Page 41 - A Little Life: A Novel

has written in black marker, “Dont worry man I cant get no pussy either.”
He closes his eyes.
It’s not promising that he’s this tired and it’s only four, his shift not even

begun. He shouldn’t have gone with JB to Brooklyn the previous night, but
no one else would go with him, and JB claimed he owed him, because
hadn’t he accompanied Willem to his friend’s horrible one-man show just
last month?
So he’d gone, of course. “Whose band is this?” he’d asked as they waited
on the platform. Willem’s coat was too thin, and he’d lost one of his gloves,
and as a result he had begun assuming a heat-conserving posture—arms

wrapped around his chest, hands folded into his armpits, rocking back on
his heels—whenever he was forced to stand still in the cold.
“Joseph’s,” said JB.
“Oh,” he said. He had no idea who Joseph was. He admired JB’s
Felliniesque command of his vast social circle, in which everyone was a
colorfully costumed extra, and he and Malcolm and Jude were crucial but

still lowly accessories to his vision—key grips or second art directors—
whom he regarded as tacitly responsible for keeping the entire endeavor
grinding along.
“It’s hard core,” said JB pleasantly, as if that would help him place
Joseph.
“What’s this band called?”
“Okay, here’s the thing,” JB said, grinning. “It’s called Smegma Cake 2.”

“What?” he asked, laughing. “Smegma Cake 2? Why? What happened to
Smegma Cake 1?”
“It got a staph infection,” JB shouted over the noise of the train clattering
into the station. An older woman standing near them scowled in their
direction.
Unsurprisingly, Smegma Cake 2 wasn’t very good. It wasn’t even hard

core, really; more ska-like, bouncy and meandering (“Something happened
to their sound!” JB yelled into his ear during one of the more prolonged
numbers, “Phantom Snatch 3000.” “Yeah,” he yelled back, “it sucks!”).
Midway through the concert (each song seeming to last twenty minutes) he
grew giddy, at both the absurdity of the band and the crammedness of the
space, and began inexpertly moshing with JB, the two of them sproinging
off their neighbors and bystanders until everyone was crashing into one

another, but cheerfully, like a bunch of tipsy toddlers, JB catching him by