by Greg Rhyno
Then comes the question we’ve been dreading.
“Guitar?”
“Uh,” Deacon says into his mic, “he’s not—”
And then, as if he’s been waiting there the entire time, Soda plugs his Telecaster into Thaler’s Fender Twin and strums a few bars.
“Never mind,” Deacon mumbles.
“So-daah!” I can hear someone in the audience—a girl—yell his name.
“Nice fucking timing,“ I say from behind the drums.
“Check the vocals.”
Soda taps the mic. “Check one. Sibilance. Sibilance.”
“Sodapop!” another voice—another girl—yells.
Deacon taps the other mic. “Check check. Syphilis. Sipowicz.”
The house music implodes in on itself and the room is impossibly quiet, save for the hornet’s nest of amplifiers. Deacon looks at Soda and he nods. He looks back at me and I do the same. We’re starting. My first four stick clicks sound tiny and insignificant.
‘Necessary Evil.’ We play our first song to an empty pool of light on the dance floor. It’s okay—a little shaky, maybe. First songs usually are. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can see the outline of approximately four hundred people ignoring us.
‘Glass Knuckles.’ Even though we play it all right, the end of our second song is still only met with a smattering of polite applause. Soda’s maintaining a certain level of swagger, and Deacon’s bantering away to the crowd, inviting people to come up to the front, but personally, I’m losing what little nerve I have. This is the curse of the opening act at a big show like this. You’re an obstacle in the way of the main event. People expect you to suck, and so you suck.
‘Thirty Helens Agree.’ Halfway through the third song, I can feel all my insecurities converging. It’s like I’m disconnected from my own arms and just watching them play the drums. I worry that if I even think the wrong thing, they’ll just stop on their own accord. Worse is the knowledge that Kim and her brother are watching us go down in flames. Townie will probably write about it in his stupid zine.
But then, during the breakdown of ‘Helens,’ the quiet part where it’s just me stomping on the bass drum and Deacon pedaling on the G, a few figures bravely creep out of the darkness. Evie. Ruth. Rotten. It’s something, and when we drop back into the chorus, I try to play as if they’re the only people in the room. By the end of the song, Danny Grove and Mark Zaborniak have joined them.
‘One Jenny Too Many.’ We go right into the next song to build our momentum. There are more familiar faces. Jay Olejnik, Brandy Sawchuck, and Todd Farkas materialize, and everyone sheepishly moves closer to the stage. A small crowd grows behind them. Kim and Townie materialize on the periphery, and a sad flash goes through my chest when she looks up at me.
When we play one of Soda’s new ones (‘Unbreakable Hearts’ Club’), things start to snowball. People I don’t recognize fill out the crowd, along with people I do recognize but didn’t expect to see tonight. Toby Watkins and his doppelgänger girlfriend. Rita’s lesbian and/or communist roommates. Even Howlin’ Mad Murdock, dressed in a t-shirt and blazer, stands in the crowd, a glass of beer sweating in his hand.
Afterward, when the applause and cheering get swallowed up in the house music, I’m sweaty and relieved and flooded with endorphins. In the end, it was a good show. I want to be as happy as I think I should be, but there’s something strangely anticlimatic about the moment. Once all the fear and excitement is gone, it leaves a hole for all the Kim-related sadness to seep in. Now there’s no excuse. No hiding from her. She’s out there, and she’s going to break my heart.
“Uh, guys? We have a bit of a problem here.”
By the time Deacon and I head down to the band room, Soda’s already waiting for us at the door. Beads of sweat still cling to his forehead and he smells like Right Guard. I can see around his shoulder that Matty is sitting on the dirty floor, hugging his knees to his chest. He’s shirtless, muttering to himself, and his eyes are blank and pink. In the back corner of the room, Andy, Kyle, and Sudbury Steve are huddled and talking in low, strained voices. I put down my snare and slide my cymbal bag off my shoulders.
“Matty’s pretty fucked up,” Soda explains. “They don’t think he can play.” I can only hear snatches of their conversation.
“... there’s no way ...”
“... a thousand dollars, though ...”
