Struts & Frets Read online

  Gramps said I was like him. Always reaching for the moon.

  Maybe that wasn’t so bad. When I thought about it, he’d lived a pretty cool life. He had his music and at least he had my grandmother. His one true love. I thought about what he had said, about them being partners in crime and that there wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle together. What if I never had a girl like that?

  Well, there was something I could do to improve my chances.

  I took the steps two at a time and when I burst into the TV room, my mom glanced up at me from her book, looking completely unsurprised.

  “Not tired?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Uh . . . ,” I said. “I know it’s a school night and all, but I was wondering if maybe I could . . . uh . . . go over to Jen5’s . . . just for a little bit.”

  “On one condition,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That you’re going over to apologize.”

  “Was I really that much of a dick?”

  “Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact, you were.” Then she turned back to her book, as if I’d already left.

  Fortunately, Jen5 answered the door. I wasn’t really in the mood to be polite and reserved with Mr. Russell.

  “Hey,” she said. She was in sweats and a T-shirt. Her blond hair was wet, like she had just taken a shower, and it almost looked like you could run a comb through it in places. It was weird to see her look so boring and normal. Weird, but kind of cool. Like a peek backstage.

  “Hey,” I said. “Can we talk a minute?”

  She was looking at me suspiciously, her sharp features compressed into something very close to a frown.

  “What’s up?” she asked as she stepped outside and shut the door behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “For being weird tonight. For getting pissed that you were just caring about me. I just . . . I think I was in shock or something.”

  “Feeling better now?”

  “No, I feel like shit now.”

  “Now, that’s my Sammy!” Her face relaxed into a grin, and when I saw that, it was like my chest relaxed at the same time. It was such a relief that I just kept talking.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about last night, too,” I said.

  “Why?” She looked like she had no idea what I was talking about.

  “Uh, well . . .” I wasn’t really sure myself what I was talking about. I hadn’t ever really figured out what I was sorry about. “Well, you were mad about something I said . . . and then all day today you weren’t talking to me, and—”

  “Oh . . . ,” she said, her eyes softening. “That.” She looked down at her toes, scrunched them up on the worn brick stoop. She didn’t say anything more.

  “What?” I said.

  “Look . . . that was just me,” she said. She tilted her pale foot to one side and examined the calloused bottom like she was looking for the right words there. “I was mad at myself. I mean, what you said really got me thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Well, you said that I’m never afraid, and that’s totally not true at all.”

  “I know. Sorry, I was exaggerating—”

  “Stop apologizing.” She finally looked up at me and her paisley eyes gleamed in the white light above the door. “You were totally spot-on. Because I put up this front like I’m never afraid. And that’s bullshit. It’s not really me. And that’s my problem,” she said, pressing her hands to her chest. “I don’t risk myself enough. You do it all the time. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

  “Do what all the time?”

  “You walk around with everything out on your sleeve, your chest just this big, gaping wound. I could never do that.”

  “You don’t want to,” I said. “Trust me.”

  “Well, okay,” she nodded, “I wouldn’t want to do it all the time. But I want to be able to do it when I choose.” She paused for a second, looking off at nowhere, and pursed her lips for a moment. “I want to be able to do it with you, at least.” She paused a little bit longer. “And maybe my dad.”

  “Your dad?” I hadn’t seen that coming.

  “Yeah,” she said as she looked back at me. Her eyes were a little sad. “I know he’s a total freak, but I love him. Someone’s got to.” A faint flush crept into her cheeks and I could tell that she was trying really hard to do something. Or not to do something. And I thought maybe what she was trying to do was be vulnerable.

  “Okay,” I said quietly and I took her thin, long-fingered hands in mine. The skin was rough from all the paint she was always scrubbing off them, and probably from sculpture and other art stuff that she did sometimes. I liked the feel of it because it made me less self-conscious of the thick wads of callous on my fingertips from steel guitar strings.

  “So maybe we help each other out,” I said. “I’ll teach you how to be more vulnerable and you’ll teach me how to be more of a . . . I don’t know . . .” I wasn’t sure if she would take “ball-buster” the right way.

  “Kick-ass combat ninja?” she suggested sweetly, leaning in and tilting her head to one side, her eyes half-closed in that way she did when she knew she had me.

  “Um,” I said. “Not exactly what I was thinking, but I guess we could work with that.”

  She chuckled quietly and leaned in a little closer. “You’re so funny.”

  “Why am I funny?” I asked, the soft smell of her hair conditioner making it a little hard to think.

