"Huh? Wha?"

Munky’s head shot from the hard wooden cover of the desk to meet his teacher’s gaze; the entire class looked at him with a snicker in their voices The teacher slumped again, leaned back on her heels. She loved it when she caught a student not paying attention. In fact, it had been quite obvious; the soft snores gave it away, and James Shaffer had a track record for sleeping through his history class. This deserved a nonchalant flick of her chestnut hair; she decided she just might do it to spite him…

James watched as she did so. He had been having a wonderful dream, a dream about a girl that sat across the class from him. Over the past couple of months he had developed a way to clothe his face with his long black hair, so that she would be oblivious as he stared. But her face was so dreamy…and Mrs. Mockrewski’s droning didn’t help. As embarrassment flamed his cheeks he couldn’t help but catch a glance at her.

Her name was Kaitlin Eurich (he had seen her name in the yearbook) and the only time she looked at him was when the teacher announced him. She looked at him with indifference now as his heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t like school.

To say the least.

And now he was in bit of a complex. See, his dream had been…well…a fantasy. And if anyone looked at the tent pitched in his pants, the snickers in the classmate’s eyes would voice themselves triumphantly.

"Are you going to pay attention, James, or do you want a pillow?" his teacher asked with complete sincerity. He waved her off.

"Alright, then. But meet me after class." She paused, and then picked up her waving stick and faced the board once more. No one saw her grin as the students voiced soundless groans.

When the attention was off of him again, he adjusted his long shirt to fit over his pants. He tried to get his mind off of Kaitlin. Could. Couldn’t. She kept fleeting and returning with even stronger force. He wondered what she looked like without clothes on. He had never seen someone without her clothes on, save himself, and his scrawny body wasn’t too impressive. She had nice, big—

"Hey, good one, man, that was real slick" read a letter that flittered haphazardly over his right shoulder. He snatched it out of the air with his long, delicate fingers. This way of passing a note was a risky one: there was strict etiquette for passing notes in school. Many times had Jimmy been the audience to personal notes read aloud by amused teachers who could give a damn what the social effects of such a reading would be. Kid’s lives were ruined that way. Over the years there were many ways developed to insure this from happening; now, only the dumbasses got caught.

Dropping it on the floor was the best method; the rustling of children’s feet hid the sound, and so a little shove would send the note as far to the right or left as needed for the receiver to bend casually and pick it up. This passing-over-the-shoulder/flying-in-the-air-where-the-teacher-can-see-with-the-eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head pass was risky, dangerous, rarely ever attempted. And yet, when it soared over his shoulders he got it. A look to the teacher’s back convinced him that she had not seen. He was just waiting for her to turn around; she didn’t.

Just as carefully, he turned his head to Ham’s grinning face. His double chins pronounced themselves as his chubby cheeks swelled. The sound of his pudgy fingers tapping against the desk was quite annoying; but, Ham was one of his only friends. He thought Ham was okay.

"Alright, but whatcha want me to do? She catches me no matter what…she watches me." He utilized the classic floor-kicking technique he had mastered over the years to teleport the message.

ESP would have been so much easier. He remembered reading a book that talked about how in five hundred years everyone will have the ability to communicate telepathically. Munky thought that it was true; his dad told him that it was bullshit…and if he didn’t cut his hair…by God—

Obviously, Ham didn’t know how to pass notes, because the teacher almost caught them as the paper flew over his shoulder…yet again. Though nothing in the note yet was that personal, he still didn’t need to get caught. He was already in deep shit. He would be late for Music Tech—and all because of the girl sitting across the room…as well as the nasty hag in the front.

The note read, "Don’t worry about it. Mrs. Bitch is a cunt anyway," (this note was suddenly very precious) "I was just wondering if you wanna come over my house for lunch."

"Sure," he wrote. "Look, stop passing the note to me over my shoulder. Just kick it over on the fucking floor, before I get caught again."

And yet, as he inevitably knew it would, it flew over his shoulder. Ham had added one word, and one word only, to the criss-cross conversation which had gone down the risky way.

"Okay."

