The brats are born

Girls' Life, August-Sept, 2003 by Gabe Guarente

I wasn't sure if the list was finished, but I thought I should frame it anyway. The Brats were formed the day after my friend Jackie and I drafted the list. The only equipment we had were a used amp, a Stratocaster on loan from my brother, a beat-up bass found in somebody's basement and a bottom-of-the-line drum kit I paid for by working at the movie theater. After four months of practice sessions, we were ready for our first gig: our school's senior picnic. A frame seemed like a way to celebrate. Too bad framing stuff's not punk.

Jackie's our lead vocalist. I get jealous of her because she's physically more mature--tall and curvy. She has moved swiftly through the ranks of cup sizes, while I'm stuck at double A. We've been friends since fourth grade, but once we hit high school, we started getting on each other's nerves. Music is one of the few things we still see eye to eye on... for the most part.

Our bassist Gretchen Rice is my coworker... and a bassist in theory only, since she never even owned a bass before. She's a big girl with calm, droopy eyes and a mouth that snarls. I like her because she makes sarcastic comments about the theater manager and hooks me up with free popcorn.

Our lead guitarist Weyant Meyers rounds out the lineup. He plays sloppy power chords and bobs his head to our songs. Mostly, he just sits around during practice planning out his next tattoo (he has a dark blue lizard climbing up a pectoral muscle and an ornate black crucifix on his left arm). He picked up the guitar half out of boredom and half because he wanted to pick up Jackie. They went out a few times but never really made it to boyfriend-girlfriend status.

And then there's me, lost among the stacked clutter of snares, cymbals and a kick drum. I wear my slick black hair in an elastic band threaded with red dice charms. I hide my acne behind layers of makeup--admittedly, not punk. I'm supposed to wear my pimples proudly in the face of conformist clean pores.

My name is Helen, but I spell it "Hell'N." I know it's cheesy, but I'm big on apostrophes. In fact, punctuation is the very thing I fought with Jackie about two nights before the picnic. "Let's go with 'Spoil-apostrophe--D,' and spell 'Brats' with two t's and a capital Z--it'll be cool," I told her.

"That's just stupid," Jackie said in a cold, self-righteous tone. "People won't even know how to pronounce it."

"You're stupid," I whined, resorting to a fourth-grade defense mechanism.

"OK, I'm stupid. Whatever. But we're going with 'Spoiled Brats' without the lame apostrophe and spelling."

"You always have to get your way, don't you?" My words filtered through clenched teeth. The pressure of playing in public had mounted over the last few weeks, and her criticism was getting to me. According to her, I played too fast, too loud--she couldn't hear herself sing.

"Yeah, I always get my way," she sniffed. "Like when you tore up those flyers I spent days putting together."

"You couldn't see my face!" I screamed. Those were the worst flyers I ever saw. She photocopied some random photo of us all eating Chinese food out of cartons during practice and then typed out "Be a Brat" in a boring font.

"Oh, please. Who wants to see your ugly face anyway?" said Jackie, flashing a slight just-kidding smirk that failed to soften her harsh words.

"Real nice, Jerkie," I spat, clutching my drumsticks tightly.

"We're a band. So who cares about people's faces? We're supposed to be, like, one whole...whole." She stammered, shook her head and sighed as if to say, "Stop being a baby."

"Yeah, well if we're 'one whole whole,' then why are you going around telling Dave Dunbar in social studies class that you're the leader of the group?" I was prepared to grill her good.

"I totally didn't say that," she said, defensively. "I was like, 'Some ideas are mine,' but I didn't say I was the leader. What are you, a spy or something?"

I laughed in disbelief: "You're a liar."

"Hey, at least I'm actually talking to people about us. Maybe if you weren't such a freak and would spread the word, we could build a buzz about the Brats--one t and no capital Z!"

"Bite me, Jacks."

"You guys," Gretchen pleaded, her patience sputtering. She hated watching us fight, but never took sides and could only muster up a whimper for a truce.

"Can't we just play?" asked Weyant, staring at his tattoos.

"Fine with me," I hissed. Weyant strummed the opening bars to our one original song "Toilet Paper the Trees." I came in hard on a downbeat, picking up the tempo so that Jackie was completely thrown off and couldn't find her cue. Frustrated, she shot me a cold look and sang a song she made up on the spot: Helen's a loser/And ugly as lies/Dressed like a poser/She scares away guys...

I beat louder to drown out her awful wails, imagining the kick drum was her stomach and the snare her head. We continued like that for a couple minutes--me banging away with absolutely no regard for time signature, her belting out off-key insults. Finally, Weyant and Gretchen chimed in.