8
Silence.
“Well, let me rephrase that. There’s no possibility of carbon-based life on other planets in this solar system.”
“Really?” I’ll say, after a few beats.
“Oh, yeah,” he’ll say. “No chance.”
He always has lots to say. He can manage for both of us.
We spend a lot of time over each other’s houses watching TV
and playing games. There’s a running argument about whose house is harder to take. Mine is goofy and resembles an insane asylum; his is silent and grim and forbidding, and bears every indication of having been built on an ancient Indian burial ground. We both have a point, but he usually wins and comes to my house because I’ve got a TV in my room and he doesn’t. TV can really take the edge off. Plus, he has a taste for prescription tranquilizers, and my mom is his main unwitting supplier.
Sam Hellerman and I are in a band. I mean, we have a name and a logo, and the basic design for the first three or four album covers. We change the name a lot, though. A typical band lasts around two weeks, and some don’t even last long enough for us to finish designing the logo, let alone the album covers.
When we arrived at school that first day, right at the end of August, the name was Easter Monday. But Easter Monday only lasted from first period through lunch, when Sam Hellerman took out his notebook in the cafeteria and said,
“Easter Monday is kind of gay. How about Baby Batter?”
I nodded. I was never that wild about Easter Monday, to tell you the truth. Baby Batter was way better. By the end of lunch, Sam Hellerman had already made a rough sketch of the logo, which was Gothic lettering inside the loops of an in-finity symbol. That’s the great thing about being in a band: you always have a new logo to work on.
9
“When I get my bass,” Sam Hellerman said, pointing to another sketch he had been working on, “I’m going to spray-paint ‘baby’ on it. Then you can spray-paint ‘batter’ on your guitar, and as long as we stay on our sides of the stage, we won’t need a banner when we play on TV.”
I didn’t even bother to point out that by the time we got instruments and were in a position to worry about what to paint on them for TV appearances, the name Baby Batter would be long gone. This was for notebook purposes only.
I decided my Baby Batter stage name would be Guitar Guy, which Sam Hellerman carefully wrote down for the first album credits. He said he hadn’t decided on a stage name yet, but he wanted to be credited as playing “base and Scientology.” That Sam Hellerman. He’s kind of brilliant in his way.
“Know any drummers?” he asked as the bell rang, as he always does. Of course, I didn’t. I don’t know anyone apart from Sam Hellerman.
TH E CATCHER CU LT
So that’s how the school year began, with Easter Monday fading into Baby Batter. I like to think of those first few weeks as the Baby Batter Weeks. Nothing much happened—or rather, quite a lot of stuff was happening, as it turns out, but I wouldn’t find out about any of it till later. So for me, the Baby Batter Weeks were characterized by a false sense of—
well, not security. More like familiarity or monotony. The familiar monotony of standard, generic High School Hell, which somehow manages to be horrifying and tedious at the same time. We attended our inane, pointless classes, in between which we did our best to dodge random attempts on 10
our lives and dignity by our psychopathic social superiors.
After school, we worked on our band, played games, and watched TV. Just like the previous year. There was no indication that anything would be any different.
Now, when I say our classes were inane and pointless, I really mean i. and p., and in the fullest sense. Actually, you know what? Before I continue, I should probably explain a few things about Hillmont High School, because your school might be different.
Hillmont is hard socially, but the “education” part is shockingly easy. That goes by the official name of Academics.
It is mystifying how they manage to say that with a straight face, because as a school, HHS is more or less a joke. Which can’t be entirely accidental. I guess they want to tone down the content so that no one gets too good at any particular thing, so as not to make anyone else look bad.
Assignments typically involve copying a page or two from some book or other. Sometimes you have a “research paper,” which means that the book you copy out of is the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You’re graded on punctuality, being able to sit still, and sucking up. In class you have group discussions about whatever it is you’re alleged to be studying, where you try to share with the class your answer to the question: how does it make you feel?
Okay, so that part isn’t easy for me. I don’t like to talk much.
But you do get some credit for being quiet and nondisruptive, and my papers are usually neat enough that the teacher will write something like “Good format!” on them.
It is possible, however, to avoid this sort of class alto-gether by getting into Advanced Placement classes.
(Technically, “Advanced Placement” refers to classes for which it is claimed you can receive “college credit”—which is beyond hilarious—but in practice all the nonbonehead classes 11
end up getting called AP.) AP is like a different world. You don’t have to do anything at all, not a single blessed thing but show up, and you always get an A no matter what. Well, you end up making a lot of collages, and dressing in costumes and putting on irritating little skits, but that’s about it. Plus, they invented a whole new imaginary grade, which they still call an A, but which counts as more than an A from a regular class. What a racket.
This is the one place in the high school multi-verse where eccentricity can be an asset. The AP teachers survey the class through their Catcher in the Rye glasses and . . .
Oh, wait: I should mention that The Catcher in the Rye is this book from the fifties. It is every teacher’s favorite book.
The main guy is a kind of misfit kid superhero named Holden Caulfield. For teachers, he is the ultimate guy, a real dream-boat. They love him to pieces. They all want to have sex with him, and with the book’s author, too, and they’d probably even try to do it with the book itself if they could figure out a way to go about it. It changed their lives when they were young. As kids, they carried it with them everywhere they went. They solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word.
It’s kind of like a cult.
They live for making you read it. When you do read it you can feel them all standing behind you in a semicircle wearing black robes with hoods, holding candles. They’re chanting “Holden, Holden, Holden . . .” And they’re looking over your shoulder with these expectant smiles, wishing they were the ones discovering the earth-shattering joys of The Catcher in the Rye for the very first time.
Too late, man. I mean, I’ve been around the Catcher in the Rye block. I’ve been forced to read it like three hundred times, and don’t tell anyone but I think it sucks.
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Good luck avoiding it, though. If you can make it to pu-berty without already having become a Catcher in the Rye ca-sualty you’re a better man than I, and I’d love to know your secret. It’s too late for me, but the Future Children of America will thank you.
So the AP teachers examine the class through their Catcher glasses. The most Holden-y kid wins. Dispute the premise of every assignment and try to look troubled and intense, yet with a certain quiet dignity. You’ll be a shoo-in.
Everybody wins, though, really, in AP Land.