by Len Vlahos
He talked about his brother Russell—“he’s eighteen and he’s super cool. He has an old Mustang that he lets me drive in the Caldor’s parking lot, and a huge record collection he lets me listen to.” He talked about his parents—“my dad’s a chemical engineer and my mom teaches classics at Concordia. They’re mostly okay, ya know, for parents.” He talked about how he ran three miles every night before dinner—“I’m going to go out for track next year in high school. I want to run in the New York City Marathon some day.” And he described in detail, often quoting from, the music and comic books and television shows that formed the axis on which his world seemed to revolve—“Nanu Nanu, Harry!”
The more he talked, the more I let my guard down. I wasn’t even aware at first that I’d started talking back.
“I collect baseball cards. I have every complete Topps set from 1973 forward. The best part is—” I heard the sound of my own voice and stopped. Talking to other kids was anathema to me. (Please note, FAP, the great use of an SAT word—anathema—in context, in spite of what I’m sure you think are my lackluster SAT scores.) Anyway, hearing my own voice was like walking onto a frozen lake in early spring, knowing the ice was going to collapse beneath my feet any second.
But Johnny just sat there, smiling. It was a patient smile, like watching a cat blink. It made me want to blink back. Before long I was telling him how I was almost struck by lightning. When the bell rang we went our separate ways and I didn’t see Johnny again that afternoon.
The next day during recess, Johnny was at the center of a group of boys, the lot of them orbiting around his Reaganesque charm and hanging on his every word. I sat down alone nearby. I’d just started on that day’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich when Johnny called me over.
“Hey Harry, c’mere.”
Everything froze.
I felt a rush of vertigo as I stood up. A narrow aisle parted through the throng of kids around Johnny. They were like menacing trees come to life, making an eerie path through a dense and uninviting wood. The tension pulled what was left of my skin tauter than usual as I felt them stare at me—the weird kid with the scars, what’s he doing here? When I reached the center of the swarm, Johnny said, “Hey, do you guys know Harry Jones? He was struck by lightning!” I held my breath, thinking I’d been duped into some new and twisted form of torture. I noticed the other kids looking at Johnny, waiting for a cue. Johnny noticed, too.
He shifted down the bench on which he was perched, motioning with a nod of his head for me to join him. Time, which had stopped, started ticking forward again.
“That’s neat,” one of the other kids said to me. “I mean, not neat, but wow! Did it hurt?”
And just like that, I was accepted. I was cool by association. For the first time in my life, I was starting to fit in.
OUR HOUSE
(written by Michael Barson, Mark William Bedford, Christopher John Foreman, Graham McPherson, Charles Smyth, Lee Jay Thompson, and Daniel Woodgate, and performed by Madness)
After Billy the Behemoth “introduced” us, Johnny and I started spending a lot of time together. I don’t think there’s any explanation for how people become friends. Maybe it’s pheromones (we learned about pheromones in tenth grade biology), maybe it’s kismet (we learned about kismet in eleventh grade English), or maybe there’s no reason or explanation at all (I learned about unexplained things from Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of TV series). With kids, there’s an even greater intensity to the speed at which new friendships form. To me, it seems like magic.
I’d show up at Johnny’s house most nights to join him on his training runs. His mother hated that I was there. She’d put on her best smile and speak to me in a loud and slow voice, like I was retarded, deaf, or both.
“Well, hello Harry. And how are you today?”
She and Johnny’s dad, Mr. McKenna—to this day I still don’t know either of their first names—must’ve figured that I was their son’s charity case, that I was there because he took pity on me. The more often I turned up, the less friendly they became. Johnny didn’t seem to notice, and if he didn’t notice, I didn’t care. It was a small price to pay for the pleasure of his company.
I could never quite keep up with Johnny when we ran. He would slow his pace just enough to let me almost catch up, and when I got too close, he’d put on the jets and pull away. That’s just who he was.
