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You would be well within your rights to assume that the oldest photograph of Stanley at the Snyder house was of him a few hours after birth, either in the ugly, standard issue hospital bassinet or cradled in his mother Helena’s arms as she laid exhausted in her hospital bed. But no, as those photos had been lost during the move to the new house when he was 6 years old.
Instead, the oldest photo of Stanley Alexander Snyder was of him at 4 days old swaddled in his eldest sister Phoebe’s 10 year old arms where she sat next to his second eldest sister, 7 year old Jade, playing the piano in their living room while his fourth eldest sister Olivia’s 5 year old eyes sparkled where she stood on Jade’s other side. Legend goes that it was his third eldest sister Jasmine who took the picture — narrative pushed by her, especially — but since she was also 7 years old at the time, doubts were abundant. The reality was that it was taken by Stanley’s father Matthew, the patriarch of the family.
Stanley’s first active interaction with music — disregarding the hand-me-down baby xylophone, of course — occurred on his 3rd birthday when his father plopped him on his lap in front of that same standing piano and commanded the child’s attention to his callused fingers while he ran them over the keys, enumerating that “that is a C, that is a D, that is a G…” across the 7 notes in a scale, before moving on to fundamental chords. When Stanley placed his chubby toddler hands on the smooth plastic and ebony and pressed down, stretching his fingers as far as they could to cross the skipped notes in a major C chord, the sound rippled a foundational wave in his core as his world suddenly lit up in a symphony.
And so, Stanley Snyder fell in love with music.
Before we continue, it is vital for you to know that for the Snyders, 2 things mattered more than anything: music and God. In fact, they were locally famous for it; at every baptism, the old priest joked that they had already reserved a place for the newborn(s) in all the music programs offered at the church the family had attended for the past 150 years. With every generation, the grandmas and grandpas sitting on their pew would point to one of the children in the choir and say, “ah, that’s another Snyder kid,” as they listened to them sing on Easter. Their faith was not to be discredited either, for they religiously attended services twice a week and were generous donors to the institution.
And so, Stanley Snyder trod the same path as his elders before him.
At 6 years old, his mother claimed his VIP seats when she signed him up for music lessons — activities he would continue until his disownment at 16.
At 8 years old, like his sisters, he was gifted his very own acoustic guitar — one of the few material items he managed to save once he moved into the Wingfield house.
At 11 years old, his parents surprised him with a beginner’s drum kit in the garage that he progressively added to over the years with his own money — his last memory of it being up in flames in the video his father sent him with the uplifting caption of this will be you in Hell.
As you can infer, Stanley’s relationship with music has, shall we say, conflicting elements to it. But luckily, he had a fluffy cat and his silver-haired muse as company through it all.
♪♪♪
The first time Stanley went inside the Wingfield house, he noticed 2 things: first, the lack of religious paraphernalia, which was bizarre but not unheard of, and second, the lack of music, which was genuinely concerning. No instruments, he could understand — he knew that neither Xeno nor his mother played any — but he couldn’t even see a stack of CDs anywhere (and he’d thought the couple dozen at the neighbour’s place was dismal). In fact, the place was quiet when the other boy unlocked the door to the dark house, the silence picking at his ear like an unresolved piece. At his house, a disk or a vinyl was constantly turning; his mother sometimes had her own tunes playing through the radio simultaneously while one of his sisters (Jasmine…always Jasmine) was trying to prove to everyone around that she had the chops to be the next superstar (and honestly, she really did). Sometimes, they even forgot to turn the players off before they went out to church or the mall, so utterly used to the background sound, and were giddily greeted home with Frank Sinatra crooning in their living room to an invisible crowd seated on their couch and chairs, no doubt giving a standing ovation.
To Stanley, everyday life was near constantly accompanied by notes, keys, and melodies.
…okay, maybe he wasn’t quite right when he thought the house was silent.
“I’m home, Mint,” Xeno said to the brown cat trotting to his feet, her meows staccato in her haste, and crouched down to pet her furry head.
He suddenly tensed and whipped his head to his guest.
“You’re not allergic to cats, are you?” he said, worry lacing his tone.
“Nah,” the blonde responded as he twirled the sucker in his mouth.
