Everyone in the house was out of work and unhappy except for Mom. Mom was in work and unhappy. She had two jobs, a nine to five at the Danner’s Five and Dime and a weekend shift working nights at Bobby Jo’s Party Shoppe. Dad and my brother spent all their time trying to figure out the best way to utilize Mom’s earnings. They usually did this over continuous rounds of tap stout at the Dew Drop Inn, downtown. Both had plenty of ideas but no initiative. Each night they’d come home exhausted by the possibilities, eat dinner, then pass out in front of the TV, a Stroh’s tallboy at their feet and Mom’s glassy eyes on their dumb, slumbering faces.

            Once they were asleep, Mom would go to her bedroom and work on a letter to her friend, Cindy Kyle. Cindy had moved to Florida with her husband, Duke, a year ago and Mom had been saving for a trip down to visit ever since. It was a small pathetic thing to save for, seeing as Florida was mainly just a long hot place old people went to die and Cindy never really seemed to like Mom that much anyway. But I guess everybody needs a dream.

            My dream was no less than full-blown nonstop-getting-my-cock-sucked rock stardom. My band mates, Steve, Jon D. and I had all just graduated from high school and were now free and ready to pursue music full time. We’d meet in my neighbor’s shed every night at midnight. Split the warm Stroh’s Dad and my brother didn’t finish. Talk band names.

            Jon D. liked to suggest animals.

            “What about the Rabbits?” he said.

            “Or the Fucking Rabbits,” said Steve. Steve was a round kid with a fat neck and a little head. I wondered if his blood had trouble pumping up his chubby throat to his brain. The boy was incredibly dim. But he was the only guy in the band who actually had an instrument. A Fender bass. And he knew how to play it, too.

            “Who are we supposed to be fucking?” said Jon D.

            “Everyone,” said Steve. He guzzled the last of our Stroh’s, then looked to me for approval.

            I shook my head, no.

            “Rabbits fuck other rabbits,” said Jon D. “People would think we fuck each other.”

            “Yeah,” said Steve. He looked down at his bass and slapped its strings.

            “Whatever we choose, it should be something classic,” I said.

            Jon D. sneered. “We could call ourselves the Stones,” he said.

            “I like that,” said Steve.

            “It’s taken, dip-shit,” said Jon D. “And you can’t pick a classic name. That’s something it becomes.”

            Jon D. and I both considered ourselves to be the band’s leader. We constantly battled over small points like this.

            I argued with Jon D. that his thinking was limited.

            Jon D. argued that everyone’s thinking was limited and the only thing that mattered was whether or not you knew your limits.

            Steve suggested we call ourselves the Shitty Limits.

            Jon D. and I both told him to shut up. Then we started my neighbor’s riding lawn mower and drove it over our empty tallboys, crushing them flat as tin foil before splitting up and going to bed.

            Mornings, Mom and I ate breakfast together. Commiserated over the past day’s defeats. Prepared for their reoccurrence.

            “You father’s stopped touching me,” said Mom, with a heap of instant oatmeal in her mouth.

            “Well, that’s good,” I said.

            “No,” she said.

            “Oh,” I said. “Can I get a guitar?”

            “Sure,” said Mom.

            “I think they’re like a hundred dollars.”

            “Start working.”

            “I can’t work until I have the guitar.”

            “Yes you can,” said Mom.

            “Music is a job,” I told her.

            Mom nodded. She was careful never to squelch hope of any kind in the house.

            “I need it before Jon D. gets one.”

            “We’ll see,” she said.

            “Or I’ll have to play drums.”

            “We don’t want that,” said Mom.

            “No, we don’t,” I said. Because the only way I could hope to lead the band as a drummer was if I also sang. And the precedents for singing drummers in music were not inspiring. They all strained too hard to keep a beat as they sang. It made everyone I’d ever seen look constipated and graceless.

            “Jon D. would lead the band for sure,” I said.

            “I thought you liked Jon,” said Mom.

            “I do,” I said. “He just lacks vision.”

            “Oh,” said Mom.

            “I’m afraid he’d bend to the will of any mid-level studio exec just to get our music released.”

            “I hadn’t realized you boys had made any music,” said Mom.

            “We haven’t,” I said. “But it’s important to think this stuff out first.”

