The Pallbearers' Club by Paul Tremblay

Author:Paul Tremblay
Language: eng
Format: epub
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Publisher: Titan Books

INTERVIEW(ED) BY THE VAMPIRE

I can’t even.

“Tell me about your educational background, Mr. Barbara, and please include extracurricular activities of note.”

You’re such a dork.

“I was a mathematics/education major, on track to become a high school math teacher. I can’t explain why I would choose that path after so desperately wanting to be free from high school. Maybe it represents a lack of occupational vision; I was good at math, and I couldn’t imagine another job a math person might do. Maybe the choice of major was an act of self-sabotage or self-loathing. You choose! Elsewhere, I made friends easy enough and I fully engaged with the stereotypical college good time. I don’t mean to downplay this. In a lot of ways, I blossomed.

A beautiful flower.

“For the first time in a wider, general social setting I could be me, or more me, or the me I wanted people to see, the me I wanted to cultivate, the me who wore a leather jacket no matter the season or temperature. And yeah, I felt safe at college, safer than I ever felt in high school. Sophomore year I joined the college radio station, WDOM. My first assignments included remotely producing radio broadcasts of hockey games and programming classical music shows on bleary weekend mornings. Around the time I joined the station, I started hanging out with a guy named Brian. From Long Island, he was more into XTC and the Replacements than the punkier/heavier stuff I liked, but there was common musical ground too. Plus, he played guitar and he played it well. I pestered him into showing me some chords. Though I was far from being a natural guitarist, my long, brachiosaurian fingers fit into the chord shapes easy enough. The summer after sophomore year, I worked long hours at the United Shoe Factory, unloading and loading trucks, stacking wooden pallets, sweeping the floors, and I spent some days on the production lines as a material handler. With my second paycheck I bought a used black Gibson SE and a red mini amp that sounded like someone taking a cheese grater to a metal handrail. When I wasn’t working that summer, I holed up in my room and either played Nintendo Tetris or my guitar. Once my left hand was strong enough for barre chords, I figured out how to play most of the Ramones’ first two albums. Junior year I became an RA, or resident assistant, in my dorm to help pay tuition. Things were going along well enough by then: I had a primetime Thursday-night radio show, and yeah, Punk Art was my DJ name. Whenever I had a night off from RA duties, I hit the music clubs and recorded interviews with local bands. I’d play those interviews on-air along with one or two of their songs. I made a bit of a name for myself in the local scene that way. When I went home for junior year’s winter break, my parents dropped on me that they were

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