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A little
introduction
Humanity is one terrifying experience after another right up until that
final terrifying moment where you face the unknown. Then again, all
the terrifying moments are based on the unknown. Death just happens to
be the one that you can’t hear any stories about, or read any columns about,
let alone something that you can choose to do again. If you go
skydiving and have fun, well, you aren’t as scared the second time.
It’s no longer the unknown. If you get married, ride the big
rollercoaster, find a new job, eat sushi, you can always try them again if
you like them, or avoid them if you don’t. Death is quite a bit more
final, and eludes and definitive review.
 Still,
this column would be pretty boring if I died in the middle in some
Pythonesque thrall, so we’ll just assume that I mean the stuff that isn’t
death. So, as I said, life is full of one terrifying experience after
another… at least, it is if that life is even remotely interesting. A
life of no terror is a life without risk, and as one James T. Kirk once
said, “Risk is our business, Mr. Spock.” Now, I’m not saying that you
folks are the Vulcan to my Captain, but if you wouldn’t mind accompanying me
on a few of my terrors, I’d be just delighted to have you aboard the
Enterprise of my existence if only for a few moments.
Now,
I’ve been told that my column is lame when it doesn’t have the Southpark
music at the end and the, “I’ve learned something today,” bit of hoopla.
I’ve done my very best to say a little something about the tough lessons in
life when I write. I’m a young guy, so I still learn a lot of new
lessons every day. Sometimes I don’t learn a damn thing, but I should.
Still, I’m going to try, as unlikely as it may seem, to give anyone who
reads my material, at least a little insight. Oh, and I promise, this
is the last time I cover a road trip for a long time.
Now, with that out of the way, we’ll move
on to A Week in the Life: Part Three of Two:
Before
we are flooded with nasty email from all of the anti-anti-Virgo activists
out there (That would be Virgo and Smalls) let me say that this is the last
time I’m going to reference her in my work. I just already called it
that once and that’s what it will be called now. I am not using it in
a rude way this time… I used the first sentence after for the rudeness.
Now,
when we left off, I was being cryptic about some exercise clothing that I
picked up on the Wednesday of my road trip. The reason I picked them
up, is because Heidi drug me to her gymnastics practice the day before and
somehow, despite the fact that they weren’t even my peers, I was peer
pressured by the others in her class to come on Thursday. This little
scenario covers not one, but two major terrors in life that one must
overcome to function. I had to try and overcome the fear of doing
gymnastics in the first place, but that wouldn’t come until Thursday.
The first battle with fear came when I didn’t want to look like a wimp for
not showing up to begin with. I lost one battle already. I had
caved in and agreed to go so that I wouldn’t look like a whuss, but once I
made my bed, I did in fact lie in it.
It’s
tough to skip out when your girlfriend buys workout clothes for you. I
couldn’t even use the excuse that I didn’t want to waste my money on them,
she anticipated that. She knows my game, and she corralled me like a
baby cow. I was her very own little gymnastic veal chop in the making.
We went and picked up some of those break away track pants, a pair of boxer
briefs (so that I didn’t give anyone a show) and she bribed me further by
getting me a Spider-Man T-Shirt. I figured it would only be fair to
accept the T-Shirt and then decided that it would only be right if I wore it
to the practice. I would draw on the unique gymnastic skills of my
favorite comic book hero for strength.
So,
Thursday night rolls around, and I was more than a little terrified of the
whole thing, but to make a long story short it was one of the best
experiences of my life. It probably wouldn’t have been if I had been
bad at it, but I was actually really good. I had great elevation on my
flips, graceful rolls and pike rolls, a decent round off, better cartwheel;
I could even do a bridge thing. Anyway, I wasn’t even the worst one
there, despite the fact that I had only been to one practice and some of
these people were regulars. If I didn’t live 3 hours away, I’d do it
all the time. So, let's look at the checklist.
Terror
1, Steve Kilpatrick 2
Not bad
numbers I’d say, and they only get better.
Horrifying moment number 2? The next night at an on campus coffee
house in
College Station called
Bernie’s. Yes, I know, in only a day I’ve gone from an Austin
gymnastics practice to a performance at Texas A&M. I traveled about
2,000 miles during my road trip, so don’t be surprised if we jump around
again before it’s over. Anyway, we went and set up on campus, had a
hell of a time finding a power outlet, and then finally, the moment came
when we were ready to play. I had no lyrics. Don’t think that
anyone was mad at me for this. They knew damn well that I had no
lyrics. I hadn’t been in the band for even a week, so I still needed
to get a feel for some of the songs. So, my first performance ever was
really just a glorified writing session. I wrote lyrics to 6 songs and
learned the lyrics to our cover song. Only four of the songs would be
ready for the following night, but the rest are coming along, in case you
were wondering.
We
didn’t really promote the coffee house show, because we knew it was more
like a dress rehearsal than a real gig. We did get free cookies and
drinks out of the deal though. Nothing is quite as comical as having
your bass guitar player steal your cookie in the middle of a 3 beat break,
shove it in his mouth, and keep on playing. Well, maybe our drummer
who had a cookie fed to him without missing a beat… well, no more beats than
usual anyway. By the end of the evening we were exhausted, full of
cookies and lemonade and psyched about the following evening at a place
called the Didgeridoo. This time there would be an audience, so the
lack of stress that I experienced at the coffee house would give way to the
fears of a real crowd. I didn’t realize how jittery I would get until
we got there though… and there was still plenty to do before hand.
You
see, despite the fact that we were tired as hell; we also had a two hour
drive ahead of us. We had an hour and a half on the road to the farm
that belongs to our keyboardist and thirty minutes at What-a-Burger.
Of course, he didn’t mention before we left for the place that the farm
house was a replica of the cabin they used in the Evil Dead movies.
I’m not ashamed to tell you that the place creeped me the fuck out.
The place was a time warp. There were pictures on the wall from a
hundred years ago, rat droppings on the floor, linens that were yellow with
age and lack of use, stairs that went straight up, rather than at a gentle
incline. Joel (our lead guitarist) and I had to sleep upstairs and the
beds hadn’t been used in thirty years. You see the original three
members of the band that was once called The Mellotron Trio, had all been
here before, so they knew what to expect. Jimix, the wisest of the
three, called the couch. Our sax player, Mike, laid claim to one of
the three beds in the main bedroom downstairs. Jim-O (not Jimix)
called the other small bed in the room and the largest went, by default, to
our drummer, because he brought his girlfriend along. So, Joel and I
trudged up to our upstairs room and tried to sleep.
Joel
was the first to mention that the beds were damp. Not that I hadn’t
complained plenty, but even he admitted that we could have used a lifeguard
to sleep up there. I was none-too-happy about the arrangements.
Joel coped… I tried, but eventually I went down and stretched out in the
back of the Jeep and read Kavalier and Clay for about four hours.
Sure, it was still a little daunting being closer to the outside, but at
least if I was going to die wet, it would be in a pool of my own blood, and
not in whatever liquids had fermented on the sheets and blankets in that
attic Jim-O called the upstairs bedroom. Besides, there was a scary
owl picture up there. You might claim that means fear won out this
time. Not so. It was a tie. After all, the woods are alive
you know.
Steve’s
record vs. Fear this season: 3-1-1 (I call the coffee house a victory.
The
next morning, a tired and wet group of band members and their single roadie
began to pack up for the almost two hours back to college station. I
was even more exhausted thanks to a lack of sleep, so I crashed in the back
seat of Joel’s car to the sounds of James Brown. I woke up to the
sounds of James Brown and an on coming car. Turns out it wasn’t
as bad as it sounded, though
Warren (that is Mike, our sax player)
tried to convince me otherwise when he suggested I was lucky to have been
asleep. Joel says he had a good 3 inches of clearance and that it was
no problem. I trust Joel and go back to sleep.
The
next few hours are just comprised of eating lunch, setting up at the bar,
showering, and making sure our guests are going to show up. I was
still pretty tired. I only got about an hour of sleep during the ride
back to
College Station and had no
time for rest during the remainder of the day. I was more worried
about learning my lyrics before the show. A word to any future
vocalists: DO NOT WRITE LYRICS THE DAY BEFORE A SHOW! It may
have worked out for me, but not everyone is so lucky… even me. I was
looking at my lyrics during the first couple of songs of the set that night,
but I am getting ahead of myself.
My next
bout of fear was directly related to the fact that my big unrequited love
was going to be at the show. Well, she said she was going to, but I
had to call and make sure. She tells me that, yes, she will be there
and wants to know if there is an age limit. I realized right away that
she wanted to bring a guy. She knows how I feel about her and probably
wanted to have a shield to any advances I might make. I’ll go ahead
and mention that she was going to bring a guy, I was right about that, but
she wound up not bringing him because I wasn’t really sure about the age
limit and she didn’t want him turned away. She did bring another
friend, but not anyone that I would feel intimidated by. Of course, I
didn’t know that she wasn’t going to bring the guy until she got there, so I
kept watching the door just knowing I was going to have some guy show up
with her who knew about our rather complicated past. Add that to the
fact that I was still memorizing lyrics, working on an hour of sleep and
about to perform in front of a crowd that was actually listening.
(Remember, the day before no one was listening, we were outside a coffee
shop and the Aggie/OU game was the next day so everyone was doing something
called Midnight Yell. No one cared about us.)
