in an insurance office (this was before Mom stated making so much in real estate that Dad could quit to be a house husband and make scrapbooks all day).

     Des Moines is the insurance capital of the world (Nebraskans say Omaha is, but they're wrong). A pretty large chunk of the people in my school will probably ending up working in insurance sooner or later. I think Mom's plan in sending me with Dad to Take Your Daughter to work day was for me to find out that insurance was boring and set my sights higher. It worked.

     I think Dad is probably about the most popular guy in town among the local women because he's the only guy who hangs out at the scrapbooking store. Only he doesn't make family vacation scrapbooks - he makes music scrapbooks. Like, he has a Rolling Stones scrapbook, and one for Cole Porter that he made for me for my birthday one year and about five of them full of stuff from all the concerts he and Mom have been to over the years. He has great musical taste. I learned all I know from him, and I know a lot. You have to if you want to write a decent music column.

     Sadie arrives in her car at seven to go to the Cage, wearing a vaguely goth outfit that I think she borrowed from Trinity (who isn't really a goth, though her ball gowns make her LOOK like she is).

     I step into Sadie's car and she pretends to be excited about the show. "Ready to rock?" she asks.

     "Yeah," I say. "Shame I have to go hear the Sorry Marios instead."

     We drive up 62nd Street, past the mall and onto Cedar Avenue, which was a little empty road to the interstate when I was a kid, but is now full of strip malls.

     The Cage, where the band is playing, is the oldest building on the street. Since I was a kid, it's been about six different things. When I was little, it was one of those places where they have video games, jump-in-the-balls pits and singing robotic animals. Then it was a strip club for a while - rumor had it that they kept the jump-in-the-balls pit. That didn't last long, though, and it became a pancake place, but that went under evening a real hurry, because no sane person wanted to eat at a pancake place that used to be a strip club. Now it's The Cage, Cornersville's lone all-ages venue for live rock music.

      The inside of the place has the look of any other bar and grill - street signs and goofy crap all over the walls, a digital jukebox, a video game or two. But when the post humans went public and goth became style of the decade, Eddie put up a bunch of fake cobwebs and stuff. It's pretty ridiculous, honestly. It doesn't look like a goth club at all. It just looks like a family restaurant with cheap Halloween decorations.

     When Sadie and I arrive, Eddie and the kids from the band are the only people there. Will is setting up his drums and looking around in disgust. I swear that looking around in disgust is one of vampires' actual powers - every vampire I've ever known is an expert at it. Will's not unattractive, really; in fact, he's pretty hot. He's also pretty annoying, though. Even Sadie, who generally likes dead guys, can't stand him.

     I ignore the band and head straight for Eddie.

     "Hiya, Eddie," I say, shaking his hand like a pro. "Thanks for the hook-up tonight."

     Eddied nods, and tilts his head towards a table at the back, where Sadie and I sit down.

     Eddie is about fifty and owns three or four businesses in town that always seem to be hanging on by a thread. He's always wearing a straw cowboy hat and chewing on a toothpick, and he usually seems to be stoned. Some nights when there's no show booked, he plays covers of bands like The Eagles and Neil Young on an acoustic guitar for the people who hang around the bar. I've only been there once on those nights, but seeing an old hippie guy singing "Take it Easy" surrounded by fake skulls was too much.

     "What are you eating?" he asks us.

     "Whatever won't kill me, please," I said.

     "Whatever don't kill you'll make you stronger," says Eddie, who is always ready with folksy wisdom.

     "All right," I say. "Then give me whatever will make me stronger."

     "One pizza, coming up," said Eddie. He doesn't even take the toothpick out of his mouth as he heads for the kitchen.

     I pull out my laptop and get to work writing. You can write a pretty good chunk of a concert review before the concert even starts. It's like writing an obituary. All the big newspapers have obituaries written for celebrities years in advance. When Bob Hope (my grandpa's favorite comedian) died, his obituary in the New York Times was written by a guy who'd been dead himself for twenty years, and wasn't even a vampire or anything. He'd written up the obit and just left a few lines for them to fill in whenever Hope actually died. You can do pretty much the same thing with music reviews: just ramble on about the band and the kind of crowd they attract, then add in some details about the show after it starts.

