Panic

“And I say to all the young wild ones
to you on your way up
the world isn’t against you my dear,
it just doesn’t care.”
- Modern Life is War “Marshalltown”

-

“Agoraphobia was something I’d always dealt with, so the incident at the mall was not surprising. I guess what was startling was not the panic itself, but it’s intensity. The intensity of my heart pounding against my chest attempting with brute strength to shatter my breast plate. The shortness of breath and the way every muscle tensed. The sound of my thoughts screaming “Look at all these fucking people, man, you’re not fucking one of them.”


Rob hated explaining himself. The doctor shifted in her chair, not giving Rob the slightest bit of insight as to what she thought of him. She did cringe a bit with the profanity.
“So what did you do next?” she asked.
“I’m not so sure,” he answered. “I mean I know I left the mall, but it’s all a fog and a blur. I can’t tell the difference between what really happened and what is my mind filling in the blanks. I could’ve done anything really and that’s what scares me. What I’m capable of, you know?”
“And what are you capable of?”
“To be honest I was hoping you’d know.”
“And how could I possibly know that?”
“I don’t know. By asking questions and making inferences and all that other psychoanalytic shit.”
“You seem like an intelligent man, Mr. Collins, however I would very much like it if you didn’t refer to the sum of my education and life’s work as ‘shit’.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Accepted,” she replied. “I guess the question I’m institutionally obligated to ask is are you capable of hurting yourself or anyone else?”
Rob sat silent for a bit. He wondered what reaction an affirmative answer to her question might elicit.
“I don’t think I’m capable of either.”
The answer seemed to placate the Doctor and both parties understood why. The session ended and Rob left the startling, institutionalized white of the Doctor’s office and drove back to his apartment.
Rob wondered on the drive back why he’d sought counseling. After all, misanthropy paid the bills for his car and apartment. Rob Collins was forty five. He’d been the guitarist for Nervous Breakdown, a popular and vital band during Punk Rock’s nascent stages, when he was 17. He’d since gone on to front Bulldog Front, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a band that by all accounts, defined the genre of post-hardcore. Rob had always lived on society’s fringe so, why now, would he attempt to change.
In the mid 90’s Rob disappeared from music altogether, choosing instead to take a wife and start a family. Rob told his new bride nothing of his screaming, angry, past and didn’t keep so much as an old acoustic guitar in his apartment in Manhattan. After 9/11 and a messy divorce, Rob moved to his hometown of Washington D.C. He’d started writing again, though poetry and short stories rather than songs. Rob was still very much focused and angry.

* * *

Rob sat down in the back room of a used record store in Washington D.C. The walls were lined with flyers from 80’s hardcore shows boasting lineups with Minor Threat, Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Rob’s own band Nervous Breakdown, among countless others. Rob was being interviewed for a documentary on American Subcultures throughout the 1980’s.
“So Rob where were you when Punk Rock started?”
“Probably, huffing glue in a basement listening to Black Sabbath.”
Rob immediately did not like his interviewer.
“Your band, Nervous Breakdown, is credited with furthering a certain angrier and more violent strain of punk rock, that many writers call Hardcore. This is something you’ve since apologized for in a recent interview, why is that?”
“I’ll answer that question with another,” Rob said. “How old are you?”
“21, but that doesn’t seem…”
“And if you’re lucky enough to age 24 years, noting that it’s a longer time period than you’ve been alive, do you think that everything you say and do now, will stay the same?”
“I guess I see your point.”
“To flatly answer your question, I never set out to be a mouthpiece or a spokesman for anything. I was just another dumb, angry, pissed off, brat. I was sick and tired of eating shit, so I bit the hand that fed me. I wanted to destroy and annihilate. I had no intention of creating anything, let alone a movement of any kind. It was all about blind destruction.”
“But it’s since become so much more.”
“Hitler started out an artist and became a dictator, that doesn’t mean it worked out for everyone.”
The interviewer fell silent.
“Listen, Nervous Breakdown was a time and a place for me.” Rob said. “I was proud of what we did when we did it. Writers, fans, whomever can take what they want from those songs and those records and I’m fine with that, but I’m really anxious about having my name attached to any sort of movement or ethos. Nothing good can come of that.”
The interviewer seemed relatively happier with this explanation and moved on to the topic of Rob’s band Bulldog Front.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” The interviewer said nervously. “But what the fuck is with Bulldog Front?”
Rob laughed.
“Bulldog Front was a weird reaction to what I called the ‘metallicization’ of punk rock,” Rob said. “I really wanted to create something that was the opposite of the ‘tough guy’ sludgy, stupid mess of bands that were coming out. It was all about creating a more artistic style of punk. I don’t know if we achieved it, but we sure as fuck made some weird records and the kids seemed to dig it at the time.”
“This was a very different approach than that of Nervous Breakdown.”
“Yes, in a lot of ways Bulldog Front was the musical antithesis of Nervous Breakdown. It was about creation rather than destruction. We were all still really pissed off, though, which I believe is the bridge connecting the two. Otherwise, you have two completely different viewpoints.”
The interview ended amicably and Rob left the record store and walked back to his apartment.

