“83” by John Mayer, Saturday, September 11, 2021
MOST OF MY MEMORIES HAVE ESCAPED ME OR CONFUSED THEMSELVES WITH DREAMS. "Overrated," Jess said, switching the station from MTV2 to VH1, "That's the only word I will give any thought to giving this song." She was describing John Mayer's first hit, "No Such Thing." "That lazy voice. It's like he puts no effort into any aspect of his life." "Well, the song is kinda boring. Like a less-inspired James Taylor, and that's kind of hard to do." Allan said, though thinking that his sister's criticism was a little harsh. He had a kind of handsome charm, maybe a role model of sorts that maybe one day Allan could have a boring video on MTV with a song about high school life, or the lack there of. Often when Allan was at Nick's house, Room for Squares was playing on the stereo. Nick didn't like it as much as Jill, Nick's mother liked the album. "Isn't he wonderful," Jill would say, holding a half-empty wine glass after getting off from work. She said it like a girl, awestruck by a crush. "He's not half bad," Clay, her boyfriend would agree. "Someday he might make a fine musician." Nick's older brother, too, would play the album whenever he was around. When Allan mentioned to Nick once that he was on the fence about John Mayer's music, Nick snapped, "You're just jealous because he's famous and you're not." "Maybe," Allan said pensively, more to himself. To be fair, Nick would say this for artists he himself didn't care for: Britney Spears, Celine Dion, 'NSync all got his devil's advocacy. Allan's dream of one day being on MTV2, of making music videos, of writing songs that he believed in, of being on a movie soundtrack, of having a high-profile romance with Nelly Furtado--or someone more age appropriate singer when he actually got famous (Nick would date Michelle Branch) could have been brought to fruition with Nick.
HERE I STAND, 6 FEET SMALL. For about a year and a half, Nick and Allan were inseparable. Around them their friend group was made. When they went on Pathfinder camping trips, the youth group the Seventh-day Adventist church had that was a carbon copy of Boy/Girl Scouts, Nick and Allan bunked together away from the weird kids, the ones who were too religious or too annoying. It was a friendship that Allan's mother wasn't thrilled with. In the seventh grade, word had got around in the church and church school that Nick had unwittingly charged his mother's credit card hundreds of dollars on an Eastern European porn site. It was for that reason Allan was never allowed to spend the night at Nick's house. "You go over there and play music, but you know better than to be looking around on his computer. You know our family values," his mother would remind Allan from time to time. And music was mostly what the friendship was based around. Allan wanted to be the lead guitarist and a backup singer. He was too shy to carry lead singing duties. Nick was more attractive than Allan, anyway. At fourteen, he was already 6 feet tall, corn-silk hair, clearer skin than Allan's, and radiating with confidence even when the note was a little flat, Allan's fourteen year-old brain was sure that Nick was his shot to stardom. When they performed at a school fundraiser the fall of 2001, a song that Nick would later confess was a song actually not about God's long-suffering acceptance of sinners but actually about a fight with his mother, a church member said that Nick was clearly the John Lennon of the group and Allan was a Paul McCarthy. Allan saw that as the greatest compliment of his short musical career up to that point. But Allan should have seen that the band they were building together was never about him. As members clashed with Nick and were asked to leave, Allan would realize all of this was leading up to the times when he would no longer go to Nick's basement to jam.
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