King Dork (33 page)

I’m sure they hadn’t tried to charge the other bands, but they weren’t interested in arguing on that basis. Clearly, we didn’t have the money, and we had to resolve the issue quickly. The act before us was a normal backward-baseball-hat guy who

was “rapping” to a backing track about how he had ramoned

everybody’s mother or something. He was deeply into his

second appalling minute and we knew it would end soon and

we would be on. But the normal PA guys wouldn’t budge on

the hundred and fifty bucks.

Sam Hellerman did a little Ronald Reagan voice and said,

“I paid for this microphone,” which I thought was funny but which didn’t go over so well with the normal PA guys.

“Oops,” said one of them, and knocked Sam Hellerman’s

Slurpee into his chest, all over his lovingly hand-lettered

“Mao Is Murder” T-shirt. Sam Hellerman got that familiar

“I’m totally gonna bleed all over this guy” look on his face, but he restrained himself and started to wheel and deal with 252

them instead. In the end he got them to rent him one microphone and to turn on two lights for fifteen bucks, which was all we had on us.

We had to work quickly, but we knew what to do. I found

a hand truck backstage and duct-taped Amanda’s karaoke

mic to the handle, while Sam Hellerman taped the rented microphone to one of Todd Panchowski’s unused cymbal

stands. Todd Panchowski wasn’t too pleased about that but

allowed it, presumably because he was worried that other-

wise Sam Hellerman might be tempted to express his disap-

pointment by bleeding on his drums—it wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before. Although the stand was pretty short, it was about Hellerman height after its legs had been taped to the seat of a metal folding chair. In fact, since he had to slump so far to reach the strings of his low-slung bass with the fingers at the end of his half-dislocated right arm, he still had to tilt his head up Lemmy style to sing into the mic after all. My mouth was level with the taped-on karaoke mic if I lowered my body by spreading my legs wide enough. It almost

worked.

Sam Hellerman, true to form, had brought along an

XLR-to-quarter-inch adaptor, so we were able to plug both

mics into the Frankenstein Bassman/Magnavox amp, just

like at home. Living room rock. Live. In concert.

The fake rap guy finished, saying how he had “mad love”

for his “hood” and “da funk,” and wanted to “shout out” to his

“homies” about how he had nine millimeters for “they ass”

and wanted to put his “gat” to “they dome” just as we were ready to go. It was more like an abortion than music, but he got a wildly enthusiastic response from the crowd. Well,

we’re all pro-choice out here in Hillmont, after all.

I hadn’t meant to, but it turned out that here I made what I guess you’d call a fateful decision. I was standing at the 253

taped-on mic thinking about how Amanda’s banned banner

had really been the best thing about Balls Deep, and how

Sam Hellerman’s costume had been ruined and how Todd

Panchowski had refused even to consider wearing his, and

how everyone else got to use the PA without paying, and

how nobody was ever going to understand the seventies

porn/communist guerilla concept, and how I was tired of the name anyway, and how I would never know why my dad

was dead, and how I really hated all normal people with

every fiber of my being, not only because of the PA and

Sam Hellerman’s Slurpee, but because of Charles Evan

Henderson’s
Brighton Rock
and Bobby Duboyce’s helmet and Yasmynne Schmick’s pain and suffering and everybody’s

Catcher in the Rye
hypocrisy and Mr. Donnelly’s cruelty and Matt Lynch’s sadism and Mr. Teone’s idiocy and so many,

many other things, including pretty much everything that

had ever happened to me or that I had ever seen happen to

anybody else. So as the student body’s white rap/poetry slam euphoria started to fade, and they gaped at us and several of them started trying to instigate a “you suck!” chant, I positioned my mouth about an inch from the karaoke mic (so I

wouldn’t get shocked too bad) and—well, I think right up to the end I had intended to say, “hi, we’re Balls Deep.” But instead, what came out of my mouth was:

“Hi, we’re the Chi-Mos.” Then I didn’t know what to say.

Sam Hellerman stared at me, but he quickly recovered.

