Perhaps it was time, in this sordid tale that is about to unfold, to reveal the more elusive protagonist.
David Elihue Jacobs was the middle child of a middle-class, Jewish family from New York. They owned a furniture store, which made a decent amount of money but circumstances changed with the economy and his father decided that furniture was too stiff and thankless and instead opened a carpeting store. He said that carpeting was the future. David figured that his father had lost his mind.
His father doubled his supposed insanity by moving his family "where the carpet was." Thus, when David was at the tender age of ten, he was shuffled into the family station wagon and driven down to Tiger Hollow, Georgia.
His older sister, Sarah, thrilled at the experience to go down south as she had fallen in love with the idea of Antebellum, southern gothic culture. Needless to say, Scarlet O'Harawitz was surprised that the beautiful south wasn't so…beautiful. At least, Tiger Hollow was not. It sat near a swamp and its back was cushioned by the Everglades. David decided, as he peered up from the Chemistry textbook he had been perusing to take in his new home, that it was a pit.
The school was more or less a joke. Teachers without degrees walking through the low-ceilinged, un-air-conditioned classrooms in sneakers and tank tops. David knew that the nice education he had gotten for his first five grades was going down the toilet with each tick of the second-hand on the clock that never told the correct time.
Though he was not a rebel, David took a somewhat pleasure in giving little jabs at the establishment. At a futile assembly to keep the kids off drugs, the enthusiastic speaker informed them joyfully that no one had ever been nominated for the Nobel Prize "on dope." David had raised his hand, said simply, "Bob Geldof" and left it at that.
In eighth grade, he had submitted a paper declaring a man named Paul David Hewson had sold his soul to the devil and was to gain complete control of the world within the next five years. David outlined a grisly future world in which Hewson controlled every aspect a la Big Brother and kept everyone in line using his ultra-sonic, mutant voice powers. He got an A+ on the paper and was given extra credit points for his description and even the naming of his protagonist. David didn't bother to inform his teacher that Paul David Hewson was just Bono's real name.
David's jabs at society were minimal and largely inconsequential (although that presenter did add 'except Bob Geldof' to his speech, which made it ultimately less effective) until his tenth grade year or, rather, the year before last.
David had known he was gay since he had learned the definition of the word. He never had any friends and his family was absorbed in their southern-living, carpet-loving world for him to even try to reach them. Sarah might have understood but she was living "in sin" with her boyfriend and child three blocks away and David would rather grind his teeth down than have a conversation with Morris.
The only person who understood was his English teacher. Of course, by understood, it clearly meant that the man wanted to get into David's pants. And so he did. On his desk, usually, after class. Mr. Denton had been the only teacher at the God forsaken school that seemed to know shit from Shinola. Of course, despite being more learned than the other teachers at the school, he was still a teacher at Tiger Hollow High and, thus, couldn't be entirely smart. To whit, he never locked his door. The principal had come in and promptly had a heart attack at the sight of David and his teacher in flagrante delicto on the desk. The principal was put in a physical rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta and Denton was fired.
David wasn't entirely friendless in his thankless existence wandering the cinderblock halls of Tiger Hollow High. Early in his sophomore year (pre-Denton) he had befriended a girl named Erin O'Malley. She, like him, had been exiled to Tiger Hollow by her less than sane family. Her father was a famous music producer who was on trial for killing her mother. She had been sent to live with her closest living relative: her grandmother who lived in a bungalow down at the edge of the swamp. Their friendship was sealed when David casually asked her if her father happened to be Phil Spector.
Erin could have been popular as she fit the criteria: she was tall, skinny and blonde with what a straight man would call a pretty face but she was less Barbie and more Daria, David had found out.
They would go over to his house and watch post-adolescent alienation films from the 1990s while sipping Diet Cokes and eating cheese sandwiches on white bread. Oftentimes, these excursions were accompanied by Bob Dylan wailing dissonantly in the background. Unsurprisingly, pot was often the guest of honor during that time. Though David would never touch a drop of alcohol nor inhale on a cigarette, he found that pot helped somewhat cushion the actual blow of living in what he suspected was America's asshole.
Despite this, David remained one of the most scholastically adept students at the high school. When he wasn't watching Kicking and Screaming or pondering his adolescent cynicism, he would be reading his woefully outdated textbooks ("tensions between the north and south were at an all time high," one read).
