"Stop making us have sex with each other..." -Ray Toro
A heavy bass line pulsated throughout the dark club, reverberating throughout every jumping or lounging body in the place. With the bands that played in The Void, this was usually the case as a matter of style, but tonight's group just had their sound levels way out of balance. Gerard couldn't even tell whether the guitarist was playing. He didn't think of himself as an amazing musician; he was growing stagnate, in fact, trapped by an inability to sing over his own guitar playing. However, he knew how music was supposed to be played. In his head he had so many ideas that just knew would be brilliant if he only had a place to apply them, and seeing this band with a full set of members yet not achieving anything near what he knew could be done was perhaps the only thing that could sink his currently soaring spirits.
Luckily, even this travesty failed to smother the auspicious air that surrounded the night. It was the first Saturday night after Gerard's high school graduation, and he was ready to immerse himself in the real world. Finally free from that hellhole, anything could happen. School was supposed to give you a direction in life, but he had always known that it would never do that for him. If anything, it taught him that people were cruel. He didn't mind so much having gone, though; the way he saw it, if you don't go to high school, you will definitely go to jail. But now, now that he was free to do whatever he wanted, he could run off into anything and find something wonderful.
Gerard stood, for now, uncomfortably in a corner of the club sketching on a napkin. He effortlessly considered his options as to what he could do next in this new world of possibilities. Music had always held his interest, which was why he was at The Void, the most adequate rock club offered in his particular piece of New Jersey, but he needed a band in order to pursue it the way he wanted. Finding people right now to constitute the members would be a problem, though, for the same reason he was at The Void alone; Gerard had very few friends. The person he was closest to was honestly his little brother, but Mikey didn't even play an instrument. To pass time alone, other than drinking, Gerard had sought refuge in the comic store, and as he continued his sketch, he considered being a comic book artist a pretty favorable path. He guessed he'd go to college for art. It made sense enough.
Almost done, Gerard looked back up to the wall he had been sketching, with the piled broken bottles, but his view was obstructed. Wandering in with a couple of rowdy looking guys was a timid-looking boy uncomfortably posed with one arm grasped in the hand of the other and his eyes glued to the stage. Gerard had never seen this kid before, but he looked young, too young to be here, and he was clearly out of place among the people he had come in with who were already pushing themselves onto unimpressed women. He was uncannily good-looking, though, and not in a generic way. The boy was attractive in a way that Gerard instinctively knew was drawing his interest specifically, and as he temporarily forgot his drawing, he let his eyes linger on this new face that, despite its initial group, was just as alone in the club as Gerard.
The boy's head then turned as if someone was calling him, and Gerard shot his eyes back down to his work. Peering furtively upward after a moment, Gerard saw that the boy had moved, but more crowds were now moving past the subject of his art. He took one last look around the club, and decided to call it a night. Out the door he went, right into one of the bigger guys who had come in with the boy.
"Sorry," mumbled Gerard.
"Just watch it," said the towering frame.
Gerard was about to carry on his way when out of the corner of his eye he saw the boy of striking appearance. He had been hoping for that.
The older guy had turned back to his conversation with the boy. "What the hell did you think you were doing, Frankie? Look, I need to get back in there to Jenny, and once I do, she and I are out of here so you're gonna have to as Rick for a ride."
"You've got to be kidding me!" 'Frankie' indignantly exclaimed. "How am I supposed to-"
"You're just going to have to figure it out," the older one offered as he barreled his way back inside, adding, "What the hell, man?" as collided with Gerard. He didn't stick around though, for he was too intent on getting back to 'Jenny'.
"Jackass," 'Frankie' murmured, "Sorry about that, by the way."
Gerard was taken aback by the apology, but he managed to answer with, "It's fine. Definitely not your fault… I guess you aren't having the best night, huh?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, it's not the greatest. That douchebag you just met is my cousin, and he was sort of forced to take me here with him."
"The other guy he mentioned, though, Rick, he's the one with the responsibility?"
"Pretty doubtful. He wanted me here even less than my cousin, and there's no way in hell he'll give me a ride home. Anyway, how has your night been?"
"It's been decent. I mean, I just got out of high school, finally. How bad could tonight be?"
"Oh, congratulations… I'm Frank, by the way."
"Gerard."
After a moment of uncomfortable shifting, Gerard attempted to pierce the silence. "What do you think of the music here?"
"It's alright, I guess. I like watching people play. Their sound levels are pretty off, though."
"You know what you're talking about."
"I guess… I play guitar."
"Nice. I play a bit myself," Gerard commented as he sat down against the nearest wall, and Frank followed suit. Right after they did this, Frank's cousin came back out of the club with a girl Gerard assumed to be Jenny and made for his car.
"And if you look to your right," humorously narrated Frank, "you'll see the confirmation that I will be catching a bus home tonight."
Silence encompassed the two boys once more as they watched the invigorated legs of late-night passerby.
"So," began Gerard uncertainly, stalling as he thought of a question. "Who do you listen to?"
"A lot of Green Day, to be honest. Watching Billie Joe go me to play. How about you?"
"Iron Maiden, Bowie, Misfits… It can be difficult to find a lot of good stuff if you don't look hard enough."
"I guess that's pretty true."
"There's a lack of sex in music. I'd fix that if I ever got another band together."
"Do you think that's what you might want to do? Be in a band?"
"I guess. Maybe. That or comic books. Mainly, I want to get out of New Jersey for a while and see what else is out there."
"Really? I love it here. I like, well, the dirtiness of it."
"Ah, I guess I get it. For me I find that the Jersey mentality is: I work, I drink, I stay up all night, I try to meet a girl; it's a waste of time. I don't want to spend my life only here in with all that. Even if I can't go places with the music or the drawing, fuck art. I've gotta get out of the basement. I've gotta see the world. I've gotta make a difference."
"It must be nice to be able to act on thoughts like that. I know that I'll wake up in September and be back in school. I do well and all, but there I don't have a choice other than to go."
"School… school is like a meat grinder."
"How so?"
"It just always felt like that to me. It chews you up and pours out this mess that can't function."
"I suppose that's kind of true."
Their conversation continued through every last basic topic the two could think to cover before the number of people traversing the street before them had been decimated to half of what it had been only an hour before.
Frank asked, "Do you know where a bus stop is?"
"Yeah, just a few streets down. Do you want me to show you?"
"That would be great, thanks."
Thoroughly drained of first-conversation topics, the walk to the bus stop was a silent one. When Frank could see the bench, he spoke again.
"Thanks for sticking around with me. You didn't have to do that."
"It was no problem. Trust me, talking to an actual person was much better than anything I could have been doing at home, and you are a pretty good person to talk to."
In a stroke of luck, the bus soon came, and as Gerard stepped closer to the bus to say goodbye, Frank saw in the light Gerard's face, illuminated for the first time that night. He had beautiful eyes. Just, wow. Frank watched the person with whom he had just spoken to walk away, black leather jacket hanging perfectly off his back, and suddenly his night didn't seem at all like the failure he had expected.