Reassured, the scientist instructed him to drop their stuff in his bedroom — the second door to the right — while he went ahead to the kitchen to refill the water bowls on the floor, feline hot on his heels. Thankfully, the single storey house was too tiny to get lost in, but if he had, the giant, purple, laminated, square symbol for the element Xenon taken directly from the periodic table nailed in the the wood of the door was a great hint. Stanley rolled his eyes fondly and pushed open the ajar entrance.
Xeno’s bedroom looked…just about how he’d imagined it. A large desk stacked high with piles of books crescendoing to the ceiling, a medley of coloured pens and markers to write the perfect notes or to draw the perfect blueprints with more than one open sketchbook accompagnato. The compact wardrobe had one arm open just a breath like it had been shoved closed presto because science waits for no one.
What he wasn’t expecting, however, was the fluffy orange kitten strewn on the bedsheets looking at him with its large golden eyes. The two stared at each other for a beat before the animal jumped down to the floor with a loud meow and began sniffing at his socks.
“Hey. You must be Planck,” he greeted casually, setting both backpacks down then lowering himself to his knees.
He let the cat’s cold nose sniff at his fingertips and began stroking behind the tufty ears once given the okay. Although he had been told it was the case, Stanley was still taken aback by the loudness of his purr, vibrato thundering in his larynx and nearly belting into the room.
“Wow, he really wasn’t kidding,” the boy commented with an amused snort.
“I’m home, Planck,” Xeno called from behind him, walking into the room.
The orange cat immediately abandoned the guest when his owner came into view, crying his joy at his return, waving and brushing between his legs as the shorter boy headed to the chair to complete his daily ritual: he sat down, opened his arms, and the giant kitten leapt onto his lap. Xeno cradled him close to his chest and caressed his chubby cheek exactly twice on Planck’s cranium. Satisfied, the cat then relaxed on his lap, lids already halfway shut.
The older boy leaned back against the wardrobe and propped a knee up, pulling his homework out of his backpack as the scientist started on his report on the afternoon’s elegant experiment.
Xeno addressed Stanley 40 minutes later.
“You study quite loudly,” he remarked.
“Hm?” the other replied absently, eyes on his maths problem.
“I have been observing you for 10 minutes. You’ve been rapping your pen on your notebook. I assume from the times you slow down, one of your problems is making you think, but when you speed up, you start writing shortly after which tells me you’ve come up with an answer. Conversely, when you start tapping your foot rapidly, your eyebrows furrow so I presume you’re stuck and frustrated.”
Stanley just stared back at him, confused.
“And from your expression, I deduce you have no idea you’re even doing it.”
He cocked his head in thought as he finally noticed his socked foot indeed tapping the hardwood near-silently in a steady rhythm while his fingers clasped his pen in a traditional grip.
“Huh,” he commented dumbly.
No wonder his desk neighbour at school shot him nasty looks during class.
“You’ve only been playing the drums for a few months, correct? It appears it has already infiltrated your subconscious,” Xeno posited with his crossed fingers by his temple. Planck yawned in agreement.
Later, when Miss Celia Wingfield returned home from her long day at work, Stanley listened mostly quietly as mother and son did not say grace before they ate, then joked and laughed around the dinner table. He found that, while occasionally off-key and off-beat, the a cappella performance was just as melodic as any formal composition.
On that day, Stanley learnt that even in a place without any, music always finds a way.
♪♪♪
Stanley Snyder thought shooting a gun was not dissimilar to playing an instrument.
There was a rhythm to both: checking your weapon before you shoot was akin to a final tuning before the concert. You held it up towards the target in the same way you raise the embouchure of the woodwind to your mouth or your freshly resined violin bow to the strings. Taking aim required as keen an observation as tracking the conductor’s movements for your cue as your fingers ghosted over the first chord. Finally, pressing the trigger was singing the first lyric of your piece and the shot rang in the air afterwards like the pause immediately after the final note of a tenor’s aria. Once your session was over, you put the gun away just like you closed the lid over the piano keys.
Comparable thoughts were playing in his head as he assembled the custom-made sniper rifle on the roof of the building directly across his high school’s football stadium.
Muzzle. Barrel. High Tom. Mid Tom.
Stock. Bass Drum.
Scope. Chamber. Magazine. Trigger. C — G — A minor — F
Bipod. Effect Pedal.
The X engraved on the bullet. Snare.
Xeno was chattering away on his side while checking other factors like wind speed, temperature, and velocity on his laptop, but Stanley tuned him out, ears solely focused on his part. He pulled the turn-bolt to slip the single shot in the chamber and locked it in. He turned to his friend who had his binoculars in his hands and was looking at him with an expectant face.
