Chapter 2: That Back
I stood in the bathroom and stared at my mangled, blank hair. The scissors I had used to quickly cut it were thrown on the bathroom counter next to the black marker I had used to attempt to darken my eyebrows. This was my own parents' fault for telling my brother that his leg injury was bad enough that he wouldn't be able to go today. Still, the thought of the way his leg had grotesquely twisted when he'd managed to trip over a pair of my boots made me feel nauseous. I was the one who had to sit in the backseat with him on the way to the hospital trying really hard not to vomit in my lap—I have always had an extraordinarily weak stomach.
Awful, just awful, I thought looking at my hair and eyebrows. The hair was a sloppy mess. There was wads and wads of it in the sink. I'd managed to cut it just above the ears, but it was very uneven. My bangs were cut in a perfect straight line about half an inch above her eyebrows. Maybe no one would think anything of her hair; perhaps they would think that her mom had cut my hair poorly. I tried not to be overly concerned with my eyebrows that were now thick, dark lines across my face. I shook my head and left the bathroom.
I ran into my bedroom to grab my duffle bag and my lucky pink boots with the cows on them. I called them my "Moo Shoes." I walked past my brother's door next and I could hear him snoring in his sleep. Good, I hadn't woken him up yet with all of my cursing in the bathroom. My parents' bedroom was further down the hall. "So long, bitches," I whispered just outside of their door. Despite everything, I was feeling a little excited.
I left a note on the kitchen counter saying that my roommate needed me back on campus. It's a poor excuse, but my roommate was very needy so they weren't likely to think anything of it. I would be back when my brother was healed and could take my place instead. I remembered how excited my brother had been when he'd gotten the acceptance from the Cavaliers Drum Corps group. Since he was almost twenty-one, this summer would be his last chance to march as a member of DCI. The Cavaliers were one of two all-male groups, so not only would I have to remember everything from high school marching band, I would also have to pretend to be a twenty-year-old boy. I made a loud, ferocious masculine-like noise in my throat that I though sounded like a bear and marched out to my car. If I was going to be a boy, I had to learn how to act like one.
Three hours later, I parked my car in the high school parking lot of Rosemont, Illinois where I would be spending the next three weeks of my life. I practiced my deep, male voice one more time. "My name is Kyle Farnsworth. I am a boy, just like you. My name is not Mulan because I am not a girl. Obviously." I removed the trumpet case out of my trunk. I had never played mellophone before, but I knew that it would look suspicious if I mysteriously showed up with a trumpet. How hard could mellophone be hard to learn? Trumpet and mellophone fingerings were similar enough. I looked down at my Moo Shoes and smiled. Time to walk like a boy: I spread my legs wide apart, held my chin up, and threw my shoulders back, and performed my very best man-strut. I am totally ready.
I may not stand out as much as I originally though because some of the boys were really weird. Like really, really weird. Maybe it's because I haven't been associated with marching band in any way since my senior year of high school that I'd completely forgotten what the typical male marcher was like. There were whole bunch of boys standing in a circle playing some sort of ridiculous game and a few were sword-fighting. Most of the others were playing their instruments as loudly as possible (I'm looking at you trumpets), about ten boys were stretching and making jokes about their flexibility (no idea why), and a few scattered around were showing off how much of their show drill they already had memorized. Whoopsies. I haven't even looked at the thick packet of drill and music yet.
I did my best to ignore the panic. Instead, I decided that I needed to blend in. "Yeah, band!" I screamed that over and over again, and I ran over to my cot in the corner of the gym floor. I turned back around when I got there, proud of myself for coming out of my shell so early in the marching season. I noticed that a lot of boys were staring at me. Others were cheering along with me, apparently just as desperate to fit in.
After a welcome message from the band director, I journeyed into the boys' bathroom. I had never been inside one of those before; I don't know exactly what I had expected. I grimaced in the direction of the urinals and dashed into one of the stalls, instead. After doing my business, I grabbed my toiletries and went into the showers. Nope! Nope, nope, nope, nope. I walked back out of the showers. The locker room showers didn't have stalls! All the boys with ALL of their boy parts dangling about (icky, icky!) were standing and showering together like animals. My face burned and was probably very red as I dashed out of there as quickly as possible. I never, ever need to see a naked boy again. Not ever.
"Hey, I'm Lee. This is Chad and John. What's your name," the extremely skinny boy whose cot was next to mine asked. I looked over at Chad (very large and tall with soft features and dimples when he smiled) and John (short, angry, and red-faced). Pleasant.
