HOME AGAIN

Michael J and I were the last ones to get home, the last’est ones of the entire tour, that’s 27 people. And I guess it’s not my home, it’s his, but there’s a bedbug infested couch that I’m to collapse on for two nights and I was only 2 miles away from it.

We weren’t prepared for the cold, so the shock of Boston’s sharp, biting air threw us into a survival panic. We looked like two fear-driven teenager in a slasher movie, illiterate in the functions of using one’s house keys. Finally, danced in with the grace of a first year Inuit modern dance class student.

The trash was as generous as the skunk cabbage in my father’s swamp. If filthiness is ever commended, the gang I run with have given it a new talent.

Sleep.

4 hours later I pulled myself up and reached for a full bottle of cranberry juice cocktail, what a score, and took an impressive, desperate gulp. It was too late for my taste buds to relay the encrypted message that there was more vodka in the bottle than cranberry juice, but they tried as fast as they could. It was too late, I guess I was now partying.

I had to get-get going, because I had a big day of going to get a hair cut. It was 4 days till Christmas and one must look nice for Mom.

However, I only had enough money for a bus ride, a subway ride, and a train ticket home.

“How was he to pay for a hair cut”, an observant person might ask.

Well, the way the underground-lower class of Bostonians work is “trade within jobs”. If I worked in a club, I’d let you and your friends in for free. In return you’d give me your employee discount if I ever needed a pair of new sneakers. Got it?

Well, Will’s girlfriend Gillian, knows how to cut hair, so I was to grab two new records of the band I’m in, and a small T-shirt to trade for a cut.

But I figured I should shower, so I don’t lose the deal on account of my offensive body odor.

After tour, a long tour, the first shower home, reminds me of the old western movies when the band of cowboys stop into a towns local brothel and draw a hot bath to wash away any remembrance of their excursion.

The bathroom floor was coated with wet magazines and brown molded towels. A movie director would have said, that his set designers went too far trying to emulate a junkie’s bathroom.

After the good wash I took the 66 bus to Coolidge Corner and met up with Gillian. I asked her to cut my hair like Calvin from Calvin in Hobbs. She did just that.

I thanked Gillian for the cut and was off to the commuter rail to catch the 2:00 train home for Christmas, and I was scratching all the way.

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14 & Stealing

Kids will always do dumb things, mean things, even destructive things, without thinking of the consequences or the affect their actions may have on others.

I was one of those kids.

When I was young and a “headbanger”, my friends and I would occasionally walk down to Gordon Conwell, a college for future ministers. We would snack on their frozen snickers, their hamburgers, and their soda. When it came time to pay, the trusting cafeteria would only have a basket, leaving it up to the hungry passerby to leave the correct amount of dosh.

The honor system.

I believe I was raised well, always worrying about the uncomfortable kid at the party or helping the unknowing spider relocate when house painting. Yet when you are 14 and Skid Row, Motley Crüe, and Iron Maiden are telling you that you are the “Youth Gone Wild”, there are certain criteria you must meet to be as “badass” as them.

Not only would we eat all Saturday for free, but we would snatch a couple of bills–well more like most of the bills–out of the trust basket. The students dining would only occasionally look over: They knew, and we knew they knew.

We were getting so “badass”.

Not only would we have about 12 bucks in our pockets, but we would snatch a couple candy bars for that night’s slasher movie–Freddy, Jason and Mr. Myers were all a good way to end a thieving day.

I wish this was the end of my story, but it is only the start.

Hitting 16, we of course needed to start our own Heavy Metal band. It was clear to us that it was our job to keep the world full of “badasses” like ourselves.

So, we needed gear…

Santa provided me with a shoddy drum kit and my friends with second-hand guitars. However, we didn’t have anything to sing through. Jesus and pals would have to provide that.

It was back to the priest school. We searched diligently room after room after room and received wary looks from students that weren’t quite sure why four small, pimpled-faced boys, all dressed in black shirts with blood-soaked corpses on them would be in the house of God. Or why were they looking behind every podium.

Now that I am an adult, I will always remind myself that no matter how good of a hiding space I think I have found, NOTHING can be hidden from the bored young boy.

We found all the microphones and chords under a pew - near the front - to one side. They where hidden well, wrapped in a blanket, but it only took about an hour of looking. They must not have known that all four of us had seen “Goonies” 12 times.

The band had its gear, thanks to Santa Claus, Jesus and his pals.

I remember one day my Mom calling me down after there was a knock at the door. She said, “Davy, there was a man here telling me to not let you and the boys over to the Conwell because you are shoplifting candy. Is this true?”