“Can you do it, Stan?”
Overture.
“I can.”
Xeno smiled and grabbed the walkie-talkie.
“You may begin,” he instructed the team on the field.
Through the crosshairs, Stanley could see the two footballers throwing the ball to each other over a distance of 30 yards. The blonde shooter watched how the snap of the wrists affected the arcs of the projectiles as they soared through the air, patiently waiting for the ideal throw.
One, Two, Three, Four. One, Two, Three, Four. One–
Stanley pulled the trigger.
The ball exploded with a bang they could faintly hear from their position. They watched with glee as slack-jawed stupefaction painted the faces of the paralysed players before their necks twisted in back-and-forth glances towards their general direction, running their hands in their hair in shock. The duo grinned.
“Elegant!” Xeno yelled out his elation.
Coda.
Stanley popped the empty casing out and slipped it in his pocket as a keepsake.
“Job’s done, Xe–”
He couldn’t finish his sentence because his cheeks were suddenly grabbed and his lips captured as Xeno flung himself in his arms, the added weight toppling his back to the concrete floor. His eyes widened comically, his yelp muffled into the clumsy kiss while his hands waved confusedly around the genius’ head. For the first time in his life, only screeching feedback echoed in the young sharpshooter’s mind. When he felt Xeno continue pressing kisses to his lower lip, the noise sharpened as he realised that no, this isn’t just a burst of excitement from the successful experiment. He remained frozen until the other pulled away to sit back on his stomach, golden sun glowing like a halo behind his silver head.
“You truly are the most elegant masterpiece I have ever come across,” he whispered reverently.
The screeching turned to static. The words fluttered in his blood and fiddled with his brain only to clash against the hymns he had been taught, the ones his younger cousins sang on Sundays. It plucked at the very feelings that he had been desperately suppressing every time he caught the scientist’s ebony eyes gleaming in delight when he was deep into an experiment or when his face transformed from arrogant genius to teenage boy when snuggling with his cat in his sleep. But now, as Xeno’s thumbs strummed his cheek with a gentleness so unlike him, Stanley knew there was no way back. The irrevocable realisation that he was in love with his — very male — best friend exploded inside him violently enough to make Tchaikovsky’s iconic cannon volley sound like lo-fi. The moment was short-lived, however, when Xeno removed himself and started gathering their stuff.
“Come along, Stan. I believe we have prize money to claim.”
Stanley spent the next couple of hours half in a daze, twisting and chomping his sucker to pieces in a bid to distract himself from the cymbals crushing in his head at his new-found awareness. Once he’d dropped Xeno and the rifle off at the Wingfield house, he drove straight to his own a few minutes away, the car radio volume on high. He beelined for the soundproofed garage and plopped himself on the stool in front of his drum kit and suffocated the wooden sticks in his palms as his heart rate reached a fever pitch. He closed his eyes to focus on each beat banging against his ribs.
Clicktrack.
Stanley played until his ears rang, his hands stung, his arms and legs ached, and a visiting Phoebe came to yell at him that she couldn’t put her son down for his nap with all his racket. At least, the fog in his mind had cleared and the burn behind his eyes had (mostly) retreated.
♪♪♪
[Although the Gregorian chant Dies Irae — Latin for “day of wrath” — dates back to the 13th century, it gained widespread recognition when 19th century French composer Hector Berlioz used it in the fifth movement of his “Symphonie fantastique”. Since then, it has been widely used in a variety of compositions, particularly film scoring, to represent death…]
Olivia turned the radio off. The windows of the car were closed to block out the rain. The only sounds were the small sniffs she was desperately trying to hold back as she drove herself and her younger brother to her tiny student apartment in the city. The trunk was filled with the little they had managed to salvage from both their things at home and in the backseat sat his acoustic guitar in its soft cover nestled next to her violin in its fabric casing.
For the first time in his life, there was nothing running through Stanley Snyder’s mind. No beat, no chord progression, no compositions, no music, no noise, no sound. There was only the wet highway rushing past outside the window, the pain in his face and arms, and the throbbing emptiness in his chest.
He barely registered when they pulled up to her place, when the boyfriend she absolutely wasn’t allowed to have met them at the door of the building and helped them carry their things up, when she kissed the top of his head and placed a pack of frozen peas against his cheek then left him in the quiet of the bedroom while the couple retreated to the living room.
