The Most Homophobic Band in Hollywood, 2015
I Ruin the Romanovs
Pete Castle, guitar. Lisa Motorina, vocals. The author, drums. Cal, bass guitar.
We were getting pretty good, but I’d come to be unable to stand being in the same room with the bass player, Cal, whom I’d once considered Amigo No. 1.
Real Men conceal their feelings, and Cal concealed the living daylights out of his. His brand was all about imperturbability. The afternoon he returned after the death of one of his dearest friends to the Geriatric Bachelor Pad in the sky (well, the 10th floor) that we shared, you’d have thought he’d just received a parking ticket. When his elderly dad, afflicted with dementia, died, he didn’t let on.
Now, 10 years after the fact, he won’t speak to me because I didn’t try to console him.
I didn’t try to console him because he hadn’t let on that his dad was in increasingly awful shape. If he had, I’d have ceased on the spot to be pissed off by Cal’s reacting to pretty nearly every idea I had for the Romanovs as though it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard, beginning with the band’s name, which I suggested to honor our Russian-born singer. (The Romanovs had been Russian. Vladimir Putin was Russian, and homophobic. Therefore, in Cal’s mind, audiences would naturally infer that the band was homophobic.)
I’d written this song for Cal a couple of months before his dad’s death. It’s all me. Actual played, rather than programmed, drums on this one!
IN EVERY BIG EMBASSY YOU’VE PLANTED SPIES
I SHUDDER DISGUSTEDLY AT ALL THE LIES THAT YOU SPEW
AND I CAN’T STAND YOU
YO’VE RAISED ALL THE RABBLE. WHEN THE GIFT’S UNWRAPPED
YOU’LL SING PSYCHOBABBLE. VIOLENCE IS APT TO ENSUE
AND I CAN’T STAND YOU
GO ON, LIVE WITH YOUR DECISION
YOUR DERISION MAKES ME BLUE
I’VE CLIMBED EVERY MOUNTAIN IN YOUR GODDAMNED RANGE
BUT I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL EVER CHANGE, AND IT’S TRUE
THAT I CAN’T STAND YOU
THOUGH YOU’VE STACKED THE DECK I’LL PLAY THE HAND I’M DEALT
YOU’VE SPIKED EVERY PUNCH YOU’VE PULLED.
YOUR CHEESE WON’T MELT FOR FONDUE
AND I CAN’T STAND YOU
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