            “Sure.” Mom smiled and looked out the window at the sick elm in our front lawn.

            I sat and schemed about the band’s trajectory. Sucked milk from a bowl. Burped into my mouth.

            I believed artistic integrity led to the best twat and wanted to take the band in that direction. Any group could luck upon popularity with a few chords and a good stylist. But if that was all they had, they’d be doomed to recede into club-land obscurity after a couple of years, scoring, at best, some middle-aged biker moms with flat asses and bad attitudes after their shows. Visionaries, on the other hand, enjoyed prime pussy throughout their entire careers. Even if they were misshapen little dorks with bad teeth and thick glasses. It didn’t matter what you looked like. If fans honestly believed you made something true and lasting, they’d let you fuck them raw until you died.

            “Poor tree,” said Mom.

            “Uh-huh,” I said, as I sat thinking of girls.

            “Your father should do something.”

            Girls touching themselves. Girls touching themselves as they touched other girls. Girls touching themselves as they touched other girls touching me. Girls watching. Waiting. Videotaping.

            “I’m tired of watching it die,” she said.

            “Yeah,” I said. “What about the guitar?”

            “I don’t know, Julian,” said Mom. “I think we should ask your father.” I guess Mom hoped this suggestion would delay the matter for a couple of days. Give her a chance to think about it. Maybe buy a cheap-ass one behind my back with which to surprise slash disappoint me. But unlike her, I had no qualms destroying other’s hopes, especially if they were in opposition to my own.

            I brought up the guitar with Dad later that night, at dinner.

            “Hey, Dad,” I said.

            Dad didn’t respond. He sat staring at the charred salmon patties on his plate like he was trying to lift them with his mind. He and my brother, Joel, had both come home late from the Dew Drop, beer-dazed and ashamed. A perfect time to ask the old man for something.

            “Dad?”

            “Huh?” he said.

            “Hi.”

            “Oh,” he said. “Hey.”

            Mom watched, scraped a path with her fork through her half-finished plate of fish cakes and potato hash. Joel sat with his head bent, leaned his weight slightly to one side to pass gas as he ate.

            “How’s it going?” I said.

            “Good,” said Dad.

            “Good,” I said.

            Mom sighed, looked out the window. It was night and there was nothing to see but the dark outline of our diseased tree.

            Dad smiled. Stuck his fork in a salmon patty. He was once a handsome man. But all his fine features had fizzed out from drinking. Now his stomach was severely bloated, which made him look like he was wearing a heavy coat-vest under his clothes. His green eyes were always pink at the rims. And his lips were dry and withered as a sun-rotted apple.

            “Has mom told you about the band I started with Jon D.?” I said.

            “Who’s Jon D.?” said Dad.

            “A friend,” I said.

            Dad looked pained.

            “My best friend since middle school,” I said.

            He turned to Mom.

            “The Duesler boy,” she said.

            “That kid?” said Dad.

            “Yeah,” I said.

            “What are you doing with him?” he said.

            “Starting a band,” I said.

            My brother sniffed, forced a laugh and started coughing. Joel was a thirty-year-old man who had never lived apart from Mom and Dad for longer than a month. He hated me for being younger, smarter and better looking.  Whereas I had Dad’s emerald eyes and high cheekbones, Joel had the lips and tits of mom. Whereas I had the promise of a man just starting out, Joel had the tired resignation of a long-standing failure. And whereas I still believed in my own potential, Joel had given up believing in much other than people’s inevitable doom. He rooted for my downfall. Seeing me as broken and disappointed as him was his dream.

            “You play an instrument?” said Dad.

            “I want to play guitar,” I said.

            “Sounds loud,” said Dad.

            “It’s quieter than drums,” I said.

            “What isn’t?” said Dad.

            My brother smiled and bared his crooked under-bite at me.

            “Mom and I were talking about getting me one,” I said.

            “A drum?” said Dad.

            “Guitar,” I said.

            “Oh,” he said. “You have a bicycle, Julian?”

            “Yes,” I said, afraid Dad was going to make some lame point about being thankful for what you got. Tell me to forget the guitar.

            “Still ride it?” he said.

            “Sometimes,” I said.

