Featherless Bipeds (2 page)

Heinz ketchup bottle

A pastel and chrome cafe

Free coffee refills

On the bill the waitress writes

“Have a great day! luv Jo”

Guitar strings

Drum sticks

Fingers and limbs

Laying the thunder down

The sound of words like “thunder”

and “crunch” and “buzz” and “scream”

Streetlights, Moonlight

Foggy mornings

The roads between destination cities

Eric

Jimi

Stevie Ray

(and sometimes even me)

The comfort of a scarred-over wound

Or emerging from a tunnel

before the train roars through

Being saved sometimes from what we don't see coming

The rest of the time eventually healing

Real Tube Overdrive

Screamin' Strat

Hammered Thin Crash

The in-your-chest rumble of Subwoofer Bass

A new tribe of girls dance in front of the drumset

In the groove, in the groove

Playing deep in the groove

Hmm. No chorus. No rhymes. Jimmy T would hate it, which makes me like it even more. Maybe this isn't a rock song, anyway; maybe it's more like a confession. But there it is. It exists. It breathes on its own.

I think I'll maybe call this one, “Where She Is”. And, of course, it's about rock ‘n' roll. And, like so many other things I've written, it's partly about Zoe. I hope she makes it to the show tonight. Everything depends on it.

The van comes to a stop.

“Here we are,” says Akim.

Here we are, indeed.
Harlock's Rockpile
, the rock bar where the Featherless Bipeds were born, and where, if the fates allow, we will be born again. Tristan raises the video camera to record the momentous occasion.

I stuff the lyric-covered road map under the back seat, and step out of the van. With my snare drum under one arm, I walk towards the crumbling yellow-brick building, followed by Akim. Tristan stands back and films me as I reach for the handle of the door with the peeling paint that reads, “Stage Door — Performers Only”.

As I take a step forward into the familiar old joint, my mind races backward through all the memories, retraces the steps that have brought us here again.

S
ET
O
NE

T
HE
R
OCK ‘N'
R
OLL
M
OMENT

I
t's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment in time when a person becomes what he or she is, but maybe less so for rock ‘n' roll musicians. Each of us has had one of those rock ‘n' roll moments, when we are transformed from ordinary, everyday people into drummers, guitarists, bass players, singers, songwriters.

Tristan's rock ‘n' roll moment came when, as a twelve-year-old, he discovered his dad's knock-off ‘Beatle bass' during one of his every-other-weekend visits to his father's place. The small-bodied bass guitar was tucked behind some junk in the same closet where his father's
Hustler
magazines were hidden. In front of the big vanity mirror at the foot of his father's bed, Tristan stood with his feet wide apart and started plunking on those thick, corroded strings, feeling for the first time the potential to be something other than a introverted science geek with a video camera attached to one hand.

Tristan was leaping, Pete Townsend-style, from the rails of the king-sized bed, the neck of the bass cutting through the air like an ancient sabre, when his father walked in. Tristan's dad smacked him on the side of the head and told him to never again touch his stuff without permission.

So, Tristan began delivering newspapers and taking odd jobs cutting grass and raking leaves. He saved his money and bought a well-used Rickenbacker-copy bass and a huge amplifier from the shadow-eyed widow of an unknown punk bassist who had been dismembered in a car accident while high on cocaine. Some of that punk-rock karma must have somehow radiated into the otherwise mild-mannered Tristan though the neck of that Gothic-looking axe, because every other weekend Tristan honed his bass-playing skills by shaking plaster from the walls of his dad's small house with blasting, rumbling notes, until his father finally agreed to give his ex-wife sole custody of his son.