For the rest of the morning Munky moved through the motions of his freshman year. He always made sure he was on time for Music Technology. It was the only class he enjoyed. He had been lucky to get into it, being a freshman, since the dubs religiously went first to the upperclassmen. Naturally, he was a loner in this class as well, and adapted very well to using the machinery to make poppy music. He got a great grade in this class, and besides Home Ec (Munky had a burning desire to be a janitor when he grew up; he loved the outfit) it was the only class he paid attention in.

He examined the missing tip of his right index finger as he waited for the slow as hell Mac to load, and winced. The pain had been a sharp blade as the chain to his three-wheeler had sliced through him. He had been sneaking out to a party with his older brother, and his three-wheeler had threatened to betray him with its animal-like growls. To silence it he had slapped it…and paid for it dearly. In the dark, he had failed to find the missing tip of the finger, and so a mere lump was there now.

Man, had it hurt like a bitch, and how the blood had flowed from the missing tip. The doctor had bandaged him up, told him that he needed to rehabilitate it somehow…

There are times in everyone’s life where they come upon that crossroad, that criss-cross where they take their life into their own hands. It is a moment of truth, a decision placed upon the victim. For in everyone there is an opportunity of greatness, a split ass-crack in time where their fate is handed to them. When the doctor asked him if he would pick up an instrument, Jimmy had rolled his eyes and shifted his narrow butt on the silver platter that was the operating table. Maybe he had spoken the words; maybe a sudden flash of memory saved him, but one thing is for sure: it was his piece of ass-crack in time. He took the right path.

He said, "Yeah, well, there is a guitar in the closet…"

"Perfect!"

And Jimmy’s life was never the same.

He took lessons for the first couple years down the street at Mr. Haas’, an elderly white man who looked like he chewed on sour lemons as a habit. He taught Munky how to count the beat and play by tapping his foot. Munky tried and tried, and failed because he just didn’t dig it. Everyday he sat down with his beat-up old piece-of-shit guitar, and tried to find a button or a notch that would make his guitar sound like Van Halen’s or Motley Crue’s. Their guitars had a raw, grinding sound that made his heart race and his head throb. And he totally dug that.

The thing was: where was the button that would transform his guitar into theirs? Did they use a different pic, a different kind of guitar, even? Munky didn’t know—he didn’t know much about the guitar—but he did know that he was sick of the acoustic bullshit—he wanted to play some bad ass guitar, dude.

He met up with Ham outside of the school, in the high school parking lot. They had an hour off for lunch, and Munky was carefree as he grabbed his bag and welcomed the sunlight. He thought about his father, who was no doubt out in the desert right now, working hard labor under the beating sun. He didn’t want to be a farmer, like his father, working for major corporations for no pay; he wanted to be a janitor, where he could be inside, cleaning and flaunting his cool outfit. For a Mexican, being a janitor (and working in a school, no less) was a great job.

Ham jiggled, to say the least, as he saw Jimmy. He waved a fleshy arm. With his long legs, Jimmy made it to Ham’s side within a couple steps. They started to walk together after saying "hey"s and after Ham pointed them in the right direction. He assured them they weren’t far.

"So, what did Mrs. Bitch have to say?" Ham asked. He was already slightly huffing as they turned onto the sidewalk.

"Huh?"

"You know, Mrs. Bitch. The one that caught you staring at Kaitlin."

"Nothing. I left before she could say anything." They both laughed. After a few steps, Jimmy said, "You mean, you knew I was staring at Kaitlin?"

Head lifted his eyebrows in a laugh. "Yeah, it’s pretty obvious, man. It’s kinda funny how you tilt your head to one side and wipe your hair in your face."

"Really?" This was a revelation to Munky. He had thought no one noticed…but it looked like his love-gazing days were over.

"Here we are," Ham said. His house looked like all the others in the development Ham lived in; all had sun-tanned roofs and cement walls. The only way one differentiated one house from another were the garage doors. The neighbors would always compete to see who had the best garage doors. More often than not walkers became more frequent in front of a house that had different windows on their garage doors. A new, innovative design spawned jealousy, suspicion, and, sometimes, angst. What makes them so much better than us? the envious neighbors would think as they watched smugly from their shaded curtains. That neighbor would be completely ignored until they were showed up, yet again, by another competitor.