* * *

“Rob, there’s really not much I can do for you,” the Doctor said. “Short of prescribing you Xanax or something for your anxiety and I know your feelings on that.”
“Yeah.”
“You do have anxiety disorder though. I want to make that quite clear. There’d be no harm in taking the pills for that.”
“With all due respect doc, I feel like if you don’t have anxiety disorder in 2007, you probably don’t have a pulse.”
“Point taken,” she said. “I guess the question I put to you now, is where do you see this going from here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, have these meetings with me been helping at all.”
“In some ways I guess they have, but for the most part things are still same as they ever were.”
“I’m sorry to hear that and I ultimately wish you the best.”
“Thanks, Doc.”

* * *

Rob got a call on his new cell phone. He’d resisted the purchase of such a device stubbornly for years, but caved due to pressure from his ex wife and his publishing agent.
“Hello?” Rob answered.
“Happy birthday, Dad!”
The voice was that of Rob’s son Henry (named for Bukowski and Rollins). His voice was significantly deeper than when he and Rob had last spoken.
“Thanks, Hank”
“Dad, you know I don’t like being called ‘Hank’”
“I’m sorry Henry. How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“How’s school going, you still giving your teacher’s shit all the time?”
“No sir.”
“Good, How’s your mother?”
“She’s okay. I think she’s dating another guy now.”
“Weird.”
“Can I ask you a question, dad?”
“Sure.”
“Were you the singer for the band Nervous Breakdown?”
Rob paused.
“Cause Mike gave me a CD by them and the guy on the cover looks like you, only a lot younger.”
“It was a long time ago Henry, but yes, that was me.”
“Does mom know?”
“I’m not sure exactly. She knows but I think she tried to ignore it all those years.”
“You were really angry, huh?”
“At the time I was, but that was years ago, things have certainly changed.”
There followed an awkward pause. Rob thought of the CD cover his son had referred to. It was a close up picture of him screaming, with a mask of blood from a cut on his forehead, and the words “Alone in a Crowd” (the name of the CD) in the bottom right corner in black military stencil font.
“I listened do the CD, Dad and I like the music. It’s cool.”
Rob paused again and thought that this was probably the scariest thing his son had ever said to him.
“I guess I can’t really tell you how to live your life Hank and there’s certain realities I’ll never be able to fully protect you from, but don’t listen to those records. If anything I’ve ever told you sinks in please let it be this: we make mistakes in life and things can seem like they make sense, or don’t make sense and never will, but it’s always changing, Hank. All of it. It’s always changing.”
“Okay Dad.”
“Just don’t think that you’ve go so far in one direction that you can’t ever turn around.”
“I gotta go, Mom’s dropping me off at Mike’s house to sleep over. Happy Birthday again, Dad.”
“I love you, son.”
Rob was not sure if his son had ended the phone call before or after he said ‘I love you’, but the line was dead now. Rob was forty six and it didn’t feel any different, but it was and forty-seven would be too. It was always changing. Rob celebrated his birthday with a few friends from the DC area and he stood on his roof at sunrise as he finished a beer.