     Gradually, more people begin filing in. The bulk of the crowd is made up of girls who are clearly hoping to become Will's One True Love (or at least his prom date). They're walking around flashing smiles that show no cavities and wearing clothes that nearly do show a couple of them. Some of them are wearing skirts that I'm pretty sure were supposed to be belts.

     The guys there to pick up the girls who can't catch Will's eye are all dressed in goth gear - even the ones who would clearly be more at home in backwards baseball caps and Abercrombie shirts. Like the girls, they all appear to be drunk already. Every last one of them.

     Eddie comes out and put a couple of slices of slimy pizza in front of us, then leans over to me.

     "Take it easy on these guys, okay?" he asks. "They're good kids."

     "I'm not here to review their behavior," I say.

     "You know what I mean," says Eddie. "Be nice."

     "Nice doesn't sell papers, Eddie," says Sadie.

     Eddie, who probably neither knows nor cares that we didn't HAVE a paper, per se, anymore, just a web site, sighs and walks back to the bar. Sadie and I force the pizza down then head over to the bar ourselves, which is out of the way of the dance floor Eddie has created by moving most of the tables against the wall. The crowd is getting bigger and more annoying around the tables.

     Some guy in a fake top hat that he's totally not pulling off comes over to us.

     "Hey, cuz," he slurs to me.

     He is clearly either drunk or stoned. Probably both.

     Most of these guys call everyone "bro" or "cuz," which sounds weird coming out of a guy in goth gear.

     "What do you want?" I ask.

     "Buy you a beer, cuz?" he asks.

     "You and what fake ID?" I ask back.

     "Did you just hit on her by calling her your cousin?" asks Sadie. "Cause, damn!"

     Top Hat Guy (which is a lousy name for him, since there are tons of them there) slinks away. I note that he at least has the decency to seem a bit embarrassed. Sadie and I exchange a "job well done" nod.

     "You know who had the best line to use on douchebag guys like that?" asks Sadie. "Tennessee Williams."

     Tennessee Williams, the playwright, is Sadie's own "dead gay guy from the 1930s" obsession. Only, she would really date him if he was undead and straight; I'm happy just having Cole Porter be the kind of fantasy crush that can't possibly hurt me or let me down.

     "What was it?" I ask.

     "Well, one time this drunk came up to him in a bar, whipped his thingie out, and asked him to autograph it. So Tennessee looked down, and said 'well, maybe I could initial it.'"

     "Nice!"

     They just don't make guys like they did back then anymore.

     I order a can of Coke from the bar, and a second later I see a pale hand reach out to open it. It's Will. The vampire.

     "Um, hey," I say.

     "I thought I would give you a hand," he says with his Eastern European accent as he hands me the open can.

     Oh, crap. I'm getting hit on by a dead guy.

     "I had it under control," I say.

     "I only wished to help," he says.

     "Oh, God," says Sadie, with a chuckle. "He thinks you're fruit cup girl!"

     Fruit Cup Girl sis two lunch tables away from us - we watched her every day at lunch. Every day, she pretends she can't get her fruit cup open and asks this one guy at her table, who she clearly likes, to open it for her. Peter recorded the whole saga once in No Siree, changing just enough of the details that no one could be sure who it was about. A lot of girls do that kind of trick, after all. I wouldn't dream of it myself. I mean, who wants to date a guy who thinks a girl who can't operate a fruit cup is attractive?

     Will looks uncomfortable for a second, like being around for two hundred years hasn't taught him to recognize rejection. I guess not a lot of girls reject him. The whole reason teenage vampires stay in school even when they've been teenagers for a couple of hundred years is to meet girls.

     "You are Alley Rhodes, correct?"

     "Yeah," I say. "But I don't date people I'm reviewing, so run along, okay?"

     Will finally slinks away, looking kind of pissed.

     "Wow, Alley!" says Sadie. "You got hit on by a vampire!"

     "It was everything I dreamed it would be," I say.

     "Maybe he just wanted to sleep with you so you'll give him a good review," says Sadie.

     "Can they do that?" I ask. "Sleep with people?"

