Why do they call it “The Tube?” I mean, seriously—it’s more of a tunnel, even a pipe, than a tube. But I guess it’s the same as calling it “The L” or “The T.” Not that it’s important—train in vain, and all that—but it’s just another one of those things about the UK that have always perplexed me. Like, why do they still have a Queen, and a royal family, when they don’t actually rule, or do anything at all for that matter? And why the hell does everyone use “bloody” to emphasize meaning? And what are “bollocks,” anyway, and why shouldn’t we mind them? Fuck, none of this really matters. Except for one thing: the question that has tortured every corner of my soul since I was old enough to have a clue. Possibly the greatest American mystery, even more baffling than all that “Magic Bullet” nonsense, but a question never realized until around the same time: Why did the Brits make Rock n’ Roll so much better than we ever did?
Now don’t get me wrong—Jack was a great guy. A little unfaithful, sure, but I wouldn’t hold it against him. And sure, Rock n’ Roll came from the States. We had our Elvis, and Chuck Berry, and all that. But the attitude, the charm, and the raw, awesome power of Rock n’ Roll never made themselves known, never reared their collective head of long, greasy, unkempt hair that covered boyish faces, until the Brits had the balls to make it mean something. Eventually, we produced some great poets: Dylan, Morrison, even Janis Joplin. Of course, those bastard brats in my American Lit section never got into it. But who could blame them? Overseas, they had Morrissey, and Ray Davies, not to mention Shakespeare. We had Buddy Holly; they had Elvis Costello. We gave the world the Beach Boys (along with Brian Wilson’s multitude of eccentricities); England had the Beatles, and while they may be the most overrated band of all time, at least they trumped Mike Love’s falsetto West Coast longings. They gave us Radiohead, and the Cure, and Queen, none of whom are really comparable to anything else at all. And all of them had passed through the exact same gates at Heathrow at some point in their lives that brought me here today.
I look at all the people on the train—sorry, The Tube. The Underground—and find it shocking that they’re all actually going somewhere today. I can’t believe they haven’t declared this a national state of emergency, or a day of mourning, or something. I guess it would be about a week of mourning at this point, but still, in the wake of what’s happened, I thought at least a few thousand more lives would be affected. That’s just city life, I guess.
Jimmy Page, arguably the greatest guitar shredder of all time, was from England. And how did we respond to Led Zeppelin? With the Ramones, a bunch of longhaired Neanderthals from Queens. The Sex Pistols may have been a marketing scheme, but at least they had the right attitude. One group sang out in support of Reagan—REAGAN—and the other cried, “Anarchy in the UK!” Then came the Clash, another mob of British miscreants.
Now, I hate the Clash. Walking around, pretending to be a punk rock band, and calling themselves “The Only Band That Matters,” when there’s only one band that really matters, and it sure as hell ain’t the Clash. It was the Rolling Stones. Joe Strummer had a few unkind words to say about The Stones, but that’s only because he couldn’t deal with the fact that the Stones were the original Rock n’ Roll rebels. They were the counterculture, the look, the sex, the drugs, posing for photographs with cigarettes and snarls. Mick Jones had nothing on Mick Jagger: The Clash only called themselves “The Only Band That Matters” because the Stones had already been crowned, “The Greatest Rock N Roll Band in the World.”
Piccadilly Circus. What a weird name for a station stop.
The Rolling Stones had claimed their crown by 1969, just in time for their American tour that same year. Elvis was the King, or so they said, but the Stones trumped him hard. And with good reason—all he ever did was join the army and shake his hips on public television. Eight years later, he died. Not from drugs, or obesity, like everyone had claimed. There’s not enough symbolism in that. He died from inadequacy: he had realized that The Rolling Stones had usurped his throne, far surpassed his reign, and showed no signs of slowing down. For that, I commend him: Elvis opted to live on as a Rock n’ Roll martyr, rather than allow himself to burn out and fade away. And the Stones kept going strong; I can think of no king, no ruler or tyrant that has held such an unequivocal title, in the history of man. If you’ve no reason, and no chance, to stand up to the Rock n’ Roll Empire that is Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts, why bother? Why waste your time?
