Chapter 48: Taking It to a New Level

January 5, 1984

"It sounds like you two had a wonderful time," Evie said with a smile. Inez and I had arrived back in New Jersey the previous evening. I was over at their place, and we'd just gotten Evie all caught up on our Florida visit. There was one matter of concern that both Inez and I wanted to address with Evie, and I brought it up right away.

"We got to talking one day," I said to Evie, "about the future of the band. We aren't sure how everyone else feels about this. But I feel very strongly that I want, that I need, to concentrate on my professional life after graduation, and that means my involvement with the band will end when we graduate." I nodded at Inez, inviting her to weigh in.

"And I feel the same way," she offered. "I love music, but it's not my ultimate calling in life."

Both of us looked expectantly at Evie, who to our great relief nodded in agreement.

"I've been meaning to talk about this with the two of you," Evie put forth. "I kind of thought you felt that way, but I wasn't one hundred percent sure. For the record, I'm with you. I'm not a professional musician. Yes, my calling also lies elsewhere, and I'd also like to wrap things up when we graduate."

All three of us smiled at each other; the feeling of relief was shared by all.

"So, well ... what about the others?" asked Inez. "Do we discuss this with them? Or should we wait?"

"It's still a year and a half from now," I pointed out, starting out with a slight hedge.

"Exactly," said Evie in agreement. "A lot can happen between now and then."

"I really don't have a feel for what the others think about our future as a band," I put in. "Paul is graduating with us. But Dave will be a year behind us because of his major switch, and Eileen is two years behind us. Dave and Eileen will be looking at this from a different perspective."

"If you ask me," said Evie firmly, "it's better if we don't bring it up right now. If we do, it will start to hang over us like a dark cloud, and nothing will really be gained. Graduation is still quite a ways off. Let's just enjoy the present. When the right time arrives, we'll deal with it then. Remember that down the road, things may look a lot different than they do now."

Inez and I both nodded in agreement. With that matter out of the way for now, we got to talking about other band-related issues. More specifically, we discussed ways to better utilize our greatest single asset: Inez's magnificent voice.

Naturally, my ever-modest girlfriend wasn't comfortable with this topic. "There's so much talent among us all," she pointed out in mild protest. "Why single me out? On the other hand, I'll agree that I wouldn't mind expanding outward a little. It seems like every song I sing comes from just a few artists ... Heart, Pat Benatar, The Pretenders."

Evie grinned over at me knowingly. "Something tells me Pat has an idea." Ever since I'd buried the hatchet with Dave and Paul, I was becoming less and less hesitant to do what I felt I did best ... throw ideas out there, just to see what everyone thought of them. Of course, right now it was just the three of us, which served to lower my inhibition level down to almost nothing.

"Your strength is raw, empowered vocals with a trace of vulnerability," I said to Inez, "and honey, there's a lot of material like that out there that we haven't yet explored. You need to go a little further back in time, that's all."

"Further back," Inez said slowly, mulling it over. "There's artists like Carly Simon and Carole King, but their stuff doesn't really fit our style. Who are you thinking of? Janis Joplin?"

"No," I said with a smile, "although now that you mention her, it might be fun to fool around with 'Piece Of My Heart' sometime. The singer I have in mind is one whose material, at first glance, might seem to be a stylistic stretch for us. But I don't believe that to be the case."

"Who, then?" asked a curious Inez.

"Aretha Franklin." Right away, Evie smiled and nodded in agreement; I was delighted to see that.

An uncertain look crossed my girlfriend's face. "You want me to sing ... Aretha?" Her tone contained a strong element of doubt. I couldn't believe that the super-talented Inez was questioning her own abilities.

"Inez, you can sing anything," Evie assured her. "Especially Aretha. If you think about it, a bunch of her songs are your songs, so it's right up your alley."

I sought to reinforce Evie's point. "You've never heard of something called 'karaoke' at this point in time," I said to my girlfriend, "but ten years from now, it will emerge as kind of a fad. Basically, it's singing along to a recorded version of a song minus the vocal track. People will do it in bars, at parties, and even in their own home. My point is, perhaps the most popular karaoke song for female vocalists will be 'Respect'. I've heard vocalists – and I use the term loosely – who have a tiny fraction of your ability attempt to tackle 'Respect'. You can sing Aretha, honey. And when you do, I predict the results will be amazing."

