Our band was called tragedy of Reason. Or Tragedy of Wisdom. We hadn't decided yet. I liked "Reason" because it said how much it sucked to be the only thoughtful person in a crazy world. But our frontman, Joe, liked "Wisdom" because, he said:
"It just sounds cooler!"
We rehearsed at the Parks and Rec building downtown. It was an old dance studio, with slick wooden floors and tall mirrors on every wall, but I was pretty sure that no one had danced there for a long time. The mirrors were all smudged and cracked. The balance barre screwed into one wall was barely holding on, and only one flickering fluorescent light worked. The whole place felt like an abandoned set from one of those old '80s dance movies my mom liked to watch.
I had talked about the band name before rehearsal with Rick the bassist and TJ the drummer, and we had all agreed that "Reason" made more sense. But they didn't say anything now because they were afraid to piss off Joe.
Okay, okay. I was afraid to piss off Joe too. He was one of those guys who started shaving in junior high. He was almost two feet taller than Rick and me. He was about the same height as TJ, but TJ was a lanky, stooped hipster boy and Joe was a massive, pierced, steel-toe-boot-wearing, leather-and-all-the-crazy-spikes metal dude. And he wasn't one of those "Oh, once you get to know him, he's such a softie" kind of guys. No, once you got to know him, you realized that deep down, he was even scarier.
The problem was that even though I was scared of Joe, I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut. So I said, "But what does that even mean? Tragedy of Wisdom? It's like, doesn't it suck to understand things? Who thinks that? And we may be a lot of things, but we're definitely not wise."
"Hey, speak for yourself," said Rick, joking to lighten the mood. Nobody would mistake Rick for being wise. He was such a dude. People who weren't his friend might have called him a burnout. The kind of guy who had a permanent dazed expression and bed head.
"Right," I said, "like huffing Dust-Off is really wise."
"Ouch," mumbled TJ.
"Only that one time," said Rick. "Just to see if it worked."
"You really did that?" asked TJ as he brushed aside his mop of brown hair. He was always doing that. Pretty much anytime I talk about him, imagine him doing that. "Didn't you know that it can freeze your brain?"
"Not at the time, of course," said Rick.
"You totally knew," I said. "Because I told you right before you did it."
"Oh." Rick shrugged. "Well, you know I kinda tune you out a lot, Sammy, so I probably just missed it."
"You tune him out too?" said TJ. "Oh, good. I was worried that I was the only one."
"Ha-ha," I said. "Just wait until you're about to step off a cliff or something and I'm trying to warn you but—"
"SHUT UP, YOU IDIOTS!"
Joe.
"Listen, this isn't some kind of pukey, whiny, emo band!" he said. "This is hardcore!" He illustrated his point by kicking the metal trash can across the room. It hit the far wall with a sharp clang, and fast-food wrappers and a half-full drink cup spilled out onto the floor. He waited for a minute in silence, looming over us, with his big, meaty fists clenched and ready.
"It can't sound like some faggot-ass wannabe shit," he said. "It has to sound cool! We have to be cool! And until I can get a real band who actually are cool, the three of you are just going to have to try really hard to seem cool." He paced back and forth in front of us like a rhino looking for a reason to charge. "Any problems with that?"
No one said anything.
"Well?" he said. Then he stopped directly in front of me and glared.
"No, Joe," I said, feeling like the punk bitch he thought I was. "No problems."
"Don't forget," said Joe, starting to pace again. "I'm the one who started this band. I'm the one who knows the guy who runs this Parks and Rec building and gets us this killer rehearsal space. I'm the one who scored the practice drum kit so TJ doesn't have to lug his own kit down here all the time." He stopped pacing directly in front of me again, but right up close this time. His breath smelled like rotten jalape?o peppers. "I'm the one," he said, "who could kick the shit out of all three of you at once."
"Right, Joe," I said, hating myself. "Tragedy of Wisdom it is."
"Well, that sucked," I said.
"What sucked?" asked Rick.
Rick and I were on our way home after rehearsal in my clanking old gas-guzzling powder-blue Buick, which we had dubbed the Boat. I had bought the Boat off of a neighbor for four hundred dollars when I turned sixteen and crashed it a week later. But those old 1970s tanks were tough. With some coat hangers and duct tape to keep the headlights in place and the hood down, it worked just fine. It looked and sounded like a rolling scrap heap, but it still got me anywhere I wanted to go. That was important, because buses in Columbus, Ohio, were totally useless and my mom worked so much I could almost never count on her to give me a ride anywhere.
