by Len Vlahos
When you stripped all that other shit away—the broken, repaired, and rebroken friendship between me and Johnny; the broken, repaired, and rebroken relationship between Chey and Johnny; my unrequited love for Cheyenne—when all that nonsense was gone, locked in a drawer with no key, when only the music was left, it was a beautiful thing.
But that was only true while we were actually playing music. The moments in between the songs at that rehearsal were torture. I reverted all the way back to my thirteen-year-old self and hardly said two words. Johnny, his face a blank slate, devoid of any emotion, barely spoke. Cheyenne didn’t engage with any of us in any way between the songs, though she kept turning around, making sure we all saw her new tattoo. If she wasn’t going to say anything about it, neither was I, but, really, I thought it was pretty cool.
It was a severed leg with a lightning bolt on it. That girl has bravado. You have to love that. The rest of the time, she sat on her amp and plucked the bass, only looking up when the next song started.
The moments without music were like those first moments all these years ago between decreasing doses of methadone as Dr. Kenny weaned me off. But when the music started, man, oh, man, it worked. It just worked.
RICHIE MCGILL
That was the weirdest rehearsal ever.
I mean, Scar Boys rehearsals always went the same way: we would sit and wait for Johnny to tell us what to do. Maybe every so often, one of us would get a bug up our ass to play a certain song and just launch into it, but most of the time Johnny led the way. And if Johnny wasn’t all there, like right after the thing with his leg, Harry would step in.
At that rehearsal, the first one after Jeff bawled us out, the other guys just sat there, looking at me. I’m thinking, like, What the fuck did I do? And they’re still just looking at me. Then I figured it out. They were all so caught up in their own stupid shit that they were waiting for me to take over. I’m the drummer, for chrissakes. I mean, yeah, Don Henley and Phil Collins do that shit, but I’m more of a Keith Moon–Tommy Ramone kind of dude. Leading wasn’t my thing.
Harry was twitchy, looking like he wanted to say something but couldn’t or wouldn’t; Chey kept her head down, turning around every so often so we could see her new tattoo; and Johnny kept writing in this little black book. It was the kind of book that Fonzie used to keep girls’ phone numbers in. It was the first time I ever noticed it, but I don’t think I ever saw him without it after that. Every time there was a break in the music, Johnny opened the book and started scribbling stuff down. It was like he was getting lost in the words or something. When I looked more closely, I could see that the book wasn’t new. He had it opened to the middle, and it was kind of bent and worn. He caught me looking and covered it up like it was some big secret.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Cheyenne’s tattoo, by the way, was maybe the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was so badass. I went out two days later and got my own. It’s in a place that only a special few have gotten to see.
HARBINGER JONES
No matter what Jeff said, no matter what kind of nonsense was going on between the four of us—well, really, the three of us, because Richie was immune to all of it—these people were my friends. They were practically my family.
You know how I could tell? The music. Total strangers or business partners, or whatever it was we were supposed to be, can’t make music like that. They just can’t.
What we had was special.
I’d been struggling to find an ending to my fifty-thousand-word college essay, and it was then, while playing music at the first rehearsal after the New Year’s debacle, that I figured it out.
I couldn’t go to college. Of course I couldn’t go to college. I wasn’t craving some sort of conventional experience that prepared for me an even more conventional existence. The world told me a long time ago that it would not let me conform to its established norms, so why should I start now?
Maybe I was a coward. And maybe my face was a mangled piece of meat that scared children and small animals. And maybe I had a rougher go of it than seemed fair, but I had something else, too. Even with all the shit that was swirling around the Scar Boys, I had friends and I had purpose.
Johnny, Chey, and I had worked through stuff before, and we would work through stuff again. It might take time, but we would get back to a better place. I could feel it in my bones. I would just bide my time while it all sorted itself out.
Until then I would find joy and peace in the music, just like Johnny and I did that first day we played together after Georgia. That moment—the two of us in his bedroom, me playing guitar and him singing, with no structure, no rules, no bullshit, all the baggage left at the door—is one of the happiest moments of my life. If the University of Scranton, or anyone else, wanted to really understand me, they needed to understand that. I had my ending.
I finished the essay that night and mailed the package the following day. Even though I’d decided not to go to college, I submitted the application to Scranton anyway. I figured I owed my parents that much. And, hey, it never hurts to keep your options open.
PART EIGHT,
JANUARY TO MARCH 1987
It was a job, and I was just doing my job.
—Johnny Ramone
What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?
CHEYENNE BELLE
Duh, getting knocked up.
HARBINGER JONES
Letting a bunch of older kids tie me to a tree during a thunderstorm. I mean, I didn’t even put up a fight. I’m not sure it would have turned out different if I had fought back. Who knows, maybe I would’ve been beaten up and then tied to a tree and almost struck by lightning anyway, but at least I would’ve tried to do something about it.
RICHIE MCGILL
This interview.
