Work Text:
"We should rename the band," Joe said.
"Fuck you. I just made the shirts." That was a whole afternoon with John's art student girlfriend, a stack of pizza boxes for stencils, and spray paint. He was still sneezing orange. "We already changed our name to Rabid. We're Rabid. We're done."
"Nah. I'm thinking of something better."
"Fuck you."
"Fuck you."
"Fuck you." Billy passed Joe the joint and listened to the transcendent racket John was making downstairs.
The floor was vibrating the mattress under Billy's ass. The cracked plaster shifted and fell away from the wall at the window frame, landing by the mattress in a puff of dust.
Billy and Joe were stretched out crosswise in the square of sunlight from the window. "How the fuck many records does John have going?" Joe asked. Smoke oozed out of his mouth with every word.
Billy shifted; the wacky weed and the Magic Fingers were waking his dick up. He pulled Joe's arm over to his mouth and took another hit, holding the smoke in his chest for a minute before answering. "I think... everyone's record player, and his radio and my radio, and..." A beer bottle full of cigarette butts rattled along the floor and Joe kicked it into the corner. Billy rubbed his lip idly. "I don't know, a shitload of tape players that he found somewhere. His girlfriend's, her friend's. I think a dozen."
Twelve sources all playing at once, shuffled through their gig amps at maximum volume. Twelve songs, some loud, some soft. Twelve voices fighting and giving way. Twelve drum beats blending into something like an earthquake's heartbeat. Billy felt like he was floating on the Music Ocean. The sound was so big it was solid.
"He's fucking crazy."
"He's trying to find the source of all music," Billy said, becoming convinced for a moment that John was a genius. John was fucking crazy, sure, but he was crazy in a way that made sense, that was real.
Some kind of crooning chick crap blended on the octave with a Rollins scream and Joe's whole face twitched. For a second, he looked like his dad, so Billy had to laugh; that would piss him off so much, to know that. So so much.
"Yes, Billiam?" Joe focused back on him, intent and fierce like himself again. Billy thought about Joe Dick putting on a tie and selling prescription laxatives with his dad downtown and starting laughing, oh man, so hard that he fell onto his back and pounded his fist on the blanket. Joe Dick! Dickey Joe!
"Billy! It's contagious!" Joe lurched up over him, kneeling over Billy's hips and cupping his face in his hands. "He's making you insane! MAKING! YOU! INSAANE! AAAAAAARGH!"
And Billy laughed, laughed, couldn't stop, and Joe shook Billy's head back and forth like a terrier until the wall of music kicked up Vivaldi so distorted that it sounded like a train passing. Then Joe screamed again and rolled them over and off the end of the mattress onto a pile of shirts on the floor, where he shouted and flailed like a fish as Billy snickered hysterically, his face squished into Joe's skinny chest.
"My blood is boiling! I'm going MAAAAD!" Joe grabbed Billy's ass and ground against him, zipper against zipper. Billy punched him a couple of times because that hurt, but then their legs lined up and it was like he was bobbing up and down again on the Music Ocean. Vivaldi was duking it out with the Cramps and some seventies ball rock so loud it was like a big fuzzy blanket instead of a sound and Joe had his arms and his legs wrapped around him and his eyes staring into him and his dick drilling into his hip.
And he was stoned. He closed his eyes and let Joe rock him around.
"Billy! Billy! I got something to ask you." Joe rolled them over and chewed on his ear.
"Ouch, fucker!" Billy's eyes flew open and he yanked on Joe's hair.
"Will you be my girlfriend?" Joe asked breathlessly.
"No, but you can suck my dick," Billy offered.
Joe bit his cheek and then his lip and then it was like a kiss, and Billy hooked a leg up around Joe's waist and that was pretty good.
Then the music cut out, song after song dropping in quick succession into silence. John wailed plaintively.
"Fucking pigs!" Pipe shouted.
"Oh, shit," Billy said, and Joe rolled off him and laughed and laughed until the cops came in to arrest them for being pains in the ass.
THE END.
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