"Isn't it a little early to be drinking, Sebastian?" The bartender asked, eying the doubled-over hippie sitting at his bar. Sebastian turned his face into a dim light of the bar, the light glinting against the shimmery black skin around his eye and the sickly bruises sprouting around his jaw. The dark-haired bartender stopped cleaning the glass in his large hands.
"No," Sebastian replied with a crooked half-grin that showed parts of his teeth, then ordered Jack Daniels on the rocks. The bartender was quick to pour him the drink. Sebastian fished his worn black leather wallet out of the pocket of his Levi's and put down five dollars, "For the rest of my drinks." He took a sip as he placed his wallet back into his pocket.
The radio droned on about war-related issues, that the government hadn't been giving the public an accurate number on the troops in Vietnam. Sebastian gritted his teeth at the news. The pain that sent through his jaw caused him to grimace, and he drank the rest of his Jack in a single gulp. He ordered another. The bartender placed a full glass in front of him. The radio crackled.
There was a jingle as the bar's door opened, then it clicked shut. Sebastian looked up from his amber-colored liquor to see who had entered. He grinned, then immediately grimaced from pain, at the white-haired man who came walking in.
"Sebastian, hey!" Snare said with a grin, walking over to his friend and greeting him with a handshake. He sat down on the stool next to Sebastian and ordered a Coke, then looked back at his friend. His grin fell and his light blue eyes widened. "You weren't kiddin' about getting beat up. You ain't lookin' too cherry, man."
"Yeah I don't feel too cherry neither," Sebastian replied and took a sip of his Jack. "I'm glad you came. Is everyone else coming?"
Snare took a sip of his Coke and swished it around in his mouth, his eyebrows furrowed.
"I don't know," Snare finally said. "I didn't call 'em, but you know they'll be here if they said they'll be here." Sebastian nodded, and Snare bobbed his head back, his chin-length white hair swaying as he did so.
A radio ad for Budweiser crackled in the background. The door swung open again, this time followed by the combined noise of a group of teenage boys walking into the bar. Sebastian looked over Snare's shoulder and saw the rest of his friends walking toward him, their hands in their pockets.
"Hey Sebastian, how come I've never met this Brent guy?" Carl asked, nudging Brent as he did so.
"Carl, man, I told you," Brent said, catching the seat to Sebastian's right, "he just met me last night."
Sebastian grinned and shook his head at his friends, taking a sip of his drink.
"How'd you guys come to meet up so quick anyway?" He asked.
Carl tore into a story about how he nearly ran Brent over on the sidewalk, but Andy — the large, black-haired, quiet one who was sitting next to Snare — had pulled the wheel away at the last second. Evidently, they had ran their lead wagon of a Cadillac into one of the light poles on the street, had Brent get into the back seat, and drove away before the fuzz could be on the scene. Brent backed up the story with vivid details and exclamations about Carl's driving, while Andy sat coolly back and tapped a bottle cap against the counter.
"I don't believe a word of it," Sebastian said at the conclusion of their story. Brent and Carl looked at each other, then laughed. Sebastian rolled his eyes and ordered another drink.
For a while, they spoke of their arduous work days and how they both missed and loved being out of high school. Snare said he nearly lost another finger while wagging the stump of his severed one in front of Brent's face — another cutting machine down at the factory. Sebastian admitted to struggling in his math courses at college, and immediately turned to Brent for how he had been.
"Well, things were a lot more boring before I met this bunch!" Brent said. He called the bartender over and ordered another beer, and flew into a tale of his workplace at his family's barber shop. His father had raised him in the shop, and evidently he had always had the coolest hair in school with his dad keeping his hairstyle up-to-date with all the other boys. As a young boy, he had been promised time and time again that he would be the child to inherit the shop and learn the trade as he hopped at his father's ankles and asked about all of the different haircuts the clients were receiving. When he entered school, though, he decided that he didn't want his hair cut anymore; instead, he wanted it long. This was because, according to Brent, "all the girls were so pretty with their long hair, and, man, I wanted to be pretty like that so I could get a cute gal to share juice with." His family, of course, had kept his hairstyles up-to-par with the high school's dress code, but upon graduation, Brent had decided to let his hair grow long despite his father's threats not to pass the business down to him.
