Appearing in Places

By Adam Kaz

If you’d ask him to play the trumpet today, he’d barely know from which end to blow.

Truth is he joined marching band his senior year because trombonist Casey Fagen, Class of ’16, had gorgeous red hair; and she often wore tight Hot Topic T-shirts; and she, like him, “Liked” the College Humor Facebook page. He figured the trumpet (which the Internet said was the easiest one to learn) was close enough in distance and sound to the trombone that if Casey Fagen wanted she could march over to his section sometime after practice and ask the cute new guy how he learned the instrument so fast. 

(Most of his fantasies hinged on the assumption people cared even a little bit about the things he did). 

He imagined this conversation, their first, would prompt little-old-him to humbly explain that he just “practiced real hard because (he) wanted a challenge,” and then he would change the subject to College Humor YouTube videos or other interests she made public on Facebook.

. . . 

He learned from a percussive inside source (his drummer friend Dave) that the Deerfield High School Marching Band wasn’t too picky with recruitment circa. 2014. You more-or-less just had to show Band Director Dr. Wolfman you could sight-read the “Deerfield Alma Mater” and play a few intermediate tunes. The Music Department’s thinking was no one would bother to audition unless they had some experience/talent. But the Department never considered just how goddamn sexy Casey Fagen looked when she wore stylishly ripped fishnet stockings under jean shorts so short they almost broke the School’s two finger policy.

Truth is midway through junior year, in preparation for the band’s summer audition, he made his parents pay for private trumpet lessons from a 67-year-old divorcee whose son was a senior when he was a freshman. He went to her house every Sunday to be reminded how impressive it was seeing a young man learn a new instrument while so many of his peers were at home playing video games. 

He liked that. He also liked the tingly feeling of accomplishment that came from mastering “Hot Cross Buns,” and then “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and then especially “Seven Nation Army.” Truth is, no matter how alluring Casey Fagen looked when she read thick novels under a tree in the courtyard during her free period, he wouldn’t have stuck with the scheme if he didn’t get some pleasure from trumpet practice. He wasn’t a monster, after all.

Over the course of a year his trumpet instructor, whose home was small but cozy and filled with European ceramic figurines, expanded his ego so wide he truly believed himself to be the enterprising young man she imagined—a young man who “just wanted a challenge, you know.” 

. . .

He got in, of course, but by then he barely thought about Casey Fagen, who unfortunately had been visited by the Whale Fairy the summer of ’14, (she gained weight)—for that reason, and several others, he lost interest.

He was distracted. 

Truth is the actual marching band practice was the hardest bit of marching band. They had a couple months of preparation before their first game, and it all seemed to him like a jumbled mess of amorphous, immeasurable obstacles. Everything he thought he learned from the divorcee vanished when he was surrounded by his bandmates’ talented, experienced, disengaged eyes.

“What does one beat sound like?” he asked himself as he marched across the football field in increments of 22.5 inches. “What does it sound like when it’s cut in half? What happens when one beat gets cut into four or multiplied by three-and-a-one-and—a? What is this bullshit?”

There was the marching, and the heat, and the sweat, and the embarrassment of being the only one in a group of 80 who quite literally could not walk a straight line. Lacking both rhythm and spatial awareness, during practice he foolishly fumbled around the field with about as much skill as you could expect from someone at his experience level, sometimes nearly careening into people whose musical abilities were truly unfathomable to him.

. . .

During an in-door practice a month into the school year, Dr. Wolfman announced in front of the whole band, “I normally tell kids when they make a mistake they should make it loud and proud, but, Anthony, your noise is just so full. Try to keep it down a bit.” His name was Anthony, by the way. And after that debacle, he (Anthony) mostly just spent practice holding the instrument to his lips while he pressed the buttons (are they called buttons?) as convincingly as he knew how.

Thankfully, most people didn’t care even a little bit about the things Anthony did. 

