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

Margaret continues the story of the last punk show played at Locust House

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media. Hello and welcome nichols On Media book Club,
the only book club where you don't have to do
the reading, because I do it for you. We are
doing our summer beach read wherever you find the beach,
I often find it at creeks, and during our summer

(00:24):
beach reads, we read something that's a little longer than
we normally feature, so you can bank up a few
episodes for a road trip or a summer hike, or
sitting by the creek and watching the creek, which is
nicer actually when it's not painfully horrendously hot out, which
it is right now. I'm really excited about how in
the future we're only going to have two seasons summer

(00:47):
in hell Mouth, nine months of summer, three months of Hellmouth.
That's what we have to look forward to anyway. But
right now we are continuing our read through a Locust
House by Adam Gannatti. This is part three. Locust House
is a novella about the San Diego punk scene and
the fucked up but still empathizeable people that you find there.

(01:08):
It's part three of four. You should listen to the
first two parts. I'm not going to tell you have to,
but I'm gonna tell you you should. Last week we
met two people partners, James and Francis, who got a
lots and ran into their other friend, Joey, who's been
kind of going off the rails lately. Then they rendezvoued
with their other pal Tyler and decided to go to

(01:30):
the closing party of the East Street House aka the
Avocado Club aka Locust House, so named because the members
of an electrifying grind core band called the Locust they
all live there. And that's where we'll pick up for
this week, with James narrating. I mean, I'm narrating, but
you know, it's a sort of interviewish format this particular

(01:52):
part of the book. The book is written in a
lot of different sort of interesting formats. Here we are,
this is James. There's this line from Costaveti's great film
Opening Night, where Gina Rollins character says, when I was seventeen,
I could do anything. It was so easy. My emotions
were so close to the surface, finding it harder and

(02:14):
harder to stay in touch. That's how it was. I mean,
I wasn't exactly young Francis was. I wasn't. But here's
the thing. I was a ghost. In high school. I
had no friends to speak of, and my everyday plan
was survival. I wanted to live through the day without
confrontation and get home so I could hide in my

(02:35):
bedroom and what I don't know, draw, read magazines, stare
at the wall. My youth was a total shit storm.
After elementary school, which was great, and so was my childhood,
a good, ideal, sweet one where I felt loved and
safe and respected, I hit middle school like a piece
of hamburger dropped on a grill. Walking the halls of

(02:57):
peb Middle I felt like a fox hunt constantly in
a world where no one had ever seen a fox,
but really intensely wanted to eat one on a bun
with bacon and mayo. I hated bacon and I hated mayo,
but more than anything, I hated myself. Of course, as
it goes, people hated me because I hated myself, and

(03:18):
because of that, I was scared of my shadow and
inarticulate and full of heavy, awful weapons, great anxiety that
sabotaged me at every step. I wanted to die because
I knew I was nothing, and I wanted to die
because I knew no one would ever care what I
had to say. My life was powerless. I saw the
future as a bland, stultifying thing that looked like those

(03:41):
horrible shtheads from friends sitting on a couch and some
fancy ass well lit New York coffee shop trading mild insults.
Hated them, and I hated that the future, my future
was headed that way. At the time, I had no
other frame of reference to tell me life could be
something else. What I saw, what I knew, was what

(04:01):
I was given by mainstream media, and if adulthood looked
like must CTV, I wanted out no future, no fun,
no hope, no beauty. I was wrong, of course, but
at that time my true youth I was a dog
that had been kicked so often I flinched at every tremor.
I didn't have that impressionable, romantic, idealistic teenagehood like a

(04:24):
lot of people that came later. It came in my
early twenties, and it came when punk rock found me
in the audience of that Cha Cafe show and dragged
me in. It was a moment that arrived when I
least expected it, and beyond giving me good music, it
told me life could be shaped however you want, as
long as you work hard and dig for new options.

(04:45):
The important thing was to fight every day to make
your life what you wanted it to be. I had
so many people telling me life had to be this
one set thing, and finding out that I didn't have
to listen to them, that I could come up with
my own way to live busted my world. And two,
which is to say, I fell head over heels in
love with the brutalist, smartest, meanest kind of punk rock.

