“Ned, have you been smoking pot?” Mom asked. I exploded with laughter. I was in the kitchen, clipping my nails, eating cereal, and watching TV.
“What?! What makes you think that?” I turned to Mom. I had never smoked anything in my life, not even cigarettes, and I was tired of her paranoia.
“When you do homework, you turn off the overhead light and use your desk lamp. When you watch TV, you always keep the lights off. People who smoke marijuana become sensitive to light, you know.”
I laughed. “Mom, when I do homework, I use my desk light because it’s more focused. And I watch TV in the dark because there’s no glare that way … seriously.”
“Oookay, I’m just checking.”
I’m not sure why my mother is so fixated on me and drugs. I guess it’s just baseline suspicion—I’m fourteen, I’m in high school, and America is a morally repugnant cesspool of sex and substances anyway, right?
Mom and I had that little conference on a Thursday night in February. The following Saturday, I told her I had to go to the West End at 8:00 P.M. to see a band called Shrivel. Shrivel’s lead guitarist, Josh, went to my school. He reportedly had a really good group, and a lot of my friends were going to see him. Mom refused to let me go. I asked her why.
“Well, because I don’t know any of your friends, and I don’t know what kind of people they are,” she said.
Of course Mom didn’t know my friends—I never brought them to the apartment. It was a three-ring circus, with her obsessing over crosswords, Dad ranting about how dirty everything was, and Daniel and Nora fighting. The people I brought over tended not to return. I told my mother about my friends, but those conversations always went badly:
“Mom, I met this cool kid named Sam* in school.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s he like?”
“He’s a video game addict. He plays this game Warcraft all the time. He’s up till three every night playing it.”
“Sounds nice.”
“He’s the number five ranked Warcraft player in the world, Mom.”
“Uh-huh. Where did he go to school?”
Mom always asked that—where had my friends gone to school before they came to Stuyvesant? I never had a clue; I didn’t see why it was important.
So because I never brought my friends home and didn’t know what junior highs they’d attended, my mother decided they were bad influences. We had a loud, drawn-out argument about the Shrivel show. In the end, we reached a compromise: Mom would let me go if Dad drove me there and back.
Dad was happy to do it—he liked any excuse to get out of the apartment. He planned to drop me off at the show at 8:00, hang out in some bookstores for a while, and pick me up at 9:30. Now, Dad isn’t an embarrassing guy, but the Shrivel show was an important social gathering, and I didn’t want him escorting me to and from it. I explained this to him. He understood. He dropped me off a block away from the West End and let me walk there myself.
When I arrived, I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been out to see a band before, but I had this vague idea that bands played in “clubs” or “bars,” and this didn’t look like either: it looked like a restaurant. Unprepared as usual, I hung around for ten minutes until my socially savvy friends, who had seen a lot of bands, showed up. They led me into the West End, through the restaurant, and down a flight of concrete stairs. Josh stood at the bottom by the basement door, asking everyone for five bucks.
Next to him was his mother.
“Hi!” she gushed. “Thanks so much for coming to the show! And you are …”
“Uh, Ned.”
“Oh, Josh has told me about you. You’re from Stuyvesant, right?”
“Yeah.”
She kept talking, but I was no longer listening. I was pondering the inherent wrongness of the situation. A rock concert should be counterculture and youth-driven—not something you invite your mother to.* Rock is the opposite of mothers. Nevertheless, I paid my five dollars and walked through the door, into the West End’s dim basement.
The opening band was Army of Clones. The band members were about thirteen years old, and they were terrible. The drummer seemed to be witnessing a drum set for the first time; he eyed it strangely and hit it occasionally. I don’t think the bassist was even playing anything. Army of Clones had no good original songs because, at thirteen, they had no life experience.** In four years, they might be decent.
I looked around at the audience. The basement was half full, with a bunch of the bands’ friends milling around, chatting. But in one corner, there were … adults. Dressed in blazers and ties, sitting with perfect posture and sipping distinguished-looking drinks, they contrasted sharply with the younger members of the crowd. I saw Josh’s mother among them, and then it hit me—these were the bands’ parents! And grandparents! With video cameras to tape the gig!
On the faces of these well-off Upper West Siders, I saw the same proud “Look at my kid” grins that parents wear when they see school plays. I could just picture these people lounging at home, beaming at their videotape of Jimmy’s First Gig. “Look at him sing about his teenage angst. Isn’t that wonderful!”
Army of Clones finished, and two or three kids clapped. The parents stayed, recording everything, as Shrivel took the stage. The band had technical problems. The vocalist’s mike went dead; no one could hear what he was screaming about. The bass amp was busted, too; at one point, the bassist stopped plucking to tie his shoes and nobody noticed. That was all right. The music was standard, whiny fare, but at least it was loud. The first song they played was the theme from Batman. That was good enough for me.
By now, the kids had formed a mosh pit.* Not a hardcore one, with people actually getting bloodied—just a “mini pit” where misunderstood students could vent themselves.
I never dance—I hate dancing—but I figured I could mosh a little. Anyone can mosh: just jump in and flail your arms around, right? Well, it isn’t that simple. You have to know when to start moshing. If you start too early, you have no one to slam into and you look like an idiot. If you start too late, people give you dirty looks and call you a poser. It’s a delicate balance. At the Shrivel show, I started when three or four people were going at it, and I still felt dumb. The adults didn’t venture into the pit, but I’m sure it made interesting fodder for their VCRs.
As I was moshing, I noticed a girl I couldn’t quite place. Then I remembered—summer camp. I’d completely forgotten her name. What was I supposed to say to her? I already have a problem with seeing people from camp in the city; it feels odd. I have an even bigger problem with, um, girls. Midway through Shrivel’s set, she came up to me.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” she asked.
“Camp.”
“Oh, yeah.” She walked away. Phew. I escaped that confrontation with monosyllabic simplicity.
The second-to-last song was hard and fast. I jumped in the pit, and some kid punched me in the chin, so I swung on ceiling pipes and kicked people in the head.
By 9:45 it was over. Shrivel left the stage; their parents packed up the cameras. Ears ringing, I climbed out of the West End and into the winter night. There, on the corner, looking at a thick history book he’d picked up from a used bookstore, was my dad. I walked up to him.
“So, Ned, how was it?” He smiled. “Oh, wait, should I talk to you? I’m not embarrassing you too much, am I? Maybe I should move away so your friends don’t see me.”
He has a comforting bass voice, my dad. I started laughing as we walked to the van.
*Actually, Sam went kind of crazy as time went by. He got to the point where he played video games instead of going to school, and I’m not sure if he graduated. Hope he’s doing well.
*Except, of course, for those mothers in “Highway to Hell” (this page–this page). They were cool.
**Whereas Ike and I had a lot of life experience when we formed Wormwhole (this page–this page). I’m telling you, we were a killer band.
*A circular area where you were supposed to jump in and smash into other people in time to the music.