You can do this, Kendra. No pressure. This is just for fun.
I tapped the sticks against the bucket, testing out the sound. Rattatat-tat-tat dock-dock dock. I found if I lifted the bucket up slightly I could get a bassier tone out of it. Then I moved to the paint cans. Tung-tung-tung-dak-tungatung-tung. Okay. Then the metal bits. Ping-ping-ping-pingpingaping. Dangdadadang-da-dangdanga-kong.
The people continued to walk by, not paying any attention to me. I realized I was sweating, and I wiped my forehead with the back of my forearm. My heart was thudding hard—but I wasn’t having the anxiety explosion I would’ve had sitting at my drum kit.
Dum-dum. Dum-dum. Dum-dum. I could hear my pulse racing.
Fine, I thought. I’ll go with that. I inhaled—and then brought the sticks down onto the side of the bucket.
The rhythm of my heartbeat pulsed out of the plastic makeshift drum. A girl passing by shrieked and laughed, startled by the sudden burst of noise.
I continued to drum out that deep beat, readjusting to the feeling of having the sticks in my hands again. It was coming back quick, and I had to admit—it felt good. I wasn’t feeling any of the crippling pressure, and the unfamiliarity of the instruments meant I needed to learn how to make them sound good. I zeroed in to the way the sticks vibrated and responded in my hands, how they ricocheted off of the plastic, and how the bucket responded in turn. I moved to the paint buckets, then to the metal bits. Then I tapped a rhythm on the brick ground itself.
Okay. I got this.
I burst into a fast tempo that would’ve been right at home in a techno or EDM song—something catchy that would continue to have your toes tapping the beat hours after hearing it. I focused in on my instruments, paying close attention to how they reacted to me. I felt myself loosening up, and I was amazed by it. For the first time in months, I was playing. Sure, it wasn’t a real drum set, but I was actually using that part of me again.
I heard the tinkle of coins, and looked up as a little girl dropped money into my tote. She ran back to her parents, and I was surprised to see that I already had an audience of five or six people watching me. I couldn’t help but smile.
I suddenly realized that I was slightly rushing the tempo, and tensed and missed a beat. My audience didn’t budge, or even seem to notice. In fact, someone else came forward and dropped a five-dollar bill into my bag.
Okay. This is awesome. I’d forgotten how good drumming could make me feel, and right now, it felt amazing. I was fucking up all over the place, but it didn’t matter. This was street drumming. It was like learning a brand-new instrument.
I let myself get involved in the beat I was creating, opening up things inside my heart and my mind that had been held closed for a very long time. I didn’t stop drumming—I changed up the rhythm but kept it going as one continuous song. The sticks dug into my un-calloused palms, but I didn’t care. I enjoyed it. It was a good kind of pain. The pain of progress. I was making progress, and for the first time in ages, I felt like things might actually be okay. Like maybe, just maybe, the rainy season was starting to clear up.
The crowd grew. People stopped to take videos of me. I watched with humbled amazement as the money started to fill my bag. Some of the people danced, some kept the beat with their toes. The faces kept changing, but each one of them was zeroed in on my performance.
Then, after about forty minutes of straight playing, I realized that not all of the faces were changing. There was one girl who stood dead center, slightly behind the rest of the crowd, but I could see her watching, nodding her head slightly along to the beat, and tapping her finger against the cup of coffee she held. She’d been watching my performance for at least half an hour, longer than anyone else.
She looked to be around my age, but from the way she was dressed she seemed older. She wore an trim, expensive looking blazer and a pencil skirt, with perfectly on point makeup that made her look like the type of woman you’d see fitting right into a corporate boardroom. She was like a yuppie—or one of those really rich trust fund kids that you sometimes saw at Beasley. What stood out to me the most was her amazingly intense gray eyes. They were focused on my sticks, following their rhythm as she tapped her fingers along to the beat. From the way she accurately followed it, I could tell that she was a fan of drumming—or maybe she was a drummer herself.
I played until my hands were screaming and the beat was at a fever pitch. I didn’t want to stop. There was a part of me that was terrified that the moment I did, I would lose it entirely again; that I wouldn’t be able to play on any drums at all. This felt too good. I didn’t want to let it go.
Fat beads of sweat dripped down my face. Harder. Faster. I didn’t look, but I was sure that my palms must’ve been ripped and bleeding by now. It definitely felt that way—they were on fire.
Keep going. Don’t stop.
I doubled the time, then tripled it. I heard the crowd murmuring.
Don’t lose it, Kendra, don't—
With one whip of my hand, my left drum stick hit the hardened edge of the overturned bucket and splintered with a loud crack. The crowd gasped as the broken tip of the stick flung away—and whipped right dead center into the gray-eyed stranger’s left boob. Her hand shot up to grab it, and she bounced around cringing.
“Ow, ow, ow,” she squeaked.
There was scattered laughter. Someone asked if she was okay. People applauded and dropped money into my bag.
She shuffled backwards and sat down on the edge of a stone planter, her coffee still clutched in her hand, her breast in the other.
I tossed my sticks aside and hurried over to her. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry about that. Are you alright?”
She tilted her head back to take a few deep breaths. “Well, that is definitely going to go viral,” she finally said, still massaging her chest. “Damn, that thing had some velocity.”
“I’m really sorry,” I repeated.
She turned to me, her gray eyes meeting mine, and gave me a reassuring smile. “No, it’s not your fault. Anyway, I’ll take a stick to the tit any day if it means getting to see an awesome drum solo like that.”
I laughed, half in relief that she wasn’t angry, or threatening to sue me or something like that. Plus, it was pretty hilarious. The more I thought about what had happened, the more I cracked up, especially because she was laughing harder than I was. It felt like I hadn’t laughed that hard in… well, seven months.