Nick Drake. Kurt Cobain. Elliott Smith. Darby Crash. The list goes on, of rockers gone suicidal. American rock stars, terminating their own lives, once they realized the futility of their careers. American Rock n’ Roll bands would never last as long, or impact the world as strongly as the British Invasion, and subsequent guitar-laden exports from the UK. This attitude has contributed significantly to the rift between the Rock: American artists inherently knew they’d never be good enough. Some of them gave up all together. Our country is nothing but an offshoot of England anyway—how could we ever escape their shadow?
There is one exception to this, however. And that’s what brings me to Hyde Park right now. The place where, in 1969, shortly after the crowning, and two days before the Stones’ Hyde Park concert, founding member Brian Jones drowned himself in the swimming pool by the Winnie the Pooh statue. Brian Jones. Having very recently been kicked out of the band himself, his misery was mostly understandable. But given the recent situation, I thought that this would be the best place to start.
Mind the Gap, and all that.
On his first day teaching at Randolph High School, Paul Spector entered his third period American Lit class in absolute silence; a full minute after the late bell rang. “Please allow me to introduce myself,” he recited to his students in a droning bass tone. “I’m a man of wealth and taste, but you may call me…Mr. Spector.” He stood in silence for a minute longer, waiting for someone, anyone to get his joke; all he got was twenty-two pairs of blinking bloodshot eyes staring back at him in adolescent agony. After the first year of this, Paul realized that teaching in a public high school was not for him; still, for the sixteen years that followed, he insisted on beginning the academic year the exact same way, and it never went over well. In recent years, he also had to deal with students calling him a “queer,” because he wore earrings. Since when has counter culture become so un-hip? he would ask himself, year after year. Occasionally, he’d have a student who knew that “Beggars Banquet” was the greatest Rock n’ Roll album of all time, or at least one who liked the “The Bends” more than “OK Computer,” but these teacher-student connections never went far in establishing any kind of respect for him.
Still, Paul remained at his job, less out of some noble optimistic drive to educate the disillusioned youth of the land, and more from force of habit, and lack of any other real passion in life: music elitism hardly pays well. He tried to make his English curriculum appeal to his students by allowing them to present their favorite songs as poetry, and although he found Jay-Z’s use of internal rhyme quite fascinating, his students hardly showed any interest in analyzing Dave Matthews’ lyrics, let alone The Smiths’. But still, he trudged through Hawthorne, James, Twain, and the rest, with occasional enthusiasm from his drowsy audience for forty-five minutes a day, one hundred and eighty days a year, for seventeen years.
This is my nineteenth nervous breakdown.
Late January one year, following the annual “Mark Twain is a racist!” class discussion and its usual ambiguous conclusions, Paul offered his students a chance at extra credit. “This Sunday is the Super Bowl,” he reminded them with a smirk. “As some of you may be aware, I’m not the biggest football fan on the planet, but this year, the Rolling Stones are supplying the halftime entertainment. Now, I still don’t know the difference between a field goal and punt and all that, but at least I know when the Greatest Rock N’ Roll Band in the World is going to rock your face off. And again, that would be Sunday during the half-time show. Write me two pages on how the Rolling Stones have changed the world—or why they really are the Greatest Rock N’ Roll Band in the World—and I’ll give you five points on your test next week.”
“…Or, you can write a paper on how the Beatles are far superior to the Stones in every possibly way. You may incur the horrible wrath of Mr. Spector, but at least you’ll maintain your integrity,” called a voice from the doorway. “…How’d you end up with a black door?”
“The janitor let me paint it, Mr. Putney,” Paul said with a sigh. Jim Putney taught in the classroom next door, and mostly shared Paul’s passion for Rock n’ Roll; the only real differences were that Jim had always favored the Beatles, and that Jim had a personality that surpassed musical elitism. “Anyone who writes me a paper about the Beatles receives an F for the year,” Paul joked as the bell rang.
