When people asked (or even if they didn’t), Ethan described The Check Mates’ sound as “cerebral dance music”. He didn’t know any bands that made better use of ecstatic, accessible polyrhythms. At their most recent show, when they’d started “2+5”, people had gotten up and started dancing, without even being encouraged to. In that moment, when Ethan looked out to see the fans dancing, he felt a power akin to what he imagined cult leaders must enjoy. He was controlling what these people were feeling, and in his beneficence, he was going to make them feel good.
Ethan had cobbled The Check Mates together one desperate year after graduation, when it was starting to seem possible that the warm cocoon of college didn’t exist outside the hallowed halls of higher education. His then-girlfriend Brisa, a music major and arbiter of good taste, was an obvious choice for keyboard. Ethan met Jamal, who played guitar, at his Costco temp job; Jamal had since moved on to work at a non-profit, while Ethan had “gone permanent” (a depressing phrase if ever he’d heard one.) For the drummer, Ethan had posted on Craigslist, which materialized Brian, all puppy-dog energy and rock-steady rhythm. They had been playing together for almost two years now, and in this time Ethan could feel the individual voices gel into an amplifier for his own.
“Guys, I have a pretty big idea,” Ethan said, unplugging his bass amp from the rehearsal studio wall. He waited, just a millisecond, for a satisfactory expression of excitement from his bandmates, but continued even in light of their stingy silence. “I think we should sign up for the Battle of the Bands.”
“Isn’t that for, like, pretty established bands?” Brisa asked. Ethan wasn’t surprised that she was the first to raise a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at the idea. Slight of stature, soft of voice, and never without a full face of make-up, Brisa always made Ethan work for it. Maybe more so, in the year-or-so since they’d broken up.
“We’re as good as any of those bands. Think about how tight our last show was. We were like sardines in a virgin!” Ethan laughed a bit himself, to get the momentum going on his joke. On a small level, the instant between making a joke and finding out if it had in any way raised his standing in the room hit the same neuroreceptor as being on stage.
“I’m squished!” said Brian, in what was maybe supposed to be a sardine voice. Ethan couldn’t help resenting the laughter that followed. That wasn’t even a joke, he thought, it was just an obvious hat on top of my thing.
Ethan lay down his final gambit. “Since we’re all really excited about this, I hope we can swing the entrance fee.”
It was Ethan who, each week, placed the call to the surely stoned woman at the front desk of their rehearsal studio, making a reservation for two hours in the smallest, cheapest room available. Ethan was the one who tirelessly cold-emailed venues, securing the 11pm slots in back rooms where they played to the most devoted of their own friends (or the most susceptible to peer pressure.) Plus, and perhaps most importantly, Ethan wrote the songs. Sure, each band member put their own parts together, but the sound, and the overall sentiment, were his alone. He gave the members of his band something greater than themselves to be a part of. It only seemed fair then, that the band should repay him by covering the entrance fee.
“I’m a little strapped for cash right now,” Ethan went on. “After printing out the stickers for our last show…and I ended up tipping the bartender more than usual because Cody was so drunk…” There was a long, dead pause. “Do you think you guys would be able to cover it? If it means the difference between entering and having to miss out…”
Brian and Jamal agreed, as he expected they would. Brisa rolled her eyes with a “whatever” that Ethan knew also meant yes. Ethan didn’t worry if she was annoyed with him. She probably was, but what bothered Ethan was that Brisa couldn’t see how ultimately, he was in the right.
#
The first round of qualifiers for the Battle of the Bands was held in the basement of the community center downtown. Ethan had told everyone to arrive at 2:15, even though the instructions had said to show up at 2:30 for their 2:45 slot. Brisa would be early, but Jamal could be relied upon to arrive ten minutes late to anything. Ethan had lugged his own heavy amp from home. The email had said that gear would be provided, but he didn’t want some random sub-par equipment to mess with their sound. Not that the first round was anything to be worried about. As far as Ethan could tell, this step was just to screen out the groups that weren’t remotely serious. The second round would be a little tougher, since only eight bands would be selected for the final concert, but they’d cross that bridge when they came to it.
When Ethan got to the check-in table, he sized up the girl manning the sign-in list. Her long, blond hair was swept up into the type of hairdo that either took thirty seconds or thirty minutes (feminine mysteries), and she wore an oversized plaid shirt in which she looked delicate and almost child-like. Ethan tried to guess her relation to the music industry. The Battle of the Bands was organized by previous winners, but he struggled to picture her as a musician. He considered that she might be an employee of the community center. She had the look of someone who would pleasantly agree to work a weekend for lack of a concrete reason not to. “Name?” she greeted him.
“Ethan Alderman, checking in for the Check Mates.” He probably could have made that funnier. Checking in, Check mates….maybe something about an impending mic check. But he suspected the kind of flirting this girl would respond most to was that which exuded the least effort, so he just held eye contact and smiled at 45%. There was no one in line behind Ethan, so he lingered, to see if she’d strike up a conversation.
