The Gift of Fire (10 page)
At least during my first day, which was dedicated to orientation, I was able to meet a few upperclassmen who’d been assigned to show me around and make me as comfortable in my new surroundings as they could. But then I was left to deal with the problems, perils, and emotional pitfalls of high-school life by myself—such as negotiating the cafeteria.
Lunch was held during two different periods, one for juniors and seniors, the other for the freshmen and sophomores. This meant I wouldn’t get to eat with those nice upperclassmen or my brother Scott.
Those first few weeks enduring the noon-hour meal were pretty much hell, if you want to know the truth. I’d sit in the center of one of the long institutional dining tables, and no one would sit anywhere near me. It was as though the other students suspected that my scars were contagious, that somehow they’d get burned by sitting too close to me! Just like in kindergarten, I could almost feel their stares as they choked down their sandwiches. And just like in kindergarten, the kids grew bolder, and their snickers and nasty whispering became loud enough for me to hear.
For example, when there were no other open seats one day, a ninth-grade boy standing a few inches away from me loudly asked his friend: “You must be joking! Do I
have
to sit by him?” I focused my attention on the food tray in front of me and kept eating my meal. What else could I do? If you’re swimming in a pool filled with hungry sharks, the last thing you want to do is let them know you’re bleeding. Sure, these types of remarks hurt deeply, but I did my best to ignore them and protect myself by forming a sort of scar tissue over my heart, as I already had over most of my body.
Soon I developed a kind of inner radar that picked up on the people in a crowd most likely to attack or insult me. To this day I remain highly sensitive to the energy flow of others and get a sense of how they’re going to react to me before they know what their reaction is going to be themselves—I call it “vibing” people. While I used to rely on this as a tool for protecting my own emotions, more and more I employ it to protect other individuals from embarrassing themselves.
These days I’m more sympathetic to strangers who react rudely when they first meet me. I understand they have issues and fears of their own that make them act out defensively. But back in high school, I wasn’t nearly as sophisticated in my thinking. So when a fellow student lashed out at me with his or her tongue, it really stung.
Thank God I had my drum set. As soon as I returned home after school, I could retreat to the den, break out my sticks, and go crazy. For a long time I used the drums as a release for the hurt and frustration that was part of my daily life. Anger was such a part of my drumming style that I became a very aggressive player and often played like a real beast. In fact, one of my nicknames on the drums is “Danimal.”
But I’m happy to say that I’ve left much of that way of playing in the past, where it belongs. I’m still a very aggressive drummer, but I never let anger fuel my performance anymore. I have far too much respect for the instrument and for the music to do that. Besides, I’ve learned that when you allow anger—which is an emotion based in ego—to dominate any aspect of your life, you’re closing yourself off to love. And love is the most positive and creative artistic force in the universe. Again, these were all things I’d learn further down the road of life; during high school, I needed every outlet I could find to vent my anger and keep myself sane.
It was also helpful that Scott, who was a senior, had made friends fairly easily and introduced me to some of the boys he’d met. I also became acquainted with some older students on my own through gym class. You see, for the most part, my skin doesn’t have pores. This means that I am extremely sensitive to the sun and have a difficult time regulating my core body heat. Since freshman and sophomore physical-education classes generally consisted of outdoor activities—in the bright Louisiana sun!—the teachers arranged for me to be a part of the junior gym classes, which tended to take place in the gym. There I met those few whom I came to consider my pals.
I found all of these older kids much easier to hang out with because they were more mature and didn’t feel the need to prove themselves by putting people down. When I listened to them talk, I felt less lonely and put upon by my own classmates.
Sometimes when Scott’s buddies dropped by the house, I’d flip through the books they brought over. Some of them featured stories of people and history that stirred something within me, making me think about myself as being part of a larger world for the first time. And it was through books that I made one of my first good friends at Mandeville High.
Her name was Mrs. Plesch, and she was my English teacher that first year. After she’d read an essay I wrote about rock ’n’ roll and society, we began to talk quite a bit. She spoke to me differently, prodding me to think about things such as music and life. She was open to new philosophies and fresh ways of thinking. Through our daily chats after class, I too began to form my own awareness as to what I wanted to become. Looking back now, I see that thanks to her, I had a social outlet—and that was one of the things that saved me from the depths of total social abandonment.
A
LTHOUGH
I
’
D MADE A FEW FRIENDS
during those first few months of school, I had yet to make any who were more or less my same age.
Then one day that changed. It happened in the lunchroom, of course. A big burly kid walked right over to me, tossed his tray down on the table, and sat across from me. He looked at me for a moment with great intensity and started a conversation.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“I was burned in a fire when I was young.”
“How old were you?”
“I was two.”
“Damn. That must suck. Did it hurt?”
“I don’t really remember any pain,” I said.
He kept asking questions relating to my accident, and then he introduced himself: “I’m Matt. What are you doing over here all alone?”
“My name is Dan. I don’t really have any friends,” I admitted. “I’m not sure that anyone likes me … except a few of the older kids and my English teacher.”
“Well, you’ve got a friend now. What do you do?”
I didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean, what do I do?”
“I mean, do you like to do stuff?” Matt asked. He kept jamming food into his mouth and chewing kind of loudly. I suspected that he might be a bit of a ball-breaker and was maybe trying to show me up in front of the other students, but he seemed genuinely nice. He was also kind of funny.
“I play drums.”