Now, Inez was starting to warm up to the idea. "So, you want to try to do 'Respect'?"

"Not necessarily that song. The tune I had in mind was 'Think'." I was beginning to believe that Inez's penchant for raw, emotional tunes stemmed from her tapping into her past experiences. I felt that "Think" was a tune she could relate to in many ways.

"Okay, you've got me convinced," smiled Inez. "You have to admit, though ... it is a stretch."

"And that's a good thing," I said with conviction. "Remember, you talked me into doing 'Little Red Corvette', using the same logic."

"Guilty as charged," Inez laughed.

"We've discussed this before," I pointed out, "but I'm not even half the vocalist you are. Still, I'll try anything. Actually, check that. There's one rock act out there whose material I refuse to even attempt."

"Who?" Evie, who'd been silently taking in this conversation, suddenly blurted out.

I told them.

"You're kidding," Evie said, a surprised tone in her voice. "Pat, you could definitely handle it."

"That's not the problem," I asserted. "There's another thing to consider." And I explained my rationale.

"You do have a point there, sweetie," Inez declared. "But even so, I agree with Ev. You could do it."

January 11, 1984

It was a normal Wednesday night practice, not particularly out of the ordinary, save for the fact that we were gearing up for our first shows after taking more than two weeks off. After our holiday break, it was back to work. Not completely, however; classes wouldn't start up for another two weeks.

The one highlight of tonight's practice was that we were able to roll out the latest addition to our repertoire, "Think". Just as I knew she would, Inez had really taken to the song. Near the end of the practice, she and I discussed the matter semi-privately.

"The thing about that song," Inez noted, "is that I have to put my guitar aside. Usually, that means I'm doing a slow ballad of some kind. But 'Think' is an uptempo song, and it feels strange not having the guitar to hide behind."

This was perhaps a strange comment, coming from an experienced performer like Inez, but I knew all about my girlfriend's insecurities.

"You did just fine tonight," I said with a sympathetic smile, "and you'll do just fine when we do it live. Your vocals were incredible, as always. And as for the other stuff? Okay, I may be biased here ... but you've got one hell of a nice body. Just move it!" Inez giggled upon hearing that. The other person within earshot, Evie, giggled even louder.

"Men are such pigs," Evie teased me.

"Oink oink," I shot back.

After practice, everyone split the scene, except for Inez and me. She said she wanted to stick around for a little while. Mayra and Lisette came downstairs, and they motioned us over to the sofa, as we pulled over a couple of chairs. There was a serious aura surrounding all this, and I wondered what was up.

It was Lisette who spoke first. "Pat, I have something to tell you," she said quite tentatively. She was obviously ill at ease; her eyes were averted downward, and she was wringing her hands.

I looked right away at Inez, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

"This is really hard," Lisette added.

"Would you like it if I told Pat?" Inez said to her cousin.

"Told me what?" I said worriedly. "What's going on here?"

"No, I'll tell you," Lisette went on. "It's Seamus. He's having trouble with a kid in his class at school. The kid is picking on him all the time."

This revelation floored me. Why didn't he just come to me in the first place? I wondered. But I wanted to hear the rest of the story. "What did he tell you about it?" I asked Lisette.

"This kid won't fight with him, because he knows that Seamus has a black belt. Instead, he just makes fun of him all the time. Insults him, and says mean things to him. Seamus said that if the kid would just throw a punch at him, he could handle it. But he doesn't know how to deal with this kind of thing."

"Verbal bullying," I said in amazement. "That's not something they teach you to deal with in karate class." At least not in 1984, I thought.

"If you talk to your brother," implored Lisette, "please don't tell him I told you about this, okay? I don't think he'll like it if he finds out. But I thought you should know."

"She's right, Pat," Mayra threw in. "Even if your brother didn't want to tell you, you should know about it."

