Dancing in the Ashes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 2009 Dancing in the ashes Vytautas Adolph Malesh University of Nevada Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Creative Writing Commons Repository Citation Malesh, Vytautas Adolph, "Dancing in the ashes" (2009). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 135. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/1385334 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DANCING IN THE ASHES by Vytautas Adolph Malesh Bachelor of Arts Wayne State University 2006 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas August 2009 ABSTRACT An Abstract of the novel Dancing in the Ashes By Vytautas Adolph Malesh Douglas Unger, Examination Committee Chair Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas The following novel is the third draft of my creative thesis entitled Dancing in the Ashes. It is an exploration of the Detroit rave scene in its dying days, and it mixes real and imagined places and events in order to portray the essence of that time, if not the factuality. The bulk of the novel follows just over two weeks in the life of Thomas Kowalski, a drug dealer living with his parents in suburban Detroit. He parties constantly and seldom works except as necessary to keep his job at a local record store – an invaluable source of connections. The rave scene has been dying a slow death for years, and when Thomas’ friend Haas decides to throw one big party, the Detroit dance community is slapped out of its apathy for one wild night of revelry. The events stemming from that night become the defining incidents in the life of Thomas and his friends, and commence a stark epitaph for the carefree days of the rave movement. Being set in Detroit and its suburbs, the novel cannot help but explore themes of race and urban decay, but the majority of the characters are suburban, and in attempting to portray them realistically and sympathetically I have made the characters occasionally confused, disinterested, misguided or apathetic. As much as this is a novel about Detroit’s dance culture and the deleterious effects of drugs within it, it is also about iii young people slowly coming to terms with the collapse of American industry and the narrowing of the middle class. The novel is set in winter: the literal winter of January 2002, and the allegorical winter of the ironic mode - the fall from a low place. The characters within this novel do not lead great or heroic lives, but I have tried to treat them as lives worth considering nonetheless. Their environment is bleak and cold, their prospects dim, their city dying. I have only tried to tell the story of all of us who were there in an informative, entertaining, and faithful fashion. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………...iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...………………………………………………...vii CHAPTER 1 ……………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2 …………………………………………………………………..14 CHAPTER 3 …………………………………………………………………..28 CHAPTER 4 ………………………………………………………………..…36 CHAPTER 5 …………………………………………………………………..50 CHAPTER 6 …………………………………………………………………..58 CHAPTER 7 ………………………………………………………………..…64 CHAPTER 8 …………………………………………………………………..82 CHAPTER 9 …………………………………………………………………..92 CHAPTER 10 ………………………………………………………………..113 CHAPTER 11 ………………………………………………………………..127 CHAPTER 12 ……………………………………………………………..…147 CHAPTER 13 ………………………………………………………………..158 CHAPTER 14 ………………………………………………………………..165 CHAPTER 15 ……………………………………………………………..…172 CHAPTER 16 ………………………………………………………………..187 CHAPTER 17 …………………………………………………………..……197 CHAPTER 18 ………………………………………………………………..210 CHAPTER 19 ………………………………………………………………..241 CHAPTER 20 ………………………………………………………………..254 v CHAPTER 21 ………………………………………………………………..261 CHAPTER 22 ………………………………………………………………..275 CHAPTER 23 ………………………………………………………………..306 CHAPTER 24………………………………………………………………...345 CHAPTER 25 ……………………………………………………………..…351 CHAPTER 26 ………………………………………………………………..367 CHAPTER 27 ………………………………………………………………..378 CHAPTER 28 ………………………………………………………………..383 VITA .……...