Categories > Celebrities > Fall Out Boy > The Bass Files
Joe Bashing 101
4 reviewsChapter no. 10 is for free and boring, so as not to harm the coherence of the story. Read it before the world ends. Or fruit bats suck blood, whatever happens first.
0Unrated
Thanks for your patience. I had a little writer´s block there. This chapter is extra long so I hope that makes up for the later than usual update and for bothering you with my little forum-based dispute.
As always, I appreciate your reviews! :) (Reviews left by chiroptera not included.)
Also, it´s back to school for me now so I can´t say how regularly I´ll have the time to update. But I will, so stick around and have a snack or two.
P.S.: Whoever rated the "If you stand up for your ideals" thing, which is not a chapter of the story, ´exciting´ - You just made my day. ;) Thank you.
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10. Joe Bashing 101
Several days passed after the break-up between Joe and Nadine and it became obvious that this incident was affecting all of us.
First of all, Joe was not welcome in Joyce and Andy´s garage any longer. The better part of our band practices were spent on giving Joe nasty nicknames (Joyce and Fox had turned this into a true competition) and - let me put it this way as this chapter doesn´t really need a warning - repeatedly, no, perpetually, pointing out that he severly lacked skills in the reproduction department. Probably due to a less than rudimentary knowledge of the female body or, even more likely, the human body in general, as we were informed by Nadine. (I´d give you a verbatim report of her actual wording but a) I wouldn´t know how to spell half of the kinky slang terms she used - however, it certainly increased at least my oral vocabulary - and b) after sometime she got herself so worked up that every other word out of her mouth was "like" which started to sound, like, pretty annoying after a few minutes.)
Frankly, those get-togethers didn´t pass off as ´band practice´ to me. The only thing I practiced there was sitting around and feeling like the odd one out and, seriously, you know by now that this was really something I did not need to practice as I was perfect at it already. (If I´m ever to find out that I´m not destined to be an elementary teacher I think I would find this to be THE niche for me: misfit instructor. And I´m talking university level here. Loser education. On second thought, that probably beats the whole purpose of getting education in the first place.)
Today I was tempted to tell Nadine that I´ve heard enough comparisons of the size of Joe Jr. to the various things her biology class had been examing under the microscope up to now to last me a lifetime, that this was in fact making me wish that this lifetime would come to an end very soon, and ask her if we could, please, play a song now. However, in the end I said something like this: "Um, hey guys?"
My litte interjection stopped the girl talk that was going on between Joyce and Fox and put a halt to Joe´s ex-girlfriend/ "ex-dinner-movie-backseat-girl"´s (by courtesy of Nadine herself) search for a dust bunny in the garage with which she intended to exemplify the size and the consistency of the guy´s brain. The threesome looked at me with expectation.
"I was kinda wondering if we could get to playing some music?" I formulated carefully.
Big mistake.
Nadine´s expectant look turned into an expression of shock, mixed with a generous batch of anger and perhaps a smidgen of relief. Granted, the latter is probably just my own imagination as I was certain that she must be running out of blood-sucking animals to compare Joseph to. (Earlier Fox had suggested bats in an attempt to be helpful but was informed that only about three bat species sustain themselves with blood. "The fruit bat, for instance", Nadine exceled herself, "only eats fruit and licks nectar of flowers. You see, it is an almost ridiculously harmless mammel." After a short pause she added, "Unless you point out its spelling mistakes, at least. Oh yeah, it´s also known for handing out pretty useless literary criticism." - Really, sometimes you just gotta wonder what kids learn at school these days.)
I thought it would be wise to make amendments to my previous question. "Because, you know, I think I don´t get the chorus right on the new song...ah, what´s it called? ´Never trust Joe´... that´s the one." Oh, the subtelty of left adolescents with guitars.
Nadine pouted. I´m not kidding. Fox and Joyce kept looking at her, as if they were sensing what was about to come. I wouldn´t be surprised if someone told me that the three of them had a synchronous menstruation cycle. Just slightly disturbed.