Rick lived down the street from me, so I always gave him a ride home after rehearsal. We'd known each other since kindergarten, and as much as we ragged on each other, we'd always been friends and we always would be.
"What do you mean, 'what sucked?'" I asked him. "Joe got his way. Again."
"It's not a big deal," said Rick. "You get too worked up about that kind of shit."
"It's the name of the band!" I said. "It's the first thing people are going to know about us, the first thing they're going to hear when we go onstage!"
"Who cares?" said Rick. "Look, you still get to play guitar. You still get to write all the songs. Joe isn't going to write them, that's for sure. He doesn't even know how to play an instrument. So let him have the stupid name. It'll probably be his only real contribution."
"Other than his singing," I said darkly.
"His grunting," corrected Rick.
"Like an ox in heat," I said.
"Hey, man," he said with a grin. "That's how they do it hardcore."
"Well," I said, "at least it's better than his first name suggestion."
"Yeah… what was it again?"
"Blubber Glove."
"Oh, right," said Rick. "Pretty much anything would be good compared to that."
Rick and I lived in German Village, a neighborhood just outside downtown that still had brick streets and narrow sidewalks like they did in the early 1900s. All the houses were old and small and packed in tightly together. It was pretty much the closest thing to urban you could get in a city like Columbus. It was getting kind of trendy, and my mom and I were probably the poorest people on our block, but it was where a lot of the creative types in town lived and there were lots of coffee shops and stores within walking distance. There wasn't really anywhere else in Columbus that I would've rather lived. Not like that's saying much. Columbus was pretty dull. Everyone who liked sports was really into OSU football, and pretty much everyone was into sports. Except freaks like me, I guess.
I dropped Rick off at his house, then drove home. We lived in a little brick townhouse. It was small, but it was enough for just me and my mom. It was dark and empty when I got inside because it was only seven and my mom worked until eight. I was supposed to start homework as soon as I got home, and honestly, even though there was no one around to enforce that rule, I considered it every night. But then it always felt like there wasn't any point. If I started early and finished early, my mom would just think I was slacking anyway. So it made more sense to do my own thing until she got home, and that way I'd have enough work to seem like an earnest, hardworking high school student.
I nuked a frozen dinner and took it up to my room. I busted out my guitar, a 1961 Gibson SG reissue that had taken me over a year to save up for (Mom paid one half for my birthday, and I paid the other). Then I sat down on the floor and got to work on the song I was writing. I sort of had a melody in my head. Nothing too complicated yet, but enough for me to get down some lyrics. It would be mainly drums and bass in the beginning, with just some guitar accents, real sharp and clean and quiet. I pulled out my notebook and stared for a moment at the title I'd written down: "Plastic Baby." I didn't know what it meant. It had just come bubbling out of my psyche or something during study hall. I tried to look at writing a song almost like solving a mystery. The song was there, buried somewhere in my brain. All I had to do was follow the clues until I figured it out. So I sort of hummed the backing sounds in my head and strummed lightly on my guitar until I had something more or less how I wanted it to sound, just quiet power chords mainly. Next I started humming the vocal melody while playing the guitar part. I did this a bunch of times until I didn't really need to think about it anymore and I could let my mind wander wherever. Then suddenly words just started coming:
Cain is dead forever.
Make believe forever.
Reason doesn't matter.
Tell you what I'm after.
Then I opened up with big, fat, loud open chords on the guitar, imagining in my head the ride cymbal on the drums coming into crashing, hissing life while I sang:
Plaaaaastiiiic baaaabeeee!
I had no idea what it meant yet. I usually didn't on a first verse and a chorus. But in the second verse you had to start getting more specific.
I'd been writing songs for a few years now. The early ones really sucked. Mostly they were just knockoffs of other songs. But the more I did it, the better I got. And having a band to write for made it all seem so much more real, so much more important. It wasn't just me doodling around anymore. These were songs that were going to get played.
I was in the groove now, so I kept going with the second verse. I played the first verse and chorus over and over again, trying to see how it would lead to the next verse. Sometimes it was that simple. But not this time. I kept playing, but nothing was coming. I started to get frustrated and strummed my guitar harder and harder. As awesome as it was to write songs for a band, it was tough, too. I had to always remember that it wasn't me who would be singing it. Not that I wanted to sing, of course. But when I wrote something, I'd sing it and it'd sound fine. My voice was kind of high, though, and when I'd bring it in for Joe to try with his gravelly, twenty-Camels-a-day voice, it just wouldn't sound right.
