i really wish that i knew about midwest emo music back when it was cool to be sad about girls and sneak drinks from the liquor cabinet

by Jack Etzler

So, like, I really wanted to be the kid in High School that would go to parties to drink and smoke, ending up with some girl that I’d fall in love with because she kissed me back and was nice to me, because back in those days girls were real cruel, and back in those days I was really hardcore, and by hardcore I mean I liked metal and scream-o bands and wore dark colors and didn’t show my emotions, except when I was alone, and so, like, I wasn’t that kind of kid, but I was the kind of kid who didn’t get invited to parties, only learning about them the Monday after, and, like, by metal and scream-o I mean I listened to the big 4: Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica, and Slayer, and by scream-o I mean I listened to one song on repeat by Slipknot (“The Devil in I”), so really I wasn’t hardcore, but I wanted to be, and I ended up copying this one dude I was friends with—Wayne, he was a dick—which is something I find myself doing often, copying someone. So, like, fuck man, if I knew about this Midwest Emo shit back in college I feel like I would’ve hit new levels of emotional depth, and developing this sense of being that I have now, and I don’t mean just like a feeling about who I am, I mean a sense about the significance of being, like when the doctor/therapist/psychiatrist person looking over your welfare and self-worth tells you that the next time you have one of those panic attacks to lay on the ground—that sense of being, like, being able to actually feel the connection between your skin touching the ground or carpet or wood flooring; how cold it is and unfeeling—but you think it’s really stupid, because who the fuck wants to just get off their ass from the couch when it feels like they’re having a heart attack, because, well, you know, your girlfriend Kate calls you up to tell you that she wants nothing to do with you anymore, and suddenly you have to call her your ex Kate, and that doesn’t sit right, but for some reason you know you have to get back with her, even though this is the fifth time she’s done this this month, and just a week ago she slapped you across the face because you forgot to call her pretty and she told you you’d never be good enough for anyone else, and, fuck man, if I had this Midwest Emo shit back then right after the panic subsided and Kate wouldn’t answer my texts or calls, I’d of crawled my way upstairs into my bed, closed the blinds so the room would be pitch black—I remember it being an absolutely beautiful day out, spring, flowers blooming, the like—and popped on my headphones and blast some Modern Baseball or, fuck man, even Movements, or The Front Bottoms. “Twin Sized Mattress” by The Front Bottoms would’ve gone so hard. See, “Twin Size Mattress” is this Midwest Emo song, even though their front man Brian Sella refuses to call their music Midwest, let alone Emo (the fans decided and its Midwest and at the very least Emo—and just so we’re all aware, the regional disparities that you will find with the references are intentional, and like, I didn’t name this subgenre of emo “Midwest” just because I wanted to, but like, there are tons of bands that fit this description of a folk-y, math rock inspired sound, with a singer that sounds like the neighbor kid whose never taken singing lessons, but actually has a pretty decent voice, and there is this quality about the music that embodies a Midwest sentimentality, one that I like to imagine has the same feeling and quality of a moment of silence in which you’re sitting on the hood of your car parked on the side of a rural road that has no road signs or markings, and you stare off into the distance in an unobstructed view of fields interrupted by small forests and ranch homes), and pretty much “Twin Size Mattress” starts off with this dedication to all the people who live in broken bodies and have this inner courage they don’t realize they have, and then also to snakes—probably not the animal—but it’s a weird thing to dedicate this kind of song to snakes, like if I dedicated this writing to Kate, but the writing is about polar bears, or something. I don’t even remember the music I listened to when I broke Kate’s heart, and it most certainly was not Emo, fuck no, like, I was still trying to be this tough, hard-ass, broad-shouldered SOB that could flatten someone with a right hook, who wasn’t 120 pounds soaking wet, but was a lean, mean 250, and started High School varsity Football, like Dad, and I totally got in that car and blasted something mega hardcore, no emotions, only anger, and it was probably “Bleed” by Meshuggah because they’re metal as fuck and Swedish and I loved being metal as fuck, though I’m not Swedish, but now I just get really sad when I think about that time, and, like, I should mention that this was the final straw, so to speak, at least for me, this was the one and only time that I had ended things with Kate, and, like, I think about when I got home and cried into Dad’s shoulder and kept telling him, “I want it to stop. I want it to stop,” and he didn’t really know what to say other than, I’m so sorry bud, because here’s his kid, his boy, who doesn’t know how to quit this girl who he believes he loves so deeply it hurts, and he probably thought to himself, You broke up with her, didn’t you? You’re free, but his boy doesn’t know; his kid just cries and cries because he’s been holding this all in, and Dad probably thought to himself, I taught him that, which he’d be right, but also wrong, see, like, there wasn’t a day that we both sat down and he taught me about how to take mason jars and boil them first, because when you bottle stuff in mason jars there’s a high likelihood of bacteria forming, so you then fill it with a certain kind of memory and put it on the shelf, and don’t label it either, it’s really important to not label it, and fuck man, if I’d just listened to something with a range of emotions I would’ve cried more, and known it was okay. See, “Twin Size Mattress” is really a mix of being about heroin addiction and toxic relationships; it’s smart in that way, and, like, I’ve never shot up heroin, but I have been a terrible drunk lately, because I’ve been opening those jars, you see, and there’s this part at the end of the second verse, really it’s a pre-chorus (but who the fuck cares), where this character in the song is presumably running from something and his friend is begging the-dude-running to stay with him and the-dude-running is all like, nah man I gotta go, and bam the chorus jumps in and it’s all about finding the-dude-running a place to fit in, but this dude is a real good