            Dad reached into his pocket and passed me a damp beer coaster folded over in a half moon. “Don’t tell that Duesler kid about this,” he said.

I studied the coaster. The printed side had a picture of a couple holding hands on a beach at sunset. On the other side was a crudely rendered drawing of what looked like a backward lowercase “h” with the words “bike frames” written under it.

            “Patio chairs,” said Dad. “Made from bike frames.”

            “Oh,” I said. Summer always inspired Dad with new ideas for lawn furniture.

            “Your brother drew the prototype.”

            “That’s great,” I  said to Dad. “What do you think about the guitar?”

Dad took back the coaster. Set it beside Mom’s plate. “What does your mom think?” said Dad.

            “She thought we should ask you.”

            Mom didn’t look at the drawing on the coaster. She had lost interest in Dad’s ideas years ago.

            “Huh,” he said. “That’s funny.”

            “Yeah,” I said, looking at Mom.

She placed her ice water on Dad’s coaster, listening intently with her head turned down.

“So, what do you think?” I said. “About the guitar?”

            “I think your mother just didn’t want to tell you no.”

            “Oh,” I said. I knew he was right.

            “But neither do I,” said Dad.

            “Then don’t,” I said.

            “How much they cost?” he said.

            “I think about a hundred dollars,” I said.

            “Well, find out for sure,” said Dad.

            Oh, what a good-hearted lovable drunk my father could be. Teasing promises on Mother’s dime. I worshipped him during these little moments. Of course, I’d be lucky if he remembered anything the next day.

I told Steve the good news that night at our band meeting, a session that Jon D. had rudely decided to skip without notifying either one of us.

            “So, I think I’m finally getting an ax,” I said, sitting on my neighbor’s mower.

            “Why?” said Steve.

            “To play,” I said.

            “Play what?”

            “Guitar.”

            “With an ax?”

            I shook my head and swiped his Stroh’s. Finished it for him.

            “Hey,” he said. “That was mine.”

            “Was,” I said.

            “Where’s Jon D.?” said Steve.

            “I don’t know,” I said. “He can’t keep pulling shit like this, though.”

            “Like what?” said Steve.

            “Like not showing up to rehearsals.”

            “We never rehearse anything,” said Steve.

            “That’s a bad attitude to take,” I said.

            “But it’s true,” he said.

            “What’s true is that Jon D’s not as committed as we are.”

            Steve shrugged.

            “Or else he’d be here, wouldn’t he?”

            “I guess,” said Steve.

            “I’m not going to tolerate this shit when I get my guitar,” I said.

            “You’re getting a guitar?” said Steve.

            “Yes, dip-shit.”

            “Oh.” Steve looked around the shed. Scratched his chest. Picked up my neighbor’s gas can.

            “How do you get high with this stuff?” he asked.

            “I don’t know,” I said, mildly buzzed and highly annoyed. “I think you drink it.”

            “For real?”

            “No, Steve, for fake.”

            “Huh,” he said.

            “I’m going to bed,” I said.

            “Okay,” said Steve.

            I left the shed with him holding the red metal gas can  like some expensive thing that he might want to buy someday. Got in bed. Fondled myself.

            The next day I went down to the Cromwell pawn shop to check out guitars. They had five. Three acoustic and two electric. All but one were under a hundred dollars. The one I wanted. A badass-looking V-shaped thing with an azure glitter finish and the words “Blue Thunder” stenciled on it in black. As far as I was concerned, the guitar was the only thing in the store. It was beautiful. It converted me instantly. I believed in it in the same way, others did religion. I had faith in the thing, the type my mother claimed to have in Jesus. But instead of forgiving my sins, I believed Blue Thunder was going to absolve the things I’d failed to do. The effort I never put forth in school. The colleges I never got into. The girls I never took out. Sex I never had. Purpose never felt. I’d use Blue Thunder to shred all those things away. Grind my malaise into avant garde music with hummable melodies. Get laid and respected for it. Then share my anguished and lethargic past in candid interviews with high profile rock journalists. Tell them how no one ever expected me to amount to much. How Dad drank and Joel farted as I worked out songs on Blue Thunder in my bedroom. Weep openly at the thought of myself at that time.

