Regret had been seeping in as we progressed deeper into the drive, setting up in different regions of the brain and injecting its poison into all of my thoughts. Although it had been at my insistence, upon reflection I felt that ‘eating something American’ hadn’t been as necessary as I’d implied and that we could’ve done without the sit-down Waffle House breakfast. As my eyes darted back and forth between the road and the incessant escalation of digits on the dashboard clock, going several miles off the highway to hit the thrift store in Delaware also began to seem like a completely frivolous venture. I received minor consolation from knowing that the clock ran six minutes fast, but it would need to be still much farther ahead than that for us to make this flight. Time had gotten away and we were now dangerously behind schedule.
As my attitude veered increasingly towards pessimism and as the last strands of hope began to slip through my fingers, just before the towel was thrown in and defeat admitted, a rare inner shift known only to occur in particularly dire situations took place. My internal cobwebs parted so-to-speak to reveal an ordinarily concealed stockpile of pure, undiluted, full-strength focus to which I was now being granted access. Hesitant to indulge in such a precious and potentially limited resource for fear of its premature depletion, I took a moment to envision our immediate futures if we were in fact to miss the plane. Not seeing anything I liked, it was concluded that our current situation did indeed warrant a dip into the old supply.
Less crucial functions went into sleep-mode as the potent concentration was conjured forth and began to take hold. Distractions were blacked out, the regret was pushed aside, and my entire purpose became to successfully complete the mission of arriving at the airport in time. ‘Do or die’ driving techniques that should only be attempted when operating at this heightened level of clarity were employed, executed with skill and precision. To the untrained eye my maneuvers might have seemed reckless as I wove at high speeds through the lanes of the Belt Parkway towards JFK, but I was locked in, seeing the road from above, calculating four or five moves ahead, at one with the flow.
We made it to the check-in desk with moments to spare and were escorted through security in the fast-track lane, pointed in the direction of our gate, and told to ‘run’. Cursing the capitalistic deviant whose perverse mind thought to place a curvy aisled shopping mall before the gates, we stumbled through the duty-free shop in a lawless display of slapstick mayhem, struggling with our belts, coats, and luggage while attempting to maintain a healthy jog. The doors to the Brussels Airlines jet were closed directly behind us as we boarded and we sighed with deep relief, plunking down into our seats and taking off on a mostly empty flight.
Some bands or artists at a certain point in their career find that they might benefit from working with a manager, someone who can help out with the big decisions and maybe open a few new doors. Form A Log was not one of these bands, but we did have someone on our payroll (in an unpaid position) who acted as our ‘advisor’. His name was Kevin Esposito and although he hadn’t exactly applied for the role, he fit into it comfortably. When we as a band would reach an impasse — be it, should we get gas now or let the tank get down into the red, or should we get coffees in town before we hit the road or stop along the way — a call would be placed to Kevin who would give thoughtful consideration to our predicament before delivering his almost always sensible answer.
Shortly after I had first received news of The Log’s invitation to the Kraak Festival (where we were now headed) my phone began to buzz as a call from Mr. Esposito came in.
“Fuckin’…. heard you guys are going to Belgium.”, he said. I couldn’t tell if it was the distortion in our connection or not, because even though his Long Island accent and Italian-American upbringing came across crystal clear, something else about the way he spoke was different. His usual boisterous straight-shooting manner was subdued and I thought I could detect a wavering tinge of uncertainty.
“I was thinking, you know…fuckin’…maybe I’d come along.” He paused. “So I can advise.”
His voice reverted to its usual state of joviality after I expressed my approval of the idea and he confessed that he’d already purchased his plane tickets. He arrived in Brussels about an hour after we did, having come in on a separate flight, and we all got on a train to Antwerp from there.
We spent a few days just hanging out at Johann and Hannah’s house before getting the actual tour started, beginning first in Amsterdam and then heading to the town of Aalst where the festival was being held. The car we had borrowed was a boxy European model I couldn’t readily identify, larger than average, but still not an accommodating size for the roll call of our crew which — with Johann, Hannah, and Jonathan, plus The Log (Noah, Rick, and myself) and Kevin — ran seven deep. We managed it somehow though and had a great time at the festival, spending the night split up between two rooms in a charming old hotel in the center of town.
