The Haters (6 page)

COREY: oh hell yes

WES: like pizza?

ASH: i was thinking sushi

Second dinner was at a sushi place that Ash drove us to and then paid for, and it taught us a number of things about Ash. For one, she had a car. The car was a huge, black, new-smelling SUV that felt more like a rental than anyone's day-to-day car. It certainly didn't feel like the one my parents had. There weren't inexplicable hair and crumbs ground into the seats, or ancient mud-encrusted stacks of papers and binders sloshing around everyone's feet. There were no stray objects of any kind, and every surface felt cool and pebbly, like the skin of a lizard, but from space.

Another thing we learned was that Ash had an entire strategy for ordering sushi:

1. buy the sushi chefs a beer

2. tell them the magic word

The magic word is
omakase
. It is Japanese for “Just make whatever.” And if you utter this word after buying the sushi chefs a beer, these sushi chefs are going to make you some epic stuff. I would not be able to tell you what any of it was, except that the production values of this sushi were top-notch. A lot of it didn't even look like food. It was fish art. There was a little fish volcano. There was a seaweed pond with little fish stepping stones and ripples coming out from each one. And then they gave us each a sea urchin.

Sea urchin is called
uni
, and it looks like a human tongue, except orange and with bigger, more diseased-looking taste buds. Ash slurped hers up immediately. I put mine in my mouth without thinking about it too hard and managed to enjoy it. It tasted kind of like the sea, kind of like a burger. But Corey just stared at his with unconcealable horror.

The sushi chefs thought this was hilarious.

“Ha ha ha!” the main one yelled. “You should eat it!!”

Clearly, Corey and I had stepped into someone else's life. It did not resemble our lives anymore. It was someone with an infinitely more baller lifestyle. But Ash was kind of guarded about how it had come to be.

WES: so how come you know so much about sushi?

ASH: i don't know that much. i've had it a few times

COREY: what's up with your crazy nice car

ASH: it's my mom's

COREY: how come you have it though

ASH: i dunno, she wasn't using it

COREY: tell your mom she's crazy because that car is baller

WES: so ash where are you from and everything

ASH: new york what about you guys

WES: uh, pittsburgh

COREY: and your parents they're also from new york?

ASH,
shrugging
: they're from a couple places what about yours

It didn't take us long to figure out that she was kind of uncomfortable talking about herself and was going to deflect every question back onto us. So pretty soon we were just rapidly volunteering things about ourselves.

COREY: my dad's jewish and my mom is irish catholic

WES: our high school is called benson and it's like medium size with a couple thousand kids

COREY: my older sister becca made us get two different cats

WES: it's an inner-city public school, so budget-wise kind of hurting

COREY: one of the cats is named fish-fish and he literally has feline AIDS

WES: the gym department is so strapped for cash that one of their units is called “the block run” and in it the gym teacher just forces everyone to run around the block

COREY: wes is adopted

WES:

ASH:

COREY: he doesn't like to talk about it but it is kind of obvious from his name and then how he looks

WES: there are other possible explanations for that, but okay

COREY: sorry, maybe i shouldn't have said

WES: i guess it was gonna come out sooner or later

ASH,
deciding to ignore the adoption thing
: so you guys have played a lot of music together, huh

[
corey and wes both nod a little and then stop
]

COREY: i mean not that much outside of jazz band

WES: we more just listen to music

COREY: sometimes we play the game garfunkel

ASH: i don't know garfunkel

COREY: yeah because we invented it

Okay. We need to copyright Garfunkel. Because it's the greatest game on earth. It's incredibly simple and elegant. Literally all it is is, someone puts on a song, and the other person or people have to guess who it is. Not the song, but the person or band. That's the entire game. If you're playing it right, it's all deep cuts and artists people think they know but actually don't. But there's no wrong way to play it really.

You get five points if you get it on your first guess, three if you get it on your second or third, otherwise one if you get it by the end of the song. And if you don't, the other person gets a point, EXCEPT you can prolong the point by asking for a second song by the same artist/band/rapper/etc., in which case, you still get one point if you guess it, but if you don't get it, the other player gets three. First person to fifteen wins, or you can just keep score for your entire lives, which Corey and I have been doing. Right now he is up 2,063 to 1,849. He went on an epic but controversial
run last summer with Modernist classical composers that I'm still recovering from.

If you choose someone who it turns out the other players have never heard of, then the point is a wash. So obviously there's an honor system component, because if you're guessing, you can always be a dick and just lie and say, oohh, sorry, I've never heard of Mobb Deep, or Carly Simon, or Brahms.

But probably the strongest thing about me and Corey's friendship is that neither of us has ever even accused the other of violating the honor system.

ASH: do you guys ever play with anyone else

WES: we've tried to

COREY: you can really only play with people who are at your level or it gets frustrating

[
ash gulps a scallop and points to corey's phone
]

ASH: try me

Bear in mind, we've been playing Garfunkel for years. Also we invented it. So our game is ridiculous.

And Ash's early lobs, Run–D.M.C. and the Jesus and Mary Chain, were pathetic and quickly destroyed by each of us.

But soon it became clear that she was a hundred percent at our level.

She threw on a Gary Numan arrangement of Erik Satie. Then she followed it up with a track that sounded like luau music but turned out to be the Strokes. She hit us with a Jonas Brothers ballad that stumped the hell out of us because who knew the Jonas
Brothers had ballads. And on the guessing front she was holding her own, too. She was able to get Stewart Copeland's solo work. She got the Baha Men on her first try. She had never heard of Hank Mobley, which admittedly was a little strange for someone attending a jazz camp, but we accepted that without argument and moved on.