“Yeah!” he yelled in a high-pitched Paul Stanley voice,

with a surprising degree of (devil-head) bravado, under the circumstances. “All right! We’re the Chi-Mos! That’s the

Reverend Chi-Mo on guitar! And I’m your Assistant Principal Chi-Mo on bass and being aware of my own mortality, and

back there we have Chi-Mo Panchowski on percussion and

counting to four! Well, close enough, anyway! This song’s

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called ‘I Saw Mr. Teone Checking Out Kyrsten Blakeney’s

Ass’!”

Now, what was supposed to happen next was that Todd

Panchowski would count off with four stick clicks and we

would launch into the song. And that would have been pretty cool. But what actually happened was that Todd Panchowski

just sat there for a while. Then he took his little towel and wiped off his face. Then he stood up and adjusted his drum seat. Then he raised his sticks in the air and twirled them around. Then he bent down to pick up the stick he had

dropped. Then, around four hours later, he finally did the count-in, except that he did only three not-quite-regular

clicks and started a beat ahead of the rest of us. Well, he always did have a hard time remembering what comes after

three. And here’s a valuable lesson I learned that I will share with anybody who may want to try to have a band one day:

the fewer songs you have the drummer start, the more

chance you’ll have of getting to do more than a couple of

them in twenty minutes. Have them start with the guitar instead. Trust me.

I have to admit, our “music” was, in its own way, no less

abominable than the white rap thing had been. Most of what we had accomplished in all those practices just evaporated under the pressure of the “gig.” The Hillmont student body were unimpressed, and not even moved enough to join in the

“you suck!” chant that a few optimistic psycho normals kept trying to start. I think the crowd had realized that the most disheartening thing they could do in this situation was to gape in silent, stunned bemusement. They weren’t wrong

about that, either. I don’t know how real bands manage to

have three or more people all play the same thing at the same time—it was clearly beyond our capabilities. I kept getting shocked by the mic, so around half of the lyrics were lost, 255

though without the PA I doubt anyone could tell one way or another. Meanwhile, we had these long, uncomfortable

pauses between songs because of Todd Panchowski’s mis-

guided attempts at reverse showmanship. It was a disaster.

“Yeah, I hear somebody say keep on rockin’?” said Sam

Hellerman after we had finished the first tune. Now, this

world is vast and complex, full of ambiguity and uncertainty.

But if there was one thing in this muddled, crazy universe that was absolutely clear and beyond debate at that particular moment, it was this: Sam Hellerman had not heard any-

body say keep on rockin’.

The best thing we had going for us was the song titles,

many of which got a laugh when Sam Hellerman announced

them. We did “Mr. Teone Likes ’em Young” and “Are There

Hippies in Heaven (and If So, Can We at Least Confiscate

Their Patchouli, ’Cause Otherwise I’m Definitely Going to

Hell)?” We also did “I Wanna Ramone You,” which only I

knew was in honor of Deanna Schumacher, and “Glad All

Over,” which Sam Hellerman introduced by saying, “This

song is about the face of God.”

Fortunately, our songs were very short. But we still had

to cut quite a few because of Todd Panchowski’s delays,

which were driving Sam Hellerman off the deep end. He kept looking back at the drum set, begging him with his eyes to start the song already. Plus, while Sam Hellerman was trying to introduce the songs with his clever little shrieked speeches, Todd Panchowski would just hit drums randomly, or practice his paradiddles on the snare. It was distracting, and I didn’t blame Sam Hellerman for being annoyed.

Our big finale was supposed to be “The Guy I

Accidentally Beat Up,” the lyrics of which were just Paul

Krebs’s name repeated over and over, ending in a wall of instrumental psychedelia during which we were supposed to

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chant “Freak out, freak out. . . . ” Sam Hellerman announced the song as best he could, trying to shout over the paradiddles, and waited for Todd Panchowski’s irregular count-in.

He looked back after a while and saw TP standing on the

drum seat with his arms raised for some reason. He’d had

enough. He gave Todd Panchowski the most intense, most

devastating eye-ray treatment the world had yet seen. Todd Panchowski flipped Sam Hellerman off, threw his sticks at

him and stormed off the stage. Oh, well, it really wasn’t working out between us anyway.