What he did register were 3 additional voices that resounded in the small flat around an hour later before the bedroom door swung open to reveal Xeno’s distressed face. His eyes fleetingly widened as they took in his injured face but the scientist wasted no time in slamming the door shut and diving into his arms where Stanley sat with his head pitifully hidden in his knees at the foot of the bed. It was the warm weight and smell of his boyfriend — the very reason that had gotten him beaten and kicked out of home — that anchored him back to the ground. Despite the circumstances, Stanley did not hesitate to bury his nose in the boy’s neck and crush the lithe body to him. They held each other silently for a long time in a semblance of peace.
Pulling away with a kiss to his forehead, Xeno procured the mp3 player from his jacket pocket and was thumbing it when Stanley slapped a heavy hand on the screen and shook his head. Alarm coloured Xeno’s expression but the other only tugged him back in his arms without a word.
3 days later, the siblings were greeted by the sad smiles on Celia and Julian’s faces where they stood on the porch of the Wingfield-Paiua’a home. While the adults talked some more by her car, Stanley stepped inside his new home…and immediately turned off the CD player, not caring that it wasn’t his place to do so. He lugged his belongings to Xeno’s room upstairs and forgot his guitar on its stand in the farthest corner of the room, still in its case. He collapsed on the bed with his forearms over his eyes. Padded footsteps advanced towards him and a weight dropped on his side, arms snaking around the blonde’s waist. Stanley shifted to better cuddle the younger boy, resting his chin atop his head.
“Would you like to play something?” Xeno asked as if he didn’t see Stanley turn off the music downstairs.
“No,” he whispered while shaking his head, “I don’t want to listen to anything.”
♪♪♪
Xeno had left for his PhD internship at NASA only a few days ago and Stanley was already missing his presence. Being with Xeno dulled the reflexive crooking of his fingers into standard tuning shapes and distracted him before his feet started tapping rhythmically on the floor. Being with Xeno meant that the scientist’s rambling voice saturated his ears rather than the silence that had begun to itch his cochlea uncomfortably.
Yet Stanley stifled the compulsions.
He studied in the noisiest places at school to prevent his brain from generating a beat and asked Celia to share some of the wildest notes written in patient records she’d seen in her job as a medical secretary, relishing in his bonus mother’s laughter. He sat next to Julian during sports games because his boyfriend’s step-dad was a loud but hilarious armchair referee. He slipped out on weekends to their secret spot to shoot Xeno’s modded guns and emptied his mind with brute-force even if it meant he missed more targets than he used to. He started smoking cigarettes, the nicotine buzzing his brain and fading the pulses of his heart in his chest — the complementary poisoning of his voice did not deter him.
He contemplated the pristine condition of his guitar case in their bedroom even though he hadn’t touched it once since putting it down all those months ago.
The unavoidable exception to his self-imposed ‘noise-only’ rule was Planck (whom he had taken to calling Thomas the Tank Engine purely to annoy Xeno). As the kitten blossomed into a splendidly furry adult, his purr stayed resonant all the while growing deeper to rumble as a lovely baritone. It was impossible not to be appreciative of the vibrations below your fingers or on your torso when the 20 pound good boy decided you were of better use to him as a lounge chair. This false sense of comfort was probably why he was caught entirely off guard when he heard himself humming along as he brushed the giant hairball one afternoon. In fact, he didn’t realise he’d been doing it at all until the cat paused his song briefly when he rolled himself onto his side and the sound kept going during the lull. Stanley quickly snuffed it out, brush stilling in the air.
It was impossible to think about music without thinking about his family. Every glance at the corner of the room reminded him how his father taught him how to change the strings on his guitar; every stray note brought up how, as the church’s main pianist, his mother would warm up her fingers with different improvisations before each service; every silent car ride evoked the memory of the twins annoyingly singing in harmony at 8 in the morning when they used to drive him to school. He simultaneously yearned for and repulsed any series of notes, the contrasting emotions mixing together in his gut in a tiring medley impossible to master.
He hated it. He hated how his relationship with music had been tainted. He hated how the break with his family had inadvertently scrambled his connection with sound. But most of all, he was terrified the fracture would be permanent. For who was Stanley Snyder if you removed music out of him?
The bushy tail slapped against his wrist while Planck meowed for attention.
“Yeah, ‘lright, you needy animal,” he scolded fondly, resuming his duty.
