May 1997 mystery date by Mike Watt |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Our guest columnist Mike Watt is a bonafide rockstar. He was the bass player for punk revolutionaries the Minutemen and then with fIREHOSE, the best live band we've ever seen. He took a break from writing the first punk Rock Opera to be this month's Mysterydate, so we hope you dressed up in the flannel PJs he likes so much.
My Knees, My Knees!
My knees, my knees! Folks want to hear about my knees? Thoughts of my
knees careen through my head, bumping and pushing the other realms of my
brain into paranoid contortions, twisted and misshapen, reliving the
pain and agony, over and over. A nightmare overbearing me, taking up my
full consciousness at times, bending my perceptions, flooding my reason:
the greatest super-reality my senses have ever endured, the ballroom
floor on which my mind dances. I find myself balanced atop my two shins
with teetering fulcrums joining them to my thighbones, tiny rubber
band-like ligaments barely keeping rein on the dreaded kneecaps which
hanker to bolt and dislocate. The dread, oh the dread. The worry. The
fear. My knees.
I was a younger man when I started to know something was wrong. Growing
up in the Navy housing in Pedro (my pop was a chief in the U.S. Navy -
sort of like a sergeant if it was the army) I of course had Navy
doctors. Anyway, it seemed when I was around ten years old I started to
notice the hugeness of my knees compared the other guys around. Asking
the doctor one time when he was setting my broken arm what might be
wrong he told me: "don't worry boy, you'll grow out of it." So I went
on, business as usual. Now being a younger guy in Navy housing, business
as usual meant lots of physical stuff, lots of sports, lots of insane
war-like games. We're talking everything from traditional stuff like
baseball, basketball, football to insane shit like beating each other
with hot wheel tracks, garbage can lids, asphalt from the road, etc. We
had this one game where one guy would carry another guy on his back and
move around on your knees like some kind of horse. The horse guy would
hold the "rider" guy's legs straight out and use them for lances or
battering rams. The rider would hold on around the "horses" neck and
keep his legs straight out. Charging the other "horse and rider" teams,
we would joust. You can imagine the hell this must've been on the knees!
And the face, seeing that you couldn't use your arms to block shoe blows
(your arms were busy holding the "rider" on your back). For me, the face
damage was minimal compared to what fared for my knees. And this was
just one of our spastic games!
Had I known what the future was holding for me, I would surely have
committed myself to the bass much earlier and given up that meathead
shit. Remember, the doc said: "You'll grow out of it." Bullshit,
motherfucker, it just got worse and worse. We'd have this bike game
where two guys would share a bike. In those days most bikes were
stingray type with those long banana seats so one guy would drive while
the other sat the other way (facing the rear) with a spray bottle (like
the ones that hold shit like Windex) filled with vinegar. The object was
to get close enough so that the rider could spray the vinegar in the
driver's eyes, causing him to crash. How many times I flipped over
curbs, spun and smashed to the ground (of course with the rider on top
of you), ran into telephone poles, bashed cars, caught finger and toes
in the spokes I can't remember. It was slaughter.
We saw roller derby on the television so we played roller derby - our
way. Our way meant inside the garage on cement with those metal wheel
skates, remember them? The wheels would change from round to eight-sided
as you would run on them after hitting the deck time after time and then
getting up and try to get going again. And how would you hit the deck?
Some guy would grab you by the hair and slam you down of course. You'd
do the same to him - over and over and over. We beat each other silly.
Oh my knees, oh the youth, oh the stupidity.
