Meat is monetizing
This is a profile I wrote for a storytelling class. It was kind of written as a joke, about a joke. In Real Life, my friend Thomas is one chill dude, and makes good music.
Thomas White woke up Saturday morning in the bathroom sink of his East Village apartment. He vaguely remembered playing a show the night before with Meat Children, one of eight bands in which he is a member. Among the rest, The Money Shot Band, which pays melodic homage to Internet shock porn memes; Previously On Lost, which lyrically recaps episodes of ABC’s Lost; and Berzerkulosis, a sock-puppet hip-hop duo. He is a compulsive dabbler, and thinks that this means he has a greater chance of making money out of making music.
Thomas has a look that is easy to draw, even if you possess no artistic talent whatsoever. He has messy brown hair and pale skin prone to sunburns and incapable of tanning. He owns two pairs of pants and only wears flannel button-downs in faded maroon, sage green, and navy blue—the choice colors of old peoples’ sedans.
Behind a pair of black-rimmed rectangular glasses, his eyes are shiny, long-lashed and colored bright green in person, demonic red in flash photographs. Laughter causes them to form cartoonish half-moons parallel to his eyebrows and either side of his moustache. He leaves his dark facial hair mostly unshaven, leading to overgrown stubble he calls “my neckbeard.” Every day he wears the same navy-blue San Diego Chargers cap, which he bought at the mall when he was four and growing up in Portland, Maine. He’s twenty-one now, and the hat has since become so worn and filthy that it emits its own smell and the once-white underside of the brim is turned a sickly yellowish-grey. He has never watched a full Chargers game and has never been to San Diego.
Meat Children is an electronic dance band he started a year ago with his roommate, Jake. It began as a total joke, the idea being to record “dance tracks to play at parties where drug-using college kids could be exploited for their trust fund money.” So far, none of the bands Thomas plays in has made him any money. Some gigs would turn a small profit, but it was never enough and was almost always spent transporting his equipment to the show venue, or on beer binges. On Friday night, Meat Children headlined a thrown-together charity music showcase at Wings Theatre, a non-profit playhouse in the West Village. It was their third show ever, and they took the gig mostly because the organizers—their friends—had promised them free drinks all night.
At eleven thirty, less than twenty people at five dollars a head sat scattered in seats facing the stage, which still held the props and set elements of some play: a writing desk, stovetop, faux brick walls, a couch and rugs. It made an awkward backdrop for a music showcase as singer-songwriter after singer-songwriter took the stage with their acoustic guitars and belted out unremarkable indie folk numbers.
While waiting for the other acts to finish, Thomas took frequent whiskey shots from the bar and frequent cigarette breaks outside. He never had his own cigarettes, because he never had any money. He’d simply get a couple of smokers out the door with him, and once everybody was outside and standing around awkwardly, he’d ask, “Does anybody have cigarettes?” The strategy worked every time. Someone would eventually offer him one, and he would gratefully accept.
No one ever minded bumming Thomas cigarettes, because it usually meant you got to hear a self-deprecating story about his life. We learned last night that apart from juggling a number of band projects for the past several years, he’s held at least eight meagerly-paid jobs since he’d been old enough to work, none of which he kept for more than three months at a time. His favorite was cutting fish to order at Scales fish market in Maine.
“The first time I had to prepare soft-shell crab, I didn’t realize they were still alive,” he said. His voice was low and cynical, perpetually tinged with weary resignation from a lifetime plagued by Murphy’s Law. “This woman ordered ten of them and so I lined them all up in a row. And oh my God they started to slowly move their legs and I was freaking out.” He paused for a long pull at his charity cigarette. “Basically you have to first cut off the crab’s face so it can’t watch itself being dismembered. I guess that’s the humane way to do it. Then you peel out the sides of the shell and it feels like wet construction paper. Then you shave out its lungs, flip it upside down, cut off its genitals, and it’s ready to go. I had to do that ten times while this woman was in line and impatient.” Another drag and exhale. “Probably my most horrifying experience ever.”
Meat Children took the stage at 2:17 a.m., more than an hour behind schedule. Their setup consisted of Thomas’s laptop computer on a rickety fold-up table from Kmart, a single strobe light, and a large cardboard sign bearing the band’s name written in blue tube lights. Earlier that day, Thomas and Jake had created an iTunes playlist featuring ten of their prerecorded songs. Thomas hit play, and the dance party was on.
The next morning, Thomas’s third roommate in six months woke up to find him asleep in their bathroom sink. It was 3 p.m., and I rushed to meet him for a hangover meal at a Korean fast-food restaurant down the block from his place. He’d been eating there a lot recently—ever since they began offering a special limited-time-only, 99-cent deal on chicken soup.
When I arrived, he was sitting before a large chicken salad, side order of macaroni and cheese, and a Dr. Pepper.
“I brought exactly 99 cents,” he said. “The girl told me they ran out of chicken soup like the second I walked through the door, and there was a ten-dollar credit card minimum so I ended up with all this expensive food.”
“Do you even have ten dollars?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “But I’m playing this show on Tuesday with my space opera group.” He stabbed a plastic fork into the salad and continued, “Yeah I’m hoping they’re going to pay us this time. “ After pausing for a gulp of Dr. Pepper, he asked without glancing up, “Do you have any cigarettes?” •
