Chapter 7: The Birth of a Monster

Warwick, Rhode Island

January 3, 1995

Jim and Marcie Scanlon lived in a thirty-year-old single-story tract home in the suburban city of Warwick, Rhode Island, just south of the city of Providence. They had purchased the house six years before, just after the birth of Meghan, their oldest child. It was a four bedroom, seventeen hundred square foot structure that sat on a non-premium lot and it had cost them one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars, which, of course, they had to take out a mortgage to cover. At seven and a half percent interest on their thirty-year fixed rate, their mortgage payments were $1157 per month. With a combined family income of only sixty-nine thousand a year, two growing children, a car payment, the normal utility bills, and nearly twelve thousand dollars in high interest credit card debt, the Scanlons struggled constantly just to live paycheck to paycheck. They had very little savings to their name—certainly nowhere near the ‘three months living expenses’ the so-called financial experts recommended that every American working family maintain perpetually—and any unexpected expense like a car repair, an appliance failure, or a medical bill, usually sent them into a months-long spiral of late bills and phone calls from creditors.

However, on this cold New England winter morning—the first day back to school after the Christmas break—as Jim and Marcie awoke to the alarm clock at 6:00 AM and pulled themselves out of bed, their crappy credit score, the fact that their checking and savings accounts combined had only ninety-six dollars total, and the fact that they were already ten days late on the electric bill and still a week from the next payday were the furthest thing from either of their minds. Today was the day they had been anticipating for months. According to Jake Kingsley, who had called them last week with the happy news, the local alternative rock station, WKRO, would be debuting Together, the first Brainwash song from their self-titled debut album, sometime during the early morning commute hours. They would then play it at least once every two hours throughout the rest of the day. And that was just the Providence alternative rock station. The two hard rocks would be playing the song as well. And that was just Providence. Stations from Boston, Portland, Montpelier, Hartford, even New York and Philadelphia would be debuting the tune today as well. It was go-time. Time to see if the experiment was valid.

“Turn on the radio,” Marcie told her husband as she yawned and stretched. Her long brunette hair was mussed up from sleep and she was dressed only in a pajama top because Jim had pulled off the bottoms and her panties the night before so he could access her nether regions for a nice, sedate round of marital sex.

Jim, who was completely naked and still smelling strongly of his wife’s sexual musk, scratched at his balls for a second and then farted. “Jake said the song won’t be on until at least 6:30.”

“I don’t care,” Marcie said, walking over to the toilet in the attached bath area and sitting down on it. “People are wrong sometimes.”

“He seemed pretty sure about that,” Jim said, opening a drawer on the dresser and pulling out a clean pair of underwear.

“Just turn the goddamn radio on,” Marcie ordered as she began to pee.

“All right,” Jim said with a sigh. “Since you gave it up last night, I’ll be nice to you.”

“That is the deal,” Marcie told him with a smile.

Marcie finished up her business and then turned on the shower so it could warm up. Since the master bathroom shower tap was as far as it was possible to be from the hot water heater in the garage, she had time to brush her teeth before the water was warm enough for her to step in.

The Collective Soul song, Shine, was playing as she soaped herself up and as Jim shaved and brushed his teeth. As she stepped out of the shower to blow dry her hair and start getting dressed, Jim stepped in to start his own shower. Shine gave way to Stay, by Lisa Loeb. This was followed by a long series of commercials that played until Jim was out of the shower and fully dressed in a pair of slacks and a button-up long-sleeved shirt—his standard high school English teacher uniform.

By the time 6:30 AM rolled around, the official beginning of the commute hour for radio programming purposes, both Jim and Marcie were downstairs, eating breakfast and drinking coffee. Since they had only ninety-seven dollars to their names until payday, and since the cereal in the pantry and the milk in the refrigerator was earmarked for Meghan and Alex, their breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs with hot dogs cut up into them and a dusting of cheddar cheese on top. As they ate, they continued to listen to WKRO on the kitchen radio. Another set of songs rolled by without any of them being Together. Another set of commercials started. The clock ticked onward toward 7:00 AM, when Meghan, who had a longer commute, would need to hit the road and Margaret Scanlon, Jim’s mother, would arrive to take charge of the children.

