Run to the hills

Since today is Satan's birthday, I thought I'd share a little story about how I came to love heavy metal.

When I was in seventh grade I moved to a new school, which I hated with all the ferocity I could squeeze out of my cherubic body. Hate, hate, hate! I think about it now and I still hate that school. Damn you, Mustangs! Damn you to hell!!

Surprisingly, I didn't have any friends. What's worse, there were even a couple of jerk-offs who decided I'd be fun to play Spanish Inquisition with. Imagine an oversized pair of glasses and an ever-present green windbreaker, and you can almost see why. Then a weirdo named Junior finally took pity on me.

Junior was a grade ahead of me, and was the first freak I ever met. Sort of a cross between a New Waver and a punk, he was as much an outcast as I was, only by choice. The concept alone was a revelation. So, after letting me hang out with him and his gang of misfits for the next couple of days I ended up going to his house after school for the first time.

The house was only about five blocks from mine, but was practically in a different neighborhood. In El Paso it's easy to see the evidence of past waves of development, and my house was across the boundary line between old and new neighborhoods. Junior's house had a big, overgrown yard, trees that hung over the roof, and smaller rooms connected by crooked hallways. In my memory, it was always dusk in that house.

Once we got there, the first thing Junior tells me is his brother has this record that I've got to hear - backwards. He's going on about Satanic messages and backward masking and bam! he shoves the cover of Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast in my face.

I'd never seen a cover like that in my life. My dad was an old-school rock guy for the most part, all 60s and 70s, and my mom had most recently been deep into John Denver and Olivia Newton-John. The most shocking thing I'd seen up to then was a Jethro Tull cover I pulled from Dad's collection (we won't get into the Herb Alpert cover). Jesus, was that the devil? And what the hell is that thing standing over him? I was already getting nervous.

We tried playing the record backward, and didn't hear shit. We tried it a few more times to make sure, and then one of us remembered that this was supposed to be bad for the needle. Just to make sure it was alright, Junior said, we'd play a song off the record.

Junior twisted the knob and a voice starts saying something about woe and then "Number of the Beast" came buzz-sawing out of the speakers. Junior, who was standing in the corner with the stereo, starts lip-synching to the song, acting it out and getting crazy-eyed.

I laughed it off, but he didn't stop. And he kept getting closer. And crazier. And then he's standing on the couch I'm sitting on, hunched over me with his face inches from mine, mouthing, "Six! Six-six! The number of the beast!" And I've only known this guy for a few days, and there isn't anyone else in the house, and ...

I don't remember what I said, but I do remember jumping the hell off that couch so fast that Junior couldn't keep it up anymore, collapsing back onto the couch and laughing his ass off.

Then we listened to the whole album, and for the next few years the only decoration in my bedroom was posters of Eddie. I stopped cutting my hair, dedicated myself to being an outsider and for all intents and purposes was a normal teen-age kid.

Thanks, Satan!