CZM Book Club: Locust House, by Adam Gnade (Part Two of Four)

Margaret continues reading to you from a novella about a punk house in 2002 San Diego

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cal Zone Media book Club book Club book Club. Hello
and welcome to the Cool Zone Media book Club, the
only book club where you don't have to do the
reading because I do it for you. I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and we are in our summer read. Our

(00:26):
four parter are long. It's not actually very long. It's
barely a novella. It is right on the edge between
novelette and novella, which is an almost meaningless distinction that
I only know the difference between because of or categories.
That's the main reason that any of these numbers matter,

(00:47):
and the distinctions between flash fiction, short stories, novelettes, novellas,
and novels. But this one, we're going to call it
a novella because it's also, you know, a social category
rather than just a strict word count thing. That's the
aside you all were really excited about hearing. We are

(01:11):
reading A Locust House by Adam Ganatti. And if you
don't remember part one incredibly well, well you can listen
to it again if you want. But also, this is
a slightly less linear book than most of what we
read here, so don't worry about it too much. Like

(01:31):
obviously the stuff that's in part one is going to
come up. Especially. I feel like the payoff is really
for that part is in part four, the end, because
we're going to switch characters. We're going to switch to
new characters. Why am I procrastinating by telling you all
of this because there's a lot of Spanish in this one,
and I'm not incredibly good at Spanish. But here we

(01:55):
go anyway. Chapter two Locust House by Adam Ganatti, Golden Hill.
As you move eastward from Agnes mccanty's studio apartment, which
sits on the crest of the hill on the far
west edge of the neighborhood, the streets are wide and
well paved and lined with cars. It's an older part

(02:15):
of town, or rather it feels older in contrast to
Downtown with his expensive wine bars and dance clubs, or
the coastal areas beach resorts sprawl. The houses in Golden
Hill are by and large ratty, but as lovingly well
maintained as a low to modest income will allow. Driving
up Broadway. As the numbered streets rise, you will see craftsmen, cottages, victorians,

(02:41):
turn of the sentry, bungalows, white stucco apartments in the
California Motels style crumbling alpine and facades, railroad apartments with
French ironwork gates. Inside the Victorians and craftsmens are hardwood
floors in varying states of repair and old glass gas
cabinets and big windows and window seats with a view

(03:04):
facing west of downtown and the airport in the shipyard
or to the northeast and south rolling hills of tar
shingle and orange tile rooftops. The skies are blue and cloudless,
and the rain comes in frequently. As with most deserts,
that is what San Diego is. A desert, but a

(03:24):
desert in disguise made green with the water of other
poorer cities. In the years since, the drought has come
and the beautiful lawns are gone. But a well located
coastal town will change in other ways. Development rolls in
with tourist money or the promise of it. The San
Diego of now is not the San Diego of then,

(03:47):
just like the San Diego of then is not the
San Diego of decades past, when the sleepy beach neighborhoods
were closer to a post war America. Before that, it
was ranchland and marsh flats and endless dirt fields of
low scrub brush. Before that, the Spanish priests and the
mission above Old Town and further back Native people Lucienno, Caiuhia, Kupienno, Diegenno,

(04:16):
small tribes in the arid, sun baked Manzanita hills and
bramble land, or to the west, coastal villages with fish
and pelts drying on wood racks, small fires, men and
women pulling abalone from the tide pools. It was a
quiet time when the loudest sound was the wind, which
came and comes mostly from the west over the sea

(04:38):
and onshore wind colder than the warm offshores from the
east that blow over the deserts and spark brush fires
and the drier rural parts of the county. On March
twenty ninth, two thousand two, Golden Hill is a quiet
part of town in a different way than in the
time of the Luciennos, and the development that's now spread

(05:01):
across the country has yet to change the face of
the neighborhood here now March two thousand and two, the
predominant language is Spanish, and muscle cars or hot rods
sit in dusty driveways, next to rabbit hutches or stacks
of tires in the weeds or small gardens. In the evenings,
mariachi bands play backyard parties or birthdays or kinsignettas with

