by Rob Rufus
The Ramones, the Descendents, the Humpers, Bad Religion, the Misfits, Minor Threat, Strife, Face to Face, TSOL, Screeching Weasel, Rancid, the Clash—all of the songs were high-speed. Every singer sounded angry; even the love songs had an undertone of rage.
Nat and I passed the liner notes back and forth. The bands in the photos looked different from any I’d seen on TV. The Misfits looked like Satan worshippers. The Descendents looked like four-eyed dorks. The guitarist in Poison Idea looked too fat to stand up onstage. God, I thought, some of these bands are even more tragic than me.
Which, of course, made them the coolest bands in the world.
These were musicians I could relate to—I didn’t feel so different from any of these guys. I felt in time with their beat. It connected with me so instantly that it seemed instinctual.
The guitars played the same chords over and over. The drummers pounded—bababababababap!—like madmen. The singers screamed or sneered or whined or mumbled—it all connected with me.
I felt the power in it.
Music like this had the power to change people. It had the power to scare people. I knew that from the start. But it didn’t scare my brother. And it didn’t scare me.
From that first chord, to my last chord, it never scared me.
Up until that night, I’d felt like I was on the outside of my own life. Forever out of step at school, in the neighborhood, even with my own family. But hearing that music, seeing those photos, reading the lyrics—they made it seem okay to be out of place. These bands made it seem cool.
This was it. Even if I didn’t say so, I knew. Now I had something to relate to. I had something to claim, and I had something that was willing to claim me. I finally had a flag to fly under—one perfect and fucked up and black.
* * *
We listened to music until four in the morning. Anthony spent those last hours sitting on his knees, surrounded by cellophane and blank tapes. Whenever we really liked a record, he dubbed over a bootleg copy for us.
We didn’t wake up until way past noon.
Anthony drove us into Carytown, a neighborhood on the north end of Richmond, where there were skate shops, bars, tattoo parlors, and record stores. My cousin was hip to it all.
The freaks, the druggies, and the punks were all there in the flesh. We passed a gang of Mohawked kids with neon hair and black T-shirts. I saw a group of tattooed guys sitting on the stoop of a town house smoking cigarettes. Everyone we passed on the street could have walked straight outta Anthony’s record collection.
More weirdos loitered outside of Plan 9 Music. I was careful not to bump any of them as I followed Anthony inside.
Plan 9 was the size of a warehouse. Large windows ran three stories high, giving everything inside a natural glow. There were thousands of records, CDs, tapes, mags, and comic books within my reach. In the back were cases of patches, posters, T-shirts, and buttons. Shit, this place made Davidson’s Music seem like a joke.
I was a silent observer.
Who wore what? Who bought what? Who talked how, and why? I spied on the entire store, picking up what I could.
We pooled our birthday money together, ready to blow it all on stacks of cassettes, black T-shirts, and issues of Alternative Press and Maximum Rocknroll.
We stood at the register behind a long line of record shoppers.
Nat flipped through the magazines, studying them like they were punk rock syllabi. I just studied the checkout girl.
She had tattoos—leopard spots running halfway down her left arm. Her hair and her lips were a matching bright pink. Two silver rings stuck out from her bottom lip, weighing it down in a permanent pout.
The line inched forward. I focused on her lips. When the light reflected off the rings, they looked almost like fangs.
She rang me up and took my money. I couldn’t look away from the vampire lip.
“Solid choices, man,” she said, smiling and handing me my bag.
“Fuck yeah, man,” I squeaked back.
I tripped over myself on the way out the door.
* * *
The next morning, we left for home. I dreaded going back. Our friends, our record store, the town itself—everything seemed even smaller now.
I’d had my first taste of counterculture, and it lingered in my mouth. Huntington didn’t even have any culture to counter! I wanted to stay in Richmond. I wanted to be part of this!
But as soon as we pulled out of my uncle’s driveway, the city faded quickly away. I sat in the backseat of the car, watching blurry colors of brick and black blend into a sea of endless green. Trees ebbed and flowed on the mountains around us. The interstate cut through them like a huge cement snake.
Soon, we were back in nowhere.
I looked over at my brother beside me. His headphones were on. His eyes were shut, but he was awake. He was nodding, just barely, with the music. He tapped the empty Brain Drain jewel case on his knee.
He didn’t look depressed. He didn’t mind that we were going home. He didn’t care where we were going. He was already gone.
TWO
My Basement Life
1
Nat wanted to transform our basement into a carbon copy of the one in Richmond. I considered it a useless cause—mainly because our basement was complete shit.
Stained carpet was glued unevenly to the corners of the floor. It stopped suddenly, as if the contractor had simply run out of material. There was an old love seat in one corner. A dusty shelf hung above it, and a single-pane window above that. Like I said—shit.
But Nat was convinced that the basement was a key factor in the power of the music. He said it sounded better when it was a private thing.
So that first week home from Richmond, he stayed in the basement for hours, killing the last days of summer vacation. He angled the love seat into the corner. He put his small boom box beside it, and taped up pages of liner notes around it. He plastered the rest of the walls with the torn pages of skateboard and music magazines.
