Gram, or Graham, no one knows for sure except for him (and his mother) is in four bands. The pride and joy of the Taylor Alderdice drumline, junior in high school, outside of Dice he spends almost all his time hanging around adults with musical inclinations who contrast sharply with his childish senior friends.
A city where the weather has a worse temper than the people who have to endure it, Pittsburgh is the place where people, specifically those who seemed to want a watered down version of Chicago, come for the walkability, as there is no chance the public transport drivers are the reason that made them believe that this city was the right place to settle down for their family. Under what felt like a constant game of summer in Death Valley or winter in Siberia, Pittsburgh was simply put, average, besides a collective group speech impediment culminating in ‘yinz’, and a Pittsburgh left, a phenomenon even I have adapted, maybe from spending too much time on the bus when I was suffering of a lack of license; the bad driving and the blue lights that turn on past eight inched their way into my reflexes, allowing me to rest my mind on autopilot while touring my city each day.
I put my car in reverse and pull out into the remains of a broken street. For the past four months Bayard – the strip of concrete between Winchester Thurston and the Scientology church, my street – has been practically ‘un-get-out-of-your-driveway-table’. A test of my patience each morning, I spend more time on trying to find alternate routes to dodge the men and women in their annoyingly yellow vests arguing with me about the veracity of me being a resident, than noticing the changes of my street.
For a while, Bayard used to be the street between Winchester and a plethora of tasty – hip restaurants, but now, under new management, or no management at all, Pie for Breakfast remains a distant memory of Legume, a once fancy place to impress friends from out of town, nowadays reduced to a glorified burger joint. Recently, I realized that I have to define it as being the associate of a mediocre 7-11 and a vape store, the only landmarks teens bother to carve into their brains. I wonder when I myself became desensitized to its decline; maybe I just never noticed until I couldn’t get out of my driveway.
The first thing that Gram told me when I picked him up was that it was uncomfortably warm outside. The exact thought crossed my mind, happy to realize that forgetting my jacket, a sin when being subjected to Pittsburgh’s mood changes, didn’t quite matter today. I could repent on this November Sunday, a day that I had no idea would take me the wrong way in the first ten minutes.
I went my usual route, my usual speeding habit, but my unusual miss of the street. I overshot a house I never fail to notice. Has it really been that long?
The house stood self assured, uninvited, the demise of the street. While the construction workers had been my greatest nemesis each morning, I would not mind if they took their sledgehammers to this house, as a contribution to suddenly ‘better the community’. An absurdly large cube with windows and no blinds, contains a resident which is on the receiving end of an unshatterable grudge. I was convinced it was an object the universe had placed strategically, an object to test my irritability, my pettiness, as it would be so easy to waste some extra gas and take Beechwood instead.
Further down the street, past the cube, and up the hill, stands a house with paint peeling off the outside walls, and the ghost of my bike in the driveway – the backdrop of Gram’s weather report. The house once used to be lively but now it was tired, sick of standing. Flower beds empty and bare, basketball hoop untouched, the family that Gram so badly wanted back, and almost had, lingers, even his favorite cat now gone.
I ironically first met Gram back down the street, in the object of my greatest hatred – the venue where the ‘city kids’ took center stage and banished everyone else to the nosebleeds, as since the moment Shady Side Academy slipped out of my mouth, before I could even mention my zip code, I became blacklisted as the entitled brat Lili (my neighbor) that was corrupting her. While Central, Ellis, and Winchester, all private, are in the accepted zip code range of 15200s and 15210s, battling over the 5th avenue title, Shady Side Academy resides across the river, as if the Highland Park Bridge was the green mile for a crime punishable by death, at least, social death. While I don’t remember much of the night I met Graham, as I spent consoling my next door neighbor for the loss of her boyfriend, the attendant of the cube house and the receiving end of my grudge, I vividly remember briefly crossing Gram. It wasn’t until January rolled around, where both of our lives seemed to be just as ruined as my street, when I learned his real name.