(05:09):
And it opened up life like a giant window with
all the sunlight in the world streaming in. And that
all led to the final house show A two four one,
one E Street, the Avocado Club, the E Street House,
the Locust House, whatever you called it. The place was
an epicenter for things free of bullshit, a burning atomic

(05:31):
center point to the neighborhood and the scene and punk
rock in general. Francis. One of my strongest memories of
that time has less to do with the party than
the aftermath. Everyone moved out of the house right and
as soon as they were gone, the new tenants hung
an American flag from the second story. It went suddenly

(05:53):
from the cool house on the block where the best
bands lived to the fucking White House. You have to
remem this was just a year after nine to eleven,
and a lot of us had some pretty ugh, I
don't want to say, well yeah, okay, anti American sentiments
at the time. We were angry and we felt let
down some of us, a lot of us were sure

(06:17):
our government had cost it. Even if it wasn't an
inside job like some people say, we were at the
very least responsible for waging constant global war for money
and calling it justice. It's an awful thing when you
grow up thinking that you and your country are the
good guys, and then you find out it's all bullshit.

(06:37):
The day I realized we weren't as noble as I'd
been told, fuck man, it was a crushing moment. It
changed me. I've never been the same from a very
young age. I've been looking for community. Most of the
time you were let down, but sometimes, if even for
a short while, it felt like we were all in

(06:57):
it together. That's how our scene felt, and losing that
house was a huge blow. Maybe not for everyone, maybe
not even for the bands or the people who lived there,
but for me it was a symbol of a better, smarter,
more ethical life. It seemed firm and substantial. It felt
like something that couldn't be taken away from us. That's

(07:21):
one thing I've learned. People say that there are things
that can't be taken from you. Everything can be taken
from you the place you live, your friends, your family,
your health, your youth, your sense of self or your dignity,
your freedom, your confidence, your spirit, anything. There is nothing
in you that's yours to keep. If someone else wants

(07:43):
it bad enough, you try to hold on to it.
But life is inherently unfairly violent. From our scene, and
even more so at that last party, I felt a
kind of togetherness that was like what we experienced in
the weeks following nine to eleven. People were suddenly good
to each other, and it seemed like we were, oh,

(08:04):
please get that, and it seemed like we were all
closer than we were before. Of course, that was over fast.
In both circumstances, the party was shut down by the
cops and everyone left. People stopped watching the news after
the attacks because they couldn't take the footage, or because
they had to live their lives to get by, to

(08:25):
keep moving. I understand that. I remember sitting on the
couch at my mom's house with James and my sister
Sadie and Rebecca, watching the news reports with the towers
burning and people jumping out, holding hands, falling, falling, Ugh,
and us sitting there crying all day, so scared, so uncertain.

(08:48):
Around dinnertime, a couple of my friends showed up with
a fucking pizza. They wanted to hang out and then
go to a show at the Chay or the Epicenter somewhere.
I was like, what the fuck. I didn't say what
the fuck, but I did say, haven't you guys been
watching the news? My friend Timmy Willetts, standing in the
doorway holding the pizza box, shrugged and said, kind of,

(09:13):
I know something happened, but like, but they didn't care.
People move on or they don't feel something as deeply
as they should. I thought that after nine to eleven
there should be some kind of greater togetherness in our culture,
just like I felt as though the energy of that
party would carry on. In both cases, I was wrong,

(09:33):
and it was incredibly isolating. Situations like those are moments
of innocence, and once innocence is replaced by cynicism or
even a lack of concern. It can deal a heavy blow.
You experience closeness, but then it's a temporary closeness, and
once you realize that it's over, then things start feeling

(09:53):
pretty lonely. I've always wanted people to join together in
their neighborhoods they're scene, or in their families, whatever it is.
But the fact of the matter is Americans are bad togetherness.
We're afraid of it, or we label it as this dangerous,
subversive thing, this toxic kind of discord in the face

(10:13):
of rugged American individualism, which is nothing but bullshit and
self sabotage. Or we find it and it feels so good,
it feels natural. But just as soon as we're brought together,
we either let go or allow ourselves to be pulled
away from each other, or we stop caring, we find

(10:34):
other things to take up our interest, We get distracted.
I wanted to take the flag off that porch and
burn it, just like I wanted to kick George W.
Bush's grave, half smirking monkey face in. I wanted to
take the flag in order to keep the house alive,
which wouldn't work. Of course, the end happened. It was over.