The following morning brought with it the usual haze one might expect to follow a rather celebratory evening, and it was due to this impairment that I had trouble processing the scene through which we walked on our way back to the venue. Local shopkeepers and residents were busy nailing plywood over their windows at a determined pace, and conflicting with the lively atmosphere of the night before the town now had an ominous feel of impending danger. Something either had just happened or was about to and as I scanned the area in search of clues, Jonathan, who was walking beside me, received an incoming call.
“Did I move the car?” I heard Hannah ask him this first, her voice squelching out through the tinny speaker of the phone before he repeated the question back to her, struggling to get the gist of the conversation.
“There is a carnival where the car was?”, he continued to echo back the information he was receiving as it failed to sink in, deflected by the forcefield of hangover which stunted his acuity. The issue was presented in perfectly clear terms when we arrived back at the Netwerk venue to find the entire row of cars which had been parked out front replaced by a series of stalls which were readying themselves for the sale of various drinks and snacks. I hadn’t recalled it being mentioned even in passing the night before, but today was apparently when the Aalst Carnival began, a controversial three day event (which has since had its UNESCO designation revoked due to accusations of bigotry) attracting tens of thousands of spectators into the town for an exuberant and subversive display of costumed revelry. Our car and all the others had been towed during the night and were now in police impound.
Leaving the rest of the crew to relax inside with a coffee, Jonathan and I hiked our way back through town towards the police station, watching as storefronts and windows continued to be sealed for protection and barricades put in place. A large gathering of suddenly car-less people had amassed themselves in the lobby of the station (including a group of Germans we had met at the festival the night before) and waited there impatiently for news on their vehicles. I curled up on a blue plastic bench hoping to sneak in some rest during the wait, but was quickly prodded by an officer and motioned to my feet as more and more towing victims filed into the building. An end to the ordeal was not in sight and as overpopulation increasingly became more of an issue Jonathan relieved me of my duties, sending me back to the venue where he would come to meet us whenever he retrieved the car.
The tens of thousands of people we’d heard about had begun to descend upon the town and different gangs now roved the streets dressed in elaborate attire and disguises. Groups of Queen’s Guards, fairytale characters, and various bastardizations of political figures intermingled in the square, all gleefully swilling beer out of plastic cups as the morning faded into afternoon. It seemed more or less peaceful for now but wasn’t hard to imagine eight hours down the line, those same cups crushed into the ground amongst puddles of vomit as the strength of the plywood reinforcements began to be tested.
The crowds and festivities grew in size the further I walked, spilling out in the roads and congesting particularly badly in the area of Netwerk. As I fought my way through the mob the procession began. Parade floats made their way past displaying warped caricatures of faces I didn’t recognize, followed by masked men on stilts looming imposingly above. Seemingly hundreds of floats existed, each more absurd than the next, blaring Schlager music through loudspeakers, parting the sea of people as they passed. My friends gazed from out of the venue windows — amused, but not without reservations — at the spectacle unfolding before them. I swam through the rapids as the streets began to swell to capacity and an employee of the venue unlocked the door, prying it open just a crack, allowing me to slip in before bolting it shut again and graciously presenting me with a cup of espresso.
In terms of time it wasn’t looking good for us making it to our show in Hamburg that evening as it crept deeper into the afternoon without news from Jonathan. We watched the festivities descend further into lunacy until eventually he called, his patience audibly having run out, informing us that he was on his way, describing a corner where he expected we’d be able to meet after having already been redirected by multiple road closures and nightmarish congestion. And with that we gathered up all of our gear and belongings, reluctantly bid farewell to our safe-haven, and joined the chaos outside.
The line between the parade and the audience had been erased by this point and random civilians frolicked drunkenly amongst the masked and costumed, chasing and boarding the passing floats, hollering through megaphones. Members of what presumably had at one point been a marching band were now separated and a lone trombonist leaked queasy notes into the air on one side of the road while his former colleague tapped away freely at a snare drum on the other. The cups were beginning to collect on the ground.
We were traveling against the current, hacking our way through an overgrown jungle of clowns and miscreants chanting in our faces, blowing party whistles, and dancing against us with aggressive gyrations as we passed through with our suitcases in search of an escape. With time we began to acclimate, complying with the rules and acquiring cups of our own, Rick even braving a portion of carnival escargot. Many times we had to pause, struggling to remain stationary while Hannah would duck to the ground, pressing the phone to her ear in an attempt to decipher above the noise the new location at which we were to meet Jonathan — his route having yet again been diverted — sending us on various detours back through the throbbing hordes.