Jim made the two of them lunch sandwiches from generic wheat bread, Walmart pre-packaged lunch meat, and individually wrapped slices of Walmart brand American cheese. He wrapped the sandwiches in generic Saran wrap and then packed them into their lunch bags along with reusable ice packs and a single serving bag of potato chips pulled from a huge bag of such in the pantry.

“Thanks, hon,” Marcie told him as he dropped her lunch bag on the shelf next to her car keys and purse.

“No problem,” he said. “When we go big shopping on Friday, let’s get some better lunch meat, huh?” Though they did not get paid until Tuesday, they could go shopping at Walmart on Friday afternoon and write a check for the groceries with the knowledge the check would not clear until usually the following Wednesday or Thursday. The Friday-before-payday shopping trips were a bimonthly ritual for the Scanlons.

“You mean the stuff from the actual deli?” Marcie asked doubtfully. “You know it’s a lot more expensive.”

“True,” Jim agreed.

“And it doesn’t last until the next shopping trip. You can only keep deli meat in the fridge for a week, tops, before it starts to go bad.”

“Again, true,” Jim said. “Let’s get a pound of it anyway.”

“Live a little?” she asked with a smile.

“Exactly,” Jim said. “Life is too short for crappy lunchmeat.”

Marcie smiled at him. “I always knew we’d be high-class someday.”

On the radio, the latest set of commercials ended and the morning DJ, who called himself Justin Case, made the announcement they had been waiting for.

“New music here on the Crow to get your morning drive rolling along,” Case told the audience. “At least it’s new music for the rest of the world. Here in the Prov, however, lots of you out there might already be familiar with this group. They’re called Brainwash and they’re a group of teachers who work for the Providence Public School District and have been laying down the tunes at the local clubs in New England for the better part of ten years now. Well, they finally got themselves a record deal and this is their debut song from their first CD, which I’m told will be released on January 23. The CD is just called Brainwash, and the tune is called Together. And remember, you heard it first here on WKRO, the Crow.”

“This is it!” Marcie said excitedly.

“Shh,” Jim hushed her. “It’s starting.”

The piano and Marcie’s vocals started simultaneously, laying down the intro to the tune. She marveled at the sound of her own voice coming out of the radio speakers, her emotions a mixture of pride and awe. And then the tempo picked up as Jim and Steph’s guitars started to play. The drums and the bass began to pound. And then Jim’s voice issued out as well, belting out his part of the chorus. The song was so familiar to them, yet it was almost as if they were hearing it for the first time.

“It’s really true,” Marcie whispered when the tune ended and the next one—I’m the Only One by Melissa Etheridge—began to play.

“What’s really true?” asked Jim, who was still basking in the awe of hearing himself on the radio.

“They really are going to release a CD of us,” she said. “They really are going to play us on the radio.”

“You didn’t think that was true?” Jim asked. “After the three months we spent recording that CD?”

“Well ... most of me knew it was true, but there was a part of me that thought this was all just ... you know ... a pipe dream. That something would happen that would keep them from releasing it, or that this was all some kind of a scam. But now ... now I know it’s real. I’ve heard us on the radio! That really happened, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it really happened,” he said.

The doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of Jim’s mother, who, though she had been coming over on school mornings for years and had her own key, absolutely refused to just enter the house on her own when she knew Jim and Marcie were there.

“Mom’s here,” Jim said. “You better hit the road or you’ll be late for school.”

“Right,” Marcie said, picking up her purse, lunch bag, and keys. She gave Jim a quick kiss and a quick “I love you.” She started for the living room to let her mother-in-law in while simultaneously letting herself out. She then paused for a moment and looked back at her husband. “When will we start seeing money from this do you think?”