(10:56):
People go on with their lives, and sometimes what they
do next is even better. Or people forget, they allow
themselves to be caught up in something and then they
brush it off. The house was not the house anymore,
and it never would be again. I knew that, but
I had to do something. I had to act. I
needed some sort of pure driven cleansing to happen. I

(11:19):
had to burn the flag. There was no other option.
Much like dear listeners, the compulsion we feel to throw
to ads, and trust me, I do wish there was
any other option, but no, I feel compulsed. Here's the ads,

(11:48):
and we're back. For months after the party, James and
I had a vague, sort of unrealized plan to steal
the flag. We talked, talked about it often, but like
most of our plans at the time, it never got
off the ground. One night that summer, James, Tyler, Sadie

(12:09):
and I stayed up late drinking this big jug of
Carla Rossi Burgundy and listening to Hella's newest record over
and over again on both speeds, like Tyler loved. At
some point four am, no later, maybe five, I knew
it was time I got up off the couch. And
shushed the room. Sh Okay, listen, okay, guys, let's go

(12:33):
capture the goddamn fucking flag, I said, and then everyone
was excited. We trooped on down there, sticking to the
alleyways in the darker side streets, stopping to sit on
curbs or garden walls and drink the last of the wine,
all full of noble purpose and what we thought was righteousness.
For Tyler and Sadie and maybe even James, it was

(12:56):
more a fun, crazy thing to do. I wanted them
to feel like I did, but I knew they didn't. Still,
they were caught up in the moment, and I let
myself imagine that they felt it just as much as
I did. I needed to believe we were all doing
this thing for the same reason, even if they were
faking it. A little felt good to be together. It

(13:17):
scared the hell out of me to think James, of
all people, didn't feel this as much as I did.
Knowing I would later find out that he didn't care
as deeply as me. That he didn't have the same
ideals was heartbreaking. We're not together anymore, but we're still friends.
I wish he was more like me, but maybe he's

(13:37):
happier because he's not. I'll give him that. I can
understand wanting some distance from the shitty evilness of the world.
I don't know, maybe I wish I was more like
him Back then. I lived for parties and believed in
having fun above all. I still do, but my work
keeps me away from enjoying myself a lot of the time.
James has always been optimistic, and he let thing slide

(14:00):
off his back. We've been that way before, but I'm
not that way now. Anyway. We took our time, talking
a lot, saying big things, and letting the grandness of
what we were about to do color our speech with bold,
wild ideas and words that would sound preposterous. The next morning, James,
who was happy drunk, kept saying, I feel like Robin

(14:23):
Hood and I did too. We had a purpose. We were
going to strike back for the neighborhood and the scene
and win one for the good guys. So we got
to the house and there were cops everywhere. The place
was a mess, a fire truck and ambulance squad cars
with lights spinning and flashing on the line of houses
and parked cars. What said Sadie, She just kept saying

(14:47):
it over and over again. What what? What? A couple
of EMTs were on the lawn working on this older
woman in a torn, open pink bathrobe, full on CPR.
Then the which was a horrible thing to see. The
paddles pushed down, the body flopped up, then the paddles again.

(15:08):
We stood there and watched them try to bring this
poor fucking woman back to life. And we stood there
and we stood there, and we stood there, and they
weren't having any success. But by then Tyler and Sadie
and I were crying and Ugh, I hope to God
they'd save her. Nothing happened. They kept working. We turned

(15:29):
around and walked home. The sun was beginning to come
up over the housetops to the east, and the four
of us walked together and no one said a thing.
It was like a death toll ringing the final toll.
Not just for the woman. I hope she lived but
I never found out, but for this thing I wanted
so badly to be a greater part of my life.

(15:51):
We never went back. Tyler. It was good to hang
out with kids like Frankie and James, because that was
really not me. I wasn't searching for myself like they were,
and I didn't need the same things they needed. I've
always had a plan, and these days I am exactly
where I hoped I would be. People change, but I

(16:14):
haven't changed much. The wild, manically drinking, drug guzzling Tyler
Monahan isn't much different from doctor Tyler Monahan because I've
always been on this path. Frankie and James they were.
They are, impulsive, naive, emotional. Everything they did they did
last minute and reckless, and most of the time what

(16:37):
they tried to do didn't work. There was no premeditative thought,
none at all. It was on the fly and unexamined,
and you've got to be very good or very lucky
to succeed that way. Frankie and James believed in things
I enjoyed but didn't necessarily have to have. They believed
in the bands, and they believed in the scene. They