"Lisette came to us first," Inez told me, squeezing my hand, "and I told her that she definitely needed to tell you."

My mind was already hard at work. "I really wish he'd told me about it himself," I finally said. "But since he didn't, I'll have to go about this in a roundabout way. Let me give him a call, and I'll see if I can get him to open up."

January 12, 1984

I called Seamus the following afternoon, catching him as soon as he got home from school.

"How was school today?" I asked him, after a few minutes of small talk.

"It was okay."

He sounded listless and troubled, and I felt certain that he'd had issues with the bully that very day.

"You sounded more enthusiastic when you had the flu this time last year," I said with a slight laugh. "Come on, tell me. What's up?"

"Nothing. Really."

The brevity of his responses was a dead giveaway that something was up, and that made everything much easier for me.

"Look, Seamus. It's obvious something's bugging you, and if you don't spill the beans, I might have to resort to desperate means to get it out of you. Like nagging you even worse than Mom does."

After a moderately long hesitation, my brother finally came forward with the whole truth. "There's a guy in my class who's ... giving me some crap." He went on to relate just about everything Lisette had told me, but there were a couple of notable facts I hadn't yet heard.

"The guy – his name is Luke Feeney – is Heather's new boyfriend, and I'm pretty sure she's really the one behind it. Anyway, Luke keeps calling me a fag. Tells me that if I turned down Heather, I must be gay."

Oh shit, I thought. Heather's involved in this. It's worse than I thought. I wondered why he hadn't mentioned this part of the story to Lisette.

"You know what sucks, Pat?" my brother continued. "I have a black belt. I know how to kick this guy's butt if he comes after me. But he doesn't. He just talks all kinds of shit, and it's really hurting my rep at school. People are starting to believe what he's saying, because I don't fight back. That's what they teach us in karate class ... to only use what we learn in self-defense. They don't tell us what to do if someone starts talking..."

"Just a minute, Seamus," I interrupted, as an idea flashed through my mind. "Have you talked about this with your karate instructor?"

There was another pause of a few seconds, before my brother replied. "No, I haven't. Do you think I should?"

"That's definitely step one. Today's Thursday. Your next karate class is Saturday morning, right?"

"Yep."

"I'll drive down and take you to class, and you can talk to the instructor afterward. And one more thing. Good job not fighting back physically. I know it's pretty tempting, but if you do that, it'll make things worse."

January 14, 1984

I sat through Seamus' thirty-minute class, as I'd done many times before. Even though I had no background in martial arts myself, I'd developed a keen interest in karate, obtained vicariously through my brother.

I thought long and hard about Seamus' problem, and realized that I was now living in the 1980s, and needed to apply '80s attitudes and values in looking at the situation. As a product of a more enlightened era, I knew that there was no shame in being labeled "gay", accurately or not. But in the eighties, being called gay was quite the insult, especially for a kid a couple of months shy of his fifteenth birthday. Fair or not, he had to deal with the views of his peers, and it mattered little that those views were based on ignorance.

As the class drew to a close, Seamus looked hesitantly in my direction; I offered a nod of encouragement. I saw him approach his instructor. He spoke with him briefly, and the two of them went into the instructor's office. About ten minutes later, my brother reappeared, and came right over to me.

"Mr. Yoshida wants to talk to you," my brother said, not offering any further elaboration.

"Lead the way," I replied, looking forward to this meeting, and feeling more certain than ever that I'd done the right thing here.

Mr. Yoshida was a short, wiry Japanese man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He offered me a firm handshake, before Seamus and I both took a seat.

"Seamus told me you're attending college up at Rutgers. It speaks well of you that you traveled all the way down here on a Saturday morning to help your brother out with this little problem." He then assured me that Seamus was one of his prize students, and the progress he'd shown since starting karate class more than three years ago was exceptional. Then, he addressed the matter at hand.

"I explained to Seamus that this bully is acting in this manner because of his own feelings of inadequacy. The bully, and not Seamus, is the one with severe issues here. Once Seamus fully realizes this, the problem will sort itself out. I did offer your brother a few pointers, though, specifically dealing with this situation." With those words, a broad grin spread across my brother's face, something which pleased me immensely.

"Also, this incident has alerted me to something," Mr. Yoshida went on. "There's a missing element in my instruction. I need to introduce something that deals with non-physical bullying, because I'm sure that many young people encounter similar issues. I teach them how to defend themselves against physical harm, but not words." I knew that by 2007, most kids' karate classes would, in fact, contain that type of training. But, once again, this was the '80s, and things had not yet reached that point.

As soon as Seamus and I got in the car, I said to him, "I guess you're not gonna tell me what Mr. Yoshida said?"

"Nope," he grinned. "I'll tell you after I put it into action."

January 17, 1984

I was alone in my apartment, getting ready to head over to the Andrade house for band practice. The phone rang.

"You'll never believe what happened today at school," came my brother's voice through the receiver.

"What happened?" I asked, with a number of possibilities suddenly running through my brain.

"When I got to my locker first thing in the morning, Luke was waiting for me. Heather was with him. He started in with the usual crap. Mr. Yoshida's advice was to convince myself that Luke was the one with insecurities, and that gave me all the power. I decided not to let Luke get to me. Then, Luke said to me like always, 'If you're not a fag, how could you turn down a girl like Heather?' Pat, you should have seen Heather's reaction. She was batting her eyes at him, just like she did at you that day at our house. I acted all cool-like, and told Luke that I just got tired of hearing Heather telling me, 'I love you, Pookie Bear.' Luke just exploded. He ran up and threw a wild punch at me. I didn't even have to use my defensive moves. I just stepped out of the way, and he ended up punching a locker. I heard that he messed up his hand pretty bad. It's broken in a few places. The principal called me into his office, and when he heard the full story, complimented me on handling it in exactly the right way."

I breathed a deep, deep sigh of relief. "Way to go. The principal's right, you couldn't have handled it any better. I have to know something. Did you come up with that 'I love you, Pookie Bear' remark, or was it Mr. Yoshida?"

"It was me," he said proudly. "It just popped into my brain right then."

"Heather is such a ditz," I pointed out, "that she probably uses the nickname 'Pookie Bear' for every one of her boyfriends. I'm sure that's what set him off. I don't think you could have come up with a better retort."

"Right. But I haven't told you the best part. Late in the afternoon, Heather came up to me. She started in with the stupid eyelash-batting, and told me that since she now knew that Luke was a wimp, she wanted to get back together with me."

"Oh no," I said in alarm. "Seamus..."

He didn't let me get any further. "I told her to get lost, and to go find someone else to be her next Pookie Bear."

January 31, 1984

Classes were back in session following the winter break. We had a band practice planned for this particular Tuesday evening. I had yet another bright idea to privately bounce off a couple of my bandmates, which required some sneaky manipulations on my part.

First of all, I called both Dave and Paul, and told them to get over to the Andrade place as soon as they could. Luckily, neither had a late afternoon class on Tuesdays. I brought Dennis over with me – he was in on the secret too – and as soon as we got there, he made an offer to his girlfriend and her younger sister that they couldn't say no to; namely, an impromptu trip to the mall. Shortly thereafter, Dennis, Mayra and Lisette departed the premises. That left only Rosie in the house, and I told her what I was up to. She told me that she loved the idea, and promised not to say anything to anybody.

Right after that, Paul and Dave arrived, curious as to the purpose of this clandestine get-together. I proceeded to lay out my plan.

"Dude," Dave commented right away, "I gotta hand it to you. That's a great idea."

"I second the motion," Paul said in full agreement. "Let's put it together."

I paused for a moment to reflect on just how far I'd come with those two. The days of Dave referring to me sarcastically as "boss" were now in the distant past. I'd laid one of my ideas on them, and they'd eaten it up. And without their help, it would never work.

We brought out our instruments and got started. The tune in question was the Grand Funk Railroad cover of "Some Kind Of Wonderful". That version consists of nothing but vocals, bass, and percussion. Which, of course, meant that Dave, Paul, and I had all the means to work up a pretty decent version of our own – just the three of us.