Chapter 11
On a pink-sky November morning, Matthew Yin exited his bungalow on Puddingstone Road, got in his car, and commenced his usual Saturday morning ritual of driving to Starbucks before hitting the gym. Caffeine had a way of making him jumpy and agitated: perfect for working out but not so great for his Monday-through-Friday job as a high school therapist. For this reason, he only allowed himself to drink the stuff on the weekends. Matthew typically began every Saturday morning with a venti mocha frappuccino at Starbucks at seven. Then he’d run on the treadmill and lift weights at the 24 Hour Fitness in the South Shore Shopping Center from seven-thirty to nine-thirty, returning home just in time for a shower before “band practice” at ten.
Since their infamous debut at the Blue Danooby one month earlier, the band known as Die Trying (a name they now called themselves with slightly more self-acceptance) had gone on to play several more venues. In a sense, one could say that they had garnered a little more attention for themselves in the San Francisco East Bay community. And they had written more songs – terrible songs – though terrible songs had, of course, always been the objective.
Some people actually seemed to like their music. Others appeared to feel sorry for them and would come up to Tom, Matthew and Heather after a performance with sympathetic encouragement. Things like: “You just keep on trying and things will get better!” and “Never give up hope.”
Ironically, these were the people they found most obnoxious of all: the ones who actually thought they were struggling to sound good, when in reality it was the other way around.
Finally, there had been the ones they had been waiting for: the detractors, the critics, the ones who actually booed when the band took the stage and jeered them mercilessly throughout the entire set.
After one particularly cutting display of public rejection and ridicule at The Green Lantern in Pinole, Heather burst into tears on the drive home.
“I don’t understand why you’re so upset, Heather!” Tom said. “This is what Die Trying’s all about: standing up in the face of rejection and saying fuck you to the world!”
“But didn’t you hear what they called me specifically?” Heather choked between sobs. “They said I was a no-talent assclown!”
“They were saying that to all of us, not just you,” Matthew tried to reassure her..
“Then why was the guy who said it pointing right at me?” Heather cried.
They had just gotten off 880 and were about to hang a left turn into the Posey Tube back towards Alameda.
“I think what’s really happening here,” Tom said, “is that you’re overly-attached to the idea of acceptance and traditional success.”
“Of course I am!” Heather wailed in her sinus-stuffed voice. “Why do you think I’m even in this band? I’m trying to change, but…I didn’t know it’d be so hard. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of rejection.”
“Just give it time,” Tom said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Heather protested. “You’re not the damn lead singer!”
Matthew ordered his drink at the Starbucks counter and sat down at one of the empty tables, waiting for his name to be called. A copy of the Alameda Citizen, the weekly newspaper that was freely distributed to residents of the small island town, caught his eye. Matthew disliked the foul little publication that picked idiotic stories idealizing small-town living, but he had nothing else to do in the interim and found himself picking it up.
He opened up the first page and nearly jumped out of his seat. Had Matthew already had his beverage in hand, he surely would have spilled it all over the front of his gym pants. Under the “Opinion” section was a headline that read:
An Open Letter to the Local Band ‘Die Trying’: Please Don’t.
“Matthew!” the barista called out. He put the newspaper under his harm, stood up and grabbed his drink before racing out the door.
Matthew read the letter to Tom and Heather at practice:
To the Pathetic Members of ‘Die Trying’, individually known as Tom Beckett, Heather Fellaway and Matthew Yin:
There is a problem with your band: it sucks. I have spent a considerable amount of my life studying the craft of music. I even have a master’s degree in music appreciation from a well-known university. You probably don’t realize this, but music is an art just like any other with built-in standards. It is not, contrary to popular belief (or shall I say popular music), something that just anyone can do. Unless a person plans to be an exceptional musician, he has no business attempting to dabble in something that the gods created.
In addition to my extensive musical education, I have also spent a not insignificant amount of time analyzing exactly what is wrong with you. We have already established the fact that you suck, and now I am going to tell you why.