I was really impressed by his progress, until all the tapes, CDs, and magazines began disappearing from my bedroom.
I went down to ask him about it. He was sitting on the floor in front of the stereo and poring over one of Dad’s yellow legal pads.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
“See all these liner notes? I was going through them, ya know, and got to reading the ‘thank you’ sections—they all have one. The bands always thank other bands, so I’ve been writing down all the band names that I don’t recognize. I figure once we get some funds, we can go to Davidson’s and see if they carry any of them.”
“Dude,” I said, “that is fucking genius.”
He handed me the list. There were probably sixty bands on it. I’d never seen him put so much work into anything.
“Hey,” I said, “speaking of—where are the tapes you took outta my room? I wanted to listen to Everything Sucks.”
Nat nodded to the shelf beneath the window. “I figured we can keep them all down here from now on. They’re in ABC order, though—don’t fuck them up.”
I had to stand on the love seat to reach the shelf. I couldn’t see many—just Nirvana, Everclear, and the treasures we’d brought back from Richmond. There were only about ten CDs total, in a neat little row with cassettes stacked three deep beside them.
“Where are the rest of our records?” I asked.
“That stuff from before, it didn’t belong down here, man. It’s out in the alley.”
* * *
Bon Jovi. Boyz II Men. Weird Al. Ace of Base. The Lion King soundtrack. There were dozens of CDs and tapes, broken and blackened, melded together in the alley behind our garage. Nat had burnt them all.
Cusswords and anarchy signs had been carved on the backs of CDs. Spools of tape lay dead in the alley like discarded snakeskins. He’d arranged the pile
neatly atop his old Boy Scout kerchief. Baseball cards and a Troll doll seemed to have been used as accelerants. A tin of lighter fluid was propped against the garage.
It was all represented in the pile, everything we’d once claimed. The sports we’d tried—and failed—to play. The groups we’d tried to join. The music we’d bought mindlessly, without even knowing if we actually liked it. Different styles and phases we’d tried on for size—all there in the pile.
What would Anthony have said about Nat’s old Aerosmith tape? What would vampire girl think of my Hootie & the Blowfish CD? It didn’t matter anymore. The slate had to be cleared. Burning meant that.
Now, for once, we were committed.
Nat walked up behind me. We stood there looking down at the rubble.
“The crazy thing is, it only took one match.”
2
It was too hot out to skate, so Paul and the guys started hanging out in our basement with us. We played them our punk records, introducing them to the music the way our cousin had. They reacted almost as strongly as me.
Some days, if any of us had cash, we made the death-march up to the record store to try and mark another band off Nat’s list. Since we were their only steady customers, Chris and Egor began ordering more punk music from their record distributors—but if they did manage to get a punk album in, it was only one copy. Meaning whichever one of us bought it did so with the knowledge that he’d have to dub copies for everyone else.
* * *
Mom was worried that we spent too much time in the basement. It was unhealthy, she said, to listen to that noise all day instead of being in the fresh air. That’s what she called it—noise.
But it was all we wanted to do. I wanted to have the same attitude that these punk rock bands had. I wanted to have the balls to take on the world the way they did.
So, as the sun shined through that small window, we sat down there, my brother and my friends and I, playing the same records over and over and over again, like members of a cult who were trying to brainwash themselves.
3
School was harder on all of us now.
Paul got beat up the third week of school because he “dressed like a fucking faggot”—it was four guys, behind the bleachers after football practice. Paul didn’t dress any different than he had the year before, except for a chain he now wore as a bracelet (like the guitarist in Rancid did). None of the fucks responsible got in trouble.
It wasn’t like we’d suddenly become mutants. We wore a few chains and buttons, maybe some band T-shirts, but that’s all. Otherwise, we were the same boring-ass white boys we’d always been.
But the other kids treated us differently. It was as if they sensed we no longer had an urge to fit their definition of “cool,” so we got treated with a special kind of disdain.
Whenever the final school bell rang, my muscles instantly loosened. I’d rush to my locker, maneuvering through the halls as if I was scared I might get trapped inside the building. After what had happened to Paul, I started using the side exit.
The guys still came by our house most days, to hang out in the basement with Nat and me. We sat around until dusk, talking shit and replaying whatever album we were hooked on at the time.
But whenever my parents got home, the guys split.
Our dinner table was silent now. Mom didn’t know what to say to us anymore, and we didn’t know what to say to her. School had made me more sensitive than I used to be. Any question or comment that came from my parents felt only like a judgment, a continuation of the vibes I got from my classmates and teachers.
Once the table was cleared and the shitty sitcoms came on, we could all relax. Mom and Dad watched the TV, and I went up to my bedroom. I always locked the door.
I put on my headphones and strapped my Walkman to my pants. Then I stood in front of the mirror. When the tape came on, I would shred the air guitar, and sing to my reflection with the showmanship and passion of a goddamn pro. I did it for hours some nights, rocking through albums like I was filming my own music video. I got so immersed in it that by the time I quit I’d be sweating.
