My Metallica Story

I was your typical suburban kid listening to tapes of GnR growing up in the early 90s. I mean thankfully my mom showed me Tokyo 92 for obvious reasons. There was a kid across the street named Tom and his family was a little different than mine. His dad was always working long hours at the office and his mom left a lot of weekends for hours at a time but what did we care she always came home with stuff from hotels for us. We were too ignorant to know that his parents were doing a lot of fucking just not with each other.

Anyway – Tom had an older brother Seth and Seth was into Metallica and Tom really looked up to Seth. One day Seth left the house after a phone call (no doubt later that it was to get drugs) in which he was in such a hurry he forgot to turn off his stereo. I mean it was whaling. I didn’t really like Metallica at first and I was hoping we could go back to the Jungle again with Axl and the crew. I mean I had just gotten Use Your Illusion so I needed to play that shit. We walked upstairs (Seth had taken over the attic) and I heard what I thought was God. As we got closer it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. It was Orion. At that moment I realized that God and Kirk Hammett were the same person.

My changed at that moment. Tom turned it off and I grabbed a bowling trophy off the shelf and swung it at him. I fucking connected and he went down hard. I stood over him and didn’t even feel bad. I did my own version of Chris Tucker in Friday you know, the “You got knocked the fuck out!” part. I turned the stereo back on and this time I cranked it. Tom knew not to fuck with me. I stood up on the couch that Seth had by the window so that he could sneak Winston cigarettes and I started playing air guitar. I’ve played air guitar before and I was really good. I mean who wouldn’t be with all the Slash I listened to. I mastered all 3 November Rain solos and don’t get me started on Estranged I’ve been know to make ladies weep with my air guitar skills. That day was different though. I wasn’t playing my air guitar with the fluid sounds of a Les Paul. Instead I was shredding, straight dive bombing, with the ferocity of a wooks pitbull. I don’t know what really happened for about the next 10 minutes or so. That was the last time I saw Tom though. The next weekend he had to go live with his grandmother.