by Karina Halle
“Why are you afraid?”
“Oh, you know. Because sometimes I think I’m going to get hurt, really hurt, and it will all be for nothing. That people, bullies, bad men...fathers, will get away with shit and not get punished.”
“Does your father hurt you?” she whispered, taking a step toward me, her dark eyes warm and concerned. “Why?”
I shrugged as casually as I could. “He’s the sheriff. He thinks I’m asking for it. He thinks I’m gay.”
She raised her brows. “And…you’re not?”
“Is that a surprise?”
“No, actually. I didn’t think you were. I just thought you were kind of emo or goth.”
I gave her a wry look. “Well, emo is pushing it.”
“What does your father do…does he hit you?” she lowered her voice over the last words, her eyes darting around as if someone could hear us.
“Usually, yeah,” I said. I could tell it shocked her that I was being so open about it, so blasé, even though nothing could be further from reality.
“But that’s…against the law. You could get him in trouble. Big trouble. He shouldn’t be allowed to hurt you.”
“I could get him in trouble. But come on, he’s who he is and I look like this. Who are they going to believe?” I looked down at my nails; the black was faded away in spots. “Besides, I don’t know. I hate my father sometimes, I really do. But he’s still all I have. I feel like I should make the best of it. Shouldn’t I?”
A dawning light came into her eyes, like she’d just realized something. “Yeah, I get it and stuff. But still. Parents shouldn’t treat their kids like that.”
“And bullies at school shouldn’t either. But they do.”
“But it’s wrong. They need to pay for it.”
“They do. I stand up for myself. Or I try to. I don’t act afraid, even if I am.”
“Do you stand up for others?”
That took me off guard for a minute. “What do you mean?”
“When you stand up for yourself, do you think you’re standing up for just you or for everyone who has ever been bullied?”
“I…” I didn’t know, actually. I brushed my hair behind my ears and licked my lips. They tasted like salt. “I think I’m the only one here who gets picked on.”
“You’re not,” she said with conviction. Her eyes began to well up with tears, a sight that made my heart break a little.
I frowned. “Did…have you been bullied? You just moved here.”
Ellie sighed and looked down the row of date palms again to a ladder that was leaning against one of the trees. “I don’t want to climb it but do you want to go over there and sit? Better to talk there than out here.”
I nodded, eager to learn more about her, yet my chest was starting to squeeze a bit, anticipating the pain she was holding back in her eyes.
We walked down the row of palms, the air immediately cooler between their spiky trunks, and took a seat on the lowest rung of the wide metal ladder. I placed my backpack on the earth and thought about all the stuff I brought with me, the stuff I was going to impress her with. But we were already opening up to each other like kindred spirits or old friends.
We sat in silence for a few moments before I had to coax her onward. “Who bullied you? What happened?”
She wiped her hands on her jeans, back and forth and back and forth, and stared up at the sky. “I walk funny. I know I do. I…have something wrong with me. Something happened to my leg. I have horrible scars and I can’t, like, ever show it. Like, ever. Or people would run screaming. Believe me. It’s happened. And I can’t do anything about it. But people, they look at me funny, you know? They say things about me when they think I can’t hear. Not just kids, but older people too. And they look at my mom like they pity her and stuff and…anyway, it sucks. It’s like…I can’t even just fucking walk anywhere without it being a big deal. I feel like I can barely…live. I can’t even explain it.”
“You don’t have to,” I said quietly. I didn’t have the same problem, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. “So what happened?”
She sighed and picked up some dirt in her hands, letting it run through her fingers. “Some stupid bitch at your lame-ass mall called me a retard. Told her friends that there was something wrong with the new girl, that I was broken and if I was a horse I would have been shot and put down.”
I winced, my heart wrenching for her. I knew how much it was hurting her and that hurt me too, more than I thought it would. Ellie was too pretty and sweet to have this done to her, to have people be this cruel. Maybe I brought it on myself, but I didn’t see how she could. Her legs and her injury, whatever had happened to her, it wasn’t her fault.
