Loser Juice

Chapter 2: Seniors

I arrived at the tryout, bass and amp in hand. My soul was shrieking and my stomach was lifting weights. The garage door was open and as I walked in, I looked around and saw no one but me. 

"Alright, you're in." Said one of the girls. 

Nobody else showed up to the audition, which was great news for me, considering that I was terrible. 

"Really? Awesome. I'm Matt." And this time I was able not to have a seizure and start talking about how my full name is Matthew. They all went around and introduced themselves. There were two girls and a guy. The guy had super long unkept hair that went down to his ribcage. He was wearing a dark green shirt that was full of tiny burn holes and said "LEGALIZE IT" on the front. His Converse shoes looked maybe a thousand years old and they were doing that thing where the outside sole was disconnected from the main canvas part and they kept moving around. 

"I'm Chris. I play lead guitar and I fucking suck." He said kind of sleepily. 

"I'm Mindy, and I sing and play rhythm guitar. I'm pretty good I think." Mindy had dry, shoulder-length pink hair that seemed like it had been dyed many times and violently. She had cystic acne on the side of her face. She was wearing a see-through fishnet shirt over a black top. She also had a poofy skirt and giant black combat boots that looked like they would fit Shaq. Her voice sounded like someone sucked all the moisture out of her body. 

"My name is Georgia. I play drums. I also fucking suck. Deeply. Like to my core I'm just not a great drummer, really." Georgia was wearing a faded blue NASA shirt and khakis. She had these sick tie-dyed Santa Cruz/Vans crossover shoes. Her hair was a bright natural auburn colour. She was also super beautiful. I mean not in like a creepy way, or like I was in love with her at first sight, she was just objectively amazing. 

We sat there for a second or two before Mindy suggested we play something. Chris offered that we start with this Pixies song they all knew, and I just followed along. Now, I had taken some time throughout the week to learn the whole-step half-step with notes on the fretboard shit so I could try to keep up as long as they told me the roots. Surprise, surprise, the first note of "Where is my Mind?" is a low E, so immediately the little megaphone man lost it. My amp went "bbbuuUUUHHHBB" and the whole band immediately ceased playing. 

"What," said Chris. 

"Matt what the fuck is wrong with your amp?" Asked Mindy. 

"Yeah what the fuck Matt," continued Georgia, hopping on board with everyone else. 

"Was that," finished Chris, who I was beginning to realize was a little spacey. 

"My amp is horrible. I bought it at a pawn shop for like $75." Mindy and Georgia exchanged a kind of knowing look and Mindy went out to her car. She came back with this beautiful Marshall amp. 

"This is a bass amp," she explained. "Yours is a guitar amp, which is why it sounds like that." I plugged into the Marshall and my bass sounded like a new instrument. It was great. The only problem is that I couldn't hide behind as much distortion. 

We started playing for real this time. My heart raced and I got super sweaty, but it was all in a good way because to my musical virgin ears, we were the Beatles. We sounded amazing. Mindy's voice was impeccable, Georgia was solid, and Chris played with this super lazy and sloppy style but you could tell he knew exactly what he was doing. 

The Pixies are super bass-heavy but I played along just fine and Mindy's rhythm kind of replaced me. We finished and I just said, "oh," in a sort of blank and perplexed way. It was like I was staring into the cosmos and then one of the galaxies looked at me and went "oh yeah, forgot to mention that your destiny is to become a super famous musician. It'll be tight don't worry about it."