Wackos to Obliterate: Book Two (Chapter 11)

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Dr. Barry Motega may not have been wearing his ghost-dance shirt, but he did show up at the legalization rally as promised. It was being held on the grounds of the state fair in a large exhibition hall, which was frequently rented out for events like this. Inside the building were dozens of booths containing literature, both for and against the legalization issue. One of the latter were some small-time growers of medicinal marijuana who were worried their business would be either wiped out or at least adversely affected by legalization. In favor were promoters of hemp farming who provided factoids concerning its general uses in making industrial products and fuel, and there were booths that provided information about ways to consume cannabis like making tinctures and cooking recipes. In addition to the booths with literature, there were many vendors displaying bongs, vaporizers, pipes and even clothing made from hemp. Above the people milling around were floating big balloons shaped like marijuana buds and even a small blimp shaped like a joint. On the far side of the building opposite the main entrance was the stage reserved for speakers and the couple of bands that were slated to perform. Of course, the main attraction was the TRinkets. Brad was able to get permission to have their legalization song playing in the background over the PA on a rotation with a couple dozen other songs with a related message: mostly reggae and hip-hop.

By the time Barry and his daughter arrived, the TRinkets were about ready to take the stage. A rep from one of the legalization organizations was addressing the audience with a little bio about the band since too many years had gone by for it to be expected that most in attendance knew who they were. Barry and his daughter, Aiyana, were standing under the joint blimp floating above the crowd and looked toward the stage just as the band walked on. The faces of the original members were immediately recognizable to Barry, but it felt odd to see them after so many years had passed. He was a little surprised Sophie and Trink looked much older than he remembered. Nils was no surprise, of course, since he had seen him not too long ago, but Ryuji was the biggest surprise since he retained much of the physical shape and poise of his youth. Trink and Sophie, though, looked and moved like a middle-aged couple.

“Those are two sorry-looking frontmen,” he said to Aiyana, who shook her head, but did not know what he said since the din in the building drowned out their voices.

“The guitarist looks out of place up there with all of those senior citizens. Is that old woman the lead singer?” Aiyana asked.

“That’s Sophie and the old guy with the gray ponytail is Trink. The dude from whose name the band is derived.”

“Oh, that’s why the TRinkets,” she shouted, smiling.

“Pretty lame, I know,” he shouted back, watching the band tune up their instruments. At the back of the stage, he noticed an older Asian woman dressed in a denim pantsuit, obviously Madelyn. He noticed she still wore her hair long and straight. Even though he was a psychiatric professional, who knew no one fit perfectly into stereotypes, someone with an unclear gender unnerved him. Often the craziest people go into the field of psychiatry.

Suddenly, a very familiar guitar riff filled the building; he wasn’t playing, but it was his ‘signature’ riff. If he were known for anything, it was that riff. Actually, it may be that riff from his guitar more than even the interplay between Trink and Sophie, which provided the TRinkets with a special place in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Many people debate on who defined the sound of Pink Floyd: Roger Waters or the guitar of David Gilmore. Barry was in the David Gilmore camp.

As the group played, Aiyana and Barry were drawn closer to the stage. As they squeezed nearer, Nils noticed an older, slightly rotund, native American-looking dude with long braids and a broad, red headband standing in the audience, next to a teenage girl with close-cropped, curly black hair. He wondered if any of the other members noticed Barry. In a venue like this in the middle of the afternoon, stage lighting did not obscure their view, so it was easy to pick out faces in the crowd. Barry was very easy to pick out: he was pretty big physically – tall and rotund – and looked like an iconic photograph widely utilized in secondary-school textbooks of American history.

During a short break Nils had in the song, he stood up, tapped Ryuji with a drumstick and pointed to Barry. Ryuji nodded toward him, smiled and then turned to Nils.

Nils shouted, “Let’s call him up to the stage after this song!” Ryuji nodded back and continued playing. Nils then sat down and got back into the song.

“I think we have Sitting Bull standing in the audience,” Nils said over his mike once the song ended. Trink turned to face the drummer, and then turned the direction Nils indicated. So did Sophie and Madelyn.

“It appears we have a very special guest today,” Trink announced over his microphone.

“Very special,” Sophie agreed talking over her own. “Come on up Bear and join us.” He did as Diamond grinned like a kid with a new toy.

“Sorry man, I don’t want to take your spot,” Barry said, touching Diamond by the arm as the guitarist unstrapped himself and handed it to Barry.

“No, I’d be honored man,” Diamond said, giggling. “I can’t believe it.”

