Arab meets us at Gate 4 in his golf cart, points us into a parking spot 10 meters from the back entrance to the fair. As a favor among old punk rockers, he has allowed us a space in the crew lot.
I watch as he pulls the barricade shut behind us, disappointing a line of cars that have slowed in hopes of joining us here among the tour buses and amphitheater staff cars.
Arab waves them on, sending them to the back recesses of the parking lot, miles from the entrance.
And at my age, this parking space thrills me.
I am tempted to spend the evening in Kimm’s Yukon, isolated and safe from the teeming crowds, cracking the window only to hear Cheap Trick play Surrender in the distance.

Beyond me the lights of the fair rides sparkle in the twilight.
There is the shriek of children pitching down the banked curve of rollercoaster, there is the smell of meat smoking over open flame.
Ghastly concoctions are deep fried in oil and sprinkled with powdered sugar, ingested in the name of Summer, of being goddamned alive and once again at the OC Fair.

It is ritual, this walking tour of Americana nestled within the confines of Orange County.
It is the one month of the year, in the dead doldrums of Summer, that we can drop our cynical armor and march, like mesmerized chickens, toward the bright lights.
We imagine the thrill of the circus come to town, a brief escape from brutal and honest work in the fields.
We can pretend to be the earnest and the good, washed shiny and clutching at our nickels.
Toward the exhibit halls packed with hopeful baked goods and artsy craftsy photographs, past the pens filled with prized chickens and sheep, the best of the county offered to be judged.

It is my second visit to this year’s fair, having gone to see X play a couple weeks back.

I make a beeline for the Centennial Farm to check on the piglets, and am shocked to see how fat the little fuckers have gotten in my absence.
Truffles, a slutty Yorkshire sow lays defeated in the sawdust, eleven greedy children nursing on her chafed teats.
They eat like, well, pigs.
It reminds me to join in their gluttony, and we traipse off toward the food stands.

Oh, the food! they say, your coworkers when you tell them you are knocking off early to go to the fair.
They list their top five favorites and allow you to leave only after you promise to eat one of each for them.
But let’s be honest here; the food is pretty crappy and crazily overpriced.
It is this setting, after all, that makes the food come alive.
Eating on shared benches with open mouthed strangers, the air wafted with goat shit from the nearby 4H exhibits.

We eat corn barbecued black at five dollars an ear.
Pork chops are sold, but with a carnival twist of being on a stick, forcing us to lap with extended tongue as if upon pork lollipops.
Sausages that have been cooking for five hours straight are sold to us for fourteen dollars.
They are oversized, and this being the Fair, each sausage is also wrapped in bacon.
The meat is vicious, dried out and bland, but eating it here on a picnic bench under the purple sky it is delicious.

For dessert there are ungodly treats battered and fried, combinations dreamed up by either madmen or stoned Junior High school children.
Oreo cookies are not only deep fried but again wrapped in bacon, dipped in chocolate, powdered with sugar.
They are served, naturally, on a stick.

I take a bite and it is America, obscene and victorious.

We stumble to our seats in the amphitheater, dazed by the smoked meats and fried sugar, herded into a sold out 8000 seat arena with not a mask in sight.
There is a passable Blue Oyster Cult tribute act on stage, and it take a couple songs to understand that, no, that is Blue Oyster Cult playing.
Two surviving old guys joined by a couple new young guys, a lineup that makes me feel for some reason familiarly queasy.
But god bless ’em, they roll into the set closer of Reaper without a mention of Will Ferrell or doing a cowbell schtick, and then it is intermission.

A beach ball floats over the crowd now, people return to their seats double fisting beers.
We will have a normal Summer, the scene says. Even if it goddamned kills us.
Outside the amphitheater there are roars of terrible hydraulics, another set of hardy riders launched skyward on some insane ride, anything to escape the grim realties of our Earthbound existence.
They are, for at least a single moment, weightless.

A stranger next to be fist bumps me, yells Cheap Trick, whooo! into the night sky.
I try not to think of the odds of airborne virus in this place, the random gift of disease raining down as casually as a beach ball swatted from one filthy hand to the next.