Then we got into parachutes. There was this field by the Navy housing
in Pedro that had some tall-ass trees. We figured we could make
parachutes from sheets and jump from them. What a bunch of fucking
idiots. We took these small boxes from the commissary (where all us Navy
people shopped for chow on the base) that would hold six half-gallons of
milk and strapped them to our backs with clothesline. We each got a
sheet and tied the four corners each to about four feet of clothesline
and tied this through the hole in the box to our back. We had a kite
string tied to the center of the sheet to pull it out when the time
came. We stuffed the sheet in the box and then climbed the tree. When we
jumped and pulled our strings, they broke and the chutes (sheets) never
deployed. We took the fast way down. Lying there in a clump on the
ground for over an hour we suffered. Thank god the branches broke our
fall as we snapped them, grabbing and trying to hold on to them as we
plummeted down. We figured we had done something stupid but didn't
realize it was the whole idea but rather that the milk boxes were the
cause of our failure. So we got rid of the boxes and just went up the
tree with our chutes bunched tied to our backs, dragging behind. When we
got to the top, we gathered the chutes in our arms and jumped again! The
chutes never opened and filled with air, they were more like streamers
marking our plunges and now with many branches missing from the last
attempt we really took the fast way down this time. Sprained ankles big
time, a broken wrist for one of us and yet more blows to those casaba
melons I call my knees. We lay there crying and moaning for a long,
long time.
The first knee-pop (a phrase I coined to describe my kneecap
dislocating) happened while I was in grade school at Taper Avenue. As a
kid I had developed this weird way of daydreaming. I would go into my
bedroom, close the door and run from one corner to the other one
opposite - diagonally. This running back and forth, back and forth, back
and forth would allow me to take myself into a deep trance and I would
daydream for hours this way. I would put huge black marks on the walls
where I would slam into one corner and then head back to the other one,
bash into that one and repeat the whole thing over and over, ad
infinitum. All this with my eyes closed too. I would dream lots about
space and being an astronaut (I was born in '57 and we were just about
to land on the moon at the time) and of course lots of war situations
(Combat was a big show on the TV then) where I was the "Monkey
Division Man." I'd be so involved I'd be sweating big time. My ma would
later tell me of the stomping and banging sounds that would come from
room and think I was insane. Anyway, one time during this daily ritual I
caught the corner of my bed with my right leg and this popped the
kneecap out and I crumpled. I couldn't believe what was happening. I
went into a deep shock because of the fucking pain, pain so
incredible I saw bright white flashes. I grabbed my calf and looked
at my leg. My foot was turned at a hideous angle (actually, it was the
whole lower part of my leg) and the kneecap was way over to the side. It
looked monstrous. I was stunned beyond belief. Damn! I grabbed my calf
and tried to twist it back. Finally, it went back and the kneecap popped
back in. Damn! "What the hell was this," I thought. I laid on the floor
and just suffered. Waves and waves of big pain took the big ride through
my brain. Immediately my knee swelled to the size of a cantaloupe and
started turning heavy purple. I was crippled. It took a couple weeks for
the swelling to go down and I could walk normal again. In the meantime,
I had to cut down on the daydream ritual and when I did go back to that
madness, I kept my eyes open when I'd round the corner of the bed. At
least I tried to. Sometimes it would happen after I'd ram into the wall
and make my turn around to start to run the other way. In any case, no
one knew - I kept it secret from everyone, even my ma and pop.
Shit started happening at school too. When I would bend my knees, the
gap between the bottom of my thighbone and the top of my shinbone became
bigger and bigger. The gym teachers called this "osgood schlater
syndrome" or something like that. Funny, the Navy docs didn't know
anything about this. In high school I had my first dislocation in
public. My legs get fidgety even now as I write this, just thinking
about it. It was on the gym field running in a game of football and I
turned at a weird angle. Pop went the knee and I was down. I put it back
in and just lay there. Some guy, an immigrant guy from Mexico named
Carlos, picked me up in his arms and ran me to the locker room. I'll
never forget that ride: me bouncing in his arms, all broken, nothing but
a pile.
