Fifteen-year-old Mateo Tirado comes from a large Puerto Rican family that treats every holiday like a celebration: loud music, excessive eating, and more excessive drinking. On the night before their annual Fourth of July block party, Matt and his best friend Stick get a little high in the field between their houses and they kiss, for a moment, maybe longer, then Stick bolts so fast Matt can’t even process what happened. The next day Matt finds out that Stick’s father has died and he spends the rest of the summer trying to get back to that night. The problem is Stick doesn’t know who he is, or what he wants, other than his father back, and he knows for sure his father didn’t want him to be gay. He comes from an even larger family – thirteen children, most of the them adopted, but his house feels empty now and he comes around to Matt’s plan for a trial dating experiment – one week, no commitments – while Matt is nursing a broken wrist from baseball camp. But when Matt’s mom catches the boys kissing in the basement, the dating experiment ends and their friendship is threatened and Matt doesn’t know whether to risk his own father’s wrath and his future in baseball or go back to hiding all his secrets again.
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Who knew living in Pennsylvania could be hardcore?
Jeff knows way more about music than me. I almost forget what I was into before I met him – indie rock I guess, and those mainstream sell-outs like Death Cab or Arcade Fire, but Jeff told me you can’t be listening to anything meaningful if it ends up in a commercial for a minivan. And there’s beauty in hardcore. It infuses you with a sense of something bigger than you, something better, this grandness of emotion eclipsing the rage of the sound that forces you to release all those negative thoughts and disengage, let it all fade, revel in the beauty of the noise and let go. Fuck, I’m high. |
HARDCORE PA is a story about
FALLING HARD Finding your rhythm and ROCKING to the BEAT of YOUR OWN DRUM. |