This time, in a stray fit of courage, he hummed intentionally alongside the feline, testing out different arrangements to accompany the lead vocals. The dry chuckle burst out of him unhindered when he attempted a ridiculous set of runs and, contrary to his expectations, the confused knot inside him loosened. Frowning, he tried again and distantly heard piano keys pressed as well as the rattle of a snare playing in his ears, the knot unfurling further as his foot twitched. The rope burnt as it moved but the lightening of his core was undeniable. The desire to trial a few chords swelled like a dozing urge poked awake within him. With an invisible flick of a baton, his eyes were directed to the curved shape across the room. He briefly hesitated but composed himself with the reminder that he wasn’t dating a scientist who ate experiments for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner for nothing. Besides, Stanley Snyder had always been a man of action.
Setting aside the brush, he dragged the cover to him, unzipped it, and carefully pulled the instrument from its cocoon. Running his fingers over the body, he breathed in the smell of the wood. His arms automatically positioned themselves accordingly when he tipped the guitar to rest on his knees, summoning a squeak from the metal strings as his left hand glided down the frets. With an inhale, he strummed, only to cringe at how off-key his partner had become in his absence. He leaned back against the bed and, with his eyes to the ceiling, plucked the strings one by one as he twisted the tuning pins to the correct postures. With a final sweep of all 6, he let the sounds linger in the air…and found that it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he’d feared. Yes, it ached but it was overwhelmingly relief that sang through his blood, the tie falling loose even if the cord was still wrapped around his diaphragm.
“Whaddaya say, TT? Think it’ll work?” he asked the cat grooming himself to no answer.
His fingers curled over the neck and, for the first time in months, played a tune. Instinctively, the atoms in his body matched the melody, the jumble behind his navel untangling itself into distinct harmonies.
Stanley Snyder had already lost 3 and a half members of his blood family (Jade had originally sided with his parents because she was an eternal mommy’s girl, but they would reconcile within the year, although Phoebe, the eternal daddy’s girl, was a lost cause).
They would not take music away from him too.
Sure, it would take some time for the residual pinch to come to a rest — for Stanley rather than Snyder to graduate to lead songwriter. But he had as many drafts of original compositions tucked away as bullets he had shot; he will find his leitmotif somewhere amongst the clefs and staves.
That evening, Celia’s beaming smile muted the thin redness on her waterline when he came down for dinner with Planck.
“Ah, perfect timing, honey! Julian was just telling me how opera singers sound like dying whales passed through autotune,” she exclaimed much too happily.
“Traitor!” he cried out from the kitchen.
Stanley set Planck down and the cat scampered to join an elderly Mint at his food bowl.
“How dare you talk shit about opera in front of me. I’ll have you know…” he griped at the older man with a smile before schooling him at the table.
When Olivia and her boyfriend spent Thanksgiving at the house, she brought along Jasmine who hadn't had time to wipe her makeup from her latest singing gig. After crushing a bright red kiss mark on his cheek, the redheaded twin understandably pestered him about the effects of smoking on his voice, but then slipped him a couple beers with a wink while they spent a tipsy evening creating humorous madrigals.
When he went to pick up Xeno at the airport upon his return, he shoved the sheet music on the passenger seat in the glove box to make space for the scientist. His muse then cupped his face over the handbrake and kissed him fiercely, pouring all the longing from the hours they had spent apart into it. Stanley responded just as intensely until his smile forced their lips apart and he rested his forehead against the other’s.
“I missed you,” Xeno murmured.
“Welcome back,” Stanley mumbled back.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, does it not?
♪♪♪
3 months and 17 days.
That’s how long Stanley’s latest deployment was and, boy, was he glad to be home. The soft jazz caressed his ears when he pushed open the front door of their apartment with a sigh. He chucked his duffel bag by the door and bent down to untie his boots, bracing a hand on the wall.
“Welcome home, Stan,” Xeno greeted, approaching the door with an overweight (though Xeno would vehemently deny) Planck luxuriating in his hold, “dinner will be ready in an hour.”
Stanley pressed a purple kiss to his husband’s smile and pressed another one to the top of the cat’s head with a scratch on his fluffy chin.
“Got it.”
The human and cat duo returned to the couch so Xeno could finish his report while Stanley headed to the second soundproofed bedroom. His electronic drum kit beckoned.
Sticks. Amp. Throne. Headphones. Pedals. Cymbals. Drums.
And a five, six, seven, eight.