(16:57):
believed in finding community and in people joining together in
the name of something bigger than them. I was around
for all of that, especially the shows and parties. But
really this sounds more dismissive than I'd like. I was
just blowing off steam. Things like that party were fun,
but they were just parties. My prime directive was getting

(17:18):
shit done. The rest was just. The rest was all diversions,
great fun, thrilling diversions, but it wasn't all that important
to me. You don't dwell on the past. You move forward.
And if you do that and plan well and make calm, rational,
deliberate choices along the way, you'll find the present is
a lot better than what came before. We all make mistakes,

(17:40):
and we all lose things. But if you spend too
much time looking back, we'll never go anywhere. Much like
dear listeners, how the ad transitions aren't going anywhere. They
never look back. They continue forward as they consume, much
like you will. Here's ads, and we're back the wild.

(18:17):
Tyler Monahan didn't exist on weekdays. I studied. I spent
long hours in the chemistry lab, and I tutored, and
I moved toward my goal at a nice, even keel.
When I got there, it happened faster than I thought.
I found I was happier than I imagined I would be.
Were least contented, secure in my place. I felt a

(18:37):
little lonely because it was still is something I did
on my own. Frankie and James have both had, well,
to be honest, much harder lives than mine. I feel
bad for them, of course, but when we get what
we work for, and that's that's what they got, I'll
always stand behind them and have their back. I mean

(18:58):
this is serious. I'm serious. I'd give my life for
those two, and I say that without exaggeration. But I
know what I am and I know what they are,
and we're different animals. I get sad thinking about them sometimes,
and when I do, I feel old. I feel creaky
and lonely and kind of kind of maybe cold, yeah, cold,

(19:20):
But then I remember the good things I have, the
fact that we're only how would you say this, only
very tangentially involved in each other's lives. These days, it
is hard. Sometimes. We've talked about that the three of us.
Some fantasy part of me would love it if we
all lived in the same house one day, we could
grow old together, keep each other company. But I know

(19:43):
it's just that fantasy. We're far too different now, just
as it was back then. Sometimes I think we are
truly a lost generation, not in the romantic literary Paris
nineteen twenties way Frankie always hoped, but lost in the
sense that America is this huge, vast, enormous place where

(20:06):
everyone you know lives so astronomically far away from each other.
There's a deep, sad estrangement in Americans. We're also spread
apart and isolated, living these remote, far flung lives. We've
chosen this. Maybe we could have chosen differently. I don't know,
but this is what we wanted. I am not at

(20:28):
all nostalgic for those days. I believe in living right
now and being the best, happiest versions of you that
you can be, and the past be damned just the same.
I'd be lying if I didn't say the wild Tyler
Monahan and he's still there. Wouldn't love to step back
into the madness sometimes and feel all that all that

(20:50):
energy bursting around him, energy that was not really his,
but that he enjoyed nonetheless and was caught up in, and,
if only for a short time, feltly substantially alive. James.
The first few hours of the party were spent moving
room to room, watching whatever band was playing. At that point,

(21:12):
my bottle of mad Dog was gone, and I was
floating along stupidly in a way I never would again.
Seeing the sights like an astronaut on a new planet
or a tourist in my own neighborhood. The later it got,
the more people arrived, until you could barely get through
the holmes. At some point we ran into Ted Boone
in a leather jacket and a very dirty Joy Division shirt,

(21:34):
who was visiting from Portland, and dragged me, Tyler and
Frankie out behind the house and made us do shots
of brandy with him while he told us about his
plans to join the seminary. You guys, I'm doing it.
Next time you see me, I'll be Reverend ted Boone.
He made the sign of the Cross in the air.
Tyler shook his head. I don't believe that. You There's

(21:55):
no way you hate Jesus. I think that's really sweet,
said Frankie. Ted Boone smiled pleased. Yeah, yeah, I like that.
It's sweet. You really believe in God, I asked, handing
the bottle back to him. Is that trick question? Because
I'm pretty sure you told me different, like many many times,

(22:17):
Tyler laughed and took the bottle from Ted Boone. That
bumper sticker on the old Boon Mobile, the one that
said executing Jesus, for treason is the reason for the season.
I remember that Ted Boone laughed and shook his head.
I believe in whatever will get me where I want
to go. It's kind of fucked up, I said James