The students stormed towards the checkered marble halls as Paul and Jim continued with their endless debate on British Rock Royalty. One student, Chucky Ellis, in his typical timid manner, humbly interrupted the conversation. “Mr. Spector?” he implored, like a child confessing to his parents. He swallowed hard when Paul acknowledged him. Chucky sat to the left of the front row in class, and barely weighed in at one hundred pounds; he would tremble just the same when he would ask to use the bathroom. “Have you ever heard that joke, um, about how the only things that can survive a nuclear war are cockroaches and that guy from the Rolling Stones?”
Paul laughed. “I’ve heard that joke a million times, Chuck. The real punch line is that Keith Richards is actually God, and you can’t kill God. I don’t know about those cockroaches though.”
“Okay…thanks Mr. Spector,” Chuck sputtered, as he ran out the door and on to his next class.
“ You shouldn’t lie to your kids, man,” Jim scolded. “Everyone knows that John Lennon was the next Christ figure—he even told the world straight up, ‘We’re bigger than Jesus.’ It was a sign, man. He even died for our sins. Besides, if Keith Richards were immortal, he wouldn’t need to go in for those routine oil changes all the time.”
“They’re not oil changes…he just gets a little carried away with the drugs sometimes. Falling out of trees, and all that,” Paul retaliated.
“They drilled a hole through his brain, and he was back on tour and on drugs in less than a month! That’s messed up, man.”
Paul grinned wide with satisfaction. “That’s because he’s God.”
According to legend, Brian Jones had resided in the former home of A.A. Milne, the creator and author of the Winnie the Pooh series of stories. Whether or not this played into Jones’s decision to drown himself in the Pooh bear pool is still up for debate. Clearly, Jones was quite conscious in his decision about when he was going to kill himself, being just two days prior to the Stones’ unveiling of his replacement, but the Pooh bear symbolism has always made me question the why.
Not that it matters at this point. It didn’t even matter that he was buried twelve feet underground instead of six. There was no fucking symbolism, no fucking logic at all. And that’s what I’d missed for the last forty years. There was nothing. There never had been anything. No suicide. No sex. No drugs. No butterflies. No Rock n’ Roll. There was no sympathy for the Devil, and there never would be. I don’t even know if there’s a Devil anymore, if there’s no God to balance it out.
Fucking Pooh Bear.
I head back towards The Underground. It’s the closest thing left to a counter culture, to the Street Fighting Men, to everything Rock n’ Roll had ever stood for, and even then, only in its name and literal function and all that. For God’s sake, it’s a place where trains go.
Crossing Hyde Park, I can’t help but notice four guys in their twenties, posing for a photograph with somber expressions. I wait a few minutes, just to see what they’re up to. They strive for some kind of perfection—they have a precise image, a precise moment in their minds. They seem pretty serious, but that’s not what they’re going for. They’re re-creating something established, which would explain their precision and re-takes. And then it hits me. They’re trying to be the goddamn Beatles on the cover of “For Sale.” Here I am, the only guy who visits the Christopher Robin statue to mourn, and these kids have the nerve to take a Beatles replica photo not one hundred feet away.
I board the train, heading back for Piccadilly. I transfer to the Jubilee Line at Green Park, and wonder what Jubilee means. Why can’t they just call it the Gray Line? Or Grey Line, respectively. I find nothing celebratory about this train, in this Tube. For the first time, I begin to wonder what it is I’m trying to accomplish on this dumb adventure anyway. I don’t even know why I’m on this goddamn train. Maybe I’m just looking for some shred of hope, an iota or an inkling that Rock n’ Roll ever meant something, to someone, somewhere, if it meant nothing now.
“What can a poor boy do,” they sang, “Except to sing for a Rock n’ Roll band?” But what comes of a poor boy when he’s got no Rock n’ Roll?
I live in an apartment on the ninety-ninth floor of my block
And I sit at home looking out the window
Imagining the world has stopped
Paul lived alone in a studio apartment at 2120 South Michigan Avenue. He actually approached his apartment hunting with this specific address in mind—he cared less for size, price, or location than he did for obscure Rock n’ Roll references, just so he could laugh himself to sleep; he got more satisfaction out of pop counter culture than he ever did from romance, much to his father’s dismay. On that Super Bowl Sunday, Paul had cleaned his living room and folded up his sleeper sofa, as if anticipating company. Tortilla chips, mild salsa, and a six-pack of Budweiser would get him through the night. Ever since college, Paul had hated the taste of beer, but he would always buy a pack of Bud for special occasions, and the Stones at the Super Bowl certainly qualified.