Strawberry Pretzel Salad and a butterscotch oreo mix could only be found in the comfort of four, slightly annoyingly yellow walls. In the place that seemed to be most like Pittsburgh, a Belgian boss, and me, a fake ‘city kid’, resided in the nucleus of its culture, completely contaminating the black and gold. My boss needing to go get oxygen (half a pack of cigarettes), empty summer days and rushed winter nights, my side hustle was a juxtaposition to common belief, particularly as this ice cream shop attracts virtually all adults. While the occasional family would sample each flavor – one kid licking the glass, the other gunning directly for cookie monster – college students, those who will never leave the city and those who suddenly disappear all get their ice cream at the expense of me fielding questions about picking up smoking when returning home, the scent from my boss finding its way into the fibers of my clothes. These yellow walls create a portal, a vision to the future, the grown up city kids, leaching on ice cream that was really made in Mount Lebanon.
Parallel to the yellow ice cream time machine, Gram hustles in a place that needs a null explanation besides the anxiety that comes with trying to order a box combo at one in the morning. If I am the one who manages the ‘city adult’ mid life crisis, Gram oversees ‘city kid’ social hour. The only under 18 employee, Gram breaks corporate policy by working at Canes, and trying to chip away at his manager to accept his song requests, Graham’s higher up deflecting it onto his even higher ups. Through weekly arguments with his employees about sneaking his friends during the uncomfortable sliver of time where an establishment is clearly trying to close and its real closing time, Gram has even the people in the kitchen peeking out their heads through the metal screens to hand him his order without him asking anything besides, ‘can you play Subterranean Homesick Alien?’
They don’t. They never did. It’s the damn higher ups, it always is.
As Gram directed me toward a seemingly abandoned warehouse, I began regretting my decision of letting him show me his favorite spaces. Some were familiar– Forbes, where the terrible trombone playing never stops, Mr. Lee’s classroom, even Whiteman park; but even as unpredictable as Gram was, this seemed a bit odd. Pulling directly into a parking spot spray-painted with a stern ‘no parking’ sign, but I was too reluctant to maneuver my car somewhere else, as I thought, ‘who would even be here?’ Yet again, I was proven wrong.
While the outside looked broken and bare, once I entered what seemed like an undercover high security fort, I was surprised to see that all four floors were bustling with people. Dimly lit, the building’s grey stone stairs snaked between orange bricks leading me to a thick metallic door, a door which stood in the way between me, a conversation, and a realization.
Offices pioneering new technology, movie studios, and a closet for Gram. Even though the space wasn’t big, Grams’ fidgety energy and refusal to sit down filled it completely. Christmas lights were hung haphazardly from the ceiling, drumsticks littered the floor, and a piano displayed physics homework on the sheet holder instead of music; it seemed to me like Gram’s mind was suddenly made tangible – a chaotic product of the rhythm that his dad had drummed into him since he was a child.
When he was five, Gram hated his piano teacher and the piano even more. Quite un-partial to classical music, and very un-partial to practicing, at first, Gram was a musical failure next to the likes of his father. Drum Corps International veteran, ex-professional trumpetist, Gram’s father had been stirring the ingredients of a talented drummer into his son’s brain since birth. Even though Gram was quickly stumbling about his studio, playing with random things, this rhythm became very apparent to me; the way in which he chose his pauses, the organization of his thoughts. While it was all an improvisation, like the jazz he so greatly admired, there was a beat to it, a clear purpose. If his dad pitched it to him, Sunburst School of Music made Gram hit the home run. A rite of passage for young Pittsburgh musicians, the place where Gram would meet his future band mates, and where he found the drums, Gram’s programmed rhythm made him outshine the older kids. Now, the understudy dubbed fit to have a contributing role, Gram took the initial, ‘he’s actually really good’ and made it even better, to the point where he not only graduated from Sunburst early, but perfected the art of asking for rides to his 4 different band practices. Originally a child around highschoolers, currently a high schooler around adults, Gram has no business being half the places he finds himself, always seeming out of place, yet exactly where he needs to be – his own higher up.