“The first royalty check will be sent out in April,” Jim reminded her. “But Jake said not to get our hopes up too high for that one. We have to pay back the advance money before we start seeing income and debut albums generally don’t start to sell in big numbers until there are two heavy airplay tunes in circulation.”

“But Jake really thinks we’re going to make some money from this?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

“He really does,” Jim assured her. “He thinks that by the tail end of the second quarter we’ll go Gold and be heading toward Platinum.”

She nodded. “I hope Jake is right.”

“Me too,” Jim said.

As it turned out, however, Jake could not have been more wrong.

No one mentioned having heard a song by Brainwash to Jim or Marcie that day, though the tune had been played an even dozen times throughout the day on WKRO and another dozen on the two Providence hard rock stations. Jim himself heard the tune twice on his drive home from work.

The next day, however, after hearing the tune again on his commute in along I-95, two students from Jim’s fourth period English Lit class—Steve Branford and Donny Landis (members of the stoner clique, but intelligent ones who managed at least passing grades) encountered him in the hall as he was heading into the office from the parking lot.

“Yo, Mr. S!” hailed Steve, a grin on his face. “I heard your band on the radio this morning!”

“Did you?” asked Jim, feeling gratitude that someone had been listening.

“Yeah, dude!” Steve said. “It was tight! Was that really you singing?”

“Well,” Jim said, feeling absurdly prideful that this teenage stoner had appreciated the tune, “it was mostly Mrs. Scanlon on the vocals, but yeah, that was me in the choruses.”

“No kidding?” Steve said. “She’s got an awesome voice. And yours ain’t too bad either.”

“Yeah,” agreed Donny. “The tune was badass, Mr. S! Is it true that Ms. Zool was the one laying down the licks?”

“That was her on the lead guitar,” Jim confirmed. “She can shred, can’t she?”

“Who woulda thought?” Steve said.

In the administration office two of his colleagues—Kyle Bremen, who taught History, and Lynda Cole, who taught Biological Sciences—let him know that they had heard the tune played as well.

“Solid alt-rock,” Kyle, who fancied himself a music connoisseur, proclaimed. “Good guitar work from Steph and your wife’s voice is incredible.”

Lynda’s opinion was similar, though she was not as musically inclined. “It had energy and a strong beat,” she told him. “You guys really are talented.”

“We try,” Jim said humbly, feeling good about himself as he retrieved his mail from his cubicle.

It turned out that many of the students had heard Together on the radio that day, and, since Jake had given specific instructions to the music promotors that the band’s name be mentioned with each playing for the first two weeks, and since the student body had long been aware (to the chagrin of the school administrators, the PPSD board members, and the PTA movers and shakers) that Mr. Scanlon the English teacher and Miss Zool the lesbo gym teacher were both members of a rock band named Brainwash, most of them knew Jim was the male singer in the tune and Steph was the guitarist. In every class that day a group of students would make their way to his desk before the bell to tell him they had heard the tune and what they thought about it. Most were very impressed with the tune. No one told him they did not like it. He thanked all of his admirers humbly and then, once the bell rang signaling the start of class, he did his job and taught them the vagaries of the English language. Steph, he heard later, was experiencing much the same phenomenon, as was Marcie at the junior high she taught at, and Jeremy and Rick at the high schools they taught at.

By the next day, with Together airplay picking up in frequency and stretching all throughout the day on four separate Providence stations, pretty much everyone in all five band members’ schools knew about the song and the coming release of the CD. And this led to a bit of unwanted attention.

During period five, the second to last period of the school day, the black phone began to ring in Jim’s classroom. He looked at it in annoyance, as it was interrupting his lecture on the symbolism to be found in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was the phone that communicated with the administration office and was generally used to have a student report to the office for an early dismissal or something of that nature. Usually, the student in question would let him know when an early dismissal was in the works, but no one had claimed a get out of jail free status to him for this class.

“Excuse me for a minute,” he sighed, leaving the lectern and walking over to the ringing device. He picked it up and put it to his ear. “Room 237,” he said.