(05:24):
laughing families and candles lit on garden walls and strings
of light over picnic tables, window signs in Spanish and
out sails on pork shoulders tripe canalope. The neighborhood is
full of taco shops, mercados, and carnserias. Stately churches in
the mission style are semi Gothic. In the middle of
town is a laundromat with a sleeping cat in the window,

(05:47):
and there are well kept liquor stores and bars, shops
selling US to Mexico, phone cards and pinatas, and sturdy
cowboy boots. The trees are mostly palm trees and they
line the hilly streets like telephone poles. As you reach
the eastern edge of town, there are empty lots with
dog shit, dried white and old car batteries, and the

(06:09):
bones of cats and birds. In the ice plant and grass.
There are abandoned apartments, punk squats with kids outside drinking
forties watching you drive past. There are condemned houses covered
in graffiti, mostly names in elaborate jagged shapes and colorful swirls,
or smiling cartoon animals or exaggerated taggers with huge heads

(06:30):
and big sneakers and a can of Krylon spray paint
and hand. There are also political murals Caesar Chaves and
a sea of upturned faces Martin Luther King with a
finger raised defiantly next to his face, che Guvara Stormy
with his beard and beret, or stencils of Mexican revolutionaries
with rifles held above their heads and bandoliers of cartridges

(06:54):
draped across their chests. Now these are gone, along with
the muscle cars and rabbit touches and empty lots. Now,
in twenty sixteen, the young professionals who work in the
Mission Valley and downtown offices, and the white college students
have moved in, and many of the Mexican families and
most of the punks have moved south to Logan or

(07:15):
Sherman Heights, or further still to Chula Vista or Senya Sidru.
But for now it's a quieter time. At night, you
can hear the sound of the freeway as you walk
down Broadway and there are neons humming from storefronts, and
you can imagine yourself in nineteen fifties America walking down
c Street or twenty six at dusk, you will smell

(07:36):
dinner cooking albondigas, manuato bozzole, pots of beans, well peppered cherizo,
sopez frying in oil. James Jackson Bozick twenty six and
Frances Alisio twenty one walk past the shop fronts and
awnings lining twenty fifth Street. It's night, but most of

(07:58):
the stores are still open. They wait for traffic to clear,
then cross the street, passing the fruit stand closed and
the laundromat open. The smell of pineapples and dryer sheets
in the air. Frances hums to herself the tune indistinct.
They walk arm in arm, and James thinks of his
grandfather's twenty two pistol on the sock drawer and the

(08:19):
dusty light through the window as he slides the drawer
open to look at it on his tiptoes. Six years old, Leveda, Colorado.
Frances thinks of dark trees in Georgia and sky behind them.
She thinks of the footbridge over the stream in Hinesville,
and ring snakes bending through the grass, and a crack
of lightning running in jagged crags across the sky. Eugenio Armandares,

(08:44):
forty three, sells grilled corn from a stand on twenty fifth.
He wears a white T shirt with a front pocket,
light blue work pants, and black boots. As James and
Frances approach, he's thumbing through a copy of The Reader.
He folds it under his arm and smiles and not
so loon. He sees Frances and thinks of his daughter
back in Mexico. Standing at the water spigot, thin armed, pale,

(09:07):
struggling to fill a bucket for the goats. The sky
overhead blue and cloudless, the musky smell of the creek
in the air. Cheonda, says James. Eugenio nods. Piero lote
see gustiarra mostos poufoor. Eugenio asked James if he wants cheese,
conquees orsen Tenemoscotia. Frankie, you want cheese, right, yeah? Please,

(09:31):
she says. Eugenia nods and smiles at her, and takes
the first ear of corn off the grill and rolls
it in an aluminum serving dish of melted butter, then
drizzles it in dry white cheese, next a squeeze of
fresh lime and a shake of cayenne pepper. He thinks
of TV static as the channel's change in a dark
living room with people sitting on a couch. His daughter

(09:53):
standing in the hallway door, head leaned on her arm
against the jam, the light of the TV on her face.
John Wayne is on screen in military attire, standing in
front of a tank, squinting. Say, well, you're gone and
done it this time, didn't you. His daughter says that
Americans aren't really like that, and her brother says sh.