I asked a lady at the counter if I could see the guitar. She handed it to me like it was just another thing. I forgave her. Put the strap over my shoulder and walked to a mirror. It looked right as Christ on the cross in my hands.

“You’re holding it wrong,” said the lady behind the counter.

“What?” I said.

“Loosen the strap,” she said. “It isn’t supposed to be at your chest.”

“I got it,” I said.

“Be careful,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. I loosened the strap and the guitar almost fell to the floor.

The lady took it back from me quickly. Said I could drop the thing all I wanted once I paid for it.

So, I went down the block to Danner’s to talk to Mom about money. When I got there, she was ringing up an old woman for a box of Dimetap and a pair of sunglasses.

“Julian,” said Mom with a big smile. She loved when I visited her at the store.

“Mom,” I said looking at the Dimetap woman. “I found a guitar but it’s three hundred dollars.”

“Oh,” said Mom. She gave the old woman her receipt and closed the register.

“Is that too much?” I said. “I hope it’s not too much.”

“Julian,” Mom said. She shook her head.

“How much could we afford?” I said.

“Not much.”

“Why?” I said.

“Do you have to ask?”

“Because you’re hoarding all our money for Florida?” I said.

Mom said nothing. She watched as the old woman inched out the store.

“I bet that trip costs more than three hundred dollars,” I said.

“I’ve been saving for a year.”

“That’s kind of selfish of you, Mom.”

“Don’t say that,” she said.

“It is,” I said.

“That’s not fair, Julian,” said Mom.

“What’s not fair?” I said and left the store with an affected sigh and exaggerated slouch.

That night neither Steve nor Jon D. showed up for rehearsal. So I abandoned the shed and went to my bedroom with Dad and Joel’s Stroh’s. Slammed down both as I sat on the floor and wrote ideas for song titles in a composition notebook I’d never used for senior chemistry. Every idea was a variation of the same theme:

Life is Fucked

                                                Fucking Life

                                                Fucking Unfair Life

                                                Fuck This Fucking Unfair Fucking Life

            How Fucked am I (The Unentitled Song)

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Further down the page I wrote:

All I Want Is All I’ll Never Have

(and) Goodbye, Blue Thunder, Goodbye

(and) Mom Is a Bitch, Mom’s a Bitch

Bitch

Bitch

Selfish Bitch

Then I drew a pair of sagging tits with blood the color of black ink bleeding out the nipples and took a piss in one of my empty cans.

Mom saw the notebook the next morning when she came into my room to wake me for breakfast. It was open to the page of song titles. I was half awake and watched her pick it up and examine the page more closely. Her reaction was strange. She did not gasp or sigh. She didn’t get hysterical or shake me awake, demanding an apology. All she did was quietly place the notebook back on the floor and gather my beer cans. She sniffed the one with my urine in it. When she realized what it was, she held it away, at arm’s length, as she walked out of my room and closed the door behind her.

            I decided not to join her for breakfast that morning. Instead, I went back to sleep and didn’t wake up until I heard the sound of my brother’s daily whale farts in the bathroom at noon. I waited for Dad and my brother to head off to the Dew Drop before leaving my room. Once they were gone, I went to the kitchen, fried an egg and gave Jon D. a call.

            “We need to talk,” I said. I made a concerned face as I waited for Jon D.’s response.

            “No shit,” he said.

            “I feel like the band is falling apart.”

            “What are you talking about?” said Jon D.

            “First you skip a rehearsal. Then Steve and you both skip one. I mean…”

            “Steve’s sick,” he said.

            “He can’t call?” I said.

            “He swallowed gasoline,” said Jon.

            “What?” I said.

            “Dumb shit almost died.”

            “No,” I said.

            “Yes,” said Jon D. “Says you told him to do it, too.”

            “Me?”

            “What kind of dick are you, anyway?” said Jon.

            “Look,” I said.

            “Shut up,” he said.

“What do you want me to say?” I said.

 “Just meet us in the shed tonight,” he said.

            “Us?” I said.

            “There’s a new guy,” said Jon D. “He’s got a kit that’d be perfect for Valvoline.”

            “Who’s Valvoline?”

            “It’s our band name,” said Jon D. “I let Steve pick it since he almost bit it and everything. It’s the type of gas he swallowed.”

            “Don’t I get a say?”