We were in there for two hours just cranking tunes on her phone and munching high-grade artistic sushi and yelling bands and musicians at one another. And honestly, I know I told you how great it was jamming out earlier. But I think in terms of just overall happiness and contentment, playing Garfunkel with Ash and Corey in that sushi restaurant was probably the pinnacle of my entire life.

I just felt like maybe for those two hours I actually was being a person I could feel good about, or living a life that I could be happy about, or whatever. I don't know. I know it's stupid.

Corey got so psyched after Ash nailed the Baha Men that he immediately picked up the
uni
with his bare hands and swallowed it whole.

“TONGUE OF THE SEA,” he yelled.

“OH YEAH,” responded both of the sushi chefs.

Then Corey leapt to his feet and sprinted into the bathroom to throw up, and I panicked and ran after him because I thought he was having a fatal allergic reaction, but it turns out he just literally thought it was a tongue.

9.
RETURN TO THE JAZZ GULAG

So if this was a VH1
Behind the Music
episode, now would be the part where the narration would get all ominous, and it would go something like:

“On the evening of Monday, June 13th, Ash, Corey, and Wes were riding high. They had just made the best music of their lives and then eaten a sophisticated and challenging sushi meal. But little did they know . . . that up ahead . . . the road was
going to get super bumpy
. Because they were about to be arrested and thrown into jazz prison.”

Okay. That's not technically true, because jazz prison does not exist. But if there was one, we probably would have been sent to it.

Russell, the bass teacher, stormed up to us in the dorm parking lot as we were getting out of the car.

“This is not good, you guys,” he told us. “This is really not good.”

It turned out we weren't allowed to leave campus unsupervised. But then why was it so easy? This was not a question he was interested in answering.

“I want us to be cool,” he said, louder than I think he meant to. “But look. I gotta write you up for this. I'm sorry. I don't want to be a cop about this whole thing. I'm a musician, like you. But I got no choice. I hope you understand.”

I nodded sheepishly. Corey nodded sullenly. But Ash just looked him up and down.

“No,” announced Ash. “I don't understand.”

The way she said it brought some kind of new crazy electricity into the air.

“You don't,” Russell repeated.

“I don't understand.”

“You do not understand.”

“Nope.”

“You don't get why I can't let
minors
off the campus, out of camp jurisdiction, just running around.”

“I'm not a minor. I'm nineteen.”

“Oh. Okay. So, you're saying, first of all, nineteen is an adult. And second—”

“Yup. Legally, an adult.”

“I don't mean legally, I mean, come on. Nineteen? Sorry. Not an adult. Second—let me finish—
second
, you're telling me if something happens to one of these guys here, you're trying to tell me, you're liable. If, say,
he
gets hit by a car, or you know,
he
freaks out and, you know, runs away to join the circus, you're liable.”

“Does that happen? Do you guys have a chronic problem of kids leaving jazz camp to join the circus?”

“Don't be smart with me. My point is,
we're
liable, and, look. Do you think this is easy? You think having to police you guys, being responsible for you guys . . . you think that's easy for us?”

“I don't think
any
of this is easy for you. Because I don't think any of you want to be here.”

Russell just stared at her. And suddenly he grinned, in this defeated, tired way.

“Okay. At this point, I think you need to come with me and talk to Bill.”

“Whatever you think.”

“Your issues with the workshops, you need to take that up with him.”

“Whatever you need to do.”

“Come with me,” he said, and turned to go.

“We're coming, too,” I heard myself say.

Russell turned back and stared at me, like, why are you doing this. And I stared back at him.

I was trying to make a Defiant Face, because that was obviously the face that the circumstances were calling for. But also, because I wanted to communicate to Russell that I understood that he had a tough job and wasn't trying to be a dick, I was also trying to make an Apologetic Face.

Russell continued staring at my increasingly unsustainable face.

“Are you okay?” asked Russell.

“Don't worry about me,” I said, grimly committed to making two completely incompatible faces at the same time.

“You're making kind of a strange face.”

“No. I'm not.”

“There isn't something in your eye or something?”

“Don't come,” said Ash. “I don't want you guys to come.”

“You sure,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, and gave me a little smile.

“Sounds good,” said Corey uncertainly.

“Let's go see Bill,” she said to Russell.

And they left. And Corey and I went into the dorm, alone.

The common room was full of dudes. But no one was interested in talking to us except Tim, the scumbag guitarist.

“You cats caused quite a stir,” he said to us in a voice that was trying to be at least half an octave deeper than it actually was. “Especially the
lady
.”

Corey actually just sped up and walked out of the room.

“Join me for a square?” Tim said to me, twirling a cigarette pack and almost dropping it.

And before I knew what was happening, I found myself out behind the dorm's fire exit for fifteen minutes, watching Tim chain-smoke Parliaments and listening to him tell me How It Is. He was talking in Stage Four Jazz Voice about Ash in particular and ladies in general and how he always found himself falling for crazy ladies, ladies with
fire
, where sometimes the fire burns
slow and sometimes it burns hot, and the only thing they like better than bossing you is when you step up and boss
them
.

“They
jones
on you mannin' up, down, and sideways, my froond,” he told me. “And it's the
only
game in town that'll get 'em to quit bossin' you every which.”

Then he took a long drag, chuckled, and looked me in the eye.

He was probably trying to get his eyes to twinkle. But the effect was sort of just squinty and intense. It was the face of when someone is trying to fart, except there's a razor's edge between farting and pooping.

I had restricted myself to politely murmured agreement up to that point. But “froond” was just a bridge too far.

“Froond?” I repeated. I didn't even know how to begin raising objections to it. I found myself just repeating it over and over. “Froond? . . . froond.
Froond
.”

“Froond, like ‘friend,'” said Tim.