Frank Zappa

I was ecstatic. I had finally gotten what I wanted out of Interlochen. I had the two best friends I had ever had. It was an amazingly strong and deep bond, and made my pre-Interlochen friendships pale in comparison. Not to put down my relationship with Mel and Lenore and Karl, my constant companions from fourth grade on, but something had soured in us after we went through the tumult of puberty. Sexuality reared its confusing head and there were suddenly whole new layers of stuff between us that hadn’t been there before and none of us really knew how to deal with it (who does?), and it put a great strain on our friendships. I always said that I grew up physically with Mel and Karl and Lenore, but I grew up mentally and emotionally and artistically and socially with Eric and Allen, and that forged a deep and powerful bond between us. ACE was the place, it was where it was at, it was where I finally felt completely comfortable with all aspects of my personality – my intellectual interests, my creative passions, my hormonal questions, my odd musical tastes, my silly sense of humor. It was home.

Not that it was all smiles and loving. We had arguments, and there were times I wanted to kill both of them, and they me, but that was all part and parcel of the package. You can’t have the good without the bad, and the good so far outweighed the bad that it was easy to put up with. Even when Allen was doing his tiresome ape-boy shtick and swinging around the room and pummeling us. Even when Eric continued to knock the pyramid of coke cans on the windowsill onto my bed while I was trying to sleep. Even when I was desperately trying to write a paper that was due the next day and the two of them sat on Eric’s bed and shot spitballs at me incessantly. I asked them nicely to stop. I asked them not so nicely to stop. I yelled at them. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and stormed out to the library where I could finish my writing in peace.

The library was built under a large dome, a rotunda, with tables in a circle at the periphery of the dome. I took a seat at one of the tables, spread my notes out, and tried to concentrate on the symbolism of Billy Budd, or whatever the hell I was supposed to be writing about. Eric and Allen came into the library a few minutes later and took the table directly across the room from me. It was a well documented aural phenomenon that sitting at opposite sides of the rotundas (there were three on campus) made the sound carry from one side to the other without losing any fidelity. While you couldn’t hear the person sitting at the table next to you, somebody sitting directly across the room from you sounded like they were right in your ear. Eric and Allen knew this, and started whispering to each other.

“That Earl is a total faggot.”

“I know, he’s a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, what a moron.”

“But his mom’s hot.”

“Sure is, I’d do her”

“Oh yeah, I’d make her scream. Ooh baby. Take it bitch.”

And so on, until I started whispering back.

“You guys fucking suck. I hate both of you. I can’t believe you’re being such assholes.” Which only made them redouble their efforts to totally drive me off my bean. Even then, I still forgave them (although barely) because the conversations were so good, and the camaraderie was so satisfying.

We’d run around campus together, swinging through the trees and crashing through the bushes. Allen would get a box of cookies sent to him from home every week and we’d lie in the room, Allen in a sleeping bag on the floor, and eat cookies until we were sick. We’d play name that tune, and go to dances and air guitar the solos to My Sharona, and make up strange dances to Ultravox’s Quiet Men. We would tease each other mercilessly and listen to each other confess our darkest secrets and our greatest fears. We were the best of all possible friends, indivisible, unconquerable. We were ACE, and we owed our beginnings to Frank Zappa’s exceptionally obscure, wondrously disjointed, hysterically funny Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.

Of course, the impossible happened, the inseparable separated, and ACE broke up and followed their own paths. I still keep in touch with Eric, but I’ve long since lost track of Allen, who was married and working in a hotel in South Carolina, last I’d heard.

Years later, I was on a shuttle bus in Northampton, waiting to be taken from Smith College back to Hampshire. I was sitting in the back, reading a book. There were a few people scattered throughout the other seats. An aggressively weird guy I had seen around before climbed into the shotgun seat. He was the sort of person that would go out of his way to be obtuse and irritating, apparently taking joy in watching people roll their eyes. He stared out the front window and started singing Brown Shoes Don’t Make It loudly, clearly showing off his obscure weirdness. Frank Zappa is well known, but his early stuff is pretty obscure and very few people had ever heard it, let alone listened to it enough to memorize the words. I listened to him sing the song, and heard the exasperated sighs and watched the shaking heads of the other people in the van. I was the complete opposite of this guy, quiet and shy and fading into the woodwork, but hearing him sing this anthem of my youth made me so happy that I started singing along from the back of the van, matching him word for word, grunt for grunt. Startled, he swung around and stared at me. I looked him in the eye and kept singing. Grinning, he continued and we sang a loud duet, much to the consternation of the others on the van. I was grinning at the absurdity of the situation and flooded with joyful memories of ACE. The driver got in just as we were nearing the end, and stared slack-jawed and stupefied as we screamed out