Tonight, though, David was doing none of this. He had been coerced by his sister to fetch her boyfriend from Dooley's Bar. Morris often went there when he didn't want to deal with being a teenage father, which was a lot. Sarah usually braved the jeering men herself but instead recruited David to do her bidding.
Thus, he slogged through the mud and dirt, gravel-studded road that no car could drive on to reach the bar. Dooley's was a haven for illegal activity so the wooden clap-trap was set back almost into the swamp and shrouded by trees. David had never been in the establishment but had expected to see a scene from an old-time saloon. Perhaps rinky-dink piano music would come streaming out the door, nearly drowned out by the yells of the inevitable bar-fight going on inside. The front was oddly quiet until he opened the door.
A band was playing on a low platform that seemed about to give way. A blonde boy with hair like a rooster was singing "You're in My Heart" while the crew of drunken (and, of course, largely underage) men joined in. It was like a British soccer match, David thought. He was getting ready for the riot. David also noted that the boy singing wore a distinctive eye patch.
Rod Stewart had sex with a pirate, he thought with a chuckle. Or David Bowie….
The place was packed and David couldn't find Morris's leering, goateed face among the crowd. He spotted a deserted table near the front of the "stage" and decided to wait out the crowd there until he could fetch the drunken idiot and tow him home.
When he reached the table, David found that it wasn't quite deserted. A brown haired girl with ass-lips wearing expensive-looking clothes was sitting there. David grabbed the chair opposite her, knowing the other obvious outcast would mind the intrusion.
While the Blondie the Pirate sang into the microphone, David scanned the mirth-filled faces of the other denizens of the bar. He needed to find Morris and get out. The atmosphere wasn't as tense as he had initially thought but far more druggy. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and the entire dank establishment smelled like beer. Beer, David thought, was possibly the vilest thing he had ever smelled and couldn't understand why or how people drank it.
Unable to see his almost-brother-in-law's face among the crowd, David sighed and reluctantly turned his attention back to the stage. Forlornly, he let his chin fall to rest on the heel of his hand. With a final hurrah from the crowd, Blondie the Pirate stepped away from the mic and exchanged guitars with the tall, lanky boy who had been playing the electric on the last song.
Lanky—David was apt to giving people nicknames until he found out their real names—pulled a stool almost up to the lip of the platform. He was now wearing Blondie the Pirate's acoustic, a dingy thing that had probably seen better days. The boy was wearing cowboy boots and torn jeans. A scrap of a red bandana was around the tan column of his neck. The boy lifted his face up to the drunken crowd and gave a half-smile. David blinked his eyes.
"Whoa," he whispered.
The boy was uncannily attractive. His sandy hair fell boyishly into his eyes and tapered down the back of his neck. His eyes exuded a kind of warmth that David had never encountered before in his jade-colored land of cynicism. His smile was crooked, as was his nose but there was something endearing about those imperfections. Something that made his heart hammer in his chest.
"Hey," he said in a voice that mingled Kennedy-esque Bostonian with a New York slur and twang of Georgia peachy-peach. "I'm going to, uh, slow things down a little."
Another smile at the drunken men and he began to play.
David had never heard such beauty come from a guitar that wasn't flowing from his speakers. The tune was semi-familiar in a way that he thought he had heard it before but he wasn't even sure what it was called. The boy opened his mouth to the microphone that undoubtedly smelled like beer and pot and began to sing.
"Childhood living…is easy to do. The things you wanted, I bought them for you…"
His voice was raspy and yet honey-sweet. David lifted his head off of his hand and leaned forward. The boy's eyelids lowered and he seemed to get lost in his own world. The crowd was dead silent but David had a feeling that if they had been their normal, beer-driven selves, he would have just kept on playing.
"Wild horses," he sang melodiously. "Couldn't drag me away…wild, wild horses…couldn't drag me away…"
David recognized the song more fully now; some Rolling Stones track. He had never really put much stock in their output but the way this boy sang made him want to go out and by a slew of their albums. The rational-David in him smirked, thinking that the band should hire him for advertising. The riveted-David didn't move and just stared, listening to every word that left Lanky's mouth.
"…Wild, wild horses. We'll ride them someday…"
He finished and looked up at the crowd. The drunks burst into wild, raucous applause, as did the sober-looking Ass-Lips girl sitting next to him. David found himself, for once, joining in the majority and clapped exuberantly.
"Jack, everyone!" Blondie the Pirate proclaimed over the noise.
David felt his face heat up again.
Jack…Jack, everyone…
