DECIBELS

by Joseph Smigelski (joegs@ix.netcom.com)

Copyright 1991 Joseph Smigelski

Groovy and I always had breakfast together on the day of a
rehearsal. We could no more miss our morning meal at The Green
Kitchen on 77th Street than skip warming up with "Louie, Louie"
before running through our set of songs down at the loft.
As we were finishing eating, a little boy at the next table
began drumming on a china plate with a spoon and fork. The noise
would not have bothered me a couple of months ago. Hell, I
probably would have criticized the kid's technique. But now I
winced until his mother got fed up with the racket and stopped
him.
Groovy looked up from his plate and said, "Is something the
matter? You don't look too good.
;I think my ears are getting worse, I told him. "The
ringing's there all the time now."
"Like I told you before, it's probably psychological," he
said.
Underneath the table, my right hand curled into a fist. Of
all the good people struggling for a decent life in this glorious
garbage dump of a city, I wished Groovy could understand what I
was going through. But then I remembered that he too knew what
it was like not to be a kid anymore. He had let his light blond
hair grow long to cover the spots where it was thinning, and
lately he had been vexed over his guitar chops slipping a bit. I
forced my hand to relax, and reached for my orange juice.
Groovy stabbed one last morsel of egg with his fork and
said, "Are you thinking of quitting the band?"
I almost spilled the juice. Four hours each weekday, I wore
out sneaker rubber and breathed car exhaust working for a midtown
messenger service. Groovy filled in three times a week behind
the counter of a hardcore record shop in the Village. That was
certainly no life. Our band, The Pencils, was our ticket to
ride.
"Quitting?" I said. "No way. Things are starting to roll
for us. That benefit lined up at the Beekman looks like it could
be our big break."
"The Beekman show's not gonna be that big of a deal."
"What are you talking about? Boz told me he heard that a
bunch of record company guys were going to be there."
Groovy slurped some coffee. "Maybe."
His lack of enthusiasm shook my nerves and rattled my brain
... and made my ears ring louder. I put down my orange juice and
lovingly touched the songbook on the table in front of me. It
was an ordinary wire-bound notebook, but across its plain cover I
had printed in neat block letters with an expensive calligraphy
pen:
SONGS FOR THE PENCILS
COMPOSED BY
JOEY DEAN & GROOVY GARVEY
Although we had not yet appeared on the cover of ROLLING
STONE, I was certain that it was only a matter of time before our
faces would join the pantheon. We were not THAT old, and many
bands had been around for ten years before hitting it big. Our
day would come. After all, we possessed the magic. Pop music
history is full of legendary writing duos. To someone else, the
names Dean & Garvey may not have looked that promising together,
but to me, they were Lennon & McCartney. Every time we
collaborated on a song, we sensed each other's tones and rhythms
as intimately as we felt our own heartbeats. Groovy's melodies
breathed vibrancy into my words, and my lyrics gave his music a
sense of purpose, a reason for being.
I took a deep breath. be calm. he's having a bad day,
that's all. nothing to get rattled over. Then I said, "I'm
going downtown to the loft a couple of hours early today to hear
the Roll-Ons rehearse. I want to see just how good or bad
they've gotten before trying to convince Boz to go with us."
Groovy shook his head and laughed. "I can't see why Boz
wants to play bass with those assholes. Mark, what's his last
name this week, Flash? What a loser. He sings like a dying
cockatoo. And Carbona John has trouble finding his fretboard."
"Hey, they get as many gigs as we do," I said.
"Yeah, but so what? The Roll-Ons suck. Sooner or later,
Boz has to choose. Otherwise, let's look for somebody else."
"Like Adam?" He had played bass with us briefly a couple of
years ago.
Groovy stared at me. "Don't mention that name again unless
you want some of this coffee in your face."
"Exactly," I said. "That's why I've got to handle Boz
delicately."
Then I tapped my songbook and said, "Hey! I've got some new
lyrics I want you to look at."
He waved at the notebook. "Later maybe, okay? I'm not up
for it right now."
