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they bust up, last year they helped Malissa make those DON FOREVER, RORY NEVER buttons we all wore after Darby kicked Don Bolles out of the Germs and went to London for a month with Amber and told Pat Smear and Lorna Doom to teach Rory how to drum while he was gone. But Rory has the lifetime ban from the City of Hope when it comes to musical talent, no sense of rhythm at all, I heard him practicing in Gerber’s garage and it was even worse than Belinda first trying to sing when the Go-Go’s formed. So Pat and Lorna just gave up, and that was roll the credits black the screen on the Germs.
    And there’s a child’s garden of theories why Darby checked out, there’s the Bowie theory based on that song “Five Years” and the way Darby told all his friends in ’75 he’d be dead in five years, and the homo theory that Darby knew he’d done the Dr. Frankenstein thing with all the new hardcore kids from the beaches taking over the scene, and he was afraid they’d beat him up or kill him when word got out he liked boys, and part of that theory says Darby kicked out Don for wearing a dress onstage at a gig because it was bound to raise suspicions. And then there’s the jack-off fuckboy self-destruction derby theory that with somebody like Darby it was just a matter of time until the zero hour.
    And zero’s just another circle when you think about it.
    But theories make my head hurt, so I just guess.
    That Darby split the Germs over Rory and when he came back from England he had his Adam Ant look and his Mohican and he did the Darby Crash Band and basically all us year one little babies gave our tonsils air to spare, we yawned till dawn, it wasn’t the same anymore, and that just made it take-the-scissors-saw-the-head for him when he got back together with Pat and Don and Lorna for the Germs reunion at the Starwood a few nights before the so-called suicide pact that Casey Cola woke up from but Darby didn’t.
    Because we all opened wide again that night but cheering not yawning, the Germs were back and better than ever, they could play their instruments and keep the beat and Darby even sang into the mic.
    But that was for us. Maybe for Darby it was more like he tried to go beyond the Germs and he was back to circle one, trapped in this thing he’d made, and he wanted out and the only way out he saw was all the way out.
    What a trap though.
    The best gig they ever played, fresh and fierce as fuck, Hellin Killer says it was better than the Pistols in San Francisco, so many youth of today have no clue that Sid Vicious saw the Germs there, watching from the wings.
    At the Mabuhay, the night after that Pistols gig, the last one ever. Hellin told me all about it on those concrete stairs to nowhere inside the Masque, tapping out time with her fingers on my wrist, countdown, ignition,
Rockets Redglare,
you are there.
    They start the set with “Circle One.”
    There’s the first beat of the drum intro, before the roll that leads into the vocal.
    Darby struts out.
    Grabs Lorna’s beer off her amp.
    Walks across the stage.
    Drinks the beer.
    Breaks the bottle over his head.
    Carves a gigantic bloody circle in his chest with the broken glass.
    Then comes in right on cue, in perfect time.
    I’m Darby Crash, a social blast.

6
    Squid wants to know if I’ve walked the walk around the block yet, and once I mention Arthur J’s they’re back in Playskool mode, a bawk-bawk here and a bawk-bawk there, here a bawk, there a bawk, everywhere a bawk-bawk, the only other hang in Hollywood that’s close in chickenhawks per capita is the Gold Cup up on Las Palmas, how else do you think Black Randy came up with the marriage-made-in-hell name for the house band at the Masque, Arthur J and the Gold Cups. And since they saw Blitzer leaving here, they figure he was with me there.
    Squid says, “I reckon Blitzer’s looking more like a rooster to those daddies these days.”
    I just ask how old she thinks he looks, if I all-clear things up it’s