"Now he doesn't even let me cut hair anymore!" Brent said. "Says I have to cut my own hair before he's going to let me touch anyone else's. I don't want to be a barber anyway, he can have it."
He smoothed out the back of his hair with one hand, and took a drink of beer. He had worn an easy grin on his lips for most of the conversation, but his demeanor had turned dark when he mentioned the present. Sebastian shifted in his seat, and the other men took swigs of their various drinks.
"What do you want to be, then?" Sebastian asked. Brent looked over, holding a tankard in one hand.
"A musician."
Sebastian's lips turned up into a half-smile. When he had invited his group of long-time friends to drinks, he had mentioned that he had a plan for their weekly jam sessions; they all wore similar expressions at the news.
"How would you like to make a band with us?"
Brent grinned widely and said, "I'd love to."
His other friends were grinning and nudging each other.
"Well then, welcome to The Alcoholic Kittens!" Sebastian looked to his friends, and they all gave him the thumbs-up. The day they would become a band had been a subject at many of the times they got together, and they had unanimously decided on "The Alcoholic Kittens" as their future band name.
"Choice name," Brent said with a grin.
The other boys cheered and high-fived. The bartender came over, and at their news, served a round of beers (and one Coke) to the group. Sebastian finished off his Jack, and sipped at the beer while his friends excitedly jabbered on about the possibilities for The Alcoholic Kittens. Snare and Andy were conversing laconically about how they wanted to be like Elvis Presley and be madly famous. Brent and Carl were playfully arguing about who would be the most popular with the ladies. Sebastian sat back, his arm resting on the bar, taking in all that his friends were saying with a smile on his bruised face.
The bartender leaned against the counter behind Sebastian, drying off one of the glasses he just pulled from a sink.
"How are you boys gonna get around?" The bartender asked. Sebastian turned around on the barstool, then frowned.
"I guess we'll have to buy something," Sebastian said.
"There's a nice-lookin' van for sale down the street. It's one of those Volkswagens, I think the guy wants five hundred bucks for the thing."
"That's a lot."
"It's one of those camper ones. It's gotta bed and kitchen in it. It's in real good shape, too."
The door chimed as a middle-aged man came in. The bartender gave Sebastian vague directions on how to find the van, then walked over to serve his new customer.
"What'd he want?" Carl asked.
"He told me about a van," Sebastian said. He scooted back around to face his friends and took a sip of his drink. "Five hundred, one of those camping types, and in good condition. It's just down the road."
"I don't have that kind of money." The rest of the group echoed Carl's concern. The radio buzzed in the sudden silence, whispering about Vietnam.
"Why don't we all work together to pay for it?" Brent said. "We gotta save up for our band road trip, so we all gotta get jobs anyway."
Sebastian furrowed his brow, then immediately relaxed when the scratches on his face began to burn from the movement. He inquired about the road trip, and Brent explained that he and the boys had come up with it while Sebastian was talking to the bartender. They wanted to hit Route 66 and play gigs all over the country to get noticed.
"We'll have a whole slew of cars followin' us by the end!" Brent said. The other boys grinned and nodded, and soon Sebastian was mimicking their expressions.
"Let's do it, then," Sebastian said. His friends voiced their agreement, and they spoke at length about their deadlines. They decided they would have enough for the van in two weeks' time, and enough to fund their trip by the beginning of June, which was a little less than a month away. With this agreed on, the company lapsed into drinking and hollering once more. Their conversations soon turned into drunken slurs, all with the exception of Snare, who was sipping his pop while his friends grew more and more inebriated.
At dusk, the boys filed out of the bar. They yelled to each other that it would happen, they would go get jobs and make money for that van. Sebastian shuffled to his car and fell into the front seat. After shutting the door, he laid down. The afghans covering the bench seat all fell onto him, filling his nose with their musty stench.
album is we're only in it for the money by frank zappa and the mothers of invention // cover by iridium-