DOOM 94 Read online

  Jurģis and I were in the nerd crowd. We lived in the same building, went to kindergarten together, and had shared a desk since first grade. At home we hung out all the time, built ships out of dining room chairs, set up toy-soldier battles on the rug and later, in school, just tried to get by.

  And then something changed.

  One day Jurģis and I were sitting in the front hall behind a palm tree, scheming something. We had a piece of paper in front of us and we were drawing out some kind of plan. Then, per usual, one of the thugs came up and snatched the paper from us and crumpled it up to throw it away.

  Today the thug was Ugo.

  When he saw it was me, he put the crumpled piece of paper back down and said:

  — Hey!

  — Hey!

  That’s what I said back. Then Ugo gave a half-wave and left, without even calling us dumbasses.

  I swelled with pride. See, the mould could be broken! The world was changing! Long live Kurt! He had protected us. We were saved by a perfect chord and a gunshot.

  I looked to Jurģis to share in the moment.

  But he goes:

  — You hanging with them now?

  His expression hurt, betrayed. I go:

  — What? Everything turned out good!

  — So you’re good with them? You smoking and sneaking wine in the bushes with them, too?

  Would he rather Ugo gave us each a Charley horse in the shoulder? Is he jealous of my victory? But he keeps going:

  — You’re crazy.

  Then what did that make him? I say, casually:

  — Alright, enough planning. It’s time to start taking over the world for real.

  He goes:

  — It was just a game.

  But no — it was never a game for me.

  I ask:

  — Don’t you listen to Nirvana?

  He goes:

  — I don’t like them. It’s just screaming.

  And there it was. Life had split in two. And somehow I’d ended up on the other side.

  It didn’t sound too bad, though — me, crazy. Isn’t that what everyone wants? To break out of the everyday, out of normality and get confirmation of your existence. Hadn’t Kurt been crazy? And I was, too. I could be like Cobain.

  That’s how I lost a friend.

  And a teacher.

  I wrote ‘Kurt Cobain 1967—1994’ on my desk.

  Ms Raudupīte saw it and said:

  — Jānis, not you, too? But you’re a good student.

  She wanted to keep me on that side. Up until then I’d been somewhat of a teacher’s pet. I helped the class place commas. Meaning — Raudupīte would dictate a text for us to transcribe; she’d read the sentence once, then twice, so everyone could get it down. During her second read-through I’d tap my pen on my desk to mark where the commas should go. A quick, precise tap, like Dave Grohl — who I didn’t know existed at the time. And everyone else would write in a comma at each tap. Then Raudupīte would read the entire text through once more, and I’d again tap my desk at each comma. They had to figure out the semicolons and ellipses on their own. It was exciting to be kind of a secret Judas right under her nose.

  Teachers don’t really need to be that good. I remember our first-grade teacher, Ms Lielkalne. She was almost famous for how kind and mothering she was. My parents said:

  — You’re so lucky! Now, if you kids aren’t good for a teacher like her...

  Damn. Lielkalne was like out of a children’s book. Whenever we acted up, she just sat with her face in her hands. We felt awful. And based on the stories she told us, we were the most awful bunch there ever was.

  A person has the right to be bad. Transgressions and their respective punishments should be calculated like prices in a store — one murder costs a death sentence, and a graffitied bathroom stall costs a grade percentage. A clean transaction and zero tears.

  This prohibition on being bad wouldn’t have been allowed in Kurt’s day. And then the fates delivered us Mrs Burkova. Her husband was a public prosecutor. She had a sharp voice and a boyish figure. Best of all, she was cranky, unfair, and ridiculously easy to offend. We had regained our right to be bad.

  No, I was done being a good student. But I couldn’t give it up completely, either — I’d catch Hell at home if I did.

  Enough of Burkova. Right now Raudupīte was the one yelling at me. But I didn’t hear her because I was busy with the Walkman travelling from desk to desk, and which was now in my hands. The cassette in it wasn’t mine, either. I’d never heard it before. Pearl Jam’s Ten.

