Otha

I knew a guy who couldn't stop smiling. Seriously. He couldn't not smile. It's like his lips were permanently twisted upward in this sort-a-grin. It made everyone think that he was laughing about something, or just being nice. Everyone liked him because, well, how could you not like someone who was smiling all the time? There was something wrong with him.

His name was Otha and we met for the first time at the Foxhead. I'd just finished playing a show at the Mill and wandered over with W and Z. They started playing a game of pool and then this guy in slacks and a button-up, black shirt walked over to me saying that he'd seen the show and liked it.

"So, you're Pete Doherty," he said.

"I'm not that Pete Doherty," I snapped. Fuck that guy.

"I didn't think you were," he said. That's when I noticed he was smiling. He probably was smiling before I noticed, too, but I didn't notice. So, maybe he wasn't. I'll never know, just like pretty much everything else.

"I'm Otha."

"What the hell kind of name is Otha?"

"It's my name."

Then I smiled. "Catch-22," I said and didn't expect him to get the joke, but maybe he did because, well, he was still smiling. Then S walked up to me.

"I didn't know you were in town?" S said. He was wearing his tattered old brown leather jacket and looked ill.

"You never know I'm in town!" I said. And it's true, he never does.

"Because you're never in town," he muttered.

"If you just checked the damn website..."

"Or you could just fucking call me."

"Should I call you every time?" S is needy. He misses people. I sometimes think that he doesn't realize the world works without him.

"It'd be nice and infrequent. You're never in town. Did you just play a show?"

"Yeah, at the Mill."

"What's your band's name now?"

"Johnnie Licking Omar."

"You're serious?" Then he noticed Otha. I chuckled when he took a step back. "Oh, hi," he said.

S invited us back to the house around the corner. There was a party, he said, and it would be fun. So, after the drink, we all walked over, across the street, through Dirty John's parking lot and to the house on the corner. Otha followed. I wasn't surprised and, since S didn't object, didn't mind.

"So, what do you do?" Otha asked S.

"What do I do?" S asked, looking at him strangely. He was always doing that, looking at people strangely. "I breathe? I walk? I'm a student. I don't do much. What do you do?"

"I'm a traveler."

"A traveler?"

"I'm a travel writer."

That got S's attention. "A travel writer. What are you doing in Iowa City?" he asked.

"You repeat people a lot. And I'm just passing through."

"That's why everyone's in Iowa," S muttered. "But, seriously."

"I'm crashing with a friend. This is supposed to be a great party school and I wanted to see it."

The party was a gathering of about ten of S's friends. There was pizza baking in the oven and we walked in just as Waking Life was winding down. I knew some of the people there, they were acquaintances, people that I would talk to on the street. The place looked like every Iowa City apartment I had ever seen: old, off-white plaster, filled with character and scars from previous student crashers.

After the movie finished we all got drinks from the kitchen, PBR, and went out to the iron fire escape to smoke. All ten of us. S wondered what would happen if it fell and I asked him what would happen? Two of S's friends were conversing in French. They were majoring and had just returned from a year abroad. Otha joined in the conversation and I lost them for a while.

A few minutes later, one of the French majors switched over to English. "What's that phrase in French for the desire to jump off a cliff when you're standing at the edge?"

"L'appel du vide," said the other. "I love that they have a phrase for that."

"The French are all drama queens," Otha said.

The first French major turned to him, "Oh, you're English is excellent."

"Well, I'm glad," he said. "because that's my first language."

"But, you're French," said the second.

"No, I'm American."

"You're fucking with us," said the second. "You just talked about going to school in Lyon."

"I did. But I'm American."

"You're accent is great," continued the second, "but you don't have to pretend."

"No, seriously, I'm American. Look, I have a driver's license."

They argued for about ten minutes until finally the two French majors agreed that he must be American. The party lasted for hours after that. We talked about music and hipsters, all of them agreeing that, no, they couldn't be hipsters.

At the end of the night, as everyone was leaving, Otha and I walked down the stairs together. "Hey," he said over his shoulder, "you need a keyboardist?"

"What?" I said.

"For Johnnie Licking Omar?"

"Yeah, sure. But aren't you leaving town, like, tomorrow?"

"Nah, I'm staying for a bit."

He was still smiling like he was just remembering a joke. "So," I said. "Are you really American?"

"No. And I'm not French either." He waved and walked off. And that's how Otha joined the band.

Julia Indelicate Will Ruin Your Life

K introduced me to the Indelicates a few months before we found out they would be in town.  K and I had just gotten back on speaking terms and decided to go.  We arrived about forty-five minutes early for fear that we'd have to fight for space and found the bar, the Swamp, deserted except for us.  It was muggy, hot and miserable inside (they don't have AC in Germany) the tiny bar and so we ordered gin and tonics as a folk remedy.  Too soon it was packed and even more unbearable.