I tried the verse again, imagining him singing it instead of me. I even tried to mimic his voice, which was totally pathetic. And that just made me doubt myself more. So I got stuck and frustrated and I played so hard that I broke a string.
As I was restringing my guitar, the phone rang.
"Yeah?" I answered.
"Jen5 calling Samuel requesting a status report on Operation Rockstar."
"Hey, Fiver," I said.
Other than Rick, Jen5 was my best friend. There were four other Jennifers in our class. They quickly claimed "Jennifer," "Jenny," "Jen," and "J," so before someone could start calling her "Niffer" or "Furry," she let everyone know they could just call her Jen5. And whenever anyone asked her why, she'd say that it took five versions to get it perfect.
"Rehearsal was like eating a hot, steaming turd," I told her.
"Wow," she said. "Thanks for the visual."
"Joe started up on his bully routine and just told us that we were going to call the band Tragedy of Wisdom."
"That's so lame," she said. "Why don't you guys just tell him to get lost?"
"Ha," I said. "That's funny."
"Why? What's the worst that could happen?"
"He could murder us."
"He wouldn't do that."
"Wouldn't he? And anyway, we need a frontman. Someone with charisma."
"You have charisma," she said.
"No, I have a stupidity gene that possesses my mouth every time I should keep it shut."
"Whatever. You have way more charisma than Joe. That guy just yells a lot and looks scary. But you have genuine passion, you know? You're like a young Beethoven, all wild and crazy and totally committed to your music."
"Beethoven? You're such a nerd."
"Fine. As much as you secretly want me to, I'm not going to sit here all night and tell you how brilliant you are."
"Good," I said. "You're a terrible liar anyway."
"But you guys shouldn't have to put up with it. It can't be good for the band."
"No, it's fine," I said. "A ton of really great bands hate their lead singer. It's almost like a tradition, really. All the classic bands, like Jane's Addiction, the Pixies, Soul Coughing, had asshole lead singers."
"But none of those bands are around anymore, are they?"
"If we cut an album as sick as Nothing's Shocking or Doolittle, I'd be just fine with stopping after three or four," I said.
"Then what would you do with the rest of your life?"
"Huh?" I said. Then I heard the front door open and close. "Gotta go. My mom's home."
"Forget it." Jen5 sighed. "See you in art class."
"If you're lucky," I said.
"Ha," I heard her say just before I hung up.
Three, two, one…
"Samuel!" my mom yelled from downstairs. "Were you on the phone just now?"
"Yeah," I yelled back. The stupid phone downstairs lit up some big green light anytime someone was using it. I think she bought it just for that feature.
"Don't you have homework to do, young man?" she yelled up to me.
"I was asking Jen5 a history question." This was plausible. Jen5 was much better at history than I was. And better a half-truth, just in case she'd seen the caller ID.
"All I'm saying," she called, "is that I better not see any C's on the report card."
"Okay," I called back. "No C's."
D's and F's, maybe…
If she had come up to my room at that moment, I would have been completely screwed, because it would have been clear that I was doing just about everything except my homework. Guitar strings, my guitar, my songbook, and a pile of CD jewel cases all circled me like some kind of punk rock Stonehenge. But I knew she wouldn't check in for another half hour or so. My mom was a therapist, and I guess it was pretty rough having to listen to other people's problems all day, because when she came home she refused to do anything until she'd sat down and had a glass of white wine.
Still, I couldn't play my guitar and sing anymore, obviously. So I quietly restrung my guitar without tuning it, then cracked open my history books and began pretending to care.
"Sam?" Her voice was softer and thicker after a couple glasses of wine.
"Yeah, Mom?"
"Take a break from history for a minute," she said.
Like a dutiful son, I closed the textbook from which I had been reading the same paragraph over and over again because I just couldn't seem to pay attention to it.
"Talk to me," she said.
I turned away from my desk and looked at her.
For the most part, my mom was pretty cool. If she didn't understand me, it wasn't because she didn't try. My major complaint about my mom was that all of my friends, at some point, had to confess to me that they thought she was hot. Why couldn't they just keep it to themselves? Even Rick once said, "I mean, she's not my type or anything, but you have to admit, your mom is a total MILF!" I told him I would admit no such thing.