     "From what I heard, they CAN sleep with people, but not without killing them. He'd probably just have to stop at second base or something."

     Keeping track of what's true and what isn't about vampires is basically impossible. Like, some of them can read minds and stuff, and some can't, but most of that stuff about being scared of crosses and garlic and sleeping in coffins was invented by writers a hundred and fifty years ago. Garlic sales are still skyrocketing, though.

     I'm just finishing my Coke when I notice a guy standing around at the back of the stage. He's pale, with a long, angular face. His dark hair is kind of an elegant mess, and he's wearing a moth-eaten suit. It's a more authentic goth look than most of the guys in the place have.

     "Who's that guy?" I ask. "Is he in the band?"

      "I don't know," says Sadie. "He's kinda cute."

     "Yeah," I say. "Maybe he's managing the band or something."

     "Would you give them a good review if he made out with you?"

     "Hell no. But he's welcome to find that out the hard way."

     And just so you know, it's not like I'm a slut or anything. I don't go around hooking up with every guy I meet at the Cage. But the fact that I try not to date local guys - especially considering I'm about to move - doesn't mean I don't get lonely. Because I do. A lot, honestly. Making fun of idiots who hit on me can kind of help me keep it in check, but even I can't fight hormones that well.

     8:30 rolls around and the band is still setting up. A bunch of girls who saw Will save me from the perils of opening my own can of pop wander by and give me dirty looks, and I just grin. Three more months and I'll never have to see a single one of them again. I should make one of those paper chains like kids make before Christmas and tear off one link every day until it's time to go away to Seattle.

     "They'd better get started," Sadie says. "Trinity wanted the review by nine, right?"

     "I only have a couple lines left to add," I say. "I'll be fine."

     Finally, at a quarter til nine, the band starts up, giving me exactly fifteen minutes to write my review.

     Nat is a nice guy. I have nothing against him. But his guitar skills are definitely not beyond the "advanced beginner" level. His singing isn't too bad, but when the band joins in behind him, they don't quite play along with him, exactly. It doesn't seem like they're all playing the same song at all. Will, especially, seems like he's playing the wrong song.

     The first song turns out to be a slow jam on "Margaritaville," by Jimmy Buffet. The band's goth look is totally wrong for that song. Like, hilariously wrong. And I've never cared much for the song, anyway. It's like, a bar band cliche. Not that anyone minds - no one's paying attention to the music.

     Most of them never really listen to music. Practically no one actually does. Even at concerts people pay good money for, instead of a three dollar cover charge, they talk through the whole thing. I feel sorry for them, since none of them understand what it's like to have a song just get into your soul and become your whole world. They don't know what it's like when a song changes your life. They've never felt the way I did the first time I heard the Ramones sing "I Don't Want to Live This Life," and they'll never understand why I cry (in a good way) when I listen to Neutral Milk Hotel. The people in the crowd might recognize a Cole Porter song that's been in a commercial or something, but they wouldn't recognize his name unless they saw the drama department put on "Kiss Me Kate" and bothered to read the program. They may drive nice cars and live in big houses in gated subdivisions named after trees, but these kids are deprived.

     "Margaritaville" turns into an extended, incompetent jam that drags on for ten agonizing minutes while I finish my review:


     ON THE BEAT WITH ALLEY RHODES:

     The SORRY MARIOS at the CAGE

     The Sorry Marios, featuring Cornersville Trace High School's own Nat Watson on acoustic guitar and local vampire Wilhelm Tepes on drums, played The Cage on Friday night, opening with an extended jam on "Margaritaville." Did anyone else who was there find it odd to see a teenage band playing a song about margaritas to a room where the only person who could drink legally was Wilhelm? Not that legality mattered; half the people there were drunk when they showed up. Maybe they figured, in a rare show of wisdom, that the music would be a lot easier to sit through if they were loaded.

     Seeing a vampire drummer was an exciting prospect, but those who believed vampires had some sort of otherworldly musical talent were surely disappointed. Will could play the drums all right, but he didn't always seem to be playing the right songs. Some people are said to be marching to a different drummer. Well, Will seemed to be drumming to a different marcher.