The opening bands played their sets.  The first, the No Goes, were tolerable and the second, Lily Rae, commented to the crowd: "This is such a pleasant change from England.  You're all so nice to me.  Maybe it's just because you can all smoke inside here."

Then the headliners took the stage.  The Indelicates are a brother and sister duo, British band; their names really are Simon and Julia Indelicate.  If we're talking genres, you'd definitely throw them in with the indie lot.  Ironically, almost all of their songs are tongue-in-cheek references to indie music and culture, the best example (and the one that made them famous) is "Waitingfor Pete Doherty To Die" ("cut the words into your chest - bleed for days - stumble home in a haze... someone come and tap this pain - I haven't cried since Kurt Cobain...").

Anyway, the concert was amazing and they played K and my favorite songs.  The only downside was that Julia was losing her voice and so her solos occasionally fell into squeaks.  Julia kept speaking to the crowd in German, which K thought was adorable.

Afterwards the bar emptied out pretty quickly.  K and I asked for a picture with the band.  While we waited I talked to Lily.

She was selling albums, Vinyls oddly enough.  "Yeah," she said, "My distributor said I could either use CDs or Vinyl and I thought 'Vinyl!  That's classy.' And then I realized no one has record players anymore..."

I didn't have a record player, but bought an album anyway and gave her what I thought was a ten, double the price, as a kind gesture.  The next morning I looked in my wallet and realized that I'd accidentally given her a fifty, which explains the astonishment and reluctance in her acceptance.  She had better become the next Ani Difranco so this album pays for itself later.

"What about you?" she asked me.  "Are you a musician?"

"No.  I'm musically impaired."

"What do you do?"

"I like to pretend that I'm a writer."

"If you say it that way that's a good sign you're legit."

Several drinks and conversations later, the band was packing up equipment to go to Stuttgart for tomorrow's performance.  K slipped off to chat with Lily and one of the other band members, Al.  Julia sat down next to me.

"I'm exhausted.  Mind if I sit here?" she asked.

"Not at all.  I was impressed that you and Simon kept speaking to the crowd in German."

"I can speak German.  Where are you from?"

"The States.  Sorry."

"Don't apologize."

"I've just become accustomed to saying 'America - sorry.'"

"Hey, I love America.  I want my fucking green card."

We chatted a bit longer and I asked her about how they got started as a band.  "Well I was in this girl band while Simon was still in school.  We both have masters degrees, actually.  Anyway, he got started in poetry slams -- we both did, really, but Simon ruled the stage.  We decided to get together and write songs and ended up writing 'Waiting for Pete Doherty to Die' which got us noticed by Neil Gaiman.  Do you know Neil Gaiman?"

"I love Neil Gaiman!" I shouted, nearly falling on the floor.

"You know he's going out with Amanda Palmer?  Well, anyway, long story short, people noticed us, we wrote and album and here we are."

Okay, that's the gist of it, but I was very drunk by that time and so the conversation is a bit muddled.  And I thought it was funny talking to a musician I adored and then realizing she reminded me of a lot of people I have known: talkers.  Granted, she's an entertaining talker, but I realized that I was only making up about a quarter of our conversation.

Very soon the band was on the road.  As we walked back, K said, "You were hitting on Julia Indelicate."

"I was not."

"Yeah you were.  Al, Lily and I were watching the whole time.  They agreed."

"I was not hitting on Julia Indelicate."

"Oh, come on," K teased.  "Let's see, thirty-year old traveling poet-musician.  She's your type."

"Oh what is this?"

"She isn't even that pretty."

"She is too."

K glared at me. "You were hitting on Julia Indelicate!" she said and then the evening went downhill. And just like that, weeks and patient conversation came undone, because of an indie, British musician. Pete Doherty would have been proud.

Waiting for Pete Doherty

When Peter Doherty (no relation to the Libertine's drunken, reckless front man) came back to Iowa it was the end of Autumn.  He didn't tell anyone and so I was shocked when I saw him at the corner of Washington and Linn, on his way to Record Collector.  He saw me first and shouted "Sam!"  I didn't recognize him immediately because he was wearing slacks and a baby-blue dress shirt.  His hair was cut and he was wearing glasses.  I didn't know he could exist without a Ragstock shell of tattered jeans and second-hand leather.

He walked across the street and shook my hand.  "It's me, Pete," he said, accustomed to reminding everyone who he was.  After the Apologies, we promised to get together for coffee, or a drink, or whatever.