“Hi, Jim,” said a female voice. “Lynn here.” Lynn was the administration secretary, a woman of indeterminate age who gave the impression she had been sitting behind that desk since the days when Rhode Island had renounced its allegiance to the British Crown. The students (and more than a few of the faculty) called her Broom-Hilda, after the comic book witch, though never to her face.

“Hey, Lynn,” Jim said, carefully keeping the annoyance out of his voice (in truth, he was a little bit afraid of Broom Hilda himself). “What’s up?”

“Jeffery and Anne are requesting a meeting with you today after final period,” she said.

Jeffery Jonas was the principal of the school. Anne Borden was the assistant principal. Jim made a point to avoid dealing with them as much as possible. “They want me to stay after school?” he asked.

“They do,” she confirmed.

“Did they say what this is about?”

“They did not,” she said dryly. “They have requested you meet them in Jeffery’s office immediately after the period six bell.”

“Very well,” Jim said with a sigh. “I’ll be there.”

And he was. He made the walk from room 237 to the admin building while students were still filtering through the halls to the exits. He arrived at the door at the same time as Stephanie Zool. Understanding suddenly filled him.

“Let me guess,” he said to his educational colleague and bandmate, “Jeffrey and Anne requested your presence at a meeting?”

She smiled. “You must be psychic,” she told him.

Broom Hilda, who was wearing a black dress on this day and actually looked like a witch, sent them immediately into the principal’s office upon arrival. The office was modest, with a cheap, district supplied desk with an in and out box and a large blotter on it. Jeffrey Jonas was in his early fifties, balding, and had been the principal of Hope High School for the past fifteen years. He made it clear that he planned to stay in the position until retirement. He tried to project an image of benevolent leader to both the students and the staff, but in actuality, he just hated being seen as a bad guy or making tough decisions. He sat behind the desk in his signature sport jacket and tie, his glasses perched on his nose. Sitting next to him was Anne Bordon, known as the hatchet woman by students and faculty alike. She was in her late thirties and full of ambition to rise to the very top of the PPSD food chain. She was marginally attractive physically, tall and thin with an aristocratic face, but quite unpleasant on a personal level.

“Jim, Stephanie, please, close the door and have a seat,” Jeffery told them with a phony smile that both distrusted immediately. He waved at the two seats that had been set up in front of the desk.

“Sure,” Jim said softly, shutting the door and making sure it latched.

Steph made no move to sit down. “What is this about?” she asked the two bosses.

“We just want to have a little discussion about some recent developments,” Jefferey said.

“A little discussion, huh?” Steph said. “Is this the sort of discussion we should be getting a union representative to sit in on?”

“No, no,” Jefferey said dismissively. “It’s nothing like that. This is just an informal talk about ... well ... about this music thing the two of you are involved in.”

“The music thing, huh?” Steph said. “Haven’t we talked about the music thing enough over the years? We understand. You don’t like that we are in a band and play the sort of music you think is offensive. And there is nothing you can do about it. End of discussion.”

Jeffery opened his mouth to say something, but Anne beat him to it. “It is not the end of the discussion,” she said, “but the beginning. Please sit down, both of you.”

Jim and Steph looked at each other for a moment, passing a look back and forth. They were certainly within their rights to have union representation here—they had invoked that right before—but Steph finally shrugged, seeming to say: “Let’s hear what they have to say.”

They sat down, Steph closer to Anne.

“It has come to our understanding,” Anne said, “that this musical group you two are a part of has recorded an album and they are now playing one of your songs on the radio locally.” She said musical group the way other people said venereal disease.

“That is correct,” Jim said.

“Why did you not inform us in advance that this was going to occur?” Anne asked.

“Uh ... because it’s not really any of your business,” Steph said.

A flash of anger appeared on Anne’s face. “Don’t be impertinent with me, Ms. Zool,” she said. “The fact that two of our instructors are playing rock and roll music on the local radio stations is very much our business.”

“Actually, it’s not,” Jim said. “What we do on our own time, as long as it is legal and does not affect our job duties, is our business and our business alone.”

