“Kind of, yeah. Too fast, too loud. I played in this one band for a while, just a couple months replacing a guy who’d left, and at every show their fans would get this giant mosh pit going, and I hated it.” Scott laughed. “This is going to sound so stupid, but it felt like they weren’t even paying attention?”
Carver laughed, too.
“Like, quit shoving each other, I’m fucking playing up here.”
“Can I tell you something?” Carver said, sounding almost shy.
“Yeah, of course.”
“I listen to metal sometimes.”
Scott laughed in surprise. “Yeah?”
“My freshman year roommate was really into Slipknot, he got me into it.”
“You ever go to any shows?”
“Christ, no. And I barely listen to it anymore, but I did for a while… just for like, workouts, or when I had to grind on work, or if I wanted to not think about anything.”
“Yeah, it can be hard to think while you’re listening to metal.”
“Right, and you want people to think about your shit, I know. You want to tell a whole story about the old man and the shoe, or whatever.”
“Come on,” Scott said, laughing more. “I’m not, like, a folk singer. And I want to be loud, just my kind of loud.”
“Not even a little folk?”
“No, I don’t — this sounds bad, but I never wanted to write about all the problems in the world. Like, who am I to get into that? I’m not like Bob Dylan, watching the civil rights movement happen around me. Or even like Bruce Springsteen growing up dirt poor in Jersey. I grew uphere, and nothing ever really happened to me. I’m just a guy who lived on the periphery of a really nice place and didn’t go to college.”
“Then what stories do you want to tell?”
“Shit that happened to me, or shit I saw happen, or something beautiful I saw. Or sometimes I see a person out in public and I kind of imagine a story about them and I end up writing it down. I wrote a song that — I don’t think anyone knows this, ‘cause the lyrics are kind of abstract — but it was about an old lady I saw on the bus in Denver. Or who I imagined her to be, like, the life I thought she’d maybe had.”
“Denver,” Carver repeated. “When were you in Denver?”
“After Phoenix. Actually, after Phoenix I went back to L.A., then out to Denver, then Seattle, then back to Denver for a few years. I liked Denver… it was a cool place, and I got to play Red Rocks at one point, which was sick. But eventually it got too expensive, so I moved to Philly, kinda realized I actually missed the East Coast and stayed for a while. That was where Silk Tourniquet got started. After a few years I moved to Jerseyso I could get access to the rich kid music lessons market.” Scott yawned.
“You teach kids?” Carver said, sounding surprised.
“Yeah. Not as much anymore, I have more steady income now and I don’t really have as much time for it, which is kind of ideal ‘cause now I only have to take on the kids I like. I can tell the brats to go pound sand. Well, tell their moms.”
Carver smirked at him. “You ever fuck the moms?”
Scott exhaled to start explaining himself, and Carver made a crowing noise. “Okay — I fuckedonemom, after the kid went to college —”
Carver cracked up laughing.
“— she kept telling me how lonely she was!”
“Whatisit with you and the older women?”
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it too hard.”
“Good thing you didn’t get that MOM tattoo, or the cougars might start to wonder,” Carver said, and Scott groaned in dismay. “You ever fuck older men?”
“Hell no.”
“How oftendoyou fuck men?” Carver said in an unconvincingly casual tone, looking at him from under his eyelashes.