But the people here are happy, thrilled to be out, and I am ashamed of sitting among them with such thoughts.
It is a Summer evening amidst the lights, and for the moment anyway, we can all pretend everything is quite fine, or soon will be.
Cheap Trick come on, the familiar strum of Hello There ringing out and the crowd goes fucking wild.
And though I usually refuse to stand during these things, I am on my feet with the rest of the crowd, shouting Hello There right back to Robin and Rick.

They are joined tonight by not only Rick’s kid on drums, but Robin’s son on bass, who nails each of those pure sweet high notes of his Pop.
Ah, I think.
They have cracked the problem of longevity by simply handing down their setlist to the next generation, able to book shows into the next century with their legacy upheld.

The show ends right at ten.
The curfew imposed by the same neighbors who make the jets take off at crazy angles from nearby John Wayne airport, settling you back into your economy seat of Frontier airlines with palpable G force, your balls squeezed tight as on any badly maintained carnival ride.

As we file out we take one last look at the livestock, check in on the piglets who amazingly have seemed to grow even fatter since we arrived earlier today.
One spotted little fellow roots up close to my Conversed foot, and I dare to reach through the slats and stroke him behind his pointy ear.
He snuffles with glee, and looks up at me with canine affection, and all is right in this world.

Next year, god willing, we will return yet again to the fairgrounds.
Returned to the ritual, the memory of tonight’s heartburn and inevitable nausea long forgotten.
We’ll walk through the same Halls of Products, eat the same salty food, perhaps try the latest deep fried combinaton of chocolate and bacon on a dare.
And we will return to the pens once more, and seek out our porcine friends.
Be they now exhausted mothers themselves, with greedy piglets nursing in a row.
Or perhaps they will be nourishing us further down the midway, gloriously smoked or deep fried.
Impaled in their blue ribbon glory, America on a stick.

I’ve dozed, and jolt awake when we pull into New Pudsey station.

The car is crowded now, and I’m grateful my gangly legs and naptime drooling has kept the seat next to me vacant. I take out my phone, start a new playlist, shake my head to wake up and look about.

Beanie is in a seat across the aisle and one up from me.
He’s wearing all red today.
Pants, shirt, jacket. Socks. Everything.
The costume is tight on his thin frame, making him look like a villain from the DC comics universe, intent on kidnapping then eventually being destroyed by Batman.

Good natured to a fault, we like having Beanie along for the ride.
When we all get in that pissy mid tour mood, you can always count on Beanie to lighten up the room.
Backstage and grumpy, staring at our phones, he barges in and tells us we have to come look at the full moon hanging above Milan.

He hustles the merch, often shilling leftover shirts in the wrong sizes to fans who walk away broke and puzzled, wearing XXXL Indian Summer shirts like mumus.
And they were looking for Naked Aggression merch in the first place.

He’s squished against the window beside a large fellow, but cheerfully nodding to the frantic beats coming through his headphones, watching the green hills roll by.

He turns to his seatmate to point out a squirrel or maybe an outhouse, immediately spills a half can of Scrumpys Cider between the seats.
The big man half jumps up away from the spill, then nods to the aisle.
“Go on, go through then,” he says.
In his coarse northern accent it comes out gah froo den.

Beanie gets up to fetch some paper towels, and I am tempted to offer the guy my seat,  lest he break Beanie in half.  His forearms are thick as unsplit cords, covered in blurry mirrored lions.
Tattoos of the miserable football club that will let him down yet again this year.

But in a moment Beanie is back, paper towels and a new can of cider for each of them.
I watch them chat a bit then touch cans in toast. Soon Beanie has his phone out and is showing the chap photos of his dear departed Mackie.
The two of them now laughing at a video of the Terrier mounting then destroying another pillow.

People shut off their Ipads, finally break their gaze at the phones in their laps and just stare out the window at the land going by.
I watch them watching, see them taking in this rare moment of quiet without, alone with the scenery and their thoughts.

When they touch their phones again, it’s not to check their useless Instagram feed but to snap a photo.
Lamb noshing on turf; Cathedral spire lording over a thicket of Alders.
They picture themselves back home, Happy Hour at LoConda Verde, pulling out their phones and showing these shots to friends.
Knowing they can never put this into words.

