I walked back to my seat thinking about happiness. I decided that you didn’t really need money, power, success, religion, a spouse, or kids to be happy. All you really needed was to feel superior. I could be a homeless druggie; I’d still be able to look at businesspeople trudging off to work and think “Hah!” because I’d be freer than them.
I thought about that for a little while. Then I decided it was all pretty stupid and, award in hand, I took the subway home.
*The congratulatory letter was printed on the cheapest paper I’d ever seen. It looked like wax paper stolen from a deli. Have to give credit where it’s due, though: I put that letter on my wall years ago, and it shows no signs of decay.
*Dad got frustrated with the traffic, at one point leaning out his window and screaming, “MY lane! MINE!” at an offensive motorist. He’s going to get himself killed one day.
**All of these are actual names I’ve been called at some point. “Viccini” used to be on the doorbell of my family’s apartment.
*“Short Short Story” is a category the literary people thought up. It means a really short story, like eight hundred words.
*Incidentally, if you want to enter one of these Scholastic Writing things (who knows, you could end up winning honorable mention and spilling punch on yourself), visit this site on the Web: www.scholastic.com/artandwriting/howenter.asp. Or write to: Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
*Of course, two and a half years later I’d be showing my own work to the Harvard people, begging for admission and getting soundly rejected. But that’s another story (this page–this page).
MOXY MUSIC
My dominant nerd brain was telling me to stay home and cram. My subordinate cool brain was causing problems.
It was the night before my Biology Achievement exam. Doing well on it would improve my life greatly, my nerd brain reminded me. I had to take three Achievements to attend a Good College; if I got the biology one over with at the end of freshman year, I’d have less work come crunch time. But that night my favorite band, Moxy Früvous,* was playing so my cool brain ordered me to screw the test, screw authority, be different, and go see them.
Moxy Früvous is a folk band. They use a little feedback and curse at their shows, but they are not alternative and they are not hardcore. They play accordions and sing about gambling in Canada. They have songs called “Bittersweet” and “Fly.” They rely on harmony, not volume; they don’t bust up their vocal cords during a set; and you’ll never find them on commercial radio stations. If you want to make fun of me for liking some nerd folk band, feel free.
I lay my head down on my open study guide and thought about the first time I’d seen Moxy Früvous, three months earlier, in March. It was the first time I’d ever seen a live band (Shrivel* didn’t count). I begged Mom to let me go, and as usual, she would allow it only if Dad played escort.
So we got in the van and drove to the venue, a small organic place in Manhattan called the Wetlands. We arrived at 10:50; I thought Dad would leave to hang out at a bookstore or something, but he stayed—he wanted to see the band.
“Where are we going to stand?” he asked as we paid our money at the door. “I mean, I know you don’t want to be seen with me, and I definitely don’t want to be seen with you.”
“I’ll stay by that column,” I said as we strode inside. “I guess you can go by the bar.”
“Fine by me,” Dad said. “Enjoy the concert.” We shook hands and moved to separate parts of the Wetlands.
I waited for thirty minutes, breathing smoke, eavesdropping on conversations, wondering where the band was. Finally Mike, Jian, Dave, and Murray appeared on the tiny stage. The Wetlands could hold about one hundred and fifty people. That night, it was packed; everyone howled as the band emerged.
They looked dangerously dorky. Jian wore a shiny purple vest; Mike, a shirt covered with multicolored Pac-Men; Dave, a black turtleneck. For the opening number, Jian got behind the drum set, Murray picked up his bass, Mike grabbed an acoustic guitar, and Dave strapped on an accordion.
Then Jian announced that there would be no music tonight—just talk. “Talk radio’s getting big in America—you’d be an idiot to play music!” he said. He did a drumroll, and the band started in.