When we were first starting the band, Joe hadn't hooked up the Parks and Rec room yet. Rick, TJ, and I were hanging out one night, trying to think of places we could rehearse. TJ suggested my place. When I asked why, he said something about my mom maybe bringing us lemonade every once in a while. Well, I told him that one thing I was damn sure of, Joe would never meet my mom. TJ agreed that this was probably for the best.
"Hello?" my mom said. "Earth to Sam?"
"Sorry, Mom," I said.
"How was school?" she asked.
"Boring," I said.
"A few more details would be nice," she said.
"History is dumb. Spanish is hard. Math is pointless."
"What about English?"
"It's okay," I said. "We just finished Beowulf, which is about some knight dude, but they call him a Thane instead, and he kills this monster called Grendel, and then Grendel's mom gets upset and tries to kill him. So that's kind of interesting, I guess."
"What about science?"
"Science is just gross. We have to do these labs, right? Where we cut up plants and worms and stuff, and then we have to label all the parts on a worksheet."
"That sounds better than just reading things in books," said Mom.
"I guess," I said. Of course I couldn't tell her that at least I could fake reading things in textbooks. I didn't mind English or history, because they were about people. I felt like even Shakespeare had something to teach me about being a better songwriter. But science? Where was the poetry in cutting up slimy dead things?
"I know it's hard to see this right now, but science and math are really important. Colleges offer big scholarships for kids who excel at those subjects, and the variety of careers you can choose from is virtually endless."
"Mom, I'd rather gouge my eyes out with rusty spoons than study math. It's the lamest thing in existence. It's like the opposite of all creativity."
"Sammy, that's just not true. There's all sorts of amazing and wonderful things going on in math and science. Don't forget that it's going to be mathematicians and scientists who solve the world's ecology problems."
"Yeah, yeah."
"And computers. Video games. These things are made by math and science people."
"I know, I know. But it's still just numbers. And I'm not good at that stuff."
"You don't know that. You've never really even tried."
"Trust me, Mom. I'm not."
There was a moment of silence, during which I could tell I'd said something over the line, though I really couldn't see any flaw in my logic.
"Well," she said. "How was rehearsal?"
"Okay, I guess," I said.
"Okay, you guess?" she said.
"We're going to call ourselves Tragedy of Wisdom."
"Oh," she said. "That's nice."
See? Even she knew it was lame.
"Do you have rehearsal tomorrow after school?"
"No," I said. "TJ can't make it and Joe thinks that there's no point rehearsing without the drummer."
"Joe thinks," she said, rolling her eyes.
"What?" I said.
"Never mind," she said. "If you don't have too much homework tomorrow, could you spend a little time with your grandfather after school? He's been pretty down lately."
"Yeah, sure, I guess."
"You know it always cheers him up to see you."
"Sure doesn't seem like it," I said.
It takes me a long time to fall asleep. I'm not sure why. I don't really get tired like I guess a lot of people do. I mean, I wake up tired and stupid and slow, then as the day goes on, I get more and more awake until, by the time I'm supposed to go to bed, I'm totally wired. No, I don't eat a lot of sugar and I don't drink tons of soda or coffee. It's just how I am.
You know that buzzing sound you hear from old fluorescent lights? Not real obvious at first, but it kind of creeps up on you and gets really annoying after a while? Well, that's what runs through my head every night. So I just lay in bed in the dark and stare up at the ceiling while I wait for the buzzing to fade out. It always does, but sometimes it takes hours. And I can't close my eyes or I start to lose perspective on how big the room is and where I am in it, almost like I'm floating or sinking, and the buzzing gets so intense it feels like I'll drown in it. I used to read or listen to music in bed, but that only made things worse because not only would I have all my old thoughts from the day to settle down, but I'd be getting new ones also. So now I just stare up at the ceiling and wait.
The thing that kept floating through my head was Jen5's question: What would you do with the rest of your life?
But of course, I already knew the answer to that question. I'd just make more music. Despite its name, Tragedy of Wisdom was going to become famous. Not lame famous, like those sellout bands that play in football stadiums and can't even relate to regular people anymore. No, we were going to be cool famous, like those bands that hardly get any radio play, except on college radio, and if they have a video, it's only played late at night because it isn't commercial enough for the soulless marketing people. We were going to have one of those small but intense fan bases that would swap bootlegs of our shows online but buy the CDs anyway and totally obsess over my lyrics and what they meant. Cool writers would make references to us in their novels. Hot artsy chicks with nose rings would stalk us at concerts. The works.
That's what I planned to do with the rest of my life. Not bad, huh?