The first thing Munky noticed was that there were some frickin’-nice garage doors.

He could also tell that this was definitely an upper-scale neighborhood. For Bako, anyway. Munky lived all the way on the other side of Bako, in a small apartment at the fringe of the desert. It was a dangerous place, so bad that sometimes his mother would not let him or his brother stay out past dark, for fear of what people would do to young Mexican boys in an alley. Bakersfield looked upon Mexicans as bitches, and if one of the racist punks of the place caught a hold of him, there was no telling what could happen. It was a fact of life. A fact of life in the purgatory that was B-Town, California.

Red and yellow tropical foliage nourished by the doorway, so beautiful and plentiful that Munky couldn’t resist straying for a minute to look at it all. He marveled at the size of Head’s large house. Inside it was white and airy; various pieces of beautiful artwork dotted the walls. This was a fragile house. Everywhere there were statues and pictures, an antique piano in the corner of the dining room and a spiraling staircase that Munky guessed led to the bedrooms. He had only one word for it:

"Wow."

"Thanks. But let’s eat, okay? I’m starving," Ham insisted. He rubbed his protruding stomach.

Munky realized he had strayed and let Ham lead him to the kitchen. In the kitchen his mother faced away from them, cooking up something that made Munky absolutely ravenous. She greeted them without even turning around, and to kill time Ham fetched a bag of potato chips from the pantry. He began munching as they settled into the beautiful tan leather couch of the living room. There was a big screen television in the living room. Munky considered asking Ham if he could turn it on; save for in school, he had never seen a decent sized television. Every night his family huddled together to watch the Cosby show in front of their 5-inch screen, but other than that…

"Lunch is ready."

Ham didn’t have to be asked twice. He jumped from the couch, and planted his ass at the table. Munky was not far behind. As he sat and his mother regarded Munky for the first time, he ignored her frown. She hid a scowl in Ham’s direction, and dutifully served them the reubens she had prepared. Munky knew why she was pissed; this had happened many times before. He was convinced that his long hair had offended her; or maybe, just maybe it was because he was…

But it’s America, isn’t it? This was a free country. But still, in Bakersfield, California…it was far from being the "land of the free and the home of the brave." To put it quite frankly, Bako had issues—racial issues. Ham was enjoying his meal too much to notice his mother’s disapproval. Even after Munky had finished his meal Ham went back for more (and Munky ate like a horse, so this was a lot).

"You done yet?" Munky asked when Ham grabbed the bag of chips once more. Ham scowled, and after a falter replaced the bag of chips in the pantry. He looked as if Munky had robbed him.

"Yeah. I guess."

"What do you wanna do now?" Munky asked. They had more than half an hour left before they had to go back to school.

"I don’t know."

They sat for a minute in contemplative silence. Ham tapped his fingers nervously against his leg. Munky watched it. "Do you ever stop doing that? It’s so annoying."

Ham’s finger stilled. "Well, I’m sorry. Just can’t help it. I gotta keep the fingers moving ever since I started playing the guitar…"

"You play the guitar? So do I!"

Eureka!

And that’s how it all started. Munky watched as Ham set up his little amp in the middle of the kitchen as he had done with Fieldy for the past couple of years, every Saturday….as he showed Munky there was a lot more to the guitar than "Mary Had A Little Lamb." He watched, entranced, in love with the wrenching sound that drove forth like nails from Ham’s amplifier. Ham knew everything, it seemed; he showed Munky tracks from Motley Crue’s "Too Fast For Love" and the basic riff of "Rock You Like A Hurricane."

Years, later, in Guitar One Magazine, as Ham (better known as Head, because of the size of his head compared to his narrow frame) would insist with a shrug of his bony shoulders that "I’m no rock god. I’m just some lucky fat kid who started playing guitar end ended up here," Munky would say with awe "He gave me the awakening, the metal awakening."