Futureproof by N Frank Daniels Page B

surfing. He wants that guy taken out of here, he says. He says that people like that guy are fucking raped in prison for a reason and they deserve it. They have no respect for women, he says. The crowd is mostly silent. Splinter and Trizden are lost somewhere out there. Sharon and I are still slobbering all over each other in the silence. She continues moaning as I finger her. Then Kurt starts up again, recommences with “Territorial Pissings,” and the crowd is destroying everything again and Sharon is yanking on my dreads again and biting my bottom lip and I have no worry in the world, I’m so high on the music and the cocaine and the kissing that I could die right now and not care ONE FUCKING BIT.
    Once they exit the stage everyone starts screaming louder than they have all night. We know it can’t be over yet because they haven’t destroyed everything, instruments are still intact all over the stage. The band finally comes back and plays another song or two and then they begin the inevitable destruction by bashing holes in the drums with the mic stands followed by the impaling of the speaker stacks and then Kurt is grinding his guitar into the fucking monitors and then he’s standing on his guitar and it is making the shrillest, mostdecrepit sounds we’ve ever heard and then they all take turns throwing one of the smaller monitors up in the air, trying to knock the mirror ball above the stage from its mooring and then Kurt does it, isn’t that classic? Kurt dislodges the mirror ball from twenty feet above him and it crashes to the stage in a glittering display of broken glass and we are still screaming, the crowd is screaming, and both of my hands are down Sharon’s pants, the right hand in the front, the left in back, and she has her arms wrapped around the back of my head, pulling on my dreads, and I have still more coke left for later. The monitors, what’s left of them, are buzzing, moaning monotonally as Kurt and company leave the stage and we file out of the auditorium.
    Sharon kisses me again at the door, sucks extra hard on my bottom lip, tells me not to tell Trizden, says, “That was fun, wasn’t it?” and puts her finger to her lips in a “keep quiet” motion before disappearing into the departing crowd. I duck behind a trash can, suck up another four bumps, am still smiling when Splinter and then Trizden make their way through the door. Trizden punches me in the arm.
    â€œThanks for ditching me in the pit, jerkweed.” He’s always got one grievance or another. He’s temperamental. Like a woman.

TRANSMISSION 10:
destroying your town to save it
    April
    The riots are in full swing in L.A. and everywhere. The news is having a field day. Cities all over the country are erupting in violence and looting. Splinter keeps insisting that we go downtown and fuck some shit up, but I don’t know—it seems like a good way to get incarcerated for a long time and for no discernible reason. He goes anyway and returns to Animal Mother’s that night with a brand-new set of golf clubs.
    I don’t see the point, though. I figure, why shit where you eat? It makes no sense. These looters aren’t going after the oppressors by hitting up the rich neighborhoods. They’re destroying their own back-yards. It makes no fucking sense. But I’ve realized that this is what The Man wants. He wants us to kill each other. This makes The Man happy. Why expend money and manpower on keeping the poor people down if we’ll do it ourselves?
    I tell Splinter my theory a few days after the last rioter has gone home. We’re sitting in the square in Little 5 Points. All the whacked-out hippies and punks and social outcasts of the Atlanta “scene” hang down here. Every store in the area has some variety of “X-treme” hair dye and sells t-shirts emblazoned with underground rock band logos. We come down here for a slice of pizza, with