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And so the show was set up. Three weeks from that weekend we would drive to St. Charles in Socks’s van with the gear and play at a club called the Toe. We wouldn’t be paid to do the show. Apparently the show’s promoter was a DJ on some St. Charles college radio station, and his whole deal was getting metal bands to play to keep the scene moving and help independent bands. I wasn’t keen on having to spend money to play — even driving the van to St. Charles would cost us gas money — but I came to understand that this is the way it worked. You can’t expect to be paid to play your music, certainly not at your first show. The cover would be five dollars, and that money went to the Toe for hosting the gig.
The natural side effect of this was the stress of hoping that a lot of people came out so that the promoter wouldn’t be disappointed in us or Heathenistic Bile. Our band hadn’t played before, but Heathenistic Bile had.
“Paul says that they’ve done two shows before,” Socks said one day after we’d rehearsed our eight-song set. “He acts like they’re big time, like they’re some experienced band.” Socks himself, having drummed for several bands in the past, had played about twenty shows. He’d warned us that the turnout to this show wouldn’t be very good. “Two shows is hardly enough for Paul’s band to have built up a fan base. I mean, I’m sure that their friends will come out, but the way this guy brags about it you’d think that they’ve toured or something.”
I hadn’t had any contact at all with Paul, only Socks had, and he’d also spoken to the DJ promoter guy to work out what time we should show up and when the show would start, that kind of stuff. Instead I started working on flyers for the show. Apparently Heathenistic Bile was making flyers for St. Charles, but I knew we had to pull our weight as well. I didn’t want this Paul guy or any of his bandmates thinking we were lazy, giving them more reason to dislike us.
I drew a flyer in black and white with all the necessary information on it: the location of the Toe, a nod to the DJ’s metal radio show, the ticket price, the door time. I drew the name “Heathenistic Bile” in a jagged font, and beneath theirs, I added “the first ever concert of Colostomy Hag” in a slightly larger font. I couldn’t resist making ours larger, even though it was disrespectful to the other band because they were headlining the gig. It galled me that I had to put our name underneath theirs at all, but it would have been rude not to do so.
I filled the centre of the flyer with a stark marker drawing of my old favourite, a violent and bloody rendition of Judith and her maidservant pinning a wretched and mutilated Holofernes to a stained mattress and slicing into his neck. For good measure I couldn’t help but try to make Judith resemble me and the maidservant to resemble Fern, with long blonde hair streaming from underneath the ruffled cap on her head. I didn’t know what Paul looked like, or else I would have tried to make Holofernes resemble him.
I worked hard on the flyer and everyone loved it. One evening Fern and I went to the copy place and made a big stack of black-and-white photocopies, then I borrowed my mother’s staple gun and we proceeded downtown.
We stapled posters to every telephone pole we came across, noting happily when people would stop to read it. We knew none of them would come, of course, but it was a good feeling to be out promoting our band, even if it was just along our hometown’s crappy streets.
We stopped to put a poster up on the bulletin board at Bee Music, and the guy working behind the counter came over to check out what we were doing. It was the same long-haired guy who had directed me towards the DED CDs that day long ago.
“I’ve never heard of either of these bands,” he commented, studying the flyer.
“Heathenistic Bile is from St. Charles and Colostomy Hag is our band,” Fern told him.