  Then, with absolutely no warning, she kissed me. I guess it was only fair, since that was what I had done the last time. It started off hard, almost like it was a one-way kiss. But as I wrapped my arms around her narrow shoulders and pulled her in tight, she softened and her breath escaped into my mouth.

  “Okay,” she whispered after a few minutes. She pulled away. “Parents, just on the other side of this door.”

  “Oh.” My pulse was racing and I couldn’t quite catch my breath. “Right.”

  “Thanks for coming over,” she said, then gave me one more quick kiss and slipped back into her house.

  “Sure,” I said stupidly to the big iron door knocker. “No problem.”

  as I sat down at the lunch table.

  “So?” I said. “He skips all the time.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ,” Rick said. He didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew where he was going with it.

  “Does Joe even want to be in the band anymore?” asked TJ.

  “Do we want to be in a band with him?” asked Rick.

  “Yeah,” said Alexander. “You guys still doing that Battle of the Bands thing next week?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Guys, bands go through this kind of stuff all the time. Just give Joe a day or two to cool off and everything will be fine.”

  They didn’t seem very convinced. I couldn’t blame them, though, because neither was I.

  “Hey,” said Rick after a few minutes. “Where’s Fiver?”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re supposed to go find her,” he said.

  “Oh, are you finally giving me some gayfriend advice?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “That’s what I tell her to do whenever you’re hiding under the stairs.”

  When I needed to get away from stuff, I always headed for some cozy little nook. Jen5 seemed to always look for wide-open spaces. I found her sitting on the curb by the parking lot of the school. She was staring down at some kind of salad thing in a Tupperware container in her lap. She didn’t look too thrilled about it.

  “Can I sit?” I asked.

  “If you can stand the sight of my tofu,” she said. “This has to be the most heinous thing to be labeled food since caviar.”

  “What is tofu, anyway?” I asked.

  “Soybean or something,” she said.

  “It doesn’t look much like a bean,” I said. “It looks more like chunks of white rubber or something.”

  “That’s about how it tastes, too,” she said.

  “So wha
t’s up?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m trying to shield our friends from the hideous sight of my tofu.”

  “Okay, so how long am I going to have to bug you before you tell me what’s really up?”

  “Wow, Captain Subtlety strikes again.”

  “Like you’re one to talk. Besides, weren’t you just telling me last night you need to be more vulnerable?”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. She closed her Tupperware container and set it on the asphalt next to us. “So this Saturday, I have a gallery exhibit.”

  “Your stuff is getting shown somewhere?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “I only found out for sure that it was happening this morning when I checked my e-mail before school. And anyway, it’s not really a big deal.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “It’s a huge deal!”

  “Francine is just hanging a bunch of my stuff up at Idiot Child.”

  “And she’s going to have a little opening party or something?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “See, she and I have been e-mailing back and forth for a while, and—”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. I thought Francine was more Rick’s and my friend.

  “Yeah, well, I think she was hoping I was gay or something. I understand. The first time I met her I was wearing a tie, so that probably gave her the wrong idea. Anyway, I made it pretty clear that I was into you, and she said that was the next best thing.”

  “Wait, I’m the next best thing to being a lesbian?”

  “She meant it as a compliment.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll have to thank her.”

  “Anyway, so we still kept in touch and she’s been really getting into the idea of supporting local artists and stuff. So she wants to start a Saturday night thing, where she exhibits paintings and sculpture and stuff, and also host an open mic.”

  “An open mic,” I said.

  “Sam, come on.”

  “They are the most pretentious, least entertaining thing imaginable. Ninety-nine percent of the people performing at open mics totally and completely suck.”

  “Which is where you come in,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The other one percent that doesn’t suck? That’s going to be you.”

  “Fiver, no!” I jumped up and began to pace. Just thinking about it gave me the creeps.

  “Just you and your guitar and a song you wrote.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Please, Sammy.”

  I was about to go on and on about how I couldn’t sing in front of people, but I stopped myself. Because I realized that Jen5’s eyes were getting red. In fact, her entire face was getting red. And it looked like she was about to start crying.

  “If you won’t do it for yourself,” she said, “do it for me. Because . . .” She stopped and for a split second, I saw something like fear in her eyes. Then she looked down and stared hard at the lid of her Tupperware container. “Because my mom said she might stop by to check out my stuff, and I’m going to need you to do everything you possibly can to distract me so I don’t turn into a total fucking nut.”

  I stood there and watched her force herself not to cry. I could only take it for about thirty seconds.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll sing at the open mic.”

  “Oh, God, Sammy, thank you!” she said, then jumped up and kissed me hard and gave me a hug. “I know it’s a big deal for you,” she whispered in my ear. “You really are the best boyfriend ever.”

