Die Young with Me

by Rob Rufus

  If the note was out of tune, the tuner flashed red. If it was on the right note, the lights turned green. Nat concentrated, biting his lip as the string stretched tighter over the neck of the bass. I thought it would snap.

  But finally, the light turned green.

  He plugged the bass into the little amplifier. He strummed an open note. The volume sent sound vibrations up my chest and into my throat. I heard the basement door slam shut.

  “You wanna play something?” Nat asked.

  “I don’t know how to play yet.”

  “Well, why don’t you start by hitting the drums?”

  I laughed. “Okay, dickhead, cover your ears.”

  I took the sticks into my hands and hit the snare drum and cymbal. It was LOUD—every little addition to the drums seemed to increase the volume a thousandfold. No stereo speakers could ever have matched this sound.

  Nat waved his hands for me to stop.

  “No, no, dude!” he yelled. “You have to count off!”

  “Oh yeah . . .”

  He turned his amp up as loud as it would go. I could hear it humming. Nat looked at me and nodded.

  I swallowed hard, and my arms tensed. I held the drumsticks up—X—above my head. I nodded back at my brother.

  “One!”—click—

  “Two!”—click—

  “One! Two! Onetwothreefour!”

  The room exploded.

  THREE

  Everyone You’ll Never Know

  1

  Those years were spent underground.

  We took the music seriously, just like we promised we would. We picked it up by ear, slowly trying to learn every song in our growing record collection. Other kids came over to jam with us, all of them basically strangers.

  For years we struggled at forming a band. Every time we thought we’d found other members, it always seemed to fizzle out after a few rehearsals. It wasn’t until we met Brody, standing at the register of Davidson’s with the only copy of a Bouncing Souls CD, that things changed.

  We’d never met before, because he went to the Catholic school across town. He was tall, with birdlike features. He wore a cabbie hat low on his face. To tell the truth, his spastic energy made me uncomfortable. But he played bass. And he loved punk rock. So fuck it.

  Having two bassists was pointless, obviously. So Nat went back to the pawnshop and traded his bass for an electric guitar. He picked power chords up easily, and took to it like a quasi-prodigy.

  Two weeks after Nat became an official guitarist, Brody came over. We learned a cover of “Do What You Want” by Bad Religion. Nat sang it, because no one else would. After playing the same song about a hundred times, I had to admit that we sounded pretty good—we sounded fucking great!

  The band was on.

  We decided to call ourselves DOA—Defiance of Authority. We thought it sounded tough, like a spelled-out middle finger.

  We deemed Nat our lead singer by default. The three of us practiced almost every day, learning three or four cover songs a week. It wasn’t long before Nat started writing his own material.

  Mostly he wrote vague rip-offs of other songs—­political shit, love songs, whatever. It was exciting as hell. Whenever I saw him alone, hunched over his guitar scribbling lyrics onto notepads, I felt like I was in a legitimate band.

  Not a jam band. Not a cover band. A band band—the kind of band that could actually do something. The kind of band that could make it, whatever that meant.

  * * *

  Except we couldn’t get a gig.

  We were too loud for open-mic nights. And at fifteen, we weren’t old enough to play in the bars. It sucked. We couldn’t even play parties, because we were never invited to them. After months of looking for shows, I started thinking that our band might be DOA for real.

  It was Paul who had the idea—if no one would book us, we should just put on a concert ourselves. He found two event halls—the VFW and the YWCA—who were willing to rent to minors. Once again by default, Paul became a concert promoter.

  The Y was a basically abandoned building on the west end, used for AA meetings and support groups. Paul haggled them down to fifty dollars a night—just $12.50 between the four of us. If we charged five bucks, and ten people came, we could break even. If we got more people to come, we agreed to put the extra cash toward having another show.

  We started looking for bands to play with. The more bands we could find, the more people might come to the gig. The college was good for a few bands (usually white-dude reggae), and small towns are always good for a few middle-aged heavy metal bands. The guys who begged for change outside of the library told Brody that they had a band—an anarchist punk group called Mountain State Militia. They agreed to play the show (if they could borrow our instruments).

  Nat made a concert flyer using cutout letters from magazines. I thought it looked more like a ransom note. Dad let us run off copies at his office—we made a hundred. The black ink was hot to the touch.

  We skated all around town with the flyers. We taped them up on poles and storefront windows, in bathrooms and on stop signs. Davidson’s put one on their door. The only place in town that we didn’t put up flyers was school—if the show sucked, I didn’t want anyone there to see it.

  * * *

  Nat and I showed up to the YWCA early, so no one would see our parents drop us off. We helped Paul move all the folding chairs into a corner, while Brody set up the PA on the small stage. The other bands arrived around six, and soon it was almost time for the show to start.

  I can remember standing in the corner, watching people file in as Paul worked the door. Everyone looked at least ten years older than me. A few seemed wasted. I saw tattoos of roses and faded barbed wire. One guy wore a cutoff Misfits shirt down past his knees. A group of crusty punks showed up out of nowhere, all wearing camo and black. Paul told me later that they smelled like old dog food, and paid the cover in change.

  Twenty-two people showed up for that show.

  Twenty-two people saw a handmade poster for a punk rock concert in an abandoned YWCA and came! It was fucking amazing—all these semi-punks and loners had been living in my town, and before that night I hadn’t even known it.

  * * *

  When the first band started, no one was sure what to do. No bands ever came through Huntington, and none of us were used to being at concerts. All we could do was imitate what we saw in videos and magazines. A couple guys headbanged, and one tried (unsuccessfully) to start a mosh pit.

  But by the time Defiance of Authority went on, the crowd was all warmed up. We played mostly cover songs, and snuck the few originals that Nat had written into the set. Playing to an audience was so different from jamming in the basement. I could barely focus on what I was doing.

  The crowd finally started moshing a little, and when we played our Bad Religion cover, the guys who were dancing ended up on the stage. They ran into each other, pushing and spitting at us, bumping into our equipment.

  It was one of the best nights of my life.

  * * *

  And so that was that.

  Nat kept writing songs. Paul kept putting on shows—and the crowds kept growing. Some kids came to check out the music. Most just came for something to do. But for those of us who considered ourselves punk rockers, the chance to meet other like-minded losers was huge.

  A few others started putting on their own shows. A lot of kids decided to form bands of their own. Soon there was a show at least every two weeks. Time was now measured by concerts.

  * * *

  My brother soon turned from a “singer” into a front man. He wanted to look like a lead singer—he dyed his hair jet-black, contorting it into a pathetic replica of a Social Distortion pompadour. Onstage he would wear only black.

  By the time we entered high school, we both needed glasses. I ended up wi
th a pair of thick-rimmed black frames that made my eyes look huge. Nat refused to wear any. He said it would “fuck up his stage presence.” He said he’d rather go blind.

  * * *

  When we were sixteen, Nat convinced me to bleach my hair from blond to white. He thought it would help us stand out more onstage. I ended up with a burnt scalp and hair the color of unhealthy piss. I dug it. I spent a half hour each morning using gobs of glue to spike it into brutally sharp points.

  Nat was right—for the first time, we weren’t identical. You’d never be able to tell we were twins, unless you saw us together.

  And we were always together.

  * * *

  By the time I was seventeen, we were pulling in about a hundred kids a show. We were sure we could get a big-time record deal now—we just weren’t sure how to make it happen.

  We recorded demo tape after demo tape of our original material. I mailed copies out to Epitaph Records, Nitro Records, Lookout! Records, Fat Wreck Chords—all the record labels that specialized in punk bands.

  I’m still waiting to hear back from them.

  * * *

  In terms of business, it was Brody who really started guiding the band. He found countless books on the music business—touring, management, promotion. After reading a few, he realized some contained lists of contacts.

  So—like my brother with his liner notes—Brody plowed through each book, making spreadsheets of label addresses, booking agencies, tour promoters, phone numbers, e-mails, and contacts. He was sure that it was common sense, not songwriting, that would finally score us a record deal.

  His latest plan was to get us on the Warped Tour.

  Magazine ads for the past five Warped Tours were taped on the walls of our basement—Pennywise, ­Social D, Sublime, Bad Religion, FEAR, Descendents—all of our favorite bands went on this tour! It was like a punk rock circus, all these awesome bands in one place—every summer, when the tour kicked off, I ached to get to go to a show. But we lived in West Virginia. No tours ever passed through.

  In the back of the book Everyone You’ll Never Know: An Insider’s Guide Through the Music Biz, Brody hit the fucking jackpot—he found the contact information for Kevin Lyman, the organizer of the tour.

  So he mailed him our latest demo and a handwritten letter of adoration. Brody was sure it would butter him up enough to put Defiance of Authority on the tour.

  If we could get on Warped, we could get a record deal. When record-label fat cats came to see the bands on their rosters, we would be waiting. We’d beg, we’d plead, we wouldn’t let them leave until they watched us play.

  Brody was certain his new plan would work.

  I had faith in the plan too—why wouldn’t I? It was nice to imagine leaving our town, nice to imagine the band having a shot at the big time. It was nice to have a plan.

  So, at seventeen—while school got harder, the girls got scarier, and adulthood loomed on the horizon—I didn’t pay anything much mind. All that shit seemed secondary to me now.

  School was nothing but a waiting room.

  2

  Nat and I shared a 1986 Ford Astrovan named Sheena. Her windows were tinted, and her left brake light was cracked. She was painted the color of pond scum. We’d covered her backside in stickers and hung dice from the rearview mirror. There was a tape deck that worked okay, and the previous owner had installed a CD player. But her upholstery—covered in stains and cigarette burns—showed her age.

  Other kids might have been embarrassed to drive an old van, but not us. We fucking loved it. Because we only thought of Sheena in her official capacity—tour van.

  Of course, we had no tours to go on. But that wasn’t the point.

  Touring was eventual—if we didn’t get on the Warped Tour, something else would come along. Maybe one of our demo tapes would finally be heard, and we’d score some huge record deal—it didn’t matter how we got the record deal; we’d get to go on tour and promote the rec­ord. So having a van put us ahead of the curve—when the future came calling, we would be ready.

  * * *

  While we waited for Epitaph Records to track us down, we mostly used the tour van to drive to school. Paul rode with us every morning, although he cared about school even less than me. By eleventh grade, he didn’t even bring his books.

  Huntington High sat on a steep hill outside of town. Only one road led to the school, and each morning we took our place in the clogged line of buses and muddy pickups. On top of the hill was a flagpole where the Christian kids did a morning prayer. I ignored them on my way into the building.

  The walls were lined with massive trophy cases, which were mostly a shrine to then current sports heroes. I often saw them smiling at themselves through the dirty glass. Our same little gang stood together beneath the stairwell.

  When the first bell rang it meant I had to leave my friends. I strolled down the hallway alone, into the fuck-off that defined my high school existence.

  I sat in the back singing songs, undressing girls, and watching music videos all in my head—but mostly, I thought about my band.

  I wrote setlists for imaginary tours, I chose outfits to wear onstage, I dreamed up countless album covers—­anything not to focus on how slow the minute hand moved.

  * * *

  If there wasn’t a punk show going on, we spent Saturday nights just driving around. Nat, Paul, and I—sometimes more, never less—would just get into the van, crank the stereo, and go.

  We would cruise all around the town—past the park and its empty benches, past the public pool now drained and abandoned. We took the winding hill up Washington Boulevard, where the houses grew larger by the block. On the other side of the hill, the houses got small again. Drunken railroad workers spilt out of dive bars, onto the sidewalks. From there, we drove into downtown, past rows and rows of boarded-up storefronts.

  We always ended up at the river.

  We parked past the flood wall, which blocked out the few lights still burning behind us. We’d sit in the van with our seat belts off, barely speaking. The moon was bright on the river, floating eternally downstream.

  After we had driven the entire town, there was nothing left to do but circle back. Back to the east end, or maybe to the west. We didn’t care where we ended up. There was no destination. We covered ground aimlessly, like animals pacing in a cage.

  3

  I tried to talk to the girls in my class. The attempts were pathetically executed. Nat said that I was overly ­complimentary; I focused on small things—nail polish, ­perfume—stuff I figured their boyfriends never noticed.

  Sometimes the girls were nice enough to let me ramble on, until they could break away from the conversation politely. But I knew they didn’t take me seriously—fuck, how could they? Everything I said came off as grossly innocent.

  So mainly, I just watched them.

  Not like a creep or anything—I just mean that I admired them.

  A lot.

  I admired the way they brushed their hair behind their ears as they smiled, and the sound of their laughter down the halls. I was amazed how these creatures seemed so unaware of their sex—their breasts, their curves, all perfect by existence alone. I memorized the quarter-inch gaps between the bottoms of their shirts and the tops of their pants.

  I focused like my glasses gave me X-ray eyes.

  I stood in the hallways, and I leaned on the walls. I watched girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl after girl.

  I felt lucky just to be that close.

  FOUR

  Shitsville, USA

  1

  Ali Wilhelm was in the top tier of girls who passed me in the hallway each morning. She was one of the ­best-looking chicks in the whole fucking school. Guys wasted their Friday nights at football games just so they could watch he
r clap and bounce with the rest of the cheerleading squad. She had long black hair she wore straight down her shoulders, the way an Indian princess or metalhead might. Her skin was gold, no matter the season.

  I’d see her with her boyfriends in the parking lot after school—always jocks and good-looking and older. The yearbook committee even voted her “Best Smile” every year—I mean, this chick was award-winning.

  She lived up on Washington Boulevard, like all her friends. They were all cheerleaders. They were all loaded. They were all gorgeous. And they all ignored me.

  Except for Mandy, Ali’s best friend.

  Mandy was big and blond, with tits so huge that they circled from bad to good, then back to bad again. She was the ugliest of the pretty girls, but she refused to be overshadowed by her cheerleader friends. She got her attention by being the loudest person in the room. Any room.

  The two of them walked through school together every morning.

  That morning, I was in the hallway doing my thing. I could hear Mandy’s bellow before the two of them were ever in sight. When Mandy and Ali rounded the corner, they were both laughing. They must be stoned, I thought. No one laughs that fucking hard this early.

  I scoped out Ali as she walked. I watched her body move—left foot, right foot, left hip, right hip, right breast, left breast—everything pulsed to some forbidden beat that my eyes couldn’t quite stay in time with. Watching. Leching. Ogling. I couldn’t help it. Her voodoo strut hypnotized me.

  “Hey!” Mandy yelled my way.

  Fuck. I was busted. Shit. I was a complete creep.

  I tried to look away, but they were already walking toward me.

  “Hi,” I mumbled. It was the closest I’d ever stood to either of them.

  Ali—jesusfuckingchrist, man. She was even prettier up close.

  And she had freckles—she was covered in freckles. How had I never noticed? They made intricate patterns under her eyes. They ran down her neckline, speckling the bones above her breasts before they disappeared down her shirt.