“This does affect your job duties,” Anne said. “You are creating a large distraction to the educational process in this facility.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “You and the board members and the PTA have been telling us that for years,” she said. “We’ve gone to the wall on this issue more than once. We are not causing a distraction to anyone by playing music.”

“That is where you are wrong,” Anne said. “Things have changed now that your so-called music is being played on the radio.”

“How does that make things different?” Jim asked.

“I would think that would be obvious,” Anne told him. “When you were simply playing in clubs during the summer, the children did not have access to your music. Everywhere you played was a place where you had to be twenty-one to gain admission, correct?”

“Correct,” Jim agreed.

“Now they are playing your songs on the public radio waves,” she said. “On stations that the children of this school listen to. They are now being subjected to the offensive lyrics and radical causes that your group is well-known for.”

“Offensive lyrics and radical causes,” Jim said softly, as if pondering that. He looked back up at Anne. “Have you ever actually listened to one of our tunes?”

“Certainly not!” she said firmly, as if he had asked her if she had ever snorted cocaine from an ass-crack.

“Then how do you know our lyrics are offensive?” Steph asked.

“The type of music you play is well known for being offensive and supporting the left-wing cause,” she said.

“The song they’re playing on the radio right now is called Together,” Jim said. “It’s a song about the sanctity of a long-term relationship between two people, about how you have to face the tough times together so you can enjoy the good times. It is, in fact, a moving and quite touching declaration of love and commitment that my wife wrote for me. How is that offensive?”

“Or left-wing?” added Steph.

“We’re not here to discuss semantics or to interpret song lyrics,” Anne said. “We’re here to talk about how we’re going to deal with the distraction the release of this music of yours is causing to the children of this school.”

“What makes you think there is a distraction?” Jim asked. “All of my classes were pretty much distraction free today, except when my lecture was interrupted by Lynn calling me on the phone to tell me to come to this meeting.”

“My classes all went pretty much normally as well,” Steph said.

“Nevertheless, the distraction exists,” Anne insisted. “I’ve been getting calls all day long from parents, from members of the school board, from prominent members of the PTA, all demanding to know what we’re going to do about this situation.”

“It sounds like the admin and the parents and the PTA are the ones being distracted,” Jim suggested. “Not the students.”

“The children are being distracted as well,” Anne barked. “I’ve been out in those halls today, listening to them. They’re all talking about the song on the radio.”

“But they’re paying attention in the classroom,” Jim said. “At least as much as they normally do.”

“Again, I’m not going to argue semantics with you two,” she said. “The distraction exists because the children are being exposed to your so-called music. We need to do something about this situation.”

Jim and Steph shared another look. Here it comes, the look said.

“And what exactly do you propose we do about it?” Steph enquired.

“We are requesting that the two of you take a voluntary leave of absence for the remainder of this semester,” Anne said.

“A voluntary leave of absence?” Jim said.

“We think that is the best solution to the problem,” Anne said. “That would keep the campus distraction-free until the start of the fall semester in September. By that time, I’m sure your little album will have faded into obscurity and will no longer be able to distract the children in the manner it is now doing.”

Jim felt his anger rising and he fought to keep it down. It was a struggle. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but a voluntary leave of absence would be unpaid, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, naturally,” Anne said. “But surely you will be collecting income from the release of this CD.”

“Not until April at least,” Jim said. “And only if it sells enough to cover the advance money we have already been paid.”

“Oh ... well that is unfortunate,” Anne said, “but I’m afraid we’re still going to have to insist that...”

“Hold the fort here a minute,” Steph interrupted. “I have another question about this voluntary leave of absence.”

“What is that?” Anne asked.

“Thanks to all the previous attempts of you and the board and the PTA to try to get us fired or suspended for being musicians, I’ve gotten to know our collective bargaining agreement pretty well.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Anne asked.

“A voluntary LOA is something that the admin is not required to grant. Whether or not to do it is a case-by-case basis.”

“I assure you that we will grant the LOA,” Jeffery said. “That is why we’re having this meeting.”