Nah, I’m just kidding. The dumbest thing I ever did was not tell my mom I loved her when I had the chance. She died of cancer when I was a little kid. By the time the end came, she looked so skinny and so sick that I was afraid of her. Think about how fucked up that is, a little kid being scared of his own mom.
When she was about to go into surgery, my dad tried to get me to go wish her luck and tell her how much I loved her, but I wouldn’t do it. I just stayed in the hospital waiting room, reading comic books. My dad didn’t push it. He let me hang out there with my aunt.
My mom died during the operation.
For a long time, I thought it was my fault, that if I’d told her I loved her, maybe she would’ve lived.
I told my dad all that a few years later, and it was the only time, other than my mom’s funeral, that I saw him cry.
CHEYENNE BELLE
Things settled down for the next two months. We were back to a pretty routine schedule of rehearsing, and when I wasn’t rehearsing, I was at the bookstore. I’d kept the drinking mostly under control, only occasionally letting it get bad, and was feeling pretty good about things.
Jeff kept pressuring me to crash at his apartment. I said yes sometimes, but a lot of times I said no. I felt mature and grown-up with Jeff, but I also felt pretty bad.
The only boy I’d ever slept with before Jeff was Johnny, and that ended with me having a miscarriage and him losing his leg. I mean, he didn’t lose his leg because we had sex, but in my mind, everything was all twisted together in one of those crazy tight knots that you can never seem to unravel, you know?
The first time Jeff and I were together—and, really, most of the times we had sex—I was so drunk that I barely remembered it. I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that was more than nerves and less than nausea. There was no real pleasure in it for me, other than knowing that I could still please someone else. And for whatever reason, that mattered to me. I felt broken, and being able to please someone else made me, on some level, feel whole again. I guess that’s kind of messed up.
I was also terrified that Harry and Johnny would find out. They would’ve both freaked out.
But
then again, maybe not.
The Scar Boys was a completely different band than it used to be. We were still tight musically—in some ways, tighter than ever—but the joy had gone out of playing. It was turning into a job.
I told that to Jeff on one of the few nights I did stay in the city.
“That’s good,” he said. “It should feel like a job. You guys need to understand what a slog this is going to be.” Slog. Another Jeff word.
He was standing in the kitchen of his apartment—he called it a railroad flat, whatever that was—wearing only tighty whities and a smile. I had kind of hoped that grown men wore something better under their clothes, but maybe that was only in movies.
The apartment was long and narrow, with hardwood floors and exposed-brick walls. There were framed concert posters everywhere, giving the space just the right amount of cool. It’s exactly what a girl like me thought a New York City apartment was supposed to look like. Except for the roaches. Lots of roaches. More roaches than should be allowed to live in one place. Jeff spread this white powder called Borax along the floorboards to kill them, but I’m not sure it worked. It might’ve helped if he’d ever bothered to clean a dish in his sink.
“But if this isn’t fun, why does anyone do it?” I asked.
“Have you ever worked a real job?”
“You know I work at the bookstore.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure that sitting around all day and reading books and talking about James Joyce Oates or whoever is work.”
“That’s not how it is at all in a boo—”
“Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”
There was a bit of Johnny in Jeff. When a conversation was closed, it was closed. Because he was older, I went along with it. Plus, he let me drink when we were at his place.
“When are you going to get us another gig?” I asked.
“Funny you should bring that up.”
I waited.
“I just found out today and was waiting for the right time to tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“I got you a gig opening for another band.”
He was having fun stringing this out, and I let him.
“A pretty cool band.”
I waited.
“At a pretty cool club.”
The long pause this time was more than I could take. “Well?”
“Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, May seventh, eighth, and ninth, the Scar Boys will be opening for . . .”
“Oh, c’mon!”
“Drum roll, please.”
“Jeff!”
“The Fleshtones. Three nights at Irving Plaza.”
“What?” I was blown away. “Really?”
“Really. And it wasn’t an easy gig to get. Usually, the label wants that spot for another band on their roster, but I talked them down in price.”
“How much?”
“You guys are doing it for free.”
I didn’t care, and I’m pretty sure the other guys weren’t going to care, either. I ran over to Jeff and gave him a monster hug. “We have to tell the other guys right now!”
“No, we can let that wait ’til tomorrow.” He looked me in the eyes, took me by the hand, and started to lead me to the end of the apartment with the bed.
“Wait,” I said. He stopped and looked at me again. “I need more wine.”
HARBINGER JONES
Not surprisingly, the faceless admissions professional at the University of Scranton didn’t appreciate my fifty-thousand-word application essay, and a form rejection letter was dispatched. Quickly, I might add.
I showed it to my parents. They didn’t know that I had sent the school a book-length treatise on my life and assumed that the rejection had to do with my grades, my SAT scores, and my having taken a year off. My dad kept harping on that last one.
“It was a waste of a year, Harry,” he blustered in my general direction one afternoon. “I’m sorry you didn’t get into Scranton, but I’m not surprised.” He held my gaze and sized me up. “You need a Plan B.”