She eyed me sideways. “I guess word’s traveled fast here that I’m new.”
“It’s a fucking backwards town. Word travels fast and from idiot to idiot,” I told her, feeling frustrated with the shit we had to live with. “I’m sorry you have to put up with this.”
“Well, I’m sorry you have to put up with it too. And your father. That really blows. My parents…they’re not the greatest either. Sometimes I don’t even think my mom loves me, and I’m pretty sure my uncle Jim wishes we’d never come here. My family isn’t exactly…honorable.” She sucked on her lip, mulling something over. “You never told your father about what I stole, did you?”
I shook my head. “No way. That’s our secret.”
“I wasn’t trying to be bad,” she began to explain, “I mean, I don’t go around and steal shit.”
“I know—you had your reasons.”
“I really did,” she said, her eyes wide. “Honest. I stole this special vitamin E oil.”
I made a face. “Is that for girly problems?”
“No,” she said, smacking my arm. “It’s for scarring. I wanted to see if it would help my leg. My mom wouldn’t buy it for me. She thinks I’m hopeless and I don’t have any money, so…”
“Ellie,” I said, leaning into her and trying not to smell the top of her strawberry-scented head, “You don’t have to justify yourself or explain anything. I get it. I would have stolen it for you myself if you wanted. I’d steal you anything you wanted.”
She smiled grimly at my proposition. Too much too soon? Probably. “That’s sweet. But I don’t think a life of crime is the answer anymore.”
“It was an answer before?” I asked, half-joking.
She cocked her head at me. “We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
I couldn’t help but give her a cheesy grin at the sound of that. “I don’t have many friends, so I’d be honored if that were true.”
“Honored if that were true?” she repeated, smiling playfully. “You really are a weirdo.”
My expression grew serious. “I may be a weirdo, Ellie Watt, but from now on I’m your weirdo. You and I, we need to stick together. No one else understands us, I can tell you that right now. Well, except for musicians. They understand everything. Do you ever listen to Tool?”
“Not really,” she said. “But I’m all ears.”
I really felt like my face was going to crack in two from the way I was smiling. I leaned down to pull up my bag and my arm brushed against hers, her fine blonde hairs tickling my skin like feathers. My boner threatened to appear and my insides felt tight and fluttery. Oh boy. Being friends might end up being harder than I thought.
I shifted against the hot ladder, thankful that my shorts were fairly loose, and propped my bag strategically on my lap while I brought out the mp3 player and the minispeaker. I decided to introduce her to the band by playing the song “Stinkfist”; its strangely metallic and electric beginning morphed into a pummeling of chords as Maynard’s ethereal yet chaotic voice filled the air around us.
“It’s interesting,” she said after a while. “I like it. Dark. Different.”
You’re interesting, dark, and different, I thought. And I like you. I didn’t tell her that though. In that moment, it was enough that I had a friend. A
n ally. Someone who had the potential to be as dark and different as I was.
“It’s kind of pessimistic though,” she said as the song went slightly haywire with noise. “Like, it’s sad. No way out. That kind of feeling. I dunno.”
“No,” I said quickly, getting excited. “That’s what you think. You feel like you’re trapped and you can’t see and things are going crazy and there’s no control left,” I said, timing my words to the song. “But then…”
And at around three and a half minutes, the song’s tone changed. It became lighter. Upbeat. It rose.
“Hear that,” I said, my hands waving with the beat. “It’s like that part in a movie where things turn around for the main character and you know everything is going to be okay.”
She was staring at me with a puzzled look on her face. All right, well maybe I could go a bit overboard with music and art and the things that really made me feel…
“It’s hope,” she said.
“What?”
“That change, in the song,” she explained, tapping her finger on the iPod screen, timed to the new beat of the music, “it’s the sound of hope. That’s what I feel in here.” She put a fist to her heart. “Hope.”
