Just a Crush: Dear Diary (Oli Sykes)

Chapter Two: Not a Band

'Today, Oli asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him I wanted to be like him. "I'm flattered, little Miss Thomas, but I hardly qualify as a role model. I reckon you should find someone else." That's what he said. I don't understand. But I love it when he calls me little Miss Thomas. Everyone else just calls me Lenny or Leonora.'

I would hate it if he called me that now. I am not little anymore. Or, well, I am. I can't get past 158 cm. I can't control my height, but I can control my future. I still don't necessarily know what I want to be when I graduate secondary school. Lately, I've been playing around with the idea of forming a proper band of my own. Gemma likes the idea a lot. Mainly because she knows me well, and as such, she realises that I have no academic skills what so ever. She also believes in me, and she's said that if I became a rockstar, she could live vicariously through me. I would love nothing more than if she were to join my band as our violinist. It could work, y'know. We both like metal music, so we'd obviously play something like that. We've already recorded a few covers of our favourite songs and posted them on YouTube, but it's nothing serious. Of course, we aren't alone in that endeavour. Gemma's older brother Dom is a drummer, like myself. So, it's him on the drums, Gemma with her violin, I play bass and sing, and we have another friend, Laurie, and he plays the electric guitar. So, I guess we kind of already do have a band, but we never call it that. We don't even have a name or anything. Plus, Gemma wants to go to medical school. Ergo the living vicariously part. Dominic is a bartender at a nightclub in central London. He's never had any academic dreams, much like myself. At least, that's what Gemma always says. Laurie goes to school with us. He's been thinking of becoming a lawyer lately. I reckon that's his parents' doing, though. They're both barristers, and they want their only son to continue with the family tradition. We're never allowed to call him Laurie around them. His proper name is Lawrence Henry Pendergrass III, and he's from a very proper family. Whenever Gemma and I visit his house, we always take out our piercings, we never smoke, and we never talk about what we do after school at my house. They don't know that Laurie can play the guitar. It was actually my father who taught him. So, all I'm actually left with in regard to the band is Dom. I get on with Dom brilliantly, and I think it could be a proper laugh to form a band with him. We would need at least one more member, though. And a band name. And original songs. But we still have time. Dominic isn't going anywhere, and I still have another 2 years of school.

For now, I am enjoying my summer holiday. Last month, I finally painted the walls in my room red. I'd wanted to do that for a while. My furniture is black, and I feel it goes better with red than the white walls I had before. I really like my room. It's quite large. In fact, I can fit an entire musical set-up in it. I have my intruments on a carpet in one of the corners. That way, I can play them whenever I want. I also have a little terrace with a table and four chairs and the coolest ashtray you have ever seen. It's shaped as a skull, and the ash goes inside its mouth. My room is on the ground floor, so what separates my terrace from the world around me is a wooden fence. It's mostly a symbolic barrier, really. I like sitting outside and playing my guitar. I used to observe the elderly couple that lived next door to us, too, but the wife died six months ago, and the husband's moved out. He's selling the house now. Hopefully, a cute lad moves in. Not because I'd like to experience the clichéd boy-next-door romance, but because I've never really had a boyfriend before, and I feel like it might be time. I know that I've literally just made it sound like I wanted the cliché, but it's really not that. I don't much care for romantic movies, y'know. It's just that all the boys at my school remember me with braces and pimples, and none of them ever liked me that way. Which is perfectly okay because none of them've really caught my attention either. Well, actually there is someone at school... but he's my mathematics teacher, so it could never work out. Mostly because I'm really not good at mathematics. I like music class and physical education. All the other classes are just rubbish, really.