Struts & Frets Read online

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Well, I’d like to talk about it if you change your mind.” That was the therapist voice.

  “Sure,” I said. I even managed something that I hoped looked like a smile.

  “You’re only alone because you choose to be, Sam,” she said quietly.

  That sort of Dr. Phil statement always drove me nuts. My mom had a way of pushing my buttons. I guess, probably like all parents. But I felt like mine was a little better at it than most.

  Clothes and smiles of rubber

  Whore instead of lover

  Talk with no conversation

  Live with no realization

  After breakfast, I wrote a verse of “Plastic Baby.” I was beginning to wonder if maybe the song was about Laurie. Weird, huh? You’d think it would suddenly be about Jen5. But all this had got me thinking about what Jen5 had said about Laurie, and I wondered why I was into her. After all, looking objectively at it, she was a total trend-hound snob, and her dating Joe only confirmed that. Rich daddy’s girl having a fling with the bad seed. But even though I knew all that, I still thought she was hot. Was I completely shallow? Did I want some hot chick who just agreed with everything I said? I didn’t think so. And anyway, Jen5 was pretty hot too. Not as hot as Laurie, I guess, but still. And she was cool and someone I could talk to.

  So why did trying to imagine myself dating her freak me out so much? I wanted to completely forget that I knew she wanted to be more than just friends. I wanted to not feel that confusion and weirdness and . . . fear. Nothing had changed, really. And yet everything had changed. And it could never be like it used to be.

  I wasn’t sure what the deal with TJ was, whether he was jealous or angry or what. But I knew rehearsal was going to be weird. Sure enough, while we were getting set up later that afternoon, things were dead quiet. Then Joe came in, and with his incredible instinct for making things worse, he brought Laurie. She was dressed in some kind of super-hot black bodysuit that let you know exactly how perfect her body really was. To be face-to-face with Laurie while I was still struggling with the Jen5 stuff was almost more than I could handle. And why was she smirking? I felt kind of like she was laughing at us in her head.

  Forget everything else, I thought. Just concentrate on the music.

  But that turned out to be a problem as soon as we started up the first song. Rick didn’t seem to remember what song we were playing. The rhythm matched up, but the actual notes were from a totally different song.

  “Stop, stop, STOP!!!” yelled Joe.

  The song ground to a halt.

  “That sounded like crap!” said Joe. He punctuated his words by slamming his mic stand to the ground. “What the hell was wrong?”

  We looked at Joe, then at each other.

  “Rick,” I said finally. “I think you were playing the wrong song.”

  “Oh,” said Rick, but he didn’t seem all that bothered by it. “I’m playing A-E-F-C.”

  “Right,” I said. “But this song is F-C-F-C-G-D.”

  “Oh,” he said again.

  I thought I heard Laurie stifle a laugh, but when I turned, she looked more worried than anything else because Joe seemed like he was about to rip somebody’s head off.

  “What is wrong with you?” he snarled. “Permanent brain damage from too many whippits?”

  This time, Laurie’s giggle was unmistakable. She was actually laughing at Joe’s stupid comment. And all at once, I saw that brainless preppy girl that Jen5 had told me about that no amount of dark lipstick and thick eye shadow could hide. Sure she was hot, but in the end she was just some dumb, snotty chick who always fawned over the big tough guy. Plastic baby, for sure. I was disgusted with myself for having wasted so much energy thinking about her.

  But Rick wasn’t fazed by either Joe’s comment or Laurie’s groupie act. He just said, “We going to start again or what?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” said Joe, and he stepped on the mic stand to bring it back upright.

  TJ counted us in and we started over. Rick played the right bass line. And you could always count on TJ. He was the best musician in the band, without a doubt. So after a little bit, the three of us finally found our groove together and it started to sound like a real song.

  But then Joe began to sing. I glanced over and saw him holding the sheaf of lyric papers that I had typed up for him. He wasn’t really reading from it too much though, just kind of mumbling something that sounded close to the words. He was too busy winking and thrusting his hips suggestively at Laurie, who giggled shyly with her hand over her mouth. Joe was paying so little attention to his singing that he actually started up on the third verse when we were supposed to go to the bridge. The three of us kept going, and it took him a few measures to catch on. When he did, his face immediately contorted from sly flirtation to absolute fury.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!” he roared.

  We stopped playing.

  “What just happened there?” he demanded. This wasn’t just Mean Joe. This was Mean Joe Impressing His Girlfriend.

  Gramps once told me that fools rush in where wise men fear to tread. That was me all over.

  “You went to the third verse,” I said.

  “Yeah?” he snarled, his eyes wide like some kind of psycho killer. “And?”

  “It was time to go to the bridge,” I said.

  “Oh, well,” he growled. “Excuse me!” He turned toward Laurie, waving the lyrics in the air above his head. “Maybe if these weren’t the most asinine lyrics ever written, it’d be easier to remember them. I mean, come on.” He held out the pages in front of him and began to read them like a lawyer or something. “‘Make believe myself in a thirty-second drop, but I don’t believe in fortune or my luck to stop’? Or how about, ‘Fantasized fictional tragedy to feel. When all is said and done it seems like no big deal’? You asked what ‘Tragedy of Wisdom’ meant? Well, what the hell does this mean?”

