Eric and I toured Brown University, but knew we would not likely get in.
It was a cold day in Providence. It was raining so very hard. It was what people call "teeming."
It was cold, grey and miserably wet outside. However, Brown University is, of course, one of those campuses that still looks great on that day like that. It looks like the sort of place any high schooler would like to go to college.
I know I wanted to go there. It was in the heart of a hip section of Providence that seemed so rock-and-roll. The campus itself was filled with brick buildings so venerable and stoic. Who wouldn't want to go to college there?
Eric and I were lucky. Our parents brought us to Brown to get an experience. We were not pressured to attend an Ivy League school. We were invited to explore and make our own decisions.
I had toured Georgetown and George Washington. I had walked through Harvard Yard. I enjoyed every moment of these visits because I just admire what these places stood for without feeling an ounce of pressure to be among their alumni one day.
I think Eric felt the same way because we simply enjoyed the visit that early morning as the rain and wind relentlessly forced our huddled tour group to follow our guide under archways that shielded us.
It was under one such archway our guide, outfitted in a hooded blue raincoat, started to shout over the sound of the storm. He was telling us about life in the student dorms.
Then we heard it. We heard a scream. Eric and I looked over.
A girl was in a dead sprint out from under the archway into the pouring rain. She was screaming something so loud it must have woken up everyone in a nearby dorm room on campus sleeping off their hangovers.
"I DON'T WANT TO GO HERE!" she screamed.
Her parents took off in tow. The three continued on into the storm.
"It's a terror knowing what this world is about and watching some good friends scream, "Let me out!"/... This is ourselves... under pressure." -David Robert Jones and Farrok Bulsara.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Jeremy
The scene would have made passing drivers very uneasy.
It was late at night, a warm and foggy summer night, and for any drivers coming through the back roads of Connecticut it would have disgusted them and pushed them to really step on the accelerator.
Jeremy and I stood at the top of Jenny's driveway, shadowy figures to those on the road. They would have only seen that we were two college-aged kids up to no good. We would look just like the sort of thing that women who walk throughout the neighborhood each morning with their dogs would talk about with their friends and cite as evidence that our generation was on the wrong track. Then they would continue complaining about the growing deer population.
Jeremy and I were waiting for Jenny to come out of her house so we could all begin one of our summer "hang-out" sessions somewhere else. But Jenny never came. She was at work or.... something....
But Jeremy and I did not know that ahead of time, and while we waited patiently Jeremy decided it was time to unzip his fly and take a pee break. My dog does the same thing when the wait is too long without having to fumble with a zipper.
So imagine how it looks to a passer-by when two young men stand outside someone's house with the car in idle and one of them is peeing. It is like a scene out of The Goonies, or Say Anything, or- to stretch it- even The Sopranos.
The only other people I know who urinate on someone's property in plain sight have been out on the town for hours and didn't go to class in college all that often.
It's funny. Jeremy doesn't even drink.
It was late at night, a warm and foggy summer night, and for any drivers coming through the back roads of Connecticut it would have disgusted them and pushed them to really step on the accelerator.
Jeremy and I stood at the top of Jenny's driveway, shadowy figures to those on the road. They would have only seen that we were two college-aged kids up to no good. We would look just like the sort of thing that women who walk throughout the neighborhood each morning with their dogs would talk about with their friends and cite as evidence that our generation was on the wrong track. Then they would continue complaining about the growing deer population.
Jeremy and I were waiting for Jenny to come out of her house so we could all begin one of our summer "hang-out" sessions somewhere else. But Jenny never came. She was at work or.... something....
But Jeremy and I did not know that ahead of time, and while we waited patiently Jeremy decided it was time to unzip his fly and take a pee break. My dog does the same thing when the wait is too long without having to fumble with a zipper.
So imagine how it looks to a passer-by when two young men stand outside someone's house with the car in idle and one of them is peeing. It is like a scene out of The Goonies, or Say Anything, or- to stretch it- even The Sopranos.
The only other people I know who urinate on someone's property in plain sight have been out on the town for hours and didn't go to class in college all that often.
