I, too, am captive; constricted of movement except for the violent squirms of my shoulders and torso like a lunatic in a straight jacket. I’d love to roll my window up and spare myself from humiliation, better yet, hold Jenny’s head out and use her window as a guillotine! Unfortunately, she has complete control over them. We are almost at our destination.
She loves every minute of it. I sneer at her while she keeps her eyes on the road, wears a wide, sinister grin, and starts to blurt out lyrics. Her voice overpowers Britney in many facets: tone, sustain, and vibrato. She’s a real, classically trained singer.
An amazing one, might I add. So I wouldn’t expect anything less.
As we approach the traffic light, a green Nissan X-terra in front of us with a blue Obama bumper sticker, slows down as the light changes from yellow to red. I take a quick glance at her without moving my head hoping she doesn’t notice it, but she does; a cold-hearted stare from her frigid, blue eyes zoned in directly at the sticker. Her stiletto boots press down on the brakes as the car loses speed. Her furry black and white purse, which she acknowledges as her “dog”, rolls over from the back seat to the front of the car. She is Ted Nugent in drag, PETA’s arch-nemesis. I try to spark a conversation before she opens her mouth and a plague of wasps come out.
“So, do you think Ryan and Jeremy are waiting for us at practice?” I ask.
“Jeremy is probably still setting up his drums, so we’ll probably be there on time.” A moment of silence follows. “So, you’re gonna vote, right?” My face crumples up. Damn.
“Of course,” I say firmly.
We’ve been battling for months on this topic, exchanging verbal jabs back and forth with each other. Each jarring blow ended up hitting a brick wall.
Yet she stills asks. Three minutes have gone by and the light is still red. Is this Hell? Is it too late to turn Atheist?
“Obaaaaamaaaaa?” she asks, wide-eyed with her eyebrows raised up.
“Yeeeeeessssss…” I mock back.
“Fine, fine…” she quickly fires. She pouts and shakes her head, like a spoiled child that can’t get what it wants. I keep a poker face, but inside I am smiling because I know that one vote can affect the Presidency.
If it all came down to me, I’d make the other side suffer. It would be like watching someone who I hated drown; I’d eventually jump in to save that person, but not after watching him or her flap their arms in despair and sink.
I’ve had to deal with their champion for eight years, now it’s their turn.
“I don’t see what the buzz is all about, I think it’s stupid to vote for someone just because celebrities are endorsing him…”
As she goes off on her tangent, my attention is sandwiched between Britney Spears’ irritating falsetto and statements she recites from Fox News. Eventually I’m going to need an Advil and some poison to wash it down with to ease the pain. As if a purple-hearted Warlord and a plumber can unclog the deep shit we’re under.
“Who said I’m choosing Obama because celebrities are getting behind him?” An uneasy silence follows for about 30 seconds. I’m becoming more frustrated, manically fiddling with my fingers as I look at the green arrow appear underneath the red light. I find myself humming to the tune of the music, which I curse myself for later on.
“Well, have you even watched the debates?”
I chuckle and nod. “Well, what do you think? Do you think I pull all my facts out of my ass?”
“It’s just… I’ve been watching them on Fox and Obama just isn’t a good choice. Besides, he wants to increase taxes on people with independent businesses, so he’s going to screw me over.”
Aside from being in the band, she has her own Internet clothing company. She designs her own cloths, creating styles that cater to women who have a unique style in which they are confident in and want to represent themselves. She’s an extremely hard worker and gives up natural sleep to see that things get done. I admire this about her.
“How much do you make annually?” I ask.
“Less than $60,000,” she says.
I understand her concern. Rich or poor, there is a nationwide concern about job security and income. If it doesn’t hit now, it’ll hit later. No one is immune to this, even her.
Somewhere along the way, she might have overlooked what was written in the fine print about Obama’s plan for independent businesses. Either that or she never knew to begin with.
“He’s only going to raise taxes on independent businesses that make over $250,000 a year,” I point out.