  I said, “It means—”

  “SHUT UP!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Joe’s face was bright red now, and a thick vein stood out on his forehead. I don’t think I’d ever seen him this angry. Or scary. “IT’S DUMB!” he yelled. “IT MAKES NO SENSE! All it does is rhyme because that’s all you can do. But I guess we’re stuck with you, now aren’t we? So let’s just start over again and see if we can somehow get this shit off the ground.”

  Total silence. It was one thing to crack on someone’s clothes or hair or whatever. It was something completely different to knock the thing that someone sees as the most important thing in his life. My head was burning and I really wanted to just jump on him and pound him. I imagined my fists as sledgehammers beating him senseless. But part of me knew it wouldn’t go like that. He was so much bigger and meaner than I was. He’d destroy me.

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “TJ, count us in again.”

  TJ clicked his drumsticks together and we started over. Rick fumbled for a second, but then got it together and the song started to pick up again. Joe glared at us, letting a full verse of music go by before he joined in. Then he went back to his mic and his pieces of paper and his winking at Laurie and the song limped on.

  I didn’t really feel like doing anything that night, but Rick didn’t seem to care.

  “Let’s just go get some coffee at Idiot Child,” he said as we walked through the Parks and Rec parking lot to the Boat.

  “I won’t be any fun,” I told him.

  “You never are,” he said. “Anyway, I can’t just let you go home, listen to Radiohead, and mope all night. Come on. Just you and me. It’ll be a nice, quiet night.”

  I knew he was lying, of course. There was nothing nice or quiet about Idiot Child. It was a big, dark room full of broken-down couches and La-Z-Boy chairs. The air was so thick with cigarette smoke that you had to slouch in your seat and keep as low to the ground as possible, just so you could breathe. And it was always packed with a smelly, grungy, angsty cross-section of Columbus’s underground scene: skaters, punks, ravers, hippies, goths,
and people who were just plain weird. But the coffee was cheap and surprisingly good, the music was always cool, and they let you hang out for as long as you wanted, as long as you bought something. For a dollar fifty, you had a place to hang for the whole night with no waitresses, cops, jocks, or parents to harass you. And it was worth all the rest just for that.

  Plus, as a bonus, Rick and I knew the owner.

  Francine was in her late twenties when her parents died in a car crash and left her with a ton of money. She spent it all on two things. One was a bunch of tattoos. She loved comics, and so she had her favorites—Sandman, Emily Strange, Death Jr., and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac—inked on just about every inch of skin. And she was not a tiny person, so that was a lot of tattoos. One time she told me that she guessed she had about ten thousand dollars’ worth of ink on her body. But she said it was worth it because she’d never liked looking at herself in the mirror before and now she did. She said it also scored with the chicks.

  That was how we got to know Francine. When Rick realized that he was gay, he didn’t tell his parents (they would totally freak). But he told our school guidance counselor, Mr. Liven, who was so cheery and unthreatening, you felt like you could tell him you’d just murdered a busload of nuns and he’d still be nice to you. Mr. Liven recommended that he join some kind of support group, I guess to talk with other gay people about being gay. Our neighborhood, German Village, was a pretty gay area, so he found a place that he could walk to after school. He went to a few meetings, and that was where he met Francine. Rick wasn’t really into the meetings, because he said it was mainly a bunch of depressed old queens. Francine wasn’t into it too much either. She’d hoped to meet some chicks, but she was the only lesbian there. So the two of them spent most of the time hanging out in the parking lot, smoking Francine’s cigarettes and talking about comics. They both quit the group, and Francine said he should start hanging out at the coffee shop that she’d bought with the rest of her inheritance: Idiot Child.

  Idiot Child was just as loud and smoky as usual. The only person who worked there besides Francine was Raef, a middle-aged dude with long red hair and a gnarly beard who filled in on Francine’s nights off. He was standing behind the counter waving one hand in the air, the other pressed against the stereo receiver.

  “Hey, kids,” he said to us. “It’s gonna take me a second to pour your coffee. I’ve almost got a clear broadcast.”

  We waited while he raised and lowered his body and waved his hand slowly back and forth. He had metal fillings in his mouth and a metal plate in his head and he claimed that if he positioned himself in just the right way, he could pick up radio signals in his brain and transmit them to the stereo. He said that the first time he’d discovered this ability, he’d accidentally channeled a Pink Floyd song, “Breathe,” and it had changed his life forever.

  But I guess it wasn’t happening tonight. Eventually he gave up and said, “Just coffee, kids?”

  We nodded. Neither of us had enough cash for a real espresso drink.

  After we got our coffees, we sank into a couch in a corner of the room.

  “I hope you didn’t take what Joe said seriously,” said Rick.

  “What, about my songs being total shit?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Rick. “That. I think your songs are awesome.”