"Kyle," I replied, showing off my deep man voice and my perfect male social skills. I can reply in one-word sentences. Look at me.
I talked to Chad and Lee for a couple of minutes until Chad announced that he was very tired after practicing drill all day. I heard Lee and John agree. Am I the only one who hasn't practiced drill? I suck. As John (the one with the permanent frown) walked away, I heard him say to Lee "Do you think his mom still does his hair?" Ass hat. He was most definitely talking about my horrendous hair-cut.
I rolled out of bed in the morning…to a completely empty gymnasium. "Shit!" I looked at my Moo Shoes, they were totally judging me. I was late. How could I have possibly slept through the wake-up announcement! I put on a Cavaliers marching uniform (now I look official!) and I hurried onto the field. I was the only one in my uniform. I was mortified! Boys started to whisper all around me, but no one yelled at me. We were herded onto the practice field for basic marching technique practice before we started setting drill later on. A lot of the boys had gotten up even before them to go for a run. My brother had spent the last four months getting into shape.
My brother had been right. One of the marching directors, a man who resembled a mouse with a very thin mustache, ordered them to run six laps around the track for a warm-up. I was not capable of running even one lap without choking for air. Fortunately, Chad seemed to be in even worse condition than me so I walked the rest of the five laps with him. The other boys were already finished stretching when Chad and me were finally done. We received some disapproving glares and muttering, but no one said anything directly to them. Every inch of my body was drenched in sweat and soaking into the wool of the uniform. Boys stared at me, at the stupid dork in the $800 Cavaliers uniform that I had just destroyed with my sweat.
"Time for basics. I need everyone to line up in a line by section and march forward two lines to this tempo," the director called out to us. He instructed the drum major to clap a quick tempo for them. A super duper fast tempo. I couldn't imagine my feet marching along at that speed. I was wobbly on my feet, even just for forward marching. I missed the line and I was definitely out of step. "Roll through your steps! I thought you lot were professionals!"
"If you make mess-up, do ten push-ups!" I looked over to see who had spoken to see it was our section leader. A wave of curses spread through the air from the trumpet players as almost all of them got down and gave ten push-ups. I hadn't even noticed any of the others making mistakes, but they were still giving push-ups anyway. They were all done before I realized that I probably should have done push-ups as well. "You! Give me twenty push-ups," our section leader said to me. I guess I stick out like a sore thumb in my bright green uniform. To spite the section lead, I only gave seventeen push-ups. Take that, section leader.
It became increasingly more and more obvious to me that I wasn't even marching in the same style as the others. It seemed that the Cavaliers had a very specific marching style, one that I had not learned in high school. It was more of a high-knee march that everyone else had already mastered except for me. By mid-morning we'd marching forward and backwards countless times. The mouse-like man with the thin mustache had approached me before they'd started marching backwards. "We need to find you a cone to put over your head so that you'll stop looking at the ground when you march. Don't let me catch you doing that again." And he wasn't the only one yelling at me. Everyone wanted to yell at the awkward boy with the weird hair in the bright green uniform.
I'd managed to stay on my feet through out, but I had to sit out during the sliding basics because I almost fainted. First, my vision had started getting blurry and my stomach had suddenly felt very light, and then heavy. Brown spots made it impossible to see the ground. I wandered over in the direction of the side lines and plopped down next to my water bottle.
No one said anything to me. I watched everyone else do the slides. The band director and marching directors went around and corrected anyone who weren't doing it correctly. A lot of people had to do push-ups. Slides were always my least favorite thing to do high school. You had to turn your body, facing the stands, while your feet marched in a different direction. It was very uncomfortable. I always cheated in high school by turning my instrument towards the stands even though my shoulders were never completely turned.
We had a ten minute break where we could drink water and have a quick snack before moving onto setting drill. I grabbed my thick-packet of drill sheets all packed into a folder. I picked myself out on each one and circled Tr-13 or trumpet 13 so that I could easily find my spot. "I want everyone to sprint to their spots each time," my section-leader had wandered over to where the trumpets gathered. "The trumpets will be the first section back to their spots each time!" My section-leader does a lot of shouting.
I struggled to find my spot on the field, at first, for set number one. "You will be marching from set one to set two," I heard the band director say from the side-lines. All three of the drum majors jumped up onto their podiums. The lead drum major called everyone to attention. It was difficult to see him from this far back, but I could make out his outline, silhouetted against the sun. I baked in the sun inside of the thick wool of the uniform. A lot of the boys gave war cries and then ripped their shirts off. Unfortunately, two prominent parts of my anatomy prevented me from doing the same. Curses. I looked around at the lanky, boney bodies of the boys around me.
