NEW YORK CITY
We play at Cake Shop. We’re staying at Lucas’s, who, to say the least, has a lot of crap piled around. Amidst the CDs and coffee cups and orange peels I see a hairy butt. “Whoa, that dick is tiny,” I say, because it, well, looks tiny. “That’s my dick!” Lucas says proudly. Proudly? “It’s not tiny, it’s shot from the back.” I squint at his hairy buttcheeks. “If you flip to the back those are of me – that’s my friend there, I totally don’t like her but we did the photo shoot anyway,” and I flip through naked pictures of him and his friend in various poses. Strange. After a brief tiff about who is going to sleep where, we settle in – in to New York City. The couch floor-bed separates slowly during the night so that only our butts are on the floor. We’re here.
Videos by VICE
The next day Emily and I take off together to try and find a small synth and a new guitar for her. We get turned around on 14th street attempting to find some place the guy at the coffeeshop told us about and conclude the best place to figure it out is at the hookah bar we’re walking by, which, inside, looks like a run-down version of a Turkish hookah bar, populated only by some bros from Jersey talking about babes in it (did she have tattoos? Aw maaannnn).
Later we go to the Whole Foods in Brooklyn for some Eco-Friendly Treats. It’s completely insane – there’s like 80 check out stations with 20 lines that are color-coded). As we walk out a maybe-homeless man shouts at us heartily, “BEAUTIFUL GAY WOMEN!!!”
We look at each other, astonished. Emily leans towards me and whispers, “How did he know?!” I throw my arms up, in response and in celebration, as if I am gay and proud, which I am not, but would be, if I were. He misunderstands and shouts apologetically, “I LOVE GAY WOMEN!!!!” and we hold hands as we round the corner and descend into the subway.
BALTIMORE
As soon as we pull into downtown we see about five people getting arrested by maybe 10 cops on one of the main streets. Maybe this is just chance. Probably. We’re late, but when we pull up to the back of the venue the booker is nothing but pleased – tells us we’re going on almost immediately, so we jump out, load out, play our set. Then drive to DC…
WASHINGTON D.C.
Ian is navigating. “Turn up here, where that car just turned.”
Emily turns, slowly, so slowly it’s almost as if we aren’t going to make the raod, past a brick house with a big yard. “Right into your yaarrrdd,” she growls. “Your stupid yard!”
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Ed says. We’re dropping him off at home because he caught a ride with us to NYC but all the buses were booked on the way back and then we missed an exit on the turnpike and, for some reason, there wasn’t another exit for another half an hour. Stuck in the damn Jersey twilight zone.
“Two shakes and a jimmey?” Emily says.
“Why is it two shakes of a lamb’s tail? Because a lamb shakes its tail so quick? Emily holds up her finger and shakes it back and forth, a sassy little lamb’s tail. “Cha cha!”
Ed cracks up, and cracks up, and cracks up. “Cha cha!” Emily shakes her finger again at Ed.!
Ed is crying from joy. “Is it one of those things that keeps getting funnier the more you think about it?” Emily asks, giggling.
“Nooo I’m not thinking about it still. I can’t, I have to stop laughing.”
“And they’re always so sassy when they shake it, too, little lambie!” Ian and Emily are still talking about the lamb’s tail. “A little thumb-sized tail! Cha cha, cha cha!”
We’re staying with Ian’s uncle in the suburbs of D.C. Ian has many uncles… many, many uncles – his mother is one of sixteen children. Apparently once the car door opened while they were driving and she fell out and the parents didn’t notice for two blocks.
