Donorboy (16 page)

Redchordfan03: BUT THERES AN ALL AGES SHOW AT SOME VFW HALL OR SOMETHING IN FITCHBURG 2MORROW. 5 BANDS 10 BUCKS. WANNA GO?

Rosalind90: YEAH! BUT I GUESS I GOTTA FIND OUT IF I AM AIRBORNE AGAIN

Redchordfan03:?

Rosalind90: UNGROUNDED BY DONORBOY. I'LL GO ASK AND TELL U IN 5 MINUTES.

IM from Rosalind90

Rosalind90: HEY I KNOW THAT WAS ACTUALLY 2 HOURS R U STILL THERE?

Redchordfan03: YEAH—SO CAN U GO?

Rosalind90: YES!
SEAN HAD TO CALL THE VENUE AND VISIT WEBSITES FOR EACH BAND AND DOWNLOAD COMMUTER RAIL SCHEDULES AND LIKE ASK EVERY BANDS MOM IF THEY WERE GOOD BOYS BUT YEAH I CAN GO

Redchordfan03: COOL. MEET U AT BACKBAY STATION AT 11 FOR 1105 TRAIN?

Rosalind90: BETTER MAKE IT QUARTER TO. THIS IS WICKED EMBARRASSING BUT SEAN WANTS 2 MEET U, PAT U DOWN FOR FLASKS, BRING DRUG SNIFFING DOGS, ETC.

Redchordfan03: WHATEVER I GUESS I'LL LEAVE MY CRACK PIPE AT HOME, HA-HA.

Rosalind90: SORRY HES SUCH A DORK HOPE U STILL WANT TO GO W/ME.

Redchordfan03: OF COURSE. ITS DORKY BUT KINDA CUTE. I COULD TELL MY MOM I WAS GOING DOWNTOWN TO TURN TRICKS CUZ IM JONESING AND SHED BE LIKE WHATEVER IM BUSY WITH THE TWINS.

Rosalind90: SORRY.

Redchordfan03: THANKS. WHATEVER, SUFFERING MAKES BETTER ART OR SOMETHING.

Rosalind90: C U 2MORROW AT 1045!

Redchordfan03: ILL BE THE ONE IN THE RED CHORD SHIRT HA HA.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: advice

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. I quizzed Rosalind about it but she was not forthcoming. Did you get any good information out of her? More specifically, did you get anything about somebody named Kate?

I ask because Rosalind asked me if she could go to some kind of all-ages metal show in Fitchburg (!) at some VFW hall with Kate, and, after calling the VFW hall and speaking to several very sullen veterans, I did ascertain that it's actually happening, and that it's an all-music, no-booze kind of affair. I also checked some of the bands' websites and found really appalling lyrics about dead bunnies and eating the dead and such like things, but for some reason this didn't really alarm me. I downloaded a map of Fitchburg and figured out where the hall is and called my colleague who grew up there and asked if two teenage girls would be safe walking there, and she said yes.

I also said that I needed to meet Kate before I gave my approval for her to get on the train with her for this little adventure, and she practically died of embarrassment but agreed to the condition.

So I feel like I have pretty much all of my bases covered, except I know from my own experience that many bad apple teens are particularly adept at charming the socks off of adults. (The kid who supplied coke to about a third of the student body at my school was much beloved by faculty and parents alike, so much so that our principal tried to get him to say it had all been a tragic mistake when his supply fell from his bookbag.) So I wanted to know if you had gleaned any information about Kate.

Also, though I can't undo my decision at this point without starting a civil war in this house, this is the right thing to do, right? I have to allow her to have a life. Right? Anyway, any information you can provide would be most appreciated.

—Sean

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: advice

Sean—Thank you for keeping me in the loop and for asking about our Thanksgiving. It was uneventful—we ate too much and got sad. I'm sorry to say that I couldn't really get anything out of Rosalind about Kate or much of anything else. She told me she has “some friends,” but “nobody special,” which probably means she has a crush on at least three people instead of one. So I can't tell you anything about Kate. Hopefully you can tell me once you meet her. I will say that Rosalind seemed slightly better than she had in the past, and she really did enjoy the cooking. I am happy to see her involved in something that involves creation and, ultimately, nurturing, though of course I worry about her falling into some societally programmed femme-y gender role thing.

As for your decision to allow her to go fifty miles on the train with someone you don't know to some horrible concert, I have pretty mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can see that using permission to do this thing as leverage is going to get you a face-to-face with somebody who seems important to Ros, which I do think is important because we are in the dark about who she's hanging out with and we need not to be.

On the other hand, I hate to see her go to something like this with such horrible music. It's just a cauldron of negative energy, and I really think Ros needs positive, life-affirming experiences right now instead of a celebration of negativity. Also, I don't know if you read about the fires at Lollapalooza several years ago, or the fires and rapes (!) at Woodstock. This kind of music feeds into a, and I'm sorry here, but particularly male strain of aggression that, like all male aggression, always finds its way to violence against women. I am frankly worried about putting Rosalind into that kind of environment. I hope it's not a mistake.

—Karen

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Fwd: Re: advice

Dave—Attached find the latest e-mail from Karen. I thought maybe we could introduce her to your hatchet-faced sister-in-law. It appears they might hit it off.

Anyway, I am sorry to clog up your in-box with a hundred messages for you to get when you get back from Virginia, but I did need to tell you about meeting Ros's friend.

Well, just to jump ahead, Rosalind went fifty miles on the commuter rail to some all-ages metal show in Fitchburg and returned safely, arriving at the Back Bay station at 8:30 pm on Saturday. Her concert review: “It was cool.”

As a condition of her going to the headbanger's ball, I said I wanted to meet her friend Kate who was accompanying her. So we met at the station and I bought everyone coffee, and we sat for a few minutes while I interrogated Kate and Rosalind attempted to melt under the table with shame.

I am, of course, wary of the adult-bullshitting powers of many teens, but I have to say that this kid seemed okay. She was dressed really appallingly—well, all in black, with fishnet stockings and combat boots, which I guess is a look, but she seemed like a sweet, gentle kid. She said she'd been going to Forest Hills to sketch a lot, and she showed me some of her sketches, which were really good. I told her I'd been there recently too, and she said yeah, Rosalind had taken her there a couple weeks ago, at which point I believe Rosalind attempted to kick her, because of course she had just blown Ros's cover about after-school time while she was grounded.

I feigned obliviousness, though, and moved on to the next question, which was about which bands she liked. She listed a whole raft of bands, of which Metallica was the only one I had heard of. I said I liked
Master of Puppets
but thought their lyrics were often kind of clumsy.

I do believe Rosalind actually briefly died at that point, but she quickly revived and started looking very theatrically at her watch, which prompted me to say something about how they didn't want to miss their train, and have a good time, et cetera.

I have to say, I felt like superdad on several counts. For one thing (after she arrived home safely and not obviously chemically altered in any way), I allowed her to do something that actually sounded like fun (I mean, obviously, it sounded like it would have been fun when I was fourteen. I think I'd prefer all kinds of dental surgery to spending an afternoon listening to bad metal in a VFW hall with angry teens all around me), and I actually met one of her new friends. I know this is a good thing because a handsome star of an NBC television show told me I should meet my child's friends. The More I Know … Ahem. Finally, I was happy, though this has nothing to do with me, that Ros appears, without any input from me or Karen or pretty much anyone, to have made a good choice of someone to hang around with.

Perhaps things are looking up.

I recognize as I write that that you are going to receive all of these e-mails at once and probably think I am even more insane. “Everything's horrible! No, everything is great!” Well, I suppose I'm just happy to be able to say that something good is happening.

