It wasn’t long, though, before I noticed two pairs of eyes staring at me over the back of a computer monitor. It was a boy and a girl. When I looked up, they looked down and one of them whispered, “Busted!” Over the weeks that followed, they returned several times.
I feel doubly foolish when I consider the only thing I am actually “in charge of” is the music – a responsibility I was given because my fiancée knew it was the one job I might actually enjoy.
The first time it happened, I was 14 years old. My friend, Sarah — an older girl who wore band t-shirts and had punky hair — brought me to a dirty café that was known for letting teenagers smoke as long as they paid for coffee. I had a crush on her and she knew it.
The lady I sat next to told me she had never used a Scantron; she’d never even seen one until that moment. I watched her flip the paper over and over as she examined it like some strange alien artifact.
One of the guys–the older one–gets out of bed and shuffles off to the bathroom, easy, like it’s just another day. But the other guy–the young guy–he hits the snooze button and just lies there. Then after a beat his girlfriend pokes him in the ribs and he gets up. It’s funny because it could really happen like that, you know?
When he got to me, I‘d say, “Cheesecakes.” Then his face would grow dark as it all came back to him; he hated me. Or rather, he hated my boss. He called him the “cheesecake man.” And while this isn’t a very cruel nickname, the way he said it, it had the earmarks of a racial slur. Now I was the “cheesecake boy.”
It seems like every Monday morning I trudge into work, log into Facebook and find you at the top of my news feed: jeans rolled-up, in mid-dive over a beautiful mountain spring. Or in a dimly lit bar, engaged in conversation with some transient friend of yours (you look like you’re saying something to the effect of “Yeah, well it’s only illegal because the government saw it as a threat to the paper industry and blah blah blah”).
Well listen, that’s actually why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know quite how to say this, so I guess I’ll just blurt it out: I think you should get off Facebook. Why? There are plenty of reasons really – not the least of which is the extreme close-up of a veiny bulging stomach that you’ve set as your profile pic – but really it comes down to status updates.
Hey, what if we did a tour with Maroon 5? That would be cool. The MarGOOn 5 Concert Series… something like that. We could take turns headlining each night. I bet Adam would be up for that.
We discovered early on that writing songs – even techno – requires skill. But once we figured out the kick-hat-kick-hat + snare roll formula, things slowly came together. Then when we realized you can drop techno down to 85 beats-per-minute and essentially create ‘80s-style rap beats… well; it all sort of snowballed from there.