King Dork

and dressing casually and supporting public television and putting bumper stickers on Volvos and eating only weird expensive food and separat-ing your cans and bottles and doing tai chi and going to the farmer’s market and pronouncing Spanish words with a cartoon-character accent and calling actresses actors and making up your own religion and so forth—well, the world refused to be saved that way. Big surprise. On the other hand, no one could ever mistake Hillmont High School for a prep school, so at least you accomplished that. I mean, calling it a school involves the kind of generosity of spirit that in other circumstances might get you the Nobel Peace Prize nomina-tion or something. You stuck it to the old man, killed half of your brain cells, and dumbed down the educational system: you are the greatest generation.

Before all that character arc stuff happened, I might have been able to sing “all we are saying is make high school a little less sadistic” with a little more enthusiasm. Compared to Hillmont High School, Holden Caulfield’s prep school troubles seem like a sort of heaven on earth. But honestly, I’ve got my mind on other things. Girls and rock and roll, I mean.

Everything else is trivia.

323

OUTRO

How we live now:

Christmas break. Band practice. We Have Eaten All the Cake, me on guitar/vox, Spam L. Ermine on bass and domestic hygiene, Shinefield on drums, first album Slut Heaven.

Working on: “You Look Good on Drugs.”

Little Big Tom enters, tilts his head to one side, raises one eyebrow, does a quick, shallow knee bend, tilts his head to the other side, raises the phone he is carrying above his head, and brings it down, straightening his arm in one fluid motion, as though it’s a remote and he’s changing the channel. Or a phaser on stun.

“There a rock star in the house?”

I take the phone. “Oh, thank God,” I say, when I realize it is Celeste “Fiona” Fletcher. Because we’ve started saying that whenever we call each other.

Fake Fiona: “Trombone!”

Amanda: “Get off the phone. Get off the phone. Get off the phone.”

Mom: just about halfway visible from a certain angle, seated at the dining room table at the end of the hall in a cloud of cigarette smoke, staring into her drink. Looking sad and beautiful.

Little Big Tom, sighing: “Rock and roll . . .”

Sam Hellerman: staring ahead inscrutably, fingering bass strings. Saying nothing.

325

bandography

( A U G U S T – D E C E M B E R )

1. Easter Monday

2. Baby Batter

guitar: Guitar Guy

base and scientology: Sam Hellerman

third album: Odd and Even Number

3. The Plasma Nukes

guitar: Lithium Dan

bass and calligraphy: Little Pink Sambo

vox: The Worm

machine-gun drums: TBA

first album: Feelin’ Free with the Plasma Nukes 4. Tennis with Guitars

lead axe: Love Love

bass and rat-catching: The Prophet Samuel vocals, keys, bumping, grinding: Li’l Miss Debbie drummer: Beat- Beat

first album: Amphetamine Low

cover: white with the album title in tiny black type on the back. The band name does not appear anywhere on the outside packaging.

second album: Phantasmagoria, Gloria photo: a police dog licks a broken doll’s face.

327

5. Helmet Boy

guitar: Moe

bass and procrastination: Sambiguity

first album: Helmet Boy II

6. Liquid Malice