It's funny. Jeremy doesn't even drink.
John
John Thomas was a devoted follower before many of us.
John was a devoted follower of Limp Bizkit. He was a rap-metal acolyte, and everyone in our circles in middle school knew it.
John would scrawl the lyrics to Limp Bizkit songs like "Nookie" and "Re-Arranged" into our school desks with his pen. He even did it to the desks in the classrooms of teachers we liked.
He would take teachers' chalk and draws his fish-in-the-sand on the blackboards of our eighth-grade Spanish classroom. It was the three-trunked tree familiar to all fans like him. It represented all that Limp Bizkit stood for: big, puffy jackets; backwards baseball caps; sexually-explicit lyrics.
John would run to the DJ's table at middle school dances and furiously scrawl the name of as many Limp Bizkit songs as he thought he would realistically get played over the speakers, songs like "Faith" and "Break Stuff."
"It's just one of those days when you don't wanna wake up/ Everything is f***ed up/ Everybody sucks."
This was heavy-handed stuff for thirteen year-olds. It was rock 'n roll rebellion. After all, who could forget the mud-covered, shirtless crowds of devotees at Woodstock '99 where Limp Bizkit reigned a supreme live act. John would have been one of them. He would have moshed with the best of them. But since he could not be at Woodstock '99, John just moshed with the best of our classmates on the floor of the middle school cafetorium.
Factoid: "Cafeteria" + "Auditorium" = "Cafetorium."
And what was the price of John's discipleship? This is how it was relayed to me.
John and two of our mutual friends went into the woods. John picked up a log to recreate the scene from the music video of one of his favorite Limp Bizkit songs "My Way."
John proved he belonged in the video. He acted just like the star. He swung a log up and down like a caveman.
And then John hit himself square in the forehead with what must have been a piece of wood that weighed something in the double digits. And John almost fell backward.
That's the spirit of rap metal, and it's a tough way to grow up.
John was a devoted follower of Limp Bizkit. He was a rap-metal acolyte, and everyone in our circles in middle school knew it.
John would scrawl the lyrics to Limp Bizkit songs like "Nookie" and "Re-Arranged" into our school desks with his pen. He even did it to the desks in the classrooms of teachers we liked.
He would take teachers' chalk and draws his fish-in-the-sand on the blackboards of our eighth-grade Spanish classroom. It was the three-trunked tree familiar to all fans like him. It represented all that Limp Bizkit stood for: big, puffy jackets; backwards baseball caps; sexually-explicit lyrics.
John would run to the DJ's table at middle school dances and furiously scrawl the name of as many Limp Bizkit songs as he thought he would realistically get played over the speakers, songs like "Faith" and "Break Stuff."
"It's just one of those days when you don't wanna wake up/ Everything is f***ed up/ Everybody sucks."
This was heavy-handed stuff for thirteen year-olds. It was rock 'n roll rebellion. After all, who could forget the mud-covered, shirtless crowds of devotees at Woodstock '99 where Limp Bizkit reigned a supreme live act. John would have been one of them. He would have moshed with the best of them. But since he could not be at Woodstock '99, John just moshed with the best of our classmates on the floor of the middle school cafetorium.
Factoid: "Cafeteria" + "Auditorium" = "Cafetorium."
And what was the price of John's discipleship? This is how it was relayed to me.
John and two of our mutual friends went into the woods. John picked up a log to recreate the scene from the music video of one of his favorite Limp Bizkit songs "My Way."
John proved he belonged in the video. He acted just like the star. He swung a log up and down like a caveman.
And then John hit himself square in the forehead with what must have been a piece of wood that weighed something in the double digits. And John almost fell backward.
That's the spirit of rap metal, and it's a tough way to grow up.
Shea
We stood around ready to say goodbye.
We were ready to say goodbye to Shea Quinn. The next time we would see him he would be Cadet Quinn, a swabbie deep into his first summer at the Coast Guard Academy.
We were outside on Eric Wester's lawn one evening in late June. We had just graduated. We still felt like high school seniors, and this was a very difficult moment for us.
Shea would be the first to leave, the first to enter the new phase of his life many of us were anticipating that summer. He would go on to the Academy, and we would not see as much of him as we were used to.
For the previous six years Shea was a constant presence in my life and many others. We would greet each other each day throughout middle school with a fist bump shouting each others' last names to see how loud and obnoxious we could make them sound in the hallways lined with lockers. We began this in cross-country and it continued through band class and well into high school.
We had sat side-by-side in English classes we worked hard to get good grades in. We sat in line with one another in a Spanish class we were likely to get very bad grades in (Que malo!). We had continued shouting matches on tennis courts to see how many f-bombs we could drop after hitting bad shots.
And now Shea was driving away from this gathering in his green Honda Accord. We had all gotten together to "hang" one last time before Shea headed off to the "swabbie summer" he would later talk about as a grim experience. Case in point: upon his first day he was given a haircut that he said made his Irish mug look like it belonged to a Serbian terrorist.
Katie was the first to wear her heart on her sleeve. She hugged Shea goodbye and started crying.
And then Shea made his way to the Honda which was parked right in front of my 1991 Oldsmobile Toronado Trofeo. Navy blue with a thin red stripe running the length of the exterior, Shea had always called it my "Batmobile." It had more dials and controls inside it than most American automobiles of the early 1990s, yet it still looked like a relic of the late 1970s or a model of some vehicle designed for the Soviet military.
Everyone, Shea included, commented on my poor driving habits. Everyone loved the stories of the mailboxes I had knocked down or the one-way entrances I took straight on in the wrong direction.
So it seemed fitting that my Toronado would be parked behind Shea's Honda in tribute to his departure.
As we waved goodbye and Shea got into the driver's seat of the Honda, he channeled Will Ferrell with one final signature shouting of "GOULET!" before slamming the sedan into reverse. Que increible!
He yelled just before slamming the sedan straight into the bumper of my Oldsmobile. The only thing more unbelievable than the incredible noise created upon impact was the fact that it did not dent the Batmobile at all. Not a scratch. The tank was intact.
That's how an Irishman left the party that day- with a bang.
We were ready to say goodbye to Shea Quinn. The next time we would see him he would be Cadet Quinn, a swabbie deep into his first summer at the Coast Guard Academy.
We were outside on Eric Wester's lawn one evening in late June. We had just graduated. We still felt like high school seniors, and this was a very difficult moment for us.
Shea would be the first to leave, the first to enter the new phase of his life many of us were anticipating that summer. He would go on to the Academy, and we would not see as much of him as we were used to.
For the previous six years Shea was a constant presence in my life and many others. We would greet each other each day throughout middle school with a fist bump shouting each others' last names to see how loud and obnoxious we could make them sound in the hallways lined with lockers. We began this in cross-country and it continued through band class and well into high school.
We had sat side-by-side in English classes we worked hard to get good grades in. We sat in line with one another in a Spanish class we were likely to get very bad grades in (Que malo!). We had continued shouting matches on tennis courts to see how many f-bombs we could drop after hitting bad shots.
And now Shea was driving away from this gathering in his green Honda Accord. We had all gotten together to "hang" one last time before Shea headed off to the "swabbie summer" he would later talk about as a grim experience. Case in point: upon his first day he was given a haircut that he said made his Irish mug look like it belonged to a Serbian terrorist.
Katie was the first to wear her heart on her sleeve. She hugged Shea goodbye and started crying.
And then Shea made his way to the Honda which was parked right in front of my 1991 Oldsmobile Toronado Trofeo. Navy blue with a thin red stripe running the length of the exterior, Shea had always called it my "Batmobile." It had more dials and controls inside it than most American automobiles of the early 1990s, yet it still looked like a relic of the late 1970s or a model of some vehicle designed for the Soviet military.
Everyone, Shea included, commented on my poor driving habits. Everyone loved the stories of the mailboxes I had knocked down or the one-way entrances I took straight on in the wrong direction.
So it seemed fitting that my Toronado would be parked behind Shea's Honda in tribute to his departure.
As we waved goodbye and Shea got into the driver's seat of the Honda, he channeled Will Ferrell with one final signature shouting of "GOULET!" before slamming the sedan into reverse. Que increible!
He yelled just before slamming the sedan straight into the bumper of my Oldsmobile. The only thing more unbelievable than the incredible noise created upon impact was the fact that it did not dent the Batmobile at all. Not a scratch. The tank was intact.
That's how an Irishman left the party that day- with a bang.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Jackie
Jackie Phillips was at once the most-deserving and least-deserving person to be honored that day.
Jackie Phillips was singled out in front of fifty other people for a reason. She was a role model for everyone else in the room. Like an enlisted soldier promoted from sergeant to lieutenant in front of his unit, Jackie became the model student everyone else present should have aspired to be.
And yet the irony of it all reflected in Jackie's expression. Jackie's expression seemed to ask, "What, are you kidding me? Can I just leave or something... ?"
Jackie would revisit this moment with me and all our friends many times over the next few years.
"Remember that day in chorus?" she would begin. "Remember how Mr. Hammond stopped everything and said people should pay attention as closely as I did even though I could not sing well? Remember how he suggested that the good behavior I displayed got people like me who could not sing into chorus?"
To be fair Jackie was the one who said she could not sing, and she wore her reservations about concert choir on her sleeve. But this was also the Jackie Phillips who did not believe she deserved to be crowned the junior prom queen the year before. Tiaras were pretty stupid, she insisted.
This was the same Jackie Phillips who referred to herself as a "closet fat kid" because she ate all the time. While her appetite was impressive for a girl her size anyone could nevertheless lift her as easily as they could lift an American Girl doll.
So perhaps only Jackie believed she was not deserving of the public recognition she received in chorus class that day. Perhaps only Jackie Phillips was convinced she could not sing. Perhaps she did not deserve to be called The Only Earnest Student In Concert Choir. Perhaps she should just have been called The Biggest Square In Concert Choir.
It makes sense to me. Any senior who did their homework in study hall was a square in my book, and that's exactly what Jackie Phillips did.
I mean, who does their homework in study hall?
Jackie Phillips was singled out in front of fifty other people for a reason. She was a role model for everyone else in the room. Like an enlisted soldier promoted from sergeant to lieutenant in front of his unit, Jackie became the model student everyone else present should have aspired to be.
And yet the irony of it all reflected in Jackie's expression. Jackie's expression seemed to ask, "What, are you kidding me? Can I just leave or something... ?"
Jackie would revisit this moment with me and all our friends many times over the next few years.
"Remember that day in chorus?" she would begin. "Remember how Mr. Hammond stopped everything and said people should pay attention as closely as I did even though I could not sing well? Remember how he suggested that the good behavior I displayed got people like me who could not sing into chorus?"
To be fair Jackie was the one who said she could not sing, and she wore her reservations about concert choir on her sleeve. But this was also the Jackie Phillips who did not believe she deserved to be crowned the junior prom queen the year before. Tiaras were pretty stupid, she insisted.
This was the same Jackie Phillips who referred to herself as a "closet fat kid" because she ate all the time. While her appetite was impressive for a girl her size anyone could nevertheless lift her as easily as they could lift an American Girl doll.
So perhaps only Jackie believed she was not deserving of the public recognition she received in chorus class that day. Perhaps only Jackie Phillips was convinced she could not sing. Perhaps she did not deserve to be called The Only Earnest Student In Concert Choir. Perhaps she should just have been called The Biggest Square In Concert Choir.
It makes sense to me. Any senior who did their homework in study hall was a square in my book, and that's exactly what Jackie Phillips did.
I mean, who does their homework in study hall?
Chris
Chris Mazzone was taller than I was, and he should not have attempted it.
Chris Mazzone towered over me. He was over six feet tall. Surely that was problematic given what we were trying to do.
Surely Chris understood that we were warning him against it, against trying what we had almost seriously injured ourselves doing. It was all in the name of fun and adventurous thrills, and Chris should not have tried it.
But now Jason, John and myself were sitting in the woods were we had landed, each of us alone but aware that others who had tried it were nearby. It was midnight and the barren trees were black against the snow lit by the floodlights in the backyard. We sat and waited for the sound of Chris Mazzone hitting one of the two things you always find in woods like these: a stone wall or a tree trunk.
People talk of miracles at Christmas, and Jason, John and I had just been handed three at once. It was a miracle that Jason and John had not broken their arms or hit their heads. It was a miracle I had not broken both my legs or sent tiny fragments of bone deep into my ligaments when both my feet collided with a tree trunk jutting out from behind a boulder.
I had merely done just what Jason and John had done before me. I followed their lead, and why wouldn't I? Jason and John had as much common sense as anyone I had ever met. I would trust them in the outdoors any day.
Their sense of deliberation and knack for well-esecuted plans had always been inspiring. If I saw them attempt to steal a grizzly bear's cubs I would probably consider jumping right in on the action.
They were also two of the most spiritual people I had ever met. If they asked a crowd of people to join them in drinking the Kool Aid I would just assume it was a substitute for the wine received at communion.
So I drank the Kool Aid. They tried to offer me some sound advice from the spots where they crashed. They had told me not to try it. "Spit the Kool Aid out, Dan," they pleaded.
Shortly thereafter my two feet met the hard trunk of a tree jutting out of a boulder soles first, and I became the third recipient of a miracle that night.
Surely Chris would not do the same.
Surely Chris would see that his tall frame would be even more difficult to maneuver on that icy slope. Surely Chris could picture himself being carried down the slippery sheet of ice like a white birch tree pulled down a cascading waterfall.
Maybe his height didn't endanger him at all. I don't know; I know little about physics. I was just about convinced he stood greater chances of busting his long limbs in a place like that.
Anyway, what group of people receives four miracles in one night? Talk about a crapshoot.
And yet there he was beside us in the snow, limbs intact after he had slid feet first down that hill. He had rode that layer of frozen rain covering the ground like it was a bobsled track, and he was alright. He was miracle number four.
So after we had all spent a moment taking in just how dangerous our cheap thrills had been, after our palpitating heartbeats slowed and disbelief sent us into a mental stupor, we walked back up and out of the woods into Shea Quinn's backyard. We walked up the steps of his back deck and entered his kitchen. Shea was inside doing just what he often did around midnight whenever he was home on leave- he was drinking black coffee and cooking.
The four of us that were lucky to be standing on two feet were about to do what any group of people who received multiple miracles deserved to do- eat a pancake breakfast before 1 a.m.
"You guys are fucking idiots," said Jeremy Slonski.
Chris and I looked at one another and smirked. Jeremy must have been more surprised at Jason and John, the two people with a lot of common sense between them.
Chris and I were not surprised at what we had done. We were used to doing stupid things.
Jason
It was almost midnight by the time we piled into the station wagon in the crowded parking lot. There were six of us total, five teenages and one adult. We all smelled like the crowd we had just left. We smelled like the marijuana cloud that the concertgoers had created and imbued into our clothing though none of us smoked pot ourselves.
By the time us kids had dragged ourselves into the old station wagon we reeked from three hours spent standing on the lawn of the ampitheatre with our heads involuntarily caught in a pot cloud and our feet in beer-soaked turf. Dave Matthews and his band had been off stage for half an hour by the time we all piled into the car. A good full hour of sitting idle in traffic awaited us.
What else to do besides put in yet another of the six or seven Dave Matthews Band albums we had brought on our drive? Shea Quinn and Tim Atherton had already fallen asleep in the very back of the car. In the front and middle sections of the car sat three wide-eyed and wide awake concert-lovers looking to stretch the night out just a little more.
We put the album in and began to sing along. We hoped this would ease our disappointment having not heard some of our favorite track played live that night in Hartford. It did for awhile.
It did until the two boys in the middle seats- one a nervous-by-nature tenth grader named Dan and the other a tall, gangly dude of the same age named Chris- decided that singing along to the songs playing on the sound system was just too boring for this time of night. Why not speak the lyrics instead? Wouldn't that be fun for everyone?
