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Ironically, part of the reason I started hanging out at home more, in addition to the fact that we couldn’t do band activities at Sam Hellerman’s, was that I had started to warm up to Little Big Tom, even actually almost kind of liked being around him sometimes. But to them it looked like I had suddenly lost interest in all the clubs and afterschool activities.
That was a Danger Sign. Then they found the lyrics and pamphlet and that had tipped the whole thing over. I screwed up.
And now I was looking at a vast stretch of inept suicide-watch activity from the parental units for some time to come.
“You’re not going to like this, chief,” Little Big Tom began. What? What could they confiscate in this situation? I was all ears.
“We’d like you to see someone. Just to talk to you and help you work things out.”
Out of the three people in that room, there were two in serious need of psychiatric help, and I wasn’t one of them.
This point would have been lost on them, though, because between them they were already “seeing” a small army of counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, analysts, facilitators, and what have you. They thought that was man’s natural state. In fact, I was surprised they hadn’t tried to force me to go to a shrink long before this, if only in the spirit of trying to provide me with everything they hadn’t had as kids.
It was going to be a drag, of course, but as punishments go, I’d certainly had worse.
LI N DA’S PANCAKE S ON B ROADWAY
The following day, Sam Hellerman and I decided to skip PE.
The main reason was because we had just started boxing and sometimes that’s just too much to take. Sam Hellerman was 162
doing it mostly in solidarity with me. I mean, he didn’t really need to, as he had a special talent that made boxing easy for him. But also, he had said, somewhat mysteriously, that there was something important that we needed to discuss, and that he had something to show me. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. “Just wait,” was all he would say.
There’s pretty much nowhere to go in Hillmont except for this place called Linda’s Pancakes on Broadway. When all else fails, which is in fact quite often, Sam Hellerman and I end up going there to sit in a booth and drink coffee from these big plastic pitchers they refer to as bottomless cups.
So the state and the school district and the Hillmont school administrators had decided that Sam Hellerman and I would spend second period that day standing in a ring hitting each other, or getting hit by someone else, or watching somebody else hitting somebody else. But instead, at least for this one day, there we were, in a booth at Linda’s Pancakes on Broadway, discussing this and that.
Actually, I should explain how PE boxing works. They don’t have a real ring. Instead, there’s a mat on the floor of the lanai, and everyone stands on the edge of the mat in a kind of human ring while the two poor kids who have to box each other stand in the middle. If one of the boxers gets too close to the human ring, the ring people in that particular area are supposed to shove him back toward the middle. I probably don’t have to mention that everybody has to wear the tiny George Michael shorts while this is all going on. It’s your basic nightmare.
While the boys are doing boxing, the girls are over on the other side of the lanai doing Rape Prevention, but they’ll always come over to watch if there’s an interesting matchup, making the whole thing even more embarrassing. There’s this pretense, never verbalized without a snicker, that they 163
have boxing to “teach you how to defend yourself.” But in reality, it’s just a way for a certain type of guy to be able to beat up on a certain other type of guy during class time as well as before and after school.
They’re required to stop the festivities at “first blood” (I kid you not, that’s the phrase they use). So your best strategy is to try to get hit in the nose and start bleeding as soon as you can and thus spare yourself the rest of the state-mandated beating. Sure, the PE teacher will then lead the class in a rousing chant of “pussy, pussy, pussy” at you, but they’re always saying that. Beats getting beat.
Sam Hellerman’s special boxing talent was that he got nosebleeds all the time. He was so good at it that he could pretty much start bleeding at will, through the power of his mind. Mr. Donnelly would put him in the ring and roar: “I’m warning you, Hellerman! If you start bleeding before you’re hit, there will be hell to pay!” But little Sam Hellerman would just stand there with an angelic look, bleeding away. Mr.
Donnelly would glower and yell and turn twenty-three shades of red, but he couldn’t touch Sam Hellerman because that would probably have been good for about three or four million dollars, by a conservative estimate. Sam Hellerman’s dad is a lawyer, as he makes sure to inform every PE teacher on the first day of class.
The best part, though, is when he leaves the ring to go to the nurse’s office and tries to get as much of his blood on as many PE goons and their stuff as he can. I’ll say it again: that Sam Hellerman is a genius.
Cutting class wasn’t so smart, really, as we’d pay for it later. But sometimes you need a mental health day.
I settled into my side of the booth and looked at Sam Hellerman expectantly. He was cagey, and only seemed to 164
want to talk about trivial matters rather than this big important thing about which he had called the meeting. Finally, I just came out and said, “What’s the story, Hellerman?”
Now, you have to understand: my day-to-day life was kind of weird at that time. I was constantly in this frantic, anxious state, all wound up. I was doing the ear thing more often than not, and I was hardly sleeping at all. I was spending most of my time thinking furiously about real or imagined mysteries, many of which, I suspected, could well have no solution. I spent a couple of hours every night working on the Catcher code when I was supposed to be doing homework. It would always end in failure, and with my throwing some object across the room in frustration.
Meanwhile, I was having no better luck with the CEH
reading list. Brighton Rock was beyond doubt the best book I had ever read, but I sure didn’t know what to make of The Journal of Albion Moonlight. I spent a lot of time “reading” it, but I never seemed to get anywhere. I couldn’t tell you what it was about or what happened in it if my life depended on it. It’s like this thing was written by a crazy person. Even the printing was crazy, sometimes tiny, sometimes huge, and sometimes the sentences and even the words themselves were all out of order.
There was almost half a page with nothing but the word
“look!” repeated over and over again. I don’t know anything about the guy, but whoever he was, I hope he got help.
I was also struggling with the songs for the new band (the Nancy Wheelers, me on guitar, Sam Hellerman on bass and Ouija board, first album: Margaret? It’s God. Please Shut Up. ) I could never get the songs to come out how I wanted. I’d have a great idea for this brilliant tune where the lyrics and the melody and the sounds and the arrangement would all complement each other and resolve into a perfect three-minute encapsulation of a true experience that would play with the 165
listeners’ emotions while simultaneously crushing their skulls.
I would start speculating about how it was only a matter of time before they awarded me the Nobel Prize for Rock and Roll, once word of it got round to Sweden. But then I’d actually try to play it or write down the lyrics and it would totally suck.