“You didn’t need to bring equipment,” she smiled at him. “We’ve got a full backline set up in there.”
“Trust, but verify,” responded Ethan, who might not have deployed this particular phrase had he remembered that it was a Ronald Reagan thing. But, no one taking in Ethan’s thread-bare t-shirt, dirty sneakers, and general patina of grunge would confuse him for a young Reaganite. “So, how did you get roped into this?”
“I’m one of the judges,” the girl replied. “My friend was supposed to man the check-ins, but she bailed at the last minute, so I’m stuck missing a full afternoon of auditions.” A kindly filler of silences, she went on, “You didn’t realize I was such an important cog in the Battle of the Bands machinery, did you?”
The little flirtation seemed to have run its course, and Ethan knew enough to always be the one to leave a conversation first, so he returned to his amp and looked at his phone with a look he hoped passed for meaningfully engaged.
#
The audition felt like it went by much faster than its seven scheduled minutes. When Ethan snuck glances at the judges table, he saw both of the two judges nodding in rhythm to the song. One judge chewed gum throughout their audition. The other guy looked like a poor man’s Jake Gyllenhal, which is to say, still much more handsome than most can afford. Ethan wondered if the girl out front was his girlfriend.
After they played, the group decided to get a drink. Rather than lug the amp he’d brought, Ethan dragged it to a corner of the room, leaving a note: My dad will be back for me! Over drinks, the band reviewed their performance, and found nothing to take issue with. They’d played well. Finishing his second glass, Ethan recognized that elusive glow of tipsiness that lasted, it seemed, just a few minutes before resolving itself into intoxication or sobriety. Feeling an urge to capitalize on this rare state, he pushed his chair back and rose from the table. If one can stroll purposefully, that’s how Ethan made his way back to the community center, determined to extend the buoyancy of his current mood. Through the window, he could see the check-in girl breaking down a table. He knocked gently before opening the door. “Need any help?” he offered, as if he’d just dropped by in order to clean up an event he had only a tangential connection to.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, surprised. “Sure.” He joined her in kicking in the metal rods that kept the table up, and dragging it to the side of the room.
“I just came back to grab my amp,” he explained.
“That’s not very good parenting,” she said, “just leaving your baby unattended for hours at a time.”
“I knew she was in good hands.”
“I had to feed her dinner.”
“Well, that was very nice of you.”
Ethan did a split second calculation on whether he could kiss the girl in this moment. That would be crazy, of course, but maybe in a hot “ask forgiveness, not permission” way? He liked the idea of kissing her without yet knowing her name. Buoyed by two wheat beers and a sense of accomplishment, could he be blamed for at least considering it?
“I’m Emily,” she dashed his anonymity fantasy.
“Ethan,” he dumbly reintroduced himself. He yearned for a stick of gum. “How were the rest of auditions?”
“My friend eventually did show up, so I actually got to hear the last six bands play. Let me tell you, there are….a variety of different bands out there.”
“Oh, I know!” Ethan laughed. Surely this was a good sign. If she was commiserating with him about bad bands, she must not count his own band within that set. With the clean up done, and his buzz all but evaporated, Ethan made a mental test for the situation. If Emily touched him in any way before he left, even seemingly accidentally, she probably liked him. If she made a joke or said something that seemed like it was meant to impress him, he’d say he had even odds. Anything less than an effusive thanks for the help cleaning up and a friendly goodbye and the meet-cute turned mind-blowing tryst he’d imagined on his walk over was probably not in the cards.
“Okay, well, thanks for the help with this. I’d better be getting home — my roommates are making fajitas and I’m supposed to get avocados. And I’m sure,” here referring to his amp again, “that this little guy is tired.”
“Oh yeah, all worn out from his big day out and about.” It bothered Ethan that his fictionally animated amp had started the conversation as a girl, but Emily had referred to it now as a boy. Had she paid so little attention to the conversation that happened just moments ago? Still though, this could be counted as borderline flirting.
“I hope I see you next weekend,” she said warmly.
Ethan’s heart soared in a confusing mess of lust and pride. “Yeah,” he said with a crooked smile, “I’d like that, too.”
#
Ethan’s thoughts alternated obsessively between Emily and the Battle of the Bands all week. His showers dragged on minutes beyond their usual duration while he contemplated whether wearing suits at the finalists concert would look contrived. He came close to missing his turn while driving to work, so distracted was he by the question of whether Emily liked The Dismemberment Plan or thought of them as emo. He worried that when Emily heard them play at the next audition, she would not think they were good. He worried that she would think they were good, but assume she was biased because of her attraction to him, and would recuse herself from judgment, and then they would not advance. He worried that she did not find him attractive at all. He worried that they would sleep together, and his friends would accuse him of sleeping his way to the top of the music business. He worried that they would sleep together, and she would be so disgusted by him that he would be blacklisted in the industry. He fantasized about having sex with Emily while his own EP played in the background.