Hell. The only time you see photos taken on a flight is when the passengers are collectively recording an Air Marshal dragging an overbooked passenger down the aisle, screaming and bleeding as he clutches at their ankles.

Now I take in all my fellow passengers, spying openly.
I gift them personalities and lives befitting my perception from this rear seat.

This guy, man on his way to break it off with his mistress: he twists the gold band around his finger clockwise as if shutting off a faucet.
The old woman crocheting on the aisle? Wearing a discreet half kilo of brown heroin tight against her pantyhosed thigh.

Here we have a young Vicar returning to his flock after a cleansing weekend in Ibiza, no secret save the bejeweld butt plug that twinkles just inside his boxer briefs.
That bored Bulgarian teen taps on a labeled ice chest, delivering a sparkling cornea to St. James.
A cloudy eyed widower waits to look upon his son one last time.

And what of us, our group?
Members of a third rated Cirque troop, heading to a muddy field just outside of town.
Me, I throw knives at a leotarded gal named Isla.

People are starting to gather their things, make their way to the doors as the countryside gives way to the gravel and concrete of the city.
I watch a young woman, maybe drinking age, get up.
She’s dressed defiantly, Doc Martins and torn tights, a rainbow tie dyed MDC shirt leading up to her harsh angular haircut. She got on in Manchester with some of the other people returning from Pride weekend. She pulls a black backpack off the rack, walks past me and waits for the train to stop, the door to slide open.

I’m writing this in the future. These people, that train ride, all in my past.
Just waiting for a miserable year to finally release its claws and slip back to hell.

To ride on a train again.
Through a foreign country, surrounded by strangers, sharing the same harmless air.

I would even welcome the brat behind me a whole 12 hour Trans Atlantic flight.
Kicking at my Upper Economy seat since Heathrow, yet I vow to smile at the kid as he hangs over my headrest and stares at me upside down for the whole approach into LAX.

Please Lord.
I will gladly take the middle seat between the Herbalife sales lady and the silent farter.
Just let me go, let me wander once again. I’ll be better.

Leeds station, the others trot off with guitars in one hand, wheeling luggage behind. Beanie balances a cardboard box of the merch on his head, walks his way through the train station with the practiced gait of a Mumbai porter.

I take a moment, use the excuse of kneeling to lace a Converse.
I see the girl who got off the train first.

A man and woman come to her.
She brings a hand to her mouth, then hugs her mother.
The girl raises her head to look at her dad over her mum’s shoulder.
The dad wipes a tear from his eye with a thick thumb, then envelops them both.

I finally have to look away.
I am intruding on something real, in the middle of the station, in the shadow of the Northern Line.
I cannot resist and look back again.

They start shuffling sideways, laughing now as they try to walk while still hugging.
Trying to travel, without letting go of each other.

I turn off the 78 just past Ocotillo. The paved road drops onto a rutted two track, covered in sand deeper than it looks.
The sudden lack of traction, a twitch of the front wheel surrendering to the dust, spurs ancient muscle memory from the old racing days.

I crouch over the seat now, keeping elbows up, eyes aimed ahead.
I am sixteen and at Saddleback on a RM125. I am bulletproof.

I come to the ditch way too fast, a gear too high to effect any change in momentum or direction.
Pull up the bars and try to off weigh the pegs, will the bike to fly.

But the big bike just plows across the eroded gutter and sticks the far side hard.
All inertia seized, I float for an instant above the bike, above the Earth.
Held there for the moment, then, and already wondering: what will this feel like tomorrow?

I am Sixty and by myself in the desert on an overweighed adventure bike.
I am closer to death than birth.

Was it only a decade ago I celebrated 50 with a ride through a different desert?
A chilly morning start in Barstow, a hilarious finish in Las Vegas, a night filled with countless rounds of drinks and stories of the ride we’d just survived.
Even then, jokes about being old men.

It’s a different world now. I am solo, my usual riding buddies staying within their own bubbles during this long and toxic holiday weekend. We’re separated by distance and disease, but I’ve decided to go ahead and take a long ride myself.

Funny, growing up.
You always pictured that certain people, oh say Baseball players, Presidents–your own doctor– were always older than you.

We’d trip out at the elder statesmen of punk, Lee Ving or Charlie Harper, carrying the torch at some crazy number. He’s already forty, for Christ sake!
But the graduating class just keeps getting grayer, and we’re catching up to them all brother.