Because they use so many instruments in the studio, I had low expectations of Moxy live. Congas, bongos, accordions, pianos, organs, harmonicas—I couldn’t see how the band could play all of them on-stage. But they pulled it off, substituting guitar solos for piano solos and strapping on extra instruments when necessary. Then they started in with their bizarre stage antics. Mike dressed up as Spider-Man and shot a cap gun at the Wetlands’ disco ball, proclaiming, “That rotating disco ball up there saps and saps all the strength from Spider-Man!” Dave put on a fez, declaring that he was the king of Spain.
I looked over at Dad a few times as the show progressed. He kept his hat pulled low and his eyes closed, and tapped along with the music. True to his word, he ignored me completely.
Moxy played some favorites: “Video Bargainville,” an accordion-driven tale of everyday life in a video store, and “King of Spain,” the riches-to-rags story of a modern-day monarch. There was new material, too: the anti-employer anthem, “I Love My Boss,” and “The Greatest Man in America,” a song about Rush Limbaugh.
All of this led to a shattering eight-minute medley, featuring snippets of old favorites like “Love Potion Number Nine” and “Stayin’ Alive,” and a farcical version of “You Oughta Know.” The medley ended with Dave’s guitar solo; I heard someone clapping very loudly over the feedback. I peered at Dad, who always cupped his hands to produce incredibly loud applause.
Moxy left the stage, but the crowd began screaming and the guys reappeared, playing two encores. Dad and I didn’t get out of the Wetlands until 1:30.
“Well, thank you,” Dad said as we got into the van. “I’m pretty sure that on the entire island of Manhattan, that was the best music being played tonight.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty good, aren’t they?” I said sheepishly. I got in the passenger seat and fell asleep. The next day, I was wide awake and brimming with energy at school.
Now here I was, three months later—with my head between the pages of my study guide. I had the chance to see Moxy again, but there was a vital test the next morning. A classic dilemma. My nerd brain told me that concerts were never that great, that I was romanticizing the one I’d seen before, that I’d better lift my face and refocus on those questions because what if I was tested on this particular part of the book? My cool brain told me I’d been preparing for the test for weeks, that one more night of studying wouldn’t make any difference, and I’d better stop tak-in’ orders from society.
“Mom!” I called. She came quickly to my room; Mom was especially attentive when I was studying.
“Are you okay? Do you need any tea?” she asked.
“Actually, I was wondering if I could, ah, go to this concert tonight. It’s Moxy Früvous, those people I saw with Dad a couple months ago.”
“Out of the question.”
“What? Why?”
“Ned, it’s six o’clock. You couldn’t have planned this sooner? You have a test tomorrow; you can’t be seeing bands.”
“What if Dad came? Like he did before?”
“I know this may surprise you, but sometimes your father has better things to do than drive you around at all hours of the day and night—”
“I’ll take him!” Dad shouted from the other room. “They’re a great band! I’ll take him!”
“Jim, don’t interfere!” Mom yelled. “He has a test tomorrow!”
Dad and Mom continued the discussion. I closed the door to my room and went back to my study guide. My cool brain was ranting, “You could sneak out the window, Ned! Sneak out the window, dude! Be the man for once!” My nerd brain just laughed. I pulled up my chair and refocused my eyes on the page. I might not be doing the
right thing, but I was doing the dorky thing—the only thing I was good at. Moxy Früvous would have approved.
*Yes, that was their real name. As of this writing they are no longer active, but they were great.
*Shrivel is in “Parental Approval” (this page–this page).
POSTMARK:
BLANCHEVILLE
Blancheville is a small turd of a town on the Connecticut River. The only reason I know is because it houses my summer sleep-away camp, CCRC, short for the Christian Camp and Recreation Center.* I’ve been coming here for five years, because my parents deem it necessary and because I have nothing to do in the city. If I were home, I’d be pacing through heat waves, eating Oreos, and playing Mega Man III.**
CCRC is coed; its campers are split into age groups called sections. Now that I’m fifteen, I’m in Explorer Village, the most independent section. I live in a platform tent with five other guys. It’s a dank, smelly hole of a place—wet socks and mildewed towels strewn everywhere, a garbage can overflowing with candy wrappers … the green-fabric ceiling keeps the rain out and the odors in.
