NONFICTION
“Die Young with Me: A Memoir”
by Rob Rufus
Simon and Schuster
$25, 400 pages
There’s a temptation to back away from the Romantic nihilism of the title — its invitation to doom — but Rob Rufus’ memoir, “Die Young with Me,” is about staying alive with the pure vengeance of punk rock in all its unrepentant glory.
Rufus tells the story of forming a band with his twin brother, Nat, when they are teens. They call themselves Defiance of Authority (D.O.A.) and plot their escape from the boredom of Huntington, W.Va. In due course, however, Rob is forced to discover, within the totality of his punk experience, the strength to confront the likelihood of his early death from a rare form of cancer.
“Die Young with Me” is an ambitious project on the brink of flying apart, which is, of course, the essential perfection of punk itself. With swift jabs of bruising prose — funny, deliberate, bursting with surprise epiphanies — Rufus creates a humane space that’s held together by no-apologies bluster (“Punk … spits in the face of everything, even death.”) and tender remembrance (“I saw [my mother’s] hand and nothing else; a delicate hand, with fingers a little too long for the palm.”).
His introduction to punk occurs when he and his brother visit their Richmond cousin, who plays them his favorite groups, including Pennywise, FEAR and Social Distortion. Their conversion is instantaneous: “I’d never heard anything like punk rock before … I felt like throwing the coffee table through the [expletive] TV. I wanted to go down the unknown road.”
They return to Huntington, commandeer the family basement and listen to “the same records over and over and over again, like members of a cult who were trying to brainwash themselves.” Nat sets all of their old albums on fire — “Baseball cards and a Troll doll seemed to have been used as accelerants.” Nat declares himself the bassist, “because it was my idea — and because I called it first.” Rob is appointed drummer. They assume the uniform — high tops and black jeans — and start working on their hair and tattoos. Their 1986 Ford Astrovan, “Sheena,” is named after a Ramones’ song. Astonishingly, they’re asked to appear on the 2001 Warped Tour.
“When we played live,” Rob asserts, “every song became the fastest song.”
Punk may harbor anger against meddling parents, but Rob’s folks are hard-working, middle class and supportive of their children’s aspirations: “I don’t think they ever got tired of seeing us excited about life,” writes Rufus. Their father is a CPA whose clients include Mac & Dave’s Pawn Shop; one afternoon, the store’s truck rolls up and unloads all the gear that Defiance of Authority will need for lift-off.
Then the coughing starts. Rob has shortness of breath and insomnia; he begins hurting “everywhere under my skin.” A small hair dryer comforts him: “the white noise was all that seemed to calm my head.” His first doctor tells him, “I think what you need to do is start acting like a man.” Finally, after four months — it takes that long to get an X-ray — another physician tells him he needs specialized care at Ohio’s Columbus Children’s Hospital, three hours north.
His diagnosis is something called yolk cell cancer. “Apparently it had formed when I was a fetus,” Rufus explains. With genetic similarities to testicular cancer, it usually presents itself in adolescence, a time when “raging hormones are like gasoline on infected cells.” While it has progressed to Stage Four, the good news is the disease has yet to enter his bones.
There’s the inevitable regime of chemo, followed by graphic descriptions of spontaneous, symphonic hurling. Medical students gawk at him as if he were “a science experiment.” Food tastes terrible; his extremities tingle, and he is affected by “chemo brain.”
Throughout Rob’s treatment, his belief system remains strong: “All the rebel anthems in the world were now united against a common enemy … I would try to think like a punk rocker — one who needs no other reason to act besides the cheap thrill of defiance.” Eventually, he requires a drastic, six-hour surgery to remove his right lung and sections of other organs.
There’s remission, recurrence, more treatment, but, after five years, Rufus is cancer-free. Standing beside him throughout is his Ohio oncologist Dr. Mark Ranalli. After his first big recovery milestone, Dr. Ranalli arranges VIP passes to a sold-out Pennywise show in Columbus, where the Hermosa Beach band invites Rob and Nat onstage to sing.
Today, Rob Rufus resides in Nashville, which is “still redneck enough to feel like home.” According to a recent CNN report, “One in four residents [in Huntington] is hooked on heroin or some other opioid … a staggering 12,000 people.” Many of the author’s friends overdosed on Oxycontin or, he says, “just drifted down into nothing.”
Still, he has fond memories of H-town: “I see us bombing Fifth Avenue hill on our skateboards” or snow sledding at a place called Gobbler’s Knob. His new band, the Blacklist Royals, has toured extensively, and, in 2014, released an album, also titled “Die Young with Me,” which has a regional roots sound built upon their strong West Virginia punk origins.
Free from obvious consolations, forthright about pain and terror, “Die Young with Me” is recommended for any 21st century teenager suffering the devastating effects of potentially terminal illness. It’s a roiling mosh pit of a book with a slantwise hopefulness all its own. When its author crosses the Ohio River, he asks the ambulance technician where this unfamiliar highway goes.
“‘Hell,’ he said, without looking at me. ‘It goes everywhere.’”
What could be more punk than that?