I don’t know why I never thought of playing music for real. I was staring at the possibility every night—right there in front of me. And by the time my private concerts were over, the bullshit of my day was all lost in the feedback.
* * *
One day after school, Nat told me that we were starting a band.
“Who is?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Me. You. Whoever. Who cares? Us, dude!”
“We don’t play instruments.”
“Sean does.”
“Who?”
“Sean, man, shit,” Nat said, annoyed. “He just transferred here this week. His dad works for the railroad or something. He’s in my English class. He fucking plays guitar, dude!”
“Is he any good?”
“Jesus, man, it’s punk—who cares if he’s good?”
“Well,” I said, “what am I going to play?”
“Drums.”
“Drums? I don’t know.”
“I do,” Nat said. “Because we are the only ones who even have a basement. The other guys can’t fit a drum kit into those shoe boxes they live in. Besides, I’m playing bass. So we need a drummer.”
“Why do you get to play bass?”
“Because it was my idea—and because I called it first.”
I sighed. “Well, who would sing?”
“Maybe Tyson, Paul, or Peter. I don’t know yet. Whoever is ballsy enough to get onstage and do it, I guess. It doesn’t matter who sings.”
“Well, how are we gonna get instruments, or shows, or . . .”
“Do you not wanna do it?”
“I mean of course I want to do it.”
“Well, then shut the fuck up,” he said.
I shut the fuck up.
* * *
Nat promised he’d talk to our parents about it. If they could spring the money for some instruments, we would do odd jobs until they were paid back. I didn’t think they’d ever go for it, especially Dad. A college wrestling champion turned Vietnam vet, our father had been given the awkward job of raising two sloth-like apples who couldn’t have fallen farther from his tree. Our off-putting taste in music and fashion seemed like something he would want to ignore, not encourage.
I thought the music we listened to seriously bothered my mom and dad—but in truth, the thing that really concerned them was that their kids sat down in a basement all day. We didn’t do anything else. We were achieving a level of chronic laziness that went unsurpassed.
So at dinner, when Nat told them about his idea to start a band, they stared at him over their leftover spaghetti with looks of genuine shock.
“Okay,” Mom said, “if we could help you find instruments, if we let you guys turn the basement into some nightclub, are you going to take it seriously?”
We said that we would.
“No, I mean seriously—as in committed,” she said. “I mean practicing, lessons, the whole bit. It can’t just be like everything else.”
We swore that it wouldn’t.
If they could help us find some instruments, we would do extra chores, slave labor, whatever—we’d do anything.
“You know,” Dad said, “Ronny from Mack & Dave’s Pawnshop still owes me some money for doing their books. I could give him a call tomorrow, see what instruments they have.”
“That would be awesome,” I mumbled, while my brain screamed, Holyshitholyshit!
For once, maybe something would come easy. Maybe, in a single day, my brother had just kick-started the career of a band that didn’t exist just hours before. I looked over at him. He was smiling too big to say anything.
* * *
A week passed. Dad didn’t mention the pawnshop again. I thought he’d forgotten about the instrument
s completely.
But the following Saturday, Mom woke me up and told me to get downstairs. I looked out my bedroom window—there was a white moving truck with MACK & DAVE’S stenciled onto the side. I got dressed right away.
Nat was already downstairs, holding the front door open. A couple of guys carried the contents of the truck inside. Their shirts were soiled like they’d been doing heavy lifting since dawn. They glared at us when they passed—spoiled little fat-asses—and I was too nervous to ask if I could help.
The last thing they brought inside was a long black case that reminded me of a coffin.
* * *
The drum kit had probably been white at some point. But it was old now, and its finish had been timeworn into the yellow hue of stained teeth.
The heads of the drums were stretched to the rims like burnt wax paper. The kit was stacked in pieces around the room. A cymbal the color of a dirty penny leaned against the wall, with a pair of chipped drumsticks on the floor beside it.
“Fuck,” I heard Nat say. He was standing over the open case.
“What?”
He pulled out his brand-new, used, bright purple Ibanez bass. I started cracking up.
“Whatever,” he said. “I was gonna cover it in stickers anyway.”
Dad came down to the basement. He was grinning.
“Well, gentlemen, looks like there is no excuse to be bored anymore.”
Mom peeked down a few times too, watching us try to organize the room. The two of them looked happy just to see us doing something.
It took over an hour for us to set up the drum kit. I had no idea how to do it, where the drums went, what they were called—I had never even seen a drum kit in person before. All we had to go on was what we’d seen in music videos.
But it was simple enough—snare, tom, floor tom, kick drum—with a cymbal and one broken stand. We covered the stand in duct tape. There was no drum throne, so I used an old painter’s stool.
I hit the snare and Mom’s hands flew to her ears. My parents didn’t come back down to the basement pretty much ever after that.
There was a Bass for Beginners book and an electric tuner inside the guitar case. I sat hunched over my stool, watching Nat fiddle with his bass. He was trying to use the tuner.