I have had the misfortune of watching you perform on more than one occasion, once at the Blue Danube and another time at Café Bonjour Tristesse’s open mic Wednesday night. From these two experiences, I can safely say that you clearly have not the slightest grasp of how to compose a song, or even how to play your instruments. In addition, your lyrics are puerile and insipid. It’s almost as though you pilfered the personal diary of a hormonal seventh grade girl and transferred her journal entries word-for-word into your songs.
Your use of technique, intonation, shading and any other musical device that makes average music exceptional is virtually (or shall I say, audibly) nonexistent.
The word around town is that you are all high school teachers. I hope, for the sake of Alameda’s youth, that this is not the case. If it is true, however, I balk at the standard of mediocrity you are setting before them. Teenagers need role models who inspire them to be outstanding, not encourage them to live below-average lives filled with below-average achievements.
In all my years studying, listening, watching, and ultimately understanding the crème de la crème of music, I have never encountered a group so talentless. One might even venture to guess that the entire undertaking is nothing more than a mere joke, although I personally have my doubts. You are likely just another desperate garage band with pipe dreams of becoming as famous as The Beatles. Please do the members of this town, yourselves, and the entire San Francisco Bay Area a favor and never play another show again. We too are hardworking citizens of this seemingly endless economic recession, and do not deserve the added torture of having to endure a band like yours.
Yours Sincerely,
An Alameda Citizen Who Can’t Stand the Music
“He didn’t even have the guts to sign his name!” Tom cried. “If it was a he.”
“It’s obviously a he,” Matthew rolled his eyes at Tom.
Heather looked as if she had just been hit by a train. “I just can’t believe someone could hate us so much,” she sighed.
“But don’t you see how wonderful this is?” Tom said. “It’s the negative feedback we’ve been fishing for all along!”
“Sure,” Matthew conceded. “But you’re forgetting one crucial thing.”
“Which is?”
“Students,” Heather gulped. She buried her head in her hands and moaned.
“I told you we shoulda come up with stage names!” Matthew cried. He grabbed the newspaper from Tom and whacked him across the back of the head with it.
“No you didn’t!” Tom protested.
“Maybe not, but I thought about it!”
“Even if we had, they still would have figured out who we are,” Heather reasoned. “No one has any privacy in this world anymore.”
“So what if the students know?” Tom asked.
“If they know, they’re gonna ridicule us too!” Heather said.
“I do therapy with some of these kids,” Matthew said. “You can’t be a real person after you’ve been someone’s therapist. You just can’t. I mean, the very idea of it would make a person’s head explode!”
“Guys,” Tom said calmly. “Didn’t you ever think that if we went ahead with this experiment people would eventually, somehow find out about us?”
“Honestly?” Matthew replied, “No. No-name rock bands spend their entire lives trying to get attention, to get a whole page written in the local newspaper about them and it never happens.”
“That’s because they’re all trying to be good,” Tom pointed out. “We’re doing something groundbreaking here! You guys should be excited!”
Matthew and Heather were silent for a while. By this point, Matthew had read the letter about fifty times. He’d gone through about twice as many emotions in the past couple of hours as well. Shame, fear, rejection, embarrassment and humiliation had been the first to plague him. But now - to his own surprise - their effect seemed to be starting to wane. In their place was something new. Something like defiance and nonchalance.
“You know what?” Matthew looked at Tom and Heather. “I’m not gonna let this smug asshole tell me what to do.”
His mind flashed angrily at the time he was beaten up at school. “If people are going to say shitty things about us,” Matthew dropped the newspaper onto the coffee table, “we might as well take our shit to the next level and go all out.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Heather asked, alarmed.
“It means…I know I’ve been on the fence about this whole rock band thing from the get-go. But those days are over. From this moment on, I’m in. One hundred percent in. And no one, least of all this fool,” he pointed at the paper, “is gonna stop me from doing my thing.”
“Are you serious, Matthew?” Tom squealed.
“I'm in all the way, baby. Let them eat cake, just like Marie Antionette!”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Tom slapped Matthew on the back.
Heather was beginning to freak out. She and Matthew had always been more or less on the same page about Die Trying. Now Matthew - the only remaining voice of reason in her mind- was flipping sides in a big way. Heather wondered if she would be left standing all alone in her fear and hesitation, which still hadn’t worn off in spite of repeated reassurances that it soon would.
“But what if it gets worse?” she tried to reason. “What if…what if we get fired or something?”
“Heather,” Tom laughed. “Principal Louis is our boss and he happens to be our self-proclaimed number one fan. I really don’t think we have to worry about losing our jobs.”
“Mr. Beckett!” Lindsay Harmon, one of Tom’s first period English students, called out the following Monday morning as she took her seat in the front row. “My parents said they saw your name in the paper.”
Tom had tried to rehearse his response to these anticipated inquiries all weekend, but could not come up with anything satisfactory. The one thing he, Heather and Matthew had agreed upon on Saturday, however, was the importance of owning up to the truth, no matter how awkward or embarrassing it might feel. After all, getting comfortable with uncomfortable feelings was an integral part of immunizing themselves to rejection and humiliation.
With no premeditated verbal answer and the moment now upon him, he merely smiled and nodded once.
“They did?”
“Yeah.”
Much to Tom’s surprise, that was the end of the conversation with Lindsay. And no one else said another word about the Alameda Citizen letter all morning.
At ten fifty-five, Tom raced over to Heather’s classroom to see how her day had gone so far. When he entered the room without knocking, however, the first person he saw was not Heather, but Mrs. Savery. For a person who didn’t teach English, Tom thought, Mrs. Savery certainly did spend a lot of time hobnobbing with members of the English department…or maybe just Heather.
“Come in, Tom,” Heather said when she saw him in the doorway. Mrs. Savery, whose back was to the door, turned around. Her face immediately soured when she saw him.
“Actually,” Mrs. Savery said, “We’re kind of in the middle of a private conversation.”
“I love private conversations!” Tom chirped.
“It’s alright, Mrs. Savery,” Heather said. “Tom won’t bother us.”
Mrs. Savery sighed. “Well I suppose we are just about done here. I’ll give Michael your number and have him call you.”
Heather nodded obediently. Mrs. Savery turned to leave, but not before fixing Tom with an icy glower. “I read the letter about you two and Matthew Yin in the Citizen. All I can say is: you’re lucky Principal Louis is overly-emotional and forgiving to a fault. If I was the principal, the three of you would be in scalding hot water over a stunt like this.”
“What, for having a life outside of school?” Beckett shot back.
“It’s just like the person who wrote the letter said,” Mrs. Savery chided. “Teachers are role models. Traipsing around and making public fools of yourselves is no way to behave.”
She glanced at Heather.
“I’m sure you will be the first one to come to your senses and abandon this tomfoolery,” she told her. “I think meeting my son will do you a world of good. Plus, he has a very nice car.”
“What was all that about?” Tom demanded after Savery left the room.
“Isn’t it obvious? She’s setting me up with her son.”
“And you’re actually going along with it?”
“Of course. I mean, he sounds really smart and accomplished.”
“Well, there’s lots of smart people out there,” Tom pointed out. “Just because we all aren’t rocket scientists…”
“Astrophysicists,” Heather corrected him.
“He’s an astrophysicist?” Tom was shocked. “Does that mean he could be an astronaut if he wanted? Like flying space missions and stuff?”
Heather didn’t want to have this conversation and her face brightened upon realizing she had the perfect change of subject in her pocket.
“Did you know Principal Louis framed our article in the Alameda Citizen?” she asked Tom. “I ran into him this morning. He’s got it up on the wall in his office and everything.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He said that one day we’d be a famous rock band and look back at this early criticism and laugh. Then he quoted some song lyrics. I think it might have been Josh Groban.”
“How come I never see you wearing that purple scarf he gave you?” Tom inquired.
“I feel self-conscious wearing it,” Heather shrugged. “Purple isn't really my color.”