  I just stood there in a daze, relieved and horrified all at the same time by what I’d just agreed to.

  “It looks like a person, but it’s not a person,” said Mr. Sully. “So what’s the difference? Paint it.”

  Art class again, a circle of easels around a table. But this time, instead of fruit, it was a statue of some naked Italian guy. No, it was actually a naked Jewish guy (David, I think) but made by some Italian guy.

  “This is the worst,” groaned Jen5. “Painting a famous statue? Why don’t we just make sculptures of the friggin’ Mona Lisa while we’re at it?”

  “No fruit, no sculptures,” I said. “What would you want to paint?”

  “Seriously?” she said. “You.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  “No, I mean it. Will you model for me?”

  “Why would you want to paint me?”

  “I’ve never painted a model,” she said. “And I think this falls under the heading of boyfriend duties.”

  “Does it?”

  “Sure.” Then she grinned. “I think it would be kind of hot.”

  “Painting me would be hot?”

  She shrugged and gave me a strange look. A look I had never seen before but understood immediately. Or at least, I hoped I did.

  “Like . . . how hot?” I ventured.

  She shrugged again. There was a mischievous little smirk on her lips.

  “My mom has some deposition thing coming up, so she’ll be working late all this week,” she said. “And my dad has some faculty dinner thing tomorrow night, so . . .”

  “Empty house,” I said.

  “Yep,” she said.

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well,” I said with what I thought was incredible coolness, all things considered, “I just happen to be free for modeling tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. Then she started to paint the statue, but she still had that little smirk while she worked.

  I barely paid attention to afternoon classes. There was just too much stuff bouncing around in my head.

  Tragedy of Wisdom looked like it might be totally finished. Nobody seemed really desperate to keep it together, except me. They just didn’t see what I saw. What it could be if we just worked a little harder. We’d already put so much into the band. So many nights and weekends of rehearsal, and that wasn’t even counting the time I’d spent writing the songs. How could they just shrug all that off? There had to be some way that I could show them what I saw, but I didn’t have any ideas.

  Then there was the little matter of promising Jen5 that I would sing at an open mic. What was I thinking? Well, you don’t tell your crying girlfriend no, is what I was thinking. But the idea made me so queasy, I couldn’t really dwell on it too much. But that was okay because there was a third thing that started creeping in and taking over all my other thoughts until it was this huge knot of tension at the back of my head: losing my virginity.

  When Jen5 had sort of suggested it in art class, it had been just pure, hot adrenaline rush. But then, as the reality of it started to sink in the rest of the day, I realized that I was terrified. It was just such a mind-boggling thing. Sex. Me. Jen5. In less than forty-eight hours. Holy shit.

  I mean, I knew what was supposed to happen. I’d seen my share of porn. But that was just it. The idea of Jen5 actually saying, Oh, baby! I want your big hard cock! was just ludicrous. So it clearly wouldn’t be like it was in porn. So what, then? I’d seen other movies where it was a lot less in-your-face, but I wasn’t sure if that was right either.

  And then there were the sex talks I’d had with my mother. She seemed to have this compulsive need to talk to me about the facts of sex. I guess she was just overcompensating because I didn’t have a father to talk to me about them. But the stuff she said didn’t exactly make me feel any more ready, especially conversations that went something like this:

  MOM:

  You know, Sam, when you do decide to start having sex, which shouldn’t be anytime soon because you’re much too young—

  ME:

  Oh, God, Mom. Can’t we just watch the movie?

  MOM:

  No, I just want to clarify that the scene you have just witnessed has very little to do with a realistic and healthy sexual union.

  ME:
r />   I get it. It’s just a movie. I don’t plan on hunting down killer cyborgs, either. Now, can we—

  MOM:

  What you need to remember is that you can’t just rush right into intercourse. You have to take your time because a woman needs longer to get into the mood. This is called foreplay.

  ME (making strangling noises):

  Please . . . Mom . . . I’m begging you . . .

  MOM:

  Oh, don’t be silly. Now, the reason that it takes longer for a woman is not because she loves you less or doesn’t find you desirable. It’s a physiological thing. In order for her to enjoy intercourse, her vagina must be lubricated—

  ME:

  Okay, that’s it. I’m going to bed.

  MOM:

  Wait, don’t you want to know how the movie ends?

  ME:

  What’s the point? I won’t be able to hear what they’re saying anyway now that blood is pouring from my ears.

  So, enough of those kinds of talks and you start to feel this weird pressure. Like you have to do it right or else the girl won’t enjoy it and then you feel like an asshole. And who knew if the stuff she was telling me was even right. I mean, I think the last date she went on was when I was ten years old.