     Nat does have a good voice, though, and plenty of potential - if he gets a new backing band.


     For the record, my reviews aren't always this mean. It's like, constructive criticism. If Nat wants to make it as a musician, he needs to know what he needs to work on if he wants to take things to the next level without embarrassing himself, right?

     The first song isn't even over when I hit "SEND."




CHAPTER THREE



     Once the review is sent, I could get up and leave, but if anyone saw me leave, they'd know I didn't stay for the whole show, which would make me look really unprofessional. I have to stick around for at least half an hour.

     I look over at Sadie, who cringes. I cringe back. But then I turn away and force my attention onto the pale goth guy in the moth-eaten suit who's been hanging around the back of the stage. He's actually not bad looking at all. Maybe he could be the kind of guy that I could have some fun with while Dad is at the scrapbooking store. Just looking at him makes me realize it's been a while. Not that hookups make me less lonely in the long run, but they make me less lonely for the afternoon, at least.

     Nat steps to the microphone. "All right, everybody," he says. "Thanks for, uh, coming out and supporting us. We'd like to bring up a guy who's sort of a part-time member. This is Doug, from West Des Moines. We used to be in plays together down at the Playhouse. And now he's gonna come sing a couple of songs."

     Nat steps away and the pale guy who's been hanging out behind the stage walks up to the mic.

     "Thanks," Doug says into the mic. He has an interesting voice, low and breathy, kind of like Leonard Cohen, a really great poet/songwriter who, I'm sure, he's never heard of. No one around here has heard of him, though they at least know his song "Hallelujah" because it was in Shrek and American Idol and every TV drama known to man.

      They start playing a basic punk beat (badly, I might add), and Doug the Goth mutters "My story's much too sad to be told, but nearly everything leaves me totally cold" into the mic, then starts singing.

     "I get no kick from champagne. . ."

     There are certain words we can't use in the school paper, so we made up ridiculous substitutes, like "shlabotnik."

     All I can think right now is "Holy shlabotnik."

     He's singing "I Get a Kick Out of You." By Cole Porter.

     And I can tell from the first line that Doug actually understands the song. He understands that it isn't a happy song, like most people think: it's a miserable song about how your only chance at not being miserable is this one person you have a crush on - and that person doesn't like you back. The way Doug is singing (well, not singing so much as whispering and muttering, like he's in pain) makes it clear that he knows the song really well. His voice isn't a Broadway voice; it's that Tom Waits or Bob Dylan type of voice that may be kind of rough, but it makes it sound like every word he's singing is real.

     Yes. I definitely need to take this guy to my room sometime. Soon.

     Then, in the second verse, he actually sings the line about cocaine. When Porter first wrote the song for the show Anything Goes, the first line of verse two was "some get a kick from cocaine." But people usually water it down by changing it to "some like that perfume from Spain"(lame). But he sings the real line.

     I look over at Sadie with my eyes wide, and she just grins.

     After the bridge, he changes one line in the third verse - the line about "I get no kick on a plane." Normally I'd be against rewriting Porter under any circumstance, but I suppose this is fair enough, since no one gets a kick on a plane anymore. I can't quite make out what he sings instead; it sounds like "I get no kick eating brains," but that can't be right.

     Whatever it is, I suddenly feel like my heart is beating to the rhythm of the song. That feeling that probably no one else in the room ever gets from music? I've got it. It's like everything else in the world except me, the singer, and the song have just turned into the static between stations on a cheap car radio. I have never felt this way about a singer at the Cage. Not even close.

     The song winds to a close and I'm so surprised by what I've just seen that I can't even move. Not until I see a hand waving in front of my face.

     "Gonk?" asks Sadie. "You okay?"

     "Yeah, sure," I say. "I'm fine."

     "That song wasn't half bad, honestly," said Sadie. "Cole Porter, right?"

     "Yeah, sure," I say. "It was fine."

     "Oh my god!" says Sadie. "Let me see your eyes!"

     She steps around and looked into my eyes, then starts laughing. "You're totally smitten!" she sings, teasing me like we're both in kindergarten.

     "I am not!" I insist. "I just really like that song. And he did it right, too. Almost nobody does that. I have, like, fifteen versions of it on my ipod, and maybe two of them get it right."