“But you look so great in purple,” Tom insisted. “The way it compliments your skin and your…hair.” He swallowed, sensing he had stepped onto familiar thin ice.
“Thanks,” Heather smiled. “Well, maybe I should wear it when I meet with Michael Savery.”
“No! I forbid you to wear it on that so-called date.”
Tom stopped himself. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling and he would have eaten a shoe before admitting it was jealousy. If it was jealousy, however, he wasn’t sure if Heather perceived it as well and was playing dumb in order to spare his feelings. His mind swam in a flurry of confusing, conflicting emotions.
“So…” Tom said. “It seems like you’re not as upset about the article anymore.”
Heather shrugged. “No one here has said anything to me about it except Principal Louis. Maybe it’s not that big a deal after all.”
“And you’re…not thinking of quitting the band?”
Heather raised her eyebrows. “Who said I was quitting the band?”
“No one,” Tom replied. “It’s just that I know it’s been difficult for you. All the rejection and embarrassment. I know you wanted it, but I thought maybe you were having second thoughts.”
Heather reflected on this a moment. “I always have second thoughts,” she admitted with a slight laugh. “But the truth is, there’s something I think I actually enjoy about being onstage. It’s exciting in a way. I mean, it’s horrible and gut-wrenching and embarrassing as hell…but it’s also kind of the one time I think I’m able to feel...free.”
Tom heaved a sigh of relief.
“I’m so glad you feel that way. I don’t know what I'd do if you decided to quit.”
“Probably find a new lead singer?”
“Never!” Tom exclaimed. “I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. It had to be you, Heather. It always had to be you and only you.”
“Why me?” Heather asked.
“Because it was my vision,” Tom explained. “My crystal clear vision of Die Trying. And because…well, you’re you.”
“I’m nothing special.”
“You’re wrong,” Tom countered. “You still can’t see it, can you? You have a magic about you when you’re onstage. I can’t describe it, but I promise you it’s there. It was there the first night I saw you sing that Shakira song.”
Heather shot Tom a cold, warning glare.
“I know, I know,” Tom relented. “Tom stopped himself. “You never want me to bring it up again.”
When Matthew was in the third grade, his teacher Ms. Blaylock had cast him in the role of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Perhaps she had seen something in him, a kind of performance-oriented spark, that told her he’d be perfect for the role. That, or she simply understood that Matthew was smart and responsible enough to memorize all the lines. The eight-year-old Matthew had reluctantly agreed to the task, but along the way, something strange had happened: he’d begun to enjoy the act of performing.
This, however, went against everything Matthew knew about himself up until that point. Labeled as “shy” from a very young age, Matthew didn’t like being in the spotlight, the limelight, or any kind of light. He preferred to be behind the scenes, just another face in the crowd. Yet somehow, the tin-colored paint that he’d been forced to cover his face and hands with during the third grade play never completely washed off…literally and figuratively. The spotlight, he’d found, was a surprisingly fun place to be. And the audience responded to his singing, acting and dancing in a much more positive and encouraging way than he ever could have imagined.
After his stint as the Tin Man, however, Matthew found himself growing self-conscious. He knew now that he had it in him to be the center of attention if he wanted it, but being the center of attention also had its pitfalls. Some of the kids in his class, especially the boys, made fun of him. As a result, he’d learned it was safer to keep his own light hidden. And as the years went by and even more negative attention came his way as a result of being different, Matthew decided his only viable option in life was to keep who he really was locked up somewhere deep inside of himself. It was better, he thought, to be safe and ignored rather than the recipient of positive and negative attention.
Despite its relative anonymity (until recently), Matthew hadn’t really enjoyed being the drummer in Die Trying. How Beckett had actually managed to coerce him into such a thing still baffled him. But maybe, Matthew realized with a shudder, it was because deep down Tom knew that this was secretly what Matthew wanted. He and Tom had been best friends for so long; he was the only person who knew Matthew as well as his own family, and Beckett was always barging into Matthew’s life with his crazy ideas and ill-advised enthusiasm. Then again, Matthew acknowledged, in a sense he had barged into Tom’s life when he’d first introduced him to Queen and the world of rock music.
Matthew stared at his face in the bathroom mirror. In half an hour, Heather would come by to pick him up. It was another Friday night at the Blue Danooby. He was surprised Arissa Svengaarten hadn’t banned them from the joint yet, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Matthew examined his face, his hair, his neck (or what could be seen of it beneath his black t-shirt) in the glass. He didn’t feel like a rock star, but there was a distinct difference between being a rock star and feeling like a rock star. Every time Matthew listened to Queen, no matter what song it was, he felt that light inside himself emerge…he always had. In fact, this feeling came over him when he listened to lots of music, not just Queen.
But I’m a therapist! Matthew reasoned with himself. Therapists weren’t allowed to be rock stars, were they? No, they were supposed to be the opposite of all of all that…the solid, dependable…the voice of reason that held space for another human being. He couldn’t be Matthew Yin, the small-time rock band drummer from Alameda on Saturday, then turn around and counsel a kid who was self-harming on Monday, could he?
These questions swam like hot water in his head. He wanted to pound his ear like they do in the cartoons and shake them out. Matthew glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes until Heather showed up, and she was always on time. He and Heather got along because they seemed to be cut from the same punctual, reliable, responsible cloth…and they knew it.
Matthew drew in a deep breath and pushed himself away from the mirror. In the living room, he rifled through his record collection and found himself pulling out Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys album. Queen was Matthew’s religion, there was no doubt in his mind. But every once in a while, he found his heart pounding to the beat of another voice, another guitar. There was something about one particular son on this record that always made him feel confident, like he could do anything, be anything. And when he listened to the wah-wah, the twang of Jimi’s electric guitar, he felt like he was no longer himself, but someone…cool. A defiant, gum-chewing, smoking-cigarettes-behind-the-gym kid who cut class and didn’t give a shit what the world had to say about it.
Matthew Yin had never felt truly cool an entire day in his life.
But none of that mattered when he listened to Jimi:
Machine gun
Tearin' my body all apart
Evil man make me kill you
Evil man make you kill me
Evil man make me kill you
Maybe I never needed the limelight… Matthew thought as he lost himself in the song. Maybe I never craved it. All his life, his moments of feeling like a rock star had been lived out completely in private. Like right now. But that was out of necessity: hiding who he was on the inside was the only way to survive, and Matthew had accepted that…bought into it, hook, line and sinker. He’d done it for so many years, it didn’t even seem like much of a struggle to hide anymore, really…at least, it hadn’t felt like one…
Even though we're only families apart
Well, I pick up my ax and fight like a farmer
But your bullets still knock me down to the ground
He’d gotten accustomed to the constant act of hiding and it hadn’t felt like a struggle…until now. That letter in the Alameda Citizen had flipped, switched, snapped something within him, had made him feel ready to come out of his cage, just like The Killers sang in Mr. Brightside. Matthew watched the record spin and spin on the turntable. He forced his eyes to follow the circular, pink label until he grew dizzy.
The same way you shoot me down, baby
You'll be goin' just the same
Three times the pain
And your own self to blame
Matthew still remembered exactly how it felt when Andrew Kalzynski threw a right hook into his jaw that day in middle school. He still had the scar in his mouth that never healed from when his teeth collided with his flesh. Just the mere thought of it now made his blood steam…the same way he’d felt after reading that scathing letter to the editor.
If people were going to criticize him for something as innocuous as playing drums in a local rock band, Matthew reasoned, then he was going to give them something to complain about.
And in the spinning glow of the room and the electric blue twang of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, Matthew’s spark and confidence returned to him. And he wasn’t going to hide it any longer.
I ain't afraid of your bullets no more, baby
I ain't afraid no more
After a while your cheap talk don't even cause me pain
So let your bullets fly like rain
'Cause I know all the time you wrong, baby
And you'll be going just the same