Catching up? Hell, what of the Joeys, Ramone and Strummer?
I passed them long ago.
Tragically gone, but frozen in history with coolness forever intact, they’ll never suffer the indignities of decay.

I make the mature decision that I should not be out here, riding the trails by myself.
Back on the pavement and up toward the hills. I wave at a group of guys riding back toward the dirt on their nimble KTMs and Betas. They will soon be rolling around in that sand, falling off and getting back on so many times they lose count. They won’t see the true costs of their stunts until a later date, some distant future unfathomable to a kid on a barely street legal motocross bike.
I watch them in the rear view as they turn off the road and hit the dirt in a riot of dust, out toward the fun.

I gas it up the Borrego Salton Seaway, the luxury of pavement humming beneath me.
The dual clutch transmission automatically snicks into 5th, saving me even the tiny effort of nudging big toe under shifter.

We used to tout our nihilism with a sneer, so sure that we would never see thirty.
That life is meaningless, what better excuse to blackout drink nightly, tell the scheduling manager at Fedmart to fuckoff when the weekend shifts are posted.
We are seizing the day here, don’t ya see!

Of course the sad day comes to those of us unlucky enough to survive.
The taxes unpaid for the last three fiscal years, that pesky molar now insisting upon a canaled root- we learn that the future is upon us, and we are merely along for the ride.

I stop in Borrego Springs and celebrate my day with a bacon cheeseburger.
Hold the bacon, no cheese please.
And make that a turkey patty, fruit cup instead of the fries.
I pop a deflated blueberry into my mouth, its juice bitter as truth.

Each year another vice, another flavor, is sacrificed in the name of health.
Comfort is held ransom against another day of breathing.

I gave up the booze this past decade.
Started running, eat bundles of Kale like that shit is delicious.
Hey. I floss every fucking night.

The hygienist sits back on her stool after exploring my mouth with a little mirror, speechless.
Amazed that someone has actually listened to her scolding advice.

I start West on the 371, shadows spilling long now.
The curves bank back and forth in nice rhythm, and I think back to the last decade with the band.
It is amazing how much has changed, how much has not. The digital compression of our art, the instant and devaluing use of social media to release idea and music.
We’ve been busy, or at least give the appearance.
Released an album, an EP, various singles, a few videos.

We’ll tour again, maybe? But for now we keep the band alive with a post or video here or there. Tiny smoke signals to prove we still exist.

They drop with an artificial splash across the iPhones and flat screens, garnering a few blue thumbs and colored in hearts. We count the likes and loves, needy as 14 year old girls.
We have been reduced to Space Monkeys, pushing the correct buttons in sequence to be rewarded with a salty nut.

I stop into the Sunshine Summit market, ask the girl at the register if there’s a public restroom.
Her eyes don’t leave her phone as she points a pink tipped finger across the parking lot to a Porta Potty.

I am slowly becoming invisible, and I find a comfort in that.
If they knew the real secret, these kids, they would go screaming into the night.

That old dude sitting at the picnic table?
Just as confused as the 17 year old kid that sat on the edge of his bed, writing songs about how weird this is, all of it.
Turns out they don’t hand you the answer sheet after all.

It’s Dusk now, and getting cold.
I stop at a lookout off Highway 79 and get the heavy winter gloves out of a pannier.
Lights are starting to come on in the Coachella valley, sparkle like broken glass under streetlights.

I begin down the twisty road on the final leg, the next stop home.

I lean into the curves, slide my weight toward the apex of each turn, countersteer the front end to make the big bike obey and lean. It occurs to me I am tired, it will be so good to be still and warm.

Now LED headlights come up quick and close, a Subaru WRX kitted out with fog lights and other bolt-on rally nonsense.
I lose him easily enough in a couple turns, but the car hits it on the straights and brakes late, pulling in close again.

I see the driver’s face briefly illuminated in blue light as he glances at the smartphone in his lap. Young guy, texting. Of course.
He double clutches and revs it, sounds like a muted trumpet.

