A Lesser Gatsby

It’s not a real party until someone dies. Prodding the body of the keg-stand champ floating face down in the backyard pool with a pole, trying to bob him up to the edge, I’m thinkin’: this is the part Fitzgerald never told you about. The clean-up after the party; though I doubt Gatsby ever had to do it himself. Nope, Gatsby never had to lift a finger. And now that someone else has been offered the role of death by pool, you, a lesser Gatsby, can feel at ease. 

A few of the blokes and a girl I’d like to get up to a bit of the old Animal Nitrate with – just the girl, not the blokes – who were at the party have held back and volunteered to help sweep the shit up. So far I’ve been bobbing for bodies – just the one – this was a great party but not the best – and the girl I can’t help but think of Suede when I look at has been sweeping a net around the pool, sweeping up half-crushed cans of Coors. Two of the other ‘helpers’ have stood over by the other end of the pool and done what you do in these moments: shot the shit.  

“You mean Portland?”

“No, Portlandia. It’s this show. Fred Armisen and that chick from Sleater-Kinney-”

“Which one?”

“The hot one. They do this sketch show. About Portland.”

“So it’s not just hipsterism, it’s advanced hipsterism.”

Finally I holler over at them and they disband. One jumps in the pool and gets the last three cans that haven’t been swept up. The other hustles over to me and help me drag up the keg-stand king of the night.

Meanwhile, him, the one next to me, keeps making small talk to the one tossing the chlorine-filled cans onto the lawn:

“I was reading this biography – on Sam Peckinpah? In the book, it recounts how while shooting Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, they uh, it’s like – on most productions, they usually check the footage they shot at the end of each day, right? That’s why they call them ‘dailies’. Well, so, on the set of Pat Garrett, they didn’t do that, the first week. They went the whole week and didn’t check what they’d shot until the end of that week. So they’re all crowded in the screening room – Bob Dylan and James Coburn are off to the side sitting on a couch or something, and Sam’s there and they turn on the projector to see what they’ve got. Turns out, the camera lense was busted or skewed or something, I dunno – so you can’t see a damn thing. That first week of work – shot to shit. Didn’t get a single goddam thing on camera. Sam gets so pissed, he hauls a chair to the middle of the room, stands on it, whips his dick out and pisses all over the screen; I mean he pisses this big giant ‘S’ shape onto the projection screen at the front a the room and Bob Dylan, he’s over there on the couch and he turns to James Coburn and sez: What have we got ourselves into? For Coburn – who’d worked with Peckinpah before and was used to this shit – this was nothing. This was Sam at his most Zen. Yeah. Zen. So anyway, after that, whenever they screened something, there it would be – this ‘S’ shaped mark right there on the screen.”

We start cracking up. After that we move into the house and pile bottles and red plastic cups into black plastic bags.  

“Here’s another one: last year, I read Peter Hook’s autobiography on Joy Division? I think the book was called ‘Unknown Pleasures’, like they’re album? And there’s this really funny episode Hook recounts where he’s at home one night and the cops knock on his door. This was the late ’70’s and the Yorkshire Ripper was on the loose and everyone was on edge. So the cops, they say they got this tip that there’s this van that’s been seen in the general area of the slayings, and they’re there to question Hook about it. So Hook explains that he’s in a band, and the van’s his – it’s the band’s and they use it to get to gigs – and that’s why the van has been spotted in those places, that’s where they were playing. It’s just a coincidence that a lot of the gigs they got happened to coincide with the killings. He shows them a flier for his band and everything. Satisfied, they leave. Meanwhile, the other constables, they’ve been going around to every band member’s house to question them, you know, all at once? When they knock on – it was either Bernard Sumner or Stephen Morris – I can’t remember which one’s house, one or the other opens the door and seeing the cops, instantly freaks. Not even knowing or asking what they’re there for, he just sees the cops on his doorstep and instantly goes mental. So of course the fuzz are thinkin’ “Got’im. We got the Ripper. Why else would he be so scared?” So they haul him down to the station, and of course they're pattin' themselves on the back, thinkin’ they’ve solved the case. The other guys go down there the next morning and explain the situation, and the cops reluctantly let him go. And here they thought they caught a break. In the end, Peter Sutcliffe wouldn’t even be captured until after Ian Curtis’ death.”

Up until now, we’ve left the pool floater on the kitchen tiles. Me and the chatty bloke get another disposable and slip it over his head and tug it down but the lower half of his legs is still showing, so we get another bag and slip it over his feet and finally tape the two bags together in the middle. Meanwhile, the other two have been in the kitchen soaking up the pool water on the floor with paper towels. The four of us haul him up and carry him out to the curb. We get’im in the green plastic bin head-first, not unlike how I imagine Bob Berdella must’ve done it. Then we jog back to the house and come back with the rest of the trash and stuff the other two bags in after him.    

Afterward, we send Thing 1 and Thing 2 packin’ with whatever booze is leftover in the fridge and me and the girl share a smoke in the backyard.

Planning for this, I’d burned a mix CD. I press play and we get through Suede’s “Animal Nitrate” and halfway through INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart.”

That’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I greet the next morning with Ultravox’s “Vienna” blaring from the speakers.