Then I got a job washing pots and pans at the San Pedro and Peninsula
Hospital. I didn't always wash pots and pans though. Sometimes I would
help with the food line while we were getting the meals ready for the
patients. This one time I was on the chow line and my mission was to put
the butters on the trays as they went by. Well, I was preparing for the
next meal by filling up my tray with all the types, you know, the
regular, the low sodium and plain butters. Anyway, I'm in one of the
coolers replenishing my stock when BLAM! I slip on the wet floor and
BOTH FUCKING KNEES POP! This had never happened before, I couldn't
believe it. First the deep shock, then putting one kneecap in and then
the other. WHAT A FUCKING NIGHTMARE, a fucking two-fer! This was the
beginning of my big paranoia thing that would grow and grow. Even to
write about this now, some twenty-two years later still makes me squirm
in my seat. Something was terribly wrong. I was convinced I would be
FOREVER VULNERABLE. My knees were now shaping my very mind and the way I
would think.
More stuff happened at the hospital. Wet floors were the real killer.
Carts that were knee high and pushed my way became pain deliverers. I
was scared shitless of anything knee high and any slippery type of
surface. It seemed as if my knees were getting looser and looser with
every pop. I would have nightmare re-runs of the incidents over and over
in my mind. The hell did not end with the knee-pop itself; it was the
hell of knowing it was going to happen again.
Once in high school (Pedro High), I was standing against the wall we
always stood by with D. Boon and some friends when my knee just fell out
by relaxing it! Since I had the Levi's on, no one could see what was
wrong - they thought I was just insane, lying there in a big pile.
Sports were definitely over for me then and just walking and standing
became incredible endeavors. I even had to make sure I was sitting right
because they'd go out from a funky position or something. I couldn't
even dream of sitting cross-legged. There was this time I was outside
the front door calling my cat. Next to the door was this water spigot
with no handle on it. My knee goes out and plop, I drop to the ground.
You have to realize the shock is so intense, I'd lose control of
everything, legs, arms, everything goes limp. So I drop down on this
spigot and it rips into one of my butt cheeks, right below the Levi back
pocket, about five inches deep into me. I couldn't fucking believe it. I
pulled myself off of the spigot and drove myself to Harbor General (the
county hospital because I was going to college now and living econo) to
get it fixed. The nurse brought me into the room with these two guys
who'd just been all burned in a fire. Flesh was floating everywhere. Damn.
She kind of pulled a curtain half way and told me to pull down my pants
and bend over. She stuffed the spigot poke with about twenty feet of a
thin gauze strip, used a pop sickle stick-like tongue depressor to get
it all in. She asked me if I was ready. "Ready for what?" I thought.
Then, before giving me a chance to answer, she yanks on the goddamn
gauze like she's starting a lawnmower. WHOAAAAAA MANNNNNNNNN! WHAT THE
FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! I could not fucking believe it. Anyway, I did
eventually heal up.
I got this job reading meters in Long Beach for So Cal Edison, the
electric company. Even wrote a poem about it:
Anyway, the job entailed you walking around through people's yards,
reading meters so Edison would know how much to bill them. One day about
three in the afternoon, getting ready to finish up in a couple hours and
kind of a little bit sleepy-eye, I'm going through this yard and there
must've been a hole about one foot in diameter and about five feet deep.
Lots of tall grass around and I didn't see it. Whoops! I slip and go
down, my right leg going into the hole and popping the knee. Only my leg
is in the hole and I'm up to my hip. I can't pull it out to put my leg
back and get the kneecap back in place. My mind was being wrenched and
wrenched with hurt like a motherfuck. Finally I decided the only thing I
could do was to rotate my body around until my leg clicked back in like a
ratchet. Hell-ride and a half, let me tell you. I came back crippled to
the office and told them I was hurt. They sent me to the doctor - the
first time I let a doctor see them since the Navy housing days. The
first pecker who saw them said he couldn't see anything wrong! ASSHOLE.
The next guy was a guy named Dr. Mizaguchi and he said I had trouble.