Hope. That’s exactly what it was.
It was exactly what she was.
I stared at her with a goofy, dumbfounded expression on my face. I couldn’t help it. Last week I was figuring out how to best get through the school year without dying, and now I was ready to face it with a little less fear. Now I had someone other than myself to stand up for—Ellie. Now I had someone else’s battles that I would gladly fight.
I had someone that let me know I wasn’t alone in this town or even in this world. I had a friend, someone to talk to, to lean on, to laugh with, and listen to music with and just…live.
I had hope that in the end, no matter what lay ahead of me, everything was going to be all right.
“What else do you have to listen to?” Ellie asked, leaning into me and swiping through my iPod.
I grinned at her, and together we sat on that ladder and kept the hope coming.
That 70’s Interview—A Dawn & Sage Story
The following is a radio transcription between guitarist Sage Knightly of the band Hybrid and Barry B from KRO 98FM San Diego’s The Rock Show. Air date: May 19th, 1974
Barry B: Hi everyone, I’m your host the baaaaad Barry B, thanks for joining The Rock Show tonight. I have a very, very special guest here, a man we never thought would agree to do a radio show given his phobia of the media. Not to mention he’s a man of few words when he does actually speak. You all know him as Sage Knightly, the guitarist of the metal band Hybrid. I now know him as this extremely tall dude with bad-ass snake and skull tattoos on his arms that all the women in the station are now drooling over. Welcome Sage, thanks for popping your radio cherry with KRO.
Sage: You’re welcome.
Barry B: Now, off the bat, I must comment on your tattoos. Many people would consider these works of art and tattoos are getting more and more popular as they spread into mainstream. Even women are getting them now. Can you talk about your tattoos to us?
Sage: Well, the skulls are done after the Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. My mother was Mexican so the sugar skulls are of great significance to me. The snakes represent the python I’m packing in my pants.
Barry B: Oh golly, well we can’t say we weren’t prepared for a rock star response! You mentioned your mother being Mexican though. I can see you’ve got quite a dark complexion. Some would say exotic. I think this is the first time I’ve heard you admit that you’ve got mixed blood. Why haven’t you said anything before?
Sage: My mother was a wonderful woman. She died when I was a teenager. It was a real blow and took me right off my feet. The only thing that saved me, at the time, was music. Until lately though, I realized music had replaced her and that wasn’t fair. It was time to embrace where I came from, even though it meant embracing the loss.
Barry B: Is that why your latest album, Molten Universe, has such a Latino tone to it? I mean, many songs have a faint Mariachi sound, which is a brave thing to do when you’re a metal band. For the record, I loved that slant of things. Totally groovy.
Sage: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And thank you for liking it. I was trying to experiment with different sounds and genres. I don’t think Hybrid needs to fit in one category, in one neat little box. We’re a metal band, but we’re not Led Zeppelin and we’re not Black Sabbath.
Barry B: But you’d like to be.
Sage: Who said that?
Barry B: I’ll just take a look at my notes here, but I believe it was your singer, Robbie Oliver.
Sage: Yeah, well Robbie’s often oxygen deprived, I wouldn’t believe a word he says.
Barry B: Oxygen deprived?
Sage: His face is usually buried in *BLEEEEEEEP*
Barry B: Oh my god, I hope that got bleeped. You can’t say *BLEEEEEEEP* on air, Sage.
Sage: You just did. Maybe if we talked about getting more *BLEEEEEEEEEEP* it would happen.
Barry B: Maybe for rock stars. My wife would kick me out. Anyway, back on track. You’ve been the leader of Hybrid since you were in your teens. Who do you owe your success to?
Sage: Excuse me?
Barry B: Well, most musicians who have made it on the scene say they owe their success to something or someone. Maybe a lot of hard work, maybe it was a lucky break, or a radio DJ *ahem* that took a chance by playing one of their songs on the air. Who or what does Hybrid owe their success to?