I said, “No.”

“I thought not,” she said. “I told him that you didn’t”. It’s never fun to lie to your own trusting mother, now is it? But there would need to be sacrifices to make a “badass” Heavy Metal band that would be the next to take over the world.

Mom would understand, wouldn’t she? I mean after I bought her that yellow convertible VW bug she always wanted, she would definitely chuckle about that one li’l white lie.

In high school a teacher that thought I needed some extra attention took me out to take photos. I believe he was trying to get me into a nice hobby–get the boy out of trouble, spend quality time together, and make sure I was okay. Sometimes us dyslexic kids can get frustrated and give up on the system that doesn’t know how to handle us.

So, Mr. Jones and I went to this other priest school-type place. Now, I haven’t lived a religious life, but I believe in what I believe and God is in there somewhere. What I’m getting at is, I don’t want you to think I frequent religious places. These were two random events that flashed by in my life.

While Mr. Jones showed me how the camera worked and explained that any shot I liked was a “good shot”, I happened to see a small acoustic guitar leaning against a lone tree. I took a picture of it and a mental snapshot.

After the “Big Brother” session Mr. Jones drove me home. I then walked back to where the guitar was and took it. Not only did I take the guitar, I even took five dollars from the donation plate I noticed on the way out.

Old habits are beginning to form and becoming hard to break .

I know what you’re thinking…but hey, you’re just not a “badass” like I was.

On the walk home I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s so cool they keep a guitar around for anyone to play. Man how dumb of them, somebody is bound to take it and…and what if it rained? I’m never going to treat this guitar so foolishly. It’s a good thing I took it.”

“Where’d you get the guitar?” my Mom asked.

“I found it,” I said as I ran up to my room to give it its first couple of strums. My Mom has always trusted me and even though sometimes she shouldn’t have, the fact that she unconditionally trusted me has stuck with me my whole life, and is one of the reasons I am writing this story now. Guilt brought on by a trusting mother can turn a wayward man back to an honest life.

So the band played. We wrote songs, we played dances, we recorded demos, we even played the annual 4th of July town fair. Our name: TWISTED REALITY.

High school ended and I began attending the Berklee College Of Music. I graduated with a double major in Music Business and Music Engineering. The plan was, “We’ll record our own shit and put it out ourselves.”

I started a new band BIG D AND THE KIDS TABLE, and with the same guitar wrote the songs and with the some mics sang at practice. We played clubs, we got a little popular, so we recorded a full-length record at a studio our friend worked at. Lammi (the friend) would sneak us in at night when no one was around.

Then, we toured the States, toured them again, then again and again, selling our record that we recorded ourselves. We even played Hawaii and Alaska, then went to England, Wales, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Russia, and Japan. People liked the lyrics I wrote and told me so, they told me that the words helped them out in life and that meant a lot to me.

We were pretty popular–we were “badass”.

However, now that I’m a bit older, I finally learned through all my traveling, and with meeting all types of people that “badass” doesn’t exist.

And things have come back to me–kids stealing my disc man, clothes, hats and many other things while on tour.

So, where does that leave us?

Well, today is Thanksgiving. I played a show 4 hours away from my home last night. I had to drive home around 3 in the morning to get home at 4.

It is now 11 a.m. and I’m tired. No matter though, cause I have to do something while I’m home for this one day.

Awhile back I bought a nice cordless microphone for about 100 bucks. Now with guilt, regret and the longing to set things straight, I’m heading down to that school to lay the microphone down on the podium, the same podium, that I haven’t seen in 12 years.

On my way out I’m going to drop $20.00 in the trusting basket and leave this letter.

You might be asking yourself why, and to answer you, I’ll say this….

Don’t be someone who sings, “I wish I knew what I know now, when I was younger”, do your best to be wise and to do the right thing while you’re in your young moment.

Try not to make excuses of why it’s was okay to steal things from other people, for your own selfish benefit. The fact is, I didn’t ever feel “badass”, I felt like a little shmuck.

Now I’m not a Doctor of any type of human psychology, but I think that we all feel better about ourselves when do to good things, make people laugh, or create things people enjoy, I’ve seen it in the eyes and smiles of the brutest of men. I also believe, deep down we all feel a little cheap when we take, thieve and steal.

But “hey”, do what you like.

I myself, already feel a whole lot better about who I am as a man, and I haven’t even left yet. I read once, “honesty in the best legacy” and believe that’s true.

I’m going to wrap this up now; it’s getting late in the day.

So, be better then good, I’m off…

David McWane

P.S. Gordon Conwell, please accept this microphone as a late trade and please accept my apology.