6. Unrelated Thing

John Sid attempts to dart Flansy's faux pas.

With one skilled hand, John Sid Linnell lightly fingered the keys of his Farfisa organ along to the tape rolling in their new cassette recorder. He swayed, his angular frame swimming in his clothing, trapping in the heat that passed through his fingers. The music being displayed was jaunty, upbeat, but the lyrics implied an unsettling failure—as they usually seemed to. He watched through his eye lashes for John Flansburgh’s reaction; he was grinning to himself, tapping his scuffed Costello shoe to the metronome ticking in the background. John Sid let out a breath.

The end of the tape flapped inside the recorder’s casing and Flansburgh leaned over to pull it out.

“I think,” he announced. “That was the best damn thing ever, Sid.”

Linnell smiled, feeling it spread awkwardly on his face like jelly on pita bread. He watched avidly as Flansburgh’s hands rewound the tape and Linnell wondered how the cassette recorder didn’t cower from such big hands. But that was a quirkywackyzany thought and he pushed it to the flipside of his mind.

Admittedly, John Sid had been a little hesitant at trying out the new tape recorder. It had been years since John Sid had worked with such a cheap one and he couldn’t remember how well the result had been. Actually, no. He just hadn’t experimented with one since high school. That too had been with John Flansburgh, who had just become known to John Linnell as that-loud-kid in the grade below him. They had been playing around with Flans’s reel-to-reel and—

(snowww don’t worry don’t worry kyoko don’t worry)

Yeah, that had been great.

Linnell stared down at his hands, flexing the sore tendons. In their one English class together, had he ever looked over to where John Flansburgh was sitting and asked himself, “Will I be in living in a New York City apartment with him one day?”

Why was it so goddamn impossible to see where he’d be going anyway? Why wasn’t there some kind of hint that prepared people for that sort of life choice?

Flansburgh was plucking at the collar of his plaid shirt quietly. Saliva beginning to coat the back of his throat, Linnell cleared it, disrupting the air with its cataclysmic rumbling.

“And do you think that Bill will feel the same way? That the track is good enough?” He asked indifferently. Talking blanked the silence which cleared the incessant buzzing in his ears.

Flansburgh shrugged, still grinning.

“I can’t, y’know, see why he won’t see it anything short of awesome since the rhythm is, like, friggin’ amazing, John…”

Linnell nodded, picking a stray hair from his long-sleeved turtleneck and beaming at it. He knew Bill Krauss would like it, he usually did, but John Sid just wanted to hear Flans say it. If Flansburgh knew that he could do all this creative stuff by himself, and without John Sid’s help… Well, John Sid’d be out of a job, which currently seemed nothing more than making Flans believe he needed him around.

John Sid exhaled, letting his fingertips polish the black keys of the organ, rocking in his broken swivel chair.

He didn’t know much about Bill Krauss. Their new ‘sound director’ had met Flans the year before while going to Antioch in Ohio, while John Sid Linnell was messing around in Rhode Island. Bill and Flans had worked on the college radio station at Antioch and had collaborated on some things. Bing bang bingalong. Friends. Wasn’t that what camaraderie was supposed to be? Hell, it was truly impressive that John and John had found each other again. Now they were two twenty-somethings reliving their junior high “hey, you’re a cool kid” days. However, it was his understanding that friends to keep were made in college. Where were Linnell’s friends?

(still in a band in rhode island)

(sans keyboard player)

“When’s Bill coming over?” John Sid grunted.

“Sometime, um, around one,” Flansburgh said, drumming his painted nails on the Farfisa organ’s faux wood top. “Have you been looking at, uhm, accordions yet, John?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, sure,” Linnell said, cupping his elbow. “Well, there’s this place in Nanuet that sells piano accordions. Supposedly really good ones too. That’s all I’ve found out so far.”

“Ah, alright, cool, a road trip! We should totally check that out then, and I can go see a man about a guitar. I’m thinkin’…Telecaster,” Flansburgh said, never stopping for a passive face. It was particularly strange to John Linnell how Flansburgh never stopped smiling. You’d think the guy never had problems. “Yeah, a Telecaster’d be frickin’ ribbing, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Linnell grinned.

“Man, did you hear that car alarm last night? Seemed to go on forever, huh? ”

Linnell’s facial features seemed to puddle around his feet in one foul swoosh. Without pausing, his mind had become a dusted chalkboard. Any notes of further conversation were flying in tiny particles around the room, their heaviness of content now drifting in the air. Just a façade for what must be brought up. What had they even been talking about before? Now the air was consumed by that One Topic. That Unforgivable Topic.

Oh damn you, Mr. Flansburgh, John Sid thought hysterically.

But, really, what did he have to be regretful of? Was reaching out and touching a friend so wrongful when you needed that moment of contact? But for once he couldn’t think himself out of this thought consuming hole. It would figure that Flansburgh would mention something like that. Of course he would f**k pretense and just say it. He knew. John Linnell couldn’t believe he knew. He stared at his hands that were now splayed flush against the organ, seemingly trying to sink themselves through the keys and evaporate there.

“Yeah, pretty loud,” Linnell muttered, paying apt attention at how his finger nails stopped abruptly at a half-centimeter of raw flesh.

“Must’ve been deafening in your room right though, huh?”

A noncommittal noise begrudgingly left John Linnell’s throat and he depressed the shrillest C key on the organ. It had the musical taste of syrup and it made John want to cup his ears. He couldn’t explain these things.

“I can move out at anytime, really, if that’s what you want, Sid,” Flansburgh said then. “It’s really no big deal. I should be moving in my stuff again anyway. I mean, it’s like lightening—it shouldn’t happen again, right?”

“You don’t have to move out, Flans,” John Linnell said, a little too quickly. This earned him another inward wince that would probably continue to bite him whenever he would think about it for the rest of that day.

(curses)

“I mean, you don’t have to move right away or anything. I have no problem with you bumming here.”

Flans grinned.

“Nonetheless, it’s due time for me to get back on my high horse. My own apartment, can you believe that? Not like a college dorm or anything. It figures that my own first apartment would get broken into the first week, huh?” He laughed and it was tinkling glass in Linnell’s ears. “Can you believe how old we’re getting, John? I mean, I’m twenty-four. When will I ever experience this for the first time again? Life’s a funny thing, man.”

 John Sid glanced haphazardly at the door and as if he had drawn it forth from some seismic continuum, there was a heavy, rhythmic knock on the other side.

“That’s odd,” Flans laughed, checking the watch on his right hand. “Bill’s not due for at least fifteen minutes…”

Feeling his chest fold in on itself, John Linnell simpered, “Life’s a funny thing, Flansy.”