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It was too early for Frank Iero to be shitfaced, and yet, here he was at 3:47 on a Saturday afternoon, stumbling out of a bar in Back Bay towards his hotel. Somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, he knew that reputable musical theorists were not meant to be drunk before dinner during a conference weekend in cities they didn’t know well, but Frank didn’t give a fuck about being a reputable musical theorist. He just wanted to be drunk.
Breakups happened. Lord knows he’d been the instigator for enough of them in his life. But he and Jamia weren’t supposed to stay broken up, they were going to get back together. They were, they really were. At least, that’s what he’d thought. And now that there was no chance, that every single one of his hopes had been crushed, he was going to drink until he passed out and flush all of it out of his system with his good friends Jameson and Captain Morgan.
Frank leaned heavily on store windows and brick walls as he dragged one foot in front of the other down towards the looming Sheridan hotel. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he probably should try to throw up or sober up before he walked back in and faced the crowd of other musicians, educators, college kids, and middle and high school choirs, but it didn’t really matter because he was feeling pleasantly warm despite the unusually chilly November weather and the ground was moving underneath him and he couldn’t really worry about the conference when he couldn’t walk.
Fuck. He couldn’t walk. Frank started laughing and stumbled, clumsily falling elbows first onto a stone set of steps. He winced out of habit, but the liquor running through him stopped him from feeling any real pain, even as the leather of his jacket tore just a little bit.
“Frank?”
Aw, shit. Toro. Fucking hell , Frank thought.
“Dammit Frank. Come on. Get up.” Frank felt a set of hands tugging on his upper arms, yanking him upright. “Come on. Time to go inside.”
Frank allowed himself to be pulled upright, noting that Ray was a solid four inches taller than him and had truly the nicest head of hair he’d ever seen on a dude. “S’like a mane,” Frank murmured in awe as he stumbled after a neatly-dressed Ray Toro up the stairs and through a large heavy door. “I wanna mane too dude, shit.”
“Don’t say anything,” Ray said quietly, then pursed his lips. Damn, he looked pissed. Frank suppressed a snicker while his companion pulled him through a set of glass doors into a huge room towards a wooden bench against the wall to the left. Before he realized what was happening, Ray had dumped him into a seat and was sat beside him, giving him a disapproving stare.
“Hi, Raymundo.”
“Shut up, Frank. Where have you been?” Ray hissed. “I’ve been freaking out since you took off after your last presentation.”
Frank suddenly realized how heavy his eyes were and how thick his tongue felt in his mouth, and instead of giving a verbal reply, opted to shrug.
“Dude, you can’t just take off like that! Especially not to a bar! What is wrong with you?!” Ray sighed, running his hand from his forehead to the start of his ponytail.
“Matty Pelissier,” Frank moaned loudly, then gave a slight drunken gasp, shocked at just how far the sound carried. He was distracted momentarily from his sorrows by a cursory glance around the hall--more like a cathedral than a hall, really. There were massive stained glass windows of saints he vaguely remembered from school, enormous columns, an expansive wood floor lined with wooden chairs and pews. Shit. Was he in a church ? Was he drunk in a church ? Granted, all things considered, this was not the worst thing he’d done in a church by any means, but man, he was really going to Hell after this. Fuck. That sucked. First Jamia dumped him, then started dating fucking Matt Pelissier of all the schmucks in Jersey, and then he got drunk and went to a church . Tears started welling up in his eyes. “I fucked it all up, Ray. I fucked up.”
Ray rolled his eyes and stood up. “I’m going to find a bottle of water. Just sit here and be quiet, okay? There’s gonna be a choir in a little bit.”
Frank nodded and nestled against the wall, sniffling a little bit as he watched crowds of people begin to filter in from the glass doors at the back and musicians filter in from behind the altar at the front, carrying all manner of instruments. The choir was nowhere to be seen, just empty risers.
Ray returned momentarily, uncapping a bottle of water, and handing it to Frank as he sidled into his seat. “They’re doing the Dvorak.”
Frank had no clue what “the Dvorak” was, but nodded anyway and accepted the water from Ray. The buzz of the booze was starting to wear off and he felt sensation returning to him, starting with his scraped-up elbows and spreading up his arms, down his torso towards his legs and toes. Fuck. He was going to be hung over in a couple hours, he could already feel it.
