Nick Hornby - Not a Star and Otherwise Pandemonium: Stories

Mom always sings this crappy old song when Im in a bad mood. She does it to make me laugh, but I never do laugh, because Im in a bad mood. (Sometimes I sort of smile later, when Im in a better mood, and I think about her singing and dancing and making the dorky black-and-white movie faceeyes wide, all her teeth showingshe always makes when she sings the song. But I never tell her she makes me smile. It would only encourage her to sing more often.) This song is called Ac-cent-chu-ate the Positive, and I have to listen to it whenever she tells me were going to Dayton to see Grandma, or when she wont give me the money for something I need, like CDs or even clothes, for Christs sake. Anyway, today Im going to do what the song says. Im going to accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative. Otherwise, according to the song and to my mom, pandemonium is liable to walk upon the scene.

OK. Well, here is the accentuated positive: I got to have sex. Thats the upside of it. I know thats probably a strange way of looking at things, considering the circumstances, but its definitely the major event of the week so far. It wont be the major event of the year, I know thatJesus, do I know thatbut its still a headline news item: I just turned fifteen, and Im no longer a virgin. How cool is that? The target Id set for myself was sixteen, which means Im a whole year ahead of schedule. Nearly two years, in fact, because Ill still be sixteen in twenty-two months time. So lets say this is the story of how I ended up getting laida story with a beginning, and a weird middle, and a happy ending. Otherwise Id have to tell you a Stephen King-type story, with a beginning and a weird middle and a really fucking scary ending, and I dont want to do that. It wouldnt help me right now.

So. You probably think you need to know who I am, and what kind of car my brother drives, and all that Holden Caulfield kind of crap, but you really dont, and not just because I havent got a brother, or even a cute little sister. Its not one of those stories. Insights into my personality and all that stuff arent going to help you or me one bit, because this shit is real. I dont want you to get to the end of this and start thinking about whether Id have acted different if my parents had stayed together, or whether Im a typical product of our times, or what I tell you about being fifteen, or any of those other questions we have to discuss when we read a story in school. Its not the point. All you need to know is where I got the video recorder from, and maybe, I suppose, why I got it, so Ill tell you.

I found it a couple blocks from my house, in this store that sells used electronic stuff. It cost fifty bucks, which seemed pretty good to me, although now it doesnt seem like such a great bargain, but thats another story. Or rather, its this story, but a different part of it. And I bought it becauseOK, so maybe I will have to give you a little background, but I wont make it into a big drama. Ill just give you the facts. My mom and I moved from L.A. to Berkeley about three months ago. We moved because Mom finally walked out on my asshole of a father, who writes movies for a livingalthough as none of them ever got made, it would be more accurate to say that he writes scripts for a living. Mom is an art teacher, and she paints her own stuff, too, and she says there are millions of people in Berkeley with an artistic bend or whatever, so she thought wed feel right at home here. (I like it that she says we. I havent got an artistic bone in my whole body, and she knows that, but for some reason she thinks I take after her. It was pretty much always me and her against him, so that became me and her against L.A., and because I was against L.A., that somehow made me able to paint. I dont mind. Paintings pretty cool, some of it.)

Berkeleys nice, I guess, but I didnt have any friends here, so Mom made me join this dumb jazz orchestra thing. Id just started to take trumpet lessons in L.A., and I didnt suck too bad; a couple months after we moved, she saw an ad in a local bookstore for something called the Little Berkeley Big Band, which is like for people under the age of seventeen, and she signed me up. She had to sing the Ac-cent-chu-ate song a lot in the car the first evening I went to a rehearsal, because Id be the first to admit that I wasnt feeling very positive. But it was OK, not that Id ever admit that to her. You can make a pretty fucking great noise when youre part of a horn section. I cant say Im going to make any friends, though. The kind of people who want to play in the Little Berkeley Big Bandwell, lets just say that theyre not my kind of people. Apart from Martha, but Ill tell you about her later. (And now youll probably have guessed some of the ending, but I dont care, because you only know her name, and not how we ended up having sex. How we ended up having sex is the interesting part.) All you need to know about Martha: a) Shes hot; b) but hot in a not-slutty way. In other words, if you saw her, you would never guess in a million years that Id persuade her to sleep with me. (Hopefully that has made you very curiousMan, how the fuck did he get to sleep with her?which means youll be more interested in the happy ending, rather than the weird middle, which means I dont have to take the Stephen King route.)

But my argument for the video recorder was this: not only was I not making friends at the band rehearsals, but the rehearsals were actually stopping me from making friends. Heres how that works: I go to rehearsals. We dont have a VCR. (We left ours in L.A. with Dad, and for some insane reason Mom didnt want to buy a replacement right away, I guess because we were supposed to read books and paint and play trumpets every night, like we were living in the Little House on the Prairie or something.) I cant tape the NBA playoffs. I cant talk about the games next day. Everyone thinks Im a dweeb. Obvious, right? Not to her. I had to threaten to go back and live with Dad before she gave in, and even then she more or less told me I had to find the cheapest, crappiest machine in the Bay Area.