Surrounded by Poseurs

“Oh man, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?” Travis asked as he paced around our table in the library. “Well, the first thing you’re going to do is shut up, sit down, and let me think,” I hissed at him. “Why should I listen to anything you tell me to do? It’s because I did what you asked that I have this symbol of the Spanish black god scarred on my shoulder!” he retorted. “Slavic,” I corrected, “It’s the Slavic black god.” “Ooooh! My bad! The Slavic black god! Well, since you’re so smart, how about you just figure this out on your own? Clearly I’m just a moron getting in your way. You’re the genius who got us into this mess, how about you be the one to get us out? If you need me, I’ll be in one of the short buses licking windows, […]

“What happened yesterday?” Travis asked me as we waited for the bus the next morning. We hadn’t seen each other since lunch the previous day. “I should be asking you that,” I replied, somewhat miffed, “I spent nearly half an hour looking for you after I nearly went to the emergency room over this monster of a rash. Not to mention I had to spend that half hour with my mom, who was also interrogating me about your whereabouts because she was supposed to be picking you up as well, like she does every day.” “What was I supposed to do? Just sit and wait around for you to get out of detention when Charlie had ditched rehearsal too? The buses still hadn’t left, so I took the bus.” “See, that’s why you need to explain your version of the story first, because parts of mine don’t even make sense […]

The moment I had been dreading the past three hours had arrived. My last class of the day was out. It was time to go to Purple Hair’s office for “not detention” and break my agreement with Charlie for the first time. The feeling was not unlike waking up to your alarm in the morning, knowing you need to get up, but really don’t want to. Once the class let out, I just sat there staring straight ahead like some kind of mental patient for what seemed like minutes on end, but was probably just a few seconds. My rash kept tingling the entire time. I eventually willed myself to stand up, get my stuff together, and start walking. As I exited the classroom, the part of my brain that still hadn’t come to terms with the decision I made told me I could still go to rehearsal and not […]

Travis and I met at lunch to figure out what we were supposed to do: go to band practice and get in even worse trouble with our guidance counselor, or get our guidance counseling session over with and incur the wrath of our behemoth drummer. We didn’t have any classes with each other for the rest of the day, so we had to make a game plan before lunch was over. “Why don’t we just pop our heads into Purple Hair’s office after school, tell her we’re very sorry, but we can’t miss band rehearsal with our battle of the bands coming up, and just ask to reschedule?” Travis said. We had started calling her Purple Hair since her hyphenated last name was too obnoxiously long. “Eh, I don’t know,” I replied, “I’d rather avoid making up a fake excuse for why we can’t be there, and we can’t exactly […]

“It seems like your lyrics objectify women, portraying them in a rather male gaze-type fashion. I know this wasn’t the reason Mrs. Whitley brought you here, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t address what appears to be early stages of toxic masculinity in you two before this gets worse,” Ms. Hemway-Fischer elaborated. Travis and I looked at each other as if to ask “what language is this lady speaking right now?” Neither of us had an answer. Ms. Hemway-Fischer must have noticed our confused looks. “Here, I’ll read your lyrics back to you and let’s see if you can find the parts that may be problematic, okay?” Neither of us responded as we maintained the same expression, but she started reading anyway: Innocent virgin Traveling alone The last piece needed For tonight’s ritual She does not know How crucial she will be In the resurrection Of […]

Travis and I were sitting in the back of Mrs. Whitley’s history class the other day, writing on a piece of notebook paper we were passing back and forth to each other. Needless to say, we were not exchanging notes on the actual class material Mrs. Whitley was droning on about. We couldn’t be bothered to learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill, we were too busy working on stuff that actually mattered, like whether our lyrics should be about murder or the occult. We had just started writing original music yesterday, and despite Travis’s (and my) doubts about our songwriting abilities, we actually wrote a pretty killer four-minute instrumental. And when I say “we wrote an instrumental,” I mean we all contributed. As much as Travis (and I) tried to take the backseat and let Charlie be the Dave Mustaine of our band, Charlie wouldn’t let us off that […]

It’s been a month since Travis and I agreed to rehearse with Charlie, the school janitor, every day in exchange for him being our bodyguard demon drummer, and it’s already proving to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Although Charlie said he would keep up his whole “demon” act, that also meant he had to agree to keeping his real identity secret. If any of our peers got a good look at him and realized this abnormally-sized eastern European janitor resembled this so-called demon we summoned, our charade would be up. But despite being the size of a tank, he has done a shockingly good job of avoiding being seen, or at least being noticed, by other students. I’m not entirely sure how he does this while still accomplishing his job, but the school hasn’t gotten any dirtier in the past week. It was never exactly clean […]

The janitor/drummer/demon’s expression shifted from shock, to what briefly seemed like anger, to friendliness, or at least trying to look friendly. “Hey! You’re the Lamashtu fans from yesterday! How’s everything going?” The janitor broke the silence with his thick, Eastern European accent. Both of us continued to stare with our mouths agape for a few more seconds. Eventually Travis somehow managed to blurt out the worst possible thing he could say to the person who was not only an insane metal drummer, but also responsible for saving our butts, and our ticket to notoriety in the metal scene: “Are you even supposed to be here?” First Tom Seiks, now the janitor. You are on a roll today, Travis. The janitor didn’t seem to be offended. “Heh heh heh, I could ask you that same question. How did you even get in through the back door? Shouldn’t it be locked?” I […]

The kids on our bus were not the only ones who avoided eye contact with Travis and me unless it was the deer-caught-in-headlights look. No one came near us if they could help it. No one stood in our way. No one threw anything at us. No one shoulder-checked us. A few people even walked into trash cans and support beams trying to stay away from us. As soon as we entered a classroom, the usual rancor of unruly students immediately ceased. We probably did 25% of our teachers’ jobs for them that day. Despite both of us simultaneously having this exact same experience, Travis and I were on completely different wavelengths. He was still stuck on the guitar strings the janitor gave me yesterday that I “dropped,” even though I don’t bring my music gear to school. I was more concerned with what we were supposed to do now […]

“Dude, I still can’t get over what happened yesterday. You sure that wasn’t your guardian angel?” Travis said. We were at the bus stop the next morning after a new janitor the size of a tank rescued us from Jeff and his gang of douchebags who were about to tear us a new one. “Did that look like an angel to you?” I replied, “Look, I already explained this to you. I accidentally ran into him in the hallway while going to meet you, ran away thinking he was going to either get me in trouble or beat me up, and I guess I must have dropped my guitar strings in the process. He probably came looking for me to give them back and happened to show up at the right time.” “See, that’s the part I don’t understand,” Travis objected, “Why did you have a pack of guitar strings […]