Jazz Night, Take Three - 4/12/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

I was unreasonably nervous before jazz night. By "before jazz night" I mean "for the twenty-four hours preceding jazz night." I guess I built it up a lot in my head. I guess I expected it to be this big huge deal, and if it wasn't, I knew I was going to be disappointed. I mean, the day of jazz night last year was the best day of my life. This jazz night had a lot to live up to.

Even while I was doing this, I knew it was stupid. "Of course it's not going to be a big deal," I told myself. "It's a school concert. You're middle and high school students. Nobody's even going to be there." Instead of calming me down, this just made me feel worse. I resigned myself to being disappointed, and took on the attitude that I would just have to wait to be disappointed and then grit my teeth and be disappointed. I still couldn't get my involentary functions to slow the fuck down.

It didn't help that after school, a few hours before jazz night, Mr. Thomas failed to have pit practice for the fourth time in a row. This is the fourth time in a row that I have gotten off of work to have a practice that didn't happen, even though Mr. Thomas told me that it would definitely happen. At this point there would be two rehearsals before hell week. I kind of freaked out a little and pretty much quit pit. Mr. Thomas was appologetic. Yeah, it really didn't help.

I felt a litte bit like I was going to pass out while we were hanging around in the band room beforehand. During his be-respectful-and-not-dumb speech, Mr. Casto had someone from each band recite the order of songs for their band. When he asked me for the order of mine, I suddenly could not remember the name of Laura's song. In fact, I didn't even remember what it sounded like, or that Laura was directing it. All I knew was that there existed a third song. I called it "that other one." People laughed. Laura laughed too, but it was insincere.

The concert opened with a sax quintet played by the A band saxes, which fell apart. Then were the two middle school bands, which played fast jazz standards way down tempo. Then we went.

Tocatta and 'Round Midnight went pretty okay. There were a few scattered problems, most of which the audience (made up almost entirely of our parents) didn't notice. Then I announced Laura and said that she would be taking over the band next year, and people clapped and we switched places.

Muzikawi Silt started with a clarinet solo, the way it's supposed to. But then Speedy didn't come in. Then Dave and I didn't come in. No one else came in but the flutes, seperately, and very timidly. The clarinetist got off from the drummer. We all sort of looked around and tried to figure out what to do. We were trainwrecking.

I will not forget the look on Laura's face for a while. I have never seen someone's worst nightmares being realized so exactly. She was freaking out, almost crying, literally mouthing, "no! no!" Not even at us, I don't think. Just at life.

I knew I was going to have to stop it. I stood up and sat back down a few times before I actually got up the nerve. I stood up and Laura stopped conducting and the few people who were playing stopped playing and I said into the mic nearest me, "We're having some problems with nerves. We can really play it a lot better than that, so... We're going to try it again." A few people in the audience laughed good naturedly. Laura put her head in her hands. I said, "come on you guys," just loud enough for the band to hear, and Laura said, "yeah guys, I'm freaking out," loud enough probably for the audience to hear. We started again, and honestly, it almost fell apart again. But we got through it. Laura's conducting was panicked at the beginning and determined towards the end. Her "everyone bow" signal was rather violent.

B band was performing next, so I had to be onstage again, but I waited in the band room for Laura to come in. She did. She walked over to the piano and pounded on all the keys at once. This was pretty weird to behold. I do not know Laura well enough to have seen her angry before, and I haven't really bothered to imagine her angry.

"That could not have gone any worse!" she said. "What the fuck happened?"

"Laura, listen..." I said. "I hope you don't think that was your fault."

"Yeah, that was totally us," said Julian.

"I don't, but I still want to fucking cry!"

"Look, it was all nerves. People were freaking out. I was freaking out, and I think a lot of other people were freaking out..."

"Yeah, I was freaking out. That's why I accidentally took Julian's solo," said Speedy.

"...You know and I know that we were prepared. That was just a fluke. It happens to everybody."

She didn't say anything.

"Look, I'm in a group that's on... now... I'll talk to you later. Sleep on it. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

And then she threw a chair across the room. Like, all five feet of uptight music theory aficionado picked up a chair and threw it across the room, while everyone just sort of stood there and watched.

"Uh, you probably need to go on now," said Molly to me.

"Right," I said. "I'll talk to you later Laura."

I was so not into my other two jazz bands. I just wanted it to be over. I just kept thinking, "Oh my god. We trainwrecked. We actually trainwrecked." I took a mediocre flute solo in B band and a good flute solo in A band, and didn't play the trombone very well at all, because I wasn't trying that hard. I had come back to earth a little bit by the time we played Julian's feature, because I noticed that when he tried to adjust his stand so that it would be tall enough for him, he ended up pulling the top right off. He held it in his hands and examined it for a few seconds before Jack stood up and helped him reattatch it. I had come back to earth enough to find this very funny. I also knew that his solo was good.

After the concert was over I started to feel better, because I got compliments. Lots of people's parents told me how awesome me and my band were. Including Jay Goldman's dad. That was pretty cool. And Laura got compliments too. People gathered around her and told her that it was fine the second time and that she handled it well and that it was cool that next year it would be her band and all that. She came up to me and told me that she was feeling a little better, and she gave me another hug.

I also got a lot of stuff, a lot of it of mysterious origin. Here is the stuff that I got:

• A bouquet, handed to me by Mr. Thomas on stage, which he said was from the band.

• A bouquet, handed to me by Speedy on stage, accompanied by an adorable embarassed smile and no words. (Ugh! Come on, God! Wrong quiet funny alto sax player! You missed by one chair!)

• A box of chocolates, which had appeared next to my cases when I went back into the band room.

• A card, from Laura, which said nice things in a very sincere, slightly I'm-not-comfortable-with-emotions way.

• A card, preseumably written by Speedy, which said really very embarassingly nice things, like, about my leaving an enormous legacy which has inspired us all and stuff, signed by about seven people in varying degrees of illegibility

• A card, with a cartoon gopher on the outside saying "thanks," and a cartoon gopher in a tuxedo on the inside saying, "I just wanted to formally thank you," signed by no one at all

• A little windup gadget that jumps around, from Molly, which she told me before I opened it was going to be the most useless thing in the world.

I have been taking out the stuff and looking at it a lot. I wonder who the gopher card was from.

I took an entire prescription sleeping pill when I got home, because I knew that the look on Laura's face would not let me sleep. Usually I just take half. It's a good thing I did. The twenty minutes that I had to wait for it to kick in were torture. I just wanted not to have to think anymore. I just needed not to think about it.

It wasn't entirely Laura's face though. Before I went to bed, I did something else that I didn't want to think about: I sent this email to Molly and Dave:

Hey you guys. There's something that's been bothering me for a while, and for a while, I've been trying to decide whether I have the right to tell you about it. I finally decided that I don't. I have no right to say this to you. I won't blame you at all if you don't do what I ask. And if it screws anything up, I hope you'll forgive me. But I also decided that regardless of whether or not I have the right to ask you, I have to. This is my compulsive honesty thing getting the best of me. I'm sorry.

This is what I wanted to say:

Please, please don't go to college together.

That is all.

• Aidan