Akim's rock ‘n' roll moment is also the stuff of legend. His mother, who had made it all the way to second chair violin in the orchestra in university, but never managed to get a job playing for any philharmonic, had forced Akim to take classical guitar since he was old enough to walk, hoping that some of her unfulfilled talent might come to fruition in her only son. Akim's nimble-fingered renditions of Baroque classics were awarded top prizes by humourless white-haired judges in ill-fitting tuxedos, and won him the chance to audition for entry to the country's top music school. Despite the glory his guitar playing had brought his mother, she refused his request for an electric guitar when he turned thirteen, informing him bluntly that no son of hers would be allowed to waste his talent on “banshee music”.

At the audition that would have certainly gained Akim admission to that highfalutin music school, Akim declared, “This performance is dedicated to my mom”. Wearing the bug-eyed expression we've all seen when he's about to lose his temper, Akim defiantly plunked out the power chords of “Smoke on the Water”, then smashed his classical guitar into kindling on the gleaming floor of the audition stage. Looking first at the dumbfounded principal of the music school, then at the drop-jawed face of his mother, Akim paraphrased John Lennon, saying, “Thank you all very much. I hope I passed the audition.”

Now
that's
rock ‘n roll.

Comparatively, my own parents were pretty easygoing about my early musical aspirations. They promised to buy me a beginner's drum set if I would just stop denting up the kitchen table by banging my fork and knife all over it at dinnertime, and if I would limit my practicing to right after school, when they weren't home from work yet and wouldn't have to endure the racket. My dad figured that since I didn't play any sports, at least I would get a little exercise pounding the drums every day, so he bought me an inexpensive red three-piece kit for Christmas. Hitting the toms on this drum set reproduced the rich tonal qualities and powerful resonance of empty cardboard boxes, and the lone cymbal faithfully replicated the sound of kicking an empty pop can along the sidewalk, but I loved that drum set more than any other gift I'd ever received. For the first time in my life, it seemed like my Dad actually understood what I really wanted and, to this day, I still play red drums.

All through high school, I pounded on my drums but didn't yet
play
them, and I scribbled down lines that sort of rhymed, but I hadn't yet written a
song
. Unlike Tristan and Akim, my own rock ‘n' roll life began much later on, not with a burst of defiant anger, but with an eruption of passion. It began with Zoe Perry, the girl I've been in love with pretty much since Kindergarten. By the end of high school I had finally convinced her to be my girlfriend, but then I did something stupid on the night of our senior prom, and she broke up with me.

Losing Zoe was the most painful thing ever, and seeing her again tonight at a pub at the university we both attend has only made it worse. After she leaves the place, I decide to catch up with her, to ask her to be mine again, to beg her if I have to. It happens like this:

I am running, almost out of breath.

Then, out of nowhere, there comes a storm.

Before it hits, there is a lull, an eerie peace. Everything is just a bit too quiet, the silence too vacuous to be anything but temporary. I stand in front of Zoe's apartment building, wondering what I should do next. I have run all the way, but once I arrive I just stand still, frozen in place.

Then, there is a distant rumble.

rrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr The sky is a bruise, greyish-purple and soft. Fingers of cloud spread overhead like a wounded hand, then the whole palm cups the sky, obscuring the pinpoint lights of stars.

tick

A single raindrop strikes the glass of Zoe's room on the second floor. Behind the sheer curtains, Zoe rises from her purring-cat position near the window, parts the drapes and looks out. A slight current of air ruffles her hair, which hangs loosely about her shoulders.

I read her name,
Z. Perry
, on the panel of buzzer buttons beside the entrance door.
tick

tick tick tick

Just as I am summoning the courage to push the button, Zoe appears at the door, steps outside, her feet bare and tentative upon the cool, stony concrete of the building's single front step.

We stand outside her apartment building, raindrops splattering on the windows. She looks at me and shakes her head slightly, a Mona Lisa smile on her lips.

“Dak,” she says softly, “what are you doing here?”

“I want you to come back to me, Zoe,” I say to her. “I don't know if I can . . . ”

She raises her index finger to my lips, and says, “Shhhhhh. Listen.”

tick tick tick tick
tick tick tick tick tick tickticktick
tickhisssssssSSSSSSS

The drum roll of thunder begins, building to a slow crescendo. Zoe's warm slender hand finds its way into mine. I notice she is still wearing the silver ring I bought for her during the brief time we dated in high school.

