SHUFFLIN ALONG

HALF SISTER by PROTOMARTYR - I used to know this guy named Roach. He started showing up to our D&D and VHS Anime nights toward the end of high school, but I'm not exactly sure how he was connected to us or who invited him. We were living in that amiable "what's mine is yours" headspace that I think a lot of poor kids live in. Like, nobody really batted an eye when this dude showed up in our clubhouse. But these days, if some fucker named Roach just turned up at my house then I would probably have a problem with it. The thing that I remember most about Ol' Roach is that he wore the same pair of shredded jeans every time I saw him, and these jeans were covered in band logos that he'd drawn with a sharpie marker.

DIE AND GET OUT OF THE WAY by AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED - These weren't the cool bands of the day, mind you. Roach wasn't repping Nine Inch Nails or White Zombie. Roach was all about Motley Crue and Whitesnake and Cinderella. Which, in hindsight, was kinda weird. Was Roach truly into the hair metal bands of yesteryear? Did listening to songs like "Girls Girls Girls" inspire him to scribble on his pants and show the world that he related to the sentiment and timbre of a scene 15 years dead? Did he sit down one night and just draw the logos of every band he knew?

GARBAGE by TYLER THE CREATOR - Perhaps the jeans were passed down to him by an uncle or an older brother along with some well-worn tapes and a taste for motorcycles and cold Coors Light. Whatever the case may be, I think about Roach quite a lot. I think I admire the guy in some ways. I mean, it's hard to imagine Roach getting anxious about the future or sitting at a desk blogging about dumb shit when he should be working on something else. I didn't really know that guy, but I'm comfortable saying that he never spent a single second in a 9 to 5. Guys like Roach never do much of anything that they don't want to do unless forced by some authority figure.

SCREAM by TAPE DECK MOUNTAIN - Another thing about Ol' Roach is that everything was always "bitchin." He never played D&D with us that I can recall, but seemed content sitting in a folding chair and telling us all how bitchin we all were. I think we could all use that kind of positivity in our lives. We all have those mental voices of people in our past encouraging us or telling us where we fucked up. The truth is that sometimes, when I'm struggling, the Roach in my memory will lean forward and tell me that I'm bitchin.

HEIST by LINDSEY STIRLING - Roach is frozen in amber. He's perfectly preserved in my mind's eye as a ratty-headed weirdo pinching his namesake between thumb and forefinger in an eternal attic of geeks. I don't want to think about adult Roach. His name is probably Carl or Donnie or something like that. I don't want to think about balding Carl cussing his tax forms or mowing his backyard. No Carls. Only Roach.