Emily puts on “She Bop,” and starts dancing like a zombie, her hands in front of her, waving her head back and forth. “’I bop, you bop-a-we-bop,’ you know this song’s about female masturbation? I bop, you bop, they bop, everybody masturbates, man.” She starts dancing again, waving her hands back and forth, jazz fingers. “And then the end of the song comes – and in the music video – they all start freaking out, like they’ve gotta go masturbate or they’re going to explode – and the dancer, she’s roller skating and she like runs into a car,” Emily mimes running up against something, shakes her head, wide eyes, surprised “just because she’s gotta masturbate so bad. It’s so great – everyone in the video gets zapped every time they see someone attractive,” Emily says. “I bop, you bop-a-we-bop! ZAP!”
COLUMBIA, SC: YOU’RE A 250 DOLLAR BAND
We end up not leaving Ian’s until 5 pm at least, for the eight hour drive. We finally arrive at our host’s house 3:30 in the morning. Henry, our host, has just driven down from a show in DC, and arrived about an hour before us. The house is ominously dark, and we call Henry as we walk up. No response. No response. There are at least five dogs inside barking their brains out. No response.
“But… what if he doesn’t answer? We have no place to… this is…” Emily says. She’s driven the entire 9 or 10 hour drive. We need to sleep.
The dogs are still barking. Ferociously. But, also, licking the glass next to my hand when I touch the window next to them. A good sign.
I try the door. It’s open.
Emily shakes her head, slightly, eyes wide. “Those dogs are going to eat you.” Immediate unsummoned visions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but with my hands, and these smallish pit bulls.
“These dogs? No waaayyy,” I say, and push the door open and hold my hand out.
The dogs lick, and jump up to lick my face, and wag, and we’re in, wandering the house, searching for the phone ringing past any doorway, and Henry’s there, apologizing, then we’re asleep.
TENNESSEE
We’re driving through Clinton, SC, in search of a grocery store.
“Do you think all these houses come with secret passageways?” I ask, looking at the old Southern houses.
“Yeah, definitely. And dungeons,” Ian says.
“Excuse me, doess this house come equipped with a dungo?” Emily asks.
“Yeah a dungo. Secret basement dungo?”
“I need it so I can play dungos and dragons!”
“DUNGO”
Back on the highway, we drive past a white car with a busted-out back window, full of white teenagers.
“Ooh, party car.”
“Good thing they can still blast ICP with that busted window!”
Emily screams fake ICP lyrics unintelligibly, “I stirred, her dDRINKGZ WITH MY… DICKCCK!!!”
“I stirred her drink with my dick?!” Nick repeats slowly.
Emily laughs. “But like really delicately, like properly, stirred.”
“Like a swizzle!”
“Little dick swizzle.”
“How great would that beeee,” Emily sings to the melody of the Beach House song.
We are booked for a punk-rock show in Knoxville. The show doesn’t start until 11 at least, and we’re the last of four bands – outlook’s not great. But at least 6.5 punks stick it out until the end of our set, and at the end they applaud wildly. Or, kind of more louder than usual, at least. One more! One more! So we play the cutesey one we’ve taken out to save time. Afterwards the lead singer of one of the punk bands rasps at us with his barely-there voice, “You WEREN’T going to play that one!?”
LET’S GET GUNS IN TENNESSEE: KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE
We get fancy cheeses and meats then go to the venue for our set. The second band in Knoxville looks like he’s straight out of a 70s b-list comedy; his hair hangs long, he has thick-rimmed glasses and a small pot belly. During his set the waiter from the cocktail / fancy cheese place we went for dinner leans over to me and whispers, “he’s pretty much always totally drunk when he performs.” I listen closer and realize most of his lyrics are about drinking, drinking, only being happy when he’s drinking. Everyone is pleased. An alcoholic success. May we never be so lucky.
BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA
By now, we’ve almost sold out of records (we have two left) and have to get to the distribution center, which happens to be in Bloomington, before five. Five hours of sleep – it’s enough. We leave at nine, which is definitely the earliest we’ve left anywhere at any point during tour.
“How are my babies doing back there? Fat turds!” Emily says once we’re on the road.
Turds to Indiana, then turds home…
Previously: Ruby Fray Tour Diary: Part One
