I can look back now and say I had a monsterous crush on a boy I’ll call Ben. We met our freshman year and kept in sporadic contact all of the way to graduation. He dated my best friend for a while. Hell, he was always dating someone. And why not? He was the lanky, long-haired, guitar-playing type.
Of course we got along. All we did was talk shop.
I totally denied any affection for him. You know how that works in school: if someone finds out that you like someone else, you get either teased mercilessly, or someone runs to the other party and blurts everything out, leaving your dreams ruined. This was especially true in a situation where I clearly believed he was much cooler than I, and quite out of my league. I made for a good friend because I could babble on about Headbanger’s Ball, but that’s it. I wasn’t bitter. I knew my place.
Hilariously, hand-in-hand, we were rivals. It wasn’t enough that we each knew a lot about music; it was a constant battle to top each other. He played an instrument, and that set him miles above me. Still, I knew almost every band he would mention, and he would often openly seem disconcerted that he was no longer completely “out there,” listening to things that only he had discovered. Indeed, I would be right there to argue the merits and flaws of his arguments. We debated Nuno Bettencourt’s technique. We argued about the progression of speed metal into other branches of the genre. He introduced me to Carcass, while I showed him some of the better melodic metal still being created in an atmosphere of dying hair bands.
These were my younger years of school where I rode the city bus to school and home. Ben didn’t live anywhere near me, but we both had to wait for the bus, as it didn’t run on a nice schedule alongside the school busses. This meant a half hour of us and our group of misfit friends, standing around day after day, laughing and joking and getting to know one another. I always listened to a walkman on the bus, but never while waiting if Ben and the gang were near.
That walkman was a funny thing. It had been a rather high-end, fancy-schmancy piece of electronics in its day. It had the switch to play in either direction without the exhausting ordeal of actually opening the tape compartment and flipping that baby over. My headphones were one of the first made for discmans to clearly broadcast digital vs. analog media. I would typically record whatever albums would fit onto a 100 or 110 minute cassette and leave that tape in my player for a good month. One of these had White Zombie’s La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 on side A and part of side B, and Babes In Toyland’s Fontanelle filling the rest. I don’t think I have ever encountered another person who knows every single word to every single song on both of these albums, but with all of the listening I did, I still remember most.
Occasionally, I would borrow a tape from someone. My younger sister was a huge Megadeth fan, so it didn’t take long before I had long since memorized everything Rust In Peace and prior. My friend Shawn loaned me Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven not long after its release, making for an excellent way to wake up and stroll into third year French class. I think Anthrax’s Persistence of Time nearly got worn out.
Still, it was the hand-recorded ones that I played the most. I would often toss my flavor of the minute onto something and listen to it a handful of times before dubbing over it with my replacement adoration. Still mentally competing with Ben, it wasn’t rare to find me throwing things onto cassette that weren’t even that particularly good, just so that if Ben asked what I was listening to, I could stump him.
After a couple of years, we weren’t bussing together anymore and we had found different crowds. We would occasionally run into each other, but by this point, all that remained of our comraderie was that neverending need to top each other. I remember at this time I had discovered Led Zeppelin and was mesmerized by “Kashmir.” I was constantly worried that Ben would be nearby and find me listening to something so mainstream (never mind that I didn’t know the songs and was just getting acquainted with them) and that I would have to struggle in order to save face. Anyone on the outside could easily point at how ridiculous this all sounded, but I know that I wasn’t the only one playing the game.
In fact, in those couple of years, Ben had moved up the popularity ranks while I had stayed in the land of the mystery meat. I wasn’t popular and I wasn’t unpopular; I was a quirky, chunky girl who wore a lot of black and gave a lot of people dirty looks. So when Ben would approach me at any point of time, it almost always seemed like it was with a sneer and with malicious intent to discredit any music knowledge I could spew. Most of the time, I wasn’t incorrect in my ascertations. He truly enjoyed showing off and causing a mild wave of humiliation in me. Buried inside, there was a soft spot that let him get away with it. Still, I had also grown a lot as a person by that point and was tired of the games.
We ended up on a bus together, somehow. Ben and his crew took up the back of the bus, while I sat in my usual spot, two seats behind the second set of bus doors. My headphones were on, rocking full force, as I simply sat back and completely ignored the asshole brigade behind me. The bus ride was uneventful, to the best of my knowledge; I was lost completely in the loud music flowing into my ears, doing my best to ignore reality. Eventually, my stop came up, I pulled the catch to signal the bus driver and got ready to step out.
Just as I near the top of the steps, I hear Ben.
“Hey, what are you listening to?” he yelled, with the familiar sneer on his lips and his pals snickering.
“None of your goddamned business,” I replied, and strode off the bus.
For the next week, all I could think about was that bus ride. All I could think about was how much things had changed between me and Ben, once friends with a mutual passion for music, and how it had obviously crumbled among teenaged high school politics. Given that I had grown up being easily singled out and picked on, I suddenly felt quite ill with the idea that I had been rude to someone with whom I once shared a serious kindred spirit. Nevermind the rivalry, nevermind the heinosity that existed; all I remembered now was that ignored remnant of a crush.
True to form, I couldn’t confront him; I did what I do best and wrote him a short letter. I don’t remember what I wrote for the most part, but the gist of it was apologizing for being a bitch, with a p.s. stating that I had been listening to Lillian Axe at the time. I have no idea why it was so important to tell him that, as it’s not like one should be particularly proud or excited to proclaim that they were enjoying the bone-crunching metal thunder of such a post-hair-band melodic rock no-namers. Whether it was my neverending desire to pour out buckets of honesty or it was simply an appeal at opening up our verbal flow again, either way, it was from the heart and without pretense. Either way, I can’t remember how I got the letter to him at this point, and I’m not sure why I suddenly wasn’t afraid of the assumed inevitable taunting repercussions.
The last thing I expected was when Ben came over and sat across from me at the lunch table the next day. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you were listening to?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just didn’t feel like getting into it,” I answered.
“Hmmm… you know, I miss back when we used to just sit around, talking about music,” he sincerely opined.
And from there, we spent a good fifteen minutes just talking about music. Starting with Lillian Axe and discussing the new album which he hadn’t heard yet, we moved on into territory with which we were both familiar and beyond. It was a great flashback to earlier days, free-spirited and removed from all of the peer pressure garbage that ruins so many people. And although it didn’t last long — and although our conversations only occasionally repeated after that time — any time we encountered each other after that, all of the rivalry was gone. With one moment of sincerity, the two of us became nothing more than friends with a love of music and a bucket of mutual respect.
My questions answered I say good-bye,
–gloomchen