Somehow we found him, parked on a sidewalk with the hazard lights on, standing next to the car with his hand on the roof, absolutely dominating a cigarette. It was clear he’d been through a hellish odyssey of sanity dissolving traffic and police bureaucracy. We navigated ourselves to the main road out of town where we sat in a complete standstill, gridlocked in place as newcomers emerged from parked cars, donning their festive decor on the side of the road before joining the madness. One such group of ‘NSA employees’ who were loading their ‘proton packs’ with beers were kind enough to pass me one and we sailed away slowly from there.
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Five or six days later — having made it to Hamburg, up into Denmark and Sweden, and back down into Berlin — we played our final show of the tour at a small gallery space in Cologne, underground in a pedestrian walkway beneath a busy intersection. Our friends from the police station in Aalst were there, and although nothing crazy happened the vibe was right and the show treated us well. But almost as soon as it was over, we had to leave. The car needed to be returned the following morning and with early flights to catch from Brussels, we said our goodbyes and departed.
Having myself consumed innumerable bottles of Kolsch throughout the evening, I hopped into the comfort of the passenger seat and pried open the atlas, assuming the role of navigator with Jonathan taking the reins behind the wheel as designated driver. As the city lights disappeared behind us and the certain end of our trip approached, I could feel Rick fidgeting with malcontent in the seat behind me.
The level of excitement we’d experienced in Aalst hadn’t been surpassed by any of our other stops, and in stark contrast they’d offered barely any thrills whatsoever. In Gothenburg we had some fun riding a shopping cart around the venue and rolling around in the skate bowl after the show, and a gas station employee in Germany had asked Kevin, “Do you need to douche?” after he’d inquired about the ‘bathroom’, but that was about as wild as it got. Back in America, Form A Log wasn’t used to playing for respectful audiences who sat politely before us, silent and motionless, listening intently to the music like they did in Europe. We found ourselves missing the dysfunctional energy that we as a band had not only become used to, but relied upon. A disjointed feeling hung in the air, the sense that our business in Europe was still unfinished, that our action quota had not been met.
I was sipping the last Kolsch, staring bleary eyed at the map trying to determine how long we wanted to be on the A4, when a pair of hands emerged from the backseat and began to fondle my face in a rather indelicate manner. They were clammy, lightly tacky, definitely unwashed, and they worked themselves around my features in a blind animalistic investigation. I allowed it, knowing that any form of protest on my part was sure only to fuel the fire, deciding instead to ‘ride the wave to shore’. And so it continued, hindering both my ability to navigate and to finish the beer, yet I stayed strong, uttering no objections while my eyebrows and lips were tweaked and deformed, while my nose was bent in awkward directions and my line of vision was overtaken by a blur of grubby fingers and palm. As the time passed, everyone began to remark at my ability to endure what was obviously such an unpleasant experience, and I appreciated the positive encouragement, but my tolerance was weakening and I didn’t make it too much longer after that. The breaking point eventually came.
“Alright!”, I shouted, swatting his hands away, leaning forwards as far as I could. As I had feared, airing my grievances only provoked him, and whereas before he was rubbing intrusively yet gently, he now grasped forcefully for what he could still reach, groping spiritedly at my ears and the corners of my mouth and eyes as I sat pressed into the glove compartment, struggling to gain distance.
I knew from experience these ‘car games’ could get out of hand fast and that it was only a matter of time before the driver was dragged into the antics and away from the duties of the road. The level of distraction that it had already caused was certainly in violation of European safety standards, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to sit back and return to the manhandling I’d been receiving. In need of sage advice I hollered for Kevin, asking what I should do, but he just chuckled and said, “I dunno, man."
