from chapter two; it takes place before the band was actually calling itself "temporary mullet".  more to follow.
 

it was a beautiful story really, how heck next door met his drummer.  it was around the time that johnny kick, who couln’t kick for shit, keeled over at the occult store on the ave - where we was, as usual, playing an unplugged bass guitar in the corner and mumbling to himself.  this left heck’s brother in nominal charge of the band.  he immediately poured any existing funds into this bogus cocaine deal, the end result of which was scoured burning nostrils,  heck with his head bashed in,  and two pounds of formaldehyde mixed with vitamin C, that finally some dumb kids from the suburb bought.

heck was taking a leak at the Comanche bar, where his friends had just gotten thrown off stage, and were beating up the eric clapton cover band.  he noticed that some guy was leaning on the floor in the next stall, and looking up at heck’s joint with a little mirror.  after heck kicked the guy around the restroom for awhile, they got talking about bands,  and decided they’d do some music together.  the manager came in yelling about the blood everywhere, and the urinal was chipped, so laughing they wiped up the drummer guy’s blood to appease this asshole.

they went over to heck’s brother’s place,  where heck was crashing on the floor.  he helped out around the place by shoplifting cigarettes and macaroni and cheese.  his brother, fu manchu zappa beard and all, worked as assistant manager at Kmart in those days.  before he got his cunt tattoo.  they’d drink till 2 am and call it practice.  before kick died,  he’d be booting up jack daniels and talking about how great he felt, as he shat his pants and vomited.  “shit I gotta try me some of that, “ heck thought, but he was worried that it might make him feel even more violent than usual.

crack, strangely, calmed him somewhat, and he’d sit in the corner at the friday night hardcore hodown show,  muttering “I hate you motherfucker” over and over,  almost rhythmically (kick even tried to turn it into a song).  it was better than before he found crack,  when he’d run around all bug-eyed and screaming and shit.  obviously lead singer material, kick thought when he first saw the guy.  they started playing together in kick’s mom’s laundry room the next day.  his brother,  the sloane as they called him,  banged on a garbage pail and howled. he was a bit retarded, but pretty cool.

they called him the sloane cause of this one time when kick and heck and heck’s brother’s girl (heck’s bro was in jail at this time for some shit) were all watching some late night reform school girl movie,  when in comes the kid and he starts screaming that they all have to leave, cuz he wants to be alone. only he keeps shouting,  “sloane sloane”  and it takes them forever to figure out what he’s saying.

heck’s brother, as I said, had been in the can a few times,  so he’d already met the drummer guy.  bugs, that was his name.  yeah, his mother had given him that name.  she was in and out of asylums from like, age six.  one time she escaped, this is like when she was fifteen, she escaped and she went up the county fair, and she met this sailor guy.  and she stood out big time, you know, because she had this very morbid sensibility.  I mean, if you asked her, she would’ve described the fair as “ a circus of despair and agony.”  got all giggly watching the earnest farmer kids trying to show their pigs, which were shitting everywhere.  and this sailor guy had never been to war, but he talked it good and was pretty fucked up anyway, so you know how that goes.

it’s possible, that when her naming her son,  bugs’s mother was thinking,  fragmentedly,  of buggsy seigel,  and there’s that bugs malone guy.  more likely, it was just the only word she could get out of her mouth those days.  she died when bugs was eight,  making him a ward of the state thank god.  later, when he was arrested for exposing himself to some children on a seesaw, the investigators would hearken back to the early days,  when he’d tried to light his building on fire, or the second and third degree burns that’d left a scar on his back, when he set his bed on fire at age 9 in some foster shithole.

bugs had learned drums playing at fifteen with this guy fugee.  fugee liked to put on dresses when he played, and eventually the music was superseded by various juvenile fiddlings,  which wound up sending bugs back to the reform school when fugee’s parents caught them in the bathroom.  before they got caught him though,  bugs had learned “now I wanna be your dog”  on the drums, and he was hooked.