“Uh huh,” Steph said. “The contract also says that if the LOA is for more than a sixty-day period, the employer—that’s you two—have the option of not retaining the employee when they request to come back from the leave.”

“You don’t say?” Jim asked, shaking his head.

“We would allow you to return to your positions without loss of seniority or pay rate,” Anne said. “You have my word on that.”

“Your word?” Steph said. “You, who has tried to have us fired or suspended multiple times in the past? Who arranges to have us randomly selected to pee in a cup every September when we come off tour? We’re supposed to take your word that you’ll give us back our jobs?”

“My word is my bond,” Anne said, as if offended by the very suggestion that it wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Steph said. “I’m sure it is. All the same, however, I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no to your suggestion.”

“Me as well,” Jim said.

Anne’s face was now turning red. “You cannot say no to this,” she said. “We’re going to have to insist.”

“Oh, so then you’re not really talking about a voluntary LOA then, are you?” Jim asked. “You’re talking about a suspension without pay.”

“We would prefer to keep this thing on an informal, voluntary basis,” Anne said.

“I’m sure you would,” said Steph. “That’s because you know you don’t have a leg to stand on by trying to do this officially. You can suspend us if you want. You can do it right now, right this minute in fact. But you know that we have the right to union representation if you go official. You know that you have to have a legitimate reason for suspending us. You know that we’ll take this thing all the way to binding arbitration and that when the judge hears why we were suspended, you’ll lose and have to reinstate us with back pay for all the time we missed.”

“I know no such thing,” Anne said. “I’m asking you to think of the children and do the right thing.”

“The children, huh?” Jim said, shaking his head sadly. “Don’t you think that trying to suspend a couple of popular teachers because they put out a music CD would be more of a distraction than just leaving things be?”

“No, I do not think that at all,” she said.

“Well, I guess we aren’t going to be seeing eye to eye on this issue then,” Steph said. “In any case, my answer is no. I will not go on a voluntary LOA. If you want to suspend me, you’re going to have to do it officially.”

“My answer is no as well,” Jim said.

“You two are making a serious mistake,” Anne hissed.

Jim simply shrugged. “I’ve made them before,” he said. “Are we done here?”

“We are not done here!” Anne said. “We need to resolve this issue before you leave.”

“Then I’m afraid,” Steph told her, “that at this point I’m going to refuse to speak anymore to either of you without a union representative present.”

“Me as well,” Jim said.

The vice principal and the principal fumed a little, and blustered a little bit more, but it turned out that the meeting was over after all.

By the third week in January, Together was the most-requested song at radio stations coast to coast in the United States and Canada. The tune resonated with fans of alternative rock and traditional hard rock alike, dominating the 18-35 demographic for both males and females. The song debuted at 67 on the Billboard Hot 100 before the CD was even available for sale. And it began a rapid climb upward from there.

On January 24, the eponymous CD was released for sale across the US and Canada. Jake Kingsley, who was in charge of the Brainwash project and was monitoring things closely—as well as directing every detail of the promotion campaign that Aristocrat Records had put into play—was not expecting much in the way of CD sales at first. That would come, he figured, after the second track to be released—Steph’s What Can I Do?—started to get airplay. He figured that in the first quarter of the year they might sell fifty thousand or so if they were lucky. He was, therefore, quite surprised when Brainwash, the CD, sold more than forty thousand copies in the first week of release. It sold another twenty thousand or so by the time January turned to February.

A little research gave him a partial explanation. More than ninety percent of the first two weeks’ worth of sales were in the New England region. Brainwash had been popular in New England for years and their fans were snatching up the CD once they became aware of its availability. A little further research clarified things a bit more. Well over a third of the purchases were made by the 15 to 25-year-old demographic with the heaviest sales in the Providence region. In other words, younger people in Brainwash’s hometown were snatching up the majority of these early sales. The members of Brainwash were junior high and high school teachers at four different schools in the city’s district and had been teaching new crops of kids there for years. Their students and former students were the people who were buying the CD more than anyone.