Bronson Gao

高校一年生の時

地下室

うるさい音楽

Getting into local metal was one of the best things to happen to me in high school. I remember getting kicked in the teeth at the first pit I got into. I still had braces then, and my parents were displeased, obviously. The weirdest part was when my dad insisted on coming with. Whenever I got a new interest, he especially felt the need to insert himself into it, analyze it, and declare it valid or not. And my mom wasn’t much better: not about the skateboard, the music, the t-shirts, whatever.

He was wearing a camouflage baseball cap. A sneaker shotguns into my lower lip, and from my peripheral, I dimly make out the sweat stain on his polo and his “That’s what ya get” look. He’d folded his arms and stood leaning against the wall, wiping grass flakes from his pant leg and checking his watch like he was waiting for someone.

これは映画みたいなんです。The kid with the lip ring helped me up and apologized, and I said “No problem” and sat down. Then, I was distinguishing the steel taste of my blood from the rattled wire making it. I look at my dad still standing by the door and say “Fuck him” to myself in my head. Then I look at my hands; they’re empty, trembling a little.

Now I wanna get back in there, and I’m leaving. Nobody really said anything, but it was mutually understood that it was happening. The last thing I saw was half the crowd piled onto the stage, one mass of people grabbing for the mic, trying gargles and death screams. I wondered, but knew, I didn’t get any sympathetic looks as I turned my back and went outside.

After that day, my dad needed a good reason for me to use the car. There needed to be proof that I wasn’t just going out to do whatever the hell I wanted, that I was on the right path in life, that I wouldn’t be “such a fuck-up.” In hindsight, I think either it happened that I got good at lying, or they just gave up trying to make me their “perfect son,” the sequel to what now isn’t, and now can never be.