The ringing in my ears increased again, and I could not say
anything for a few seconds. BE COOL, DON'T OVERREACT. HE'S JUST
HAVING A BAD DAY, REMEMBER? Then I looked at him and said, "But
I think this might be THE SONG. I've got some great ideas for
the music."
His blue eyes locked onto mine. "Like I said, maybe later."
Then the little kid started imitating Ringo Starr again with
his spoon and fork.
That was the end. I wanted to pretend that this morning had
not happened. I got up and squeezed into my leather jacket which
I thought looked cool with my short spiked hair. The jacket's
texture and smell reminded me for a moment of how good I used to
feel.
"Look, Groovy, I gotta go. I'll meet you at the grease pit
at 2:30, okay? Rehearsal's at three."
As I reached down to pick up my songbook, Groovy moved his
left hand and spilled coffee all over the book's cover.
"Hey, sorry, man," he said. But from the sound of his
voice, I could tell he didn't mean it.
-----
About two blocks from the Green Kitchen, I passed a
newsstand and noticed an ad tacked up above a stack of THE NEW
YORK POST.
e*a*r plugs
great for riding the subway
and so comfortable you can
even eat while using them
I kept walking. But before I had gone another half block, I
turned around and strolled ever so slowly back to that newsstand.
After looking both ways to make sure no one was around who might
know me, I bought a pair of the earplugs.
As I put them in my pocket, I remembered the first time I
had ever heard "I Want To Hold Your Hand." One morning, when I
was thirteen years old, I woke up and heard the radio playing in
the kitchen. As usual, my mother had it on while doing her
morning chores. But that day it played a sound the like of which
I had never heard before. I knew instantly that that sound was
special, that in some way it was significant to my life, and that
it was changing me even as I lay in my bed rubbing the sleep out
of my eyes. Now, twenty-three years later, I was the leader of
The Pencils. Although Pencilmania had not happened yet, the fire
of rock and roll still burned inside me. When our songwriting
and rehearsing were going fine, it felt like Groovy and I were
the Tops of the Pops.
Gigs were the best though. About two months ago, The
Pencils had played a small club on the west side called SPACE.
Madison Square Garden it was not, but a couple of hundred people
had magically materialized, and everyone danced. During our
wildest up-tempo rocker, "A Reason to Cry," they leaped, twisted
and spun around ecstatically. I felt like we had them in a tight
hold and that we would never let them go. No thought was given
to what would happen tomorrow, how we would have to scratch and
claw for our next gig. Being on stage, singing and playing each
note just right, our music filling the whole world, that was
everything. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else was real.
And I had another reason for wanting to be in a band. I
could not stand to look at myself in the mirror if I was an
ordinary guy with nothing but a straight job, boring friends and
prosaic passions. I wanted more. I wanted to transcend. If I
did not have rock and roll piping through my veins, my idea of
who I was would be completely lost. And using earplugs did not
fit the image of a self-proclaimed live-fast-die-young rebel
named Joey Dean. That was why, when I later took the subway
downtown to the loft, the earplugs stayed in my pocket. The
thundering train made my ears feel like they were filled with
water, and my eardrums crackled each time the heavy iron wheels
screeched against the tracks.
-----
Mitch, the Roll-On's drummer, had arms as big as Sly
Stallone's. Every time he slapped a rim shot, needles pricked my
ear drums and the ringing inside my head rose an octave. About a
half minute into the song, he stopped torturing his kit. "Hey,
Carbona!" he yelled, "I can't hear your guitar. Crank it up,
will ya?"
Boz turned to Mitch and snarled, "Can you hear THIS?" He
slammed about a dozen explosive notes from his bass, each one a
fist to my right temple. I fingered the foam earplugs in my
pocket.
Mitch raised his hands like a vandal under arrest and said,
"Okay, Boz, okay."
Boz frowned as he looked behind one of the big P.A.
speakers. Carbona John had not been playing at all. He was
sitting on the floor frantically twisting a tuning peg on his
guitar back and forth. His tangled, dirty black hair looked like
it had been used to mop Grand Central Station. Boz went up to
him and accidentally kicked over the bottle of Carbona near
John's left thigh. The cleaning fluid spilled onto the floor,
and John leaned over to catch the wafting fumes.