For the next fifteen minutes, the band played with Barry on lead. When it was time to do their new song, Barry gave Diamond back his guitar, waved to the audience, and walked to the back of the stage where Madelyn, Chelsea and a few stage hands were standing. Barry motioned to Aiyana and she joined him. Before the band played, Brad appeared on two rather large TV screens situated on opposite sides of the stage. He was seated in his solar wheelchair among tall marijuana plants in the Pixie Palace.

“In honor of our quest to end the prohibition of a free people to use a gift of nature that has been proven to be safer than any other substance consumed for relaxation, pleasure, or just to have a good time, this great band – the TRinkets – have created a song hoped (at least by me) to become the anthem of our struggle for legalization. As an old San Francisco band ‘Blue Cheer’ sang so many years ago: ‘Oh pleasant hope, when we gonna get our dope.’ The TRinkets respond …”

Perhaps due to the excitement that accompanies a surprise like Barry’s reunion with the band, or due to the new song already gaining some traction through the PR campaign initiated a couple of weeks before, the crowd was bopping around and dancing as soon as the Trinkets ripped into Ryuji’s song.

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“That was awesome!” Madelyn said.

“I think I’m in shock,” Trink said, squeezing her hand as they walked down the metal steps at the back of the stage. Madelyn was holding Chelsea’s hand with her other; making sure the older woman walking in front of them would not fall as she descended the rickety stairs. As they reached the bottom, an attractive, rather thin woman in her early thirties walked up to them.

She held out a business card. “Mr. Mars, I’m Jill Stein with the Sentinel Post.”

“Uh huh?” he responded, taking her card. Feeling a little like he did when religious fanatics would come to the door and peddle their wares.

“That was an amazing show you just put on.”

“Thanks,” he said knowing what was going to come next, but more than willing to allow it to happen since it had been years since any media organization had wanted to have anything to do with him or the group beyond stirring the dirt surrounding their breakup.

“I would appreciate the opportunity to interview you and any other member of the group, ideally everyone if possible.”

“Currently, we’ll do interviews that keep the focus on the issue of legalization,” Madelyn said, taking the card from Trink, “Ah, Ms. Stein.”

“Please call me Jill,” she said, offering a hand to shake.

“Of the Sentinel, very nice; I’m Madelyn, the TRinkets’ manager,” she said as they shook hands. “Here, allow me to give you my business card if I can find one.” She reached into her shoulder bag and extracted a small case from which she took a card and handed it to the reporter. “Call that number tomorrow morning around ten and I can let you know how many members we’ll have available for the interview. Oh I’m sorry, would you rather have me call you?”

Trink stood back and let Madelyn take care of the PR. About ten yards in front of them, he noticed Barry and the others standing around Chelsea and chatting with a few people who looked like fans. He called out: “Hey Bear!”

Barry turned and smiled. “Trink, my man, that was one hell of a show!”

“Not belittling Diamond or anything, but you made the day!” Trink said, walking over and giving his old bandmate a hug.

“That’s bullshit, man. The crowd went crazy for the new song.”

“Well, you got to consider where we’re at, it’s a legalization rally, after all.”

“Even so, it was great to experience the excitement,” Barry said, standing back, but still holding one of Trink’s arms.

“Who’s the little lady?” Trink said, nodding to Aiyana and smiling.

“My lovely daughter, Aiyana,” he said, motioning for her to come over. “Aiyana, this is Trink.”

“Of the TRinkets, I bet,” she replied with a tinge of sarcasm.

“It does sound pretty lame, doesn’t it? We’re in a different age,” Trink replied.

“Frankly Dude, it sounded lame back in the day as well,” Ryuji said. “So Bear, how did you know we were performing today?”

“Why didn’t you let us know you could come?” Trink added.

“I saw a post online and realized that since I was able to have a break in my schedule as the result of an unforeseen tragic death of a patient, Aiyana and I thought we’d surprise the fuck out of you all.”

“That you did, man, that you did,” Nils said.

“Who’s Maddie talking with?” Sophie asked.

“A reporter from one of the major papers in this state,” Trink said, looking at Madelyn and motioning for her to come over.

“No shit,” Ryuji said as Madelyn pointed toward the band and said something to Jill. She smiled and they both walked over.

“This is Jill Stein of the Sentinel Post,” she said. “Let me introduce you to the members of the TRinkets, both past and present.”

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The following afternoon, all the members including Diamond were interviewed inside the Pixie Palace. Jill brought with her a small crew: a photographer and a video cameraman.

“We’re planning to embed the video on our website,” Jill said.

“Probably include a little from yesterday’s concert as well,” a twenty-something African-American woman explained as she pointed the movie camera at them sitting among the same plants around which Brad had been filmed for the segment used at the concert. As the group lounged around on lawn furniture with small microphones attached to their clothing, Tinker and Peter were hard at work in Neverland.

