POSTER CHILD, Part Two.
by Eli James
This imagined friendship between Tommy and me never came to be. It couldn’t be, and not just because we were born a whole generation apart. Thing is, I couldn’t help being bitter toward him—even for all of his devotion to the band. Tommy was the first rich kid I’d ever known, and my resentment was based largely on the fact that, should the band fall on its face, his life would probably turn out all right. Mine, I feared, would not—such was the weight I had attached to the band, an organization that represented my third career change so far. Tommy could be in fourteen more bands and a chamber orchestra before deciding he wanted to be a marine biologist, then a film director, then a chairman of something. There was no need for him to assume the bassist position in my band for any reason other than a summer thrill, while I, a man inching steadily closer to that unspoken self-destruct date known to every young musician, was treating “Eli and the Indoor Boys” as a matter of life and death.
There were other reasons our would-be brotherhood was strained. I’d never met anyone who thought it a good idea to use the word “antediluvian” in conversation. “My uncle has an antediluvian Gibson amp I can use, but he says it works flawlessly.” He was also a big fan of “absurdly,” “laughable,” and “existentialist.” I had a natural sympathy with scholastic nerds, having been one myself and having been bullied consistently for it. However, Tommy’s use of language made me want to, for the first time in my life, take someone smaller, weaker, and eight grades below me, and kick the crap out of them.
Because I had a habit of breaking guitar strings early on into our sets, he was afforded far too many opportunities to share his awkward grandpa-like humor with the audience. “We’d like to thank Mercury Lounge for their really big stage. It’s lots of room for us to do nothing on. (pause.) Cue laugh track please.” “This next song’s about a girl named Lauren who Eli used to have sex with. (Pause. To me.) What? It is!” And the crowned prince: “Hey thanks for singing along, Eli’s ex-neighbor-slash-girl-he-dated…”
It was all I could do to keep from pushing him off the stage with the broad end of my guitar. Instead I learned to play noisy song intros every time he opened his mouth. I knew he meant no harm, even though the things he said made us seem like a guest act from of the first season of Hee Haw and sent what little crowd there was careening toward the rear of the dance hall. Like any younger person, Tommy just wanted to be one of the guys, and to him that meant commenting on everything he saw, heard, smelled, sensed, or thought about. He once tried to engage me in what he deemed an important debate over ribbed or unribbed condoms. I refused to answer. I learned early on that as much as I wanted to be his big brother—offer man-to-man advice, buy him his first martini, beat him at basketball—it was a role I could not play. There was nothing I could advise him on or help him with and I sucked at sports. He had been to scores of places I’d only read about. I was penniless, while he somehow had a Gold card. He knew people. I only knew him. If anyone was going to bail someone out of a jam, it would be Tommy, not me. He was my big brother. And while I still harbored brotherly affection for him, I was too busy thinking about nipple-twisting him into oblivion to acknowledge it. He was always on the top bunk, and I believed I deserved it more.
When the inspiration to blanket the town in posters took hold of me, I drafted Tommy’s help with the grunt work, something he’d been remiss in doing since joining the band, what with spring finals falling right in the middle of sweet sixteen season. To this point I’d handed out all the flyers, made all the ads, hunted down all the drummers. When I finally enlisted his aide in a canvassing tour of the Lower East Side, I took an undue elation in bossing him around. It was the last time someone like me would. Tommy was now beginning to tour the Ivy Leagues, running up and down the East Coast scouting the perfect place to get his degree in “Linguistics and French.” Before he broke away, I would detain him, forcibly if need be, to sweat under the summer sun for the good of my band. Before you ponce off to Harvard to begin analyzing irregular verb endings, my boy, you are going to attach hand-written posters to telephone poles with Scotch tape. The band will be able to say it hit its marketing quota, and you will be able to say you mucked in with the underprivileged to promote your scrappy punk group. This in turn will gain you street cred, something your Riverdale School comrades will envy more than your Audi A4.
It was I, of course, who was about to receive the sternest lesson in humility.
We sat in my bedroom scribbling names, dates, and times on a stack of posters. I still had three hundred posters in a crate, which I’d dragged up from Philadelphia in a U-haul. I had designed them very carefully, making sure to include enough negative space to scribble in the changing club dates. In Philadelphia, I’d made only a few attempts at poster-hanging, and it had always seemed a dangerous business. The areas of concentrated cultural activity in my hometown were few, and the in-between miles were populated by tumbleweeds made of garbage and drugs. My efforts were usually thwarted by oncoming sirens echoing down the empty streets. I gave up after the first or second hanging, stuffing my flyers in a bag and legging it home.
When I moved to New York I was far less skittish about promotional vandalism. Everyone was doing it. There was a flurry of activity on every block, a level of street PR impossible to regulate. Every publicly and privately owned surface in the East Village had been covered with announcements—not just for bands, but for dog walkers, housekeepers, language tutors, computer doctors, and for people who would put your posters up for you. The eyes ached, the heart raced. Within seconds of becoming a New Yorker, I’d been struck by New York Disease, a widespread illness characterized by a persistent feeling of being behind in everything.
And so I dragged Tommy McBride and a plastic bag out one September twilight, forcing them both into the long haul down Second Avenue. The work might be tedious, I thought, but damn it we were going to paper this neighborhood until it looked like we were the only act in town. May the long tentacles of consumer advertising put our name on the lips of many drowsing New Yorkers at bedtime.