I cook my meals over a campfire, which is intensely gratifying. Sure, the food tastes like ash, but I get to chop firewood.* And camp cuisine is a welcome departure from my New York diet of orange Hostess cupcakes and Trix cereal.
Most of my stay at Explorer Village is spent in “Festivals” and “Free Time.” Festivals are the typical camp activities—hiking, swimming, soccer, Ping-Pong, fish-punching,** and general lounging. This year, it’s rained almost every day, which means lots of Ping-Pong and lounging. I hate both.
But I hate Free Time more. During winter, as I trudge through school, all I want is a little time for myself. At camp, I finally get it—and it bites. What can I do with an hour in the woods of Connecticut? Read? Write? Practice my hopelessly flawed basketball shot? My campmates go “chilling,” which means sitting on a rock and having light, hip conversations with girls. I could never handle light, hip conversations. (Girl: “Did you see Heathers?”*** Me: “Uh, nope … did you see, ah, Jurassic Park?” Girl: “No.”) I spend most Free Times brooding in my tent, which has led to some Deep Realizations About Camp.
First off, it’s a Darwinian popularity contest. At all times, the question on everyone’s mind is, “Who’s coolest?” People complain about high school cliques, but cliques at camp form more rapidly and are twice as vicious. Last year, some guys in my section set up a full-on monarchy, complete with lords and vassals. This kid Corey was a vassal; he would kneel before the lords and fetch things for them.
It’s not even the lords-and-vassals thing that gets to me. It’s when I’m walking and talking with X, and he runs ahead to whisper with Y and Z, and they all laugh. Bam—I’m left to wonder what I’m missing out on.
The easiest and most preferable way to be cool at camp (and everywhere, I guess) is to get with a member of the opposite sex. Even the dorky, buck-toothed guys become instantly popular when they land a fifteen-year-old girl. This is where my problems start.
I can’t go up to a girl and ask her out. (Of course, “going out with” someone at CCRC is stupid because there’s nowhere to go. It just means you and your counterpart hold hands and engage in some public displays of affection.) Fear of rejection isn’t the only thing that holds me back—a powerful sensation of disgust does, too, as if I were in third grade and girls were icky. If I were gay, that would clear things up, but I’m not. Just inept.
This year, I had a chance—I really did—with this punk girl named Kat. She came up to me on that first day of camp and started chatting:
“Hey, Ned! Are you still reading all those Orwell books?”
“Oh, hi. Yeah. I brought some with me, actually.”
“Did you bring your Devo CD?”*
“Uh, no, left it at home.”
“Oh, you don’t like them now? You’ve moved on?”
“Yeah, I like this band called Moxy—”
“I can’t believe you didn’t bring Devo. I realized, the way you dance to that, you would make the perfect Rude Boy!”**
For the next few days, we talked. It was classic: I liked Kat, I thought she liked me, but neither of us was forward enough to do anything. One day, this guy named Neal asked me what the deal was between me and Kat.
“Nothing, we’re just friends,” I answered.
Neal got with Kat frighteningly quick, forming a relationship that lasted all through camp. I was thankful; it gave me an excuse not to ask her out, which I had feared more than anything.
I might have had some hope with Kat if there hadn’t been any dances. I can’t describe how much I hate dances. Ever since fifth grade, when that girl Rebecca told me I danced like a cricket, I’ve been a professional wallflower. I like it, in a perverse way. Standing by the wall, surrounded by other nerdy non-dancers, a sort of camaraderie forms. It’s safe there, much safer than on the floor.
As luck would have it, dances are held at CCRC every Saturday, in the rec hall. During the first dance, I sat on a Ping-Pong table by a wall for three hours. Kat grabbed me and threw me onto the floor, urging, “Come on, Ned, dance!” I walked back to my table.
I missed the second dance because I was on a canoe trip. During the third dance, they played “Whip It” so I was obliged to get up and groove with Devo. When the song ended, I went back to my tent and slept. Sleep also freed me from the final dance, and as I lay in my dirty sheets, I wondered, “What happens to the wallflowers of the world? Do they ever get laid? Do they ever get married?”