"Asshole," Boz said. Then without looking at the drummer,
"Take a break, Mitch. Why don't you run down and get some more
beer?"
"With what money?"
"Lay it out, okay? I'll pay you back after our next gig."
"Which is ... ?"
"Next Tuesday. The Beekman, remember?"
"Jesus, Boz, that's not us," Mitch whined. "That's The
Pencils."
He was out the door before Boz had time to lay down his
bass.
"I put my foot into it that time," Boz said. He walked over
and flopped onto the old battered car seat I was sitting on.
That seat was a mess, but it was more comfortable than any of the
elegant chairs in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel.
For a few minutes neither of us spoke, and I was thankful
for the relative quiet. My ears rang with far less intensity,
and I tried to imagine the silence around me. Silence was so
important to me now. If only I could truly experience it again.
I distracted myself by looking at the walls. There was a
new Jimi Hendrix poster, and someone had tacked up Miss November.

She lounged on a bed of homemade Roll-Ons and Pencils fliers.
Over the sink, a gigantic rubber phallus provocatively poked a
nun's habit that Carbona John had stolen years before when he was
an altar boy. Next to that hung a deflated plastic sex doll, its
arms stretched out as if crucified. Zebra, a guy who could drink
a six-pack in fifteen minutes, had named the doll Sophie. Zebra
was The Pencils' drummer.
Boz got up, returned to the rehearsal area, and started
fiddling with the cord on his bass guitar. He was almost
surrounded by beat-up amplifiers and the worn drum kit.
"You'd think he'd be passed the cleaning fluid stage by
now," Boz said after a while, pointing at Carbona John.
His voice startled me. My ears suddenly felt as though
wires were being pulled through them.
"Why the hell did you have to knock over that damn bottle?
It stinks like hell in here," I said.
Boz looked at me as if he had not noticed the smell, and got
up to open a couple of windows. Cool autumn air breezed in.
"There's something we should discuss," I said.
The door flew open. Mark Flash pranced in and headed
straight for the refrigerator.
Boz spun around and said, "You're late again, Mark."
Flash flipped him a casual bird and wheezed, "Fuck you. Got
any beer?"
I jumped out of the car seat and grabbed Boz's arm. "Have
you taken a really good look at the Roll-Ons lately?"
"I heard that, Dean." Flash's screeching voice grated the
nerve endings in my ears. "You know what I think? I think The
Pencils should get the fuck out of this loft and leave the Roll-
Ons alone."
The noise in my head made it difficult to think, so the
wittiest quip I could come up with was, "Hey, Flash, when you can
get through one entire song without screwing it up ... "
"All right, both of you idiots shut up," Boz hollered. Then
in a softer voice, "Whose place is this, anyway?"
-----
When Mitch returned from his beer run, he strode like a
barbaric conqueror over to the drum kit. Boz strapped on his
bass, and Mark Flash removed his trousers, revealing the
"performing pants" he wore underneath. Matching his top, they
were made of skin-tight pink spandex and looked obscene hugging
his fat body. I could not get used to the clash in styles. All
Boz ever wore were white cotton T-shirts and frayed blue jeans.
Flash grabbed a microphone and rasped that he was ready to
begin. I again fingered the earplugs in my pocket.
"All right, count off," Boz ordered.
Mitch screamed "One! Two! Three! Four!" while slapping his
drumsticks together, and the Roll-Ons plowed into a raunchy
twelve-bar blues called "I'm Your Battery Pack."
Carbona John, who by this time had partly crept out of his
stupor, played at full volume, and his guitar sounded like a
humongous Buick dying in the jaws of a metal compactor. Boz
rushed over to him and screamed into his ear. Immediately, the
guitar was a few decibels quieter. After a lunge at the mike
stand, Mark Flash sang as if each syllable ripped his vocal
chords. He did so many gyrations, leaps and dips that during the
second verse his ass started to slip out of his spandex pants.
Although the noise was killing me, I had to stifle a laugh.
When the Roll-Ons had finished the number, my ears were a
cathedral's bell tower on Sunday morning. I went up to Boz and
pulled him aside. "Look, I gotta go," I said. "I'll be back
before three."
"Hey, what's the matter, man? I thought you were gonna stay
through the whole rehearsal." He must have seen the pain in my
face because his expression soured. "We don't sound THAT bad, do
we?"
"It's not that, Boz." I hesitated before turning to go
because I wanted to tell him about my ears. I really did. But
the words were buried under too many layers of pride and fear.
Also, I lived in a dream that one day I would wake up and all the
noises in my head would be gone. If too many people knew about
my problem, it would achieve a separate, objective reality, and
have a better chance at attaining permanence.
"Oh, let him go," Mark Flash said to Boz. "He's just a pain
in my ass."
"Yeah, maybe so, Flash," I said, "but you're a pain in my
HEAD."
Mark looked at me with such a bewildered expression that I
laughed out loud. The sound of my voice danced a swirling waltz
with the screaming inside my ears.
-----
I walked down the dilapidated, graffiti-ridden hallway and
took the grimy elevator to the ground floor. When I reached the
street, I phoned Groovy. I asked him if he wanted to meet me
earlier than planned at the grease pit. He said, "Yeah, okay,"
sounding just as enthusiastic as he had that morning at The Green
Kitchen.
The grease pit, which was across the street from the loft,
had torn plastic table cloths and peeling wallpaper. I
considered the place a modest example of radical chic, and
thought the food was pretty close to delectable. Old Benny, the
owner, had been a beat poet back in the fifties, and sometimes
would erupt with something like, "Gray cement hovers above my
heart / A slab of ice over a black hole."
After sitting down in the booth, I put my songbook on the
seat next to me and covered it with my jacket. I did not want to
risk any more accidental spills. Groovy ordered a ham sandwich
and I had the house special - Pastrami with Pickles on
Pumpernickel. The coffee was good and hot, but best of all, my
ears felt better and safer away from Mark Flash and The Roll-Ons.
"I've really got to talk to you about my hearing," I said to
Groovy.
"Oh, yeah? Well I've got something I want to talk to you
about too."
Groovy's belligerent tone jarred me, and my ears started
killing me again. I also felt afraid, for myself AND for The
Pencils, because I sensed that Groovy had a secret that he was
hiding from me. But then I realized I was probably projecting.
I was the guy with the secret dilemma: My hearing and peace of
mind were in jeopardy if I continued to play loud music, yet my
Lennon-McCartney-like partnership with Groovy was too good to
dissolve. Besides, it was unthinkable for me to break up the
band because I would not be the only one crushed. Groovy was as
much The Pencils as I was, and I just could not let him down.
The sounds in my ears developed fresh nuances of tone and
pitch. For a short time, I totally spaced out and had the only
real "vision" I have ever experienced. I was in the middle of a
long gray hallway suspended in the sky. At one end I could see
what looked like the stage of Carnegie Hall. A low-lying fog
bank that seemed wet with suffering billowed across the
footlights. Then bright, hot spotlights came on above to ease
the pain by melting the mist with euphoric colors. I ached to
perform in that place, but also knew I needed to look at the
other end of the hall. I turned around and saw a dark chasm,
nothingness.
If Groovy continued speaking, I did not hear him. What
snapped me back to the grease pit was another familiar voice. It
seemed to completely fill the place.
"Hey, Pencils! How do? Find a manager yet?" We both
looked up as Jim Benson sauntered over and stood by our table,
holding out his card. His head resembled a light bulb with weird
tendrils growing out of it. Despite the cool weather, he was
without a jacket, and had only partly tucked his shirt into his
pants. I snatched the card out of his hand and laid it down in
front of me.
James R. Benson, Managerial Services
It was amazing how often we ran into this guy. We had first
met him in connection with an outdoor concert he had organized
that was to have taken place at a huge Third Avenue street fair.
The concert turned out to be a fiasco because no stage or sound
system had been anywhere in sight when the bands showed up to
play.
"Hi, Jim," I said, trying to be kind. I remembered how he
had looked the day of the fiasco - eyes bulging out of his head
and his whole body in the throes of hyperventilation. I had
feared that he was on the verge of a heart attack.