“Oh,” she whispers to herself. “This country has gotten worse.”
The argument stops here. Good riddance. For some reason, I thought about an evening barbeque we were at a few months back at our friend Brian’s backyard. I was talking with a few people about how Sammy Davis, Jr. had one eye, and Jenny walks in on the conversation and asks, “Wait… the baseball player?” We stare at each other in silence with an eyebrow curled up, trying not to burst out laughing. She is lost; she tilts her head over like a confused dog with her eyes squinted, her left eyelid twitching with rhythmic spasms. “He’s the one who hit 72 home runs with the Cubs, right?”
Some people ask what the difference between an argument and a debate is. Intelligence.
Besides her typical “Blonde” moments, which she greatly admits to having, she is a well-educated person. She graduated from college at the age of 20 with a degree in Business and Marketing. This is displayed by her persistence in strategically planning out neighborhoods to promote the band. She looks for communities that contain a high demographic of people who would possibly be interested in our music and assigns each member to go out and promote. Beforehand, she designs flyers and assigns the rest of us the task of duplicating demos to pass out for free.
Though her feistiness and determination has rubbed past members the wrong way and gave her the label of “Band Tyrant”, I welcomed it. It helped us to expose the lazy bastards who didn’t want to work and reap our harvest. If there is one thing I have learned about being in the Chicago Music Scene in the last seven years, it’s that most Chicago musicians are either extremely talented with no drive, or have inflated egos and a lack of talent to back it up.
The light finally turns green, but a “number 81, Irving Park Express” bus cuts us off and stops to let its passengers exit and enter. Less than a minute into it, the light turns yellow then red again. False alarm.
I felt sorry for those incompetent schmucks who actually thought there were Weapons of Mass Destruction sitting idle in Iraq…
Wait. Weren’t we supposed to be fighting terrorists in Afghanistan? I forgot: oil, liberation and religious cleansing are more important than the safety of our people.
“Agh! I hate this light!” she vents out, slamming her fist into the top of her steering wheel. “Someone needs to fix this stupid thing!”
The hole in the Ozone layer isn’t the only thing that needs fixing up in the Earth’s atmosphere. We should probably hire the nation’s best scientists to create a shield that would also absorb the impact of a several hundred missile strikes from North Korea and Russia.
They hate us too.
I look over at my alpine white Les Paul that is resting in my lap and I think about why I became a musician.
A Punk Rocker, more or less.
It started off as a love for a specific kind of music. I liked the simple and catchy tunes and the less than perfect vocals to accompany it. It was music for the underdog; it gave every Average Joe or Jane a legitimate chance of being an actual musician.
I never had any teenage-angst in me; 9/11 happened a few months after I turned 20. I was spoiled as a teenager growing up in the economic success of the Clinton Era. I took it for granted thinking that jobs would always be there, that my dad wouldn’t lose his job a few weeks later and support the family with unemployment checks. I thought that maybe the world would change with the right song. Kinda like a hippie, but angry and intense.
Punk Rock gave me a change to voice out my frustration while playing the music I loved so much.
Jenny doesn’t understand. Her family lives comfortably in Wilmette.
The light changes to green again, but the bus takes its time straightening out and getting back on the road. By the time the backend of the bus is at the foot of the traffic light, the light becomes yellow.
“Fuck it. I’m going through,” she mutters out vindictively. I shrug. Bright, white rays shoot out from every angle, bouncing of the corners of the street like pinballs. Suddenly, it feels like we are at the center of the dance floor in a Disco. “What was that!?”
“Oooh. It’s those cameras that take your picture when you run a red light,” I shouted with child-like amusement. “Makes it easier for the Piggies to write you up a ticket, especially since they have it on tape!”
It’s the first time I’ve seen those things in action.
They’re creepy.
Maybe George Orwell was right. Big Brother is watching.
“Damn it. I just went to court last month to contest another ticket,” she says in a tone of defeat.
“Speeding?”
“No, tailgating my dad’s car up in Michigan.” We both laugh synchronically.