            “We can talk about that tonight,” said Jon D, then he hung up the phone.

            I could see were this was heading. I’d fucked up. Now Jon D. felt that he had complete control over the band and wasn’t sure he needed me in it at all anymore. And the only way I could think to convince him otherwise was if I had Blue Thunder.

            So, I called Florida. I rooted through my mother’s things for the Kyles’ number. Took a breath, dialed, hung-up, dialed again.

            “Hello,” answered Cindy, the second time.

            “Um,” I said.

            “Hello?”

            “Hi. Cindy?”

            “Yes?”

            “It’s Julian.”

            “Julian?”

            “Julian Cripe. From Indiana.”

            “Oh,” said Cindy.

            “I was calling about my mom.”

            “Is there something wrong?” asked Cindy.

            “Sort of,” I said.

            Cindy said nothing.

            “It’s just…I’m not sure she’s going to have enough money to come visit you this summer.”

            “Visit me?”

            “I know she’s been planning this trip forever but…”

            “What are you talking about?” said Cindy.

            “My mom,” I said. “Katherine.”

            “Katherine Cripe?”

            “Yeah,” I said.

            “Is coming to Florida?”

            “Well, I’m not sure.” I said. “That’s sort of why I was calling. To see if you could come up here instead.”

            “To see your mother?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Are you kidding?” said Cindy.

            “No,” I said.

            “I think you have the wrong number,” said Cindy.

            “You’re Cindy Kyle, right?”

            Nothing. A disconnect. I called again.

            “Look,” answered Cindy. “I don’t know who this is. But you better stop calling.”

            “Uh,” I said. “It’s Julian Cripe.”

            “Why are you doing this?”

            “Because my mom wants to see you.”

            “Please don’t do this,” said Cindy. And then she hung up again. It was my third hang up in a row. I couldn’t even make a simple phone call. A precedent for the rest of my efforts that day.

            In the afternoon I took an hour-long half-shit on the toilet. After that, I went to my brother’s room and flipped through his Penthouse, but I couldn’t get my dick to fill with enough blood for more than one good jerk-off. I was so distracted and anxious that I couldn’t even finish reading the magazine’s Forum section, which usually enthralled me like nothing else in this world. Then, that night at dinner, I couldn’t finish my food. A heaping plop of goulash served on our worn white porcelain plates.

            “What’s wrong?” asked Mom as I spooned through my stew.

            I wanted to tell her but there was too much wrong for me to begin. What was wrong was that I had accidentally convinced dumb fat-necked Steve to drink gasoline. And as a result I’d probably get kicked out of the band. What was wrong was that Mom was going to waste all our money on a trip her best friend didn’t even want her to make. And if I told her, I’d be exposed as the greedy, backhanded shit that I was. But if I didn’t, Mom would still end up spent with grief and disappointment. Either way I wasn’t going to get my guitar. And that, to me, was the biggest injustice of all. What was wrong was that opportunity was passing me by. And if my life continued in this way, these days would not turn into sentimental fodder for interviews in music mags. Instead, these days would just become lost time. Gone. Not even forgotten. Because I didn’t even do enough to forget. I just existed, like a stone under a stone in the bottom of the ocean, which might be some ideal state to an idiot Buddhist but useless to me and my dingus.

            “Nothing,” I told Mom.

            “You seem upset,” she said.

            Dad and Joel both looked at me.

            “No,” I said, afraid she was going to bring up the stuff she’d read in my notebook that morning.

            “Something wrong?” said Dad.

            I shook my head.

            “What’s wrong?” he asked Mom.

            “I don’t know,” she said.

            Joel rolled his eyes and sighed. Dad grinned. Mom looked out the window.

            “Has he found a drum yet?” said Dad.

            “Guitar,” said Mom.

            Dad faced me. “Well?” he said. “You find one?”

            “No,” I said.

            “Where you looking?” he said.

            “I sort of stopped,” I said.

            “You ought to look around here,” he said.

            “Uh-huh,” I said. Mean drunken fuck.

            “I’m serious,” said Dad. “Have you looked in the closet?”

            I stared at the old man searchingly. He just looked drunk as always. But Joel seemed more pissed off than usual, which made me think there might actually be something to Dad’s question. I went to see.