“... instrumental, or ... ?”
Here’s the thing. Unless you’re Jerry Garcia or Jim Morrison, you might want to lay off dropping vast quantities of acid before a big show. Actually, seeing as though Jim Morrison’s dead, I guess he’s not exactly the best example. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to sound like an after-school special or anything. I thought the episodes of Degrassi Junior High where Shane takes acid and then falls off a bridge were hilarious. Soda’s done acid a bunch of times, and I know Kim has, too. If I were a little ballsier, I’d probably give it a shot, but seeing Matty—who’s now tasting each of the couch cushions with the tip of his tongue—firmly retraces the drug line I draw at marijuana.
“What are they going to do?” I gesture toward the rest of the band.
Soda shrugs, but I think we both have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen next. It’s Thaler the Wailer who finally pops the question. He walks over to us, looks at me and Deacon for a second, and then propositions Soda.
“We need you to fill in for Matty.”
Soda looks at him. “You want me to sing? I just sang an entire set.”
“Come on, man. You know all the covers. ‘Friend of the Devil.’ ‘Riders on the Storm,’ ‘Back in the USSR.’ I’ll write down the lyrics for the originals—they’re really simple, and you know how they go.”
Soda turns to us. “I’m only going to do this if it’s cool with you guys.”
I can tell by the look on Deacon’s face that it’s decidedly not cool, but the fact that Soda’s asking permission makes it somehow impossible to say no. Plus, desperate times and all that junk. Without a lot of enthusiasm, we both nod our heads.
He tells the rest of the band, and a few moments later they’re all walking out the door together.
“All right,” Sudbury Steve claps his hands together. “Here goes nothing.”
“Oh,” Thaler says offhandedly, “can you guys babysit Matty while we’re on?” He doesn’t wait for an answer.
“Fuck,” Deacon says quietly.
“Fuckuckuckuckuck ...” Matty parrots.
A floor above, I can hear Thaler introduce Soda as their “special guest singer,” and there’s a couple seconds of confusion that dovetail into a lot of cheering and hollering. It takes about two songs for Ruth and Rita to find us in the band room.
“What the shit is Soda doing up there singing ‘Scarlet Begonias’?” Rita asks.
“You’re so beautiful,” Matty tells her. “Your face is like the moon ...”
Things are quickly self-evident.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rita mutters. “And—Jesus, why aren’t you guys helping him? Where’s his shirt? It’s freezing down here.” She takes my parka off the coat rack and wraps it around Matty’s shoulders.
“So warm ...” he says, sliding his arms through the holes.
“Great,” I grumble. “Now my jacket’s going to smell like patchouli and armpits.”
Rita and Ruth stick around, partly to keep us company and partly because they don’t like Bunsen Honeydew. After a little while, they offer to relieve me and Deacon from babysitting duty so we can watch the end of Soda’s set. Deacon opts to stay, but I decide to go take a look. Matty’s pretty out of it, but he seems calm enough. As I leave, he’s leaning his head against the wall and watching the concrete floor like it’s a television set.
When I get upstairs there’s a pretty solid crowd in front of the stage. It’s about the same size as ours—maybe a little bigger—but with a lot more interpretive dance. I keep to the back to avoid getting hit by a twirling skirt or b
eaded necklace. Soda’s halfway through ‘Munchies From Outer Space,’ and while it’s still an undeniably terrible song, his version is at least a little more listenable.
“Wasn’t this guy your lead singer, too?” someone asks when the song ends.
“Yep,” I say, keeping my eyes on the stage. I can see Soda skimming through the lyrics of the next song. “Their regular singer’s too stoned to play. He’s just filling in.”
“Oh yeah. Sort of like Joe Strummer taking over for Shane MacGowan in ’91.”
Jesus, who just knows this kind of stuff? That’s when I look over and realize that, for the second time this year, I’m having a conversation with Chris Murphy from Sloan. Of course. Chris Murphy from Sloan knows this kind of stuff.
“Well, killer pipes,” he says, “but I liked your set better.”
“Really? Thanks!”