(10:14):
The traffic clears and the street darkens, much like dear listener,
how the hubbub of content must clear out so that
we can throw to ads. Here's products and services, and

(10:38):
we're back. The neons of the turf club glow green
against the gray and black, and the windows of the
laundromat are bright lit and cheery. A pregnant woman moves inside,
pulling wet clothes from a washer and setting them aside
in a wire basket. Now traffic again, moving past, slow,

(11:01):
yellow white head lights, dull red break lights, flashing. Frances
wraps her arm in James's, her head on his shoulder.
All is good, for now, for now, all is good.
Joey Carr twenty four turns the corner, walking past Pancheta's
Bakery and Jac's Market, smoking a cigarette, drinking tequila from

(11:23):
a doctor pepper Can, staggering but comfortable, singing to himself.
Frances nods up the street. James, is that Joey Carr? Huh, yeah,
he looks like shit. Eugenio asks James if he and
Frances want something to drink. James shakes his head. No,
gracias hues tres dorades. James opens his wallet, takes out

(11:46):
a ten chilo dos poor al porpino hey cambio see
grassius miho. Joey catches sight of them and half jogs
up to the stand and then he's out of breath,
leaned forward, hands on his knees. James Jackson Bosic and
Frances Alicia, What are you two vampires up to? Laughing,

(12:08):
standing up straight again, bringing his cigarette to his mouth,
sucking in. His nails are painted black and chipped, and
his hands are sunburnt. His hair is dirty, and he's
wearing an eyeliner, and he smells like weed and sweat.
His stained white T shirt reads the Shock, The Shock,
The Shock in hot pink letters. James smiles. We're going

(12:29):
to the East Street House show. It's their moving out party.
They got evicted. You should come with, says Frances. Eugenio
hands Francs a paper bag with the aluminum foil wrapped
corn cobs inside. It's heavy. She can feel the heat
through the bag, and she can smell the butter and
cayenne pepper. Thanks, she says, thank you, Miihita. He stares

(12:50):
at her sadly and decides to call his daughter in
the morning. In his mind, he says he's sorry. Ociento
letta lociento. Mihita makes a dragon, turns his head and
blows the smoke to the side. Dude, no way, the
Avocado Club's closing up shop bummers. James nods. Avocado Club.

(13:11):
Who calls it that? Some people do? I always just
called it the Locust House. As Francis Joey's distracted. He
looks across the street at the seven eleven. Yeah, but
like but like nobody else does. He looks back at
James and Francis and smiles. His teeth are gapped in yellow.

(13:31):
I've always called it the East Street House, but it's
funny to say the Avocado Club, because I'm all, No way,
that shit's a sandwich, you ow, not a house. You
can't live in a sandwich. He laughs and coughs. That
shit's a it's a sandwich, right, James shrugs. I guess
I don't know. Anyway, it should be pretty fun. Who's

(13:52):
playing locust Blood Brothers. Joey flicks his cigarette into the street. Sick.
James looks at the cigarette lying in the street. Smoke's
still trailing up from it, moving with the breeze. A
car passes over it and he sees it again. The
smoke is still rising. I think I think the new

(14:12):
band with Omar and Cedric from at the drive in.
They stepped to the side so a woman with a
toddler girl next to her can order nessosito nueve. The
woman tells Eugenio he trus pepsis. Eugenio begins to work.
Joey pulls another cigarette from his pack at the drive in.
No way, really is it Mars volta No? I think

(14:35):
it's called the Facto. Frankie, who else is playing. James
looks at Francis shrugging, moving units. Francis shakes her head.
Maybe I don't know, but we should head out, James,
you want to do this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, says James.
Let's do it. Joey lights the cigarette and sticks his
lighter into his back pocket. I'll see you around. Maybe

(14:58):
I'm supposed to meet Kurt at Ray's. We're going to
ib to buy talking quieter. Now. We're buying some shit
to take down to Ensnata to sell if you all
want some. James shakes his head. No, that's cool, No thanks,
says Francis. All right, late, see you two around. Don't
go chasing waterfalls. Joey laughs, then coughs again, holding his

(15:20):
fist to his mouth. Don't go chasing waterfalls, he says again,
hoping James or Francis will continue the line. They don't
see us, says James. By Joey, says Francis. James and
Francis walk down twenty fifth, Francis holding the bag of
corn cops under her right arm. Yeah that was awful,