At band practice on Thursday, Ethan’s nervous energy crowded the already small studio. Jamal was practicing one of his overly complex guitar licks, which Ethan always had to diplomatically walk him back from, saying how they were almost “distractingly good” when he just meant that they were distracting.
“Hey, have you heard back from the Battle of the Bands people yet?” Brisa asked. “They’re supposed to let us know sometime this week, right?” They were indeed, and with each day that passed without an email about the Round Two auditions, Ethan’s agitation grew. Of course he would rearrange absolutely any part of his schedule to be available for whatever fifteen-minute slot they were assigned this weekend, but it felt like a power move to be given such little notice. And the last thing he needed was Brisa or Brian saying that actually they couldn’t make it, when it should be obvious that the second round audition was the one that actually mattered.
“Not yet,” Ethan replied stoically, lest he jinx anything with a show of emotion. He’d been thinking today about who would send the email, whether it would come from gum-boy, Jake Gyllanhal Lite, or from Emily herself. And if from Emily, would it be a form letter, or would she say something, even just a part of a sentence, that gestured to him specifically?
Rehearsal was perhaps the only time Ethan severed completely from his phone. Pulling it out of his pocket afterward, he saw the email. It read:
Thank you so much for auditioning for this year’s Battle of the Bands. We enjoyed getting to know you and your music. This year, over 60 bands applied, and only 30 can move on to the next phase. We’re sorry to say that we can’t invite The Check Mates to move forward this year. We hope you keep playing together though, and encourage you to audition again next year!
The email was signed by gum-boy, with the other two cc:ed. Embarrassment felt like sawdust in Ethan’s throat.
“We didn’t get it,” Ethan said.
“But, I thought there was another audition this weekend?” Brian asked.
“Yeah, we didn’t make the cut for that,” Ethan mumbled. He was relieved he hadn’t spoken out loud his certainty that they would, of course, at least make it to the next round of auditions. But even his secret confidence felt mortifying. He was uncharacteristically quiet as the group dispersed, and when he got home, he made himself do twenty breathy push-ups, an accomplishment no one could take away from him or judge him for.
#
That Saturday, Ethan didn’t explicitly decide he was heading to the community center, but that’s where he ended up. He bought an iced coffee, and nursed it in the little park area nearby. He could see guys and, disproportionately more rarely, girls head into the building, lugging instruments in cases and carrying on a burble of jokes to surf on top of their nervous energy. Many were bands he recognized from the local scene. Most he respected, but there were one or two that he felt certain were not as good as The Check Mates. The low point of the afternoon was seeing The Qualms, a band he and his friends frequently referred to as “white bespectacled music men”, a brother and brother duo whose songs almost exclusively centered around the plight of women of color.
His anxiety earlier in the week had been of the fun, energizing variety. Considering all the ways things could go wrong created the negative space to consider the ways in which they could go right. But had he actually hurt the band’s chances by flirting with Emily? He scrolled through their interactions pretending he was Brisa, trying to decide if she would say he had been imposing himself on her, or just making himself look like an idiot. (It was Brisa who had coolly informed him one drunken night that his desire to be well-liked was in fact the least likable thing about him.) Brisa usually thought Ethan was trying too hard, though, even when he was sure his effort was perfectly calibrated.
As the sun started to set, he saw Emily walking out of the community center. He rose from the bench and sprinted over to her.
“Hey!” She greeted him, not without some surprise. “You auditioned for Battle of the Bands, right?”
“That’s me. Ethan.” He extended his hand, frantically searching for a funny or face-saving way to confirm his own identity. “Single amp dad, lover of power chords.” In this context would she know he meant that he liked using the root and the fifth, or think that he just loved plugging things in? Maybe it actually worked as a pun. “I guess The Check Mates aren’t your type, but we’ll definitely be back to try again next year,” he lamely quoted his own rejection email.
“That’s good,” she said, plausibly meaning it. She tilted her head to the side in a gesture that Ethan thought girls employed to seem flirtatious, but made him think they hadn’t heard him correctly. He felt desperate to know the details of the judges discussion. What didn’t they like about his songs? Had they been close to making the second round, or barely even considered?
“I don’t know if this is out of line, but, did you have any…feedback? About our audition? We, ya know, aim to please.”
Emily seemed uncomfortable. “Oh, well, I mean, I didn’t actually hear you guys play.” She did the head tilt thing again, like she was asking him for something, but he didn’t know what. With a swift inhale through his nose, he leaned down and kissed her squarely on the lips, employing the amount of pressure he’d calibrated the majority of girls enjoy. She jerked away, wiping her mouth with her hand. Ethan wasn’t surprised, per se. He moved through the world aware of all the possible outcomes that could greet him. It never hurt, though, to be open to the best among them. The interaction was clearly a lost cause, from a career or a carnal perspective, so he tossed the dregs of his ice coffee into the can on the corner and headed for home. He could write a song about this. People would love it.
THE END