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Authors: Joe Pernice
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You into Japan?”
I stopped fumbling with my locker, surprised, disoriented. I thought he meant the country. He was wearing too much Polo cologne, though at that age it struck me as confident and mature.
“Umm, I guess so,” I answered stupidly. He seemed a little frustrated by my lack of enthusiasm, as if a preconceived notion or two of his own had been validated.
“What about Kate Bush?”
“Don’t really know her,” I said. He let out a groan, then pointed his thumbs at the badges fixed to his breast, which read:
The Dreaming
and
The Kick Inside
respectively.
“The Cure, Joy Division, Bowie, Bauhaus, The Smiths? Tell me you like The Smiths.”
The Smiths? The Smiths?, I thought. “I love The Smiths,” I said, holding up my walkman for him as if he’d be able to see the poorly marked cassette inside.
He let out a sigh I took to be genuine and said, “Thank God, because I don’t think you could be my bass player if you didn’t like The Smiths.”
Charles was as noticeable on campus for his appearance as he was for being a gay star athlete. His style of dress was new wave, though the ill-informed called it punk. The guys’ uniform at Saint Longinus was pretty drab: blue pants, a solid dress shirt in pastel colors only, school tie, leather shoes (no canvas). Because Charles was famous, he got away with dressing like Ducky’s wardrobe consultant for the movie
Pretty in Pink.
He wore ruffled tuxedo shirts, or gas station shirts that used to belong to Freds or Tonys. And skinny, satin (or leather) ties decorated with piano keys or anembroidered dancing Elvis. And hand-tooled, dangerous looking belts that were watered down versions of gun holsters from the old West. His pants were pleated like accordians or Chinese fans, and were always pegged just above his low-heeled, pointy leather shoes (in white, red, black or gray). His hair was one hundred percent Flock of Seagulls, and sometimes jet-black, sometimes blond or red.
He definitely knew how to exude confidence through fashion. Despite the rumors, the girls fell for him the way they fell for Michael Jackson after the
Thriller
TV special of ’84.
“I’m booked solid until the end of the semester, but after that we can get together and I’ll teach you some songs. No,” he added, interrupting his own thought, “Learn the songs on
Meat is Murder
and we’ll get together in June. Deal?” I had never heard a seventeen-year-old describe himself as “booked solid” before. He was made to be a frontman.
“Umm … OK … I guess so,” I said, feeling a bit railroaded and at the same time absolutely positive that come summer I’d be in Charles’s band and not my own.
* * *
When Allison didn’t come back to school I stayed pretty depressed for the rest of the term, and my mood carriedover into the summer like a compounding late fee. The combined heat and humidity in suburbia was as smothering as a dead horse thrown over the castle wall by a war-loving nut job. Ray said that Murph’s sister Patty said that Allison was feeling a lot better, but was still too weak to do much more than sit on the couch and talk on the phone or watch
The Guiding Light.
“You should give her a call and cheer her up,” Ray said, smiling around two soon-to-be lit cigarettes stuck between his lips. It was dusk and we were drinking a couple racks of Narragansetts, seated in the cab of a piece of heavy construction equipment. I think it was a back hoe. For a few weeks they had been resurfacing the streets in my neighborhood, and some of the heavier pieces of equipment were parked every night on a cul-de-sac surrounded by woods at the end of the development. It was a perfectly shielded place for drinking. And within stumbling distance from my house.
“You think I should?” I questioned Ray back. He hated getting a question for an answer.
“Why not?” Ray said, childishly moving the cigarette toward me and pulling it out of my reach each time I went for it.
“Cut
I stopped fumbling with my locker, surprised, disoriented. I thought he meant the country. He was wearing too much Polo cologne, though at that age it struck me as confident and mature.
“Umm, I guess so,” I answered stupidly. He seemed a little frustrated by my lack of enthusiasm, as if a preconceived notion or two of his own had been validated.
“What about Kate Bush?”
“Don’t really know her,” I said. He let out a groan, then pointed his thumbs at the badges fixed to his breast, which read:
The Dreaming
and
The Kick Inside
respectively.
“The Cure, Joy Division, Bowie, Bauhaus, The Smiths? Tell me you like The Smiths.”
The Smiths? The Smiths?, I thought. “I love The Smiths,” I said, holding up my walkman for him as if he’d be able to see the poorly marked cassette inside.
He let out a sigh I took to be genuine and said, “Thank God, because I don’t think you could be my bass player if you didn’t like The Smiths.”
Charles was as noticeable on campus for his appearance as he was for being a gay star athlete. His style of dress was new wave, though the ill-informed called it punk. The guys’ uniform at Saint Longinus was pretty drab: blue pants, a solid dress shirt in pastel colors only, school tie, leather shoes (no canvas). Because Charles was famous, he got away with dressing like Ducky’s wardrobe consultant for the movie
Pretty in Pink.
He wore ruffled tuxedo shirts, or gas station shirts that used to belong to Freds or Tonys. And skinny, satin (or leather) ties decorated with piano keys or anembroidered dancing Elvis. And hand-tooled, dangerous looking belts that were watered down versions of gun holsters from the old West. His pants were pleated like accordians or Chinese fans, and were always pegged just above his low-heeled, pointy leather shoes (in white, red, black or gray). His hair was one hundred percent Flock of Seagulls, and sometimes jet-black, sometimes blond or red.
He definitely knew how to exude confidence through fashion. Despite the rumors, the girls fell for him the way they fell for Michael Jackson after the
Thriller
TV special of ’84.
“I’m booked solid until the end of the semester, but after that we can get together and I’ll teach you some songs. No,” he added, interrupting his own thought, “Learn the songs on
Meat is Murder
and we’ll get together in June. Deal?” I had never heard a seventeen-year-old describe himself as “booked solid” before. He was made to be a frontman.
“Umm … OK … I guess so,” I said, feeling a bit railroaded and at the same time absolutely positive that come summer I’d be in Charles’s band and not my own.
* * *
When Allison didn’t come back to school I stayed pretty depressed for the rest of the term, and my mood carriedover into the summer like a compounding late fee. The combined heat and humidity in suburbia was as smothering as a dead horse thrown over the castle wall by a war-loving nut job. Ray said that Murph’s sister Patty said that Allison was feeling a lot better, but was still too weak to do much more than sit on the couch and talk on the phone or watch
The Guiding Light.
“You should give her a call and cheer her up,” Ray said, smiling around two soon-to-be lit cigarettes stuck between his lips. It was dusk and we were drinking a couple racks of Narragansetts, seated in the cab of a piece of heavy construction equipment. I think it was a back hoe. For a few weeks they had been resurfacing the streets in my neighborhood, and some of the heavier pieces of equipment were parked every night on a cul-de-sac surrounded by woods at the end of the development. It was a perfectly shielded place for drinking. And within stumbling distance from my house.
“You think I should?” I questioned Ray back. He hated getting a question for an answer.
“Why not?” Ray said, childishly moving the cigarette toward me and pulling it out of my reach each time I went for it.
“Cut
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