Sensing that a change was necessary, Jonathan pulled the car over to the side of the road. I hopped out and opened the back door. Rick was sitting with attentive posture, staring straight ahead, hands folded neatly together in his lap, feigning innocence. We fumbled sloppily at his seat belt, him trying to prevent me from undoing it, while I pulled and yanked in opposition, eventually getting it loose and dragging him from the vehicle into the grass by his legs. I sat straddled atop him slapping him back and forth across the face, alternating between open and back handed while the nighttime highway traffic passed us in a steady glide. Caught up in the moment, I failed to notice that amidst the blows Rick had dug his hand into the Earth and I was taken by surprise when he reached up, compacting a fistful of loose soil directly into my eye. The dirt stung as it dispersed itself across my cornea and I clutched at my ocular region in pain as I fell backwards. He quickly took over the straddling position I had previously held and began to rub an additional handful into my face, resuming the techniques he’d perfected in the car, working meticulously to leave no area uncovered, imbedding the dirt deep into my pores. Summoning up a burst of strength, I cast him aside, managing to land a couple ‘actual punches’ before we locked into a series of bumbling wrestling maneuvers, flopping each other to and fro on the side of the road while the traffic began to slow down for a peek.
“That’s enough of that.” Jonathan eventually said.
We looked up, filthy and out of breath, as he dropped the end of the cigarette he’d taken the opportunity to smoke while watching, heading back towards the car. The back door was still wide open and the overhead light cast a sorrowful glow over the others faces as they sat looking out at us, unenthused and exhausted.
An unknown amount of time passed before I woke up to a nudge from Jonathan.
“Give me twenty euros.”, he said.
I was slumped over in the passenger seat in a horrifically contorted position and some trapped air emerged in a violent belch as I straightened out. We appeared to be in a parking garage or some type of subterranean bunker. While I’d been asleep they’d crunched the numbers on the tour and after the impound and towing fees, ferry tickets, Denmark-Sweden bridge toll, and other expenses, we were in the hole over 100 euros. I took my wallet out and coughed it up.
The way home was different. We were early for the flight. Very early. Several hours needed to pass before we could even check-in and we spent it occupying the rather prime airport real estate of the leather sofa lounge area at Starbucks, much to their dismay. The Europeans had left, Kevin and Noah had gone silent, and Rick and I — both in pretty good moods — watched the departures board as new cities were added, saying what we could about them as they appeared.
There was only one concern. It had come to me on a trip to the bathroom when after turning the corner I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With our spare time having been so limited on the tour I’d never found a chance to shave, it had been weeks, and a brambly unkempt beard had been slathered across my face and neck. Like the rest of my hair, skin, and clothing, it was covered in layers of visible filth and polluted soil from the side of the highway. My right eye — the dirt eye — had swollen up to cartoonish proportions as if I’d been stung by a wasp. Due to the lax indoor smoking policy in most of the places we went in Germany I reeked like cigarettes and also probably stale Kolsch as I began to sweat out the poison from the night before. Would they actually let us on this plane?
We were the last ones to board, which wasn’t a coincidence. At check-in, after a huddled exchange between employee and manager, we were told our seats would be ‘assigned at the gate’, which after presumably having kept a watchful eye on our behavior and determining us too downtrodden to be a threat, they were. We were given the very last row in the back next to the toilet, where we sat lined up together in a shameful display.
The stewardess who was in charge of our aisle’s drink service gave us a sidelong stare, shaking her head back and forth, simultaneously entertained and appalled.
“One too many Belgian beers for you guys, eh?”, she said, handing us bottles of water, not extending the option for anything more. I’d have liked to say something back to her in return, anything at all, but there was nothing there. My supports had given out and the weight of the partying, fighting, and lack of sleep had all come crashing down at once, leaving me mentally vacant, frail, and in physical pain.
When negotiating our terms with the Kraak Festival, I remember thinking it seemed reasonable for us to fly out of the New York City area, but as the plane began its descent and we looked down over the snow capped buildings of northern New Jersey in preparation for landing at Newark airport, I couldn’t for the life of me remember why that would’ve been. Rick lived in Chattanooga, Noah in Philadelphia, and myself in Providence. After landing, we all ended up in different customs lines and were spit back out into civilization separately, each man going his own way without any kind of farewell.
I was extremely tight on time for my Megabus back home and after getting off the train at Penn Station, although I was in no condition to do so, I ran, sprinting through the streets of midtown Manhattan, jet-lagged and destitute, but determined to make it. It hurt a great a deal to see that big blue bus turn the corner from just a block away, but that’s what it did. I prayed for a red light, for something to interfere, but it released a big cloud of exhaust into the air and it kept going. Leaving me alone, sitting on the sidewalk with my suitcase full of cassette players, shattered in the shadow of the Javitz Center.