(15:42):
James says, What the fuck? Poor Joey, he's such a
nice kid. I wish we didn't see that. What's he
getting from Kurt? I don't know, Heroinugh, geez, no good, no, no,
no good. I fucking hate that guy. Kurt. His sister
also is cool. It's not about that, huh, James, he

(16:03):
looked like he was eighty. Yeah. Yeah, But we're going
to the party and it'll be great. It will, right,
it will, Frankie, it will, it'll be great. And who cares? Right?
Who cares? Ah, James. But still still, I feel like
we just saw a ghost. They stand at the stoplight

(16:24):
across the street on Broadway. Joey Carr drops his doctor
Pepperkhn in the trash and walks into the seven eleven.
Francis sees Tyler Monahan's dark blue Miata pull up to
the curb and park on Broadway. Tyler gets out, shuts
his door, and waves at them emphatically. Hey guys, he
shouts him across the street. They don't hear it. They
see him, James look Tyler nice, Hey, Tyler hey. Francis

(16:51):
looks up as the light turns to green above them.
The black sky is streaked gray, like lines of old
scars on skin. She thinks of relief maps, train tracks,
dirty canals, neosporin, hydrogen peroxide. They crossed the street. But
dear listener, do you know what would never cross us? No,

(17:12):
it would never get past us. Is a chance to
interrupt stories, to tell you about products and services. And
we're back. Chapter three, Battles and Aftermath. James, Frankie, Tyler

(17:42):
and I sat on a curb down by the overpass
bridge and ate our corn and sipped Tyler's flask of rum.
The rum felt warm in my belly and made my
head swim nicely, and the corn was damn good. But
Frankie and I could barely sit still. We wanted to
go to the party. We wanted to see the bands.
We finished the corn, we stopped at seven to eleven

(18:02):
for provisions and walked to the party. The place was
packed by the time we got there. It was a
very dark night foggy too, which is something that stands
out in all my memories of Golden Hill. Foggy nights,
slow fog when it's dark and there's no moon in
that thick beautiful mist creeps up from the canyons and freeways,
and the air is wet and smells a honeysuckle and

(18:24):
night blooming Jasmine. At the house, A million kids were
out smoking and drinking on the porch, a whole sea
of them, and more than that on the lawn, sitting
along the white picket fence that lined the sidewalk, lying
in the grass with bottles and cigarettes in hand, or
up on the rooftops of cars coming in and out
of the house. Every square foot of the place was

(18:46):
moving like it was covered in ants, and you could
hear music from inside, muffled but heavy rumbling. The street
was lined with vans, and the bands had come in,
and some of them had their side doors open, and
you could see all all your heroes drinking or smoking
or talking or just chilling before they're set. We walked
past one of the bands standing outside their van on

(19:08):
the sidewalk, and I stopped the singer and I was like, Hey,
my name's James, my friend of your cousin Meggie. You
guys new record is so fucking good. I've listened to
it two hundred times this week. And he kind of
just shrugged and smiled and walked off. I was young,
younger than I am now, and very starstruck and nervous,
and so much more innocent than the person I've become

(19:31):
who I worry is a hard time feeling his blood
some days, as nerdy and uncool and on the outside
of things as I was at the time. My move
towards the opposite of that has come with a price.
I won't say I'm jaded, but I've never felt as
thrilled by music by white, hot, cranked, wild eyed music
as I did back then. My love for good music

(19:53):
was almost religious or maybe sexual. It was pious, desperate.
Good music made me feel hot headed and frantic, and
I don't know if I've ever felt so free since
I wasn't cool, but I was free, and that was
something good. Frankie and Tyler and I walked up the
sidewalk and we were so happy and so innocent, and

(20:14):
I was taking SIPs off this bottle of Mad Dog
twenty twenty orange flavor I got at seven to eleven
and was getting solidly drunk, and it felt as though
everything was new and alive and more colorful and vibrant
than everyday life. The time, I had a job as
a reporter for a small wire service in Hillcrest, and
Frankie worked as an endoscopy clinic receptionist up in La Joya.

