That midnight, the cops located the stolen Honda, and Papa and I went together to claim it. It was wrecked. The windows were shattered, and human shit was rubbed all over the back seat. The whole car had been dusted for fingerprints and was unrecognizable. While filling out the police report, my father sought to inflate the value of the stolen contents, claiming there were valuable items in the car, which he and I both knew weren’t there.
“Benjamin, you had probably five hundred dollars of cassettes in here, didn’t you?” he said for show so the police might take note.
I looked down at my feet. “No. It was just one cassette.”
“No, but of course it was a whole case, Benjamin! Probably worth hundreds! Tell the officer now, because he’s making a record of it.”
“No. It was one. That one with all the black powder on it—Madness, The Rise and Fall.” I still have that cassette, stained with fingerprint dust.
Papa tried to get me to fib, to exaggerate, like everyone does for insurance claims. But I simply couldn’t lie anymore, for any reason. I’d done it for too long and I never wanted to again.
She broke down
And I broke down
’Cause I was tired
Of lying
I saw my first girlfriend years later, while on tour in San Francisco. She’s awesome and wise. I had spoken to her only once since high school, calling her in 1997 to make sure she was okay with the promotion of the song “Brick.” She said she felt better knowing something positive could come from it all. I could breathe easier about its release. She implied her parents didn’t feel the same about it. They felt I was profiting from everyone’s tragedy. To them, I can only apologize. I write songs about what I feel. And I feel there could not be a more expensive cheap lesson than this episode.
PLAN A FROM OUTER SPACE
I WASN’T EXPECTING TO GRADUATE high school. I was flunking my classes and had missed too many days. So I was mulling over my Plan B options—summer school, community college, a job, maybe the Army—when out of nowhere I received an incredible, beautiful lifeline in the mailbox. It was a full-tuition scholarship to study music at the University of Miami. I had all but forgotten about Plan A, my application to music school, and the life I’d wanted to pursue. I read the letter over and over. I showed it to my parents to confirm I wasn’t misinterpreting it. Maybe I could study music and be a percussionist in a fine symphony orchestra. I just needed to convince my high school to let me graduate.
* * *
—
Way back at the beginning of the school year, before my girlfriend and I had gotten into all our trouble, before I worked two jobs while flunking school, I had auditioned for University of Miami, having read that the Dixie Dregs, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, and a host of other brilliant jazz musicians had either studied or taught there. Who’d ever thought of going to a university that taught jazz? And who had ever considered that making a living in music was possible? When you went to your guidance counselor in those days, they pulled out a few catalogs of schools and majors, and nothing about music ever came up, aside from teaching. Learning to perform music—original music—for a living? That just wasn’t on offer. Therefore, it didn’t exist.
But my jazz-band teacher, Mr. Burns, knew better, and he collected all the information I would need to audition to be a jazz performance major at U of M. The audition requirements were a few solo percussion pieces, like snare-drum études. Yes, there is such a thing as a snare-drum étude, and I crushed those. Some orchestral mallet percussion. Easy. But one that left me scratching my head was performing three jazz standards of different grooves at the drums, with a rhythm section. I didn’t know any local pianist or bassist who could play jazz very well, if at all. And I really wasn’t familiar with jazz standards myself. So, I went to an 8-track multitrack studio in the basement of Duncan Music, a local musical-instrument retailer, and I made up three jazz “standards,” performing them at the piano, bass, and the drums. I sent the cassette tape to the University of Miami along with my bundles of awards and certificates and forgot about it.
Practicing piano in high school, 1984. In background, Scotty Folds’s original painting of piano player.
And now I found myself in the kitchen, holding an acceptance letter. And not only had they let me in, they’d given me a full-tuition scholarship. One of two full scholarships in the whole music school! I had all but given up the notion of pursuing music before that letter arrived. And now I had a beacon to follow. I knew I had to act on this gift.
I got to work convincing my teachers to give me another chance. I volunteered essays on the importance of my scholarship and about what I wanted to do with my life. I had come to appreciate their classes too late, I explained, but was willing to make up the work. I had a doctor’s note for the strep throat. But I was still coming up a little short of convincing all my teachers to let me pass. So, I thought, I’d go to a therapist and convince them I had some emotional issues to further make my case. That sort of soft fraud was always persuasive with teacher types. I’d just act anxious for the shrink and he would excuse the rest of my absences. I chose the same therapist who’d seen my girlfriend.
During the session, which began as a stunt to allow me to graduate, my whole year came flooding back. As I heard myself recount the awful experience, I realized I had actually been through a lot. And by the end of the session, I was a puddle on the floor. He gave me the note, and much more. I was allowed to graduate, barely.
* * *
—
My parents dropped me off at the airport at the end of the summer and I boarded the first plane of my life. My mother later told me that my father cried as the plane took off. I didn’t believe that, of course. Real men don’t do that (or so I thought at the time). I made my way to my first baggage claim, picked up my 1950s’ suitcases, which came from my grandmother’s attic, and took my first ride in a taxi. I was too shy to question the cabdriver as he dropped me a mile away from the university, somewhere on U.S. Highway 1, but I managed to make my way to the campus. This was it. Plan A. It felt like I’d been delivered in a spaceship. I passed strange palm trees and heard people speaking in Spanish.
I took the second cab ride of my life a week later, to the Greyhound station, to retrieve a large cardboard box containing my drums, which, although I’d packed them myself, were now mysteriously accompanied by some of my mother’s Rice Krispies Treats wrapped in tinfoil, stuffed between the Styrofoam packing.
The parcel, in order of its value:
Shipping cost > Rice Krispies Treats > cardboard > old shitty drum set.
For now, for the first time in my life, I could actually imagine a path to becoming a musician. A real working musician who performs and records music, not just teaches it. An artist who puts food on the table—something that I’d never witnessed outside of the radio and TV. I shuffled what happened in high school under the rug and promised myself to never speak of it again. I was now in the company of some of the best young jazz students in the country. These were my people, I thought, unlike the kids back home, who ranged from broke rednecks to aspiring law students from old-money families. Maybe I’d found home at last. I felt relief, a sense of pride, and the overwhelming sensation of butterflies that a kid gets when he’s far from home for the first time. I set about establishing my new life, shaking hands with my new roommate and gearing up to learn as much as possible.