Guitar? Scar!

Getting clobbered in Valley Stream

Mike Nicolosi (RIP) – Nihilistics bass player – is 19, I’m 18 and we’re a year out of high school, in need of a weekend hangout playing decent music. Mike learns of Legz through a girl he’s dating or knows and it becomes our weekend destination. The ritual begins down in Mike’s basement with the downing of a cheap six-pack of beer, usually warm, to the bewitching strains of The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers, U.K. Subs or Dead Boys or whatever’s recently acquired during trips to the only area record store with imports from England. We smoke a few Ben Franklin cigars ($5.99 a box of fifty at the Pathmark), then pile into Mike's yellow Mercury Capri and head off to Sunrise Highway in beautiful Valley Stream. (Tony LoBianco, as one half of a murderous duo in The Honeymoon Killers, looking out a window onto a tiny lawn: "Valley Stream! They call this place Valley Stream. Ha! Thousands of little jail cells surrounded by lawns!").

Ah, Legz! A diner transformed into a “nightclub” and run by Mafia wannabes, it now finds its disco nights on the wane and–in a bid to stay afloat–pivots to “PUNK & NEW WAVE FRIDAY & SATURDAY NIGHTS!” We’re there so often I become intimately familiar with the layout and can find my way around the place blindfolded if necessary. We always arrive as the doors open and are soon up four steps from the small parking lot, through the double doors, past the bouncer and bound for our first stop: the long bar for drinks. The ammonia and bleach stink barely outpaces the reek of desperation. Everyone’s desperate to have a good time, desperate to hear their favorite song, desperate to meet someone, desperate to get laid. I loathe it. And love it. Legz is so much worse than other places I could be but so much better than home.

Mike and I order our gin & tonics (or whatever the drink-of-the-moment’s is) and park ourselves by the elevated DJ booth to throw (usually ignore) suggestions at whomever’s spinning. Across a small parquet dance floor bordered by low benches on one side and cocktail tables with chairs on the other is the small rear bar. To the side, separated by a short wall, are bathrooms with sufficient flat surfaces for snorting coke. Mirrored walls and disco lights provide what little “ambience” exists. Look closely and you can clearly see the failed diner Michael LaMarca and his squad of leering muscle-bound Vietnam Vet goons command. Reeking of flammable cologne, their hair perfectly coifed, flaunting colorful skin-tight Qiana shirts unbuttoned low to show off medallions, Italian horns and copious chest hair, LaMarca’s Tony Manero-wannabees greedily ogle every woman entering, alone or paired up. It’s obvious they barely tolerate the new music supplanting their beloved disco and–as the drugs kick in and the night wears on–will use even the slightest transgression of the unwritten rules to kick the living shit out of some “fag” until the cops arrive. LaMarca then steps forward and issues his stock line:

Damn micks… always startin' trouble in my club!

For some reason he hates the Irish–or maybe he knows most of the cops around here are Irish and this is how he gets an extra laugh as they haul away the evening's sacrifice.

When in attendance I nurse my cocktail and gaze jealously on anyone having the good time I long for. Becoming openly voyeuristic, I focus intently on lovers making out, beautiful women alone and Mike chatting up whatever girl he’s interested in. Rarely do I experience a deeper isolation in the midst of so many strangers. I’m fat, pimply, self-conscious and have absolutely no game. Talking to women without feeling like I’m going to die is not yet a skill, so Legz becomes an endurance test. For hours I’m alone (or hanging with some other clueless schmuck) while waiting for Mike to get a phone number and then deign to drive us back to Lindenhurst.

One night in December 1981 I’m seated with another perpetual virgin–gangly Pat of the Romanesque nose–at a small cocktail table on the edge of the dance floor. We’re lost in mockery of everyone’s dance moves when LaMarca comes over and begins screaming at us. We can't hear him above the music so he bends over, put his twisted, sputtering red face inches from Pat’s, grabs his arm and yells What did you do?! What did you DO?! I told you to stop flickin' cigarettes, didn't I?!

LaMarca shakes Pat so violently he begins to slide down his seat until I think he might end up under the table. I’m close enough to smell Lamarca s bad breath and feel flecks of flying spittle wet my face. Pat meekly protests.

I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do anything. I've just been sitting here...

LaMarca saves his best for last.

You hit a girl in the eye, do you realize that?! You hit a girl in the EYE and now she has to go to the hospital because of you!

LaMarca leans in closer and grins a look that saysYour ass is MINE! A Pat-stomping seems imminent.

