GWAR, Me, and the Onrushing Grip of Death: Part 15

So I found myself cast out of the heavily-vandalized Rhodes Hall, and not a minute too soon. Because everybody knew that Rhodes Hall had a dangerous lean and was supposed to collapse any minute. I’m surprised it’s still standing! Luckily, I had a place to stay…

December 18, 2009; 12:00 PM • by Dave Brockie

Seasons Beatings from GWAR and Slave Pit Inc.!

We are back from yet another pummeling tour…but you can read about that everywhere else. Right now, it’s time for…

GWAR, Me and the Onrushing Grip of Death
Part 15: “And She Goes By the Name of…Domino”

So I found myself cast out of the heavily-vandalized Rhodes Hall, and not a minute too soon. Because everybody knew that Rhodes Hall had a dangerous lean and was supposed to collapse any minute. I’m surprised it’s still standing! Luckily, I had a place to stay…

After my evening drawing class was over, I would usually make a beeline straight towards my friend “The Pot Goddess’s” apartment on the 1100 block of Grace Street. This in itself could be a dangerous proposition. Richmond has always had serious crime problem, and back then there was no sprawling VCU campus to serve as a haven from the criminals who were drawn towards the Fan for the sole purpose of victimizing its inhabitants. This was not just limited to the usual beatings and strong arm robberies. One night my friend Barbara Powers was attacked and stabbed to death in the 1200 block of Grove. Her assailant was never caught.

I met Pot Goddess through people I’d met at punk shows, and her place was treasured hangout spot. Pot Goddess ruled the comfy confines of her cube-cluster with a weed-giving hand. All kinds of people would drop by, flop into any number of over-stuffed couches and chairs, and wait for the bong to be handed to them. When it finally got there (and it usually didn’t take too long) it was a really cool one made out of a cut-off aluminum softball bat. We would suck it silly while listening to Pot Goddess’s extensive record collection and eating whatever she had made that night. Occasionally more people would drop by and give her money, Pot Goddess would give them pot, and we would start smoking it. Inevitably I would doze off in a room full of people blasting punk music. One night I dozed off, then re-awoke, muttered the word “Couchville…” to a crowded room, and fell back asleep. The name stuck. “Couchville” was my new home.

Soon after I had been kicked out of the dorm I showed up at her doorstep with all of my possessions. I couldn’t move in but was allowed to set my shit up on her first-floor porch, where basically I had a room with a roof and one wall. Soon the local bums were sizing-up my new pad with rheumy, envious eyes, and guarding my stuff every night became a real chore. But once again my new friends saved me.

Tim and Bender were a real pair. Both were out-of-town imports like me, trying to ingratiate themselves into the local community by being as obnoxious as possible. Tim was a squatly-built, almost-albino blonde, his face peppered with angry yellow-heads. Bender was a fanatically obnoxious loudmouth who sounded like he was from New Jersey. They were moving into the same building as “Couchville,” in the apartment directly above it, and allowed me to construct a rude lean-to in their dining room, dubbed “The Bat-Cave.” I would crawl in there, sometimes dragging a girl, on the nights I made it off the couch downstairs. Soon this place had added a more sinister alternative to the “Couchville” experience, like its evil twin. You went to “Couchville” to smoke pot and eat the endless casseroles that Pot Goddess cranked out…you went to “Trashville” to listen to Black Flag records and drink Black Label, smash furniture, and fuck up in general. It tended to attract crazy people like Butch the skinhead, who once (along with me) licked a gallon of spilled grain punch up off the floor. Dickie Disgusting was Butch’s best friend. He had this weird disease that made his hair fall out in oval patches, creating these big shiny hairless putting greens all over his scalp. He shaved his head, I suspect to make them more noticeable, which it did. Dickie had just triumphed over Dirtwoman in the dog-food eating contest, had bent license plates bolted to the sleeves of his leather jacket, and came over all the time.

