TRVE CVLT: Choice 5
You sneak out of the sanctuary through a door behind the pulpit. The congregation’s collective whispering turns into a choir of nosy gossip as your dad fights to regain control of his flock. You wade through the back of the church past classrooms of kids who don’t know any better. You can’t blame them. Not yet anyway.
You make it to the parking lot full of minivans and SUVs when your phone starts blaring tinny blast beats. The screen reads Austin and you hesitate to pick up.
Things got heated the last time you hung out. It always tended to happen with Austin. One drink too many and all of a sudden, any disagreement was taken personally. God forbid you didn’t like an album he was into, or worse—liked one he didn’t.
Your ringtone continues to scream. By the time you reach your van—purchased to stash your drums—the signal drops momentarily before the song starts over as you slide your key into the door. You answer, not to talk to Austin, but to quiet the noise. At least that’s what you tell yourself.
“Hello?”
“Where the fuck are you? I’m at your place,” Austin says. “We need to talk.”
“At church,” you say, but you continue before he can give you shit. “Not like that. I blacked out in the sanctuary at Toni’s wedding last night. Which, by the way, you fucking bailed on.”
You knew Austin was invited and you knew he had shit-else to do, so why wasn’t he there?
“Toni’s folks shelled out for an open bar,” you say.
“Whatever, good for her,” he says. “I had shit to do.”
You rummage around the floor for a water bottle while Austin hypes some opportunity.
“All right,” you say. “So spill. What was so important you had to miss her wedding?”
Excitement alters Austin’s typically monotone tenor. It’s a rare enthusiasm you aren’t used to hearing and it sounds almost distorted through your phone.
“Waste Doctrine is going to play a show here. Fucking here,” he says. “And we’re going to open for them.”
“Didn’t think I was in the band anymore,” you say. “Something about me being a poser bitch.”
“Forget that, we’re cool.”
Toni replaced you forever ago and you may be hungover, but you’re smart enough to know she’ll be honeymooning, so you ask, “When’s the show?”
“Next week.”
Ah, there it is. Confirmation for what you already knew—Austin needs you. You know he’ll never say it, but hearing the tone of his voice shift from elation to near-desperation, his mood hanging on the precipice of your response, is enough for you.
“This could be big,” he says.
And you agree.
Maybe you can finally leave this town. Tour with a signed band. Impress a label. You’re well aware that metal bands rarely break even. Deep down, it isn’t about the money though, is it? It’s about getting out of your hometown. Making something of yourself. Crushing the bones of dissatisfaction beneath your heel. Doing something other than work at a call center because Associate’s degrees just don’t cut it these days. This…could be the catalyst you’ve been waiting for.
You’re beat down. You need this. This push. This drive to shove all of the aspirations—the ones your parents tried to instill, not the ones you carefully cultivated over time—into the ground to be buried here where they will rot.
Then, a thought surfaces to the forefront of your mind. You’re a bit shocked Austin wants any part of this—the spectacle—because it’s antithetical to his authentic sensibilities. And you think something is up. You don’t vocalize this. Not yet. It’s too early for that.
Instead, you say, “Okay, I’m heading back to my place.”
***
Your place is, of course, your parents’ place too. A fact you and your parents resent, though for completely different reasons which go unspoken until someone decides to lob the proverbial verbal grenade. More often than not, it’s you who does this. Sometimes you need an explosion to be seen.
You park and step out of your van.
Austin’s music blares. You hear specific notes through the closed doors of his vehicle. It’s as if the soundwaves are trying to escape Austin’s presence. You imagine each blast beat, each thud of the kick drum, filling his car, perhaps with pressure, and if he doesn’t open the door soon, it will burst. The frame will buckle. The glass will shatter. His body will be shredded. Mangled—
The music stops, and now your thoughts are too loud. You say, “hello” as he steps out of his car in order to quiet them.
“Damn, you look like shit,” he says.
You give him the finger, and motion for him to follow you inside of your parent’s upper-middle class home. It isn’t the parsonage. You moved out of that 1920s dump when you were seven, the age you began to think something was wrong with the world, though you were too young to conceptualize why. It was just a feeling then. Your mom said that the wrongness you felt were the evils of the world, but good men like your father were bringing slow, positive change. Even then, you weren’t sure that was accurate, but again, your age and still-developing brain couldn’t quite make heads or tails of what you were told. But change required action. That much made sense to you. And so the parsonage was donated to a single-parent family in need. A member of the congregation whose tithings were never grand, but always consistent, and delivered with an obligatory smile of gratitude for all of that positive change your father and the church provided them.
“I’m going to clean up,” you say, kicking your shoes off at the door.
Austin leaves his well-worn skater shoes on. Small wedges of dirt fall from the bottoms of his shoes, leaving a trail behind him. You know your parents will bitch about it. They’ll probably blame you, too.
There’s nowhere to go but deeper into the madness. Check out TRVE CVLT, on sale September 25th!