  “Even though you can’t remember how to play them?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Rick. “That’s why I’m bringing it up. Because it’s my fault that I can’t remember them. I just haven’t worked on them enough. And what I’m saying is that Joe hasn’t either. He just doesn’t want to admit it, so he’s blaming you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I mean, he’d probably say that stuff even if he loved my songs.”

  “Maybe he says it more when he likes them.”

  “I guess. Of course, I know they aren’t brilliant, you know?”

  “Sammy—”

  “No, really. I’m still trying to figure out how to do it. I know that. I think it would help if we rehearsed more. And I feel kind of limited because I know there’s some stuff I want to write that he would never sing because it’s too emo or whatever.”

  “Sammy? Emo? No way!” Rick said.

  “Do you think TJ is mad at me?”

  “TJ will get over it,” said Rick. “But you have to decide what you’re going to do about Fiver.”

  “I really don’t know what to do. For real.”

  “Do you think she’s hot?”

  “I’ve never thought about it before,” I said. “She was just my friend, you know?”

  “You gotta start thinking about it.”

  “Why? Why can’t I just pretend you never said anything and go on being exactly like I was?”

  “Well, first of all, there’s TJ,” said Rick. “He’s only going to wait so long and then he’s going to ask her out.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And also, Fiver. She’s only going to wait for so long before she gives up on you and finds someone new.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Of course not. She’s convinced she’ll wait as long as it takes or she’ll never date anyone. But I know better. And you know better. Fiver is not going to put up with this bullshit forever.”

  “I know.”’

  “And it is bullshit, you know?” He leaned forward a little. “We’ve all be waiting for you two to hook up for years.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “All of us. Shit, even your mom is waiting for it.”

  “You haven’t talked to my mom about—”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying that it’s so obvious to everyone else that there’s something there. Chemistry, magnetism, mojo. Whatever. It’s present.”

  “I guess,” I said, swirling the wooden stir stick in my coffee. “But it’s just so . . . weird.”

  “What is?”

  “Thinking about her like that. She’s my friend.”

  “Are you seriously expecting me to believe that?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

  “What?”

  “That you’ve never thought of her as anything other than a friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would swear to me that you never once thought of her while jerking off.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I’m serious. Can you tell me that?”

  I said nothing.

  “Exactly,” said Rick, tapping the table like he had just scored a major point. “Now, look. Let me tell you what your real problem is.”

  “Oh, this’ll be good,” I said.

  “Your problem is this: You freak out about the tiniest little stuff. You get all passionate and intense naming a stupid band or thinking about whether your favorite singer sold out or whatever. It’s like life or death to you. But then when it comes to really important stuff, you totally puss out. It’s like too much and you overload or something. It’s time to grow some huevos, amigo. Be a man.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “When are you going to ask somebody out?”

  “That’s totally different,” he said, shaking his head.

  “No, I don’t think it really is.”

  “There’s no one for me to ask out,” he said.

  “Have you looked?” I asked.

  “Just forget it,” he said. “It’s too weird talking about this.”

  “It’s not weird at all. In fact, we were just talking about this stuff with me. You’re just making it seem weird.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” he said. “I brought you out tonight so that I could pick on you, not the other way around.”

  “Are you sure you’re even gay?” I asked.

  “What? Of course.”

  “Then why don’t you ask someone out on a date?”

  “Are you sure you’re straight?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then why don’t you ask out the coolest chick in school when you already know for a fact
that she’ll say yes?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “When I put it that way, it makes you feel a little stupid, doesn’t it?”

  house. Sure, Mom only worked a few hours on Saturday, but that still meant nice clothes, hair, and makeup for her. So on Sunday, she sat around all day without makeup, in baggy sweats, and didn’t leave the house. What this meant for me was that if anything needed to be done, like errands or shopping, I did it. I pointed out to her that the Starbucks coffee barista would probably forgive her if she showed up looking like a scrub once a week. But she just said it was a girl thing and I wouldn’t understand.

  Fortunately, we were pretty well stocked on the basics, so it was a quiet day until dinnertime. That’s when one of Gramps’s neighbors called and said he was acting weird. The neighbors were used to his normal weirdness, so anything they thought was unusual worried us. Someone needed to check it out. Usually, that someone was Mom. But since it was Sunday, that someone was me.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Mom as she settled down on the couch for TV and ice cream.

  When I pulled up in front of his building it was starting to get dark out, but I could still see what had worried the neighbors. Gramps had dragged a chair out onto the lawn in front of the apartment building. He was sitting with his hands in his lap, staring up at the sky between the building tops, looking totally at peace. And the strangest thing was that he was all dressed up correctly in a suit and tie. It looked like he’d even combed his hair.

  When I opened the car door, I heard the last few bars of a song. The music ended and I saw him lean down and press the button on a small boom box at his feet. The music started up again and the smoky horn and lightly disjointed rhythm told me it was definitely Miles Davis.

  He had returned his hands to his lap and he looked so still, I was afraid to startle him. But as I walked up the sidewalk, he turned calmly and looked up at me.

  “Ah, Sammy,” he said. “I knew you’d come. I knew she’d send you. She’s a smart one.” He smiled quietly to himself. Then, “Have a seat.”