washington, d.c.
we got into DC and the show was at this house, wasted dream. as soon as the door opened, amelia greeted Dan from Lotus Fucker/Dirty Wars – guess she knew him. another small world, but the world kind of shrinks itself when amelia is around i’m thinking.
our dan is telling me that that dan once walked on ian mackaye’s car in once because he was blocking him from walking.
Veterans pulled up and we realized that we actually saw them sitting in a diner in west philadelphia that morning. pretty fucked up. dan also realized he stayed at one of their member’s houses, i think when he was out with In Defence. logan had played with them with Enabler, too. small world, over and over again.
we met james, the dude who set up the show and he was kind enough to make us spaghetti. we’ve been really lucky to hit such a string of accommodating and decent people while we’re out.
we stood on the porch for a few minutes and a dude in a rasta hat wearing a windbreaker walked by holding a fucking spear.
rachael and i decided to walk down to the grocery store as i was still hungry and didn’t want to be a greedy dick. i lived in DC for about two months once and it made me the most hypervigilant freak ever. rachael isn’t exactly the most intimidating person at 5’2″ so i kept glancing over my shoulder until we got into a more populated area. seemed like there was a pretty great seafood shack on the way.
big grocery stores are so fucked up. i’m always blinded when i get in there and overwhelmed with stress trying to navigate around a bunch of clueless cows. huhuhuh sheeple huhuhuhuh – whatever. i put a salad together and so did rachael, then we headed out and i stopped to get some sort of empanada from this place i wanted to go to last time i was in the area, but didn’t get to. i got the chilean style empanada which had hard boiled egg, pork, raisins, and some other stuff in it.
my notes say i ate fried chicken. i didn’t. why did i write that?
we got beer and got back in time to catch a good set from Dirty Wars. the house has a super fucking tiny basement so there wasn’t a lot of room, but it’s nice because we could get 20 people in there and it instantly became a good time. Veterans played and although theyre not my thing right now, they all made us look like the bumbling drunks that we are. very intense stuff.
dirty wars at wasted dream
two of my most favorite people in the world showed up, eran and mario. they are the wisest men i know and i cant express what unique and rare people they are. eran is a doctor and a walking encyclopedia of music knowledge – one time in a cab in nyc, i watched eran gab with the driver about some sort of mixtape of cuban rap that he picked up by ear. mario is a dog-walker and the author of a book called 44 Presidents – he is also the best writer i have ever met in my entire life.
Much Worse played next and max smashed his head into dan’s drums and started bleeding everywhere. i was a little jealous that he managed to hurt himself in such a sensational way, especially that rachael was recording it. i’m pretty fucking lame.
a dude who’s name i didn’t catch jumped on the show at the last minute to do spoken word. apparently he’s been around a long time and doing shit at hardcore shows – dunno the guy but he’s pretty hard to forget with cerebral palsy (i think? i’m a total dick if i’m wrong but i thought someone told me this) and also a fucking prosthetic leg. i didn’t catch his set but i was pleased to see when i came back in, there were still a fair number of people in there.
we plugged in as dude was ending his thing and started playing. pat was trashed so he immediately started flailing around violently, looking like a stretched out baby throwing a temper tantrum. somehow he swept his body in an upward motion and caught me in the jaw. the impact jolted my brain out of my body.
i kept singing and holding my jaw, struggling to finish our three song block and getting angrier after yelling each word and feeling stronger and stronger pain. the block ended and i announced we would play two more songs. everyone looked at me like i was telling a shitty racist joke – shocked and confused. we went into the next song and i came apart. i couldn’t close my mouth and my teeth felt cracked or something – something wasn’t right. i threw the mic down and started punching and kicking a beam in the basement. i stomped out and punched the back door and split open two knuckles.
eran and mario came out after me while i continued to lose my mind. i screamed as loud as i could and paced around and then stared at the guy with the prosthetic leg, realizing whatever the fuck happened to him was way worse than whatever just happened to me.
“you’re humbling me right now, buddy,” i muttered to him.
eran felt around on my jaw. he told me it was dislocated and brought me inside, rachael in tow talking about how she gets hers dislocated now and then. i could hear that our set kept going and someone was singing who seemed to know our lyrics.
“you don’t have hep c, do you?”
“no, no, i’m good.”
eran wrapped his fingers with a paper towel and stuck his fingers inside of my mouth. with his other hand, he gripped the side of my face and pushed his hands together towards each other.
“i’ve only done this once.”
everyone made a noise when it slid back into place. it hurt. it could have hurt more, but it hurt enough. i went downstairs to see how our set was still moving and saw max, face covered in blood, screaming
“MY NAME IS DREW, I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU, I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY, I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY, I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY” over and over again.
it was fucking cool and sounded great, odd enough. of course, rachael did not record any of the incident or the rest of the set. bah.
i tried to help eran fish some toilet paper out of his ear from makeshift earplugs but couldn’t. mario tried and maybe had more luck but to be honest, i was distracted. james gave me some electrical tape and paper towels to re-dress my wound on my arm and to put over my bleeding knuckles.
we went back outside and i received more sagelike knowledge about women from Mario. eran and i sat on a bench and broke it. i took pictures of Pat outside, rolling around on the front porch, all drunk.
i passed out sometime after that on the way to richmond.