When he had run his allotted distance he would flop down on some neighbor’s lawn panting and laughing and I’d follow suit.
“What are you doing for Halloween?” he asked me out of the blue one night.
Since the lightning strike, I’d made a point of avoiding Halloween. It was my least favorite night of the year. Other kids would transform themselves into the monster I already was, going from door to door scaring people into giving them treats. That I didn’t need a costume was a miserable reminder of everything I hated about life.
“I’m not really into Halloween,” I told him.
“Come to my house,” he said, ignoring my answer. “We’re going to have fun.”
I shook my head no and changed the subject.
“My parents,” I told him, “want to meet you.”
You have to understand, for five solid years, since 1976 to be exact, I only left the house to go to school, doctors’ appointments, or wherever else I was dragged. That I was suddenly leaving of my own accord was a shock to my parents’ system. They didn’t know whether to open a bottle of champagne or call an exorcist. They took the middle ground and invited Johnny to dinner.
It was a few days before Halloween when Johnny showed up at my house. When I answered the door he was wearing a sport jacket and carrying flowers. Johnny was strictly a jeans and T-shirt kid, so at first I wasn’t even sure who I was looking at.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in, Harry?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” my mom said from behind me, “invite him in.”
I was too stunned to say anything, so I just stepped aside and let Johnny pass.
“Mrs. Jones,” Johnny said, “these are for you.” He held the flowers out, and I swear my mother almost cried when she took them.
“Mr. Jones,” Johnny continued, approaching my dad, who was standing just behind my mom, slack-jawed and dumbfounded, “it’s nice to meet you, sir.” Sir? Johnny held out his hand and my dad took it. “I’m Johnny McKenna. Thank you for inviting me over.”
It turns out I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to relate to kids my age. My parents were just as clueless.
My mom hadn’t worked since the lightning strike.
Her life, post-storm, as I think I’ve already told you, was defined entirely by me. It was my dad who was the breadwinner. He was a political campaign consultant, working mostly on statewide elections. For a man who loved to argue as much as my dad did, it was the right kind of work. Most nights over dinner, he would introduce a topic that would get the three of us debating. Sometimes it was serious stuff like “What happens when the world runs out of oil?” Sometimes it was light stuff like “Who’s funnier, Lenny or Squiggy?”
But on the night Johnny came over, my dad, for the first time I could remember, seemed flummoxed. When you stop to think about it, it kind of makes sense.
If I’d had a normal childhood, my parents would have been broken-in by a steady diet of increasingly older and more sophisticated friends. Instead, they skipped over all that and got right to Johnny. It was like having your first driving lesson. On the interstate. During rush hour.
Johnny took the seat my dad offered and proceeded to give my parents his entire life story. I didn’t join the conversation. Not because I was freaked out or nervous, but because there was no natural opening. Johnny and my parents, mostly my dad, basked in the warm glow of each other’s company. I was something of an ornament.
That made me feel good and bad at the same time, but it didn’t really matter. More than anything I was proud and happy to show my parents that I wasn’t a total freak,
at least not anymore. Not only did I have a friend, I had this friend.
My mom shot me the occasional look throughout the night, making sure I was doing okay, like she always did.
I’d actually started to zone out when something Johnny was saying caught my attention.
“… excited that Harry’s going to be joining us for trick-or-treating on Halloween.”
What? Did he just say I’m going trick-or-treating?
My parents, who were well versed in my views on Halloween—mostly from my annual October 31 sob fest—looked at each other and then at me, and then back at each other. After a beat, they both started talking at once, falling over each other at how happy they were to hear the news.
“Wonderful,” said my mom.
“Best thing for him,” my dad said to Johnny like I wasn’t even there.
When the celebration subsided, all three of them looked at me.
“Great,” I said weakly. Johnny’s face was all smirk.
After dinner was over, after Johnny helped clear and wash the dishes, after the four of us watched Laverne and Shirley together, it was time for Johnny to go home.