(20:36):
Our lives weren't bad, but the nine to five sucked
it out of us. It made us feel slow inside, muted,
dead on our feet. It felt like we were wasting
our time. But when we listened to these bands, we loved.
Life seemed vital and strange and triumphant and real. What
I'm trying to say is I had no arrogance, no stuffiness,
no true or defined ego. I was terrified of living

(20:58):
half the time and scared as hell of die eying
the rest. A lot of us were that way, and
we wanted nothing more than to sign off on real, hard,
stupid life and listen to records that were like trains
crashing into each other and dance clubs exploding into rainbows
and carnivorous flowers devouring crickets at ten times the normal speed.

(21:18):
We wanted punk rock, but our version of punk didn't
sound like a band. It wasn't two guitars, bass, singer, drums.
We wanted a sound that tore itself to pieces, but
did it smart. We wanted grindcore turned inside out and
sped up and then chopped to pieces by a machete.
The size of the universe. We wanted power, violence with

(21:39):
a big loving heart and good ethics to match. We
wanted punk you could dance to and never feel awkward
or uncool or out of place. If anything, I wanted
to dance. I wanted to lose my mind and throw
myself into walls and get sweaty and stupid and feel
the raw animalness in me. I had many nights alone
in our cottage, which in Golden Hill, sad, drunk after

(22:02):
a bad day at work or a fight with Frankie
in the dark, dancing by myself in front of the
record player, one hand on the bookcase. I needed bands
like Angel Hair, Antioc Arrow, Get Hustle, Die Princess, Die Melt,
Banana Orchid, Black Dice vss Man as the bastard, universal
Order of Armageddon, celebration, the best, in the darkest, the

(22:26):
wildest hearts. I still remember the first time music really
did it for me. I was at the Chay Cafe
a couple years before the East Street Party, and the
Locust came out of nowhere and imploded my world. Those short, abrupt,
sinewy forty five second songs wiped my brain clean, changed everything,
scrambled my senses, showed me that music wasn't necessarily what

(22:50):
everyone had told me. It was unlike a lot of
people I've talked to. I didn't have to work to
get their music. It made immediately. Of course, of course
songs should be like this. Of course, this is how
music should be. That first song at the Chay was
enough for me to change for the better, and the

(23:10):
change was natural and easy and comfortable. I didn't consider
their music scream o or metal or anything else the
critics called it. I began to see Locust songs as
pop songs, danceable, rhythmic blasts of thrash and grime and
humor and new experimental ideas. A few months later, Francis
Ben Frank and I went to see the band open

(23:30):
the premiere of the John Waters film Cecil B Demented
at Hillcrest Landmark, and they played the show in adult
sized diapers, more or less naked, in front of the
big screen in a sold out crowd. Their set was
about nine minutes long, and they played twice that many songs, short, colorful, glittery,
stutteringly abrasive, robotic, seizure songs just as human as birth

(23:54):
and life and sex and death. After that, we watched
the movie, smiling like fools, slurping our soa and picking
out her popcorn and junior mints. In the scene that
used their song Nice Tranquil thumb in Mouth, the characters
show up at a Baltimore Film Commission luncheon and have
a big shootout with the cops. Thumb my favorite song

(24:14):
at the time, was looped to extend it and it
was the catchiest thing in the world. Toe tapping, head nodding,
but oh man, so fucking savage and strange and brutal.
When the credits rolled and the band's name came up
in the soundtrack list, everyone cheered. I was proud, proud
of my city and the people in it, and of
this small moment of time. People were excited, excited and

(24:38):
together about this thing. It was easy to get caught
up in. Their music became a part of our culture.
Not everyone's culture, but for some of us it was
as San Diego as the Tom's deep plate at Poca's
and gothy wine, drunk dance parties in North Park and
talking shit about the gas lamp. There's this line from
Casavetti's great film Opening Night, or Genie Rawlin's character says

(25:02):
when I was seventeen, I could do anything. It was
so easy. My emotions were so close to the surface.
I'm finding it harder and harder to stay in touch.
That's how it was, and that is where we're going
to leave it for today. But soon, don't worry, we're
going to touch base with Agnes from the first part.

