The Drumkit

The anger overwhelmed him. He didn’t even know why he was angry. She told him she just wanted to be friends. She even said she wanted the friendship to grow and that she loved him. What did that even mean? He was inside out. The idea of her with anyone else made him crazy. The idea of him without her made him crazy. But he knew he had to let her go. He didn’t even know why it made him crazy. He intellectualized the situation over and over again in his mind and he fully understood the situation. Often he would be fine. He would put it out of his mind as if it weren’t even there and not think of it and he felt normal… great even. Then something would happen and he would imagine her making love to someone else, or even kissing someone else. His cool was gone. His sense was gone. He would go outside his own self and lose himself entirely in madness.

What was this? Why couldn’t he control these emotions? Who was this woman? I mean, was this love? Was it obsession? Most importantly … is there a cure? Funny enough, he now understood the film ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’. She was in his blood. And he was in hers. He wanted the pain to stop, but that was like trying to fix a ghost limb … it was completely intangible.

Could he trust her that she felt the same way? She said she did. He was so mad, he didn’t trust her. He calmly said his goodnights and he ran. Out the door and down the street. He ran ten, fifteen miles. He just didn’t want or need to stop.

Back to his house, sweaty and endorphin filled, he wandered down to the basement. Half in a daze, he searched for his new towels and t-shirt. He heard a kah-thunk. Wiping the sweat from his face, he looked over his shoulder and saw his old drum kit from high school.

The drum set called to him from the corner. Forget her, it said. Let her go. If you play me, I will make you famous… you will travel the world and you will meet many women and you will see that she is nothing.

Mesmerized by this, he took the towel to his face as he removed the dust cover and sat in the hazy light of the basement enveloped by the kit. His drum sticks lay on the snare just where he left them probably a half a decade ago.

Tat tat… bbbbrrrrrrummm tat tat tat…. he went. It felt so good. His muscled remembered what to do. He was so tired, however, he could barely see straight. He returned the sticks to the snare promising to return in the morning.

The sun came up. It is now 20 years later. He traveled country after country, city after city. He became rich and famous as one of the single most greatest drummers in the world. He poured every single unexplainable emotion into his kit, which was now a very large kit, and gave that to the world. He still thought of her every day, and even though the kit promised him there would be others, which there were, there was no one. He was thankful for the pain which finally was subsiding after so very long.

​There was a knock on the door. It was her. Finally, the calm he wanted and waited for. He drew the dust cover over his kit and never played it again…. until…. his little boy asked him, ‘Daddy.. what’s that?” half a decade later.