     The band starts up again, but it sounds like they aren't all playing the same song. Doug is motioning to them, trying to give them directions. Then he sort of gives up, steps back to the microphone and sings the first line:

     "I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel..."

     Oh. My. God.

     Holy Shlabotnick again.

     He does know who Leonard Cohen is. He's singing one of his songs. And even though the band seems to be playing three different songs, none of which are the right one, he's doing a pretty good job.

     He gets to a line of the song about getting a certain favor from a girl in a hotel room and all of the douchebag guys in black cheer. They don't know that he's singing about a girl who had been dead a while when the song was written. They don't care.

     But as much as I'm almost ashamed to admit it, I'm imagining myself as the girl in the song. Not dead or anything, but, you know. In the hotel room with the singer.

     I shake my head and try to get ahold of myself. This is not the way I think! I do not fall for guys like this!

     I wander away from our seat and over to a spot by the window, which is all fogged up, and draw a picture of the Seattle skyline in the fog with my finger. It's an easy skyline - just a bunch of normal buildings, plus the space needle. Back in the 1960s Jim Morrison described it as "a 1930s version of 20 years in the future." It still looks like that now. Drawing on the window distracts me for a second, but I can't keep my attention away from Doug the Goth.

     Who knew a singer like this could come out of West Des Moines? About the only famous singers from around here are Andy Williams and the guy from Slipknot.

      And what in the heck is Doug doing playing in The Sorry Marios? He's working way below his grade level here.

     And no one in the room knows it but me.

     They don't know a thing about music.

     The song ends and Doug says "thanks" into the mic, then stumbles away. The band goes into a really bad Green Day cover, and I wander back over to Sadie.

     "That was pretty awesome," I say.

     Sadie laughs at me. But before she can lay a brilliant zinger on me, Marie the necrosexual stumbles up to our spot. She's clearly wasted.

     "Hey, you guys," she slurs. "I still like vampires and all, but these guys suck!"

     I'm snapped back to reality by the look on Marie's face. I've seen it before, back when I was younger and my mom hadn't quite outgrown her party animal teen years.

     "Oh, great," I say. "She's about to blow."

     "Yeah," says Sadie. "She's in that about-to-barf state. Is there a word for that?"

     Marie wobbles a bit. She's not quite there yet, but it's coming.

     "Nauseated?"

     "No," says Sadie. "Nauseated means you feel like you could barf. Is there a word for when you're about to?"

     "Not in English," I say. "It's probably one of those things where there's a Yiddish word for it, but not an English one."

     I really should have paid more attention at Jewish summer camp, like Sadie did, instead of focusing all my energy on prank wars and flirting.

     "Yeah," says Sadie. "it's probably something like 'verblecht.'"

     "That's what she is," I agree. "She's verblecht."

     "Yeah," Marie slurs. "Tell Peter that one. I'm verblecht!"

     "Let's get her out of here," says Sadie.

     I close my laptop, tell Eddie to keep an eye on it, and Sadie and I lead her through the crowd and out into the parking lot. Through the window, I can hear the band slogging their way through the last verse of "Time of Your Life." Nat is singing in a bad key for him. If I was still writing the review, maybe I would say "I felt like giving Nat a chair to stand on so he could have better chance of reaching the high notes."

     But then again, even I'm not that big of a jerk. I say stuff like that in my column, and Peter's column, all the time, but at least I don't name names.

     Marie ralphs into the bushes while Sadie holds her hair, and I wander back up to look at the band through the window, just on the off chance that Doug is singing again, but when the song ends, Nat announces that they're going to take a short break. While Marie recovers, Sadie comes back over to me.

     "Smitten!" says Sadie.

     "That guy knows Leonard Cohen and Cole Porter!" I say. "What the hell is he doing in a band like this one?"

     "You're past smitten!" says Sadie. "You're versmote!"

     I wander back in to pick up my laptop from the bar, and maybe ask Doug his last name. That's all I want to know. I want to Google him and see if he's been in some other band or something. After I know his name, I will walk out of the Cage and go back to just waiting to move to a city with more datable guys. He's probably got a girlfriend anyway. Singers usually do.