Matt’s gaze shot directly down to the ends of my arms—which didn’t look like any he’d ever seen before, obviously, especially on a drummer. “Get the hell out of here!” he exclaimed after a few seconds. “How do you do that? I don’t know anything about the drums, but I play a little guitar, and I have a hard enough time doing that with
all
my fingers! I can’t imagine playing without hands. Come on, man, you’re putting me on! How the hell can you manage to ever hold on to drumsticks without any hands?”
“I do okay,” I said, smiling at his openness. “I use a wristband to attach one stick to my right hand, and I can hold the other stick with my thumb on my left hand.” I held it up, wiggling my surgeon-constructed digit for him.
He whistled softly and shook his head in amazement. “Man, oh man! That is so cool … are you any good?”
I always hated it when someone asked me that. How was I supposed to respond? I settled on: “I’m okay, I guess.”
That was all it took for us to become friends—me responding to Matt with an honest answer, and him not being freaked out by the way I looked. We began hanging out together quite a lot, both at school and after. At first we mainly hung at my house, jamming on instruments with my brothers and generally having a good time while getting to know each other. Matt would bring his guitar, and I’d play along with him on the drums. They were good days for me, uplifting and eye-opening.
Matt also knew a lot of people. He had one of those open faces and easy, likable personalities that attracted friends; I really looked up to him. Through him I got to know several other great people, and my life began to open up socially. Sometimes I couldn’t believe what had been inside of me, but untapped, for so long—the ability to have good friendships!
It felt incredible to finally have someone around me (who was not my family member) who acted and behaved in a “normal” way around me. Maybe I’d been on the defensive for so long because I’d grown used to feeling isolated, as if it was my normal way to feel. Now that I was venturing out into the world, meeting Matt’s buddies and making new pals on my own, that sense of seclusion was peeling away. I was extremely thankful to Matt, and attentive to the gift of friendship in my life. Matt Rycyk was (and still is) a solid guy, and an outstanding friend.
I did have to overcome a familiar hurdle not too long after we met, though. Matt took me over to his house, and his mother greeted me with a comforting hug. We then wandered into the next room, where his father sat reading the newspaper. I guess he was fairly engrossed in the paper because when he glanced up to acknowledge my introduction, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Nice mask.” It wasn’t a joke. He just hadn’t been thinking … or perhaps he really did think I was wearing a mask. I honestly don’t know.
Matt’s mom almost died of embarrassment. As for me, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I tried to chuckle a bit, not knowing what to do or say. My friend just sort of stood there, dumbfounded as well. Finally, after a couple of minutes of this awkward situation, Mrs. Rycyk explained to her husband, “Dear, he’s not wearing a mask. This is Dan. He was burned in a fire when he was a little boy.”
Mr. Rycyk, I knew, must have been in a personal hell when he realized what had just transpired. He was clearly upset by what had come out of his mouth and dropped his paper to take a second look at me. Then he got up and left the room without saying another word. I guess that’s all he could do to try to save “face” after he’d inadvertently insulted mine. Mrs. Rycyk followed her husband out of the room, tossing a little glance of apology in my direction.
Matt and I, more or less, allowed the moment to move over us like an out-of-place rain cloud on an otherwise bright day. As I recall, he kind of rolled his eyes as if to say, “Parents! What are you going to do?” And then we headed off in the direction of his room to check out his music collection.
School began to improve for me socially after the first semester. Students who’d heard me playing drums respected how serious I was about my music, and I made a few more good friends through the Mandeville High junior band. Music had a way of cutting through a lot of the social stigma that had always surrounded me. It wasn’t long before my brother Scott and I formed a band called Rain Dogs with a few friends.
I was loving music more and more. I started listening to all kinds of bands and genres that, I’m embarrassed to say, I’d never really heard before. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix are just some of the artists I “discovered” during this period; and their music had a profound effect on my psyche, as it did for the generations that came before me.
I started reading books about the hippie movement back in the ’60s and found myself identifying with that whole culture of protests and questioning established values. My brother did, too, and often our views about music and society meshed perfectly.
What
wasn’t
meshing perfectly for me anymore was the drudgery of school. Topics I used to find interesting— which was just about everything—now seemed stilted and boring, and my grades started slipping. I simply stopped caring about what “the establishment” was telling me I had to learn. I knew for sure that I wanted to steer my life toward music and was eager to learn everything about music history, music theory, and playing the drums. But as Frank Sinatra, the most celebrated crooner of my grandparents’ generation, so famously sang, I wanted to do it my way.
I was becoming a bit of a rebel, which is often par for the adolescent course. My parents, however, weren’t at all happy when it came to my declining grade point average and nonchalant attitude toward schoolwork. It wasn’t unusual for me to be grounded for having blown off an essay or for getting into trouble in some other way at school. I was also not shy about blurting out my opinions on whatever social issue I’d convinced myself I suddenly knew more about than anyone else.
In my head, I was a “revolutionary.” But really, I was just a normal teenager in a not-so-normal body, with some pretty atypical issues to deal with. I needed to flex my intellectual muscles, assert my independence, and test the waters of freethinking individuality. In my mind, that included toying with a little marijuana and booze, partly to make things interesting, and partly to deal with some emotional pain I still hadn’t come to terms with.
I made darn sure that my parents didn’t get wind of this particular side of my rebellion—they would have gone ballistic if they’d known—so I became sneaky and learned how to cover my tracks. I think I pulled it off, but then again, my mother and father are very smart people. What I do know for sure is that I was never dumb enough to let either one of them catch me red-handed with a joint! I was grounded plenty of times, but never for doing anything that would have broken my parents’ hearts.