The poster image was a blow-up of a black and white photograph showing me and a friend dressed in suits and large glasses, holding up a record player, looking very serious, as if we’d just invented it. It was a bit blurry, the result of a Photoshop accident I didn’t know how to fix, and which had the effect of making the picture look much older than it was, like an archival photo from the U of Penn science lab. This was good – it fell right into the “vintage” range of fake old, and anything vintage had value in New York. The term in this case refers to anything manufactured between 1960 and 1985. Anything earlier ran the risk of evoking Rat Pack conservatism, and anything post-eighties was not kitschy enough – and therefore could have little relevance to the crowd choking Ludlow Street in their oversized sunglasses and untamed beards. With my out-of-focus black and white posters in hand, I was a credible member of the vintage nation and I was ready to fly the flag.
I hadn’t seen the need to come up with a system. Nothing along the lines of, “Okay, Tommy, you hold the poster and I’ll apply the tape which I’ve divided into precut strips. Total time allotted for each posting: eight seconds.” In practice, it was a three-minute-long process, most of which was spent disentangling my fingers from a roll of packing adhesive that was missing a cutting blade. And I’d forgotten to bring scissors.
Our campaign to beautify Manhattan was moving steadily if slowly forward—we’d hit two telephone poles and a mailbox—when we stopped at a lamplight across the street from Arlene’s Grocery. While I searched the heavily trafficked lamppost for ad space, Tommy said, “Uh, Eli. Hey, buddy… There’s a cop here.” The cruiser had apparently pulled right up to the curb while I was stamping our presence onto the public consciousness. I turned around, red-handed, with only a dunce cap missing from my array of accouterments.
“You guys posting signs?”
I thought about lying. “No, officer, just removing some of this filthy artwork. This poor neighborhood is besieged by vandals.” But then I saw my arrest flash before my eyes, and based on TV I figured that lying to a police officer was worse than getting caught.
I would fudge the truth though. I’d own up to hanging the posters, but I’d plead ignorance on the whole illegal thing. I would base my plea on the fact that there’d obviously been a precedent set, and that a hundred other bands posting on Stanton Street had made it seem okay.
“What are the signs for?” The officer was thirty-four-ish, Italian, and with a grin that gave away his embarrassment at what was probably the first collar of his shift.
“We’ve got a band show coming up.” His embarrassment could not have matched mine. The words coming out of my mouth were those of a fourteen-year-old, complete with the end-of-sentence high note.
At that moment any contention that had previously existed between Tommy and me was replaced by guilt and fear—guilt that I was a schmuck nearly twice his age involving him in a petty crime designed only to promote my music. The fear came from the idea that Tommy would get some kind of life-crippling citation that would keep him out of Yale, resulting in his parents suing me. In court I would be sentenced to replace every dollar lost from Tommy’s lost career as a U.N. interpreter.
“Let me see your ID’s, guys?”
I had obtained a New York State Driver’s License only a few weeks before. My Pennsylvania one had prevented me from claiming unemployment. Now I was wishing I’d made no such leap. Having an out-of-state license might have granted me some leeway. “Sorry, I’m from out of town” had worked the time I got pulled over for blocking an intersection on the Upper East Side three years before. But I was locked in now. My I.D. showed that I was not only a New York resident, but that I lived in the very neighborhood in which I was offending.
They scanned Tommy’s, then my I.D. For a moment, I worried that Tommy, by force of habit, had handed over his often-used fake, which meant we were really done for. But Tommy kept his head better than I did. In fact he appeared totally unfazed by the experience, even on the border of having fun. He stood in his rock star pose, legs apart, hips cocked, hands on belly, not a bead of sweat. Had we been dragged in, this would have been his mug shot.
While the cop filled out his paperwork, I wondered over the consequences. Were we about to get a three-hundred-dollar ticket? No. It was unlikely that we’d be getting anything. I’d be getting. The minor would probably not be held accountable. I was equally panicked about how this run-in with the law would harm the turnout at our gig. We’d only gotten three posters up before the whole operation came crumbling down.
My brain was still working to come up with excuses—nothing that would necessarily lighten my sentence, but things I could say to make me feel less to blame. There was nothing. It would have been different, and slightly more heroic, had I been breaking the law in the name of justice (“Anti-Bush Concert in the Park”) or awareness (“Fight Premature Birth Defects”), or in the employ of some larger entity. (“They told me to do it.”) But it was all me, and there was nothing noble in my cause. I was the President and CEO of Loser-Band, Ltd. Tommy was my assistant, who’d probably be handing in his notice.
“Sorry guys,” the officer said as he handed back our I.D.’s and unfolded his citation pad. “It’s a quality of life issue down here. They get too many signs, the neighborhood doesn’t like it. Plus it’s a fire hazard.” How I wished the poster I was currently looking at for “The Elfin Magic Band” would burst into flames. Quality of life. If we were going to get philosophical, I could posit my thesis on how music is actually essential, Officer, to the quality of life…
“This is a standard summons. You’re gonna have to report down to the courthouse on this date.” He pointed to the corner of his pad. “The judge might let you off, you never know.”
Okay, and if he doesn’t? What’s the jail time? Do I have the right to a lawyer? None of these questions made it out of my mouth, probably because I didn’t want to know. I watched the officer etch the letters of my last name into the individual squares on the ticket. There was no mistaking it. The squares don’t lie. That was me.
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..... To Be Continued....