Like no shit. He said it was congenital, I was born with it. He said my
kneecaps were too outside and not sitting where they should be,
balancing the forces around the joint. I asked him what I could do. He
said he could re-attach the ligaments further over on the kneecap and
yank it on over closer to the inside of my leg and try to keep it from
the dreaded pop. He said there was a 50 - 50 chance my leg would go
stiff. I said I didn't care any more because I was going insane with
both pain and paranoia. We went for it. He cut into my knee with
surgery (my first) and I woke with this giant cast on my leg. The pain
was incredible, a dull, deep, chronic drilling into my head that my knee
was hurting and hurting bad because it was healing. Six months I was in
that cast and my leg wasted away. When they cut that cast off, my thigh
was like three inches around and totally yellow! The knee was like
mega-grapefruit size and had this six inch caterpillar-like scar running
top to bottom. I couldn't even lift my leg off the bed, not even one
inch, my muscles had atrophied so. I would have to learn to walk again,
like a little baby. Two good things though: (1) maybe the knee was fixed
and (2) Edison paid for it. Remember, I was very econo at the time. The
next big crisis-time occurred when it was time to see if the knee would
bend. This was a couple of months after the cast came off. I remember
going into Mizaguchi's office and him laying my leg out there on the
table. Please realize I had kept that leg stiff for a while, day and
night, to guard against ripping out the sutures that were installed
during the surgery. I kept that leg more straight and stiff than a horny
George Hurley, let me tell you. So anyway, Mizaguchi is just looking at
my knee, feeling around when WOW! he just bends my fucking leg ninety
degrees - just like that. I screamed like someone had just sliced my
balls off, I couldn't believe he just up and went and did that. I looked
up at the ceiling to see if the sutures had popped out through the skin,
shot up and splattered up there. I just could not believe what had
happened but it did and slowly, day by day, I went from a crawling
child-man to an almost walker. The crutches dug holes a mile deep into my
armpits so that was further incentive to get bipedal again. I was a
Minuteman then and we did gigs with me in a chair. Had to work the bass.
That was an ordeal (six more months) but it was successful so I got
working again, this time with cable TV as an installer. We're learning
to gaff poles (gaffs are a little spike that straps to the inside of
your ankle so you can climb up telephone poles) and at the top of the
pole my left knee goes out (the one they DID NOT fix) and I
rode that pole down. The splinters were the size of baseball bats. I
must've been doing at least thirty miles an hour when I hit the ground a
thud. I had a creosote racing stripe (creosote is what they coat
telephone poles with so they won't rot as fast or catch fire easy)
running down my face and the front of my shirt and pants. I lay at the
bottom the pole in a pile. It was time for operation number two. The
scar from the second operation actually wasn't as fat and obvious (maybe
Mizaguchi was better with practice) and yes, the 50 - 50 odds for a
freeze-up were still there but what's a scar when we're talking about
ever walking again, right? The surgery went well except for one thing.
Because I smoke mota, the anesthesiologist misjudged the sodium
pentathol dose and killed me. They revived me with a shot of some sort
of adrenaline injected right into my heart. Me being knocked of course,
prevented me from remembering any of this. Anyway, the doctors prevailed
and Watt lived with the knee job a success. Of course the leg was one
tenth its original size (like the other one because of the atrophy) but
another six months of therapy and I had learned to walk again for the
third time in my life. Well worth the hell though, maybe now my knees
would stay tight.
Both these surgeries happened in the early eighties when I was in my
early twenties. The knees stayed together but I was very over-protective
of them and walked very slowly and very carefully, trying at all times
to keep myself out of scary situations (knee-wise). Things went well
until '86, a little after D. Boon died. By that time I was a fIREHOSE
and ready for our first time out. Sonic Youth had decided to take us as
an opening act for a tour of the States. It was the last gig of the
tour when things went bad for Watt. It was a regular thing for us in
fIREHOSE to join the Sonics for their encore with one of
their songs and a Blue Oyster Cult song. On the last gig at
Hampshire College in Amherst, this version of the encore went awry. I
think Mascis and Dinosaur was the opening act for this
gig. Anyway, comes the end of "Starpower" and the whole of the
Sonics start tackling us and guess what Kim knocks out? Yep, my
fucking knee. Damn, I couldn't believe it. I went down to the deck and
twisted it back in. Of course no one knew what was going on because of
the Levi's hiding my legs so Thurston just picks me up and puts me in
this chair - with my face screwed up and hollering and we go on to do
"the Red and the Black." I couldn't play, fuck, I could barely hold the
bass, I was in such deep shock and since I sang this song, the
microphone was shoved right in my face. I couldn't think of any of the
words due to my brain glowing white inside with pure agony so I just
yelled and screamed. Folks thought I was disturbed. After what seemed
an eternity the fucking song finally finished and I nearly passed out.