(22:38):
Tyler Francis, welcome to my world. Drink more brandy. You
will start to believe in many things great and small.
Drink now, because I am in a grand, amorous mood,
and I must find sexual companionship of the young and
firm breasted kind, or I will wither like the vine
without shade. You're kind of a villain ted boon. You

(22:58):
know that, right bank on it, he said, with an
evil grin. I took the bottle from Tyler and unscrewed
the cap. After that, I was fucked. And dear listener,
that's where we're going to leave it today, right as
the party gets going. Obviously, you'll notice that this is

(23:20):
not a story about a party. I mean it is,
but you know it's not a story about a party.
It's a story about our lives and who we are
and who we used to be and all of that. Hazel,
who helps behind the scene, says, quote, I really like
how this novella plays with time scales, stretching a few
hours into a whole book and compressing a lifespan in between,

(23:41):
the way that Adam writes about punks growing out of
the scene is really relatable to me. We can't burn
bright forever and what do you do with yourself once
you've burnt out? And it's sad, but it's also like fine.
Life has phases, and this book so perfectly captures what
it's like to be young and what it's like to
have been young once. Really good shit, Thanks Adam. I

(24:04):
guess I would say that that's how I feel about
it too. I really think by showing different people's perspective
on that particular thing, I think it does a lot
of good. Or the story's good because it shows that
I am not feeling articulate. It has been a long
day of smog, not small wildfire smoke. But I really

(24:30):
like the like balance of nostalgia non nostalgia, right, Like
a lot of the characters like, aha, it used to
be kind of crazy. That's kind of shitty, right, and
other people are like fuck, I thought we all meant
it when we said we were trying to do this
like revolutionary shit, And you know, other people are like, Yeah,
this is always just the stage. This is always I
was going to be and uh, that's how it is,

(24:54):
you know. And I think that's like one of the
main things about being young is thinking that you're going
to enter a static thing, that adulthood is the static thing,
and you're gonna you know, your friend group in your
early twenties is the only friend group you've ever had
in your early twenties, and it feels eternal, and then

(25:14):
people burn out or die or drift away or you
do these things. You know, I don't know. That's why
this book stuck with me. Like I said, I read
it all in one night the day I picked it
up out of my stack of Adam Ganotti books because
I did what you all should do, which is I
found when Adam Gannatti was speaking. I actually didn't know

(25:36):
his work particularly well yet, but I went to go
see him speak and was pretty blown away by the
reading he did. And so then I just bought his
entire collection of books, because that's what my brain says
is the thing I should do. But who is Adam Ganatti?
You might be asking. You're probably not asking, because I've
read his bio twice before on this thing, but I'm

(25:57):
going to read it again. Born in San Diego, California,
Adam Gannatti now lives on a six acre farm in
rural Kansas, near the towns of Lawrence and Tonganoxie and
a half hour outside Kansas City, Missouri. On September twenty sixth,
twenty twenty six, the Numero Group will reissue Gannatti's two
thousand five debut Talking Songs record Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender

(26:21):
on twelve inch final. In October of twenty twenty six,
his fourteenth book, Wild Horseshit Horseshit's Two Words 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 Song's collection The World of
Today and the World of Tomorrow, issued on cassette in

(26:43):
twenty twenty one and Layethe Cut CD in twenty twenty six.
Gannatti's work is published and issued by Brett and Roses Press,
three to one G. Hello America Stereo Cassette and the
Numero Group. And I'm your Host, Margaret kildoy Ana. I
have music. I don't know if I plug some stuff
I don't plug as often. You can find my black

(27:04):
metal band Femino School, which was me and several other
amazing musicians. We haven't put out anything in a long time,
but it is real good. And you can also find
my sad Girl Beepboop electronic music at Nomadic war Machine
and other sad Girl electronic music a two piece band
called the Lathe. You can find all of these things
wherever you listen to music. Band Camp is a good one.

(27:26):
I'd recommend that over Spotify. I will be back next
week with one more Locust House. And don't forget about
our girl Agnes from the first episode. She will be
back and fighting until then. Carry the words of Ursula
k Legwin. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable,

(27:48):
so did the divine right of kings. And yeah we
can and we will imagine a better world together. Bye everyone.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

(28:10):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources where it could Happen here updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com. Slash Sources thanks for listening.