Now Nadine got up from the guitar amp she had been sitting on and made two steps towards me. "Do you think I´m stupid?" Hm, she had hooked up with a guy in his early twenties who, according to Patrick and Andy, had be seen fooling around with more women than the month of February had days. Even in a leap year. Then I picked up on the undertone of her question. Retorical one. Right.
"You know how that song goes! You know damn well how to play the chorus!" Somehow she had skipped from normal conversation volume to the sound intensity you would expect from Christina Aguilera/ Jessica Simpson/ Mandy Moore on finding out that Britney Spears/ Ashlee Simpson*/ Paris Hilton isn´t only wearing the same dress as her at some award show but also went to the same surgeon to get a boob job/ nose job/ brain augmentation/ brain. Cos that´s like, toooo-tally not awesome.
"What you really want to say is not that you need practice but that I do! Because I fucked up at the youth club." Nadine stared at me with fiery eyes. It didn´t look very healthy. "You just can´t get over it, can you?"
Who couldn´t get over what, Miss ´Never trust Joe´?
"I said I was sorry! What else do you want?"
I waited a few seconds to make sure Nadine had finished her verbal reflection of a silly misinterpretation of my simple question. "It´s not about that," I shook my head twice. "I really just wanna get to playing. I thought that´s what I´m here for..."
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other one and tilted her head, "Well, you certainly didn´t engage in much conversation with us." Ok, this woman was capable of exaggeration as well as redundancy. For some reason this observation made me think of fruit bats again. Weird.
The other two girls had kept quiet and motionless throughout Nadine´s ramblings but now I could see Fox nodding to her last comment.
"It´s not that I don´t like you, guys," I tried to defend myself and bring some clarification into this mess. "It´s just that I wouldn´t know what to say to all of this. I don´t know you too well and I don´t know Joe too well. How do you want me to react to your situation?"
"Show some loyalty," Nadine snapped at me. "At least some sympathy!"
I rolled my eyes, "I´m sorry that Joe broke up with you."
"Oh, please!"
Probably I shouldn´t have rolled my eyes, huh? Well, tell you what, I was getting really pissed off by this silly high school behavior. If the guy is so bad in bed, why did she keep sleeping with him? If the guy is so stupid, why ON EARTH did she keep sleeping with him? Maybe because birds of a feather f* together, I really wouldn´t know.
Nadine was looking at me as if she was gonna shot thunderbolts at me through her eyes any second now. Honestly, I´m strongly recommending an ophthalmologist. I expected that she would give me the whole ´talk to the hand´ deal soon.
I inhaled deeply, "Nadine. I am sorry that Joe decided to put an end to your relationship."
What? No hand?
I continued, "I´m also sorry if I gave you the impression that I was mad at you because the youth club gig didn´t work out as planned. That´s simply not true." I wasn´t mad. Think what you will, but in fact I was a little happy that someone else had made a fool of themselves other than me. In the end it had turned out ok, Patrick had filled in. What was the big deal? "I´m just advocating that we get down to playing music because I believe that ALL of us could use a little more practice."
"Really, I can´t think of playing guitar now. I´m way too agitated," were Nadine´s words.
That was the last straw. I wasn´t going to crouch anymore, enough with apologizing for something that I hadn´t said or done, enough with begging for simply doing what we all came here for, playing their goddamn girly punk music.
"You know what? Me too, " I said and put my bass down. Then I unplugged it from the amp and started putting it into its case.
Joyce tried to stop me from leaving. "Sheena, don´t leave. We can work this out. Nadine´s just heart-broken, she didn´t mean what she said." Fox was whispering something to Nadine, probably telling her to let Joyce handle the situation.
I turned to face her, "I´m sorry but I really gotta go now. I have some assignments to grade at home and it´s getting late." I glanced at my watch for emphasis. It was half past six. Oh, well.
I grabbed my bass and started walking towards the door. Then I heard Fox´s voice.
"Hey, Sheena." I smiled to myself. They know they´re nothing without me.
I turned around, "Yeah?"
"Aren´t you supposed to leave the bass here for Andy?" The fruits of megalomania. I was tempted to say that I actually should leave it for Joe but thought better of it. Instead I shrugged and put it against the wall, right where I was standing.
Silence.
I left.
________
* Just because Mr. Wentz isn´t in this one yet doesn´t mean that you Pete lovers aren´t thrown a bone. ;)
As always, I appreciate your reviews! :) (Reviews left by chiroptera not included.)
Also, it´s back to school for me now so I can´t say how regularly I´ll have the time to update. But I will, so stick around and have a snack or two.
P.S.: Whoever rated the "If you stand up for your ideals" thing, which is not a chapter of the story, ´exciting´ - You just made my day. ;) Thank you.
_____________________
10. Joe Bashing 101
Several days passed after the break-up between Joe and Nadine and it became obvious that this incident was affecting all of us.
First of all, Joe was not welcome in Joyce and Andy´s garage any longer. The better part of our band practices were spent on giving Joe nasty nicknames (Joyce and Fox had turned this into a true competition) and - let me put it this way as this chapter doesn´t really need a warning - repeatedly, no, perpetually, pointing out that he severly lacked skills in the reproduction department. Probably due to a less than rudimentary knowledge of the female body or, even more likely, the human body in general, as we were informed by Nadine. (I´d give you a verbatim report of her actual wording but a) I wouldn´t know how to spell half of the kinky slang terms she used - however, it certainly increased at least my oral vocabulary - and b) after sometime she got herself so worked up that every other word out of her mouth was "like" which started to sound, like, pretty annoying after a few minutes.)
Frankly, those get-togethers didn´t pass off as ´band practice´ to me. The only thing I practiced there was sitting around and feeling like the odd one out and, seriously, you know by now that this was really something I did not need to practice as I was perfect at it already. (If I´m ever to find out that I´m not destined to be an elementary teacher I think I would find this to be THE niche for me: misfit instructor. And I´m talking university level here. Loser education. On second thought, that probably beats the whole purpose of getting education in the first place.)
Today I was tempted to tell Nadine that I´ve heard enough comparisons of the size of Joe Jr. to the various things her biology class had been examing under the microscope up to now to last me a lifetime, that this was in fact making me wish that this lifetime would come to an end very soon, and ask her if we could, please, play a song now. However, in the end I said something like this: "Um, hey guys?"
My litte interjection stopped the girl talk that was going on between Joyce and Fox and put a halt to Joe´s ex-girlfriend/ "ex-dinner-movie-backseat-girl"´s (by courtesy of Nadine herself) search for a dust bunny in the garage with which she intended to exemplify the size and the consistency of the guy´s brain. The threesome looked at me with expectation.
"I was kinda wondering if we could get to playing some music?" I formulated carefully.
Big mistake.
Nadine´s expectant look turned into an expression of shock, mixed with a generous batch of anger and perhaps a smidgen of relief. Granted, the latter is probably just my own imagination as I was certain that she must be running out of blood-sucking animals to compare Joseph to. (Earlier Fox had suggested bats in an attempt to be helpful but was informed that only about three bat species sustain themselves with blood. "The fruit bat, for instance", Nadine exceled herself, "only eats fruit and licks nectar of flowers. You see, it is an almost ridiculously harmless mammel." After a short pause she added, "Unless you point out its spelling mistakes, at least. Oh yeah, it´s also known for handing out pretty useless literary criticism." - Really, sometimes you just gotta wonder what kids learn at school these days.)
I thought it would be wise to make amendments to my previous question. "Because, you know, I think I don´t get the chorus right on the new song...ah, what´s it called? ´Never trust Joe´... that´s the one." Oh, the subtelty of left adolescents with guitars.
Nadine pouted. I´m not kidding. Fox and Joyce kept looking at her, as if they were sensing what was about to come. I wouldn´t be surprised if someone told me that the three of them had a synchronous menstruation cycle. Just slightly disturbed.
Now Nadine got up from the guitar amp she had been sitting on and made two steps towards me. "Do you think I´m stupid?" Hm, she had hooked up with a guy in his early twenties who, according to Patrick and Andy, had be seen fooling around with more women than the month of February had days. Even in a leap year. Then I picked up on the undertone of her question. Retorical one. Right.