Ray didn’t say anything more to Frank, but rather sat back in his seat and opened his concert program. Occasionally, he snuck a quick glance, but Frank stayed quiet, still a bit teary eyed.
A slow sound of flutes and woodwinds started to emerge over the chatter of the growing crowd in the church sanctuary. Frank thought they were just tuning but slowly the sound started to build and suddenly there was a gargantuan sound from the orchestra at the front. It took him by surprise just how large it was.
What took him even more by surprise was the figure conducting it. The conductor, clad in a black button-down and slacks, looked slightly disheveled, making broad messy gestures with his baton, a mass of pitch dark hair shaking with every crescendo. He didn’t seem to be particularly imposing; his shoulders pulled back, baton held tightly in his right fist, his back pulled straight up and down, nothing really helped the fact that the man wasn’t very tall. Frank was a terrible judge of height, considering everyone was taller than him, and he was still drunk, but he hardly reached the top of a stand-up bass it seemed. Still, the conductor had a very powerful presence about him, made stronger by the sound of a full orchestra and a choir whose entrance Frank somehow missed in his drunken stupor.
“Stabat mater dolorosa,
Juxta crucem lacrimosa.”
That sounded familiar. Fuck. Where did Frank know that from. He groped for Ray’s program, accidentally grabbing the other man’s thigh once and crotch twice (yep, definitely going to Hell), and eventually got his hand on it, tearing it away from his compatriot and sticking it close to his face to read.
Weeping stood the Mother of Sorrows next the Cross while her Son hung there.
O how sad and afflicted was that blessed Mother of her Only-begotten Son
For she grieved and sorrowed, the pious Mother, as she witnessed the pains of her great Son.
O Mother, fount of love, make me to feel the strength of your grief, so that I may mourn with you.
Holy Mother, this I pray, drive the wounds of the Crucified deep into my heart.
Of your wounded Son who submits to suffer for my sake, let me share the pains
Virgin of virgins, resplendent, do not now be harsh to me, let me weep with you
When my body dies, may my soul be granted the glory of paradise.
Amen.
Shit. Frank remembered this poem. It wasn’t all there, some chunks were missing, but he definitely remembered this poem. Fuck. This was the one about Mary right? But they were all about Mary. Mater Dolorosa, that was Our Lady of Sorrows. Even in his drunk state Frank’s Catholic upbringing had its say about the music he heard.
Ray snatched his program back, giving Frank a disapproving frown before returning his attention to the choir, still only halfway through the first movement.
Frank watched the choir for a few minutes, then the orchestra, then slowly let his eyes drift to the conductor. He didn’t have a good view of him, but each time the man turned to cue a soloist or instrument on Frank’s side of the sanctuary, he caught a glimpse of his profile.
Long pale face, straight nose, thin lips, round cheeks, chin slightly protruding. Dark brows. Dark hair in dramatic waves from his erratic movement. The longest goddamn eyelashes Frank had ever seen on another man. Damn , Frank thought to himself, impressed. His eyes drifted down the curvature of the conductor’s shoulders, along his back, pausing on his rear end and thighs. Oh hot damn man, Frank thought, his lips turning upwards as he nodded to himself.
A loud chord and high vocalization of “JUXTA CRUCEM LACRIMOSA” knocked him out of his lewd stupor and suddenly Frank realized what he was listening to. The suffering of the Virgin Mary at the Crucifixion of Christ. More importantly, he was listening to a mother mourning her son in one of the most beautiful pieces of music he’d ever heard . Literally the unsexiest thing a former Catholic schoolboy could think of. He leaned against the wall beside him and stared at the cross hanging high above the altar, listening to the heavy mournful wail of violins and cellos against the vocalists and choir. He fell into almost a trance; something inside of him felt very calmed by the beauty of the music, part of him was enraptured by the ambiance, part of him was fascinated with the conductor’s hands waving in large, dramatic gestures and his handsome face teeming with emotion. The whole ninety minute duration seemed only a handful of moments to Frank’s still slightly-drunk brain; it was a beautiful reminder of what he loved about music, his job, the world he lived in.
And there was that one, lone pale man with the long dark locks at the center of it, cuing with enormous gestures and a grand wave of his baton. Frank wasn’t sure if it was the music or if it was really so, but the conductor looked so beautiful in the last of the daylight streaming through the stained glass, illuminating him before the ensemble.