  I had made it to the main song. I listened to it, stopped the cassette, then took the cassette out and rewound it using a pen cap. To not waste the batteries. I listened to the song again. It was about me. I, too, am quiet and sullen, and spend time ‘at home drawing pictures’, everything fell into place, except that I wasn’t 15 yet. I could wait. If no-one could understand me by then, I’d blow my brains out in front of all of them, then they’d see. It would also be a nice tribute to the song itself. Then they’d all see how important it had been to me. The whole class.

  Jeremy spoke in class today.

  And I’d want the song to be playing quietly in the background. It was so good. Though, maybe it was too good?

  Someone tapped my shoulder, and without looking I knew someone wanted the Walkman back. Get lost, go learn where to place commas. But the tapping didn’t stop, and I started to mutter to myself using some choice language. But muttering can turn out to be rather loud, especially if you’re listening to ‘Jeremy’ at full volume.

  Raudupīte, our teacher, was standing right there, right in front of my desk. Her expression sorrowful. She had been lecturing me for minutes, but I’d heard none of it. I’d only been saying words. The entire class was thrilled.

  Everyone except Jurģis.

  I was kicked out, and told to come back with my parents. For something so stupid! As if the rest of the class hadn’t done worse shit. But this was my first time.

  I stood alone in the hallway. Then a little kid came careening down the hall and slipped — they didn’t wax the floors here just for the smell — then scrambled back to his feet, looked to see if I was laughing and then disappeared into the bathroom.

  I’d lost a friend and a teacher. But I wasn’t at all sorry. There was a whole new group of friends and teachers right on the horizon, all crazy loners. That’s what I stood there thinking while some little kid was taking a dump.

  4

  I switched on my desk lamp. It was an old lamp and used to be my sister’s. She had plastered the lamp with stickers from bananas: ‘Ecuador’, ‘Colombia’, ‘Costa Rica’. I didn’t like them, but I felt bad tearing them off. I didn’t have any stickers of my own. So I wrote ‘I feel stupid / And contagious’ on a piece of paper, licked it and stuck it onto the lamp.

  I opened the black Crown cassette player. My dad had brought it back from Finland several years earlier. It had worked like new for years, but in the last few months it had started to wear out. I put in a cassette, closed the player, hit play. Nothing. I opened it again, took out the cassette (which was hard because they always caught) and saw that one of the teeth one of the tape reels had popped out. I pushed it down, but it popped out again. I took the piece out and discovered that the spring hidden under it was at fault. I threw the spring away, put the tape reel back in, put the cassette back into the player and hit play. This time it worked. I had the golden touch back then.

  Nirvana’s Incesticide, their enigmatic 1992 album. I sat and listened closely. ‘Sliver’ seemed so different, so un-Nirvana. And what was it they were singing about in it, about lost childhood or something? Then there was ‘Molly’s Lips’, and I was afraid to love it because it almost sounded pop-like. ‘Polly’ was so strong and juvenile compared to the version I knew from Nevermind. Back then I thought the song was about a parrot or a cat. ‘Polly wants a cracker’. I didn’t know it was about a terrible real-life event. I’d thought — how original,
a song about a cat. The last song, ‘Aneurysm’, was the most beautiful. ‘Love you so much, makes me sick’. Those were the only words I could make out, but it was all I needed to understand how beautiful the misunderstood were. I couldn’t help but turn up the volume.

  My sister came in from the other room.

  — What are you listening to?

  — Nirvana.

  — Again, huh. Listen to something else. And quieter.

  I couldn’t argue with my sister because she was going to have to go talk to Raudupīte with me. The last song was over anyway, so I took out the cassette. Now what? Kārlis had given me his copy of Therapy’s Troublegum. In it went.

  It was no Nirvana — absolutely not. But I should still listen to it. ‘My girlfriend says / That I need help’. Total lies; I didn’t have a girlfriend. What else. ‘My boyfriend says / I’d be better off dead’. Better. ‘I’m gonna get drunk / Come round and fuck you up’, much better. Damn, I can’t get further into the lyrics than that. ‘All people are shit’ — that’s pretty profound stuff. Most importantly, sullen and without compromise.

