1981

X MASS?

(Alex POV)

After my nose finally healed, things went back to normal and now here we are, burning roaches in Nikki's apartment, drinking tons of beer, and just having a fucking blast.

"Fucking roaches! I'm gonna fix it!" Tommy yells as we both run around with hairspray and lighters.

"Burn fuckers!" I yell, both of us laughing cynically as the roaches fry to a crisp. Tommy and I try to find every roach in sight to burn , not caring about the carpet, or the walls. We finally killed them and walk over to where the others were sitting, Tommy pulling me into his lap. Nikki comes out from the kitchen, handing all of us more beer.

"So here's my theory, alright? If we wanna knock people on their asses, then we've gotta give 'em a show. The punks, they're doing the minimalistic thing. So, let's take it in the exact opposite direction. I'm talking a stadium show in the clubs, man. Like costumes, and lights, and..."

"Pyro! Flames and shit!" Tommy and I say at the same time, cutting off Nikki and blowing the hairspray into the lighter flames yet again.

"Exactly, man!" Nikki says with a smirk on his face, then taking a sip of his beer.

"And explosions!" I yell, making a bomb motion with my hands and an exploding sound. Tommy laughs at my excitement, while I lean back into his shoulder.

"Exactly. Look, it's a fucking war out there, and the only way we win, is by showing these kids something they've never seen before." Nikki says as he goes to pick up his notebook.

"So then what do we call this thing?" Vince chimes in. Nikki starts to flip through his notebook quickly, trying to look for a specific page.

"Where is it? Here." He exclaims as he finally finds the page he was looking for, and shows it to all of us. I look at my dad with the same look he was giving me, it's stupid. "You know, it's all about being, like, fucking larger than life." Nikki says, really convinced that it's a good name for the band. I take a big gulp of my drink, if all of the names they come up with are gonna be this shitty, I'm gonna need a lot more of these.

"X MASS?" Vince asks, looking at Nikki like he's a total idiot, which in Vince's defense, it was a shitty name.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, that gets a 1.9." My dad chimes in, sighing and rolling his eye, I hold out my beer to cheers to that, and the bottles clink together.

"I agree man, who's gonna go see a band called Christmas? Fucking Jesus's deciples?" I say, causing Tommy to snicker behind me.

"It's a play on Christmas, you can use all the Christ imagery and shit. It'll really piss people off and make people think, you know. It's got shock value." Nikki explains, trying his very best to defend his point. You can tell he's had that name thought up for awhile.

"Yeah I'm shocked. Shocked at how much it blows." My dad says, taking a drink of his beer. We all chuckle a bit and look towards a defeated Nikki.

"Alright then assholes, you give it a shot! But make it big!" Nikki huffs out, a bit annoyed. Tommy takes the notebook from Nikki and flips to a new page. "Here Tommy, use my pen." Nikki chimes in, handing the pen over to Tommy. I watch him begin to draw something vulgar on the page and just decide its best to chug the rest of my drink. He starts snickering at me, and his name, finishing up the last couple letters.

"Alright, what have you got Tommy?" My dad says, knowing it has to be bad since he watched me down my drink. Tommy turns the notebook around, and laughs at himself a bit too proudly.

"The Foreskins? Really, Tommy?" Nikki says, rubbing his hand down his face. Tommy just laughs again.

"Yeah man! 'Cause we're gonna fuck the audience in the face every night!" Tommy yells loudly before shoving the notebook onto the table. I get up to go to the fridge to get another beer and hear one of them speak up.