I know of a certain 25 year old who would downshift now and get ready to fuck with this guy.
Maybe the block and slow treatment, or toss him back a windshield snack of pulpy orange. Or more likely, race him down the hill.
He’s still in there, fights to fight. I can feel it.

Tomorrow I start the next decade.
The days and weeks will pass quicker now, speeding toward a focused dot on the horizon.
Will I revisit these GPS tracks on my 70th birthday, or will I be unable to swing a leg over the saddle?
Still here, or gone on unspeakable adventure?
Perhaps locked in an Alzheimer prison of the mind, forever more twelve years old and incontinent?

I swerve into the next turnout and slow, and let the car go by.

We got busted for sneaking 48 cans of Coors Banquet into the Cathay DeGrande one night.
We loaded through the front doors innocently enough, Dobbs nodding us in as we carried naked guitars in one hand, and in the other guitar cases heavy with Rocky Mountain Lagers.
We left the stage looking like a hoarder’s rumpus room, El Duce pantless and snoring beneath a pyramid of aluminum cans.
After that drunken night, we were searched for smuggled booze each time we played there.

Years later, when some of the larger and greedier venues allowed us through their gates, they’d check to make sure you weren’t sneaking merch in the Anvil cases.
Can’t have the band avoid count-in and the 20 percent cut they got out of the inflated T-shirt sales, now can we? Fuckers.

Post 9-11, load in at the Downtown Disney House of Blues became nothing less than a military exercise.
You had pass a thorough security check before they would lower the phallic bollards for entry.
Cheerless dogs would sniff at us not for pharmaceuticals, but explosives.
Mirrors on poles were shoved under the van to peek at its underside, a colonoscopy of the machinery to ensure we weren’t carriers of some terrorist cancer.

And so it goes, being in a band through the decades.
You learn to comply to the latest protocol, to submit to the latest safeguards.
The world thinks up new horrors, and the punk adapts and continues on, bouncing pinball-like against and off the latest obstacle, onward toward the flashing lights once again.

Bring us up to 2020, and on one muggy Saturday we queue up at check point to have our temperatures checked and recent medical history reviewed.
We point our smartphone dumbly at QR codes and wait for a 3 page questionaire to pop up. We have to think hard as we are asked if we have had contact with the infected:
Has a Zombie bitten you? Be truthful now….

Inside, the venue is impressive, not only for its production setup and gear, but for the medicinal cleanliness of the facilities. Arrows along the floor keep us wandering in a clockwise path through the warehouse, lest we actually confront another human face to face and breathe a shared droplet of disease.

We say hello to the usual Soto devotees, Greg Antista and 2 Bags, Jorge and Frank Agnew.
Efrem and the kids of BadCopx2.
We shout muffled hellos through fabric, extend elbows to bump.
It feels like a gig-almost.

Thankfully, the greenrooms are air-conditioned, clean if not a tad antiseptic.
I mean, what we would give to sink into those germ laden couches in the black dressing rooms we love!
The contact risk of scabies and crab just another charming risk in the name of RocknRoll!

But we are here for a good cause, to play the songs of our fallen brother Soto on the eve of his birthday. Cathy Mason has graciously allowed us to be part of the show, along with all these other people who miss the big fella so much.
Fittingly, the proceeds of the show will go towards Save Our Stages, an organization that hopes to have venues still there when this madness clears.

Good ol Joe Sib is there to act as emcee, his constant patter a comfort as the room is heavy with the absence of audience. In fact, the whole day is eerily calm and quiet.
We go up and do our song, searching the black lenses of the cameras for any sign of life, listening for the slightest response from the few stagehands scattered through the hall.

We send Steve’s song Everybody into the void, and it’s like tossing a valuable gem off a cliff just to hear its reassuring crash on a distant bottom.

The stage manager gives us the cut sign and we’re out as the show switches to a video feed of Kevin Seconds beaming his sweet song down from Sacramento.
And then it’s silent once again, masks are replaced over our smiles.
We roll up the guitar cords, and for once they are not filthy, sticky with spilled beer.
No one comes up to the stage and asks for a setlist or pick, no one comes by to tell us that we really sucked tonight.
I miss that.

I stare into the camera’s dead lens, at my image inverted and black, wondering at the new digital distance between this and the audience.
Is this how it will be, if at least for a while?