  My dad came into the room and turned on the TV, sat down on the couch. The couch was somewhat lopsided and broken; my sister and I jumped on it a lot as kids, but that was a long time ago. I turned the music up a notch so I could hear it over whatever sports my dad was watching. If our TV had had a remote control, he would have turned the TV up a notch as well, but instead he just said:

  — Turn that thing of yours down.

  There wasn’t a whole lot to Therapy anyway. Nothing wild. I took out the cassette, put Nine Inch Nails in. Yes! The Downward Spiral. More onpoint. I’d read about the band in the Evening News. Trent Reznor had talked about how all his friends had committed suicide, and so on. Then I’d spotted the cassette at the market and had raced home, excited to learn about the best way to kill yourself.

  It was something wholly different; it was perfect. There was clanging and banging — it was beautiful. It was industrial music. ‘Black and blue and broken bones / you left me’. When would someone leave me? ‘Nothing can stop me now / I don’t care anymore’. Exactly. No one was going to stop me.

  — Turn it down. Or off. You can’t possibly like it anyway. What’s there to like.

  That was horrible. I felt like the last bastion of a fragile, true art form. So, of course, I didn’t turn it off. Now they sang: ‘I want to know everything / I want to be everywhere... I wanna do something that matters’. See, dad. I want to do something. And I’m doing it right now, here, by the stereo. Fighting against you.

  Then ‘Hurt’ came on. It was so beautiful that for a moment I forgave the world, and turned the volume up to share it with everyone else. You can’t not like a song like that. Everyone who hears it understands it. ‘You can have it all / My empire of dirt’.

  And my dad said nothing; I felt that the beauty of the pain had overcome him, and made him happy.

  The cassette ended. Now what? My collection wasn’t that big yet. Stone Temple Pilots. A homemade tape. Play.

  My dad shifted in his seat.

  — That’s too much!

  He had no idea that this wasn’t nearly wild enough; I didn’t even know it yet. Fine, fine, I turned the volume down. I leaned closer to the stereo and immersed myself.

  My mom came into the room, an apron around her waist.

  — Dinner’s ready.

  Neither of us said anything, and I have to admit it was rude of us. Back then I didn’t know that politeness was likely the most valuable thing you could have.

  The cat sauntered into the room, looked around, and went back into the kitchen.

  — Not even the cat can stand that stuff you call music.

  I got up and went into the kitchen and sat down to eat potato pancakes. I took one at a time, but now and then my mother would come over and pile a stack onto my plate. I’d told her multiple times I didn’t like it when she did that. I ate all of them, but my emotional balance was ruined. And then she tried to get me to eat the pancakes with lingonberry jam — she said I didn’t understand anything, that I was letting the good parts of life pass me by.

  I don’t want all your good parts of life, you can’t make me eat lingonberry jam! The battle was on.

  And then it came to me — I had to listen to Ministry! I hurried back to the room. Ministry was a genius idea for a band name. I’d seen a music video of theirs on RBS TV where they were crashing cars. This music sounded like crashing cars. I put my face close to the stereo and listened.

  — Enough, enough. Go to bed.

  — Just the last song.

  I had to turn it up. My god, the sound! The thundering of the drums! The guitars! How could anything be this beautiful?!

  — Jānis, I said that was enough.

  My entire family was standing there, looking at me.

  — Jānis, think about the rest of us.

  But Ministry shouted:

  — What about us?

  What about those of us who don’t want to go to bed?

  Then my sister added:

  — You tell him, he won’t listen to me. He just listens to that garbage and gets weirder and weirder.

  They were all angry with me, me, the good kid. My dad, from the deepest, most beautiful part of Latgale, his little brother lies dying, sobbing, the doctor is too far away, the Germans set up a cannon in the yard and give round candies, later he served on the other side of the arctic circle, where airports dive up from underground, then work, work, only honest work; my mom, still beautiful, just like back when she didn’t listen to her teacher’s command to cry when Stalin died, when she went to the barricades and made my dad go with her; my sister, my saintly sister, who would soon stop speaking to everyone and live only in her quiet dream world, writing strange poems that many people will like.