Despite my telepathic efforts to keep the band quiet, Soda starts into another song. ‘Hydroponica.’ I wait for the instrumental part in the middle before I make conversation again.
“I’m Pete,” I tell Chris.
“Chris.” No shit.
“We met before when you came through with the Super Friendz.”
“I remember. Giant Killer.” He says our name with theatrical menace, the way a six-year-old boy might say dinosaur or a fifteen-year-old boy might say Slayer. Immediately, I wish we had gone with Kid Charlemagne. “You guys have this sort of Teenage-Head-meets-Crazy-Horse thing going on.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Is that a good thing?”
“For sure it’s a good thing. I’m into it. Do you guys have any plans to tour?”
So. This is how it all starts. Our band was going to get signed, go on tour with Sloan, and rule the entire universe. When Kim eventually dumped me, the fragments of my broken heart would be glued back together by a long line of indie rock groupies who, while generally not as cleavaged or hot-panted as their hard rock counterparts, would make up for it in kind with charming shyness, cat’s eye glasses, and basic literacy skills.
“I’m going to give you my number,” he says when ‘Hydroponica’ finally finishes. “Maybe we could do a couple dates when we come back through Ontario this summer, and—”
“Pete!” Ruth suddenly appears in front of me, breathless, pulling on my sleeve. I don’t understand it. Why is Ruth interrupting Chris Murphy from Sloan?
“Pete, it’s Matty.”
I don’t care. I don’t care. Fucking Matty was not going to fuck this all up again.
“He just start freaking out—scratching at his face—then he took off and ran outside. We all chased after him but—” She catches her breath, and I notice her eyes are wet with tears.
God-fucking-damn it. Fucking Matty was going to fuck this up again.
Chris Murphy from Sloan looks concerned, and his words break the spell. “You should probably go help your friend.”
Outside on the main drag, there’s already a crowd gathering. Bad news travels fast. People stand around in the frozen slush and stomp their feet. I follow Ruth to Rita and Deacon. Matty’s about twenty feet away, lying on the road. The alternating red and blue lights from a cop car reflect off his face and make him look ghoulish. The blood coming out of his nose looks black. His bushy dreadlocks spring from his head like a cartoon explosion. One of the cops, a middle-aged woman—crouches beside him with her ear to his mouth. The other one, a young guy with a goatee, stands a little ways down the road and talks to some kids beside a pick-up truck. The truck that hit Matty.
“The ambulance is on its way,” Rita tells me. “We’re supposed to stay back and give him air. He just fucking took off.” I’ve never seen Rita cry before.
I suddenly need a cigarette. Is it bad form to smoke while someone you know might be dying in the middle of the street? I look around and notice a few other people smoking. One of them is Mr. Murdock, so I figure it’s okay. Rita lets me step back a few feet to light up. As I move, I get a better view of the pick-up and realize that I’ve seen it before. The enormous blue-and-white Ford is half on the curb, and the headlights are looking at each other cross-eyed from either side of a lamppost. I walk past my friends and go a little further up the street to get a clearer view of the driver and his passenger, who lean against a recently repainted tailgate. Dave Greatorex has an ugly-looking cut on his forehead, and Brad McLaren is wide eyed and holds his Montreal Canadiens cap in front of him by the brim. They’re talking to the cop with the goatee, and Greatorex is waving his hands around emphatically. When I walk a few steps closer I catch the end of what he’s saying.
“... just playing a joke. Give him a scare.”
The cop says something inaudible.
“That’s what I’m saying.” Greatorex’s hockey rink voice cuts through the night and a couple people look in his direction. “We thought he was somebody else. He was fuckin’ stumbling around in the middle of the road ... he didn’t get out of the way ...”
I look back at Matty’s body, still wrapped in my Han Solo parka. It’s suddenly very clear to me just who they were trying to scare.