Unbelievable.
I have been asked how two people with completely opposite political views and lifestyles can be in a room without causing a wreck. My answer is not the typical “We’re doing it for the sake of the band and writing music, but we hate each other’s guts.” Despite our differences, we actually do meet somewhere in the middle with many issues. We both care about the state of the world, and we only want positive change.
As lyricists, our ideology comes across as neither liberal or conservative, but rhetorical, optimistic and hopeful. We also never shied away from exposing a more dark and pessimistic side and both agree that maybe our only hope in this lifetime of ever getting it right is by burning the world down and starting anew.
We finally make it past the intersection and everything is smooth sailing from here. The neighborhood is a mental time capsule of the 1980s for me. Vintage streetlights that are dim, wooden signs that are rotting with snazzy painted lettering and a vacant lot that used to hold a Ponderosa steakhouse. That was parents’ favorite place to go.
“Dude, what’s up with all these streets starting with the letter “L”? she asks.
“No idea.” It is pretty odd how the next 3-4 streets start with the letter” L.” Laramie, Lexington, Long. These strings of consonants are soon broken by another set of street names beginning with the same consonants. Mango, Monitor… Ugh.
Part of me never wanted to grow up. Life was so carefree and simple back then, or maybe it was because my awareness of the world’s evils had not corrupted my innocence at such a young age. I saw no difference between a Republican and a Democrat, toy guns were realistic and cool, Michael Jackson the King of Pop and still black and the music was much better.
I’m thankful for that.
My parents chose not to expose me to that kind of world. They were very political people, but they raised me to appreciate art and nature. I spent a lot of afternoons at the park letting my curiosity take hold of the steering wheel. I never was a conventional thinker. While other kids would play baseball with their fathers, I was questioning why grass was green and why I’d get sick if I ate it.
“I don’t understand why Jeremy and Ryan can’t make it a point to schedule in a practice every week? Do they not want this band to succeed? Jenny asks, breaking the spell I was in.
“Meh. I don’t know anymore. One’s got ego issues, the other one’s lazy. It’s pretty annoying.”
We are coming up to Austin Ave. as Jenny taps the stick to signal a left turn.
“I say we call a mandatory band meeting. I can’t deal with this anymore. This is the right street to turn on right?”
“Ditto. Let’s wait ‘til after the show. This is a pretty big gig we got. We don’t want them bailing on us. Yeah, this is it. There’s the patio store.” I point at the store to the right side which says in white, orange and maroon lights “PATIO.” It resembles the Chicago Theatre.
The problem with me when I was young was that I took things for granted. I lived in a fantasy world in which I’d graduate from college at 21, make a lot of money, get married and raise a family by my mid-20s. If I were to meet up with my 5 year old self in a time warp to have a cup of coffee, or chocolate milk, I’d feel like I owed him an apology. Imagine going up to a little kid with the brightest dreams and telling him or her to stay in those dreams because reality sucks.
“Yeah, that’s true. Knowing Ryan, he’s probably gonna come up with some lame excuse the day of the show.”
“We can play as a three piece. It’s not like Ryan added anything creative to the music. Ugh, we just missed Waveland.”
“Shit! Second time in a row! You wanna make a quick stop at McDonald’s?”
“Yeah, I could go for a shake. They’re probably not even there yet.”
I’ve been told countless times that it’s my generation that’s going to suffer from these times of economical turmoil and war.
I am more fearful of my future children’s generation. I always wanted to have a family, but our current crisis is forcing me to think otherwise. My paternal instincts want to raise children in a better world free of guns, child-molesting members of the Church and genocide.
But I guess if we keep things up with the way they are going, there might not be a future for anyone of us. We can choose to live by the Mayan calendar and wait for the meteor to save us before we end up killing each other.
2012 isn’t that far away. But who knows what’ll happen with the next 4 years.
Only God and Obama.
Loved the Purple-Hearted Warlord/plumber line:) Very heartfelt and honest, but without seeming preachy. I really enjoyed it.
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