She walked out of the room and into the kitchen.
“Are we having a real dinner?” she asked her mother. “Or is it greens and mutant potatoes?”
“You like sweet potatoes,” said Janice.
“I like real dinners,” she said.
Every hint of emotion was gone from her voice. It was as if our conversation hadn’t occurred at all. I closed my eyes again. The smells coming from the kitchen were not much different from those I would have smelled at home, but they made me feel nauseous. I wondered if Nana would cook without me there. What would she have for dinner and what would she do with the hours that followed? Janice’s words leaped back into my head. Sound. Mind. I had never seen Nana react to scrutiny the way she had that morning. Maybe she needed someone to watch out for her now. I knew she needed company, but I also knew that person couldn’t be me. She had asked me to leave. She had struck me for the first time in the history of our time together. I couldn’t go back now.
“Jared!” called Janice from the kitchen. “Dinner is ready!”
Jared yelled something down the stairs I couldn’t quite make out. But I could tell by the pitch in his voice he was excited about something.
“Go wake Sebastian,” Janice said to Meredith.
“Why can’t you do it?” I heard her say.
I got up off the couch.
“I’m up!” I said. “It’s okay. I’m awake. I’m ready for vegetables.”
I DIDN’T KNOW ENTIRELY WHAT I HAD EXPECTED FROM dinner, but what I received was not a hero’s welcome. Meredith absconded to her room with her plate of vegetables shortly after sitting down, claiming the conflict of a television program. Janice spoke (more to herself than to Jared and me) about the next Youth Group meeting, and new ways of making people test their faith. She also kept a roving eye on my plate to make sure I was eating. Jared stuffed big hunks of potato in his mouth and complained about the lack of a main course. But all the while, he threw conspiratorial looks my way, and I felt like I had forgotten something important. I ate just enough to be polite, and not enough to induce vomiting. When the meal was over I followed Jared upstairs, and it wasn’t until the door was closed safely behind us that he finally told me what was going on.
“Big news for The Rash,” he said. “Giant news, actually. Are you ready?”
It took me a moment to remember the name of our band.
“Jared,” I said. “This hasn’t been the best day for me.”
Jared looked at me blankly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t feel well, and I’m confused,” I said. “So I don’t know if I really want to discuss the band at this moment.”
He took this in. Then he violently pushed his glasses up his nose.
“I’m trying to distract you, you ungrateful ass,” he said. “I’m trying to get you to concentrate on brighter things. Do you really want to wallow about how bad and messed up your life is right now and act like some giant vagina?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Well then, there you go.”
I said nothing.
“Fine,” he said. “I acknowledge that your life sucks, and your grandma is batshit and that’s sad. But I have good news about The Rash, and I’ve been waiting to tell you. So, nut up, Johnny! Think about the band for a minute and not just yourself.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the news?”
“Are you ready?”
“I’m ready, Jared.”
“Are you really ready?”
I just looked at him.
“We have a gig.”
After he said the last word, he punched me in the shoulder and shook my arms.
“And if we rock our asses off, we might even get paid,” he said.
“What’s a . . .”
“A gig is a show,” said Jared. “We’re going to perform. It’s going to be so fucking awesome I can’t even think about it without getting a humongous boner.”
“Where are we going to perform?”
“It’s perfect,” said Jared.
“Where?”
“It’s so perfect,” he said. “We’re rocking the site of our crime.”
“Immanuel Methodist?”
“The Youth Group hosts a talent contest every year. And it’s coming up in a couple of weeks. Bam! We’re going to win. We are going to conquer their asses like Napoleon!”
“Weeks?” I said.
Jared punched me again.
“Please stop punching me,” I said. “We don’t know how to perform any songs.”
“Yet,” said Jared. “But that’s the best part about you being all abandoned and everything. We’ll finally have enough time to practice!”
He jumped up on his bed and began playing an invisible guitar.
“I admit it’s a pretty exciting idea,” I said.
I sat down on an amplifier.
“I wonder if Christian girls will throw their panties onstage?” he asked, jumping on the bed. “Do you think any of them wear thongs?”
I didn’t say anything, and eventually he looked up at me.
“Goddamn, you’re impossible today.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I think my grandmother might need serious help.”
Jared collapsed on the bed and ran his palm over the sheets.
“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty shitty,” he said.
He looked up at the ceiling, seemingly lost in thought.
“I won’t let my mom give you the boot,” he said quietly. “You have a home here, man.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I mean it,” he said.
“I understand,” I said.
But I couldn’t feign excitement anymore. My words fell from my mouth like chewed bread. Jared watched me closely. He got up off the bed and walked over to the closet where he had once hidden his soaked cargo pants. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard the contents of various boxes being spilled onto the floor.
“Dammit,” said Jared. “I swear there are little gnomes that come in here and move my shit around.”
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
No answer. Just more shuffling.
“Ha!” he said, moments later. “Gold mine.”
He emerged from the closet with two metal handles in his hands. They were painted white, but the silver showed up in thin nicks and scrapes. He tossed the handles on the bed.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Pegs,” he said.
He walked to the bed and grabbed one. He pointed to a hole at its end.
“You fasten these little bastards onto the screws that hold your back wheel in place. Then someone else can ride on the back of your bike.”
He handed a peg to me.
“That’s great,” I said.
“Don’t humor me, Sebastian. They aren’t that fuckin’ great, okay? But I thought we could put them on your bike. Then we could go check on your crazy-ass grandma at night.”
“You mean sneak out?” I said.
“Do you think in a million son-of-a-bitching years my mom would send me out in the cold on the back of a bike?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then we shall sneak!” he said.
He handed me the pegs and I rolled them around in the palm of my hand. They were surprisingly heavy.
“I’ll make you a deal,” said Jared.
“What?”
“Tonight we work on songwriting and tomorrow we check on . . . Nana.”
I stuffed the pegs in my pocket. “Okay,” I said. “But it has to be tomorrow.”
“It will be.”
“All right then.”
“So we have a deal?” he asked.
“We do,” I said.
“Great,” said Jared, “Then take off your shir
t.”
I looked at his face to see if he was joking. His hair hung over the frames of his glasses, and underneath, his eyes were perfectly calm.
“Why?” I said. “I don’t feel well.”
Jared reached over and started unbuttoning my flannel.
“I have a fever,” I said.
“I liked you better when you did everything I told you to,” he said.
I smacked his hand away. “I’ll do it myself,” I said, “if it’s so important.”
“Whoa, killer,” he said. “Save that rage for the band.”
I finished unbuttoning my shirt and sat only in my ragged T-shirt.
“That goes off, too,” he said.
I was too tired to argue. I pulled my shirt over my head, exposing my pale white chest. I felt goose bumps rising. Jared returned to his closet and pulled a fresh white folded T-shirt off the shelf. He let the fabric drape open and I could see that he had decorated it with Magic Marker. The front had our band name spelled in crude lettering. “tHe rAsh,” it said. He turned the shirt around and there was a picture of a stick figure with long hair and headphones on. It said, “JESUS DIGS THE RASH!”
“I made one for myself, too,” he said. “We have to start promoting ourselves. I want our name on people’s minds before they even hear us.”
He tossed me the T-shirt, and I stretched it over my head. I had been sweating out my fever and it felt pleasurable to be wearing a clean, dry shirt. It fit tight around my thin arms, and hugged my chest. Jared pulled out a shirt that almost matched. The drawings weren’t exact because he’d done them by hand. He turned around and put on the shirt. He looked from my shirt to his. Then back to mine.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Now we just need some songs.”
19.
The Architecture of Noise
EVEN THE SMARTEST PEOPLE ON EARTH CAN’T CONTROL the human thought process. That’s what Fuller believed. There are simply too many spontaneous ideas and perceptions that move through our brains at any time. Trying to corral them would be too difficult. Yet Bucky did believe we could methodize our thinking to a small degree. He called this practice “sorting.” The basic idea is that if we didn’t “sort” on a daily basis, we would be so overwhelmed by thoughts that we could never make any decisions. But something tells us to order the grilled cheese when we are hungry. Thinking about global starvation is too big. Thinking about our digestive system is too small. Getting food in a timely manner is the result of sorting. Thus, the sooner we recognize the way our brain files away relevant experiences, the sooner we can harness our own mind power.
I attempted to explain all of this to Jared when we sat down to write our first song that night. My fever had not subsided, so my explanations may have lacked coherence. But as we sat side by side on his bed, our instruments humming again, I began to see a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. My proposal was that we had to rid ourselves of all thoughts irrelevant to composing a punk anthem. If there was a large garbage bag, say, full of all our song ideas, we had to start letting some out, and retaining the best, most precise ones.
“Why is it a garbage bag?” asked Jared. “Are you saying our ideas are a bunch of nasty trash or something?”
“The receptacle is irrelevant,” I said.
“Your testicles are irrelevant,” he said, “but I think I see what you mean.”
“So what stays in?” I asked.
“The best ideas. I get it.”
“So what are our best ideas?” I asked.
“We’ll start with that beginning we wrote like a hundred years ago. Do you remember that?”
“A minor,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “But after you play that chord, just play the root note of what I’m playing on the top string, like this.”
He showed me where to put my finger and I kept it there.
“Just play it over and over like this,” he said, and played his E string repeatedly at a steady rhythm.
“Okay,” I said.
I mimicked what he had done to the best of my ability. The rhythm wasn’t as good, but it wasn’t awful.
“Punk bassists don’t really need to learn chords. Those are for bands that try too hard.”
I kept playing the droning repetitive bass part.
“Now this is the part of the song where I’m going to sing,” said Jared. “As soon as we write some goddamn lyrics.”
Next to him on the bed was a spiral notebook. He’d written the word “Songs” at the top in sloppy cursive. Then he’d drawn a picture of a skull and a pentagram. But there was nothing written beneath the drawings. He took up the pen and looked at me.
“What are we pissed off about?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I am pissed off.”
“Yes you are!” he said. “You don’t have a house. Your grandma dogged you.”
“I know, but I’m more hurt by that,” I said. “I’m hurt and befuddled, not angry.”
“Well,” said Jared. “Punk songs are not about hurt, okay? That’s country. Punk is about anger and not taking any shit, and living how you want to, and catching an awesome buzz from some beers, and being a shit-head, but a great shit-head.”
“So what are you so angry about?” I asked. “Specifically?”
“That’s the problem,” he said. “I’m furious about everything. It’s hard to narrow it down.”
“Relevant thoughts,” I said. “You have to get to the precise ideas. What about that school your mom wants you to go to?”
“What about it? It sucks hard.”
“So why don’t we inform people about why it sucks . . . exactly.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Who cares?”
“That’s it,” I said. “Who cares. That’s the whole idea, right?”
Jared looked at me.
“I don’t like your mind games,” he said, but underneath the word “Songs” in his book he wrote the word “Topics.” Underneath that, he wrote the words “Stupid School.”
“That’s the title.”
“What is?” he said.
“ ‘Stupid School.’ That’s the perfect title.”
“How do you know what a good title is?”
“Before I left home, I was studying,” I said. “It’s similar to that song by the Replacements. ‘Fuck School.’ But we can’t . . . we can’t utter that word at your church.”
Jared looked down at the title again.
“I love the Replacements,” he said.
“They laughed in the middle of his speech,” I said, “that’s what the song was about, right? Getting back at all those fellow students who mocked the singer.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s small. That’s precise.”
Jared took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said. “ ‘Stupid School.’ Let’s try it. Play that root note again.”
I clamped down the string with my middle finger and used the thumb on my other hand to play. The low-pitched thunder of the bass buzzed out of the tiny amplifier. Jared just listened for a while. Then he came in at the same rhythm I was playing with a fuller, crisper version of my note. After a few seconds, he just opened his mouth and sang.
“Mom’s taking me to stuuuupid school!”
I nearly stopped playing when it happened. I skipped a note, but when Jared looked at me, I got back in time right away. I tried not to look at him, afraid I would reveal something with just a glance. Afraid I would reveal the truth:
His voice was incredible.
It didn’t sound like his speaking voice at all. It was lower and cleaner. But not too clean. It sounded like it came from someone at least twice his age. And it appeared to emerge out of him effortlessly. I couldn’t believe it. I stopped watching my fingers on the bass and watched him play instead.
“Mom’s taking me
to stuuuupid school, and I want to diiiiiiiiie.”
He switched chords to something different. Something higher. I tried frantically to find a corresponding note on the bass, and when I reached a note that matched, I saw his brow relax. He listened to the mix of our parts and somehow when he switched back to the original chord, I was right with him, back on the same fret of my E string. Jared played harder, and out came the voice again:
“Teacher, teacher, teacher, and I want to die! Teacher, teacher, teacher, and she teaches lies! Why, teacher, why!”
Jared stopped playing a moment, but he motioned for me to keep going.
“You should sing that part,” he said. “In the final version you’ll shout out that last part in, like, a scream. Okay? Backup vocals.”
“Sure,” I said.
He was in charge now, I could see. Something had been switched on. He didn’t play again for a while. He just let me keep going. But he wasn’t stopping. He was singing softly to himself, hashing things out. As he sang, he tried variations on his part. He made it even choppier. It sounded like the notes had been sliced with sharp knives. I was waiting to hear him sing again. And eventually he did. But he switched chords again first. Then he took a breath and belted out what he would tell me later was the chorus.
“Everybody goes to stupid school, then the stupid rule the world. No. No. No!”
He played a couple of shrill notes, faster than I’d ever seen him do anything. Then sang again.
“Everybody goes to stupid school, and the stupid rule the worrrrld. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah!”
At the end of the last line, he stopped playing abruptly. I had already stopped when he started in on the chorus. Not because I thought that was what he wanted me to do. But because I just wanted to see where he would go next. After he stopped, he looked at me, and his lip was curled funny. He looked sheepish.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
Without saying anything, Jared walked to his bedroom door and kicked a wadded-up towel underneath it. Then he took a pack of cigarettes from a sweatshirt pocket and lit one. He cracked his bedroom window and aimed the smoke toward the small patch of screen. The wind stole the smoke right from his mouth when he exhaled. A frigid breeze blew back in. It gave me the chills, and reminded me that I was still sick.
The House of Tomorrow Page 17