As I watched both my parents hug him goodnight, I have to admit that I felt a pang of jealousy. This is what it must feel like to be normal, I thought.
I walked out of the house with Johnny. As soon as the front door closed behind us, he gave me a high five.
“Awesome, Harry,” he said. “Trust me, they’re going to let you stay out as long as you want on Halloween.” He walked down the street toward his house, adding, “See you at school tomorrow” as he went.
Halloween. I had told Johnny “no” about Halloween because I really wanted to stay home. The thought of being out with other kids made me physically nauseous. But thanks to his stunt with my parents, I was trapped.
When I look back now, I see that this was the beginning of what would become a well-established pattern of Johnny deciding and me doing.
As I went back up the steps to my house I overheard my parents’ muffled voices on the other side of the door.
“What a fine young man,” my father was saying.
“I’ll say,” my mother offered. “The two of them are lucky to have found one another.”
“The two of them?” my dad answered. “Let’s call a spade a spade, Ruth, Harry’s the lucky one here.”
“Ben, hush, he’ll hear you.”
I waited another minute until I heard them take their conversation into the kitchen, and snuck back inside. I pretended not to have heard anything, said goodnight, and went straight to bed.
HELLO, I LOVE YOU
(written by John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and Jim Morrison, and performed by The Doors)
I arrived at Johnny’s house on Halloween night 1981 decked out in my dad’s tattered cotton trousers, faded button-down shirt, threadbare suit jacket, and old fedora. I was sporting the costume of choice for discriminating suburbanite teens: I was a bum. I’d even burnt a piece of cork and smeared it all over my cheeks, nose, and chin.
Everyone was already outside when I got there. They were all dressed exactly like me and all holding pillowcase sacks filled with eggs and shaving cream, ready to battle each other, mailboxes, cars, or anything else that got in our way. We looked like a pack of short, skinny 1940s hobos.
I’d expected to find Johnny and a few boys I knew from school. Instead, it was Johnny and a whole lot of kids I didn’t know, including a bunch of girls from the Our Lady of the Perpetual Who-Can-Remember-the-Name Catholic School.
Girls.
Catholic school girls!
“Harry, I want you to meet someone.”
I froze.
“This is Gabrielle Privat.”
My tongue tied itself in a neat little knot and a bowling ball dropped from my esophagus to my stomach. My fingertips and toes went numb.
“Harry?” Johnny asked. I finally managed to mutter a sheepish hello back, though I said it more to my shoes than to Gabrielle’s face.
Right from the start, I was smitten with Gabrielle. I was a gargoyle around girls on a good day; hideous, mute, and petrified. And this wasn’t a girl, this was a goddess. She was my age, and even with her own smudged face and porkpie hat, I could see she was beautiful. The softness of her skin, the delicacy of her features shone through the smeared ash. The way I remembered it later, she was glowing, literally glowing. I’m surprised I didn’t pass out. I secretly cursed Johnny for turning the night into a disaster before it began.
But that’s the funny thing. It wasn’t a disaster at all. It was one of the best nights of my life.
For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I stepped outside of myself that night. I was possessed by some holy spirit, speaking in tongues and walking on water. I was my wittiest, funniest, and most charming self. Maybe the burnt-cork-soot on my face was a mask, a safe place to hide, a place from which I could finally venture forth. But I think the real reason was Gabrielle.
She and I spent most of the night talking and laughing. We covered every topic held sacrosanct (SAT word alert!) by white, middle-class thirteen-year-olds: Our favorite TV shows, like Taxi and WKRP; the classes in school we didn’t totally hate, like English or history; and MTV, the newest, coolest thing either one of us had ever seen. We ignored our solemn egging responsibilities and existed outside the group, outside the world. We were lost in the sphere of each other.
Our friends, boys and girls both, recognized what was going on, and other than the occasional squirt of Barbasol on the back of my head, left us alone.