So we did “The Guy I Accidentally Beat Up” without

drums, but we skipped the actual song and started from the outro because we were running out of time and the audience was leaving. Sam Hellerman started bleeding from his nose, making sure that he thoroughly soaked the rented microphone. I put my guitar against the amp and turned it up all the way to cause as much feedback as possible, and then we knocked the drums over and tore the Magnavox apart by hitting it with the drum hardware. Sam Hellerman was on the

speakers, jumping up and down, blood flying, hitting the

Magnavox with a cymbal stand till it stopped making noise

and was in several pieces. I was kicking the drum set, which soon was little more than a pile of rubbish. We were definitely going to have to find a new drummer after this. Todd

Panchowski’s main qualification had been that he’d had a

drum set. And he certainly didn’t have one of those anymore.

The set, and the Festival of Lights, finally ended when

“Chet” and a few others pulled us away from the wreckage

and switched off the Polytone. Sam Hellerman, who had

been rolling in his own blood screaming what sounded like

“yay-uss” over and over, had to be physically restrained by no fewer than three thoroughly confused goons. The students,

who had been hurrying toward the exits when the destruc-

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tion began, had all stopped dead in their tracks to stare and remained frozen for some time. They didn’t know what to

say—even “you suck!” must have seemed inadequate. There

was total silence, and for probably the first time in my

Hillmont High School career I could hear myself think. It was nice, though the thoughts weren’t.

TOTALLY CALLAB LE

We didn’t win the battle of—I mean, the Festival of Lights. The

“yo mama” guy did. Everyone had hated the Chi-Mos. But we

had made an impression, albeit a negative one, and it was the kind of thing people talked about, which is what everyone did for the rest of the day and well into the following week.

Sam Hellerman had printed up a zine with the lyrics to

all the songs on the set list plus several others. It had said

“Balls Deep,” of course, but as he stood at the main exit hand-ing them out, he wrote “The Chi-Mos” at the top of each one in Sharpie, so it looked like “Balls Deep” was just the title. It proved to be a pretty popular item because of its populist anti-Teone message, and he ran out quickly, promising to go over to the Copymat to make more as soon as possible.

I was kind of in a daze standing by the stage when

Deanna Schumacher came up and whispered, “Thanks for

hanging up on me, ass.” (It didn’t matter what I said before I put the phone back on the hook: she always claimed she

thought I had hung up on her.) But then she said, “Nice

show, sexy,” in a voice that didn’t sound all the way sarcastic and handed me a note, sneakily rubbing my palm with her

finger as she did it, before running off to join her friends, who were on the way out. The note said: “Thanks for rawking my world. I’m totally callable Mon/Thur from 6 to 10 if you’re 258

into it,” and it was signed with a heart and a big “D.” And next to the heart it said “slurp.” I kid you not.

Cleaning up after our set had taken longer than antici-

pated, so I was late for sixth period. I stopped in to the otherwise deserted boys’ bathroom, and Mr. Teone ambled in.

Now, Mr. Teone’s office is located just across the corner

from the boys’ bathroom at the southwest corner of center

court, so he can see its door from his desk through the mirrored plate glass, though you can’t see him looking. When he has some important matter to discuss with a student in an un-official capacity, he’ll wait for his moment and try to meet him in the bathroom for an informal chat. I don’t know who takes care of the girls’ bathroom in that corner of center court. Not Mr. Teone, surely, but, hey, you never know.

I had never been a participant in one of these secret

meetings, but I had walked in on them. When someone walks

in, Mr. Teone abruptly ends the meeting and growls some-

thing like “keep your nose clean!” Then he’ll zoom out, but as he leaves he’ll say to the interloper: “that goes double for you, Henderson!” Well, he only says Henderson if the interloper happens to be me or someone else with my last name.

Obviously.

But for the first time, I wasn’t the interloper. I was the main guy.

“Well, well, Henderson,” he said, standing a couple of urinals over from me, “you and your stunt you boys pulled has a great deal of folks around here pretty steamed.”