Dice comes with its own story – to me it evokes the moment when someone spoils a horror movie; I know the whole story, but would have never gone to see it in the first place. As Dice should have been my alma mater, coming to the end of highschool, I now realize the grudge I held against it, the guilt I hoarded for the daily trip across the Highland Park Bridge each morning, now triggered my detached nostalgia for the community it houses. Dice itself is upright, unlike some of its students. With radiators that sound like Gram decided to have a solo within them, the known consensus is that it’s a school that beacons people to be great, just for them to only make okay out of it, a concept that seemed relatively foreign at Shady Side, with a few notable exceptions. Is it bad to say I was a bit jealous, upset that I couldn’t be as free even though I lived just mere blocks away?
While I have never perceived Gram himself as a degenerate, his friends fit the Dice stereotype perfectly, therefore guilty by association. Always in the foreground of their shenanigans, there is not a single moment I would catch his friends not being busy breaking lamps, or bullying people off Forbes, the self appointed child kings of the street. At a moment in time, to me, they were the true ‘city kids’, those who made ‘okay’ out of things rather than ‘great’ out of them, people who would do just enough to get by and then feverishly attend to their immature tasks.
It was strange to observed the types of people Gram used to fill up the missing parts of himself, the sister off at college, and now his ex-step-siblings… Gram loved people endlessly, but it always seemed like he was left in the dust, choosing the exact opposite types of people to cope with. The extent to which he went to put on a show to the people he felt a relative sense of not dread but boredom, even when it was clear that the only show he wanted to be putting on was with his funk, or rock, or jazz, or rock funk jazz bands, was heart wrenching. Yet, once Gram found his rhythm, it became clear to me how Gram fits into Dice, the way he fits into everything really – by not fitting in at all. This year, either skipping gym to sit in AP Music Theory, or being dubbed Western Pennsylvania’s top drummer, even though it took him three years and four band programs at school alone to get there, Gram realized what school he went to, or the people he felt forced to surround himself with didn’t define him, didn’t put him in a box but rather gave him the tools to make a community of his own, even in a watered down city.
I had no such realization besides the fact that driving had not been kind to me lately – tucking my car behind a van, I just knew I was going to get towed.
Just a week after it being ‘uncomfortably warm’ I was shoving my face within the warm grasp of my scarf, as me and my friend Olivia braved the cold. I would be indifferent to my car being ticketed or taken away, I felt as though I would expect nothing more from this week. Suffering from chronic sleep deprivation, and with no motivation to leave my green walls, I was tempted to seclude myself and just listen to music in the confines of my own room, I didn’t need to put my car in danger. I locked the doors and walked out of the wired gate.
Even though I was only five minutes from Bayard, it felt like I was in a different world, as the city felt unfamiliar tonight. Murals and sculptures lining the sidewalks and building walls, even in the dark their shapes and colors were different than the grey, torn apart put back together again Pittsburgh I was used to, it felt like time would move slow here, especially when your condensation clouds your vision for a moment.
We found ourselves in front of a yellow painted door with three paper plates, the tape messily holding them hostage, not letting the wind take them down the street. Pushing the door inward, I revealed industrial lights and a cement floor covered with glass, a broken wooden stair standing by its side. I seriously started to think this isn’t where we had to go, but the plates said 2nd floor Poster Child with Blue Condition and I hadn’t broken 3 traffic laws– a Pittsburgh left, disregarding a one way, and a very illegal park job – for nothing; I was promised a good show.
This house was so weird. Olivia, my best friend who would go on any adventure with me as long as it ended in froyo, was even more skeptical than me. I don’t blame her. While I may at least bare the 15213 zip, Olivia’s phone number could’t even claim the 412 area code. The wood groaned under our weight, the staircase lit dimly with a singular lightbulb. As I inched my way up to a bend, waiting to have accidentally walked into just a regular person trying to cook or watch TV, I suddenly felt like I was breathing different air. Decorate rugs lining the floor, plants and pictures growing across every surface, the red wall standing assertively with a big hole without a door. The room itself was alive, even without the crowd mushed on the inside of the empty door frame. I felt as though I lived here, suddenly MY mind was made tangible and it wasn’t even my doing, even the first floor, the debris started to make sense: the house was a 4 story work of art.
In the cutout, a room lit purple, outlined by couches and folded wooden chairs, even the floor space was occupied. Gram saw us immediately, but I was too busy being punched in the face by the no apple pay sign, leading my now broken nose to the fist fight of trying to download venmo with a show about to start any minute.