Suddenly, the piece was over just as quickly as it began for Frank. Beautiful, haunting, ethereal, it hung in the air until the sound of applause shattered the stunning image of the director with his baton frozen in a cutoff, cheeks red from the emotional effort of directing a 90-minute-long tribute to a mother witnessing her son’s death, written by a man in mourning over a hundred and twenty years ago. Echoes of the final chorus of “amen” still lingered, even over the thunderous applause.
Frank applauded along with Ray and the rest of the crowd and watched as the ensemble bowed, then the director, smiling crookedly with pride for just directing one of what Frank newly considered the most beautiful piece in the world.
When he and Ray returned to the hotel, Frank, now much more sober than he had been at the start of the performance, asked Ray for a copy of the program, which Ray procured and handed over for the promise that Frank would drink a glass of water and go right to bed, despite the fact that it was only quarter of six. Frank tucked the small piece of paper away into his planner and crawled into bed, weirdly exhausted from an emotional day and the last vestiges of alcohol in his system.
That night he dreamt of low, melodic cello lines and a round-faced man with long eyelashes.
---
Frank could not believe the piece of paper he was staring at.
There it was, in black and white. Gerard A. Way from New Jersey, doctorate in early music, applying for the Director of Choral Activities position. He could hardly believe the black and white resume in front of him. But there it was-- Directed the honors choir and orchestra in Antonin Dvorak’s ‘Stabat Mater’ at the Northeastern Regional Choral Director’s Conference in Boston, Massachusetts , it said. Frank was fucking floored .
“Ray,” he exclaimed, “that’s the guy! The guy from the concert at the church. We gotta give it to him.”
Ray, who was looking at the application of another candidate (someone named Hanley, a woman who had done mostly opera for the past several years), looked up, confused. “What church concert?”
“The Dvorak. In Boston.” Frank extended the resume. “Check him out.”
Ray scanned the length of the application, flipping through the several pieces of paper. “Take it up with Bryar, man. You know we’re just here to screen them all.” He handed it back to Frank and smiled at him. “I remember him though. We talked a little bit later, after you went to bed. What a cool dude.”
Frank stared at the name. Gerard A. Way. He hoped he’d see him on faculty next year.
---
The office plaque on the room next door read “DR. G. WAY”, subtitled “HEAD OF CHORAL ACTIVITIES”. Frank’s heart skipped a beat in the middle of the hallway in the early August heat and he dropped the backpack on his shoulder. Holy fucking shit.
There was a short chord progression on a piano from behind the door and suddenly a tenor voice, slightly raspy and nasalized and muffled by the door and thick walls, let out the loudest fucking vocal siren Frank had heard in recent years. It was enough to startle him into picking up his backpack and hastily unlocking the door of his own office, shutting it quickly behind him and leaning heavily on the wall. Holy fucking shit .
It was nearly impossible to focus on assigning pieces of music to the students he knew he’d have in three weeks time, and it was even more impossible to focus on not listening to Way sing through his warmups, some Purcell, some Mendelsohn, something that Frank vaguely recognized as a Smiths song arranged into some easy vocal jazz. Everytime Way hit a particularly high note, or sang something sustained, or just fucking wailed on some big grandiose line, Frank dropped his pencil onto his desk and just stared at the pale green wall that separated their offices. Holy goddamn motherfucking shit .
Over the next couple of hours, the sound of Way’s singing began to cut in and out. Frank suspected he was only reading through excerpts of music to try and assign some to his students, although it would probably change after the first lesson. Eventually, Frank was able to tune it out a bit and focus on some pre-semester planning. He wrote out all of the lesson times of his freshman guitar students, then plotted out his office hours alongside his theory and composition classes. He was almost all the way finished with revising the syllabus for his seminar on counterpoint when he heard it.
“Stabat mater, dolorosa… ”
Gerard Way’s voice was not robust enough or powerful enough to perform the tenor solo of the opening movement with aplomb or the deep, rich, eastern-European quality that the score required, but he sang with honesty and with heart. Frank felt the pit of his stomach drop all the way through the floor to the bottom of the first floor music classrooms below him.
This year was going to be monumental, Frank knew, all because of Gerard Way.