We marched from set to set all morning. This was turning into the longest day of my life and it was not even lunch yet. After doing set 1-5 all in a row, the band director finally gave us thirty minutes off for lunch. Everyone was already very buddy-buddy and they wandered off into the cafeteria. I hadn't yet made any friends so I ate at a table with the thirteen-year-olds.
That afternoon, we put music to drill. I didn't know the music yet like everyone else, and I had been thinking of when I could learn it on my own before anyone realized the problem. They played the music for the first 10 sets while I pretended to know what I was doing. I was shocked to discover that everyone seemed to know there music already. I remembered that in high school we spent a month and a half learning the music and setting drill before putting it together. They were already having us do that on the first day. We were then instructed to march and play. Uh-oh. Not happening. Silly people.
The drum major, Shang, as he was introduced counted us off and we started. The first five sets went okay. I only missed one of the marks. I knew that my posture and technique were terrible, but I could figure that out on my own time. I was watching the drum major instead of looking at the ground like a good little marcher when I found myself staring a bit too closely at him. He'd removed his shirt in the summer heat like a lot of the boys, but he wasn't lanky like them. His body was muscled like a gorgeous Greek god. I tripped over my feet and felt myself fall.
The rest of the trumpets behind me toppled over my body and came crashing down on top of me. I could hear frustrated shouts from the rest of the band, and the rest of the trumpets announcing that it wasn't their fault. I felt the weight on top of me subside as the other boys were pulled off of me one by one and dusted off. I looked up from underneath my arm into Shang's face. He'd wandered over to yell at me, probably. He was of Asian descent, like me, with dark eyes and a very solid, perfect jaw. Perfectly square. He was looking very angry at me, but that, honestly, just made him look even more perfect. His dark eyebrows were pulled in sharply over his eyes. I felt my eyes wander down to his flawless, perfect torso. The sweat glistened off of his bare chest and his muscles rippled underneath his arms. My jaw dropped open. Hello beautiful!
"I won't allow anyone to march who isn't going to take this seriously," Shang said lowly so that only the trumpets nearby could hear. Great voice, sexy Shang. His voice was smooth and deep and perfect. Shang was perfect. Perfect in every possible way.
"S-S-S-Sorry," I stuttered. My mind wasn't capable of thinking right now. The only sound was my inner voice screaming. Hot man alert, hot man alert, hot man alert. My heart thumped in my chest and I could feel my face burn bright red. In all of the hot, male excitement, I had failed to respond in my sexy, deep male voice.
"What's your name?" Shang raised one thick eyebrow at me.
He's really good at raising his eyebrows. Such control over his body. Good Shang, fine Shang, hot Shang. I stared. I had just noticed his lips, and I didn't notice the question. "What?"
"What's your name," this time he said it a lot louder. His perfectly smooth voice was gruffer now, but still just as perfect. Such a good voice…
I had just noticed a single drop of sweat travel from his sharp jaw down his thick neck, across his pecks, further and further down, down his stomach….until it disappeared behind the waistband of his shorts. I blushed furiously. I would like to formally apologize for ogling at my drum major's nether regions. "Ping!" I don't know why I said that. Ping is not a name. The powerful man's voice that I had been working to attain came out as more of a squeak.
"Ping? What's your name?" He looked around as though asking the band director to come over and help him. I could see his frustration. First day on the job, and already, he has to deal with me, the problem student. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Shang, I am sorry.
"That's not my name. I have a name, and it's a boy's name too." I said some other things too that were a product of my rambling. His perfect body made me forget a lot of things.
"Are you being serious? You have one more chance or else you're out."
I didn't think a drum major honestly had that power, but I still took him very seriously. There wasn't much worse than the drum major hating you…especially a sex god hating you. "Kyle. My name is Kyle Farnsworth." I said this in my best voice. I wandered if the perfect male specimen thought I had a good man's voice.
"Farnsworth? Aren't you Zhou Farnsworth's son?" My father was one of the members of the Cavaliers back in the seventies.
"I remember your audition tape. You were impressive." The band director had wandered over, and he clapped Shang on the shoulder. "I'll talk to you later," he said to me, giving me a wink. What?
Shang turned around, relieved that he was done talking to me, probably. The band director started talking to my father about me, but I wasn't hearing him. Shang's back was flawless. It glistened with sweat. The muscles of his shoulders and lower back moved underneath his skin as he walked. For whatever reason, I imagined my teeth sinking into his back like it was a perfect, rare steak. That back. That back. That back.