(In 2011-12, I wrote a 60,000-word novel called Teacher of the Year<\/i>. I was unable to land an agent and didn’t want to publish it myself so it’s been locked away since then. The book now seems dated in places, but does contain a few chapters that still interest me. The one below, \u201cRockitude!\u201d is practically memoir. The dialogue is almost verbatim. I’ll never forget this character. One day I hope I can get his rock-and-roll story out and also the story of how I saved a school district from a multi-million dollar lawsuit because I had this student join my band for one song at an open mic event and it changed his life. It should be a film. Maybe it will be one day.)<\/p>\n
Rockitude<\/i><\/p>\n
Right after second period, as the class exited, one of Love\u2019s students lagged behind. \u201cHey Mr. Love, how are you going to celebrate the end of the school year later today? Some kind of ritual, right? Going to collect some limpets?\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Jay, an emaciated junior with stringy brown hair to his shoulders. He wore the same clothes and sweat bands every day. He practiced guitar in Love\u2019s room during lunch since the beginning of the year, but still couldn\u2019t play anything, including the famous opening riff from \u201cSmoke on the Water.\u201d Love had tutored him repeatedly but Jay\u2019s hands trembled so much from multiple prescription drugs that he couldn\u2019t finger the notes.<\/p>\n
That never seemed to frustrate Jay. Nothing did. Ninety seconds after the noon bell rang, Monday through Friday, he would blow into Love\u2019s classroom clutching two energy drinks and a maple bar. He would swallow the maple bar whole, drain one of the energy drinks, crush the can, then repair to a far corner of the room, and enact his routine: strumming away at chords of his own invention on a $100, never-in-tune Gibson knockoff, wind milling like Pete Townsend, kicking out like Keith Richards, hop stepping like Angus Young, and sometimes even plugging into his $25 practice amp that worked half the time.<\/p>\n
At 12:35 the bell would ring, Jay would pack up his gear, drain the second energy drink, crush the can, then rush off to the next class he was failing, but not before thanking Love for letting him practice. On his way out the door he would pump both fists in the air, give the hang loose, hook em\u2019 Horns, and peace sign gestures in rapid succession, and then scream like Roger Daltrey at the end of \u201cWon\u2019t Get Fooled Again,\u201d \u201cRockitude baaaaaaaaaaaaby!!\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Jay\u2019s signature phrase and summed up everything joyful and aspirational about him.<\/p>\n
For some reason, Love took lengthy notes on this boy and some of the things he said, such as, \u201cHey Mr. Love, my first hit is going to be named exactly the same as my first album and my first band.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike Bad Company.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTrue rockers know everything about rock. It\u2019s their calling. But I guess you wouldn\u2019t know that Mr. Love, not being a true rocker!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRock is dead. Why do you go on? Give it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRock will never die! Not as long as I personify it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay couldn\u2019t have possibly known the word personify<\/i> or heard anything by Bad Company, but he did, and had.<\/p>\n
Love implored his students to perform non clich\u00e9d rituals after significant rites of passage, which meant not getting drunk or vandalizing property. In fact, he often required rituals as part of a writing assignment and they frequently involved the beach, bonfires, building forts, intermittently drinking cranberry juice from a cow\u2019s skull while reciting poetry, taking a ten-mile hike into the woods and bathing in a stream, remaining silent near a river for an hour, or stripping naked and running into the ocean.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m not collecting limpets today. The tide\u2019s wrong. I\u2019m going to a clearcut with the dogs,\u201d said Love.<\/p>\n
Jay looked unimpressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing. I have to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cQuit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love to but I have to pay for my car and a new guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGet rid of your car. You don\u2019t need a new guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, right! Wha\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay almost uttered the obligatory \u201cwhatever\u201d but refrained. He knew it was Mr. Love\u2019s most despised word in the English language and always precipitated a rant about the insidious indifference of the word.<\/p>\n
Love smiled at Jay\u2019s instant self-edit, they said goodbye, fist bumped, and the boy vanished into a stream of clustered bodies in the hall. All Jay ever wanted was to belong in a rock band. Throughout the year he had compiled a list of names for bands he claimed to have started or would soon start, and he would pitch them to Love for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cServants of the Kelp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToo coastal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOvaries of Steel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll never get a chick.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cConjoined Mermaids.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d see that band. Are they hot?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cScabrous Dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI like dogs. Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeahorse Tinctures.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not impotent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSquirrels of Angst.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat can you possibly know about angst?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlps on the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToo indie.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStereo Snake.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGlam is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSlanderous Vitriol.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one will get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaves of Ass.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWatch it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gonads of Muhammad Ali.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you insane?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLonely Fishermen at Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to get beat up?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing the Apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds like a video game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSlices of Stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWake me up after they play.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGravy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVegans will loathe you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho Sued the Pope?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds like an album title.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHuddled Monsters of Love.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve read D.H. Lawrence?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Lying Thighs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cField Trip Runaways.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll never headline.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChronstitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of dig it. Sort of political.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the year, Jay had something close to 300 band names neatly listed in his spiral notebook. He had drawn up many elaborate logos for them too.<\/p>\n
Love would have paid him $50 bucks to own the notebook. He would have paid $50 bucks a kid to help Jay form a band.<\/p>\n
And that’s exactly what Love did, under the table of course. One gig. That was it. And then a tsunami hit Oregon and the gig was canceled and Jay came into the classroom and said, \u201cMr. Love, I am cursed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d said Mr. Love. \u201cYou are blessed.\u201d The rock gods simply don’t want you to play because if you do, you will kill rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay laughed. He had the best laugh.<\/p>\n\n
(In 2011-12, I wrote a 60,000-word novel called Teacher of the Year. I was unable to land an agent and didn’t want to publish it myself so it’s been locked away since then. The book now seems dated in places, but does contain a few chapters that still interest me. The one below, \u201cRockitude!\u201d is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-4113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-matt-love","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4116,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions\/4116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}