Captive Audience by Dave Reidy

Author:Dave Reidy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IG Publishing
Published: 2010-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Abe stood under the awning of his apartment building while the doorman hailed a cab. His gut throbbed with fear. The only thing worse than going to the doctor when you didn’t have to was going when you did. Standing with his left leg braced against a tall, terra cotta pot, Abe wondered why the false reports of his death had never really bothered him. Maybe he had always known that death, when it finally came, would be all too real.

LOOK AND FEEL

In high school, I hung out with the heavy-metal kids. Before first bell, we would gather around a table in the cafeteria to trade tapes—an Iron Maiden bootleg for a Megadeth EP, Slayer demos for some Swedish death metal. I didn’t like the music much, but I liked drawing the way it made me feel. While my sort-of friends banged their heads over air guitars, I drew thunderheads and snarling dogs and broken limbs in pen. When a drawing was finished, I would make photocopies and hand them out to the rest of the guys, who would tape them to bathroom walls and locker doors and the covers of their chemistry textbooks.

By the end of my freshman year of college, I was done with metal and done with drawing, except when my graphic-design classwork demanded a quick sketch. What I wanted was to be in a band. All my friends were either members or fans of Simon Eyes, a band of indie kids a year ahead of me at school. I went to every Simon Eyes show. I watched them rehearse in the unfinished basement of their rotting bungalow. And, in the privacy of my off-campus apartment, I taught myself to play their melodic, privileged-kid punk on electric guitar. Then I waited. When the band’s second guitarist, Jimmy, went down with strep throat two days before a Saturday gig, I could have said honestly that I hadn’t wished that particular illness on him, as I’d pinned my hopes on either mono or flu.

While Jimmy slept on the second floor, I joined the rest of Simon Eyes in the basement. We started with “Messy,” the band’s usual opener. I felt myself struggling to keep up—I had never played the song at full speed—but managed to get through it without missing a single chord. And, to my relief, I sang the backing vocals on key, though I doubt if anyone heard me, as I wouldn’t put my mouth within a foot of Jimmy’s microphone. I wanted to be a part of Simon Eyes, but not enough to risk getting strep.

After “Messy,” the lead guitarist led us into an up-tempo charger called “Kick It.” Again, I played all the right chords at all the right times. But nothing I played on either song had sounded quite right. The band heard something missing, too. They offered to let me borrow Jimmy’s guitar. I declined. So they ran my guitar through an effects pedal and we tried another song. This time, I worried

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