Weapons (no, not like that) 1/4
A
The whir of brushes on the skin and its circular motion transfixes me. This is my save point.
I am 17 and my hair is too long. It sits, mostly straight, mostly brown, and reaches my mid back, getting caught in my coats and in my glasses. The music building, named D, is the only one not connected to the rest of the CEGEP. We must walk in the blizzards and in the rain then, soaking ourselves and our instrument cases. I heard a rumor once that there used to be an underground passageway connecting the gymnasium to this pavilion, but they shut it down in the 90s after too many women were assaulted in its dim corridors. My teacher sits in front of me, lulled to sleep by the brushes as well. The lights are off and the gray sky does a poor job at illuminating the drum room. He is my only friend here.
In my second lesson with him I express my concern about the language barrier here, how I feel stupid when really, I swear, I am smart and well spoken. He tells me he felt the same when he went to an English university and so he tells me our lessons will be in English, and it will be our secret. He becomes the only person here who really knows me then, who really hears me speak. He is nice to me, to the point that he doesn’t seem angry or even disappointed when I so clearly did not even look at my homework. He lets me off the hook easily and so I do not feel pressure to excel at all. I do not understand how the practice rooms work so I barely try to book any. I walk through the basement corridors and peek through the narrow windows at the older drummers. I gasp in awe at what they sound like: so much better than I ever even wanted to be.
In my rehearsals my bandmates are all closer with each other than they are with me. They say words I only kind of understand, and when they try to form bonds with me I shy away, like a stray cat. When I play, the teacher always tells me to give more, be more, take up more space. I cannot, I want to say, I can barely speak with my mouth.
Let this be your words then, I muse to myself.
But it doesn't work, and I drag the tempo, play the wrong hits, and my bandmates look at each other briefly. I do not understand what this look means yet, but I feel its impact nonetheless.
I try to disappear into the crowds but I am inherently begging for attention by existing. A female drummer is hard to come by in these parts, and as I say “je joue la batterie”, accented, I hear faint whispers in the back. The Etiennes and the Maximes are making comments, staring proudly at this feat of nature. I am so embarrassed all the time here. I cannot fathom staying in these halls longer than absolutely necessary. I am failing gym class. I am failing philosophy. I am failing myself in every way.
I feel different here. I am watched for being a woman, heard for biting my tongue, clunky, like a puppy with its paws too big. My piano teacher has known me for 4 months, and he asks me:
“You’re a singer right?”.
My ensemble instructor is a bulky bald man with square glasses who speaks perfect quebecois. The way he accents and draws out certain words is beautiful, like he is singing all the time. When he watches my band rehearse, he only criticizes me. It is so obvious that even my bandmates start pointing out the injustice. Surely it is not only me. I can not be the only issue. I’m not that bad of a drummer, right? I shake nervously after class and try to get home as fast as possible. Still, I believe I love it here. Sometimes love just feels wrong.
When I leave my jazz improvisation class that I barely understood, a boy from my class gets in the same metro car as me. He is attractive and I blush when he is around. I know him from camp. We met there months ago and we even spoke once or twice, but for some reason, we have not spoken since discovering each other at school, in the same program, in the same class. We have not addressed that we went to the same camp. We do not address that we know each other at all. We don’t even smile or wave. It is so awkward I want my blood to bubble over and boil out of my skin like an unwatched pot of water.
He sits next to me in the metro without realizing. He meets my eyes and I instinctively look away and I've sealed my fate. We avoid each other's eyes silently on the train for half an hour. I want to die! Why can I not speak? Even worse, why won't he speak to me? I blame myself for being shy, but I blame others more for not attempting to make contact. I am resentful of these people. I am resentful of this boy with long blonde hair for being as awkward as I, as stubborn and as stupid.
When I get up to leave (thank god he is not leaving at the same station) I decide to smile at him. But he looks away, anything else but her please, and I realize that the door to leave is actually on the other side and now I look even more stupid.
When I see him a year later, after the Great Pause, he has shaved his blonde hair and I cannot see if he smiles back at me through his mask.