  But, ‘What about us’?

  I turned it off, off. And hid my sneer as I climbed into bed.

  5

  Ministry were glorious. So were Jesus Jones, and Sonic Youth, and KMFDM, and Psychopomps and Temple of the Dog. This is what I learned from Kārlis, a classmate of mine since first grade, until now just an uncultured punk who once kicked a soccer ball into my stomach. We’d recently started talking again for some reason, and he lent me a few tapes like they were a drug, a weapon, a mystical entity. Usually they came from his brother. Kārlis said that he and his brother had been listening to Nirvana well before 5 April 1994 — can you believe that?

  Nirvana. It was still the best there was. Even better than The Cranberries, better than Dolores O’Riordan’s lake-green eyes.

  — She drinks, by the way.

  This comment came from my friend Pūpols, a unique character. The nickname meant ‘pussywillow’, but he only resembled the fuzzy bud in shape. His personality was angled, thorny and incomprehensible. Earlier we’d been talking about Assyrian archers and The Corsican Brothers. I remember how talked on and on about them — and to continue the conversation I walked with him to his house, and then he walked me back to mine. Now we had moved on to music and the musical lifestyle.

  I already knew that the name “Riddle” wasn’t meant to characterize the legend of this brand of wine, but rather its origins, contents, and consistency. We drank it often in the newly built but abandoned mansion that was probably meant to be some young couple’s future wedding chapel. And now we were there with our wine and cigarettes. When I told Jurģis about it at school, he repeated:

  — You’re crazy.

  And I liked it. But in moderation. You could be a little crazy, but not too crazy. Girls supposedly liked that. Though it wasn’t working at the moment. But it didn’t matter because I was used to it. I’d lived long enough to know that girls didn’t like me. But I was crazy. Only a little, crazy within reason. Don’t worry, friend.

  Pūpols, in turn, was of the strict belief that we had to drink a lot. As much as possible. Because the goal was to get drunk! Kārlis was the only one of us who had succeeded in this. He’d
even thrown up on the way home, and his eldest cousin had said:

  — You’re a man now, son.

  But we hadn’t been able to get drunk. We drank beer, almost two full bottles, then split a bottle of wine between five of us, and a bottle of vodka among a whole group of our friends — but still, nothing. When I got home I sat down next to the stereo and blasted Nine Inch Nails, trying to see if something in me had changed. It hadn’t.

  The group that met at the abandoned mansion had been joined by two real-life adult women, eighteen years old. The girls had gotten successfully drunk for the first time ages ago and had already earned their stripes, so they were able to give us tips:

  — Don’t eat beforehand. It’ll hit you sooner on an empty stomach.

  — Mix alcohols, if you can. You won’t be sorry.

  Eva worked as an art teacher; she looked at me and was saying something with her eyes. I treated her presence like that of a ghost — you’d seen one now and again, but they weren’t real. But I remembered their suggestions.

  That Thursday I skipped the school dance. I always skipped them, to be honest, but this time I had the feeling I was missing out on something. Friday morning, the whole school was buzzing with news. Things at the dance had gotten interesting. Our classmate Artis had achieved the dream — meaning he’d gotten piss-drunk and passed out in the middle of the gymnasium. And he had passed out so hard that not even the school director was able to wake him up. Smelling salts being the extent of our school’s emergency first-aid kit, the school called for an ambulance to take him to hospital. Stuff always happens to everyone else.

  Pūpols had made the most of his Thursday night, too. He can’t remember who else was there, but he drank half a litre of vodka and then headed home. His body gave out on him right in front of his building, and then out of nowhere a group of our classmates wandered over and helped him up to the fifth floor and handed him over to his father. His father was our history, poli-sci and German teacher. He listened to the group as it announced: