Each thrust of my legs on my pedals was agony, but I was so close. Despite it being mid-September, the sun beat down upon my head unbearably, making every single movement a sweaty personal hell. But Kev’s place was right around the corner, and it was important that I make it there at all costs. Personal health, comfort, and hygiene be damned.

I had the biggest fucking news on the planet, well, maybe not the planet. But certainly the biggest news in Orange County North Caro-fucking-lina. And since none of my bandmates ever checked our email but me, I’d be able to break the news right to their little faces in person. But first I had to get to Kev’s place. 

Kev’s parents were farmers, or at least they liked to project the image that they were farmers. Really, both of them taught agriculture and plant sciences at State, having long since sold out the majority of the Warner family lands to big agri-businesses. But they still kept this shitty little farmhouse on the outskirts of Chatham Hills where their good-for-nothing son, who just happened to be my best friend, lived. 

It was a perfect space, decrepit enough where even the minimum of cleaning helped make it seem like we were keeping the place all nice and tidy. And perfect for our band practice. Stacy's Moms was formed in this shitty little shack on the outskirts of town, and one day when we made enough money out of the dying death rattles of the American music industry we’d create a little memorial to this shack and say “This is it, folks. This is where rock and roll was saved.”

Not that rock and roll needed saving, of course, nor was that even possible. Times had changed and it was no longer the 80s; rock and pop and punk and all that had seen its final days. The Warped Tour had long closed down and until some kind of ironic revival, it seemed like pop, punk and all that were condemned to college radio stations and smaller more intimate venues for good. Barring the one or two massive financial blockbusters who had all of their real hits ten to fifty years ago who still sold out stadiums because boomers and people with children would pay top dollars to get all the greatest hits spewed at them. 

But I digress; where were we? Oh yeah, I’m dying on a fucking bicycle because the seasons don’t mean anything anymore in the south where the two weather forecasts are pain and pain with humidity. Just a little bit more to go is a mantra that I’ve been whispering to myself since, oh, halfway through the ride. But it’s true now. I think. I recognize some of this scenery, which means there’s just a few more minutes of biking to go. 

I hate that Sam has my beat-up junk of a car for the foreseeable future. Sure, he’s going through a ton. It’s not every day you decide to change your passion, drop your fancy scholarship, and decide you want to go to culinary school. And it’s not every day that you decide to move back home because your parents agreed that they’d pay for culinary school if he moved back to be with them. But did he really have to take my car too? Yeah, sure, all I needed was a bike since I had finished community college and had genuinely no idea what to do with my life outside of my music, but it was rough trying to go through a drive-through on a bicycle. And there’s no way in hell I’m getting laughed at by the people at McDonald’s again. Once is enough, dammit!

Not that I really blame Sammy. It’s not like he really wanted to study law in the first place. Mom and Dad had already had one failure of a son, and I guess he didn’t want to be a second failure. Jokes on you, bud, everyone in this family is a failure. Some of us just accepted that a little bit sooner than others. There was just this idea that I would be something great. Besides, I aced all of my classes when I was stressed out and believed that there were consequences for my actions. 

But then, in eighth grade, I discovered my true calling. See, that year for my birthday, as a reward for being so good at my schoolwork, my parents gave me a nice set of headphones. Some that really let you hear every little detail of the song. They probably wanted me to pay more attention in online classes because a low A wasn’t good enough for them. 

Eighth grade also happened to be the year that Kev transferred into West Chatham Hills School for the Academically Gifted and immediately we both became best friends. Maybe it was the fact that his hair was a little longer than a ton of the clean-cut kids. Or maybe it was the grungy Legend of Zelda t-shirt that he was rocking that first day, but I knew as soon as I saw him that our destinies were forever entwined. And on that very first day of talking with him, he was like “Yo, dude, what music do you listen to?"

Well, naturally, I told him that I had listened to all the important things. I had subsisted on a steady diet of the Beatles and selected tunes from the classic rock radio that my dad listened to as he drove me to school in the morning. 

“These are the fundamentals, Justin,” Dad would say, tapping his fingers along on the steering wheel as he drove. “Music is never going to get any better than this.”

Dad was wrong, of course. In a way that all dads are. They’re encased in their nostalgia, like mosquitos in amber, set in their ways never to be shaken out of it. Nostalgia is a comfortable familiar thing, but also as soon as Kev passed me an earphone with Screaming Females on it, I knew that my dad was wrong.

You’d think that having your fundamental worldview shaken would be a rough thing. We all grow up with the belief thrust upon us that our parents are infallible creatures, that they know what’s right and what’s wrong. Sure, Led Zeppelin songs are boring and too long, but your parents like them, so they must be okay, right? As it turns out, wrong! Very wrong! There was a whole world of music out there that I had no idea about, not just in regards to modern rock, but there were so many genres that I had but the simplest of knowledge about. It turns out Kev had a voracious appetite for music, and an even more voracious knowledge of how to use torrents, so he had all of musical history at his fingertips and I just soaked it up.

Through Kev I became obsessed with the lyrics and flow of hip-hop, devouring MF Doom and Wu-Tang Clan like any other dweeby kid would fawn over their comic books. We’d laugh and steal sips of his dad’s shitty beer while listening along to Brian Eno and get all spaced out and ambient. There was a thrill running through the fields behind his shitty shack, blasting the dulcet tones of Orville Peck and calling each other a gay cowboy. Not in a homophobic way, Peck just made being a gay cowboy sound like the coolest most melancholic thing on earth and we were both like fifteen. 

Just a little bit more to go. Just up this hill and I’ll be there. And then I can share the good news. My feet are lead and my throat is dry as fuck. I wish I had stopped at the Circle K and grabbed something to stick in my messenger bag to drink. Some of that blue that’s not found in nature Gatorade or maybe a Slushee or something. Anything to quench the thirst that I knew I was going to build up by biking down these fucking shitty rural roads to nowhere. But no, I had to go. I had to tell them the news in person. I had to see the looks on their faces. 

Ultimately, my love continued to drift back to any music in the punk family. Punk is kind of an umbrella term, mind you, with the amount of blending and blurring of genre lines. I’d pick it up for ska punk and  headbang for some death metal. If it went hard, had a heavy beat, and I could move my body to it, I was there. I’d stopped dancing at the house after Mom said I moved my hips too much, but with Kev I could just fucking go ham and he wouldn’t judge me. 

At this point Christopher had been pulled into our orbit as well. I think it was at the ninth grade talent show we had our Sleigh Bells dance routine cut off halfway through for being “too loud” because I insisted we crank it up all the way. Christopher thought that was the coolest thing he had ever seen and pretty soon our duo was a trio.

And then came the conversation that would change our lives forever.

“We should start a fucking band,” Kev said during lunch one day.

 “We don’t know how to play any instruments, dump ass,” Christopher chimed in.

“We learn how to play instruments, you chode,” Kev bit back. 

It was 1 vs. 1. Both of them turned to look at me and I decided to play it cool. “Yeah, maybe we could form a band or something. Could be cool, or whatever.” Totally nailed it. I downplayed it enough so that Christopher didn’t feel like he was being ignored, but ultimately made the right call. We were going to be a fucking band. But first things first, we needed to learn how to play. Fortunately, YouTube exists. 

My pedaling gets rough and uneven as I take on the final hill outside of Kev’s place. This one is always a doozy, even in a car. Last January it snowed here and we barely got my old piece of shit car up the hill without it falling apart on us. I swear to God it felt like it was going to slide off at any moment. That still wasn’t as torturous as this moment, right here, right now. Cresting the hill, sun beaming on my face, sweat dripping down my back in torrents, all I wanted was a fucking cold beer. But I made it. I could see it. Kev’s house was there, nice and sitting nestled in the trees and the fields. I made it. It was all downhill from here.

~~~

“Y’all!” I burst through the door into our little practice space, scaring the living shit out of Kev, Christopher, and Baph with my dramatic entrance. I was quite the sight. My hair was absolutely wild, scraggly with sweat dripping off my brow. I probably smelled like shit, but who cared, smelling like shit was the punk thing to do. Laura Jane Grace said in her autobiography that she had like, a pair of pants that she wore for like a year and it was the nastiest pair of clothes and it was like her calling card before she got famous and actually had money to spend on clothes that she hated before she transitioned. I didn’t necessarily have the dedication that Laura Jane Grace had, but dammit at least I had some of the spirit. 

“Jesus, Justin, were you being chased by a bear or something on your way here? You look like shit, dude,” Baph laughed. Baph was our unofficially official ‘manager.’ And by manager I basically mean our drug dealer who also happened to give us advice and hung out with us. Some would call her a friend, but I liked to think of her more like a cat who adopts you rather than the other way around. She just kind of showed up one day, insulted our song, offered us a joint, and next thing you know she was just a permanent member of the band.

It was a perfect symbiotic relationship. If anyone wanted to give Baph shit for being trans, we would introduce them to our good friend the curb and invite them to have a taste. Not that that particularly happened, but we did have to throw hands with a fucking Proud Boy who wanted to give her shit about her ‘degenerate’ lifestyle. And in return Baph made fun of us and gave us fashion advice and feedback and every once in a blue moon found us a gig. Not like the gigs were ever anything that special. Stacy's Moms wasn't what one would call ready for prime time, but we had been gracing a few dive bars every now and then and through constant practice we had evolved from “bad” to “listenable.” Maybe, on a good day if we pushed our luck, we could even be “decent.” Maybe.

“Y’all,” I said again, desperately trying to catch my breath. “Y’all.” I stumbled over to the fridge and grabbed a Blue Ribbon winning beer from a twelve-pack, cracking and draining it in less than a minute. O sweet alcohol, friend to the sinners. Refreshment of the Gods. Of course all that did was make me feel a little queasy, but since I hadn’t eaten today, I was queasy and feeling the whopping 4.5%. It's not disordered eating if you don't eat so drugs hit you harder. That's called being thrifty. Everyone was still staring at me and I held up a single finger as I continued to catch my breath before turning at the three of them. 

“Okay, so you remember Stinky Terrance from Schoolkids?”

“Yeah,” Kev smiled, “how couldn’t I? He legally changed his first name to Stinky. Kind of the coolest guy ever.”

I nodded, only Kev would have thought that was a cool move. But hey, at least Stinky didn’t change his name to Trashboat. “Okay, so last week I was in there trying to pick up a new Ex Hex release, because y’know, support local businesses. And he asked me if I was still in a band. I was like ‘Fuck yeah, I’m still in a band. We just finished recording an LP.’ Which I mean, is basically true. We just need to edit it and then we can self publish on Bandcamp or wherever. Well, apparently he knew a guy who knew a guy who works for Cat’s Alley and they were looking for an opener for a pretty cool show.”

“No way,” Christopher said, a smile growing on his face. He was generally a pretty reserved guy, but when you caught him smiling it was the cutest shit. It seemed like his whole world just lit up. Whenever I brought that up, he said that I must have been lying cuz there was no way he could be cute, so I just let it go. Sometimes dudes just have that pride, y’know.

“Who’s it for? Some lame local act or something?” asked Baph.

“No. Even better. Killitoris.” I smiled. “Lady and gentleman, Stacy's Moms is going to be opening for the one and only, mother-fucking Killitoris.”

“There is no way in hell this rinky-dink ass band is opening for Killitoris.” Baph shook her head. “That cannot be possible. The same band who get played like nonstop by WXKY? The same band who totally got their start touring for Carseat Headrest? That’s like, an actual legit band. How the fuck did you swing that?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know, just got hella fucking lucky. But it doesn’t matter how it happened. What matters is it happened! Which means we need to post about it everywhere. Drum up some support; I don’t know, this might be our big break.”

“Well, we still need to make a Twitter for our band or something,” Kev whined. “We can’t really drum up support if nobody but the barflies know that we exist.”

“And I told you,” Christopher countered, “that there is no way we are putting our presence out there on social media besides a Bandcamp page. There is no way we’re gonna get canceled because you make a post like “Girldick is the best dick” and then everyone gets mad at us because we aren’t allowed to say that. I know you, Kev, that’s exactly the kind of shit you’d post.”

“Well, you can’t get mad at him for telling the truth,” Baph said. “Girldick is objectively the best dick. I mean, have you even fel--”

“Nope!” I shouted, clamping my hands on my ears “We’ve reached the Baph is oversharing time of the conversation. Let’s get back on topic please, I have to email Stinky back, we’re good to play at this show, right?”

“Yeah, totally,” Christopher nodded.

“If you don’t I’ll fucking hate you forever,” said Baph.

“Uhhh, can I get a day to think about it?” Kev winced as we glared at him and scratched the back of his head. 

“What?” I shouted.

“Dude, come on.” Christopher and Baph looked like their hearts had both been broken, God knows I felt the same way. 

“Okay, yeah, I know you all hate me, but think about it. This is going to be a big commitment here. We’ll need to make sure we have a lot of original stuff. There’s no way in hell we’re going out there and I’m singing like twenty covers. We need about thirty-ish minutes of material and our LP is only twelve minutes long. So we’re going to have to practice a metric fuck ton. Right? And I want to do that, but I’m also worried that we won’t have enough time. When’s the gig?”

“The gigs on Halloween. So basically a little over a month away.”

“How about this, we call a band meeting in a day. We vote about the concert. We do things as a unit, right? Give me enough time to try to write a song or two. I work best under pressure anyway. If I can do that, then I’ll feel comfortable doing this. We can brainstorm best case scenario and all that. I want to do this, but I want to do it right, right? I don’t want to set us up to fail.” Kev’s deep voice wobbled a bit as he spewed out his plan, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Come back in a day. Have a band meeting. 

He knew that three out of the four of us had their heart set on this concert. He just had to get to this at his own pace, which was fine. We could wait. We could prepare. We had enough time, right?

DerbyGhost

Welcome to my new story, Shut Up and Play the Hits! This is one of the two tales that have grabbed onto my motivation and won't let go. This takes place in the same universe as "And If Your Heart Stops Beating." And I know. You want that story done. I sure do too. But right now this story and my queer vampire hunter story are what's keeping my writers block at Bay. 

If you like what you've read, check out my friends KT stories as well! "Pure of Heart, Dumb of Ass" written by the amazingly adorable ForeverEgg, and the ongoing "Ashes From the Underground" by the awesome Punchline Press!