Free Play Me Backwards by Adam Selzer Page A

could.
    â€œLook,” he said, “if you get stuck, tell them the story about the time Danny Nelson tried to keep one of his pet snakes in the back and why we had to get rid of it.”
    I looked at him to see if he was serious. He wasn’t laughing.
    â€œThat story’s kind of gross for mixed company.”
    â€œTrust your dark lord, Harris.”
    I don’t know why I put so much faith in Stan’s advice.
    But sometimes I really did think he might be privy to all the secrets of the universe.
    Back in the 1980s people honestly believed that bands were hiding secret Satanic messages in rock songs, and that you could hear them by playing the records in reverse. There are web pages where you can hear samples of them, and they all just sound like mumbling and jibberish to me. Most of the time, when the secret message is supposed to be something about Satan, it sounds to me like they’re saying “Stan.”
    â€œBecause I live with Stan.” (Led Zeppelin)
    â€œThere’s power in Stan.” (Led Zeppelin)
    â€œStan is lord, he will give you 666.” (Led Zeppelin)
    â€œStan, move through our voices.” (Styx)
    â€œYeah, Stan, he organized his own religion.” (The Eagles)
    â€œStan, Stan, Stan, he is God.” (Black Oak Arkansas)
    Sometimes I imagined all these bands having shadowy meetings with Stan at a lonely crossroads someplace, bartering their souls for rock ’n’ roll stardom and sealing the deal with a handful of Skittles from an accursed barrel of mix-ins.
    After work I cleaned myself up, finished cleaning out my car, and drove out to Paige’s house to pick her up, listening to a few more minutes of Moby-Dick while I went. No answers yet.
    When I knocked on her door, Paige stepped out. “Hurry,” she said. “Let’s not do the meet-the-parents thing.” I was only too happy to oblige there, and the two of us practically raced down the icy driveway to my car.
    â€œYou cleaned up in here,” she said, as she looked around.
    â€œIt’s only fair,” I said. “If you’re gonna be spending any time in here, I could at least get rid of the fast-food wrappers and stuff.”
    She smiled.
    As we got on the road to Dustin’s house, Paige told me she waited tables two nights a week at Casa Bravo, the Mexican place on Cedar, and from then on we swapped stories about terrible customers and moronic managers. Casa Bravo sounded like a real shit hole to me. Her stories about getting yelled at and coming home exhausted only made me more aware of how lucky I was to work at a place like the Ice Cave. No one ever yelled at you there. George, the owner, didn’t seem to care if we got bad online reviews, or even if he checked the browser history on the computer and saw that someone had been surfing for porn. Or if we ate our weight in mix-ins.
    We picked up Dustin, then drove a few neighborhoods over to pick up Jacqueline, whom I’d never met. She was heavyset, but not bad-looking, with dyed black hair and lipstick that appeared to be dark purple. It was hard to tell in the dim light.
    â€œHi,” I said. “I’m Leon.”
    â€œI’ve seen you around,” she said.
    Dustin just stared at her. “You have really pretty eyes,” he told her.
    â€œUh, thanks,” she said.
    â€œI mean it,” he said. “They look like glowing orbs above the sea.”
    She buckled her seat belt and thanked him again, but I could tell she was sort of weirded out.
    All the way to Cedar Avenue, Paige and I enjoyed the spectacle of watching poor Dustin try to talk to Jacqueline. His attempts to charm her were well-intentioned, but most of them just made him look like a creep. At one point he even asked if she wanted to hear a poem he’d written for her.
    â€œUh, maybe later,” she said. “Look, Hurricane’s is right ahead. I don’t want to make us late.”
    Throughout the evening