I like to help when I see an injustice and before LaMarca can call his goons over I clear my throat to take up Pat's cause. 

“Mike, I've been sitting here all night and I didn't see him flick anything.”

I’ve unknowingly made a grievous tactical error, becoming the target of a roid-raging sociopath. LaMarca turns away from Pat, points at me and screams.

And you... you son of a bitch!

He grabs our cocktail table, spilling the ashtray and our drinks. Then he raises the table high above his head and brings the rectangular steel base crashing down on my skull. It doesn't hurt as much as I think it will and I instantly become strangely calm. Warm torrents of blood cascade from just above my hairline, spill down my forehead to my right eye, pool for a bit on my cheek, then overflow onto my chin, neck, shirt and pants, finally splashing to the floor. I have heard head wounds bleed a great deal and it’s true. My crew-cut can’t absorb the blood, free to run wherever gravity beckons. People gasp, move away from Pat and I. LaMarca stands above me sneering, still wielding the upside-down cocktail table, his “Security” forming a tight phalanx behind him. Pat, in shock, clamps his hand over his mouth, frozen. I slowly stand and look LaMarca in the eyes.

“I'll leave.”

I trail blood into the men's room, catching sight of myself in the mirror. My thrift store ruffled-front tuxedo shirt is drenched in blood. I look cool but when the pain comes wish I’d kept my mouth shut. My head throbs and I begin wadding up paper towels, wetting them in the sink to dab the wound. The towels keep falling apart in my hand. A bouncer I'm friendly with since gifting him a scale-model hand-built Huey helicopter (like the ones in Apocalypse Now) enters the bathroom expressing regret and an issuing a warning.

I think you better leave, kid.

I try to explain I haven't done anything wrong but he makes it clear it doesn't matter and hands me a dishrag, indicating my head. I hold the dishrag to the open wound and press down hard. It’s time to go.

Mike’s not in the club so I figure he must be in the parking lot where people go for fresh air or to smoke pot or fuck in their cars. I make my way outside–everyone gaping at my bloody sight and clearing a path–and over to the Capri. Mike, his back to me, is with a girl. She spots me over Mike's shoulder and shrieks. Mike turns in time to see me step out of the lamplight.

Jesus Christ!

He flings the car door open, steps out, repeats himself.

Jesus Christ! What the fuck happened?!

By now I’m not feeling well, not up to explaining.

“Can we just go?”

The girl in the passenger seat points at something, says Uh oh. Mike and I turn to see LaMarca hurrying down the steps followed closely by four large men.

They're going to stomp the living shit out of us and there's nothing we can do about it.

LaMarca finds us, grabs me by the shoulders, maneuvers me under the lamplight.

Jesus, did I do THAT?!

He fishes in his pocket, pulls out a bankroll, peels off a bill, shoves it into my hand and barks Get that taken care of, kid!

Mike and I climb into the Capri, burn rubber out of the parking lot and onto Sunrise Highway. When we’re gone a mile I unclench my fist and unroll the bill. It’s a hundred! I've never held one before. At arm's length I check the front and back several times and start laughing, waving the hundred at Mike. He thinks I’ve lost it until he sees Benjamin Franklin.

Holy shit... where did you get that?

“LaMarca gave it to me. For hitting me over the head. He can hit me over the head some more if I get a hundred bucks each time.”

Mike gives me the once over and declares me a goddamn mess. I look at the hundred and feel better. By the time we pull up to Mike's house I decide the money will be spent on that Carlo Robelli¹ Gibson SG copy hanging in Music Land. My Carlo Robelli dreamboat has the oh-so convenient price of one hundred dollars. It’s cherry red with a glued-on neck (like actual Gibson SG's) and when I play it during my last Music Land visit it felt like a real guitar, not like the Ibanez bolt-on neck Les Paul copy I’m playing. Soon, it’ll be mine, all mine!

I say "Good night!" to Mike and drive myself home, arriving around 3 AM. My mother, whose bedroom is separated from mine by a small pink-tile bathroom, usually sleeps through my comings and goings but I catch her unawares in the hallway on her way to the kitchen for a cold drink. Her half-mast eyelids snap open and she lets out an unholy scream.

Jesus Christ! WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU?!

I try to squeeze around her into the bathroom but she blocks me.

What happened?!

I decide to lie.

"I've been in a fight." 

A fight?!

"Do you think I'll need stitches for this?"

I remove the blood-soaked dishrag from my head. My mother gasps anew.

It's too late for stitches! The skin has separated! WHY DIDN'T YOU GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM?!