     But when we get in, all of the girls are crowded around Will on the other side of the room. Doug is sitting right in my chair, in front of my closed laptop.

     And all of a sudden, as we get closer to him, I start to get nervous. I have never been nervous around a guy before. What in the hell is wrong with me?

     "Hi!" says Sadie to Doug, cheerfully. "We're from the press, and we need some information about you. You live in West Des Moines, right?"

     Doug looks at her for a second, then mutters "Sort of. I don't really live there, exactly." At least, I think that's what he says. He talks the way he sings - in a low voice like a whisper. Very quiet.

     "Why did you only do two songs?" I ask.

     He sort of points at his throat, like he's telling me it hurts. Sadie opens my laptop and pulls up a word processing program. "Just type it," she says.

     He starts slowly typing something out. On the one hand, I'm annoyed that Sadie has taken it on herself to let anyone touch my computer. It's a part of me, like a diary. On the other hand, there's this intimacy about letting the guy type on my laptop that's kind of thrilling, in a way. I've never let a guy do that before.

     He's not a fast typer. He looks like he's being very careful. Finally, he turns the screen to us so we can see what he wrote.

     
My throat isn't in good shape. I can only do a couple of songs before I don't have any voice left. I'm not really in the band. Nat just lets me sit in. Old friend.

     

     So it's health stuff, I guess. Allergies, maybe. That's freaking tragic.

     "Well, Doug," says Sadie, "this is my friend Gonk."

     "Alley," I say. "People call me Alley. It's like, they're both short for Algonquin, which is my whole name. So you can also call me Quinn, or Al. Only Sadie calls me Gonk. It's her thing."

     He's just looking at me. I've just totally embarrassed myself, rambling on about my name. He must think I'm another dumb drunk girl. I almost want to buy a can of pop just so I can demonstrate that I know how to open them. He doesn't even say "hi." He just waves.

     "Gonk was very impressed that you knew Cole Porter and Leonard Cohen," says Sadie. "She thinks you're pretty awesome."

     The dim lights probably cover the fact that I'm blushing.

     "Not many people sing that song the right way," I say before Sadie can embarrass me any further. "I mean, you not only got the cocaine line, you seemed like you knew what the song was about."

     He types out "Nat understands it, too, even though he's not so good at playing it. He's a theatre person. But I've been trying to explain music to Will for years. Hopeless."

     "Oh my god," says Sadie. "You've known him for years?"

     Doug nods.

     "Are you a vampire, too?" asks Sadie.

     I'm totally relieved when he shakes his head "no."

     "Well, that's good," says Sadie. "Because Gonk isn't into vampires, but she's totally into you, and I'm here to set the two of you up. Were you singing that Cole Porter song to anyone?"

     He shakes his head no again.

     "So you're single?" Sadie asks.

     Doug nods, and I swear my heart sort of flutters. I always thought hearts only really did that if you were about to have a heart attack or something. You're supposed to feel things in your BRAIN, not your heart, right? I mean, that's where I've always felt stuff before. Either my brain or my stomach. The heart thing is kind of new.

     "Good," says Sadie. "You and Gonk are perfect for each other. She's a Cole Porter freak, and her dad probably has a Leonard Cohen scrapbook. You busy tomorrow night?"
Doug shakes his head, and Sadie takes the computer and types out my address.

     "You have a car?" she asks.

     Doug nods.

     "Here's where she lives," she says, pointing to what she's typed on the screen. "Can you pick her up tomorrow night at seven?"

     Doug starts typing again, and then shows me the screen.


     You really want to go out?

     
I can't say anything. I just smile. I nod a little and blush a lot.

     Doug smiles and types that he'll pick me up at seven.

     I don't remember a thing about the next several minutes. I remember we loaded Marie into my car and took her to my house to clean her up, and I remember Sadie teasing me about how she knew I'd be knocked on my ass by a guy sooner or later, and that's all.

     When I get online, I find that Trinity's already posted my review to the paper's home page.


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Copyright 2009 by Adam Selzer, all rights reserved. Coming January 26, 2010 from Delacorte Press