The Prophet of Brian Sella

On Twin-Sized Mattress by the Front Bottoms

First - some setup

A few days ago, I had the privilege of reading for Adam Strong’s Songbook at Le Salon Rouge. Le Salon Rouge is in Mark Savage’s and Pat Janowski’s garage, so I try not to publicize events there too much. The way Songbook goes, is you write about a song that’s influenced you in some way, you read your piece in front of a crowd, and then everybody listens to the song together.

Now, onto the essay…

Sometimes I look for lions under the overpass of Hawthorne on MLK. I cruise in my beat-to-fuck Subaru past tents and burning drums at night, looking in front of the Transitional Projects Shelter. If you’re ever in the area, let me know. Let me know when you see someone gibbering, talking to himself. That’s where the lion hides. The lion hides under brown and purple skin, leopard-spotted with sores the color of raw ribeye. He looks the way a refugee would look if they swallowed another refugee: with skinny arms and legs, walking like a skeleton, but bloated in the middle.

Get close enough to him and his eyes will look the way the Jaws theme song sounds. His mouth, always swiveling, grinding over something that used to be there will call himself Quentin.

But I knew him as Johnny B. Get close enough to Quentin-Used-To-Be-Johnny, and you might hear him say, “As Brian Sella of the Front Bottoms once said…”

Back when we were losers we were still beautiful in our loser way. We walked out of high school with our skulls sloping down to our Converse All-Stars, dropping beer cans and bottles of Mike’s Hard on the concrete. In Johnny B's garage, we reclined on bean bags and cut what was left of our cigarette butts into a Gatorade bong made with skateboard parts.

Johnny B-Not-Yet-Quentin strummed a guitar, finger-picking. “One-two one-two one-two one-two.” Johnny B said. “This year will be the year of the Talon of the Hawk.” Johnny B held up his phone. The screen looked like a snowflake, or a spiderweb from when he dropped it while skating. Johnny B pressed play, and a garbled tambourine sound came out, and this nasally voice sang, You know what I think is really sad? I know how really sad you are.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“This is your new favorite band, whether you like it or not, motherfucker.” Johnny B said.

The thing about Johnny B was he was always right about me. I was a motherfucker, and the things I love I almost always start out hating. I’m hardwired that way. I can’t truly love you until I’ve hated you first, or at least told myself I hate you. And so it would be with the Front Bottoms.

“This whole album, it will be the album I think of when I think of you, or you will be the person I’ll think of when I think of this album,” Johnny B said.

When we drove, Johnny B jammed the aux cord into his phone and blasted Front Bottoms. He belted song lyrics that were easy to belt because Brian Sella of the Front Bottoms is not a good singer. The same way that, when there’s a lull in a conversation and we get quiet, instead of saying a Jewish baby was just born or it’s four minutes past the hour, Johnny B would fill the silence with, “As Brian Sella of the Front Bottoms once said…”

For example, if Johnny B wiped out on his skateboard, he said, “As Brian Sella of the Front Bottoms once said, ‘Not even you can chew through my bones. I’ve got very strong bones.’” Meanwhile I’d smoke weed and watch as Johnny B picked the scabs on his shin. The scars showed up as purple knots, and his dark hair would grow all around where his skin used to be.

One night on New Year’s Eve, Johnny B climbed on a wooden raft with a firework that shot 49 mortars in a row. Icicles grew like space-age crystals on the lake’s surface. I ferried the wooden raft on a canoe, and scooped the water with the oar. Johnny B had one job: light the firework, get on the canoe. But Johnny B fucked that up, so I got out of the canoe and made him put his legs in.

Right before I lit the firework, Johnny B fucked his second job and fell into the water, tipped the canoe, and broke the oar.

I pulled him out of the water and made him take off his clothes. I made him wear my clothes, and he looked like a big Winnie the Pooh with his belly hanging over his undies.

Almost pissed myself scared. Almost pissed on Johnny B to warm him up.

Johnny B crumpled into a fetal position. His teeth chattered, and we got the kind of quiet Jewish babies get born to. He said, “As B-b-b-b-Brian Sella of the F-f-f-front Bottoms once said, ‘I feel fucked, but in a good way.’”

The way I must have sounded calling for help on that lake, my voice running out across the water and then running back. I screamed “help,” and the trees screamed it back in my voice. Our friends came out on a paddleboat and picked us up.

When asked how he fell in the water, Johnny B answered, “As Brian Sella once said, I want to contribute to the chaos.”

When you Google the Front Bottoms, you find pretty much what they sound like: a couple of longhaired losers from West Virginia. They sing bad, and most of their songs start pretty much the same; like some egg-punk on an acoustic guitar. As far as I was concerned, there was only one artist who was allowed to be a bad singer and that was Bob Dylan, and he only gets a pass on Freewheelin’.

 But it’s their loserness that’s beautiful the same way that me and my loser friends were beautiful. These college drop-outs lived on the fringes of things. They sang songs about being broke, and every song sounded like a breakup. That was the real mark of a loser: being hung up on the same person for years and years because when you were together was when you still felt like winners.

One day, I drove over to Johnny B’s in my not-yet-beat-to-fuck Subaru. I go into the garage behind his mom’s. There’s guitar strumming one two one two one two through the walls. I open the front door to broken bottles of Mike's Hard on the floor. There’s clothes everywhere, and crushed beer cans. Smashed pieces of guitar are scattered in a billion different places, strings all over the place. Shattered Xbox controllers, his TV, broken with a hammer sticking out of it, his speakers blasted with holes like mouths, splintered drinking glasses and lightbulbs, his beanbag bleeding white pebbles onto the floor. 

The one two one two one two blasted from a corner in the room. The song Twin Size Mattress, Brian Sella screaming through a broken speaker. Between his legs, in hands with fingertips chewed raw, Johnny B held that Gatorade bong made with tape and skateboard bearings.

“Hey man,” he said, and then he blew bubbles.

“Johnny,” I said, stepping over broken glass, “What did you do?”

“Nothing, man.” Johnny B said. Johnny B crushed up the end of a cigarette and dumped what little tobacco was left into the bowl. He said, “You want some?” His eyes big and black, looking the way the Jaws theme sounds. 

It happened that fast, how you can be one way and then another. Like a phone falling beneath a skateboard, or how you can be trying to light a firework on a wooden raft, and there’s a big splash and when you turn around, your friend and the canoe and the oar he was holding are gone. 

Standing in that garage, here’s the kind of loser I was: I walked out. Just when I reached the door to go back to my car, Johnny B said, “I’m Quentin now, by the way.”

“What?” I asked.

“Quentin. I’m Quentin now. No more Johnny B.” No-longer-Johnny, but Always-Will-Be-Johnny-To-Me said.

A Psychotic Break it’s called. Years later, a friend would tell me how he trashed the living room and his parents had to wrestle him into the car to take him to a mental hospital. Now he’s on schizo pills.

When I got into my car, I could still hear Quentin, not Johnny singing. He sung, “She hopes I’m cursed forever to sleep on a twin size mattress in somebody’s attic or basement my whole life. Never graduating up in size to add another, and my nightmares will have nightmares every night, every night.” 

That was almost a decade ago.

So if you’re ever cruising by the Hawthorn overpass, be on the lookout for a lion in a wiry broke down frame of my friend’s body. Ask him where you can get some fireworks. If he’s quiet like it’s four minutes past the hour, say something Brian Sella would say. Tell him you know about the Talon of the Hawk. Tell that loser we were beautiful once on a raft. 

Now that you’ve finished reading, you can listen to Twin Size Mattress here.