I had been free of this shit for like five years and now it was back in
my life like a motherfuck.
More paranoia set in. I'd always played with my knees all locked up (by
extending them backwards as far as they could) but now I gave it twice
the effort. Doubt really struck me deep regarding the surgeries. Was all
that shit for nothing? Damn. The insecurities returned. The fears
returned. The nightmare paranoias were back with a fistful. I thought I
was free by letting Mizaguchi make the hell-cuts and now look. I thought
back and remembered everything Mizaguchi said. I remember him saying
something like: "those ligaments might stretch out in the future" or
something like that. I started thinking about the effect these knees had
on Watt being Watt. Had they shaped my entire being? Wasn't the first
Minutemen record called "Paranoid Time" and wasn't the crux tune on it
called "Paranoid Chant" or what? Why did I even need kneecaps, why
couldn't Mizaguchi have just put in big brass door hinges instead? In my
mind my thoughts raced: "so the operation isn't 100% - when will it
happen again - how much will it hurt?" Afraid, I cowered then gathered
resolve and stood up to myself and just sucked in some air and stood up
straight. "Keep toiling" I told myself and did.
The next time it happened would be the last time so far and boy, it
was the worst by far. I would take three big blows in this one fell
swoop, what a hand fate dealt me that night in Chicago. It was the fall
of 1991 and I was playing with fIREHOSE. We had brought the
Minneapolis band Run Westy Run with us on tour for the opening
act. It was our last show with them and we were playing the Cabaret
Metro near Wrigley Field. While we were finishing our set, the drummer
Dan comes on stage and starts squirting us with shaken up beer from the
bottle. I guess he was celebrating. Anyway, I slip in the beer and
immediately roll and twist my right ankle. As this happens, my right
knee pops out, fucking christ. Instantly I'm in shock and let go of
everything and start to fall to the deck. The bass, however, is still
strapped to me so when I finally hit the ground, the bass follows me
down. Now the bass has attachments on it so its strap can be used to
sling the bass over your shoulder. The rear attachment for this strap
hit me square in the right top front tooth and jammed it almost to that
punching bag thing in the back of my throat. Almost every
fIREHOSE tour had a leg of it where Kira would fly out and do
maybe four gigs with me as our two bass only band called dos
(from the Spanish meaning 'two'). We've had this band eleven years
now. Anyway, she was there with me that night in Chicago and ran up to
help me. When she saw my tooth, she screamed bloody murder "your
tooth"! By this time I was in deep shock and could finally put my knee
back. Damn it had stayed in for five years, five fucking years. When it
finally "thunked" back in, I grabbed my tooth and pulled forward. Damn,
those front teeth are long - I could feel the root almost rubbing under
my eyeball. I pulled it all the way back to it's original place. Only
the shock from the knee-pop allowed me this and later I was to find out
from a dentist that this was a very lucky thing I did. A little longer
and the tooth would've died for sure, he said. Meanwhile, it wasn't
over yet! Kira and I still had another gig (we had previously played
before Run Westy Run) starting midnight at some little place
where the stage is right above and behind the bar. Kira got me over
there somehow and had some folks lift me up to this little stage to
prop me against some stool. I remember she was wearing all flannel,
matching plaid flannel pants and shirt. She was the only thing that
made me glad I had hope enough to carry on. Her spirit was like "damn
the fates, let's do it for dos, let's do it for us" and I
followed her lead and soldiered on. Bourbons were poured and handed up
to me as I somehow got through the gig. It was mainly because of Kira,
she's just the best at what she does in dos. I was useless and
mostly a burden, howling and hurting. Puffed mouth. Puffed ankle.
