beautiful monsters

back to school

Today’s the day… start my workshops, one this morning and one this afternoon. I made muffins but then forgot and they burnt on the bottom.

My mum likes the notes I wrote before writing the piece about Daz, the character sketching bits, more than the actual vignette. Damn. I’m not that happy with any of it, but no time to rewrite now.

And no time to blog, so here’s the piece that isn’t the actual piece.

***

Put down Daz, for my name. Mum’s the only one who calls me Damien. I’ll be 17 soon. Almost legal, for most things. Physically? Studly. Nah, I wish. Short, but not that short, you wouldn’t really notice or anything. I’m just not very tall. I go to the gym, sometimes. Brown hair - I’m gonna grow it long, so I can fling it around in the mosh pit. I live in Hamilton, in the most boring dimension of the known universe. Do you have to put all the true stuff down? Can’t you say I live on a space station or something?

Family, check. School check. Community, check. Post-apocalyptic? Well, if you count my sister Rach hitting puberty, that was pretty apocalyptic. She spun off into psycho drama queen world and she hasn’t come back. Details? What kind of details do you want to know? We live in a house. On a street. With some trees. And me and Rach made a treehouse, out the back. Sometimes I still go there, when I need to think. Rach is almost two years older than me, but she doesn’t act it. She spends most of her time talking on the phone, or screaming at mum. Mum’s ok. She’s a maths teacher, at the university. She used to play piano too, but she doesn’t have much time these days. Dad buggered off years ago. We used to stay with him on the weekends, but now he lives in Sydney.

Mostly I hang out with Jason and Rawiri. They’re the guys I jam with. Jason plays drums and Rawiri plays bass – he’s really good too. I play guitar. I write songs too, but Jason always wants us to do covers. There’s a few other guys we hang out with at school, and my mate Kristina. She’s pretty cool, for a girl. We’ve known each other since kindy, but she only told me this year that she’s bisexual. That’s pretty cool, we can check out girls together.

Music is definitely my passion. Some days I think it’s the only thing that keeps me alive. Not just playing music, listening to it. Sometimes when I’m listening to something really good, I feel as though the music is seeping under my skin, controlling me. Like it’s changing the speed of my heart, like my skin is just a thin tissue holding me together with all the music inside, rippling and pounding. I want to write music that makes people feel like that.

Everyone has secrets. No, I’m not telling you mine.

Love? Yup, put a big tick beside that. Lola Martinez.

I love saying her name. Lola. Like my tongue is kissing the roof of my mouth.

Actually her real name is Maria de los Dolores Garcia Martinez. Imagine being called “Maria of the pains.” I know that’s what it means because I put it into an online translator. She says most of the girls in South America are called Maria something-or-other. Of course, no one gets called by their full names. So it doesn’t get confusing, with all the Marias, they all have nicknames, like Encarna, for Maria Encarnacion, Marite for Maria Teresa, and Lola for Maria de los Dolores. All the boys are called Jose something. Jose of the refuge, or even Jose Maria. I’m glad I wasn’t born in South America. Imagine being called Joseph Mary. Lola says it doesn’t sound weird in Spanish. She’s an exchange student, in case you were wondering.

Posted by Fionnaigh at July 17, 2003 08:38 AM