Tales From the Dragon Cave

Trouble • P l a t z

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4...

Again.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2- shit.

I sigh and pick up my stick from the ground, wiping the sweat off my face. God, I'm tired. But the tour is less than a month away now and I have to be good enough. One more time.

Bass there, tom there, cymbal, fill, keep going, keep going, do not slack off, don't even think about holding back...

"Platz!" I snap out of my drum zone to Wayne calling my name. I keep quietly tapping though. "Dude, what the hell are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

Wayne groans. "Why are you drumming at four in the morning?"

"Don't want to fall out of practice," I answer, building it up slightly.

"Okay, stop for a minute."

I don't.

"Platz."

Drumdrumdrum.

"Platz, stop." He rips the sticks out of my hands and looks at them, dropping them when he sees blood. "What the fuck? Show me your hands."

I look down at my hands, breathing heavily, then show them to Wayne. My fingers are bleeding.

"You're nuts," he mutters as he gently takes my hands and examines them. "C'mon."

I stand up and follow him to the bathroom, where he takes a first aid kit out of the cabinet above the sink and turns on the faucet.

"Why do you have one of those?" I ask him.

"Because the three of you are dumb as shit and you're always getting yourselves hurt," he says as he moves my hands under the water. It feels good, I have to admit. I tend to be too proud to actually wash my hands when they bleed.

"Thanks," I mumble as he wraps my fingers with bandages.

"Sure. Now can we talk more about this obsessive practicing thimg?"

"I'm a musician and I want to be a good one," I say. "Don't you?"

"Yeah. But at least I try to sleep."

I sigh and take a towel from the bar next to the sink, wiping my face with it. It's not a problem. I don't have a problem. Dedication. That's not a problem.

"It's fine. Alright? I'll go home if that'll make you happy."

"Or you could tell me why you're so concerned with being good that you're losing sleep to practice," Wayne suggests, giving me a sarcastic smile.

"You and Dan stay up writing all the time," I counter, shutting off the light and walking back to the booth.

"Yeah, because he can't fucking sleep if he doesn't and I can't sleep either way," he snaps. "Which brings me back to you. Drumming doesn't help you sleep."

"Well, maybe it does. Maybe I can't sleep if I think I'm going to get on tour and screw everything up!"

I didn't really think that was true until I said it.

"It's hard, okay?" My voice loses its power. "I can't quit writing parts that are almost too hard for me to play because I always just want to be better."

I sit behind the drum kit and Wayne pulls a stool up in front of me.

"Music school fucked us all up a little bit, didn't it?" he says, smiling.

"If you're a perfectionist going to school for jazz music you're fucking screwed," I mutter.

That's probably why we've managed to have success, though. We applied our prestigious music school mindset to a little rock band, which nearly killed Dan at first but he got used to it. Less sleep, more practice, less living life, more practice. Always playing. It certainly did something.

But now we don't know how to chill with it. Or I don't.

Wayne's been thinking for a while like I have, but now he speaks. "I was a much, much better guitar player when I was nineteen than I am now."

"Nah."

"No, really. I can't play half the shit I could play back then. But I can write. And I know how to realistically play and write with other people. That's more useful than being able to play really fast, useless stuff."

I sigh, looking down at sticks in my hands. "I just don't wanna screw up, you know?"

"What makes you think you would? You never do."

"Yeah, I do."

He shrugs. "I never hear it. C'mon, Dan messes up his own lyrics every night and we don't give him shit for it."

I don't say anything, still sort of uneasy. It doesn't matter if they give me shit, it matters that I give me shit.

Wayne walks across the room and picks up an acoustic guitar. "Well, whatever you were doing when I got here, I was working on something and I think it'd go good."

He starts to play loud, hard-strummed chords and after a few times through the progression I join in. We play for a few minutes, and I'm starting to feel good about it when I mess up. Bad.

"Fucking hell," I mutter, stopping.

"What?"

"Nothing. I messed up."

"I liked it. Play it that way again."

Shrugging, I play it again, this time including the mistake I made. Wayne grins.

"Yes! That's good. Keep it like that."

We spend half an hour playing, tweaking what we have and eventually recording it. It sounds cool. Different from what we normally do, and with drums that are really, really fun to play.

"Now you're gonna go home, right?" Wayne says after he proudly sends our track to Dan and Ben.

I nod, putting my sticks down and running my thumb over the bandages on my hands.

"Good. I swear we should be named Imagine No Sleep."

I smile a bit as I head to the front hallway and hover by the door. "Thank you. For...you know, being all smart and shit."

He shrugs. "I try. It's really the insomnia, I know way too fucking much about all of you. But uh...of course. Mistakes make you better."

I make a mental note to really think about that as I lie in bed to sleep tonight, then give him a brief hug and leave.

Although I never do think about it, because as soon as I get home and flop on my bed, I'm sound asleep.

But I prefer the pay dirt...