Plan B was the same as Plan A: play music. It’s what I was meant to do. Can you imagine Jimmy Page if he hadn’t played guitar? Can you picture him with short hair, in a suit and tie, doing data entry at some accounting firm?
My dad’s idea of Plan B was for me to take classes at the local community college, the same place the rest of the high school misfits and miscreants wound up. It was like a holding pen for people who grew up to amount to something less than they were supposed to be.
Community college: dreams not welcome.
Sure, some kids made the most of it, putting their time in and transferring to a four-year college, and good for them. But I didn’t have any illusions. For me, it would be like a Roach Motel. If I checked in, I would never check out.
Even knowing that, I agreed to my father’s version of Plan B and registered for a writing course that summer. The whole exercise of the Scranton application essay showed me how much I liked to write, and I figured why not.
So other than trying to keep my parents (mostly my dad) off my back about school and about getting a job, I spent my mornings sleeping, my afternoons rehearsing, and my nights playing computer games. It developed into a kind of seamless routine that bordered on becoming a rut. If it wasn’t for Richie’s school schedule and my dad being gone four nights a week, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to tell you what day it was.
The rehearsals were great musically but otherwise lifeless. I know that sounds like a contradiction, because, really, music is life, but that’s the way it was.
Cheyenne added three more tattoos, but still not one word about them was mentioned. It’s like they had become logos for our newfound lack of friendship. Any acknowledgment of Chey’s body art would have been an overt act of intimacy, and that was simply not allowed.
Except for when we returned from Georgia, those two months were the longest period of time we’d gone, since early in the eleventh grade, without a gig and without working on a new song. Newness had no place in what we were doing. We had gone from being an organism to being a machine.
The rehearsals became so repetitive that my brain would sort of check out. I found myself going back to old habits and running through lists in my head while I mindlessly strummed the chords to our songs. It’s amazing how quickly the details of a list can leave a person’s brain. I used to know every world capital cold. Now I was struggling with some of the easy ones. Was Lusaka the capital of Zambia or Zimbabwe?
Chey and Richie were the only two members of the band to really engage one another, and that was only while we were playing and it was only with their eyes and smiles. They really are the greatest rhythm section I’ve ever seen.
Johnny worried me. He looked thinner and twitchier as each week went by. His personal hygiene was going to shit—his hair was uncombed, his shirts were stained, and I could smell his breath from all the way across the room—and he was starting to walk with a limp, like he hadn’t been doing his exercises. It reminded me of what he was like right after he lost his leg, when he was going through the trauma of figuring out how to live as an amputee. And it reminded me of me, for so many years after the thunderstorm.
The only way we saw Johnny engage with the world was through his keyboard, and by writing in that little book he’d started carrying around. He would open it between songs and scribble something down. None of us knew what. I tried to sneak a peak over his shoulder once, and he pulled it away, making sure I couldn’t see.
Other than that, I never asked Johnny how he was doing, and he never offered. The rules were the rules. The truth is that I used Jeff’s rules as an excuse, as a place to hide, a place where I didn’t have any responsibility for my relationships or my friends. I think we all did.
The Scar Boys played on like that with no end in sight, like zombies, until Jeff summoned us back to the diner in New York City with “news.”
I thought maybe it was a record deal. I violated the “not-frie
nds” protocol and asked Richie and Johnny what they thought on the ride to the city.
“Don’t know, dude. Record deal would be pretty cool, though,” Richie answered.
“Johnny?”
“No clue. I just hope he isn’t going to yell at us again.”
And that was the whole conversation.
When we got to the diner, Jeff and Chey were already there.
Cheyenne had stopped riding in cars with me or Johnny. She would let Richie pick her up for rehearsal, but only if I was picking up Johnny. Since Johnny, Richie, and I were riding down together, she told Richie she’d meet us there.
Jeff and Chey were seated on the same side of the booth, which was weird, so Johnny, Richie, and I slid in across from them. Jeff had a shit-eating grin on his face, and though she was trying to hide it, Chey did, too.
“Welcome, kiddies, one and all,” he said, holding his arms open wide like he was Tommy, from the movie, like we were his disciples.
“So what’s going on?” I asked.
“Do you want to tell them?” Jeff turned to look at Cheyenne. The way he looked at her, the way she looked back—no, wait, strike that. Not the way she looked back—the way she let him look at her, I could tell there was something between them. I shot glances around the table and saw that Johnny and Richie could tell, too.
Johnny, who hadn’t been saying a whole lot lately, put his hand on his journal and gritted his teeth. “So Cheyenne knows this news, whatever it is, already?”
“I got here first, and Jeff couldn’t wait to tell me,” she said without missing a beat. Jeff smirked at that, as if he was thinking, Good little girl. It was like a billboard that said, I own this one, and it made the mood at the table a million times worse.
Richie, being Richie, said, “So what’s the news? Is it okay to shit where we eat now?”
Johnny let out one loud cackle, a laugh of derision, hatred, and disrespect. It echoed among our water glasses and died a slow death.