She got
there a few songs before I was set to debut with the band. I went
over, awkwardly said a few things, looked and felt like an idiot. See
seemed uncomfortable, I got even more uncomfortable and to be fair I still
had to read my lyrics. I excused myself and went back to my little
corner. In case she reads this I should mention that my friend Rachel
was there too, but she is not my unrequited love. I did go to my
Junior Prom with her sister, but that was a night better left in the, “Just
lie and say that you were drunk,” category.
I would
later find out that the aforementioned flame was surprised that I didn’t
talk to her more. She had no idea that she had seemed uncomfortable.
What I did is called projection folks. Remember that one, it’ll be a
great one to remember when you cheat on your girlfriend and then suspect her
of cheating. P-R-O-J-E-C-T-I-O-N kids, learn it. Anyway, I went
up, sang my first song, it was sort of an embarrassment. That song
being first was a bad call, but it wasn’t the band’s fault. My lyrics
weren’t fleshed out. They will be next time. Still, I shrugged
it off and went on to kick the next song’s ass. I rocked, as that’s
what rockers do, and had a great time the rest of the night. I was
still nervous, but I was nervous and having a good time. I have
absolutely no stage presence though.
Now,
the band is mostly composed of guys that are twenty years old and under.
I am the only member of our band that can legally drink. Since we
didn’t charge a cover, we got free drinks all night. They were stuck
drinking juice and soda, but they informed me that if I wasn’t drunk by the
time we left, I would be in deep shit. I still had a song left on my
list (two if your count my Dijembe bit on the last tune), but I had a few in
between and decided I should start getting drunk. Well, another word
of advice: When you have had an hour of sleep and only 2 meals in the
last 2 days, getting drunk is easy. I went to the bartender and told
her to give me the strongest drink she could think of that was really easy
to drink. I never thought to ask her what she put in it, but I know
that it was almost all alcohol yet didn’t taste like it at all. I
drank the whole thing in about 2 minutes. I didn’t get drunk really,
but I certainly got a buzz quickly. I wanted to drink another, but I
didn’t want to fall over on stage or forget my lyrics. I figure that I
was thinking about as clearly as Tom (POJK) usually does without any alcohol
in his system. Still, I thought I was drunk at the time, and proceeded
to tell Rachel that I was drunk and told her to keep me from looking stupid.
She told me that she couldn’t even tell I had had anything to drink.
Then I made my way to the girl I mentioned earlier. Now that I was a
little tipsy I figured I could go ahead and talk to her. We wound up
talking for a few minutes; she also said that she couldn’t tell I had been
drinking. I guess my disorientation was a byproduct of the lack of
sleep mixed with the drink, topped off a bit by the noise and smoke in the
bar. Bars with music tend to make me a little disoriented even when I
haven’t had a drink. Still, knowing that I had to be back on stage
made me a little self conscious about it.
Despite
the fear, which was tapered quite a bit by the wonderful drink of courage, I
staggered off to the bathroom and then back to the stage just in time for my
final vocal number. Ok, so I didn’t stagger, but I should have.
The last vocal song went really well, I pitched in on the final song of the
evening and then we called it a night. I was complemented, maybe as
much out of a need to be polite as a joy for the show. Still, my
friend Rachel said we were good and that I was good, and as she reminded me
very clearly, she would tell me if she didn’t think so.
I wound
up talking to my female friend after the set for a good twenty minutes or
so. She told me that next time I should give her a call sooner if
we’re in the area. I agreed that I would and we went our separate
ways. Thankfully she had helped me avoid packing up the equipment,
which was very nice since I was still buzzing. Next on the agenda was,
you guessed it, a trip back to the farm!
Jim-O
broke the news that he couldn’t go back because he had to work at 8 a.m. and
would never make it there and back in time. Well, he could have made
it back, but he would have been in no shape to fly a plane, which is what he
does. This left us with the daunting task of finding a backwater
farmhouse that none of us really knew how to get to. Jim-O drew a map
and several hours later we finally made it… not NEARLY as quickly as the
last two trips on that path had been. When we got there our original
thought had been to get shit faced drunk, but spirits were markedly lower
after the drive so we shelved that… for about fifteen minutes anyway.
We started talking about the show, the rides home, recording a real demo and
then all of the sudden Lee, our drummer and the youngest in the band at
twelve years old (sorry, inside joke) throws back a shot of vodka.
This
opened up the flood gates.
The
entire liter was gone within three hours and only four members of the band
had a drop of it. Add to that a couple of 40oz bottles of malt liquor,
a six pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, three Jack Daniels Hard Colas, some
Cognac and other assorted sips and we got pretty toasted. I didn’t
drink as much because I had already been tipsy once and decided to enjoy the
show. I wasn’t disappointed. Jimix wound up with an entire
bottle of Malt Liquor in his gut, two of the hard lemonades and more than a
third of that liter of Vodka. Needless to say, he puked…a lot.
So did Mikey, but not until later. He drank second most. Joel
and Lee didn’t vomit, but they both made it a point to touch their genitals
a lot and talk about sex... well, we all talked about sex, but mostly about
how hot Mikey’s girlfriend is. She was the hottest girl in the history
of our high school, so we all, at one point, wanted to fuck her.
We still want to, but we can’t really vocalize that when he’s around.
Mikey, if you’re reading this… that’s just a little joke…ha, ha.
Mikey
decided he would show us how it’s done and humped the air a few times
throughout the night. Joel made it a point to tell Lee’s girlfriend,
“you know what, if there were any hot girls here, I’d fuck the shit out of
‘em.” Lee rubbed Mikey’s back… and Jimix’s back, Joel tousled my hair…
drunkenness makes you a little homosexual it seems. Then, the greatest
moment of the night as far as retelling value came along. We’re all
trying to go to sleep… well, Jimix is passed out on the bench on the porch
and Mikey is vomiting about five feet away, but the rest of us (Joel, Lee,
Melissa and yours truly) were in the downstairs bedroom with the three beds.
Joel says to us, “remember when I said I’d fuck the shit out of some girl?”
We sort of agree that we remember. “Well,” he goes on, “I don’t know
if I would because being drunk makes you numb.”
Lee
says that he isn’t numb at all. Joel says, “well, I just don’t think I
could feel my penis enough to make it work.” At this point there is
silence and then Joel drops the bomb on us, apparently forgetting that he
was talking out loud, “seriously guys, I’ve been rubbing it for the last
five minutes and it won’t do anything.”
At this
point I decided I wasn’t really all that sleepy. I went out on the
porch where Mikey was still dutifully emptying his stomach of anything he
could. I ask him, “say Mikey, if you die of alcohol poisoning, can I
have your girlfriend?” He says, no, that he’s taking her with him.
Joel is out there by this point, realizing that he’s probably too drunk to
sleep. He pokes Jimix to make sure he isn’t dead. Mike says that
he’s never drinking again; we all call him a liar. Around this time
Jimix wakes up, vomits one last time and then, for the first time in several
hours, forms a complete sentence. Mikey repeats his vow that he’ll
never drink again and Jimix tells him to, “STFUMF, you’re drinking again
next Thursday.” Joel asks Jimix if the night’s escapades have turned
him off to the Ghetto 40oz Malt Liquor. Jimix says that it has not and
he will be drinking a 40oz again very soon. Then he passes out again.
Moments later, Lee came out in his pajama pants with an erection that he was
holding and waving from beneath his clothing. He was very proud
because, unlike Joel, he could still get an erection.
I’ll be
the first to admit that the rest of that stuff really had no redeeming
value, but it was fun and it really brought our band together. You
learn a lot about people when they’re drunk and when you have to keep two of
them from dying via alcohol poisoning and another from climbing a tree after
seven shots of vodka (never mind the fact that he played with my hair and
rubbed his penis in a room full of people), you gain a certain closeness
that can’t exist until you have stuff that would end a political campaign.
So, if you can’t find anything pure in underage drinking, at least marvel in
the fact that no one even considered driving, we did it in a safe location
and we all learned a lot about one another. After all, one of the
biggest terrors in this terror-filled life of ours is the terror of
self-exposure.
I get a
lot of grief for taking myself seriously in this column, but it’s because I,
like every other artist or worker out there, puts a lot of themselves into
anything they do. I don’t write this so that my name is out there, I
write it because I love to write and I want my ideas out there. After
all, why write something crappy for exposure? I don’t want my name
attached to anything that I don’t take seriously, especially if I’m not
getting paid for it. Sure, if you asked me to write something stupid
and were going to pay me, I’d sell out, but as long as it’s about just me
and my writing, taking myself seriously is the least I can do. All of
that comes from the fact that I faced a huge fear by taking on this column
every week. I don’t write about movies, or comics in any way other
than the abstract. I write about me. I tell you what I do and
feel and fear. I lay myself out on the line every week in hopes that
someone else might do so later.
That’s
what this life is all about. You have to lay it all out to win
sometimes. I could give you a million metaphors for it, but I won’t.
Just remember that if I take this seriously, it’s only when someone tries to
make it sound like I shouldn’t. That because they don’t think it’s
important, they figure I shouldn’t either. Well, remember, this is
important to me because this is my Enterprise. I’m the Captain of this
vessel, so the stories behind the hull are about as important to me as they
can get. If I take it personally, it’s because it is personal.
If you guys appreciate the way I expose myself to fear every week, then
welcome aboard. We’ll all go visit the stars that make up my past, and
the uncharted galaxy that is my future. I won’t have to write about my
road trips anymore because you can all come along for the ride. Oh,
and since I beat that analogy to death, I’ll go ahead and plot a course on
out of here.
Engage.
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