“As a psychiatrist who specializes in treating patients with supposed substance-abuse issues, I’ve found marijuana can no more be considered a gateway to addictive substances than milk or oxygen. Simply put, almost all the clinical studies conducted in the past three decades have concluded marijuana use is no more an indicator of who will abuse an opiate than eating chocolate, drinking milk, or almost any daily activity,” Barry rattled off.

Madelyn stood back and watched as the interview progressed. She could see at the outset that Ms. Stein was hoping to get material she could edit and manipulate, which would result in putting the legalization cause into a somewhat negative light. Turn it into a pitiful situation: middle-aged, washed-up, overweight has-beens trying to relive the glory days of youth; turn their story into nothing more than a marijuana-induced unfocused fantasy to recreate bygone days that were lost mostly due to their professed abuse of ganja. Instead, what she was getting was a highly articulate and well-reasoned appeal to put an end to an ill-conceived and costly law.

“If I might add,” Brad, the veteran from corporate media, spoke up from his wheelchair, “after more than seventy years of a government policy that has resulted in the senseless incarceration of millions for nothing more than choosing to partake of a plant proven by science to be a safe, non-toxic substance, isn’t it finally time to admit an injustice has occurred and end this prohibition?”

“You sound like Moses coming down from the mountain,” Jill said with a smirk on her symmetrically telegenic face.

“Set my people free,” Ryuji said in a voice that mimicked Charlton Heston playing Moses. “Or was that, ‘let my people go’?” he added and everyone laughed.

“Moses or not, I wouldn’t be confined to this chair if cannabis were legal.”

Jill walked over to Brad with her handheld mike. “Explain.” Marden started with the drunk driver, which he quickly followed with his rant about alcohol and how it was an affliction that ailed society. He concluded by stating the negative effects of demon rum would be erased by the legalization of marijuana.

“What does this crusade have to do with the reunion of the TRinkets?” Jill asked, addressing the band members. “As I recall, your breakup was not very amicable.”

“More like the ‘Big Bang’ I’d call it,” Sophie said.

“So what brought about the reconciliation?”

After that question, there was a short pause before Nils said: “Money.”

“Oh man,” Barry said. “That’s the most obvious answer you could expect from a drummer; the bare bones of existence.”

“There you go being critical of the rhythm section again. We’re the foundation of the group,” Ryuji said, taking the lead from both Nils and Barry to divert the interview from anything too personal and bringing it back to the typical banter people expect to hear from rock ‘n’ roll groups.

“There’re reasons your kind of people are not at the front of the stage,” Barry added.

“What do you mean, ‘your kind of people’?” Sophie said in a tone implying she heard a racial slur. “That sounds a little like ‘the back of the bus’ to me.”

“As you can see, reconciliation has nothing to do with it,” Trink said. “It’s just the sound. That’s why we came together in the first place and that’s why we’re together again. That is, if Bear stays around for a while.”

“Actually, I just showed up yesterday since my daughter convinced me to take her to see my old band.”

“Are you planning to play in any of the future gigs?” Ms. Stein asked, completely diverted.

“I guess you need to stay tuned to find out,” Barry said as he glanced over to Madelyn seated in a lawn chair next to Brad and his wheelchair.

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After the press had left, Tinker brought in the hookah and got it ready for everyone to taste the benefits of the recent harvest. Everyone expected Nils to turn it down since he had stopped smoking before the band broke up, but this time, Barry refused as well.

“I’m surprised after your statements during the interview,” Ryuji said after Barry held up his hand and shook his head from side to side.

“I don’t use anything anymore: tobacco, alcohol, or even coffee.”

“Do you still eat and breathe?” Sophie asked.

“Occasionally, but I’m trying to cut back.”

“Wow, a medicine man who doesn’t take medicine. That’s wise. Do you prescribe anything to your patients?” Nils asked.

“That’s all part of the job, isn’t it?”

“Is it? Don’t you think too many shrinks prescribe too many pills they themselves haven’t taken?” Trink asked.

“Touché; never forget Luke, eh?” Ryuji said as he accepted the hookah mouthpiece from Sophie.

“Who was Luke?” Chelsea asked.

“An old friend of Trink’s from high school,” Madelyn said.

“Actually, he was the older brother of my friend, but the point is he was over-prescribed medication that fucked him up so much he committed suicide.”

“How many times have I heard this conversation? You’re a broken record, Trink. I can’t believe the number of years that have gone by and you still harp on the same shit. Madelyn must really get tired of hearing you repeat the same crap over and over.”

“He does get a little repetitive.”

