Angela Townsend

drum solos

It is the rare seventh grade boy who worries about the morning after. Noah could not absorb the events of ‘Oh, What a Night!’ without imagining the aftermath.

Blame the DJ who tucked the Four Tops between Salt n’ Pepa and Tupac. There was no disruption in the Circleville Middle School dance on account of Mariah or the venerable Beastie Boys. But when Frankie Valli crooned of conquest, the boy in the No Fear T-shirt smelled foul.

‘I don’t think this is a very nice song.’

Noah sought me out explicitly, risking ego and limb to weave between oblivious gyrators. I saw him navigate the cafeteria, his Dutch-boy bangs purpled by the strobe light. I knew he would not be asking me to dance. He was the friend of a friend. He went back to nursery school with Big Jason. He knew, as all the larval males did, that I was best friends with Big Jason, Little Jason and Josh. They ringed me like archers whose weapon of choice was pretzel nuggets. They lent me their Green Day CDs. They gave my father nothing to worry about. They prevented actual boys from asking me to dance.

Noah did not ask me to dance. He did exceed my expectations. ‘This guy is bad news.’

‘What guy?’

‘The guy singing this song.’ Noah stabbed in the direction of the ceiling. ‘It’s not right.’ He slumped onto the Formica bench. ‘Want pizza?’

‘No, thanks.’ I straightened my velvet hat. It had daisies the size of my fist. My father said I looked like Eliza Doolittle. I thought it looked good with my Phantom of the Opera T-shirt.

Noah ordered a slice. He held it out to me before taking a bite. I shook my head.

‘I don’t like this song.’ Noah was not making idle conversation. He had larger eyebrows than other boys. They fell like judgment. ‘These people are using each other. “Oh, what a very special time for me!” He’s a bum. He’s a selfish bum.’

I had always liked the song. I would never like the song again.

‘“Just one night!” Seems pretty stupid to me.’ He wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘Sure you don’t want a bite?’

‘Not so good for the ‘beetus.’ Three years into Type 1 diabetes, I had the language to bubble-wrap it. It served no one to make boys uncomfortable.

‘Right. Bastard carbs.’

‘That would be a good name for a band,’ I observed.

Noah snorted and ordered a second slice. ‘See, that’s why you’re in Honors and I’m not.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re funny, which means you’re smart.’ He held his pizza vertically and watched the oil drain. ‘You got the ‘beetus to hobble you so the rest of us have a chance to catch up.’

We were being melodically instructed to jump around. I watched both Jasons jump up, jump up, and get down. I watched my Socrates try to lick sauce off his chin.

‘I think you’re pretty funny.’

Noah was a drummer. Every day in Band, they threw pencils at the popcorn ceiling until they hung like stalactites. They joined the pencils of the ancestors. There were #2s from the time of Alexander Hamilton up there.

The drummers were smart in ways Honors diabetics surrounded by Jasons could not access. They discovered Sri Lankan rap while the rest of us were still singing ‘Frere Jacques.’ At the talent show, one of them tore open a silica gel DO NOT EAT packet and ate it in front of all the parents. One drummer thought it was selfish to sing about ‘a very special night for me’.

‘I’m hilarious,’ Noah clarified. ‘But you’re smart hilarious.’

Whitney Houston had the eighth graders slow-squeezing like sausages. Noah didn’t ask me to dance. He wiped his hands on his pants, yanked my hat over my eyes, and said, ‘I like your hat.’ He returned to wherever unclassified boys came from, somewhere between the band room and the sweaty palm of God. He stayed there for fifteen years, until Facebook unzipped time and space.

‘Noah Andersson has sent you a friend request.’ We had mutual friends, Jason Campbell and Jason Livesey and even Jason Minto, who never liked any of us in the flesh.

Noah peered out under the same blonde awning. ‘Accept.’

‘Crap! You are a pastor!!!!!!’ He saw my ‘Master of Divinity’. I could not calibrate his message. Was he horrified? Genuinely concerned for my well-being? These, plus ‘mocking’, were the default responses from faces unseen since Circleville. Noah was not mocking.

‘I work at a cat sanctuary,’ I corrected. ‘I went to seminary, and then God snorted at me.’

‘Nobody snorts at you!!!’

‘God gave me the ‘beetus.’

‘I do not think that is true!!!’

Noah had married a girl named Olena at Legoland. He had a CPA and one white shirt. He had a stick in his hand in eighty percent of his photos. He had a YouTube channel called Spittle Drummer Boy. I spent an hour watching him reinterpret the theme songs to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Super Mario 1 and Super Mario 2 and Super Mario 3. I messaged him. ‘This is enchanting. I am transfixed.’

‘Good!!!’ he responded. ‘I am enchantment incarnate!’

On my birthday, Noah donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He wrote, ‘stay on fire, you delinquent.’

Noah’s videos stretched to fifteen, thirty, sixty minutes. He freestyled the Frasier theme as if Kelsey Grammer had been the lost Ramone. He played the intro to Metroid with the gravity of Vespers. I watched him throw sticks overhead and catch them in the opposite hands. The shelf behind his head was crowded with rubber ducks. ‘No one wants to watch this. I am a self-indulgent bum.’

I reposted Noah’s videos. I informed my audience, a convocation of Jasons and Princeton professors and actual pastors, ‘You need to know Spittle Drummer Boy. This is 100% worth your time.’

‘Who is this man?’ Dr. Rockwell messaged me. ‘I am unable to turn away. He thrums with life. He is buoyant, even brilliant.’

I reported this to Noah. Noah made another donation to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. ‘You’re a good girl, Angie.’

‘Story of my life.’

‘No, I don’t mean a “good girl”.’

‘That’s all I am. Twelve, thirty-two, I haven’t changed.’

‘BoLOGna. You’re beating the ‘beetus. You’re on speaking terms with ALMIGHTY GOD.’

I sent a video of Meat Loaf singing ‘Rock n’ Roll Dreams Come Through.’

‘This theologian confirms that the angels had guitars even before they had wings,’ I noted.

‘Are there drummers in heaven?’

‘They have their own band room.’

Noah didn’t respond for two days. Then: ‘But we just want to be in the big room with everybody.’

‘I want that too.’

‘You’re too good for the big room.’

‘Please don’t say that.’ I wished I had worn fewer daisy hats. I wished I had made imprudent choices with bums. I wished I had scandalized at least one theologian under the ivy. I wished I had eaten too many carbs and been carried to the green grass by a fireman.

‘I wish everyone was more like you, you delinquent!!’ He included a GIF of Carleton Banks doing his oblivious dance, over and over, a lonely hoedown. I knew Noah was not mocking.

Angela Townsend is a seven time Best of the Net nominee and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, CutBank, The Normal School, SmokeLong, and Terrain, among others.

Angela wrote the following about her story:

‘Drum Solos’ celebrates the wry rhythm of kindness that mostly goes unmentioned between teenagers. How many of our ‘awkward years’ have found grace in unexpected quarters? If we are rich indeed, these friendships persist across miles, decades, and bangin' drumlines. Noah is a tribute to all the gentle, shaggy mid-'90s boys who could not hide their good hearts under their sleeves. Their greatest rebellion was staying warm when everyone hoped to be cool. May their music ever persevere.