Gigantic.29

Premonition

Every teacher at Iowa had a philosophic core to their approach. Denis Johnson was all about experience. Frank Conroy was nuts-and-bolts technique. When it came to James Alan McPherson, it was always about meaning and basic human decency.

When he learned of my challenges staying with the program, it was Jim McPherson who stepped in and advocated on my behalf. Thank you Jim.

Come fall semester, I’d have a teaching job with a salary sufficient to cover basic living expenses and instate tuition. My future intact, I moved from the cold basement to a sunny two-room apartment on the second floor with real wood floors and windows on three sides.

I built a cabana in the backyard and took to throwing martini parties every Friday. Summer was looking pretty good. The only immediate challenge was finding temporary employment for the next two months in a town where PhD candidates competed for jobs at Burger King.

The local plasma center was a start. But, if you’ve ever been hooked up to a contraption that looks like R2-D2 except it extracts your blood then pumps it back into you, you’d know that donating plasma twice a week is not a sustainable source of income.

I complained about my job search over the phone to my friend Alex.

“Why don’t you work at Secret Pizza?” he said.

“Do they need help?” I said.

“Oh, they need help alright.”

I called Secret Pizza. The owner’s name was Roger and he was very suspicious. Apparently he did need help, desperately, but for some reason was unable to place an ad. When I met him the next day, I found out why.

Literally on the other side of the tracks, Roger had me come to a secondary location to size me up. Once he decided I was okay, we walked another two blocks to Secret Pizza.

An unmarked, wooden shack of a building with peeling paint, it looked like it had barely survived the Civil War.

It was hot inside from the single pizza oven. Windowless, the place was strewn with all sorts of items both related and completely unrelated to the production of pizza. Behind a tattered curtain was a back room with a cot where Roger slept. He lived here.

The ads for Secret Pizza said, “The Secret is the Taste.” The real secret was that if the Iowa City health department ever found the place they would close it in three seconds. Hence, the location of Secret Pizza remained a secret.

I wanted to make pizza. Roger wanted me to deliver it. We met in the middle. He’d teach me to make it if I’d deliver it.

Slight challenge, I didn’t have a car. My girlfriend Cherie had a ’73 Plymouth Volaré she’d inherited from her grandmother. She didn’t mind me driving it, but delivering pizza was a stretch. I guess she cut me some slack.

The real problem delivering for Secret Pizza was not extra miles on the vehicle. It was that Roger had no concept of time whatsoever. More than once I was threatened with bodily harm when I arrived with a cold pizza well over an hour late.

One night, when he finally finished making this one pizza, it was almost two hours late.

“Roger, you gotta come with me, I can’t deliver this one by myself.”

It was one of those Iowa stormy nights. Rolling thunder, lightning, foul smelling winds blowing across the manure-strewn fields of the surrounding pig farms.

When we arrived at the trailer park and knocked on the door of the single wide, two guys let us in, but they were so tweaked they had forgotten they had even ordered a pizza.

“Did you order a pizza, man?” one said to the other.

“Nah, man, I didn’t order a pizza.”

The wind slammed the door to the trailer closed behind us. One of the tweakers came between Roger, me, and the door, blocking our escape route. It was right out of Jesus’ Son. Denis would’ve approved.

“No, wait man, I think I did order a pizza,” the first tweaker said. “But that was, like, five hours ago…is this our pizza?”

Looking at the kitchen counter, I thought I saw a .45 automatic nestled between empties and dirty dishes.

“Pretty stormy out there, fellas,” I said, handing it to him. “Sorry ‘bout the delay, our compliments.”

One of the guys held the box while the other, in slow motion, opened it to investigate. While the cheese stretched and stuck to the inside cover of the box, I brushed past them, grabbed Roger and pulled him toward the door.

“Wait,” Roger said, “that’s eight dollars.”

“Good night guys!” I called, dragging Roger out to the Volaré.

“That was eight dollars,” Roger repeated.

“Roger, did you see those guys?”

I’d heard stories that Roger himself had been beaten and rolled for his money more than once. Apparently, in addition to zero time management skills, he lacked the ability to read the room.

For the sake of my health, I took a few days off working at Secret Pizza. The timing was good, I had some friends visiting from back east.

John deVries from Agit Pop was producing an indie band in a barn on the outskirts of Iowa City. He and Joe drove out and were staying with me at my apartment.

They arrived just in time for martini night, perfect introduction to summer life in Iowa City. This rolled into a series of serious drinking bouts at the Foxhead, George’s, and every other bar I could think to introduce them to.

Despite clearly enjoying themselves and the surroundings, once they got lit, John and Joe developed a habit of adopting fake Iowa accents and making fun of the locals. This didn’t sit well with Cherie, who was from Iowa, but she found them amusing and tolerated my otherwise mostly charming friends.

John still thought of me mainly as a writer because I’d written about Agit Pop for Interview. But here in Iowa City, I’d continued playing shows beyond The HBO Special, and he noticed I was regarded as some sort of indie musician myself. One night, he and I were playing guitars in my apartment when he looked at me differently, like something clicked. This click would make a huge difference in my life a year later.

Another night, Joe popped a copied cassette into my stereo.

“I’ve been hanging out with these guys,” Joe said, “check it out.”

The album was called Yerself Is Steam. Maybe it was just a bad recording, but my first impression was that it was a little noisy and all over the place. I kept listening anyway, then started to laugh.

I don’t claim to be more psychic than anyone else, but sometimes I just know things and can’t explain why. At that moment, listening to this pell-mell album in Iowa City, I knew that one day I would join Mercury Rev.

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