Sage: They owe it to me.
Barry B: And who do you owe it to?
Sage: I don’t feel comfortable answering these questions anymore.
Barry B: Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sage. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. I believe you when you say the band owes their success to you. Without you at the helm, writing most of the songs and pushing for a new sound, the band wouldn’t be what it is today, about to take part in a cross-country tour this August, playing at festivals and large arenas alike. I was just curious to see if you owed all of this to anyone…if anything.
Sage: I owe no person anything.
Barry B: Can I read into that answer?
Sage: No.
Barry B: OK, from the way Sage just glared at me and stormed out of the station, I’m going to assume that the interview is over. Thanks for listening everyone. Maybe this guy just needs some *BLEEEEEP*
***
The following is an interview that Dawn Emerson did with famous tour manager, Jacob Edwards. This interview was nixed from the original 1974 article that Dawn wrote on Hybrid for Creem Magazine.
Dawn: Hi Jacob, thanks for taking a few minutes to sit down and talk with me.
Jacob: Aww, cut the crap Dawn, you’ve been hounding me all day. Can’t even sit on the bloody crapper without seeing your smiling face there.
Dawn: Yes, well, anyway, I know you’re a busy man…
Jacob: Then why are you interviewing me right now? You know the bus leaves in 30 minutes and I have no idea where the hell Robbie went.
Dawn: I thought I saw him take that short, blonde chick around the corner.
Jacob: Well that’s no surprise. I guess if I need him I can go check the rubbish bins in about 10 minutes.
Dawn: I promise this won’t take as long as that. But that brings up a question: You’ve been seen as one of the more vocal and intimidating tour managers out there-
Jacob: Is that so?
Dawn: Uh huh. I was wondering how you manage keeping the boys in Hybrid alive and well.
Jacob: I’m keeping them alive, for now, I suppose. Keeping them well…that’s another story.
Dawn: It must be challenging to let them have their freedom without compromising their performance.
Jacob: As a tour manager, your first job is to manage. If that means I have to find them the prettiest trollops in arse-crack Minnesota in order to keep them in line, then that’s what I’m going to do. If keeping them ob
edient means letting them snort a kilo of coke up their nose every now and then, then that’s fine with The Cobb. Managing is about keeping the balance. I keep the balance.
Dawn: You keep the balance? Care you elaborate on that?
Jacob: Now you’re just being nosy.
Dawn: I’m a journalist. It’s my job. Just as it’s your job to be evasive.
Jacob: Right. Well, every band, whether it’s Hybrid, Wishbone Ash or someone else, they all have a tendency to over indulge in the bad and ignore the good. It sounds like simple math and it is…I just know that you have to have equal amounts of good and bad in order to keep a band alive. Or, at least successful.
Dawn: So Robbie can go bang the chick around the corner as long as it doesn’t interfere with his singing the next day.
Jacob: Exactly. There’s nothing wrong with them gang-banging groupies in a bathtub full of baked beans if it helps their performance.
Dawn: Hold on…who gang-banged groupies in a bathtub full of baked beans?
Jacob: A good manager never tells. Now if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got some managing to do.
Dawn: Wait, one last thing. Throughout the tour I’ve noticed a sense of urgency and despair from Sage Knightly. He’s yet to open up to me in any way and definitely avoids my many attempts at an interview…I was wondering if you could shed some light on that.
Jacob: Sage? Sage has some issues he’s working on. They aren’t really mine to comment on.
Dawn: What kind of issues? I know that the last album was almost entirely influenced by him and wasn’t perceived as well as the others. Does he feel like he’s let the band down or does he feel like the band is holding him back?
Jacob: I guess you could say both. I wouldn’t go about getting your expectations high about him, though. Sage is always the quiet, mysterious guitarist and that’s the role he’ll play to the bitter end.
Dawn: Who says the end has to be bitter?
Jacob: Welcome to rock and roll, Dawn.
Target—A Dex & Perry Story