Exiled to the wrong side of the door frame, me and Olivia claimed a couch and tried not to seem out of place. A man with the blazer part of the suit on top and blue jeans on the bottom walked in and out his hands twitching, hair a mess. My card declined. It was looking like we might have to camp outside, and looking back on it, it probably would have been the best view.
I was still left speechless by the house. I didn’t know things like this existed in Pittsburgh, a place where I thought all culture was in the past, every cool thing buried in the soot that once used to define it. A lady was next to us on the couch. Quietly sitting on her phone looking up to the blazer man every time he walked back out, she was the one to first break the silence, ‘does it sound like someone singing super high pitched or am I finally losing it?’ Her glasses were perched on her grey hat, asking us before she even really saw us. We listened. Surely it was someone hitting a high note, or someone throwing the cat out of the 3rd floor window. We talked to her for a while, rambling on about how much I liked the space, it wasn’t just small talk. Eventually I asked her if she had been here before and she said she’d just cover for us, by the end of the night she had a certain liking for us.
When I took off my rose-colored glasses, I felt that my realization ended up plaguing me as once I learned the power of up-and-leaving, bridges were not burned but still grilled. I separated myself from something I had known for years, I realized I couldn’t live in a bubble anymore, especially around people who truly believed the rest of the world would reflect the sheltered life they had led until now. I didn’t become barbaric, completely isolating myself from civilization, but it took a long time to become okay with the fact that I can outgrow people, even without an explanation.
Finding myself sitting on the ground I felt as if I didn’t belong, a perpetually out of place city kid, infiltrating an event that they couldn’t even cover. Mic feedback and people standing right infront of us, the music started.
I was impressed from the first chord, something Gram had been doing a lot of lately. It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in the skill, but the atmosphere added a different dimension to the talent.
More people started to stand in front of us, to the point we had to throw looks between people’s legs to get a single shot of Gram’s foot hitting the bass drum.
I took a moment to let the music be the background to my people watching. A few people I didn’t have to make assumptions about, I knew them, the very people who had their preconceptions about me, the ones that never got past them. My chest tightened, I felt like an imposter; even if I clawed my way out of the Shady Side buble, over time I had forced myself into a new one, a bubble that was fueled by my internal fraudility, a bubble that never let me explore past Forbes. It was at this moment that Tilly walked in the door.
Gram and Tilly were the closest I’ve ever got to clawing out of the constraints thrown at me. Both hailing Dice, both people I connected to based on passions and shared experience, Tilly up and pushed me to the front of the semi-circle crowd. Three songs in, and I couldn’t be more impressed. Em brushed past me tugging his cord behind him like a tail, Casey synced her movements with mine, and Gram put on the show he actually enjoyed. Even though I thought I looked out of place, I finally felt as though I belonged somewhere, even just temporarily – I knew here, people were just for the music, not for the judgement, maybe something I had been ignoring in the city for so long.
I was too harsh on Pittsburgh, on the city kids. While I had experience with the recipe I deviated from, I tried to make sense of things by applying stereotypes to things with completely different ingredients, in the end, mixing it to the point it blew up in my face. It was strange, almost embarrassing that Gram, a year younger than me, a fake-degenerate, reached this epiphany before me. From chasing those who you think you should be friends with, to leaving in secret to go be around people whose company you actually enjoy, to do things you actually love rather than what you’re expected to, Gram clearly had a firmer safety net than I did: music talent. Slowly but surely, several almost-parking tickets, faith in random doorways, and becoming friends with the woman that owns the venue, while I may not have a set community like Gram to defer to, I now realize even a state of limbo has its pluses.
Back in 6th grade, in an effort to save a dyslexic kid from embarrassment, Graham (his real name) allowed himself to become a unit of measurement – wearing it proudly until it defined him. It was sort of an idiotic detail, one which seemed insignificant until I realized that it might just be the singular thing that will never change in our lives: people were always confused about his name, and they always would be. Gram is a unit of measurement for the ineffability of life. People come and go, and some even end up in limbo, but Gram taught me that any moment can instill life, as long as someone’s passion lands.