Puffed knee. Plain puffed period. When it was done Kira brought me to a
Motel-6 and comforted me the best she could. The rest of the tour was
done in a chair (so weird for punk rock) and the following tour was
done limping standing up with only store-bought ibuprofen for pain
because of the distaste I found for most of that prescription shit that
left you in a daze and useless. Had to play good for the folks even if
that meant suffering from the damn vibrations coming up from the floor
and transferred to my knees through my feet! What a hell-ride. It took
me months to recover. I kept wishing and wishing for the bone saw,
asking my Dutch dude Carlos for it constantly. I even begged George to
break my leg above the knee with a side-kick. He wouldn't do it. I love
him anyway.
It's been almost five years since that last buckling and still I fear.
I've never gone more than five years since I was a little kid. Had a
tiny slip-out last year playing on the "Ring Spiel" tour in Providence
but it was no knee-pop. Enough to scare the shit out of me though and
make me wear nylon/rubber braces. Even now, playing for Perry in Porno
For Pyros I had to let Shawn London know about Fragile Boy when he just
barely bumped me from behind at a big gig in Australia. Anything gets
physical and the first thing you hear from Watt is "My knees, my knees -
look out." It's a mantra I carry everywhere for everyone every moment of
every fucking day. The memories will flood me when I feel weak, when I
feel relaxed about how I'm sitting, how I'm standing, how I'm turning,
etc. Memories of twisting, popping, screaming, tearing, contorting and
flailing. My face in a wrung-up, stretched and hyper-strained spasm.
"Enough" I tell myself. "Enough of this, make your mind free!"
Eight months ago I bought a bike from some Pedro dude who was moving
for five dollars. I started riding it. I got my first car (a VW) when I
was sixteen. I hadn't been on a bike since then (twenty-two years!). It
was a trip. The first few weeks my knees were like water balloons but
then the swelling went down as I got stronger. Maybe this is helping,
maybe it's keeping the joints moving and lubed. I don't know. What I do
know is it beats waiting for the next time. Well, I'm still waiting but
I'm peddling while I'm waiting. Sure, I'm not fast but I'm steady. Watch
my knee pop while I'm on the bike and I fall over, only to have my head
run over by a passing car. I will always be rolling the dice when it
comes to my knees.
Sometimes I get to thinking about how my knees try to keep me humble.
Them and, of course, the multitude of defeats I've suffered on other
fields, mainly of my own making. Hardly any of those measure up to the
"god's gift" quality as does these beaten knees. Does that sound sick? I
remember I would lie on the ground after a knee-pop when I was young,
praying and praying to god to put my knee back in and if he did I would
right all the wrongs I had ever caused, just like some drunk on the
bathroom floor retching with dry heaves and praying to the porcelain god
for mercy. That's more the stuff for the self-inflicted disasters I can
blame no one but myself. The reckoning of the pain court! Thinking of my
knees: the wishing, the waiting, the remembering - all of it has caused
me to fix myself against the physical plane in such a way as to define
the terms in which I perceive this universe with a bend toward the pull
of knee-pop. Popeye once said "I y'am what I y'ams" and I think this is
important because "the knees help make me me, see?" I might not be able
to ski but at least I can still walk, thank god.
Mike Watt, c/o staff@smug.com
back to the junk drawer
|
|
·feature·
·net worth·
·bumping uglies·
·smoking jacket·
·ear candy·
·feed hollywood·
·target audience·
·three dollar bill·
·compulsion·
·posedown·
·the biswick files·
·mystery date·
·and such and such·
·blab·
·kissing booth·
·contents·
·freakshow·
·fan club·
·junk drawer·
copyright © 1996, 1997 fearless media