runner, and it’s crazy because I remember I started drinking a lot more when I met Kate, and that’s probably a sign I should’ve seen, and the song touches on that, you know, saying there’s consequences for the stupid shit we do and things to learn from, but maybe drinking and being with her was a good thing, I’m not too sure. You see, the first time I ever drank drank, not like the first-time alcohol touched my lips, because that was when I was eight or nine and I was running around the Rondeau’s house on the other side of North Olmsted (it was one of the Rondeau’s Summer parties) and all the families were together and us kids were playing ghost in the graveyard and I ran around the front of the house where Dad, Mr. Rondeau, Kit, and Chris were standing drinking beers and I stopped for a moment and Dad said, Whatcha running from? And I told him, “Alec found Donnie and me’s spot,” and he asked if I was thirsty and told me to have a swig of whatever he was drinking, which had to have been Bud Light because right around that time Dad had some problems drinking beer and the light stuff didn’t give him an allergic reaction, and it tasted how you’d expect it to taste for an eight or nine-year-old, and so I had made some friends in college, during my first spring semester: Dorian, Jake, Mike, Kate, Jose, Pat, Rachel, Joe and Wally, Abbey, Other Rachel, and Cole, so, like, Mike decided to throw a party in his dorm room that was this suite type thing—they had a living area and their rooms all connected to it—and, like, for some reason Kate couldn’t come, or wouldn’t come, I don’t remember that part, but what I do remember is being invited to this party, and told to bring something, but I didn’t know what to bring so I just brought myself, and I sat myself down next to the table with all the drinks and mixers because there was no room on the couch for me and people were already deep into conversation and halfway through the Crown Royal, and, like, I’d never drank before, not like this, and so I ask Mike to make something, because he comes over and said to me, Hey, Jackie-boy, glad you could make it, and he made me a screwdriver with Kirkland brand Vodka and SunnyD, and it was in the classic red solo cup that I kept attached to my hand the whole night, because an old friend from High School, she told me that sometimes people like to spike other people’s drinks to get them high and laugh at them, and so, like, not wanting to be laughed at, I kept my drink in my hands the whole night, and I downed one after the other, and at some point I started getting the spins, though I didn’t call it the spins, so I told Dorian, “The room is all weird,” and he told me, Oh shit Jack you’re drunk! And I guess I was drunk. I remember that Mike cut me off at one point by taking the Kirkland bottle away from me and putting it in his room, and he came back and asked how I was getting home, and I told him, “Oh I think I’m staying with Dorian,” and Mike told me that Dorian had left an hour ago, and I decided to call Kate, and, at the time, we’d been in a weird spot—we’d gone on a couple dates over spring break and called it dating, but soon after the semester started back up she dumped me and said she wanted to be with other guys, then told me about all the guys she’d been sleeping with, and this really hurt me because I knew all the guys she had been with; they were all these broad-shouldered SOBs who could squat their body weight—but she picked me up anyways. I guess she was alone that night, because her roommate, Rachel, had been out (sleeping around as Kate had said whenever Rachel wasn’t home), and so it’s just me and Kate, like, totally alone in her dorm room, me completely drunk with the spins and her cold sober, and I think she was doing homework—she’s studying marketing and graphic design—so I get there and feel like I’m imposing, because I was, and I get all apologetic and sad, to which she tells me that I’m glad you called, I’m happy you’re here with me. So, like, she then tells me to get into bed—the classic dorm room twin mattress—and we’re lying there together, and I tell her, “It’s really cool being drunk, the room spins.” And she asks if I’d drank any water, and I tell her no, because I wanted to be drunk, which she asks why, and I tell her, “Because of you,” either because the adage—drunk words are sober thoughts—is true, or because I wanted to hurt her, and I do think I wanted to hurt her. You know, that song I was talking about, “Twin Size Mattress”, also ends with (funnily enough) a twin-sized mattress, so, like, it ends in this big fury because the narrator, or singer, or writer, whoever, is letting all this emotion out about how this girl is cursing him forever, and I feel like Kate cursed me, too; which I don’t think she actually did—like witchcraft, demon cursing—and, I mean, laying in her arms that night while the room spun around me, I don’t think she, or I, would know what was coming, you know, all the arguments and hate, the love, the abuse, the heartbreak, but in that moment I couldn’t help but feel safe. And, you know, I still have a problem with drinking, and even that night I didn’t think it would jumpstart that whole process which led me to a hospital room where my doctor told me that if you have more than twelve drinks in a week you can be considered an alcoholic, and ever since then I haven’t stopped drinking, nor have I stopped counting my drinks, and I might even say that to spite that idea I may have drank more through the weeks, but I’m not certain what to do with all that information, like I could probably tell you that my relationship with drinking is rooted in a number of things—like my family having a genetic disposition to addiction, both my grandmothers had been raging alcoholics, my dad and his dad were heavy smokers, and my mother has picked up smoking weed again—and these things can be recreational, but I can’t help but notice that the heavy bouts of drinking, for me at least, come during times of stress, anxiety, and depression most of all, and I could also say my problem is rooted in this moment where the room spun around me and I laid in Kate’s arms in her dorm room twin-sized mattress and I told her about how depressed I’d been and that I’d considered killing myself a number of times and she told me that was frightening, and I still can’t comprehend the process that brought me to that point, at least now that I’m more removed from it, the wide array of memories that lead up to that night have become blurred, and I’m only left with a few spots of clarity.

Photo of Jack Etzler

BIO: Jack Etzler is from Cleveland, Ohio, currently teaching at the University of Akron, recovering from finishing a graduate program—he lives with his cat, Miss May.