Are the Scars Out Tonight?

Scars have the strange power to remind us our past is real.

So wrote Carmac McCarthy about the theme of tonight's Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux: scars.

Conspicuously absent was one of Richmond's finest, an undoubtedly scarred person himself, GWAR musician Dave Brockie, who has twice been part of the evening's storytelling lineup.

His untimely death yesterday was the subject on everyone's mind and as we paid our cover fee to get in, the doorman wrote "RIPD" on the back of each person's hand instead of the usual symbol.

Rest in peace, Dave Brockie.

While I'd been at both the Secretly Y'All events where he told a tale, my favorite memory was a night he shared with no other storytellers, a night that was part travelogue, part military history and pure Dave Brockie, "To the Volga and Back," here.

Somehow he'd gotten wind of my post the next day and tweeted it to his adoring fans all over the world. No kidding, my blog had over 1,000 hits on that post and they came from as far away as Russia, England and the Philippines.

Such was the power of Dave Brockie. I have no doubt he could have come up with all kinds of stories tonight to suit the theme of scars.

Tonight's evening of tale telling began with Donna's "Fear and Trust" about a serial killer in the neighborhood in which she'd lived as a teenager, back before such things were commonplace.

As the neighborhood and her friends got progressively more terrified, a good friend of hers was arrested for the crimes.

And while she visited him in prison (the old Spring Street penitentiary), eventually she realized that he was a very bad man. "I hope he never gets parole," she concluded.

Margaret's story, "Tragic Places, Sacred Spaces" was much worse because so many bad things happened to her to scar her.

At age 12, one man exposed himself to her, another time when she was hitchhiking (it was the '70s, after all), a carload of guys tried to take her off into the woods. A businessman who picked her up tried to do the same.

She cited her ability to tell a lie as if it were the truth as having saved her life.

"The Five Stages of Grief aka Being a Nurse" was told by Jay Michael, an ICU nurse who compared the stages of grief to the experience of adjusting to nursing.

"I had a sadist in my family who told me I should be a nurse," he quipped before explaining "the unique things male nurses do."

He finished with a story of caring for his dying grandfather whom, when he said, "Grandpa, I love you," heard back from Grandpa, "I'm not surprised.

Will, who does the "12 Fluid Ounces" show on WRIR told the story of going to the grocery store to get stuff for a Superbowl party.

The only qualifications he and his new wife had for entertaining on the high holy day of football were, "She could make chili and I could drink beer."

After finally procuring ground turkey, a six pack and ice, he tore through the parking lot "in Superman mode" flying on his grocery cart, which upended, pinning his hands under it and dragging them long enough on the street to scrape away the skin down to the bone.

There was a collective groan from the audience as he described his bloody digits.

The story of a 15-year old learning to drive on his parents' country property was told by Mark and titled, "A Whale Tail."

Seems that once he'd learned to peel out and mastered the "fish tail" in his parents' 1992 Ford Escort station wagon, he set out to one-up himself.

Putting on his "Street Racer" persona, he proceeded to "put on something heavy like Dave Matthews" and peel wheel up a dirt hill, terrifying himself and barely getting an acknowledgement from his young cousin in the passenger seat.

WRIR showed up again in the form of Shannon's "Are You Alright" story about his quest to get to the Ghost of Pop show at Gallery 5 in 2008.

His bike lights were missing (possibly stolen by roommates) but he set out anyway, running into a car's bumper causing his tire to explode and Shannon to go sailing into the car and up against the windshield.

Miraculously, despite the throwing and rolling and both he and his bike hitting the glass, he escaped relatively unscathed.

But it did provide that moment when he realized, "that could have been it," only further emphasized when his father died late last year. "Mortality is not this infinite thing," Shannon concluded.

Ian's story was called "Stimulant" and he had the most curious delivery. Speaking in a deep voiced monotone and never really looking at the audience, his tale was told in a decidedly literary way that was hysterical.

It was on his first sandbar at Virginia beach that he realized there was a jellyfish down his bathing suit and began screaming. When his Dad realized what it was, he began clutching at the jellyfish, trying to pull it out and away.

He said it must have looked like a lot of emphasis on a child's crotch in the ocean.

