The Pit

Flash Fiction*

The “old biker” who ran the joint was about 29, and he was the first one to scream at the kids for whipping shit at the rats that sprinted through the alley behind the party store.

“You’re the fuckin’ rats in society, and you don’t like people fucking with you for no reason.”

We all scuttled into the building when we heard the first band tuning up, about two dozen of us, unaware that the whole set would be a series of tunings and detunings, amplified and played through effects pedals, punctuated with cymbal crashes and rhythmic pounding on an old suitcase.

It was just an address at first, this building where the show was happening, quietly promoted on a flier that circulated through the loose society of weird teenagers and two-chord junkies.

The building was christened The Pit, equally for the colliding bodies in front of the stage, the trash, and the crumbling plaster that fell from the ceiling in powder or chunks.

The next week’s flyer would say “The Pit” next to the address, and the week after that, until the address became moot and anyone who wanted an escape from the cable TV musical status quo and wanted their eardrums ripped from their moorings knew where to go.

The Pit became a scene, grown organically from the soil of frustration and watered with malt liquor.

We were young and loud, amoral but not immoral. I remember the first Pit pregnancy, and when the girl’s belly began to show over her red checkered skirt other girls started slapping lit cigarettes from her hand and buying her grape Faygo to replace the grain alcohol.

I was at The Pit every chance I got, which was often. Me and this chick named Umber not Amber recorded all the shows on cassette tapes, all surface noise and feedback, snippets of conversation and the occasional glorious sound of one of society’s rats regurgitating General Tsao’s chicken and General Liquor’s gin in the corner.

I worked the door and cleaned the puke and sometimes helped the guy who sold nitrous balloons.

I sat on a folding chair in shock when the old biker found the Lord as though the Lord had walked down Plymouth Road and snatched him,  and cried when he abandoned the place, a chain on the gate like the chain I used to wear around my boot.

Lulaj bought The Pit, saw me at the party store, not hard to recognize with green hair.

I didn’t know Lulaj or trust him, but he paid me cash to help him transform the space into a laundromat, then hired me to empty and fill the change machine, break up fights and sweep up broken glass and needles.

He let me move into a room above the laundromat, what used to be The Pit, an extra layer of twenty-four hour security for his reconditioned dryers and stale chip vending machine.

Chrysler was hiring back then, and I meant to go, but fuck Chrysler, I never had to leave the laundromat, The Pit, the address to make a paycheck that covered beer and pizza, and my rent was free.

Lulaj had a stroke last year and sold the laundromat to his nephew, who hired his cousin to do all the stuff I did, but Lulaj made sure I have an apartment for life, on the second floor, above The Pit. What used to be The Pit.

If you are waiting for your laundry to dry and you like cool music, you can come up the fire escape and knock on my door. I’ll play you some old cassettes, and probably yell at the neighborhood kids when they whip shit at the rats who sprint through the alley.

***

Photo by REVOLT on Unsplash

*A reader and dear friend/homemade Greek dressing priestess asked me to write about punk rock. I’m sure this won’t be the only story that touches on that topic. What is considered punk has evolved so much over the years that it can be a challenge not to be anachronistic.

This is entirely a work of fiction, though it is true that Detroit’s legendary Graystone Hall on Michigan Avenue is now the Sunshine Laundromat.