—Sean

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: advice

Well, that was a hell of an e-mail bonanza this morning! And thank you for the e-mail attachment. I love the part about “particularly male aggression.” Allie's hatchet-faced sister would really like that, but I do have to say she seems to have given up on the whole football thing. I volunteered to wash dishes before watching the game, and that seemed to calm her down a little. And yeah, I thought the Tuna's head was going to explode on that blown TD reception, and yeah, it's probably unhealthy for us to still hate Parcells, but that's what football is for.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, my friend, you have something to be thankful for, which is that Allie's hot sister (Sorry—not named Cindy, though she is Kimberley, which was the girl from
Diff'rent Strokes
, I think) is applying to law schools in Boston. Allie obviously lost her mind and did nothing but talk about how great you were, how you'd been to BC law, blah blah blah, and how she should come up so we can all get together, blah blah blah. Did I mention that Kimberley has been working as a yoga instructor? I probably shouldn't even tell you this stuff, but I am feeling nice and thought you might enjoy imagining what that kind of flexibility could mean to you.

So I will let you know when she hits town. She is 26 and so way too young for you and will probably go for some buff rock-climber or something, but at least you've got some hope. For me it would be kind of ideal because I know she's nothing like Marcia (okay, okay, she got all gooey about your little save-the-world job, which is something else I probably shouldn't tell you because you'll start stalking her), but she's still a lawyer, or at least a lawyer-in-training so I can still tease you about the Oedipus thing.

So overall, Thanksgiving was pretty painless, except for the traffic on the way back which was horrible, and Max was an incredible pain in the ass the whole way. I really thought I was going to kill him somewhere around hour 5.

Sounds like you had an eventful weekend. For the record, I think you did the right thing letting her go and probably by interrogating her friend too, even though you did expose her to particularly male aggression. (If you ever get the chance, you could tell Karen that I break up probably four fights a year, and the girl vs. girl ones are always the bloodiest, most vicious, and hardest to break up. Usually the boys are happy if they have shown that they are willing to throw a punch, whereas the girls “ain't stopping until the fucking bitch is dead!” That's actually a quote.)

Anyway, it sounds like things are looking up, or at least not down. Keep it up. Speaking of which, just because I love you, I attached a digital picture of Kimberley from this weekend. What you do with it is your business. You filthy pervert.

—Dave

Dear Fluffy,

The concert was great! Well, I mean, the whole day was great except for Sean's horrible job interview thing with Kate, which yes the worst part was when we got on the train and she was like, “I don't know why you say he's such a dork. He seems cool to me,” and all I could say is like well, you don't have to look at the screws in your window frame every day, and she was all TAKING HIS SIDE, like, “he was probably just worried,” and I swear I started to wonder if she had a crush on him or something but that was way way too gross a thought, like probably grosser even than any other thought I ever had, so I changed the subject.

We had a great train ride just laughing and talking and making fun of people which there were a lot of people to make fun of on the train. These two old guys kept going, “Eyyyyyyy … BOB!” Nobody knew who Bob was, and me and Kate almost died laughing.

Anyway, the concert was in some gross place and it was so loud that I still can't really hear right, but I actually got into it way more than when I just listened to the CD. It was like I could just forget everything and all that volume and anger or whatever (or “negative energy,” which is what Karen couldn't shut up about on the phone tonight) just made me feel really good. Which is weird because you would think that it would make you feel worse and more sad and angry but actually I felt better and happier than I have in a long time at the end.

We hung out for a little while with this one band called Child Soldiers Run Amok where Kate's cousin Jamie is the bass player, and the lead singer was talking about how he was straight edge, which I had no idea what he was talking about but I guess it means he doesn't smoke or drink or anything. Kate said he used to smoke like a chimney but he got TB like it's 1826 or something and they told him he'd die if he smoked, so he got straight edge or something. Which it was a little disappointing to find out it was not really some strong belief or something because I thought it would be cool to have that kind of thing and just not care what everybody else thought. Plus, yes, he was really cute but too old for me even though he is six years younger than Jen's boyfriend.