Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

Darren lifted his head to see exactly what he had hoped to see: a bona fide rock chick at school. She had that short haircut with black hair, assorted clothes, the general attitude associated with the look and headphones that blasted what Darren thinks he recognized as Metallica. He mentally pumped his fist. Externally, all he did was stop playing and look at the girl with a frowning look. It was reinforced his strong eyebrow game honed through years of school delinquency.

“Well, of fucking course I don’t know how to play it.” The pissed look turned into a grin. “That’s why I put up the paper. You play bass?” he asked the girl, handing her the instrument. “I have no idea if I tuned it correctly. There’s a thing with red and green lights on the amp and letters, I just followed that. I think its more or less okay. Its probably just that I’m shit. I’m gonna be taking lessons with a friend, I just bought it the other day.”

His grin widened again. He couldn’t quite hide his excitement. One of the only things he regretted not attending middle school more for was the school concert. He had been too busy skipping classes to fight other delinquents to realize there was even a school concert, and then slacked on actually learning an instrument. In high school, he promised himself, he was gonna form a school band a play in a school concert and it was gonna be awesome.

Therefore, when he saw a deal for a used bass at the local music shop, Darren went ahead and bought a bass he couldn't play, along with an amplificator so that everyone could hear it.

He scratched his head, remembered he forgot to introduce himself. “I’m Daimon Darren, by the way. I’m in 1C. I’m trying to find people to make a school band and teach these fools rock n roll.” He smiled again. “You in? What do you play?”

The goth brunette walked towards the blonde delinquent while unzipping her jacket and licking her lips. In other occasions, Darren would have lifted an eyebrow, but he knew much sanity shouldn’t be expected of rock girls in general, especially the oes that were also in hero school and called themselves Leviathan.

She took the bass from him and said something about saxons or something. “The fuck’s a saxoyan?” he said with a big dumb smile.

He observed how she handled the bass. She played the strings over and over while fine-tuning the knobs on the instrument’s head. “Are you tuning by ear? How do you even do it? I hear you’re supposed to get this bit of metal but I don’t see how that help me do shit.” He was referencing diapasons. “Do I need it to turn a secret knob somewhere? I haven’t even seen anyone do that.” He blinked a few times. It was difficult to tell if Darren was acting dumb or just plain was.

His trap wasn’t about to shut. “So, what do you usually bump?” he said, referring to music. “I'm a dinosaur. Give me that last millennium shit, Stones, Zep and the likes. Everything with an electric guitar. Until the 2000 hit. Man, did rock take a hard blow then.” He curled his fist in an overly dramatic manner. “It still hasn’t recovered to this day.”

He feigned shedding a single tear. However, once the girl was about to start playing for real, the mask of utter idiocy on his face morphed into one of undivided attention and devouring curiosity. Despite his usual behavior, Darren could be quite focused when doing the things he loved.

For once, it involved playing music instead of punching people in the face. The young delinquent was showing some progress, even if his objective was to sing songs about punching people, eventually.

The girl explained that it was a san-san and that it was a Chinese guitar. Darren answered with an “ooooh”. It was difficult to tell if he was mocking or genuinely interested. “Is your dad Chinese?” he asked dumbly with a matching smile.

When she lifted her favorite bands, Darren nodded. She started playing the intro to Just Like Heaven and informed him that it was the most important to her with a wistful quote. He nodded again. “So you’re into the heavy stuff. I don’t mind it, but I like classic rock better. I think my own dad influenced me.” He had a big grin at the mention of his dad. “He manages the big bands. I’m a very good friend to have if you like rock,” he added happily.

He shut up for a while and listened. Levi had that expression on her face, the expression that musicians get when they play something dear to them. Darren wasn’t much of a musician yet, but he was good at reading people. He let her finish the song in a rare display of respect.

“Nice,” he said. He had no other comment. Darren was at least perfectly aware of his total lack of knowledge. The knowledge he didn’t have, he compensated with borderless enthusiasm. “So, will you teach me? I think I more or less understand how you’re supposed to play, but I can’t get the strings down. Look.”

He grabbed back his bass, tried to press his G string at the second fret. He was grabbing the neck of the instrument like one would grab an axe, instead of putting his thumb behind the fretboard for greater leverage. It was a common beginner mistake.

“See? It super hard to keep them thick-ass strings down. How do you do it?”

Darren looked at the punk-goth-something-that-was-definitely-rock chick with big eyes when she said her dad just liked how it sounds and artfully dodged his question. He had a knack for noticing when people were hiding things, but he lacked the curiosity. In a parallel dimension in which Darren was a responsible and well-adjusted adult he was a detective; however, such a dimension resided firmly in the realm of fantasy.

He did not press her. He didn’t really care and was far more interested in learning how to play bass. To his question, she mentioned playing the instrument backward and then called his hands a bitch. It was a new insult, and Darren had heard and uttered his fair share of those in his sixteen years of existence. If anything, people tended to call his hands brutish and violent from the numerous bruises and overabundance of callus tissue on the knuckles, but not bitches. Darren cherished this reputation and defended it vehemently.

“Hey, my hands are not little bitches. Bet you can’t catch em,” he bragged and demonstrated by punching a random spot of empty air. It felt a little stupid. “But I guess they ain’t worth shit when it comes to playin' bass. Yet,” he quickly added.

Nonetheless, she seemed interested in helping him and Darren was interested in having her help him. She leaned over to check his hand position. Darren didn’t mind her leaning over to check his hand position at all. He had some sort of notion of the fact that she was sorta going out with Maxi, but even the full assurance of that fact wouldn’t have stopped the delinquent from mirin’ what could be mired when stealing a quick glance.

“I put it like this,” he showed her, grabbing the thing tightly with his thumb resting on top of the frets. “Do I just need to start to lift with my fingers?” he added in a tone that rested perfectly in the sweet spot where it sounded like another one of dumb questions just as much as it sounded like another one of his dumb jokes. With the amount of both he was getting out a minute, both were reasonable assumptions.

“One day, I’ll show you what these bitch hands can do,” he said in a tone that masterfully rested at the crossroads of menace, sexual innuendo and casual conversation.

For all his shit-talking, Darren’s brain was hard at work analyzing the person he was talking too. It was a naturally multi-tasking brain, and the people analysis department was working twenty-four hours a day, all week, all year.

The people analysis department got good compensation and vacation time ever since the Committee of Darren’s Brain took power a while ago. They tried to shut it down, but they realized that it couldn’t be shut down. Darren was stuck analyzing everyone he met all the time, as a result.

This one was a toughie. It was the type that seldom expressed things with their faces and bodies, and given that a good deal of communication was non-verbal, it made for a challenge. They only had words to work with. ‘Leviathan’ seemed intent on discrediting the hard work of his callused hands and to be the cloud-headed artistic type at first glance.

Nonetheless, Darren understood perfectly what she was talking about, or at least assumed that his interpretation of what she was talking about was the correct one.

“No, no, you gotta feel the rock n’ roll in your soul when you play, you can’t just play with your fingers, you have to play with your whole body. No, no; I know all that. It’s like fighting,” he started, and wouldn’t shut up for a while. “You gotta feel the rhythm of the punches with your body, it’s true what they say, it’s like a dance,” he philosophed with a lot of hand gestures.

“I’m tryna apply the same logic to music, I heard it was the good thing to do, that all the greats did it. I ain't like to overthink shit, I just do. It’s funnier and better, and you learn faster,” he nodded.

“It just so happens that I ain't seem to be playin’ just right yet. I mean, I guess it takes time, but I figure it goes better with some help. That’s why I set up the flyers n’ shit, but that’s not the only reason.” He had a beaming smile and a look of vastly unearned confidence on his face. “And I’m makin’ a band! I know a chick who plays guitar, bit of a punk but she has the right attitude. She's cool. You said you played some other shit? What else you play?”

In great contrast to Levi, Darren’s word box opened and closed constantly, filling the conversation with a constant stream of idiocies mixed with semi-legitimate thoughts, following in the footsteps of the great oral shitposters. A fellow rock n’ roll enthusiast could wonder why such an excitable guy picked the subdued role of a bassist instead of the screaming electrified notes of a lead guitarist.

Under all the bluster, in the same building as the people’s analysis department and working closely with them and all the other analysis departments in the building, the headquarters of Darren’s reasoning long ago decided that no one wanted to be the bassist and that if he wanted a school band, he was gonna have to take on the burden. He consoled himself with his plan to invoke the Sting Clause and claim a mic. Singing was something else in which he compensated his utter lack of ability with boundless fervor and passion.

Hello hello! I'll be grading your thread today! I'm still learning so I apologize if I make any mistakes! Taking the post count and word count of each member into account and the content of each post, this is what I determined the reward to be:

Levi: 7 EXP

Darren: 12 EXP

Sad to see this is a dead thread but please enjoy your EXP!