"You know how that song goes! You know damn well how to play the chorus!" Somehow she had skipped from normal conversation volume to the sound intensity you would expect from Christina Aguilera/ Jessica Simpson/ Mandy Moore on finding out that Britney Spears/ Ashlee Simpson*/ Paris Hilton isn´t only wearing the same dress as her at some award show but also went to the same surgeon to get a boob job/ nose job/ brain augmentation/ brain. Cos that´s like, toooo-tally not awesome.
"What you really want to say is not that you need practice but that I do! Because I fucked up at the youth club." Nadine stared at me with fiery eyes. It didn´t look very healthy. "You just can´t get over it, can you?"
Who couldn´t get over what, Miss ´Never trust Joe´?
"I said I was sorry! What else do you want?"
I waited a few seconds to make sure Nadine had finished her verbal reflection of a silly misinterpretation of my simple question. "It´s not about that," I shook my head twice. "I really just wanna get to playing. I thought that´s what I´m here for..."
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other one and tilted her head, "Well, you certainly didn´t engage in much conversation with us." Ok, this woman was capable of exaggeration as well as redundancy. For some reason this observation made me think of fruit bats again. Weird.
The other two girls had kept quiet and motionless throughout Nadine´s ramblings but now I could see Fox nodding to her last comment.
"It´s not that I don´t like you, guys," I tried to defend myself and bring some clarification into this mess. "It´s just that I wouldn´t know what to say to all of this. I don´t know you too well and I don´t know Joe too well. How do you want me to react to your situation?"
"Show some loyalty," Nadine snapped at me. "At least some sympathy!"
I rolled my eyes, "I´m sorry that Joe broke up with you."
"Oh, please!"
Probably I shouldn´t have rolled my eyes, huh? Well, tell you what, I was getting really pissed off by this silly high school behavior. If the guy is so bad in bed, why did she keep sleeping with him? If the guy is so stupid, why ON EARTH did she keep sleeping with him? Maybe because birds of a feather f* together, I really wouldn´t know.
Nadine was looking at me as if she was gonna shot thunderbolts at me through her eyes any second now. Honestly, I´m strongly recommending an ophthalmologist. I expected that she would give me the whole ´talk to the hand´ deal soon.
I inhaled deeply, "Nadine. I am sorry that Joe decided to put an end to your relationship."
What? No hand?
I continued, "I´m also sorry if I gave you the impression that I was mad at you because the youth club gig didn´t work out as planned. That´s simply not true." I wasn´t mad. Think what you will, but in fact I was a little happy that someone else had made a fool of themselves other than me. In the end it had turned out ok, Patrick had filled in. What was the big deal? "I´m just advocating that we get down to playing music because I believe that ALL of us could use a little more practice."
"Really, I can´t think of playing guitar now. I´m way too agitated," were Nadine´s words.
That was the last straw. I wasn´t going to crouch anymore, enough with apologizing for something that I hadn´t said or done, enough with begging for simply doing what we all came here for, playing their goddamn girly punk music.
"You know what? Me too, " I said and put my bass down. Then I unplugged it from the amp and started putting it into its case.
Joyce tried to stop me from leaving. "Sheena, don´t leave. We can work this out. Nadine´s just heart-broken, she didn´t mean what she said." Fox was whispering something to Nadine, probably telling her to let Joyce handle the situation.
I turned to face her, "I´m sorry but I really gotta go now. I have some assignments to grade at home and it´s getting late." I glanced at my watch for emphasis. It was half past six. Oh, well.
I grabbed my bass and started walking towards the door. Then I heard Fox´s voice.
"Hey, Sheena." I smiled to myself. They know they´re nothing without me.
I turned around, "Yeah?"
"Aren´t you supposed to leave the bass here for Andy?" The fruits of megalomania. I was tempted to say that I actually should leave it for Joe but thought better of it. Instead I shrugged and put it against the wall, right where I was standing.
Silence.
I left.
________
* Just because Mr. Wentz isn´t in this one yet doesn´t mean that you Pete lovers aren´t thrown a bone. ;)
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