https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DT6ZMKXQ/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

I really wanted to write about this story "Trojan Whores Hate You Back" from Eric Puchner's collection "Last Days on Earth."

You see that's the name of the band, punks who are reconnecting to go on the road decades later. The lead singer Alistair says he's doing it for his buddy Glenn who just got out of rehab and is destitute. They're driving to the final show of their tour at the Wiltern. Yes, they have an audience, but they've never heard a song of theirs on the radio until the drive down.

The day before the show Alistair decides to drive with Glenn back to Claremont, where they grew up, shared the same sensibility, became infatuated with the music and started to make it. But as they're driving around, as Alistair is pointing out how the old landmarks have been replaced with new ones, Glenn doesn't react. And then Alistair realizes although they were buddies once, their lives have deviated, they're no longer on the same page.

As for the gig at the Wiltern... The venue is not sold out, but it's full enough, it's a triumph, which Glenn celebrates by hitting the bottle. And as they're standing there outside, they see a kid with a blue mohawk standing up through the sunroof of a Prius while the radio blasts a song with the lyric "F*ck you and your Hampton house/I'll f*ck your Hampton spouse/Come on her Hampton blouse/And in her Hampton mouth." To quote the book, "It made Trojan Whores look like the Wiggles."

If you're fiftysomething are you truly a dangerous punk? Hasn't that ship sailed? Sure, people might want to come and see you, to relive the era, but what about you and your life?

Alistair cannot only not relate to Glenn, but the other two members of the band. They're all on different pages. This is not living your life for rock and roll, this is being lost.

They go on TV for the exposure and the young host makes fun of them.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING HERE?

Then Alistair calls his wife up in San Francisco, who's about to break up with him after nearly two decades together. She just can't handle the adolescent behavior anymore. She wants to be an adult, she IS an adult!

And all this made me think of real life. When I go to the show and I see the old guys with their long hair and their black leather motorcycle jackets. I mean really? Who are you kidding? I laugh inside while my brain says GROW UP!

And then there are those who live to see the dinosaurs, again and again and again. Guys on stage...and it's almost always guys, oftentimes with plastic surgery and wigs, to give you the illusion that they're the same as they were in their twenties, but they're not. They're playing your favorites of yore, they're veritable jukeboxes, there's money in it, but it's positively soul-crushing. And being on the road at twenty five is one thing, after fifty? To say it's a slog is charitable.

So what's a poor boy to do?

Most don't want to look at themselves. They just go on living blindly. Like in that trade publication that's the same today as it was back in the eighties, the only thing that's changed is the names of the bands. How can you live in such denial?

As for the new acts... They're mostly for young people. But it's not like you can trade your allegiance. Because there's rarely anything there. They're famous, but so were those acts before the Beatles.

It's a conundrum. And it all became clear reading "Trojan Whores Hate You Back." That's why you read fiction, to illuminate life.

Now "Last Days on Earth" is comprised of previously printed stories, so I thought I could find it online and you could see for yourself, but it's not available anywhere.

But I haven't been able to get the story out of my head.

Next time "Culpability."


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