(25:22):
She's around here somewhere. Hazel, who helps behind the scenes, says, quote,
I really really like how much the city of San
Diego is almost a character in this book. You can
tell just how much time Ganati has spent rooted in
the neighborhood. His prose feels so lived in. That's for
what I have to say about it. You know. It's
funny is I don't remember what I had to say
about it last time, so maybe I'm going to say

(25:44):
the same thing, but I don't know. I love how
punk this is. That's like sort of obvious, right. It
is a punk novella, but it's also it's literature. It's
written in a very literature style, including making choices that
Isa John or fiction writer often wouldn't make right. But
it's telling a really simple day. This is just a

(26:08):
story about some day that some people had and how
it was unforgettable even though it was regular in every
day And I think that this is one of my
favorite styles of art, is stuff that makes us remember
that we do live these magic lives and that even

(26:31):
if like this is why I hate superheroes, Like, even
if we're not superheroes doing it astounding world changing things,
we're doing these things. And you can see the resonance
of how this like flies out across the rest of
the country. Right Like, I'm guessing more of you have
heard of or seen the movie Cecil Be Demented than
have really listened to The Locust or you know, been

(26:54):
to this type of house show. But yet the band
that sort of has this kind of house as the
song on the underground but still mainstream John Waters movie,
you know. And I think I saw The Locust, And
what's funny is I don't know two thousand and four,
I was going to a lot of these styles of shows.

(27:15):
I also think I went to the Chay Cafe, but
I weirdly don't know. I have a memory of what
it might be. But I'm also mixing it up with
another like Radical Cafe that was up in Seattle in
the U District, and so I think I actually probably
never went to the Chay Cafe. And I don't know
if it was the locust or the body that I
saw in the copycat in Baltimore at a warehouse, you know,

(27:41):
on the top floor of a warehouse party where I
had just left New York to go hang out in Baltimore.
But I like, I haven't been here. I'm not trying
to be like I know this neighborhood, I know this cafe,
I know this band, right, I don't, but I know
this scene. And I think that that's like why this

(28:04):
gets to me so much, you know, is because this
is about how I came up in a way that
I never see represented. And so I really appreciate you
all coming along to hear something that's deeply personal to me,
whether or not it is to you. And I think
that that includes the horrible shit. You know, there's like

(28:28):
this almost blase attitude that this story has towards some
really horrible shit. And both parts one and part two, right,
but so just real, like those are both experiences I've had,
you know. Yeah, anyway, we'll be back with part three
soon enough. You actually know when it's going to be

(28:49):
next Sunday. That's when we're gonna be back with part three.
Nus you're listening in the future, in which case you
already can listen to part three because it'll all already
come out, unless the world ends between now next Sunday,
which case you want you listening to this later anyway.
But did you know that Adam Gannatti gave us a
biome to read? And this is it. Born in San Diego, California,

(29:10):
Adam Gannatti now lives on a six acre farm in
rural Kansas, near the towns of Lawrence and Tonganoxie, in
half an hour outside Kansas City, Missouri. On September twenty sixth,
twenty twenty six, the Numero Group will reissue Gannati's two
thousand and five debut Talking Songs record Run, Hide, Retreat,
Surrender on twelve inch final. In October of twenty twenty six,

(29:30):
his fourteenth book, Wild Horseshit will be released by Brett
and Roses Press in conjunction with Three to one g.
Recent works have included the Home and Away Quartet and
the Talking Songs collection The World of Today and the
World of Tomorrow, issued on cassette twenty twenty one and
laithe Cut ced twenty twenty six. Gannatti's work is published
and issued by Brett and Roses Press three to one

(29:52):
g Hello America, Stereo Cassette and the Numero Group. And
I'm Margaret Kiljoy and you can find me. I have
a newsletter comes out every week. It is Margaret Kiljoy
dot substack dot com. It's called Birds Before the Storm,
and that's where you can find me. I'm also in
social media, but I hate social media. It makes me

(30:13):
really sad. I will be back next week with more
Locust House and remember until then that any human power
can be resisted and transformed by human beings. It is
our moral imperative to become grains of sand in the
wheels of the machine. Fuck Ice Free Palestine. See you
next week.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
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