"Getting any gigs lately?" Benson asked. I could tell he
wanted to sit with us and was waiting for something from me that
would pass as an invitation.
"Yeah, we're playing the Beekman next Tuesday," I said.
Benson laughed as if I had been joking with him, and slid
into the booth. He obviously did not believe we had the gig, and
that annoyed me.
The talk soon got around to his latest promotional idea. He
told us about a BAGEL NOSH on 86th Street run by a couple of guys
who had just gotten off the boat. They apparently liked the
spiel that Benson had given them about business really rolling in
if they had live music in the place.
I thought, oh my God, he's talking about rock and roll in a
BAGEL NOSH; he must have really flipped this time! But not
quite. He wanted to book folk music acts and transform the place
into a quasi old fashioned coffee house.
"How about it, you guys?" he said. "You used to do that
kind of folk stuff. How about doing it again up at the BAGEL
NOSH? Of course, you won't get paid much, just tips, but think
of all the good exposure!"
Good exposure, the guy might have something there, I
thought. Besides, acoustic stuff would not pummel my ears. But
before I could say anything, Groovy said, "We'll think about it,
Jim, and give you a call."
Benson looked at us with egg yolk eyes and said, "I'm sure
you will" in the most dejected tone of voice he could muster.
When I offered to pick up his tab (he had had coffee and a
doughnut), he beamed as though I had given him a thousand bucks.
When Benson had gone, I asked Groovy why he had thrown away
the BAGEL NOSH offer.
Groovy smirked. "Oh, man, come on. I can't go backwards,
and playing acoustic again, especially in a place like that,
would be turning tail and running home to mama."
"But we could play new songs!" I said.
He looked at his watch. "It's just about three. We'd
better go."
-----
As we walked to the loft, I knew I had plenty to think over,
but the ringing in my ears refused to allow me the privilege. We
did not hear the Roll-Ons rehearsing when we got off the
elevator, so we figured it was probably safe to go down the hall
and walk in. The door had been left wide open. Everyone was
gone except Carbona John, who sat cross-legged amidst a pile of
old paper bags near a large steel garbage can. A new Carbona
bottle was resting in his left hand.
We found a note from Boz attached to the refrigerator door
with a daisy magnet: "Pencils. Emergency came up. Had to go.
Can't rehearse today. Sorry. John will explain."
One look at Carbona John told us that we were getting no
explanations from him this side of the year 2000. Groovy opened
the fridge, pulled out a couple of beers and tossed me one.
"Do you want to stick around and wait for Zebra?" I asked.
Groovy gulped his beer and then said, "Why bother?" He
looked down at the floor and raked his fingers through his
thinning hair. All of a sudden he seemed old.
"I've been thinking," he said. "Having a band was a good
idea a few years ago. It really was. But I don't know anymore."
I felt the blood deserting my face, and focused on Groovy's
lips, desperately hoping that they would form other words than
those I feared were coming. Then Groovy moistened those lips and
blurted out, "I'm quitting The Pencils."
While I stood there stunned, as though struck in the
stomach, Groovy went on to say, "You can find another guitarist,
they're a dime a dozen. And, hey, we had fun while it lasted,
right?"
I was in my daydream hallway again, but Carnegie Hall was
gone. All I saw was the dark chasm, the nothingness.
"What do you mean, you're quitting?" I said. "You and me,
we ARE The Pencils."
Groovy's voice rose. "The Pencils are going nowhere, Joey.
Just let it go. Give it up."
"I can't believe this. After I spend years with this music,
OUR music, screwing up my hearing, you want to just give it up?"
"Look, I'm sick of it, all of it," Groovy shouted.
My hands were shaking, and I could feel my ears getting
fiercely hot. I knew I needed to say something conciliatory,
like CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS? Instead, a low visceral growl
crawled through my teeth. "Get out. Get away from me."
Groovy's face went blank, and he stormed out of the loft. I
knew it would be too late to patch things up the next time I
would see him, but I could not move to follow him.
Then a scraping noise behind me made me turn. Carbona
John's legs jerked wildly for a few seconds and then he mumbled,
"I'm all right, I'm all right." I could not help wondering if HE
had hearing problems.