Truth is band kids (with some exceptions) love it when someone, anyone, joins their friend circle. When the trumpeters asked him why he joined his senior year, Anthony replied, “Because the band kids seemed like the coolest kids in school.” He found this answer charmingly ironic, as did his new buddies, so he just kept saying it and hoped no one would hear it twice. It was exactly that sort of dry wit, coupled with his unbounded psychopathically naive optimism, that made all eight of his fellow trumpeters appreciate Anthony’s company and generally forgive the rouge’s inexperience. 

For not the first or the last time in his life, Anthony “skirted by.” No one expected or needed him to improve, so he didn’t bother improving. And things got along just fine. One of the trumpeters (Jenna Klobberman) even let Anthony slip his hand under her shirt after they saw The Lego Movie one crisp fall evening.

. . . 

It never occurred to Anthony as odd that he put so much time into a skill for which he desired no real improvement. Like most people his age, Anthony felt like he just sort of appeared in places, an impartial observer in his own life. 

And on the first game of the year, surrounded by the crowd’s enthusiastic furor, Anthony found himself in a hot costume (are they called costumes?) in the band section, pretending to play, feeling the excitement of having appeared here—here, of all places—with him in the marching band, if you can believe it.

As per Dr. Wolfman’s instruction, ten minutes before their halftime show the band left the stadium for the north end of the parking lot. There they split into two massive cloisters, with one half comprised mostly of woodwinds assembled by the east field entrance and the other made of brass by the west. Once divided, the two silent mobs split into sub-cloisters by instrument, and then they organized their sections into an order determined loosely by height. Dr. Wolfman envisioned this exodus to be accomplished, as he put it, “under the veil of night,” with as little noise as possible, which, he added, “shouldn’t be easy for you lunatics.”

The operation was almost perfect. Nearly everyone assembled in their place, with a few exceptions, including and especially Anthony, who wandered aimlessly between spots in the trumpet line, unable to remember—or more accurately just then realizing he never cared to remember—where to stand.

In that moment Anthony no longer appreciated the pleasurable sensation of Being There but instead sensed the all-too-common flipside of that perspective, that he was terrified to see himself here—here of all places—in this horrible, confusing clusterfuck; in this dark, spooky parking lot; if you can believe it. He was imprisoned in the moment by Fortuna’s cruel wheel, totally out of control for reasons outside his control. And his usual grounding method, i.e., relying on the encouragement and kindness of others, was barely an option. Instructed not to speak under any circumstances, no one was willing to answer his desperate pleas for direction.

“Do you remember where I’m supposed to be?” he asked the tubas and trumpets. 

This was met with blank stares, and seeing these silent imposing figures in military garb added a whole level of dystopian unreality to Anthony’s terrifying predicament.

“Jesus Christ, Anthony,” trombonist Casey Fagen, Class of ’16, said with a hushed scream, “get over there.” She pointed her slide to an open space between Carey Weisman and Roy Spak.

. . . 

Anthony’s halftime performance was subpar. Thankfully, though, no one in the audience cared even a little bit about the things he did. He looked at the other trumpeters’ feet and tried his best to follow along. Mostly, though, he was distracted by a sudden uproar of bottomless existential shame.

It occurred to Anthony, as his right foot tripped over the left on the 30-yard marker, that this moment—him appearing here—was the culmination of a certain un-self-awareness that he, by virtue of the affliction, was rarely able to recognize. But he saw himself so clearly then, as a bizarre, perverted, self-involved fiend whose desire to be seen/heard made him barely a human, and so he assumed very few people ever saw/heard him at all, not really. He remembered how at this time last year he laid in bed imagining what it would feel like to rub his crotch against Casey Fagen’s jean shorts, and now he wondered how he let that strange passing obsession make him embarrass himself so tremendously right now. But it did. And he was here, barely a person, but instead a sort of maladjusted status climber whose decision making matrix was skewed by a desire to be something entirely foreign to himself. But, then, what was himself? The routine ended before he could figure that part out.