…………………………………………………………………390 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This novel was pushed into being in great part by the oversight and concern of Douglas Unger, who has mentored me the entire while. I would also thank my committee members Pablo Medina, Nick Lolordo, and Daniel Villanueva for their efforts and time. Amongst my critics, I would thank those who first read this draft in its infancy: Mark Baumgartner, Joseph Cameron, and Kaitlin McClanahan. For my friends and family, I thank my father Dale Malesh for his unwavering support, my mother Jaquelyn Burgess for introducing me to the written word, my previous mentor Chris Leland, my late grandmother Sarah McNulty for encouraging me to pursue academe, and any other soul whosoever has uttered a kind word in support of this endeavor. vii Chapter 1. Antonio’s Coney Island is in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb at the intersection of the black north, the white west, and the Arab east. Most Detroit suburbs exemplify such divides. Southfield is a hodge-podge of the Jews that fled Detroit in the 1960’s and the Blacks that were wealthy enough to follow behind. Warren is the working-class cousin of Grosse Pointe, to which the Catholic Poles, Italians, and Germans, fearful of the rioting blacks and unwilling or unable to follow the Jews to Southfield or Birmingham. Dearborn was a white suburb, notorious for its pristine white street sweepers with black lettering on the sides that read “Keep Dearborn Clean,” well understood by Detroiters and Dearborn residents alike to mean Keep the Niggers out of Dearborn. Diametrically opposed and rigidly enforcing the black-white color line, nobody noticed when Arabs and Armenians moved in en masse to the East Side, effectively making a brown city within Dearborn’s city limits. Thomas Kowalski and Baxter Mancini drank coffee at Antonio’s as a part of their post-party ritual. It was very early on January 6th, 2002 (or rather it was very late, January 5th). Both were twenty-two years old. Thomas was bone skinny and thin-haired, dark eyed and pale. He wore oversized khaki cargo pants, a blue hooded sweatshirt, and a black Fresh Jive baseball cap pulled down to his eyes. His father was mostly Polish and had given Thomas his thin hair and pale skin, his mother was mostly German, and she gave Thomas his strong bones and bitter mouth. He was darkly handsome, his face was charmingly cruel. 1 Baxter was yellow haired and olive skinned, a beautiful Mediterranean boy, a modern David. His father was proudly Italian, Florentine, with no trace of Moorish darkness about him. His mother was of French descent. Baxter swaggered when he walked, and his smile was the half-cocked smirk of an accomplished lothario. Their man Darryl waited on their table that night. Darryl was black, not particularly tall, and round-faced. He had milk chocolate skin and black eyes. He wore his hair short and natural. He wore the uniform required of him by his job – a white short- sleeved oxford shirt and black slacks, with clunky thick-soled black shoes. Outside of work he was a breakdancer, a b-boy, and he had the dense, muscular physique to show it. He was also a student at Henry Ford Community College. He did okay. He didn’t think about it much. The few customers in the restaurant, stubble-chinned drunkards and losers laid off of third shift who couldn’t learn to keep daylight hours, were all white, and middle-aged or older. They ate without savor, they drank coffee under their thousand-yard stares. They were not resentful of the boisterous trio in the back of the restaurant, nor were they indifferent – indeed, if they were even aware of the existence of Baxter, Thomas, and Darryl, they made no sign. “Should have been up to Motor,” Baxter said as Darryl warmed up their coffee. “Hot to death?” Darryl asked. “It felt good – real vibe” Baxter replied, conjuring up the dusty and disused language of the rave scene, the impromptu dance craze cum social paradigm that had brought these three together years ago, and which now floundered and limped impotently. 2 Rave, now drug down by oppressive “crackhouse laws” and the somber tone of American social life post 9/11. “You all givin’ out light shows and shit?” Darryl teased Thomas. “Fuck yeah” Thomas joked, making his voice dumb and apish, “I be getting’ them club sluts all rollin’ and trippin’ out-“ “Tryin’ to get ‘em to suck his dick like a pacifier!” Baxter said. “Shit yeah, them bitches be all like nom nom nom,” Thomas said before waving away this silliness. “I’m-a tell y’all bitches,” Darryl said, referring to the pairs girlfriends, Rachel and Maria. “Shit,” Thomas said, and shrugged. “Go ahead on,” Baxter added. “Where they at?” Darryl asked. Baxter shrugged and said “Dunno – lezzing out or something.” Darryl scrunched up his face and asked “Damn, ain’t they cousins?” “Don’t you have sex with your cousin?” Thomas asked, his face blank and naïve until he couldn’t hold it in and cracked a grin. “You dead wrong!” Darryl laughed, and then returned to the kitchen to put his coffee pot back on the warmer. Motor was hot. Motor had vibe that night. Urb magazine had named it the best dance club in America a few years before, and the house-heads, techno hipsters, and junglists that continued to flood the venue every weekend agreed.

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