I fired my beer can into a hopeless pile of junk - yes,
junk. It suddenly was clear to me that the loft contained
nothing really useful, nothing substantial. The place was filled
solely with the sort of worthless stuff that fuels pointless
dreams and keeps alive the empty promises of youth. I kicked the
nearest electric guitar off its stand. It almost hit Carbona
John in the head. I could have hurt him, and that made me feel
worse than before because, even though he was zonked out of his
skull on that sickening cleaning fluid, he seemed to be the only
person in the whole world who might give a damn if I let myself
fall apart and cry. But a sharp metallic sound kept shrieking
inside my head, and I decided I could somehow survive without his
concern.
As I was leaving him to his fumes and whatever dark
pleasures they provided, Carbona John mumbled again. It sounded
like he was calling my name. I turned, and saw him clumsily
grasp the guitar which I had kicked. Then he weakly lifted his
hand that held the Carbona bottle, and motioned for me to come
closer. When I did, he whispered, "I could learn all The
Pencils' songs, you know."
Trying in vain not to breathe the Carbona fumes, I stood
there for a short time and looked into his bleary eyes until I
fully realized what he meant.
"Thanks, man," I said. "But I don't think it would work
out."
-----
As I walked down the dirty concrete stairs into the subway
station at Sixth Avenue, I heard the train barreling in like an
angry monster. The uptown express had never seemed louder. The
screech of its brakes conspired with the ghastly noises in my
head, threatening to tear my ears wide open. I spun around,
hurried back up to the street, and slipped into a nearby doorway.

I smelled urine and vomit, but the privacy was worth it. It was
very important to make sure no one was watching. Slowly, I
brought the earplugs out of my pocket. Then, like a spy working
a secret device, I quickly removed the packaging and stuffed the
plugs into my ears.
After the expanding foam wedged itself tightly inside, I
could just barely hear the familiar street sounds. The voice of
a newspaper vendor yelling "Central Park murders, read it here
first!" was the murmur of an invalid, and a cab's honking horn
became the complaint of a lonely pigeon. However, the high
pitched whir inside my head sounded like a crowded runway at JFK
Airport.
When I stepped down into the station and reached the damp
subway platform, there was no train in sight. A few people stood
around waiting, looking very bored. My left arm began to twitch,
which made me overly aware of the songbook tucked under it. I
took the notebook in my hands and opened it.
Each page held a beloved song that I had hoped would one day
fly The Pencils to rock and roll stardom. One at a time, I
ripped those pages to shreds, letting the pieces fall to the
slimy platform. How could I go on living knowing that somewhere
in a bedroom drawer or a basement trunk, years after being buried
away, those songs would endure in black and white for no purpose
except to mock me?
As the cold wind heralding an approaching train blew the
torn strips of paper away from my feet, I concentrated on the
earplugs pressing almost painfully inside my ears, and stared in
front of me at the black ditch housing the subway tracks. I did
not care if people were watching me now. I was happy this act
had been public. Tearing up that songbook had been my final
appearance as a Pencil. I thought of Groovy saying, "We had fun
while it lasted," and screamed headlong into the roar of the
hurtling express.
With the ear plugs in, the noise could not hurt me. Let it
be noisy. More noise! More! I dropped what remained of the
notebook, just the cover bearing my carefully crafted lettering,
and boarded the uptown A train. I could not help picturing that
now useless cover lying on the concrete floor waiting to be swept
up by a bored janitor unaware of its significance. I had to feel
my way to a seat because my eyes brimmed with tears.
When I raised my hands to my face, I found that I still held
one crumpled sheet of paper, one final page that had not been
destroyed. I blinked my eyes until I could read the title at the
top. It was our best number, "A Reason To Cry." hey, maybe
there's a reason that this song survived my rampage. I started
folding it with the intention of putting it in my pocket, but
then balled it up as small as I could and rolled it under the
seat.
Fresh tears welled up inside me, and I closed my eyelids
tightly to hold them back. Then I focused on the loud swirling
sounds inside of me that no one else could ever listen to, and
rested my head against the wall of the hard, shaking train.

The End

Contact JOE at :joegs@ix.netcom.com

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