But our punked-out, puked-on, nirvana was about to be shattered. One night, wrecked, I passed out in front of David Letterman on our black and white TV. I awoke to see the unmistakable outlines of a pistol pointed at my face. Junior (another freak) had been living on the couch for a while… he was wide awake as he watched an arm break through our window screen, unlock the window, and then open it wide enough to allow this dude and his friend to climb through and point guns at us. We were hog-tied with speaker wire and forced into the bedroom, where we were made to kneel over the bed while they piled pillows over our heads, pistol-whipped us, and threatened to butt-fuck me! The highlight of the terror came when Bender walked right into the middle of it, and was beaten to the floor. Luckily my hot GF had just left, and even luckier than that they didn’t carry out their threat to butt-fuck me. Add to that the fact that we had nothing worth stealing and it was a pretty unsuccessful crime. Before they left through the same hole they had made, we were actually joking with them.

“Don’t blame us man,” said one as he passed the TV out the window to his waiting friend. “Blame Ronald Reagan!”

“Do I look like I fucking voted for Reagan?” I screamed, as I cried, my butt-cheeks flecked with his wasted man-seed.

Later, when Junior was asked as to why the hell he would allow two complete strangers to break into our apartment right in front of him, without so as much as waking me up, he replied, “I thought they were your friends!”

It was holiday season in punkville and the food situation was looking grim. Pot Goddess had split town for a couple of weeks (to get weed) and left Couchville in our care. Butch and Dickie had moved in within minutes of her leaving, let in by “The Brit,” a misplaced Londonite with a dubious explanation as to how he had got there. He had actually been fucking Pot Goddess for a place to live, something I had never done. I was turning into quite the whore but still had my standards. She was an awesome girl but not an awesome catch, as she enjoyed her own cooking too much and was given to mad snorting fits that doubled for laughter. After a couple days we had eaten everything the apartment had to offer, so The Brit put forth an idea: why not slaughter an animal? He knew where there was a large herd of sheep on a private estate, and sheep made good eating. All we would have to do is climb a wall and snatch the unsuspecting animal, who, as just one amongst a whole herd, would not be missed. Sensing danger, I demurred, as the gang of interlopers piled into a pick-up truck and disappeared into the night.

The next day I got a phone call from the boys. The mission had been a great success, and a huge holiday feast was being prepared at a location suitable for the slaughter of a medium-sized sheep (it was actually a lamb). Pot Goddess just wouldn’t have understood why her apartment was covered in blood. I was invited, and showed up with a gapingly empty stomach. Here I found a great cauldron of bubbling meat, and gorged myself as I heard the details of the daring raid. Stealing through the night, the boys had climbed a fence and found themselves in a private estate, confronted by a solitary animal which had apparently wandered away from the herd. Dickie dispatched the unfortunate creature with a single heavy sledgehammer blow to the head, and together they threw the dead thing in the back of the truck. About halfway home the plucky trio picked up a hitchhiker, who lasted about three blocks before he leapt from the bed of the truck, screaming, and ran off into the night. Stopping the truck, they saw to their horror that the lamb was still alive, had somehow gotten to its feet (hooves?) and stood bleeding in the bed of the truck. But Dickie had the solution for that…he sawed off its head.

Hours later, drunk and swollen with sheep meat (one of the most delicious meals I had ever had), I stumbled out onto the back porch and unleashed a stream of urine off of it. The piss made a strange sound as it hit the ground, and I looked down my jetting piss-stream to see that I was urinating on the animals severed head.

The next day brought the Richmond papers and news shows, all broadcasting appeals to whoever had stolen the prized and beloved pet of a wealthy local family. A $2500 reward was offered to whoever could return or provide information as to the whereabouts of “Domino”…who at that moment large pieces of were forming a huge turd in my ass. We flushed the evidence and waited for the worst. I think The Brit actually tried to collect the reward money, and ended up in jail. Butch and Dickie fled town, never to be seen again. I had a great shit, but felt lousy about it.

Well, I didn’t quite make it to the birth of Death Piggy, but that gives us more to read about next time in…

Part 16 of “GWAR, Me and the Onrushing Grip of Death”

Happy Holidays!

(Confused? Get caught up with Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.)

Dave Brockie is the voice behind Oderus Urungus, bellicose lead singer of GWAR, Richmond’s most lethal export next to tobacco. Check out his website at www.oderus.com and keep up with GWAR at www.gwar.net

December 18, 2009 12:00 PM 6