The Scar Boys

Rock And Roll Band

My parents, even five years later, wore the incident of the thunderstorm like a Scarlet A.

Their guilt at finding me tied to that tree half alive---as if they could've controlled or prevented it---hung over our house summer smog.

As time wore on I grew to resent it.

It made me feel like I'd done something wrong, but it had its advantages, too.

When I told my mom I wanted to play guitar, the same day Johnny had introduced me to my new bandmates, she lit up like a Christmas tree.

Before I knew what was happening, I was whisked to the local music store and outfitted with a new Fender Stratocaster, a Peavey amp, and a schedule of lessons once a week from Rick, the long-haired, tattooed "dude" who ran the guitar department.

Rick played lead guitar in a sixties tribute band called the Skittish Invasion.

Their set list covered everything from Gerry and the Pacemakers to Jimi Hendrix, and they appeared regularly at a handful of local bars.

"The money's decent,  but the bet part's the chicks." Rick talked to me like I was an equal. Strike that. He didn't talk to me like I was an equal at all.

He was Kung Fu and I was Grasshopper. But he didn't talk to me like I was a freak.

He made me believe it was my right to expect every success he'd found with the guitar.

Of course, I didn't know at the time that the success he'd found was, well, kinda lame.

Back then I thought Rick was a rock star, and I wanted to be just like him. 

I really did.

In the year and a half I spent taking lessons, Rick taught me basic music theory, gave me drills to make my pickhand nimble, and showed me how to use a slide.

Together we went to school on blues, rock, and country guitar styles, covering everything from pentatonic scales, to how to damped the strings when using a distortion pedal without causing too much feedback.

And, most important, he imbued me with the ancient and sacred knowledge that the most beautiful part of music is the pace between the notes.

I don't think I can ever repay Rick for giving me the gift of music. It is the single greatest gift I've ever received.

Praise the lord and amen.

But all that took time.

When I arrived at the Scar Boys' first rehearsal, a mere four weeks and four guitar lessons later, I'd only managed to learn three chords---A,D, and G.

Through relentless hours of practice, groping the Braille on the fret board, I'd trained my hand to creep from one chord to the other and back again.

As Johnny, Richie, Dave, and I stood there, staring at each other like a bunch of Neanderthals trying to figure out how to make a fire, I started to play.

A to D, A to D, A to D to G. A to D, A to D, A to D to G.

Dave who had even less musical experience than me, asked what I was playing, so I shouted out each chord as I strummed it, and he managed to find the matching note on his bass.

A to D, A to D, A to D to G. A to D, A to D, A to D to G.

Richie, who had even less musical experience than Dave, found what little rhythm we were cobbling together and added a flailing but rudimentary four-four beat.

Tick tick tap tap. Tick tick tap tap. Tick tick tap tap.

Johnny grabbed his old Invicta cassette recorder, pressed the "play" and "record" buttons together, and started to sing.

I can't remember the words now, but I think it was called "Middle Class Blues."

It was a song about the drudgery of doing chores and the ills of authority, and anthem for teenage angst. 

When I listen to that tape now, I'm surprised at how earsplittingly, dog-howlingly awful we were. 

But when You're thirteen and you can string three chords together in any organized way, to your own ears you're the Beatles.

A few weeks later we played four original songs at each of those three holiday parties. 

Maybe no one had the heart to tell us we stank, or maybe they saw the chemistry and the potential of the Scar Boys and wanted to egg us on.

Whatever the reason, they loved us. Or so the other guys told me.

Being onstage, having a spotlight shining on me, even metaphorically, was terrifying.

I was still the mistfit, still the monster.

I played each of those gigs with my dad's fedora (the one from Halloween) pulled low over my face, a pair of dark sunglasses, and a denim jacket with the collar turned up, and I spent most of the time facing Richie, with my back turned to the audience.

Johnny tried to convince me that the name of the band would make a lot more sense if I could let my guard down, show my face.

But I wasn't ready. 

After a while he backed off and stopped asking.

We played on like this through ninth and tenth grades, making occasional appearances at friend's parties, but mostly just jamming in my parents' basement.

When we weren't playing music, Johnny and I spent every free minute together.

We'd lie on the grass hill by the elementary school, spotting animals, cars, and musical instruments in the clouds during the day, and counting stars at night.

We'd leave empty soda cans, and pennies, and once even a history textbook, on the commuter rail tracks, watching the ten-car train demolish whatever was in its path.

We'd cut school and sneak in through the movie theater's back door to see Return of the Jedi, or War Games, or The Right Stuff.

We'd try to work up the nerve to talk to girls at the mall, Johnny so effortlessly succeeding, me staying back, lurking in the shadows like the Phantom of the Opera.

And, of course, I'd join Johnny on his nightly run.

It was the last thing, the evening run, that was my favorite ritual. 

While I didn't have the same soul-infusing love of running that Johnny did, I saw the appeal.

It was easy to lose yourself in the sound of shoes slapping on the pavement, in the whoosh of wind in your ears.

It felt good to be moving. Whether we were running away from something or toward something I didn't know, and I didn't care.

My friendship with Johnny was making everything better. Even school was becoming bearable.

I was still one rung lower on the social ladder than Tina, the girl who'd crapped her pants in the second grade (there are something you can never live down; her family should have moved after that happened), and two rungs lower than Lance, our school's one and only deaf kid, but classmates who used to laugh at me would now at least nod in my direction, and a small but growing group of kids---mostly the ones that circled Johnny---were becoming my friends.

And then, when we hit the eleventh grade, something strange happened.

Something no one anticipated or could have predicted.

The Scar Boys got good.