Boring Girls(8)

You f*cking little cow

I ignore your screams

Beg, beg, beg

I show no mercy for the wicked I am the cruellest of them all Is it bad that I’d listen to that song and imagine another confrontation with Brandi? Of course, I would never carry out anything violent. And neither would the vocalist from DED, Balthazar Seizure. He understood what it was: a fantasy. It wasn’t madness and blood lust and something for parents to worry about. It was empowering. It was going to make me stronger. And it sure made me feel very pleased to picture myself standing on Brandi’s stupid face.

Most of DED’s lyrics were about vengeance against some oppressive force or person, and the joy that could be taken from tormenting and eventually erasing bullshit people from your life. Another song I liked the lyrics to was “Moon” from the band Bloodvomit.

We will ride through a sky

That is black with your pain

We will howl at the moon

Red with bloodstains

Together we pull you apart

Piece by f*cking piece

Your suffering death

Is my only release

I liked the directness to the lyrics. They weren’t trying to be fancy or poetic, they just conveyed their message. They weren’t great artists who would be held up for public acclaim or approval. They just knew how full of bullshit most people are, like I did, and they were creating music based on pure emotion. I admired it.

I started buying metal magazines, which talked not only about other bands I wanted to check out, but also about the members of the ones I already liked. DED was my favourite; they had been my initiation into this secret world, and I wanted to know who they were as people. But aside from accumulating photos of them, it was hard to learn much about them from these magazines other than their names: Balthazar, the singer; Ed and Sid, the guitarists; Victor on bass; and the drummer, Chaos.

Because I could find little information about them, I could make up my own story for them. I imagined them to be very much like myself, isolated and angry. They’d been lonely, until they found each other and formed their alliance. In a way it was better to be able to fantasize about who they were, and that they would like and accept me, rather than learning potentially disappointing facts about them. I was free to write in my journal and speculate to my heart’s content.

xXx

“Rachel, I know you’re listening to more than one band in there,” Dad said to me one night that summer as we ate dinner together. “But I can’t tell them apart. It all sounds the same to me.”

“Oh, there are differences,” I said cheerfully. “You just have to listen closely. None of them sound exactly the same.”

“I think I’ll leave that to you,” he said.

“I can’t even tell the songs apart,” my mother said. “It really does all sound the same.”

“It sounds like Dracula,” my sister mumbled into her casserole.

xXx

I was very happy that summer and I think that’s why Mom and Dad didn’t complain or try to wrestle the CDs away from me. It was totally expected that they wouldn’t understand the finer nuances of the music. They weren’t supposed to. But I was able to. And I knew there were other people out there who would understand it as well. I just had to find them.

xXx

There were two things I was preparing myself for that summer. One of them was Brandi and another year of shit from her that I worried would be more violent. I never wanted to be as weak as I had been after that exam. The other thing was to express how I felt on the outside. I didn’t fit in with Brandi and her pals, and I wanted to show that as strongly as I could, for them to know just by looking at me that I rejected them and everything they stood for. And, if I was able to express how I felt by looking a certain way, maybe I would finally attract another soul like myself and start meeting more people who felt like I did.

I hoarded black clothes and started brushing my hair, which only fell to my shoulders, so that it covered half my face. I bought some black eyeliner, which Mom very reluctantly agreed I could wear in small amounts. I dug up a pair of black winter boots that had buckles on them and could pass as kind of cool. I needed to change how I looked, but I knew my parents would freak out if I demanded a new wardrobe. So I adapted what I had. I wanted to be ready for when school started. I wanted Brandi to know she wasn’t going to be able to get me.





FOUR


That fall I went back to school steeled. Ready.

When I saw Brandi in the hallway, she gave me a once over and laughed, walking past me with her little group of friends. It was so anticlimactic. I actually felt disappointed. And then I got pissed off with myself for being disappointed. I sat through my first class that day, my head pounding with rage. The teacher was outlining what the year would bring for us, ancient civilizations–wise, but I barely heard a word. I was too consumed with trying to figure out why I was so irritated by Brandi’s nonchalant reaction to me. I hadn’t changed myself for her, had I? To make an impression on her? Her laughter was a given. Had I wanted her to attack me? What had I been expecting?