Sometimes things work out exactly as you hoped they would. No, not sometimes. Actually, never. Things never work out exactly as you’d hoped. But there are times that come close. And for me, no one moment came as close to my hope for it as when I opened our coat closet and found Blue Thunder with a note attached that read:

                                                For our favorite songs yet to be written.

                                                Love,

                                                Mom and Dad

And no moment was as far away from my hope of it as the one that occurred later that night in my neighbor’s shed.

“What’s that?” said Jon D. He stared at my guitar, which I wore self-consciously behind my back upon entering the shed.

“This?” I said, grabbing its neck and pulling it around. “It’s my new guitar.”

Jon D. turned to the new guy, a skinny kid with thin black hair and an angry face.

“What do you think?” said Jon D. to the kid.

“How’s it play?” said the kid.

“Fine,” I said.

“Where’s the amp?” said Jon D.

“I don’t have one of those yet.”

“Shit,” said the kid.

“Who is this?” I asked Jon.

“Darren,” said the kid.

“His brother works a club up in Ft. Wayne,” said Jon D. “He likes our band name.”

“So,” I said.

“Let me see that,” said Darren. He grabbed for my guitar.

I backed away.

“Just let him see it,” said Jon D.

“Be careful,” I said.

Darren strapped it on and strummed it a couple of times. Examined the decal. “Blue Thunder,” he said. “That don’t even make sense.”

“We can take it off,” said Jon D.

            “I don’t want to take it off,” I said.

            “Look,” said Jon D. “Darren’s got a kit he’s wants to sell.”

            “So,” I said.

            “So, maybe he’ll trade it.”

            “Yeah,” said Darren. “I’ll  trade it.”

            “No,” I said.

            “He’d rather play guitar,” said Jon D.

            “But I got the guitar,” I said.

            “Valvoline doesn’t need two guitarists,” said Jon D.

            “What are you going to play?” I said.

            “I’m the singer,” he said.

            “What if I won’t play drums?” I said.

            “That’d be too bad,” said Darren. He pretended to windmill my guitar..

            “His brother’s place is next to a strip club,” said Jon D. “Says the girls come over and do coke with the bands sometimes.”

            “I saw a stripper fuck a drummer’s face once, backstage.”

            I shook my head, stared at both of them.

            “So,” they said.

            “Jesus Christ,” I said.

            I told Mom the bad news, next morning at breakfast.

            “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She looked like she was in pain. Like someone had just punched her uterus or something. Mom didn’t say another word. She stood up from the table and walked out of the kitchen. A piece of tape from work was stuck on the sole of her shoe. It made a slight tearing sound with each step she took away from the table. The noise made me want to cry.

            Darren brought my drums over a couple days later. It was a cheap looking set with duct tape over a tear on the snare. I never learned to play them. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t get my feet to synch up with my hands. At least that’s what I told Mom and Dad. But honestly, I hardly tried at all. I’d just rhythmlessly beat the shit out of them when I got bored watching TV. And I could watch TV a very long time before I got bored. The band never performed in Ft. Wayne at a club next to a strip joint, or anywhere else for that matter. The closest we ever came to playing for an audience was when Steve signed us up for the Cromwell Community Center talent show, which we all attended just to hear an MC announce our names.

Mom never made it to Florida, either. But she did get a nice postcard from Cindy Kyle. On it was a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at Disney World. All of them stood with perfect smiles on grass as green and manicured as a professional golf course. In the distance was water, impossibly blue. Same color as the cloudless sky over all their heads. On the back of the postcard Cindy wrote:

Dear Katherine,

Found your letters to Duke. Please don’t send any more. He’s my husband, you dumb bitch.

                                                            Cindy

Joel was the one that found it in the mail. He gave it to Dad right away. Dad didn’t get too upset when he read it though. I think it made him feel better. His dream had always been to find a good excuse to do nothing. Mom’s affair finally gave it to him.

Eventually, our elm rotted and died in the front lawn. But before it did, Mom made a last ditch effort to save it. Put all her worth into healing the dumb tree. Skipped breakfast to water its withered yellow trunk and shriveled leaves. Ordered special dirt from a nursery. Even put compost around it. But it was already sick at the roots and everybody knew it didn’t stand a chance.  

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