"I didn't think it was that bad!"

This is going to leave a scar! Put a butterfly bandage on it and see how it looks tomorrow!

That’s her final instruction before she shuffles into the kitchen to drink RC Cola directly from the bottle. I go to my room, undress and get into bed, visions of new guitars dancing in my head.

I awake to the sight of my blood-soaked shirt draped over a chair. It fascinates me. There’s a large ruddy-brown stain over the collar and most of the shirt-front, reminding me of those JFK autopsy pictures. I hang the shirt in the back of the closet, sure it’ll make nice stage-wear for the next Nihilistics gig. Music Land opens at 11 AM Saturdays and I’m there at noon. I don't remember if I did but like to think I slapped the hundred down on the counter and directed Charlie, my favorite salesman, to render unto Caesar what was mine. When I get the guitar in my paws the events of the night before recede into a mist. A smile plastered on my face, I blast home with the Carlo Robelli on the backseat of my 1971 Plymouth Satellite. All the way to the front door of 680 South Fifth Street I hum to myself, imagining what it'll be like to hear the SG through my 100-watt Gallien-Krueger amp.

The house is quiet when I arrive, no one around, and I hurriedly get my new toy into my bedroom, out of its cheap case and plugged into the amp’s high gain input. I don't bother to remove the price tag hanging from the headstock as my clumsy, cold fingers form a barred C chord and I feel the waves of volume pulse around and through me. I bang out a hasty, cheesy chord progression and it’s like manna from heaven.

O glorious instrument! O sound divine!

There’s a knock at the door before my mother pushes it open, yelling Lower that damn thing! She, who never takes notice of such things, points at my new Carlo Robelli.

Where the hell did you get that?

Likely suffering a cocktail table-induced concussion, I blurt out "I bought it with the money that guy gave me last night." My mother screams.

What guy?!

"The guy who cut my head open..."

I ‘m still not lucid enough to see where this is headed. I could've lied, said I borrowed the guitar from Billy or Alex or Lenny. But it’s too late. My mother grabs the price tag and reads it aloud.

A hundred dollars?! HE GAVE YOU A HUNDRED DOLLARS?!

"Yes! For hitting me over the head..."

AND YOU WENT OUT AND GOT THAT?! 

"Yes!"

BRING IT BACK! Bring it back RIGHT NOW and GET THE HUNDRED DOLLARS!

"What do you mean, bring it back?! I don't know if I can..."

I DON'T CARE! Bring it back NOW!

Backstory: From the time I turned eighteen my mother’s been charging me $200 a month for room and board. I’m notoriously late with the rent, and not just because I’m always broke. No one else I know has to pay to live at home and I resent it. But I haven’t figured out how to pick up and leave. I’m in arrears to my mother for–wait for it–a hundred dollars. And now she’s Caesar, saying to “Render unto me what’s mine:” My mother scares me more than Michael LaMarca, so I grumble, stomp around, slam doors and mutter but an hour later I’m back at Music Land, Carlo Robelli in hand. Charlie listens to my story, takes pity and refunds my money, handing me the same blood-stained $100 I paid with. I shove the cursed bill into my wallet and spin around, determined not to look back and see the object of my stunted desire lest I turn into a pillar of salt.

I’m back at Music Land a week later and there’s an empty space where my Carlo Robelli once hung… and an empty space in my heart. The scar, however, remains. Witness this picture taken January 11, 1982 (photographer unknown) at a very early Nihilistics gig (the first Sonic Youth public appearance, too) at Anspacher Theatre (Poets at the Public Theater):

Note the shaved area of my scalp and the new scar? It’s still there, now an old scar. In a subsequent trip to Music Land, December 10, 1983, I score an actual Gibson, what turns out to be a 1968 Les Paul, for $225. That axe I do not return and still own, since nicknamed “Debbie.” I’ll tell her story next time.

Remember: Spread the word about NIHILISTIC and tell your friends, enemies and frenemies to sign up:

1. In the '60s and '70s Japanese factories churned out copies of famous, expensive American guitar brands (Fender, Gibson) under the names Burny, Greco, Ibanez, Univox, etc. The Sam Ash music store chain had Carlo Robelli. These "lawsuit" guitars (because Gibson sued the manufacturers) were very serviceable. They played right, looked right and if you put electric tape over the name on the headstock who would know? For instance, my friend Richie painted over the "Univox" on his Les Paul Junior copy and applied an easily-obtained Gibson decal. He was living a lie but I was one of the few who noticed.