I appologize for the length of this entry. I had a lot to say.
I showed up for the talent show half an hour early and didn't quite know what to do with myself. I helped Greg carry his drum set onto the stage. (they decided to use it as the main drum set, and he got all excited.) Then I tuned with Dave. Then I just sat around. Adam was nowhere to be found, and I worried about that. Eventually, Greg started to worry too. "Where's Adam?" he said. "I'm not sure." "Great. One of my guiarists isn't here, and one of them's freaking out about playing his solo." (Greg played with two bands.) "What is wrong with my bands?!" "Ok, you know what? We need to tune, so I'm going to go see if he's backstage or something..." At this point I turned around and he was standing right there. "Woah!" said Dave. "Where did you come from?" He shrugged. "Scene shop. We need to tune." "I know," I said. "I brought my amp." Things were generally ok between us while we got ready. Dave and I told him to practice the melody of Ob-La-Dee Ob-La-Da, and Adam and I told Dave to practice hitting the right partial for Low Rider. I practiced my mad bass solo. Greg tried to get his other guitarist to stop freaking out.
After we couldn't think of anything else to prepare, We visited our groupies. Emma, Cassandra (I haven't mentioned her yet, have I? I will eventually) Molly, Sam, Jenn, Tom, Katherine, and Julian all came to see us. So did all of our parents and my aunt and uncle, who sat relatively close to each other towards the back of the crowd. Our friends sat up front. Emma threatened to scream out my name when I was onstage, and gave me giant lightbulb-shaped earrings, which I wore when I played. It's nice to have groupies.
Before the show, my mom called me aside and told me that Greg's grandfather died this morning. When I told Dave, he said "Oh yeah, I knew that. Didn't you see his away message? 'This one's for you grampa.'" "Jeez," I said. "That's a lot of pressure." "It's not pressure," he said. I hate the feeling you get when someone you don't know dies.
Eventually, when some girl was singing in front of the closed curtain, Kevin, who is a techie, told us to come set up. After some frantic scrambling on his part and on Hattie's, we got our amps working, and when we gave the signal to the MCs to stop stalling, the curtain went up. Emma didnít scream out my name, but a drama kid who I kind of know did. We played. Ob-La-Dee Ob-La-Da was mediocre - the volume on my guitar amp was too low and Adam majorly screwed up the melody. But Dave immediately hit the right partial on Low Rider. Not only that, everyone started cheering for the song when they heard the melody. And my bass solo was AWESOME. Seriously, it was. People cheered for me when it was over. Afterwards, some forty year old lady who I've never spoken to in my life told me I was awesome. Like, she didn't say, "You were awsome!" she said "You're awsome!" We congradulated each other. "Dude," I said to Dave, "You hit that note RIGHT ON. Like, you couldn't even tell you were worried about not hitting it." "Yeah, well, how do trumpet players greet each other?" (This is a well-known instrument joke.) "'Hi, I'm better than you.' I always have that attitude when I'm playing." I also ran into Rob. He stared at me for a second and then said, "Hey Aidan, Go play bass." I wasn't sure what this meant, exactly, but I said, "Oh, I meet your approval?" and he nodded.
At intermission, I went up and talked to my mom for a second. Then I glanced in front of me and saw Adam's parents talking to Adam and the girl. It was the same girl - short and pale with red hair. I tried not to look over, but I couldn't help it. They were laughing. I went up and sat with my friends again. Adam never joined us.
For the rest of the show, I sat between Molly and Julian. I talked to Julian about the music and to Molly about random things that popped into her head. The second act was really very good. The coolest one, I think, was these guys who did "You can call me Al." They used pedals to record the guitar and bass parts on loops, and then they sang and used a fiddle for the trumpet part. And the kid did a really cool fiddle solo. Rob, Andy, and a sax player named Jay (these three are at the very top of the musical elite) jammed a few times. The last act was Greg's other band playing Stairway. Greg dedicated it to his grandfather. They were awsome and got a huge standing ovation. While they were playing, I thought about how everyone around me was leading a completely different life. I watched Greg playing the crap out of his drums, for his grandfather. I watched Tom and Katherine rest their heads against each other. I looked at Molly to one side of me, and Julian to the other, both absorbed in the music. Everyone has their own problems. Everyone has their own successes. I felt sort of peaceful thinking about it.
Once I got in the car with my mom, she told me I did well. Then she said "Are you okay though?" I knew what she was talking about. "...I think he has a girlfriend," I said quietly. "I know he does." I didn't say anything. "I've just got to say, I'm really quite angry at him. I would have thought that he'd know enough to handle this better. But he handled it horribly." She kept saying things like this, like how it wasn't always going to be this way and how I should try not to let it affect the way I think about relationships and stuff. She kindof went over all the awful stuff he did. And she kept talking about his mother. She thinks that his parents don't know - that he lied to them and told them that he broke up with me before he did or that I broke up with him or something. "Because if his mother knew, I doubt she would have let him handle it this way." "I don't see what his mother has anything to do with it," I said. There was silence. "When do you have the right to be angry at someone?" "You certainly do now." "Well when do you have the right to act angry at someone?" More silence. "I don't know how to feel right now. I don't know what to do. I hate conflict. I WANT to go back to being friends. It's nessescary for us to go back to being friends - you know, with the band. But right now, I feel like we can't. I almost feel like we shouldn't." More silence. "So now I have two options, both of which suck. I can be civil towards him and act like nothing happenned, which is letting him off easy - basically letting him walk all over me. Or I can start badmouthing him the way that part of me wants to - refuse to be friends with him - turn the rest of his friends against him - get him kicked out of the band, if I need to. But I don't want to do that either because... What good does that do? But not badmouthing him means not telling anyone what he did. And don't you always say that I should get these things off my chest? Talk to my friends about it? he deserves for people to know." More silence. "This sucks." Normally I do not say this in front of my mom, but she didn't seem to mind last night. "Well, so did he in the show tonight." "That doesn't make me feel any better mom." More silence. "All the guys I've dated have been insecure, arrogant, significantly dumber than I am, and unable to survive without a girlfriend." "Tom's not insecure, is he?" "Why else can't he survive without a girlfriend?" "Why can't you survive without a boyfriend?" I exploded. "See, I hate that. Please don't think that. Needing to be in a relationship and being a little unable to function because you're not in a PARTICULAR relationship are two completely different things. I am FINE without a boyfriend. I don't even LIKE the whole relationship thing." I started to cry. I hate crying in front of people. "You don't know how long it took me. At first I wouldn't allow myself to become emotionally attatched. But then I forced myself - I told myself that I could trust the situation. And I developed emotions. And I LIKED them. And the fact that it ended up that I COULDN'T trust the situation..." More silence. "Man, I have to stop dating people who I'm smarter than." "Is Julian smart?" she said. "Are you being serious with me?" "Why, what's wrong with Julian?" "Nothing's wrong with Julian." More silence. "I won't allow myself to do that. I won't allow myself to say 'Oh, I can't fixate on this person anymore, so I think I'll fixate on someone different.' That's not cool. I won't do it." Besides, I wanted to say, Julian's not interested in relationships. He's interested in jazz and physics. Hm... perhaps this attitude is the reason why I date people who are dumber than me.
As I lay awake in bed, I thought about France a little. I thought about how I had to call my roommate eventually. I had caught a glimpse of her at the last meeting, but I couldn't remember exactly what she looked like. I just remember she was kind of short, and had red hair...
"NO!" I think I said it aloud. "OH NO. If it's her.... if they're one in the same... Holy motherfucking God, No."
Yes.
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