From there he told us about a trip to Busch Gardens with his aunt when he was an acne-ridden 15-year old. "I have a latent white trash gene and my aunt was only six years older than me."

It took a while for the laughter to die down on that one.

The story involved riding a tram with a "douchebag of a guy" across from them trying to hit on his aunt until Ian indicated she was his.

He didn't go so far as to put his arm around her to prove it because "that would have been creepy."

After an overly long intermission where half the crowd left, we started the second half of tonight's loaded theme.

Wendy's was the first name drawn out of the hat and she wanted to make sure we knew that, "As soon as you push your face out of a vagina, you're scarred. Or as soon as you're cut out, you're scarred."

She proudly told us about all her scars obtained as an accident-prone kid with a bald, cancerous grandmother who had no time or patience for sissies.

Her conclusion? "America would be better off if we all stopped bitching about everything." The room erupted in cheers. Even all the bitchers cheered. "Brag about your scars."

I think that's a good point. I have a close friend who had heart surgery and the long scar across her chest is a point of pride. My mother always claimed that stretch marks and C-section scars were badges of honor.

Joseph was called to tell a story called "Lessons in Loss and Recovery" and I recognized him, having just met him in the bathroom line at intermission.

There, he'd suggested that there ought to be a contest at these events to see who peed the fastest. I assured him I'd win and on exiting the bathroom moments after entering, he'd deferentially acknowledged as much.

Now here he was telling us about a road trip home at 3 a.m. with his boyfriend, trying to avoid deer running across the road.

When he saw one off to the side, he'd swerved, over-corrected and ended up spinning out, sending them into the guard rail and the couple's dog flying into the front seat.

When the two men exited the car, the dog took off, evidently terrified at his owner's driving skills.

They searched in the darkness for the pooch and finally gave up. Back home, they contacted a missing dog Facebook page (which he plugged for others who might need it) with no results.
By two weeks after the crash, they were coming to terms with never finding their dog again.

"We were showering together one morning," Joseph went on, "Cause that's what you do when you have a lover..." and the room began applauding and cheering that sentiment, "And we got a call from a lady saying she had our dog."

Happily, Lassie came home.

When Chris' name got called, he came up to tell "Good Pain," asking the crowd if anyone kayaked or went white water rafting. More than a few hands went up.

"Seen any black people doing that?" the black Chris asked. Not so much.

He told the story of a (white) friend who suggested they do the Gali festival together, which he described as "class V rapids, a real shit show. It doesn't hit me right away that I'm the only black person there."

Describing the "festival" as "20 seconds in the water and the first drop is 12 feet," he explained that the main goal is to stay in the raft.

"Now we're not drinking or taking drugs, this is all adrenaline and crazy white man stuff," he said to much laughter. His friend decides to flip the raft, causing the girlfriends to go flying into the water followed by the menfolk.

When it happens a second time, not everyone flies out, but he's one of the ones who does, emerging with a broken off tooth and two broken fingers from trying to hold on to the raft's t-strip.

Justifiably, he blamed it all on crazy white men.

Dustin told the last story about his job as a mental health counselor and some of the scarred kids he's worked with. Badly scarred kids who punch cinder block walls until they splinter the bones in their hand. Truly sad stuff,

Wendy was right. We're all scarred in one way or another and sometimes you can see people's scars and sometimes they're hidden.

But it was the missing storyteller who provided the most touching and significant reminder tonight.

Mortality is not this infinite thing. RIPD.

Postcards from the Edge

I took a walk on the warm side.

It wasn't that far - only to Balliceaux - and passing by Edo's, a handsome man in a gray suit (no tie), gave me a courtly head bow and smile as I passed.

Some gestures never go out of style.

At the bar at Balliceaux, I found mixologist Bobby K., who greeted me by telling me he'd heard about my escapade at Heritage.

Except I hadn't been to Heritage anytime recently.

As the rumor mill had it, a food writer was alone at the bar (which is why they'd suspected me), as were two very inebriated restaurateurs-to-be who proceeded to drunkenly tell her she knew nothing about food writing, a tactical error which apparently resulted in them being ejected.

I was happy to inform him that I was definitely not the food writer involved, despite my penchant for dining out alone.