I shouldn’t dwell on unpleasant subjects. Some big things happened at camp, most of them on the canoe trip—eleven campers, two counselors, five days, seventy miles. I learned a lot about myself on that trip, namely how to (A) smoke a cigarette* and (B) get high.
(A) took place the first day of the trip, after we had reached our campsite. A group of boys trekked into the woods, bringing me along. They all lit up Camels, enveloping me in a smell familiar from my high school. I was offered one and shown the proper puffing technique. I took a drag.
It was just as I’d expected from riding in unventilated yellow cabs and car-service sedans—sort of like sticking your head in a campfire and inhaling deeply. The smoke went to the back of my mouth, then lower into my throat somewhere. It was acrid, abrasive, like swallowing sand. It tasted raunchy. I got very dizzy and began hacking, and then I gave the Camel to someone else. I sat down for a while, and the aftertaste was kind of good. But not good enough to shell out three bucks a pack.
(B) took place the next night, when my friend X produced a bong and brought me down to the riverbank with Y. X told me that nothing would happen to me because smoking marijuana only affected you the third or fourth time you tried it. He passed the bong around; I don’t know how much I smoked. We finished and X asked me:
“So, feeling any adverse effects?”
“No, I feel normal.”
“See, I told you nothing would happen.”
He turned to Y and began chatting with him. Then I started laughing. At X and Y’s conversation. At anything and everything. They told me to shut up.
While I was laughing, a deep, analytical part of my brain was mumbling, “So this is what it’s like to be stoned.” It was like waking up at 2:00 A.M. with a 103-degree fever and stumbling through the hall to pee. I tripped over grass clumps as I went back to my tent to sleep.
The next day, I felt guilty. All those public service announcements I’d seen as a kid (in between Nintendo games) were haunting me. I justified myself the same way I’d done with the cigarette—if I hadn’t smoked, I’d always be wondering if it were some great experience. Doing it, laughing a lot, getting told to shut up, and then going to sleep took a lot of the romance away.
Yet, for most of camp I haven’t been stoned, or sitting through dances, or being called a “Rude Boy.” I’ve just been trundling along, writing, practicing my bass guitar, idly picking apart leaves. Last Sunday, at our weekly Sharing Circle meeting,* the counselors and
campers sat around a campfire, talking about what we’d learned from CCRC.
“Ned,” one of them called, “what have you learned from camp?”
Geez. I learned that teenagers are vile creatures who grasp and exploit in the name of popularity. I learned some new songs on my bass guitar. I learned (A) and (B). I learned that hanging out is highly overrated. I learned that I don’t like Free Time. I stalled.
“Um, uh, what did I learn? Uh, let’s see … well …”
“Okay, I understand. You don’t get it, right?”
“Uh …”
The counselor smiled. “You probably think that this whole thing is stupid, right?”
“A little,” I said.
“Well, someday you’ll get it. Someday you’ll realize how great camp is.”
Okay. I hope so.
*The “Christian” part was dubious; CCRC had a short optional chapel service once a week. But that was good enough for Mom, who didn’t want me missing any church over the summer.
**One of the better video games of all time.
*Seriously, I love chopping wood. I wish there were somewhere to do it in New York City, like a wood-chopping gym. I’d definitely get a membership in a wood-chopping gym.
**You lean off a dock and try to punch fish in a lake, okay? It’s not as fun as it sounds because the fish are too fast.
***Cool movie about mean teenagers.
*Oh, Devo. What can I say? The nerdiest band of all time, and one of the best.
**I didn’t know what a Rude Boy was either. Kat was always using punk terms I didn’t know; I just nodded and smiled.
*I knew I’d smoke a cigarette sooner or later. I also knew it would be overrated. I did it to get it over with, to check off another little box in my head. Now I know that when teenage boys make a pilgrimage to the woods, they’re going to smoke—so I’m not missing anything if they leave me behind.