I hear the ambulance for what seems like a long while before it arrives. When it does show up, it’s a carnival ride of noise and light. It seems funny that something so deadly serious can arrive so cheerfully. The paramedics spill out and work with cool precision to get Matty onto the stretcher and then into the back of the van. Only after the sirens finally Doppler themselves out of earshot do I notice Kim. She’s standing around with Townie and Jay Olejnik. Her face is a mess of mascara, and I know I should go to her, maybe even hold her hand. She’s technically still my girlfriend, after all, and I don’t need to be afraid of her tonight. Not after all this. Even Mr. Murdock goes over and talks to her. Annie, he’s probably saying to her, where’s Ringo tonight? Shouldn’t he be out here with you? It seems like a good moment to make an appearance, and I’m about to when I notice something strange.
People comfort each other in times of crisis, so it’s pretty understandable when Murdock puts his hand on Kim’s shoulder and smiles at her. But then, as they keep talking, there’s this tiny gesture—honestly, if I didn’t think it was so weird to see a teacher smoking, I probably would’ve missed it. Kim reaches down and takes his cigarette in her fingers without breaking eye contact. Kim’s pretty bold, and it’s not like she hasn’t stolen a smoke before, but when Murdock doesn’t react, when he lets it leave his fingers as if she’s done it a hundred times before, it hits me like a truck.
Kim isn’t sleeping with Sudbury Steve, or another musician, or even some guy she met in one of her classes. She’s sleeping with my OAC Art teacher. She’s sleeping with Mr. Murdock.
SIDE B
Rebellion (Lies)
“Yep. Murdock is totally fucking you,” Ruth says. She shoots back the rest of the cold coffee left in her thermos lid and brushes the crumbs off her skirt.
“Murdock? I thought this was the department head’s job.”
“Yeah, but Murdock’s the VP in charge of timetabling for next semester. Plus, I don’t think even Gail is cruel enough to give you three Civics classes in a row.”
I tack the piece of paper to the bulletin board with one pushpin and then stab it repeatedly with another.
“I don’t know what you did to that guy in a former life, Pete, but he’s definitely got it in for you.”
The office doesn’t have any more work for me today, so I’m just packing up to go home. Ruth opens the door to leave for her next class, then stops at the threshold. “Hey,” she says, “don’t forget we’ve got that thing tonight.”
“What ‘thing’?”
Ruth rolls her eyes in disgust. “I knew you’d forget. You’re worse than Deacon.”
“Let’s not get crazy here. Nobody’s worse than Deacon.”
She ignores me. “The dinner party. At Sharon and Ray’s.”
I stare blankly.
“My cousin Sharon? You went to their shag?”
“Shit,” I say
. It all comes back to me. “Why would I agree to that?”
“Well, you did, and you’re coming. Don’t try to get out of it now.”
“Is it just the five of us? Won’t that be kind of weird? That’s about as fifth wheel as you can get.”
“I think there’ll be others.”
I smell a rat. A lady rat, to be precise. “This isn’t some kind of fix-up, is it?”
“No,” Ruth says.
“Because the last thing I need is to get stuck sitting next to someone with a ‘great personality’—” I use air quotes for emphasis “—who complains about her divorce all night or starts quizzing me on whether or not I like kids.”
“I get it.”
“I mean, I’m sorry, but the viability of one’s eggs is just not good dinner conversation.”
“Okay! All right! No fix-ups.”
“Good,” I say, leaning forward a little in my chair, “’cause I’m kind of just getting out of a ... situation ... right now.”
“Oh,” Ruth pauses a moment. “So you’re not boning the superintendent’s wife any more?”
Deacon.
“I know all about your little ‘situation,’ Pete,” she says before she closes the door.
The fact is, I hadn’t really talked to Vicky for a couple weeks. Even earlier today, I kept an eye out for her on my way to class, but no dice. I used to see her like clockwork in the hallway before Ancient Civ, but I’m starting to think she’s changed her route, along with our ... situation.
Two Sundays ago, she showed up at my apartment and kissed me backward onto my unmade bed without saying a word. Afterward, as she was cinching up her jeans, she told me her marriage was over. Jamie was moving out. I wanted to be sympathetic, but all I could think about was how long it would be until her husband showed up banging on my door. Or worse yet, how long until he found a way to transfer me up north to Nip-Rock High. Vicky assured me my fears were unwarranted, that our secret was still a secret.