As the night drew to a close, Gabrielle and I offered each other a nervous half-wave, our faces ready to crack from suppressed smiles. I headed home with no candy and with no mischief accomplished, but with a strange and wonderful fluttering in my heart.
When I visited Johnny the next day—the visit a pretense to see Gabrielle—it, of course, all came crashing down.
She was disappointed to see me in the light of day. With no soot on my face or hat on my head, my disfigured skin was revealed in all its gruesome glory. And with my mask gone, I reverted back to my shy, awkward self. We spent a few uncomfortable minutes chatting before she made a weak excuse and left. Johnny walked her to the door.
I didn’t need to read between the lines of Johnny’s white lie—about Gabrielle not being allowed to date, about how sorry she was—to know the truth. She saw the real me, a scarred little boy, scarred on the outside and scarred on the inside. She turned tail and ran.
I would learn later, on a class trip to the Bronx Botanical Garden, that Gabrielle Privat was the name of a species of rose. Its flower had a delicate, fleeting beauty, its attraction one of form over substance. I guess that sounds kind of petty, but hey, it’s the truth.
Anyway, I must’ve folded myself up like an envelope, sealed with no way in or out, because the next thing Johnny said was, “We should start a band.”
It was a strange thing to say. He could’ve said, “Don’t worry, there will be lots of other girls,” or “Let’s go listen to some records,” or “How about we walk down the hill and get some ice cream.” But no, he said, “We should start a band.”
I could only guess he was trying to distract me, trying to stop me from falling down a well of self-pity and self-doubt. It was either an act of kindness or sympathy or both. Whatever it was, I should’ve just walked away. But Johnny was Johnny. He had a knack for knowing the right thing to say, the right joke to tell, the right expression to wear on his face at just the right moment.
Neither one of us had ever touched an instrument or knew the first thing about playing music, and none of this was going to erase Gabrielle—even time, healer of all healers would do a half-assed job with that one.
The only thing I could think to say was, “Sure, let’s start a band.”
And that was how it all began.
DAYDREAM BELIEVER
(written by John C. Stewart, and performed by The Monkees)
That same
afternoon, the day Johnny had suggested the idea of a band to soothe my dented ego, we were lying on his bedroom floor, daydreaming and planning our meteoric rise to superstardom. We were at an age when kids were starting to identify themselves by the music they listened to: there were the headbangers and clubbers, the rockers and punks, even the Broadway musical wannabes. And then there was us, determined to defy definition.
Johnny’s older brother Russell had a collection of albums spanning thirty years and we devoured every disc, every track, every groove. We started with the Beatles (Help! and Rubber Soul all the way through The White Album and Abbey Road), graduated to Exile on Main Street, Physical Graffiti, and Quadrophenia (the greatest album ever recorded), and did our postdoctoral work with Elvis Costello, Richard Hell, and the Clash. We sampled Miles Davis and John Coltrane. We even dabbled in Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. Nothing eluded our grasp.
Every day we spent hours and hours watching those black discs spin, listening to the pop and hiss of the needle riding the imperfections in the vinyl until the first chords took over. We’d lie on our stomachs poring over every inch of the album cover, the back album cover, the liner notes, and, if we were lucky enough to have them, the lyrics.
As we lay there that day, a new record from a band called Black Flag was on the turntable. If the Sex Pistols made the Who and Led Zeppelin sound like they were singing anthems from another age, Black Flag made the Sex Pistols seem overproduced and corporate, if that’s even possible. This was a bunch of guys with a guitar, a bass, and a drum set that were—or at least it sounded like they were—recording in someone’s living room. And they sounded drunk. (While I didn’t have any frame of reference for knowing what a drunk band would sound like, I was pretty sure this was it.) Songs like “Six Pack,” “TV Party,” and “Gimme Gimme Gimme” stitched themselves into a kind of manifesto for Johnny and me.