Will the music and visceral beat, the sweat and smell be reduced to a binary sentence of 1s and 0s, and fed to the screens of people so far away?

Greg and the fellas come out to set up for their turn to wade in the stream, but I stay on stage a moment longer.
It’s been too long since I’ve stood on one.

The WebX meeting drones on, Shelia from HR outlining the third phase protocol of facilitiy reopening, once phase two has cleared, pending the go ahead from the individual team leaders but not until after…..when you catch yourself drifting off with a snort of a snore.

You look longingly at the couch, just a meter away.
Ah, to stretch out, mid day and- if even just for a moment- slumber.

And so a new generation has discovered the joy that musicians, toddlers and other day drinkers have known about all along: the nap.

Oh, you’ve been a good sport, all this work from home stuff.
Sitting through meaningless PowerPoint presentations and corny Zoom birthday parties for Jason down in Contracts.
That you are only wearing pajama tops and terrycloth skorts is small consolation as the day reaches 2pm, and you suddenly catch your head slipping off its axis, nodding like a novelty sippy bird.
But you resist, pop another RedBull. Go to sleep during the day, me?

What ya need is a nap.

Oh, I’m not talking about those sweaty 90 minute affairs that wreck your Saturday.
Where you bolt upright, clammy from the vivid nightmares that haunt deep daytime sleep.

See, all ya need is 25 good minutes of shut eye, a quick reset of the day.
What can be more luxurious than to take a break mid day, to simply give ourselves a moment of graceful rest.
Shut ourselves out of the scary clatter, disconnect from the insane digital trash we have injected into our every moment of consciousness.
We draw the blinds, lay down in a room darkened and cool.
And shut our eyes.

That’s the ticket.

Kindergarten, do they still nap?
That was a charming and somewhat creepy tradition we could probably not get away with today.
A roomful of toddlers strewn across the floor, faces pressed into the synthetic toxicity of a filthy rug, the unsupervised supervision of a single adult watching over 25 unconscious minors.

The Asian community has long seen the value of laying head down on desk.
No shame here, people. More like plugging in the phone for a bit, letting the little flashing lighting bolt of sleep recharge the inner lithium.

The closet alcoholic goes out to his van at lunch, a cheerful little respite after nipping off a half pint of Canadian Club all morning. He’s back at the desk at 1pm bright as a nickel, ready to tackle those spreadsheets until it’s time for Happy Hour at El Torito.

Passed Out. Napping.–who’s to say? It’s all semantics officer.
And besides the keys weren’t even in the ignition.

If that’s the case, Kimm and I have been guilty of only catnaps at 3am, holding up the line at Del Taco.

But traveling with an aging punk band, oh baby.
That’s where naps are not only beloved, but necessary as Wet Ones and backstage WiFi passwords to the touring musician.
Fuck soundcheck, brother.
We’ll be back at the Quality Inn, riding those semen paisleyed comforters like champs, blissfully asleep until downbeat.

On those rare occasions we all have to share a day room or perhaps an upstairs apartment above the venue in Europe, it is a race to see who goes down for the nap first. The loser of this contest is usually cheated out of his nap, subjected to the symphony of syncopated snoring and farting that soon fills the room.

It is an enviable talent to be able to shut down instantly, like a machine.
Anthony of course has been known to fall asleep mid sentence, deep into REM before the flight attendant has even finished holding the oxygen mask in front of her face.
In the van, Ant can only be counted on for just a brief conscious moment: getting his place in the back of the van before making a canine circle of the best seat and immediately drifting into slumber.
Bunk mate Nick just looks over at him, envious, and silently pulls out the Bose noise cancelling headphones in preparation for the hurricane of snoring that will soon flood his vicinity.

Back when the band was in its hard drinking days, we’d pull into town and meet the locals for a jolly lunch.
Our reputation precedes us, and old friends have been dying to show us what’s new in town.
The decent Churrascaria , or maybe that bar with the good jukebox–hell, they persuaded the owner to open early, just for us.

And what’s this? Hah! An actual beer bong? You guys!

In the guise of good humor, we’d ingest everything put in front of us.
Waddle through a hilarious soundcheck and then its bed time.
How many times have nervous promoters called the agent back home, the support band blasting away in the background, wondering just where the hell we were.

