Whip-its seemed as good as anything else now that his thrash-metal band had fizzled and he found himself at parties with no special role, nothing really to do, Johnny Carson-like. Once upon a time, I was the goddamned host.

Tim O’Reilly was gone now. Frizzy-haired, big-headed Tim O’Reilly, gone to Florida with his mid-life crisis dad and with him went the band, “Dishonor.” They used to spend the afternoons after school in O’Reilly’s basement, ripping through a dizzying array of speed metal tunes: Metallica covers, Slayer covers, Sepultura covers, “Beneath the Remains,” “Damage Incorporated,” “Angel of Death,” “Raining Blood.” O’Reilly’s songs: “In the Distance,” “Destroyed by Ignorance.” Brandon’s songs: “Ripping Skin,” “Come Die With Me.”

O’Reilly’s basement, a small room, an annex off from the finished television area, dimly lit, ringed in Crate Half-Stacks, Brandon at the microphone, guitar pick furiously galloping… “Seas of blood…bury life…smell your death as it burns deep inside of you.” Howling into the microphone, barking into the microphone. “Night will come and I will follow…All my victims no tomorrow…” A guttural singing like the swallowing of nails. The sweat, the drums, the distortion, the rage.

Now after school they smoked pot and played video games and watched Judge Judy. And if he was being honest about anything, he’d have to admit he liked just hanging out with his brother better than any of that: Super Nintendo or Dungeons and Dragons (neither of which he could admit to his friends). Or sitting watching re-runs, the two of them, goofing on Matt Houston‘s hairdo or pointing out plot holes in Charles in Charge. Or watching for the billionth time the old animated cartoon of The Return of the King, which they knew by heart and Brandon at seventeen should have outgrown long ago. John Huston intoning: “Hear you now a story of good against evil.” A darkened sky, Gandalf’s cape and beard, whipping in the wind, like a struck banner. “Concern yourselves with armies and wizards, phantoms and emperors, cloud-capped towers and bloody fields of horrendous carnage.” And the low moaning chorus: “The bearer of the Ring, The wearer of the Ring,” sung by baritones in an operatic desperation: Beware the power, it’s a power never known…

When his mother would come home, she’d order pizza for them and they could munch the warm cheese and rich tomato sauce and grow perfectly plump and content, as she smiled.

All of this would seem a million years ago, even three hours later in the cool summer night during the endless two or three minutes after the whip-its kicked in.

Exhale. Inhale. Exhale deeply, clear your lungs. Shut your eyes and the world will fall apart. The noise at the party–the beer-breathed chants, the shouts, the loud cackling laughs, the Get out your seats and jump arounds–all stop and echo in your head like a skipped CD. The world shrinks and everything you know and can see is the size of a pinprick, a tiny hole in a dark canvas with light shining through. Now growing smaller still.