It did get a big chuckle out of Jason, the son of the man driving the car and chaperoning this event. Jason looked back from the passenger seat at his two friends as they happily chanted the lyrics to every song in a truly awful monotone. Oh, this is fun, they thought as they reveled in their ridiculous idea. They were all too happy to entertain anyone they ever encountered with half-brained ideas just like this one.
Yes, Dan and Chris were certainly thoroughly enjoying themselves and both were silently thinking , Wow, I am such a funny guy!
And the driver? He was the family man forced to sit in a car full of hyperactive high-schoolers that reeked of smoke, sweat and all the grime shared by a thousand people standing too close to one another. There were the smells, the traffic, the fact that it was a late night turning into a long morning. On top of all that two moronic high schoolers were sitting directly behind him in the station wagon speaking the words to some of his favorite Dave Matthews songs. It must have been a toxic cocktail. A migraine ensued.
The driver speaks with his son in the passenger seat and politely suggests that the two guests in the middle CUT IT OUT. Why not just listen to the songs instead of reciting the lyrics as if it were the Pledge Of Allegiance?
Chris and Dan shut up, the traffic subsided, and the crew could finally head home. Few words were exchanged until someone suggested they all stop at Dunkin Donuts once they rolled back into town. Iced Vanilla Bean lattes all around, everyone!
Jason and his father very generously rewarded two obnoxious people in the drive-thru at three in the morning. There is nothing qute like the lingering aromas of a concert mixed with vanilla flavoring.
By the time us kids had dragged ourselves into the old station wagon we reeked from three hours spent standing on the lawn of the ampitheatre with our heads involuntarily caught in a pot cloud and our feet in beer-soaked turf. Dave Matthews and his band had been off stage for half an hour by the time we all piled into the car. A good full hour of sitting idle in traffic awaited us.
What else to do besides put in yet another of the six or seven Dave Matthews Band albums we had brought on our drive? Shea Quinn and Tim Atherton had already fallen asleep in the very back of the car. In the front and middle sections of the car sat three wide-eyed and wide awake concert-lovers looking to stretch the night out just a little more.
We put the album in and began to sing along. We hoped this would ease our disappointment having not heard some of our favorite track played live that night in Hartford. It did for awhile.
It did until the two boys in the middle seats- one a nervous-by-nature tenth grader named Dan and the other a tall, gangly dude of the same age named Chris- decided that singing along to the songs playing on the sound system was just too boring for this time of night. Why not speak the lyrics instead? Wouldn't that be fun for everyone?
It did get a big chuckle out of Jason, the son of the man driving the car and chaperoning this event. Jason looked back from the passenger seat at his two friends as they happily chanted the lyrics to every song in a truly awful monotone. Oh, this is fun, they thought as they reveled in their ridiculous idea. They were all too happy to entertain anyone they ever encountered with half-brained ideas just like this one.
Yes, Dan and Chris were certainly thoroughly enjoying themselves and both were silently thinking , Wow, I am such a funny guy!
And the driver? He was the family man forced to sit in a car full of hyperactive high-schoolers that reeked of smoke, sweat and all the grime shared by a thousand people standing too close to one another. There were the smells, the traffic, the fact that it was a late night turning into a long morning. On top of all that two moronic high schoolers were sitting directly behind him in the station wagon speaking the words to some of his favorite Dave Matthews songs. It must have been a toxic cocktail. A migraine ensued.
The driver speaks with his son in the passenger seat and politely suggests that the two guests in the middle CUT IT OUT. Why not just listen to the songs instead of reciting the lyrics as if it were the Pledge Of Allegiance?
Chris and Dan shut up, the traffic subsided, and the crew could finally head home. Few words were exchanged until someone suggested they all stop at Dunkin Donuts once they rolled back into town. Iced Vanilla Bean lattes all around, everyone!
Jason and his father very generously rewarded two obnoxious people in the drive-thru at three in the morning. There is nothing qute like the lingering aromas of a concert mixed with vanilla flavoring.
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