Before leaving him to his puzzlement, I got a glass of discounted pinot grigio from Alto Adige (the wine list is being overhauled so it's out with the old and in with the new) and made my way to the back room for a special installment of Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story.

Tonight, GWAR member Dave Brockie was doing an evening called "To the Volga and Back," which turned out to be part history lesson and part twisted travelogue.

He began by talking about his parents who'd both joined the British armed services at fourteen (they both lied about their ages) to be part of WW II, factors he think influenced his lifelong fascination with war.

Virulently anti-war, this information was a prelude to his tale of visiting Stalingrad.

The trip began by flying to Amsterdam with a friend to pick up two Dutch buddies and do what people do in Holland.

Showing a colorful slide, Dave said, "Holland is known for its windmills and you can get drunk in this one. And we did."

Judging by the slides, they might have also made stops at a few Amsterdam "coffee shops," judging by the slide of apothecary jars of weed and hash.

Apparently it was great stuff, too, because he told of  smoking and then trying to find his hotel room on a floor with only ten rooms.

"I could read numbers and I knew what room I was in, but I couldn't figure it out!" he said.

Special moments like that punctuated his talk, like when he left the stage, mic in hand, observing, "This cord is long enough that I can walk to the bar and get another beer."

It seemed he needed fortification for the next leg of his journey to Moscow.

"There are two types of women in Moscow," he explained, showing a  slide of himself ogling two pretty girls. "Babushkas and hotties. If they're not scrubbing floors by 9 a.m., they're wearing high heels."

An oversimplification, perhaps, but we got the idea.

Since the guys naturally ate at a McDonald's, he was able to assure us, "I'm here to tell you that a quarter pounder with cheese in Russia tastes the same as a quarter pounder with cheese in America."

Now there's something to fight for.

The highlight of the guys' trip to Moscow seems to have been the tank museum and a big part of Dave's talk was devoted to slides and descriptions of what he called "death machines."

"We were like kids in a candy store," he grinned, but looking around at the male members of the audience, they looked just as enthralled.

I don't want to insult Dave, but as far as I could tell, one tank looks pretty much like another.

He did point out that German tanks were far more deign-oriented while Russian tanks were merely utilitarian hulks that eliminated everything in its path, but I just couldn't see it.

When we finally moved on from the wonders of tanks, it was to hear about the group's 29-hour train ride to Stalingrad (now Volgograd to be PC).

They were on a  pilgrimage to see what was the largest free-standing sculpture in the world when it was built in 1967, "The Motherland Calls,"  a colossus of a figure of a woman, sword in hand, to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad.

Actually, it was this battle that had been the reason they wanted to visit the city in the first place.

"It takes effort and time to get to see it," Dave explained, showing slide after slide of the slow journey up a hill and then 200 steps to the top, where his pictures showed men looking like gnats at the bottom of the statue.

And despite making it to the top, he admitted, "If I went looking for answers, I'm not sure I found them."

Their visit to Stalingrad coincided with the May 9th Victory Day holiday, marking the surrender of the Germans to the Soviet Union in WW II, so we saw slides of the celebration and pageantry of Victory Day.

Even so, he was no clearer on historical context than before he'd left.

"I still feel the same way about war as I did before I went. The only way to fight war is to battle against it. I utilize my rubber sword in GWAR to wage a love war," he said, sounding very peace, love and groovy.

He said he wanted to end by reading a war poem called "Wait for Me" to us.

"And no, that's not a trick ending," he grinned. "You're not about to be squirted with jizz."

Thank god and the motherland.

It was warm enough walking home on a hot, August night without that kind of stickiness all over me, too.

You Can Quote Me On That

My friend Slash Coleman interviewed me about the local artistic scene for a book he's writing about developing creative ambition, but I was still pleasantly surprised when I showed up in his blog, "Twenty One Hours," along with GWAR's Dave Brockie. That's just the kind of company I want to be keeping.

Check it out, if you're curious:

http://twentyonehour.blogspot.com/2009/10/artist-myth-2-you-have-to-live-in-la-or.html

Slash is a great resource for artists unsure how to market themselves and turn talent into a living, having succeeded at both himself.