heck meanwhile,  about this time,  was getting drunk everyday behind school,  hanging out and yelling at the hippies,  throwing beer cans and shit.  his brother,  three years older,  was working on cars (which he knew nothing about, this didn’t last long) and swilling beer and racist comments with dad.  yes, there had never been divorce in heck’s family, thought dad once shoot mom,  and she died of complications sometime later.  still, it was sad for the old man,  they’d made up and were even having sex again when she keeled over and threw up her intestines.  there was the bullet,  still lodged after three years,  and not a bit rusty.  dad picked it out before he called the ambulance.  no sense stirring that whole thing up again.

heck never got over his mother’s death.  maybe this is what got him involved with the whole white supremacy thing; he needed to belong.  of course, none of the groups ever let him join.   he’d write his,  shall we say,  “thoughts’ on the matter.  it was only a matter of time before somebody pointed out that he’d been misspelling nazi,  and in a very creative manner.

by the time heck and bugs met,, bugs had managed to connive his way out of the halfway house,  and johnny kick was dead.  I mean, he had just died; bugs went with heck and the others to the wake thing, even.  he was so fucked up,  him and heck’s brother split this pill thing, and bugs could barely even walk.  sloane was there,  but he he didn’t say anything.  heck’s brother had to hold him for a long time.  kick’s mother, who was in her like nineties or something,  kept smiling with her big false teeth and telling everyone how nice they were.  at this sort of moment,  heck could almost be sweet.  he held her hand and told her what a great loss her son’s death  was, to him personally.  cause he’d given johnny twenty bucks for  some drugs.  did she know where he hooked up?

heck had just moved into the place on sixty-three kitty avenue, and he had his brother tell sloane’s mom that sloane wouldn’t be playing in the band anymore.  meanwhile,  bugs, who was now crashing either on heck’s floor or at heck’s bro’s pad down below the bunker house church thing, had stolen a drum kit off some teenage kids at a rocky horror show.  there was just the kick drum, a ratty snare, and two crashes, both in fact exact duplicates of one another.   heck’s bro’s  was actually rehearsal spaces at night,  but they could sneak in and hide there all day; they’d hear people screaming and beating up on each other up above, and the organ howling while they chanted in mexican.  bugs set his drums up in one corner and would bash on them for hours. heck’s brother had no problem playing “now I wanna be your dog” for that long and even longer, and heck could make up lyrics without much problem, just mostly yelling things like “fuck you” and “i’ll rape your ass” (which seemed to hearken to his later, more “political” musings) when he couldn’t come up with anything else.

at first he’d tried to figure out the guitar to make up for johnny kick’s absence.  after that they thought about giving the sloane a try.  veronica knew this guy, and there was moment of confusion  a big because heck wanted to immediately kick his ass.  but, it turned out heck had him mistaken for someone else, and everything was cool, and the guy turned out to be pretty good on the guitar.  his main influences were like, ratt and quiet riot or sniffing glue or something.  he never really went into details,  but certain things are pretty obvious.  they called him scruff.

he’d have this pretty serious look on his face, the whole time they were doing a song.  like, as if he had to concentrate on the one chord they were playing.  heck liked him cuz he was big, quiet,  and always brought beer.  he knew this girl,  and they’d go by, just heck and him cause the other guys weren’t really into it, and they’d buy these big joints off the girl and flirt with her fat, crazy roommate.  the cop’s would be sitting outside, they were totally staking out the place,  and
eventually everyone would get so wasted that they’d go out and beat on the hood of the car and howl, in a friendly manner.  then they’d go back and drink more.  you couldn’t say shit on the phone cause it was tapped.

later scruff would drop heck off by the office max.  heck would invariably walk over to see if his brother and bugs were around, so’s he could bum a cigarette.  they’d be listening to the band’s demo, recorded on this boombox thing.  actually, just heck’s brother would be listening. bugs would be staring off into space, totally not in the room with them, a bottle of some 40 ounce shit in his lap.  naked, usually, too.  he kept telling them how he was gonna play their shows naked.  shows? heck would shout, what fucking shows? they now had five songs,  and they all sounded like “now I wanna be your dog”.

on heck’s insistence, they did this one cover song, “that’s entertainment” by the jam.  the jam was heck’s favorite band. he actually owned their record (though he didn’t actually have a player).  this song would become the band’s signature piece (it sounded like “now I wanna be your dog”).  they started calling themselves “driller killer”, heck’s brother’s idea.