The Richard Stein Bible is more like a guide to being alive than it is the story of his life. It doesn’t seem like his story at all, actually, because he wrote it in the third person, which is one reason why I decided to read his book instead of all the other histories. It is next to impossible to read every history book in the cemetery, not to mention it’s not worth reading them all since many people live very drome lifestyles. So I had to judge the whole book on reading the first paragraph, hoping it would be an interesting attention-grabber.
Richard Stein’s first paragraph was:
“The main thing that keeps the gun away from your head is thirteen hundred bottles of bourbon, eight hundred bottles of vodka, three hundred bottles of gin, two thousand bottles of rum, six cups of everclear, and four hundred twenty-two bottles of southern comfort during the course of a lifetime; but any more than that and you’ll be considered an alcoholic. Richard Stein was considered an alcoholic.”
Nan is in the round-a-go crowd with a chunky blue-haired woman named Liz, who says she has sex with small mammals. They are at a table, sitting on milk crates, sitting with two Harvey Wallbangers and two walrus-shaped skinhead guys who are trying to take both girls home with them, thinking their red suspenders are attractive enough to surpass walrus-shaped features.
“Your friends are pretty Mr. T, Nan,” Liz says, letting one of the skinheads’ hands reach around her dimpled thigh. “But I was expecting another punk band.”
Nan punches the zit-bearded skinhead, just for looking at her. “Yeah, they suck, but they’d rather have everyone hate them. I think that’s the point of being in a noise band.”
Zit Beard doesn’t leave, finding Nan’s violent reactions arousing. He snuggles her shoulder and she punches him in his tits. A smile cats up on his BIG red face, and he does it again, whisper-caressing her stomach this time — not because he wants to turn her on, but because he wants her to punch him again, hopefully harder. She elbows him in the neck. Very stimulating.
“Have you seen Gin lately, Liz?” Nan asks, elbowing Zit Beard once more for a diversion, accepting the fact that administering pain to someone other than herself is a rather enjoyable performance.
But Liz finds the act of allowing a blubber-filled shirtless skinhead rub his hand all over the insides of her clothes a more enjoyable performance. She forgets to reply to Nan’s question among all the fat-sweaty sensuality. Instead, she asks another question: “When do you want me to return that Hertzan Chimera book? I haven’t finished it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to.”
“What about Gin?” Nan asks.
“What?”
“Gin. Have you seen him?”
“I think he went on a beer run with Lenny and the guy from the first band.”
“Thanks.” Nan gets up, kicking Zit Beard on the way, and scuffling into a round-a-go crowd.
I appear on stage — swirl-swirl goes the crowd and the color-blooming makes my eyes sizzle — with my cello and my T-shirt that reads Battlestar Galactica 4 Life. I play a short slimy cello solo and then the song curdles into a blur of discord before it ends.
The crowd does not seem to notice we are here.
Vodka leaps from the toilet, stampers onto the stage, into our faces. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO MY BAGPIPE SOLO AFTER THE CELLO INTRO,” he screams, though his scream is non-exclamatory because of his anti-emotional attitude. He shoves Christian, thrashes the sheet metal, and rammer-runs through the warehouse, but his movements still seem robot-like.
The crowd doesn’t seem to notice Vodka’s outrage.
“This is our last song,” Christian says to the crowd. “It’s called The Greatest American Hero Theme Song.”
We play some gak-shrilling noises and squeal, but it sounds nothing like the original theme song. Before the music ends, we are kicked off of our own stage by a band of five skinheads. The singer (Zit Beard) takes the mic from Christian, pushing him into the crowd who beat him up cruel. Zit Beard spits on the crowd and everyone cheers.
In other words: ZIT BEARD = PUNK.
“We’re the Oi!s,” says Zit Beard. “Our first song is about smashing capitalism and breaking fascism and stomping religion and destroying all the governments of the world. It’s called PUNK ROCK!”
This is what he sings:
“PUNK ROCK! PUNK ROCK! OI! OI! OI!”
The punk kids are into songs like this. They cheer and jump and punch each other until the song ends half a minute later.
“Thanks,” he says. “Our next song is called ANARCHY!”
Nan gets herself outside to find Gin, but there is no Gin. She meets someone named Lenny instead, scurries over to him, stepping over a flattened little Abraham Lincoln hat.
She calls, “Lenny!”
He mopes around, all drunk and finished, was puking in the back lot, wiping some yellow off his chin. Lenny is a thin little guy, antsy stickman, so it didn’t take much beer to make him vomity drunk. He wears old lady glasses and a shirt that says, Kiss me, I’m Yugoslavian.
“Where’s Gin?” she asks him. “Liz said he went with you.”
“Oh yeah,” his voice cracks in a drunken sort of way, “Gin told me to tell you he’ll be at Stag’s place. I would’ve gone with them, but they wanted to stop off at Satan Burger, and… I’m Vegan Hardcore you know.”
Her face crimps up all red, squeezing her fists. “That cunt is dead. I told him not to go anywhere without telling me.”
Lenny shakes his head at Nan for acting the tough guy and walks away. “Well, I should get going then.”
“Lenny,” she stops him with her awkward voice, “You have a truck, don’t you?”
He turns back around, “Look, Nan, it’s not that I don’t want to take you…”
She grabs him by the wrist and drag-pulls him toward his truck. “Come on. We still might be able to catch him at Satan Burger if we hurry.”
Nan has many-many problems besides her tough-guy-dominating-Gin routine. She’s also manic-depressive, she’s missing half of her right lung, she’s an insomniac, and she’s always having problems with her sexual identity (An abusive father and three older brothers raised her as a boy). This kind of upbringing could have turned her into a lesbian, but since she is disgusted enough just being a woman, there’s not even the slightest chance that she would get the desire to have sex with one.
Richard Stein said that the only thing children need to do to keep the guns away from their heads is to have pets of their very own. A dog or a cat or a gerbil or even a goldfish would suffice, keeping their fragile little minds on the pets instead of on the nasty juices that society likes to spit at them. Pets may be just small creatures to adults, but they’re gifts of good mental health to the kids. Some children are allergic to animals, though, and tend to avoid owning them; and not owning an animal as a child ruins the perfect cure for keeping the gun away from the head once adulthood arrives. This sometimes results in what people call a bad childhood, and what a bad childhood does is make a person bitter.
Bitteris what we call Nan.
The only pet Nan ever had was a small black duck. She named it Chico and one time her father decided it was food and ate it. He was drunk and thought it would be a funny way to show off to his hairy shirtless friends.
The worst of Nan’s problems had nothing to do with visualizing poor Chico digesting inside of her spiteful father’s beerbelly. Actually, the worst of her problems had nothing to do with her father at all.