Robin, Boy Virgin: Original Series

After the final bell rang and Cora left, I lingered in the practice room, hiding out while the Jazz band set up. I played around on the piano, trying to make the music sound weird and avant-garde. If I didn't mess around like that, I got jazz overload.

I'm situated at the back of the Jazz band ensemble. I mean, with the amp and the fact that the bass guitar never gets the credit it deserves, it fits to be back there.

Anyway, also in the back with me is Greg the drummer. He doesn't talk to me. He only talks to his friends Kip and Terence, who play saxophones. They have undemocratically decided that they will be the popular ones in Jazz band. Yeah whatever, right?

And the other person who's in the back is Minnie Kwok. She plays the double bass, you know, the big, upright one that looks like a cello? Anyway, there are two things I feel I should say about Minnie:

1.) She's a dedicated musician and I like that. She's uncommonly serious about her instrument.

2.) She also, for some inexplicable reason, always talks to me. Like a comment or two every single time we cross paths. And they never really make sense and she never cares that I don't respond. I think that she thinks I need to hear another human voice. Like, she thinks I'm severely devoid of social skills and need the practice or a just a very lonely, complete social pariah.

I'm hoping that she thinks it's the latter.

That day she said this to me:

"That new girl's locker is down the hall from mine."

and

"I don't think she actually stole a car. That's illegal."

When Jazz band was finally over, I stuck my iPod ear-buds in my ears and steeled myself for dinner at home. I listened to Radiohead way too loud, damaging my hearing like an idiot and enjoying it.

I opened the front door and was hit with the smell of onions. My dad, Glenn, stuck his head into the front hall from the kitchen.

"Hey kid. How's it going?" he asked.

"Uhhhh," I mumbled, lost for words. Should I lie? Should I tell the truth? Did I have the energy to say anything at all?

"Linda's here. She brought over The Sound of Music. Come watch!" My dad's euphoria with breaking his old marital bonds and sleeping with someone new was just... too annoying to bear at times. Especially when I was in such an un-Sound of Music mood.

"Um, no."

"Oh come on. You love musicals," dad said.

"Look, school kind of kicked the crap out of me today so I'm just gonna go to my room," I confessed, rolling my eyes to the ceiling.

"Well... okay, kiddo. Turn down your music ok? You'll go deaf by the time you're twenty."

I turned down my iPod a couple of decibels and went up to my room. I lay down on my bed and looked up at the Pink Floyd prism. I listened to "How to Disappear Completely": a deliciously depressing song, I highly recommend it. Even though Radiohead was crying loudly in my ears, I could still hear Julie Andrews singing her scrappy little heart out downstairs.

At around five thirty, after I'd exhausted my Radiohead albums and had moved on to Placebo, dad called me down for dinner.

Okay, here are some more reasons why I preferred it when my mom and dad were together:

1.) I knew exactly what was expected of me in the household with my parents at any given moment. There were no surprise activities together, no forced socializing, and no having to pretend like I was more polite or interested in their lives than I actually was. With the girlfriend, Linda, I didn't always know how I was supposed to, you know, "be" around her.

2.) When we did all live together, my parents almost never made me eat with them and let me eat in my room. They mostly just watched TV while they ate.

3.) On the rare occasion that we did all eat together, very little conversation was focused on me at the dinner table. Mostly my parents just bickered with each other.

Even after my parents split up, my dad let me eat in my room. Sometimes we eat dinner and watch TV together. But again, the primary activity there is watching TV, not talking.

The introduction of the new squeeze has brought an onslaught of unwanted social conventions. One of them being we eat dinner together at the table and Linda talks to both my dad AND me.

"So Robin? How was school?" Linda asked me while we poked at the subpar stir fry. This seems like a fantastic, acceptable question to ask a student, but it really isn't. I mean, if I told the truth I'd just get more concerned questions and if I lied... well okay let's try that.

"Uh, okat," I lied. That was easy.

"How's Music Composition going?" she asked me.

I was preoccupied with drowning my meal in soy sauce, adding some flavour to the mix. Glenn and Linda were silent while I made the ocean of salty condiment. I looked up when I felt them starting at me.

"What?" I asked Linda, feeling myself turn red.

"How is your Music Composition class going?" she reiterated.

"Um okay. Just, killing time until the new software comes," I mumbled.

"Write anything new lately?" dad asked.

"Uh... no," I partly lied.

"What about that one I always hear you playing in your room?" he asked, swishing the juice around in his glass in big swirls.

"Dad," I protested automatically. For some reason, his hearing what goes on in his house was an invasion of my privacy.

"I'd love to hear it," Linda spoke up.

I looked from my dad to Linda and then down at the soy sauced stir fry. I've suffered worse humiliation, it's true, but I think I've filled my quota for the year.

"It's, uh, not done," I muttered.

"Artists," dad commented to Linda. She giggled at his wit and he grinned. I exhaled a quiet huff of breath. Am I an artist? I feel like a lousy faker is what I feel like I actually am.

After dinner, I escaped upstairs. I took a super fast shower and then lay down on my bed. I watched Family Guy episodes online until nearly midnight and felt much better for the distraction. I turned off my laptop, exhausted after the day and watching, like, ten episodes of the cartoon. I turned out my light and fell asleep immediately.