Months passed, as these things usually go, and we didn't see or hear from each other until close to a year later, last week.  On a whim, I went for a walk up to the Hilltop Lounge on a warm night.  An ex-roommate of mine said that a writer in Glimmer Train had mentioned it as an Inspiration for some story.  He saw, on the men's bathroom wall, "Rick is back in town," and a story was born.  Pretty tenuous, if you ask me.  But, in Iowa City, there probably isn't a bar that doesn't have the distinction of being an inspiration for some story or another, even Brothers.

Anyway, Pete Doherty was there.  He was playing pool, sleeves of his Blood Red shirt rolled up, with some older guy who looked a little like and talked a little like Charles Bukowski.  I only heard him mutter incoherently and punctuate everything with "Fuck."

"Said we'd get together," Pete said when the game was done.

We walked over to a table with our pint glasses and sat down.  It was surprising nothing broke from mere proximity to the man.  The Hilltop Lounge is a Grungy bar that is far bigger on the inside than it appears outside.  I've never seen more than a dozen people there though.  Thirty year old Budweiser posters or girls in bikinis perpetually smile at the patrons, though I find this association somehow Hysterically perverse.

Something you should know about Pete Doherty: in high school we used to work together at a pizza lounge in Ames and he was That Coworker, the guy who comes in ten minutes late every day because of some other adventure and no one wants to get rid of him because he's not bad at his job and life would be infinitely less interesting without him.  I Loathed him.  His Life was Easy and he could get away with anything.  He was a musician, he drank, he smoked, he hung out with college kids, he had a new girlfriend every week (which seemed mathematically impossible, considering the size of my school) and he had that laid-back the-world-is-ending-and-I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude.  But, I was This Guy to That Coworker, because I kind of worshipped him.

It wasn't until college that we hung out outside of work and I discovered what kind of world he lived in.  He was everything I imagined him to be, which was awful for him because people assumed he was Someone he wasn't.  We accidentally ended up at the same parties and while he sat in the corner playing his guitar sometimes I'd hear the opening lines of some Punk-ish song of his own design and sometimes I'd hear him shout at whatever girl, "I'm not Pete-fucking-Doherty!  I'm from Chicago!"  The more our paths crossed, the more often I heard him screaming the Denials and Differences.  We probably had half a dozen brief conversations in all that time and still, somehow, he remembered me.

Yes, I was surreal sitting with him at the Hilltop Lounge because I think both of us realized at the same time we didn't really have anything to talk about.  That didn't stop us from Trying, though.

"So, what are you doing in town?" I asked.

"Working for ACT, actually," he said.  "I fact-check.  It's more interesting than it sounds."

I got the feeling he didn't want to explain so I didn't ask.  Instead I said, "Do you still play music?"

"Of course," he said.  "I have a band.  We're playing at Gabe's this Saturday.  You should come out."

"I work.  Sorry."

We talked for a long time about Inanities and Shit I'm certain neither one of us really cared about.  It was just a way of passing the time.  Suddenly another round appeared and I'm not sure who bought it, only that we were still drinking and desperately trying to Make conversation.

Finally I asked him, "Why did you come back here?"

He responded almost immediately.  "Because I found a job."

"You were just looking for a job?"  This pragmatic explanation coming from the lips of Pete Doherty was both absurd and disappointing to me.

"Weren't you?"

I shrugged.

He said, "You write, you read, you serve coffee, you sell books.  What's wrong with that?"

And that was a palpable hit.  I heard myself repeating, "What's wrong with that…?"

"Yes," he said.  "It's not all that hard to get what you want."

"You want to live in Iowa City, fact-checking ACT questions?"

"So what if I do?" he demanded.  "I'll be busy for life," he said, as if staying busy were Everything.

It was strange to ask Pete Doherty, "Is staying busy all you care about?"

"Of course not," he said.  "No."

Suddenly, on the radio, we heard The Indelicates moaning, "Waiting for Pete Dogherty to Die."  I didn't say anything out of respect for Pete Doherty's quiet wrath.  When the song ended he said, "Christ, I hate that guy."

"People still ask you if you're the real Pete Doherty?" I joked.

He gave me a cold look.  "People still ask you if you're the real Sam Ferree?"

"No," I laughed and thought about it a little more.  "No.  No one ever has, actually."

We had another round and then walked back through the Iowa City graveyard, stumbling over the freshly green grass and navigating around head stones. When we were almost through, he fell on his back in his business casual out fit and said, "I'm an Ares.  What about you?"

"I'm an Ares, too," I said.

"Doesn't suit you."

"Doesn't suit you either."

He laughed.  "Let's make up new constellations."

So we lay on our backs, tracing out new designs in the stars from the graveyard.  We thought about new, wacky, worthless, and wrong horoscopes until dawn.  Before we left, he stopped by the Black Angel to kiss her on the lips.  "They say I'll die seven days later," he mumbled, grinning.

It's been seven days.  I'm waiting on the call.