“Hey,” I say, lifting her hand in front of our faces, “you still wear the ring.”

She looks away, but she doesn't let go of my hand. “Don't read too much into it, okay?”

hrrhrrrrrrhrrrrRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOMMMmmmm

Rain assaults the pavement now, hisses upon the lawn, forces the blades of grass to bow over, to submit. Rain roars like a hundred thousand cheering voices of a frenzied crowd at a concert, the
-tick-
of each raindrop rising to join the
-tick-tick-
of others, a chorus at first, then a ghostly choir, now a mob-like roar.

rrrrrrrrrC-CRACKOOOOOOWWwwwwwwwww

Chain lightning dances a fragmented streak across the sky; above it all, free, alive with energy, immortal. But only for a fraction of a second. Its pattern is burned red, purple, then blue into our eyes when we blink, an afterthought of the free, crazy energy.

I try to stop myself from doing it, from going too far. I kiss her tentatively, just to the side of her mouth, tasting strawberries and smelling that bittersweet, wet hair scent; and I feel that sunshine warmth sweep through me, and the tidal wave of everything she is hits me again.

She does not exactly kiss me back. But she doesn't resist, either.

The sky is still flashing, but gently, now, and the hiss of rain, the roar of thunder, the dancing lines of light recede from us, leaving only an infant sprinkling, a small reminder of what has been.

The air is newly cool, reborn, almost sweet to the lungs. I still have Zoe's hand, and she still has mine.

“Do you forgive me?” I ask, my voice only slightly louder than the whispering breeze.

“I forgive you,” she says, a raindrop clinging to her bottom lip.

Am I brave enough to ask it?

“Can we be together again, Zoe? I want you to be mine again. I need you to be mine.”

And she smiles at me. A smile of mercy and kindness. The smile of a higher being.

“How about we start by being friends again,” she says. “For now.”

“Just friends?”

“It's a good place to start again, don't you think?”

I nod. It's better than nothing.

I walk home, my feet splashing through puddles, my insides a churning whirlpool of feelings, a bubbling swirl of disappointment and elation. She is still not mine. But she could be. She could be. When I get back to the dorm, I can't sleep, so I sit cross-legged in the middle of the cot on my side of the room and write a song. And then another. And another after that.

And that's it. That is my rock ‘n' roll moment. Every lyric I write, every rock song I construct, every thundering drum fill I play from now on will have a piece of this stormy night inside it.

Passion. Longing. Thunder and lightning, rain blasting down from the sky. Hearts racing, fingers trembling, eyes half closed. That's rock ‘n' roll. That's where it all comes from.

S
KIN

A
t the moment of my death, I had expected my life to flash before my eyes. Everything I had ever heard or seen or read about dying had me anticipating this. I expected something like newsreel footage to play before my mind's eye; a montage of my birth, my first steps, my first day at school, my first kiss, the day I bought my first car, the moment I lost my virginity, the first time I fell in love with Zoe, and the second, the third, the fourth time, too . . . but no.

In the fragment of time between the back of my head hitting the concrete and the dark, cold silence, just three images flash through my brain. The first is a finger waving in my face, the words “racial bias” burning between my temples. The second is an image of the wide, frightened eyes of a teenage girl who reminds me of my sister.

The last image is not really an image at all, but just a feeling on my skin, a tingling inside my ears. At the moment that everything stops, I feel Zoe's warm, smooth fingers drawing away from my arm, and I hear her songlike voice saying, “Be good.” I feel her touch, I hear her voice. I long to see her, but the doors to my senses slam shut, and everything disappears.

This Friday evening starts like most others, with one of us scouting out a party, then gathering the troops. Tonight the successful scout is Veronica, my roommate Tristan's girlfriend, who has learned about a keg party being held by a girl she knows from her Women's History course.