Up and back into moldy clothes, back into the van and back to the venue with the second hangover of the day.
A couple shots of Jaeger to get back in the groove, play the gig and then drink enough to get back to sleep, ready to do it again, then again.
Good times.

A bit more sleep. I propose it’s what we’ve all been yearning for.
We have become discontent, ready to shout ourselves hoarse over natural difference of opinion.
I hear you.
We’re all scared, we’re all pissed.

What we have become, is cranky.

And what do we say to all cranky children, hmmm?
Somebody needs a nap!

I walked upstairs to the backstage, not in a great mood.
It had been a long miserable travel day to Kiel, 8 hours on an Autobahn that slowed to a crawl every 80 kilometers due to construction.
The old soda delivery van we traveled in had no air conditioning, a single rear window.
We took turns at the window seat to stare out at the baking sunflowers and the neon vested roadworkers who would slow us down yet again.

We finally got to the club and loaded in, too late for a soundcheck.
We all wandered off in different directions, finally free of being in a space the size of a refrigerator box with four other oversized men.
We would play this gig, load up again and get a couple hours on the road toward Berlin before sleeping somewhere.
It was one of those nights when you have to ask yourself just why, exactly, are you are doing this.

I walked into the dresssing room and there sat Ken at the catering table, picking through the fatty meats and sweating cheeses.
He looked up, registered my dark mood, then started to plaster himself with slices of deli.

Mike, he says. It’s Good-ah to see you!
And here he points at to himself.
Gouda—eh? You get it?

Fuckin Chi.
Anything for a laugh.

We first met Chi way back.
Summer of 1983 we cut back West through Canada.

A gig in Toronto with Youth Brigade then meeting up with our old pals in Stretchmarks, Winnipeg.
We set off toward Edmonton with hangovers, those hardy Canadiens feeding us Extra Old Stock malt liquors all night for their wicked amusement.

Ken was young then, great fucking hair.
We had the half Asian thing in common, and chatted about that a bit.

I remember the night after the gig he came and hung out with us as we did our wash at some Edmonton laundromat, took us to a cheap place he knew for lunch.
He sat in the blue and white while we waited for the dry cycle to finish, thumbing through Jay’s pro wrestling magazines. I believe he wanted to be in the van when we shut the doors.
Ready to go on to Vancouver, onto somewhere, anywhere, more exciting than another dull weeknight in a prairie town.
He was a kid to us, but totally into the music and lifestyle we seemed to be only taking half seriously in comparison,

For when he took to the stage, it was energy unleashed.
You’ve seen the photos, Chi rarely with two feet planted upon the stage. It was as if laws of gravity didn’t apply to him.
It was a meter above the Earth that he was more comfortable, singing those pun driven lyrics with a surprisingly clear tenor.

We caught up a few other times through the years, when they would come through LA, SNFU rightfully eclipsing our band in popularity.

2009 Düsseldorf we shared a bill once again.
A grand night, Adolescents and The Dickies, DOA, SNFU and us.
I walked backstage and said my hellos, Joey Shithead eating some backstage pasta, Anthony and Soto chatting over the bar.
I saw Ken, and I think it was the first time I encountered him in the Mr. Pig persona.

He came right over and gave me a sweaty hug.

I held him at arms length.
Jesus, kid, I said. What the hell happened to you?

And indeed, this last decade, he did look rough.
The drugs and mental demons seeming to pull ahead of him.

Not that it came as a surprise, the social media posts seem to all start off with, before repeating the news of his passing.
And that’s the fucking heartbreaker, right there.

He flipped his dentures over in his mouth and cackled, took off into the club.

It was the usual clusterfuck after the gig, all the bands loading up in the darkness, drum hardware and amp heads slotted Tetris-like into the back of Sprinter vans.
Tour routes compared, we’d see some of these guys in a few days for another gig, probably catch up with everyone again at Rebellion.

I found Chi wandering around, said goodbye.
He laughed again, another damp hug, then went past me and fell to his knees behind DOA’s tour van.
He pointed at the towing ball mounted beneath the bumper and laughed, then actually put his mouth around the filthy thing.
Look Mike, I’m sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch!

Fuckin’ guy,
Anything for a laugh.