“Kind of true with the sound of the band, too, don’t you think?” Nils said. Everyone turned to him. “Was it only me, or weren’t the rest of you getting tired of the rut we were in?”

“You think we were in a rut?” Sophie said and then took a big drag on the hookah.

“Don’t you feel we were becoming parodies of ourselves?” Nils said in an attempt to clarify his thoughts.

“So, you’re saying all of the bitching was in large part because we got bored with where we were going as a band?” Ryuji asked as he accepted the mouthpiece from Sophie.

“That’s just it, we weren’t going anywhere. We were just repeating the basic riff.”

“Perhaps, the rhythm section wasn’t supplying us with a new foundation,” Barry said smiling at Nils and Ryuji.

“No doubt that’s why some members felt they had to go outside the norm and push the envelope,” Sophie said.

“Meaning what?” Trink asked.

“What do you think?” she replied, rolling her eyes. “When you started doing it with me, I just thought you wanted to experiment. Who knew where it was going to end? I didn’t think it would end with Herbie’s demise.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Madelyn asked, even though she was trying to stay out of the banter between the old band mates.

“I think you know what I’m saying, Maddie. You were his assistant for fuck sake. You pushed our manager over the edge.”

“I had no idea what he was doing with that Jimson Weed. That was Ryuji’s big venture, wasn’t it?”

“No, that was me,” Barry interrupted.

“That’s right: Bear the Medicine Man. I forgot you were into all of those old natural rituals at the time: peyote and what the fuck; kind of a Pan-Indian kick,” Trink said.

“That’s one reason I let that all go. What happened to Herb scared the shit out of me.”

“It didn’t seem like it at the time,” Madelyn said as she remembered the nonchalant way he acted when she told him Herbie had been found dead after an apparent overdose on Jimson Weed.

“My current profession is a direct result of that event. I guess I wanted to work it out in some way. Pay back my debt or something.”

Chelsea knew better than to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “So, how does that relate to Trink or Madelyn?”

“Anal intercourse,” Sophie blurted out and started laughing uncontrollably. Partly due to the spontaneity of the outburst or the fact that most of them were pretty stoned by now, everyone started laughing, too; except Madelyn and Barry.

“Classy, eh; I wonder why she didn’t use that in the interview,” Madelyn said as the laughing subsided.

“Fuck you!” Sophie shouted.

“Nope, not possible.”

“Probably your dick’s too small to get inside, or you’ve had it sliced off when you ‘transitioned,’” Sophie said as she stood up and started moving to where Madelyn and Chelsea were sitting.

“That’s enough now, things are getting ugly,” Barry said, grabbing Sophie by an arm as she tried to move past him.

She pushed his hand away. “Not as ugly as that trannie bag.”

Trink grabbed her and shouted, “You jealous cunt!”

She struggled in his grasp. “What the fuck are you shouting about? Jealous of what: a honky with his transitioned gook?”

“Whao! Did I hear the “G” word? Hey, Marden, I don’t think your blessed herb is having a calming effect on our little crew,” Ryuji said. “Sophie, enough already.”

“It’s good this didn’t happen in the interview.” Barry closed his eyes and slowly shook his head from side to side.

“You think so? Well, wait until the next one,” Sophie said.

“It’s not going to happen, not here, not anywhere. Thanks for the effort, but I think we’ll shut this down,” Brad said from his chair beneath the tallest plant in the greenhouse.

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“I was wondering, where’s Aiyana?” Trink asked Barry as they walked outside Pixie Palace.

“You didn’t think I’d let her watch an interview in a greenhouse full of pot plants, did you?”

“Oh, before I forget: drop by the house since we have a couple of baby pictures of Aiyana taken with Tracy and you,” Madelyn said, walking arm-in-arm with Trink.

“That sounds nice. I’m sure Aiyana would get a kick out of them. It’s surprising how few pictures we have of the three of us together.”

“She went so quickly,” Trink said, slowly nodding his head.

“I was just completing my studies at Columbia when she was diagnosed. Luckily the university’s medical school hospital was able to accept her. Who would have expected a brain embolism at her age? They kept her on machines for a while, but …” Barry said, his throat started to choke up and he moved a hand to his face to keep from crying.

“Does Aiyana remember her mother?” Madelyn asked as she moved from Trink and rubbed Barry on the back.

“Not really, so she’d love to see the pictures.”

“It’d be nice if you could see our house before we have to give it up,” Trink added as they walked up to their cars parked outside of Marden’s place.

“What do you mean?”

“Not all is well with the ‘honky/trans-gook’ Mars’ household,” Madelyn said.

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Links to the previous chapters of Book Two

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

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Copyright (©) by Kenneth Wayne