Like Kohoutek — Story notes and soundtrack

2019-06-15

Last week I published a new short story “Like Kohoutek” in Lit Up. Here’s how it opens:

October, 1993

Knock knock.

“What was that?”

Silence.

Knock knock knock.

“What was that?”

“Someone’s at the door.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Don’t answer it.”

Knock knock knock knock.

It was midnight on a Saturday night. Vin, Meadow, Angelo, and I were sitting in the dark, tripping our balls off.

The story takes place five years after the events of “The Plunge Pool,” a story I published last year in Lit Up.

In “Like Kohoutek” Dan and Vin take another weird trip, though this time not so far from home. I won’t say too much more, you can read it, if you want. I will say that Dan and Vin have a complicated relationship, as maybe all lifelong friends do. I think I may have one more story about them in me. It’s still germinating in my subconscious, but I think I might be able to put it together in the next year.

Soundtrack

Notes about this story wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the soundtrack. I don’t think I’m too different from most american gen-xers in feeling that a soundtrack runs continuously through all my memories of the 80’s and 90’s. Any story I write set in that time period has a soundtrack running below the surface, even if I don’t mention it explicitly.

Here are the albums and songs that run under, and on the surface of, this story:

R.E.M. — Fables of the Reconstruction

The namesake song:

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Blood Sugar Sex Magic

Rush — A Farewell To Kings

This is the album that the guys expected to be trippy, but that turned out to be “thin and mechanical”. That’s the thing about acid. It doesn’t do what you expect. Things can be flat where you expect them to be deep, clear where you expect mystical. It’s still a good album, if mostly forgotten today. Here’s the track that Danno expected to trip to: