The Scar Boys

LYING


(written and performed by the Woofing Cookies)




It was a Friday afternoon. My dad was home from Albany for the weekend and we were sitting across the kitchen table from one another. I was leaving on tour in a matter of weeks, and I hadn’t told my parents anything about it. In fact, regarding my future, I had told them a series of colossal lies.

Colossal Lie #1: I had applied to four colleges. They’d helped me fill out the applications, write my essays, and even took me to see all four schools. When everything was ready to be mailed, I drove my mom’s car to the post office—“Mom, Dad, this will mean more to me if I’m the one to mail the applications”—and pitched all four packages in a Dumpster.

Colossal Lie #2: I was accepted at the University of Scranton, my first choice. Johnny had applied to Scranton as a safety school and got in. He was too much of a choirboy to want to give me his acceptance letter and packet of admissions materials, but Cheyenne talked him into it. A little creative cutting, pasting, and photocopying, and I made it look like the package was addressed to me. I’d never seen Mom and Dad more proud.

Colossal Lie #3: I mailed the check my dad wrote to Scranton—for the first semester tuition, room, and board—to the same place I’d “mailed” the application, though I was smart enough to tear the check into little pieces before throwing it away.

It was against this fictional backdrop that I told my father I was going on the road.

“We’ll be gone about a month.”

“But that means you’ll be late going to school,” he said, a bit bewildered. I’d caught him off guard, which was my plan.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll be there for the first day of classes.”

There must’ve been something in my voice, because my dad did a double take. His eyes narrowed, and his usually fidgety hands went very still. His Spidey sense was working.

“Harry, how long have you been planning this? You said you have a van, you made a record, and you booked more than twenty shows, that’s not something you do overnight, is it.”

“I don’t know, I guess a couple of months.”


“And why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I was afraid you’d say no.”

“But what if I say no now?”

I was silent because we both knew the answer. I was going with or without his blessing. But he was digging for something else here.

“You know, the check we sent to Scranton hasn’t been cashed yet.”

This is the scene in the movie where the prisoner has just escaped from the cellblock and is skulking along the interior perimeter of a giant brick wall when a massive floodlight stops him in his tracks. Busted.

“Huh,” I said, trying to act cool, “that’s weird.”

“I should say so. Tell me, Harry, if I call the school and ask why, what do you think they’ll tell me?”

Stick with the lie, I told myself, ride it all the way to the end. “Probably some clerical mistake,” I said. “I’ll call them for you and find out.”

“Aha!” He pointed at me. My offer to call, or rather my effort to stop him from calling, was the clue he was looking for. “You never mailed the check, did you? You used that money for your band’s little tour!” When he got angry his Boston accent became more pronounced. The “a” in band was flattened, and “tour” became “taw.”

“No! Dad, I wouldn’t steal from you! Besides,” I said, thinking fast, “if I’d used the check, it would’ve been cashed, right?” This calmed him down a bit.

“Hmm. Yes, yes, I can see where that would be true.” But he still wasn’t convinced. “Then what happened to it?”

“Really, Dad, I don’t know. I’ll call the school and find out.”

“No, Harry, I’ll call the school.” He went to his home office to get the phone number and make the call, leaving me in the kitchen to sit and think.

I figured I had three options:

Option #1: Run. Get out of the house and get on tour. Things would sort themselves out. Only problem was, all our gear was in my parents’ basement. And I had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide for the three weeks until the tour started.

Option #2: Go find my dad right then and there and confess. Do it before he makes the call and maybe he’ll go easy. Tell him everything and let the chips fall where they may.

Option #3: Wait it out. Let an opportunity present itself to me.

I chose door number three.

Five minutes later my father came back into the kitchen. I was still sitting at the table. I didn’t look up.

“Isn’t that strange,” he said.

“Did they get the check?” I asked.

“Why you cheeky little bastard,” he said. I kept my head down. “You lied about everything, didn’t you?”

No answer from me. I kept my eyes glued to the Formica surface of that kitchen table.

“The school has never heard of you. Not even an application. You’ve been playing this charade for months. For the first time in my life I wish I was a violent man so I could beat the living daylights out of you.” My dad was just getting wound up. When he stumbled into a morally righteous position, all bets were off. His paternal soul gave way to his political mind as he figured out how best to eviscerate me.

I sat there with my head down as my father spewed a rainstorm of abuse on me. I was so wrapped up in my own world, trying to figure a way out, that I only caught sporadic words and phrases from his rant.

“Ingrate.”

“Thankless.”

“We sacrificed everything for you.”

“Toaster.” I looked up at that one, not sure how a toaster figured into what he was saying, but he was so lost in the brilliance of his own argument that he hardly noticed I was still there. It went on and on and on and on.

Then I heard “failure,” and “loser” in rapid succession. He was probably saying something like “I don’t want you to be a failure,” and “Don’t end up as a loser,” but I didn’t hear the context and the words were like a trigger. I’d had enough. It was time to play my one and only card.

“You’re right, Dad,” I interrupted him with an edge. My tone caught his attention and I could see that he was shocked I was talking back. “I guess it’s just what us god damn freaks do, isn’t it.” I met his eyes and held his gaze. Let him stare at my mangled face, I thought. Let him see his son.

My dad knew exactly what I was saying. He was the only person on the planet with a more vivid and more painful memory of that day at the lighthouse than me. He knew this was my golden ticket, that there was nothing he could say. And I knew this wouldn’t work for me more than once. At least my deformities had taught me how to choose my battles.

He started to say something almost a full minute later, but then thought better of it. He flopped down into a chair. And just like that, it was over. I had won.





GONE DADDY GONE


(written by Willie Dixon and Gordon Gano, and performed by the Violent Femmes)




A few days after school ended we were loading equipment into “Dino,” the name with which we’d christened the Econoline. We made trip after trip from my parents’ basement and through the garage to the open and waiting cargo doors of the van.

We carried our cymbals stands, guitars, and amps past the lawn mower, the beach chairs, and the old Schwinn; around the tin saucer used for sledding, the bucket and brush and Rain Dance for washing cars, and the fifty-foot coiled snake of green garden hose; and over a haphazard collection of rakes, shovels, and sawed-off two-by-fours. My father stood guard, trying, but failing, not to scowl each time one of us went by. He was dressed in khaki shorts, a brightly colored, striped polo shirt, and boat shoes. A “NY State National Guard” hat covered his thinning hair. The skin on his exposed legs was translucent white, his veins and arteries tracing obvious lines down the length of his shin. He leaned on a golf putter, using it as a cane to support his ailing back.

My mom was in the house crying. I knew this because when I went in to say good-bye, she lost it. She wrapped me in a bear hug and didn’t want to let go.

“I know your father is upset,” she told me, “and you shouldn’t have lied to us. But Harry?”

“Yeah Mom?”

“I’m so incredibly proud of you.”

That’s when the waterworks started, from both of us. I hugged her again, and she shooed me away. I composed myself and went back outside.

Cheyenne was walking out with her bass, and that was it. We were packed and ready to go.

“We’re all set, I guess,” I said to my dad. “See you in a month.” His stern gaze stopped us all in our tracks.

“Remember,” he said very seriously and very suddenly, “think with the head on your shoulders.” We must’ve seemed confused because he added, “Not you, Cheyenne.” Then he shoved a small wad of bills into my hand, and disappeared into the house. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away.

It was probably the most personal and tender moment my father and I ever shared, and I clung to it the way a dying man clings to a priest’s robes. The advice and the money were proof that his love was unconditional—twisted and weird proof, but proof just the same. And like the Grinch, my heart, at least the way it felt about my dad, grew a size or two that day.

Then my father was gone and the gears in my brain lurched back to the Scar Boys. We piled into Dino, certain we were ready for whatever the world was going to throw at us.

Richie was driving the first shift with me in the passenger seat. Johnny and Cheyenne were in the back, their knees, elbows, and shoulders touching. Chey was affectionate like that—a light touch on the bicep, a passing squeeze of a shoulder muscle, even the occasional peck on the cheek was par for the course. When I was the lucky recipient, which wasn’t often, it was the highlight of my day. I would lie awake at night remembering her touch, no matter how insignificant, and dream about the next time it would happen. Strike that. I would dream bigger dreams, dreams of Chey and me together, of going to movies, going to dinner, holding hands, kissing. I knew it was a fantasy, but as long as she gave those small, physical cues, there was hope. And hope is a dangerous thing. But in the weeks leading up to the tour she’d stopped all signs of affection with everyone except for Johnny.


I pretended not to notice.

I turned the radio on as we drove down my parents’ street into an uncertain future. One of the only AM music stations left on the dial was playing “Join Together” by the Who. I took it as an omen that big things were in store for the Scar Boys.





STREETS OF BALTIMORE


(written by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard, and performed by Gram Parsons)




“You were awesome, dude,” Richie said to me. It was fourteen hours after we’d left Yonkers and we were sitting in an all-night diner in Baltimore, congratulating each other on what we thought was a great first gig on the tour. “I don’t know how you got the feedback coming out of your amp to screech like that, but man, I could feel it in my sneakers.”

I just smiled. It was a great gig. There weren’t a whole lot of people there, but that didn’t matter.

The four of us were sharing two plates of French fries in brown gravy; something we had never tried before, but that the waitress had assured us was a Maryland delicacy. It was good, but because we thought it was exotic and cool, we were convinced it was incredibly, unbelievably, maniacally good. That was the feeling we all had that night.

The gig had been in the back of a bar in the Pimlico section of the city, close to the racetrack, and closer still to check-cashing, gold-buying, and liquor-selling storefronts, all of them covered with steel shutters at this hour.

We were one of three bands on the bill, and other than the manager of the first band and the girlfriend of the drummer in the second band, the only people in the bar seemed to be neighborhood regulars. They sat on their stools with their baseball caps pulled low; they gave off a vibe of being pissed off. Either the owner of the bar was lousy at promoting gigs, was trying live music for the very first time, or there was somewhere a whole lot better to be in Baltimore that night.

We were the first band to take the stage, and no one seemed to care. The neighborhood regulars sipped their drinks and didn’t do much else. But as we played deeper into our set, we saw their attention shift from the TV suspended above the bar to us. Before long toes were tapping, heads were bopping, and faces were smiling. When we finished, we got a nice round of applause. There was no encore, but the mood in the room was unmistakably good.

“You know,” Cheyenne offered as she scooped up a gelatinous glob of gravy, “a night like tonight is the reason I joined this band in the first place.”

“Not me,” Richie said, tongue firmly in cheek. “I’m in it for the chicks.” Johnny and I laughed.

“All I’ve ever wanted,” Chey continued, ignoring us, “is to play music that would make people feel good. We did that tonight.” We were all quiet for a moment.

It’s funny. I’d never really thought of it that way before. I’d only ever thought about how playing music made me feel. But Chey was right. The real magic comes from the audience. Music, it turns out, is more about giving than receiving. Who knew?

“I’ve always wondered,” Johnny asked Chey, “why did you want to play the bass?”

“I didn’t.” She didn’t offer more. That’s how Chey was. An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, covered by a blanket or whatever the hell that phrase is.

“Then why do you?” Johnny persisted.

“Because I can’t play the trumpet.” We all looked at her sideways, which is pretty much what Chey wanted, and she laughed. “I started playing the trumpet in the fifth grade. All the other girls chose the flute or clarinet, but I didn’t want to be like the other girls. I wanted to be one of the boys, so I took up the trumpet.” Again, Chey stopped, like we were supposed to know the rest of the story. Like we’d all read her biography.

“And?” Johnny asked.

“Braces.”

“Braces?” Richie asked.

“My teeth were crooked. I got braces. I had to give up the trumpet.”

“Okay,” Johnny said, “but why the bass? Why not the piano, or guitar?”

“How the hell should I know?” Chey was annoyed that Johnny had finally gotten to the heart of the matter, had pierced her protective shell of misdirection and confusion, and he let it drop. This was classic Cheyenne. Anytime the conversation turned to her, she would run you in circles, and just when you thought you were getting somewhere, she would leave you scratching your head harder than when you started. It drove us all nuts, and made us all like her even more.

“How about you, Harry, what’s in all of this for you?” Cheyenne asked, waving her hand at the four of us.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d joined the band because Johnny had wanted to start a band. He was my first, and at the time, only friend and I would have joined the circus if he’d thought it was a good idea. But now that I was here, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I’d stumbled onto my one true love, music, as an accident of circumstance.

“I don’t know,” I finally answered. “I guess I didn’t have anything better to do.”

Johnny snorted. “For me, it’s always been about the music,” he said with a little too much force. I didn’t believe him. It sounded like the kind of thing Johnny would say so people would think he was smart, or wise, or sincere. But I was in too good of a mood for Johnny being Johnny to spoil it.

When I look back now, sitting in that diner was the last really happy memory I had of that tour and everything that came after.





BREAKDOWN


(written by Tom Petty, and performed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers)




The swollen Virginia sun was beating down on the van, and the air conditioner—a truly fine piece of machinery designed by the brilliant engineers of the glorious Ford Motor Company—barely kept the inside temperature under eighty degrees. It was our third day on the road, and we were on our way to a radio interview at the University of Richmond. Richie was driving, with me in the passenger seat. Johnny and Cheyenne were in the back, she with her legs draped across his lap. I’d continued my self-delusion that each new sign of affection between the two of them was platonic and that we were really one big happy family. It was getting harder and harder to believe my own lie, but I was determined.

A brittle SNAP! came from under the van.

Richie grabbed hold of the wheel and muscled us over to the curb.

“Dammit! Cotter pin!” he exclaimed. He hit the hazard lights and leapt out the door. I looked back at Johnny who shrugged his shoulders. We all climbed out.

We were stopped on a narrow two-way street with no room for parking. Cars were able to move around us, but had to slow down enough that we were causing a traffic jam. Richie had the cargo doors open and was rooting around in his drum gear.

“What the hell’s going on? What’s a cotter pin?” Johnny demanded.

“The clutch,” Richie answered, not looking up from what he was doing. I saw a bit of his father in him, tolerating the need for conversation, but focusing his attention on the work his hands must do. “When I stepped on the clutch to change gears, it went straight to the floor, lost all its tension. That noise you heard?”

“Yeah?”

“It was the cotter pin—a little piece that connects the clutch to the gears—breaking off.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Johnny demanded.

“Dude,” Richie answered, still rooting around in his gear, “when you have a mechanic for a dad, you just know.”


“So what do we do?”

“We fix it.” Richie turned around, holding a coat hanger in one hand and a pair of needle-nose pliers in the other. “Never be without one of these,” he smiled, waving the hanger in our faces. He reminded me of Ford Prefect extolling the virtue of always carrying a towel, seconds before the Earth was destroyed. (I’m just going to assume, FAP, that you’re cool enough to know about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.)

Without another word, Richie dropped to his knees and rolled under Dino, his legs swinging out into traffic as he reached into the engine. The three of us were left to wave cars around.

As is true every summer afternoon south of the Mason-Dixon, the stifling heat and humidity were nature’s bit of foreshadowing. In those few minutes between the snapping of the cotter pin and Richie’s disappearance beneath the van, roiling clouds crept in and blotted out the sun.

The first few raindrops coincided with the first flash of still far-off lightning. I silently counted—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi, Nine—and then the unfurling of low, rumbling thunder. Almost two miles away.

I caught Cheyenne looking at me when she heard the thunder and I could see she was worried. Chey knew my history, and knew that I made a point of staying away from bad weather. When I met her gaze she reached for me. Her hand was tiny and soft, the fingertips, like mine, were calloused from playing the bass. But on Cheyenne even the calluses were smooth and gentle. Her hands were the antithesis of Mr. Mac’s. His oversized first baseman’s mitts were tools to make and unmake the world. Cheyenne’s were slender silk gloves made to stroke, caress, and save it.

On some level I understood this was a maternal act. I was one of her family, one of her cubs, and she was protecting me without knowing why. But I was also an eighteen-year-old boy, a lonely eighteen-year-old boy with untested hormones, and even though I hadn’t admitted it to myself, I’d been in love with this girl since the moment she walked into my parents’ basement.

Maybe my pupils dilated, or my mouth twitched, or the muscles in my forearm tensed, because Chey gave my hand a gentle squeeze and let go. “It’s okay if you want to wait in the van,” she said.

“I’ll be fine.”

There were six “Mississippis” between the next bolt of lightning and the next boom of thunder, this one a little less rumble and a little more crackle. The sky, stained a dirty but glowing green, had given itself completely to the encroaching storm. The electricity in the air made the hairs on my arm stand on end and I felt myself losing what little control I had. The panic started to overwhelm me. But it wasn’t panic about thunder and lightning, at least it didn’t play out that way. That’s the thing about panic attacks. They’re never what they seem. Most of the time you don’t know why you’re freaking out. I suppose if you did, you wouldn’t be having a panic attack.

I robotically waved cars by and started to wonder what the hell I was doing there, standing on the side of a road in Virginia, in the pouring rain, our piece of crap van giving in to its piece of crap nature, tortured by the unrequited love of a girl never more than five feet away but who may as well have been on Easter Island, waiting for a gig in a town where no one knew or cared who we were, chasing some idiotic dream I had no business chasing. I should’ve been home. I should’ve been getting ready to go to college. I should’ve had a job at Caldor’s or McDonald’s or the movie theater. I should’ve been going on dates. I should’ve been doing what all the other kids my age were doing.

A flash of lightning. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—the thunder starting with that staticky sizzle that said I’m here Harry, and I’m coming for you, setting up the cannon blast. BOOM! I flattened myself against the van and shut my eyes.

But I wasn’t all those other kids. I was different. I was a freak. I couldn’t work in Caldor’s or McDonald’s or the movie theater. I couldn’t go on dates. I was never going to get the girl. Or the job, or the money, or anything else. College was just going to be high school all over again with me the misfit. The misfit, not fitting, standing apart, alone, outside. Outside. A searing white light penetrated my eyelids, eyelids that were shut so tight that light shouldn’t have made it through the skin and muscle to my optic nerve, shouldn’t have been able to travel the length of that nerve to the neurons in my brain, the brain that was screaming for me to get the f*ck out of there.

One Missi—the explosion. A tree branch down the street shattering and falling to the ground. I didn’t see it, I heard it. I could hear that it was a dogwood tree, I could feel it catching fire. The rain was pouring down my face. Not a cleansing rain, a damning rain.

Hands. Cheyenne’s small delicate hands. More hands. Rougher, masculine. Pulling me, guiding me. My Converse high-tops soaked through, my socks soaked through, my skin soaked through, my bones wet. I allowed myself to be led, but didn’t open my eyes until those hands were helping me through the side door of the van. I crawled onto the bench in the back and balled myself up like a fetus. Cheyenne and Johnny climbed in next to me.

“I’m all right,” I managed to mutter. “Sorry.” I listed Beatle albums, with songs, in chronological order, to calm myself down. I began with Introducing the Beatles: “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Misery,” “Anna,” “Chains …”

Richie climbed in the front seat. He was drenched from head to toe, his face so smudged with grease and oil that he looked like something out of Apocalypse Now. He started the van, carefully depressed the clutch, and pulled the shift on the column into gear.

“F*cking A!” he screamed, as the gears engaged and we rolled on down the road.





WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES


(written by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, and performed by the Doobie Brothers)




No one stopped us as we sprinted through the student union   on the University of Richmond campus, racing to get to WDCE in time for our interview. I can only imagine what we looked like, with our drenched clothing, Richie’s blackened cheeks, and my own face, sideshow that it was. I’m surprised no one called the cops.

When we found the station, the actual studio was too small for the whole band, so Johnny and Cheyenne did the interview while Richie and I waited outside. This arrangement was never discussed. It just happened. This was Johnny after all. He was the front man. He was the voice. He was the leader. But this was also Johnny the tourist, the Potsie, Mr. Future College Boy, and it pissed me off.

It’s not like I wanted to do the interview. Hell no. I’d sooner have walked naked down a busy street. I just wished we’d talked about it first.

The three of them had tried to console me on the ride over to the campus, filling the van with one platitude after another. “It’s only natural, Harry, someone who’s been through what you’ve been through can’t help but have that reaction.” (Johnny) “We’re a family, Harry. We all love you. You have nothing to be embarrassed about with us.” (Cheyenne) “Don’t sweat it, dude. Lightning never strikes the same place twice.” (Richie)

Richie and I sat in the reception area, listening to the broadcast through speakers suspended from the ceiling. I traced a circle on my palm, feeling the outline of where Cheyenne’s hand had touched mine during the storm. That only made things worse.


DJ: So why “The Scar Boys”?

Johnny: Our guitarist picked the name. He was struck by lightning as a kid, and it left him with a few scars.

DJ: Struck by lightning, really?

Johnny: It’s the truth.

DJ: Don’t you think that brings you bad luck?

Johnny: Just the opposite. Like Richie, our drummer, always says, no one ever gets struck by lightning twice.

Cheyenne: Though I suppose he could get electrocuted onstage.

I listened as the three of them—Johnny, Cheyenne, and the DJ—clucked insincere, staged chuckles, laughter without feeling, laugh-track laughter. And I convinced myself right then and there that I was and had always been nothing more than the Scar Boys’ gimmick. I was a prop.

The radio interview managed to get a handful of people out to the club that night, which was a handful more than the first gig on the tour. They were with us by the third song, on their feet and dancing. I let the music revive me and felt my emotional funk fade. The alder wood of my guitar vibrated against my stomach. It was the same sensation as feeling a cat purr and it calmed me down. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the groove.

Later, packed, loaded, and ready to go, we decided we needed a night in a hotel. It’d been three nights sleeping in the van, and we were starting to get rank. Richie guided Dino back to the highway and then off the very first exit where we found a sea of budget motor inns. With the money my dad had given me burning a hole in my pocket, we booked two rooms. Johnny, Richie, and I retreated to one, Cheyenne to the other.

I dozed off right away, but it didn’t take. I woke up an hour later with Richie sawing wood in the bed next to me and Johnny off sleeping in the bathtub. I got up and let myself out of the room with as much stealth as I could manage. A blast of warm, wet air slapped me fully awake. I closed the door and stood for a moment, leaning on the railing, looking down over the small parking lot. A dozen cars and our van filled half the spaces.

I was depressed and I was confused. It didn’t make sense. Being on the road should’ve been the happiest time of my life. This was all I’d ever wanted and I was somehow blowing it. I tried to distract myself by memorizing all the license plates I could read from my perch, but I got bored.

Cheyenne was in the room next to ours and without stopping to think about what I was doing or why, I crept low, sidled up to her door, and listened.

Laughing. No, not laughing. Moaning.

This is the place in the story, FAP, where I expect you will audibly groan, horrified that the protagonist (me) doesn’t see what’s coming, and that the reader (you) will wonder how such an idiot got to be a protagonist in the first place. But this isn’t a story, and I’m not a protagonist. I’m just me. The fact is, sometimes we just don’t see what we don’t want to see.

Curtains were drawn across the window, but they were being blown out and billowed by the air conditioner, allowing a glimpse inside: A partially finished bottle of Coke sat on a nightstand; a TV screen glowed blue; and Johnny moved to and fro, on top of Cheyenne. I couldn’t see their faces, only their bodies from the torso down, but I still knew it was them.

I wanted to throw up, I wanted to bang on the door. At the very least I wanted to walk away. But I could only sit and watch until he was done. Until they were done. I let myself back into my room and stretched out in the tub where Johnny was supposed to be.

I shut my eyes and slept the sleep of the dead.





MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL


(written by Ric Ocasek, and performed by The Cars)




In our junior year of high school, I sat behind Johnny in trigonometry. It was the only time we were ever in the same class.

Johnny McKenna’s name was a permanent fixture on the RHS honor roll. He took Advanced Placement courses, aced all his tests, and was on his way to graduating in the top ten of our class. As I’ve already established it was a different story for me, though there was one exception: math.

There’s something about the logic of math that I find beautiful. No, really, I do. It probably has to do with how Dr. Kenny trained me to embrace the truth of things, and math, no matter how you look at it, is always true.

When I got placed into honors trig, my dad was so happy I thought he was going to pee himself. He kept talking about how with math as a foundation I could be an engineer or a physicist. It went in one ear and out the other. I was just psyched that Johnny and I were going to be taking a class together.

For the first few months, it was great. We would meet outside the room, catch each other up on news of the day, and then take our seats. During class, we’d pass notes when the teacher wasn’t looking. Johnny always initiated the note passing, usually offering some comment about the band or something he’d seen on TV.

In December of that year, he passed me a note that said: So are you ever going to get a girlfriend?

Johnny would say things like this to me all the time. Part of me thinks he was genuinely interested in my happiness. Another part thinks it gave him a feeling of superiority to know that I had no shot. My answer was always the same.

No, I wrote on the note without going into any more detail and passed it back. Why not? You know why.

Okay, okay, he wrote back, but if you WERE going to date a girl, who would you want it to be?

I didn’t really like where this was going, so I put the note in my pocket and didn’t answer. A minute later Johnny passed me a new note.

Well????

Well, nothing.

We went back and forth like this for a while, but eventually, Johnny wore me down.

Kristen Greeley, I wrote, sorry I did as soon as the note left my hand. Johnny read it, nodded, and didn’t say anymore. I thought that was kind of weird, but then I forgot about it.

Two weeks later, Johnny canceled our nightly run because he had a date with Kristen Greeley. You can draw your own conclusions, FAP, but I think we can both figure out what happened.

The two of them only went out twice. That was enough, I guess, for Johnny to prove his point: namely that he could have everything I couldn’t.

And that brings us back to Virginia.





I CAN’T DRIVE 55


(written and performed by Sammy Hagar)




Just before sunrise someone nudged my foot.

It was Johnny.

“Harry?” he asked. I could see right away that he’d figured out why I was sleeping in the tub. He and Cheyenne were out of the closet. He looked at me, waiting for I don’t know what. Absolution? Celebration? There was nothing to say, so we just stared at each other for a minute before he nodded and walked off.

I lay there for a while, not sure what to do. Here are some of the things I considered:

Broken Heart Remedy #1: Fill the tub with water and try to drown or maybe electrocute myself. But I didn’t really see how that would help.

Broken Heart Remedy #2: Quit the band and take a bus home, though that didn’t seem any better than Remedy #1.

Broken Heart Remedy #3: Get drunk. This was my favorite idea, but it was only five in the morning, and truth be told, I’d only ever been drunk once before and didn’t have a fake ID with which to buy booze.

Broken Heart Remedy #4: Punch Johnny in the face and be done with the whole thing. Okay, this was my favorite idea, but who was I kidding? I didn’t have it in me. Even after watching him break his own promise about Cheyenne, watching him steal the girl I knew should be mine, I still couldn’t play any role other than Spock to his Kirk. Strike that. More like Chekov to his Kirk. Strike that again. More like Unnamed Male Ensign Number Three to his Kirk.

Broken Heart Remedy #5 should have been to talk to Johnny and Cheyenne, to clear the air and tell them how I was feeling, but honestly, it never occurred to me.


In the end, I did the only thing I was programmed to do—I pretended it hadn’t happened. I buried my emotions in a secret place with no windows and no doors. Either they would suffocate and vanish, or they would catch fire and burn everything down.

Once their relationship was public knowledge, Johnny and Cheyenne flaunted it. They held hands, they hugged and kissed in public, they gave each other little neck massages. Each new sign of affection was like the pinprick of a tiny knife.

I tried to talk to Richie about it, but he just said, “Ah, dude,” and walked away. I didn’t really know what that meant, but it made me feel kind of stupid, so I didn’t ask again.

We had a gig in Durham the next night opening for a popular local band. They were a two-piece—crunchy, rockabilly guitar and spare, taut drums—and they filled the room with students from Duke and UNC. Our music didn’t fit the vibe, so we weren’t sure how well we’d go over with the crowd, but go over we did. No one told us that our B-side, “A*sholes Like Us,” had been getting played on the Duke radio station. When we closed our set, half the audience was singing along.

Hey Mom, I’m gonna drop out of school

’Cause I think it’s so cool

Gonna play in a rock ’n’ roll band.

Don’t shed a tear

Was only eighteen years to figure out

You were so bland.

Gonna spend all my money

’Cause I think it’s funny

Gonna blow it on a real shitty van

Driving through the states

It’ll be great

Getting laid wherever I can.

What’s it like to be my mother?

What’s it like to be my father?

What’s it like to be my brother?

To have to deal with an a*shole like me.

Other than big hair and Yuppie bullshit, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot to rebel against, so we focused our angst inward, rebelling against ourselves. At least we had a sense of humor about it.

It was by every external measure a great gig, and playing music did let me forget about things for a while. But the sense of relief faded with the last chord of our last song. Watching Johnny and Chey hug one another and laugh after the set was enough to send me into a deep funk. I was in the funk to end all funks. I was Parliament Funkadelic.

When we left the club it was already after three in the morning. There wasn’t much point in trying to find a place to sleep, so we decided to drive straight through to our next gig, in Athens, Georgia.

I drove the first shift with Richie next to me in the passenger seat, his mouth open and drooling, his slow breathing keeping time with the whine of the tires on the road. A 7-Eleven Big Gulp full of Coke was balanced on his lap. We had a rule that whoever rode in the passenger seat was supposed to help the driver stay awake and entertained. It only seemed to work when I was the passenger. Johnny and Cheyenne were sacked out in the back, the two of them twisted together like a pretzel.

Every time I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, or in the transparent reflection cast by the dashboard lights on the interior of the windshield, I felt sick. I was grotesque, a thing to be shunned, an Untouchable. And that seemed right to me. A person who looked like me didn’t have the right to feel anything different, didn’t deserve to be happy.

Had I stopped for even just one minute to think about things, had I found a way to step back and gain perspective, I might’ve felt different. I was the guitar player in a touring rock band and was living every kid’s dream. Even more than that, the stage was the one place where my scars didn’t matter. Sure, I did my best to cover my face and neck, but people still knew there was something wrong with me—I mean, duh, we were called the Scar Boys for a reason—they just didn’t care. To them I was just a guy in a band. A good band. A band that made them want to dance and shout and sing. I, Harbinger Robert Francis Jones, was making people happy. That should’ve been enough to make me happy, too. But perspective, I’m told, doesn’t come easily to teenagers, and it never came to me at all.

I tried to distract the tornado swirling in my head by listing, in alphabetical order, every word I could remember from eleventh grade Spanish, starting with almuerzo. I got as far as desayuno when a loud metallic rattle, coming from somewhere deep inside the engine, announced itself with a fury.

We were somewhere near Spartanburg, South Carolina.

“What’s that noise?” Richie asked, sitting up straight and rubbing his eyes. His sudden movement caused the Big Gulp to spill all over his pants.

“Shit,” he muttered. He was half annoyed and half amused. That was what I always loved about Richie. He could find the humor in anything.

The noise in the engine sounded like a handful of ball bearings thrown into a washing machine.

“I don’t know what it is,” I answered, “it just started. And we seem to be losing power.”

“Since when?” he asked.

“Since right now. I have it floored and we’re only doing fifty.”

“Shit,” he said again, tapping his teeth with his fingernail and looking at his watch. “Get off at the next exit.”

Five minutes later we found ourselves in the parking lot of a McDonald’s, the interior shrouded in darkness, the golden arches silent and gray.

“Stay here and rev the engine when I say so.” Richie hopped out and went to a pay phone in front of the van.

Johnny stirred in the back. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t answer. My anger had become a festering sore that needed to burst, but I wouldn’t let it.

“Harry?”

“Something wrong with Dino,” I mumbled. “I think Richie wants to call his dad.”

“Cotter pin?”

“I have no idea.”

Richie motioned to me, so I stepped on the gas, throttling up the volume of the rattle in the engine.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Johnny said.

“What’s he doing?” Cheyenne asked, pointing at Richie.

I couldn’t believe it, but Richie was holding the pay phone up to the van. He had me gun the accelerator a few more times, talked for another minute, hung up, and hopped back in. The look on my face must’ve asked the unstated question.

“I wanted my dad to hear the engine,” he said.

“Over a pay phone?”

“You got a better idea?” I didn’t. “He says we probably threw an engine rod.”

“Let me guess, that’s bad,” Johnny said.

“Yeah, that’s real bad,” Richie answered, unable to hide the anxiety in his voice. “If we did throw a rod, it’s only a matter of time until the engine stops working all together and needs to be replaced.”

“Replace the engine?”

“Yeah.”

We were all silent for a moment.

“Is there any—” Johnny started.

“No. I mean, we can put heavier oil in, but that’ll only buy us time. Think of this sucker as having a massive brain tumor. The survival rate is zero.” As we talked about it more, I learned from Richie that technically, we hadn’t “thrown the rod” yet. One of the shafts in the engine that moves the pistons had come loose and was knocking around. That was the rattling. And because we had one piston malfunctioning badly, we didn’t have full power. That was the poor acceleration. In time the rod would come completely loose and break through the engine casing. When that happened, we were dead in the water.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“We keep going for as long as we can.” This from Johnny. I looked at Richie who could only shrug.


“Okay then.” I put Dino in gear, and pulled back onto the highway.

Twenty-nine miles later, there was a loud THWACK! Thick smoke filled the cabin of the van and oil spewed everywhere on the road. I was able to make it to the shoulder where Dino let out his last gasp and died on the spot. We were still one hundred miles from Athens—all our equipment, all our luggage, all our hopes and dreams entombed in rusted metal.