For the first time in the thirty-five years he’d been watching Super Bowls, Paul noticed that the game began with a coin toss. Such an arbitrary way to begin…He noticed that the clock would stop every four to twelve seconds, for about a minute, making time seem malleable, flowing like a gel. He systematically consumed the chips, and the bubbles from his Pilsner drink left the salsa in his stomach unsettled. So he ate more chips. Fifteen minutes passed in an hour’s time; the next eight minutes passed in the life of a beer. Meanwhile, Budweiser’s annual commercial gimmicks only made him stop drinking for a minute, just to think about a drink. He spent the next “seven-minute” twenty minutes focused more on the crowd than the game—he never knew who to root for anyhow, since the Stones knew no competition. He recalled Jim’s persistent jabs about the Fab Four as the first half of the game came to a close: Sure, McCartney played the Super Bowl alone that year, but the Stones are still kickin’ it strong, after thirty-five years more of touring behind incredible albums. Do they still call them albums?
Three minutes of commercials. MasterCard and Dell. Two more minutes of Budweiser and vague summer movie trailers. Paul refilled his bowl of his chips, and turned up the volume on his surround sound system. One more minute of game re-cap and introductions. He heard the nearly hundred thousand screaming fans—I know they’re only going to play the huge hits, because that’s all these kids know. All I’m asking for is “Get Off of My Cloud,” and please God don’t let this crowd sing along with “Time.” But as soon as he heard those three notes played up and down the scale, he forgot all else.
The camera zoomed in on Keith Richards in his signature bandana and brown coat, muting his mustard colored Telecaster before letting the strings scream like sirens; a wailing ambulance, tearing through the airwave traffic to save Paul’s life. “I can’t get no! No! No! NO!” he yelled, the wrong notes tearing through his vocal cords and grating on his throat. A foot stamped on the ceiling above him and cursed him out, sending ceiling spackle spiraling towards his salsa bowl. He shouted an apology, but was far too smothered in euphoria to hear his neighbor’s response, if any. His glaze was focused on the television; he only hoped that he could somehow control the camera angles, to allow him to see everything he wanted to, precisely when he wanted to.
He watched Mick Jagger, wearing what seemed like a handerkerchief for a shirt, slide down the inflatable tongue that ran between those voluptuous signature lips. Sure, Jagger hardly weighed one hundred pounds, but his charisma, and confidence were unmatched in human history, and this allowed him to command and control the hundreds of thousands of people that were equally fixated on his hip shakes.
The camera shifted to Charlie Watts for a moment; he offered a smile as he pounded and smashed against silver and hide, holding up the backbone of the group. In forty years time, his attention to the skins could not be broken, but still, his drumming seemed so simply, and soft, and casual, almost mechanical. Ron Woods was brought into focus next, relaxed and cool as he strutted away and made room for Keith Richards to once again claim the spotlight. Richards’ head had ticked up twice, and Paul noticed his picking arm snapping up and down, stiff and clumsy; Keith Richards is a machine! His hands work exactly as they should—still perfect after all these years.
The song came to searing stop; Mick Jagger led the crowd in the standard cheer and howl of arena rock. The familiar opening chords of “Start Me Up” shot through Ron Woods’s fingertips, and the reverb on his guitar left a ringing in Paul’s head that resounded like seraphim, calling from above. Mick Jagger curled the upper left corner of his lip and crooned, eyes closed, sauntering sexily with his feet in single file. Right on beat, he would freeze, and snap his head in a new direction towards another section of the crowd, engaging them in thunderous outbursts. Really, they should be fainting. Lucky bastards! At one point, however, Mick Jagger froze mid-turn; the song continued, but it seemed as if his trademarked lips weren’t moving. Theatrics. Man, do they know how to put on a show.
The hum of the guitars faded away, while the echo of the cymbals escaped into the night air. The band sat in silence for a moment, immobile, but this strange lull was interrupted by the funky, familiar buildup of drums. Mick Jagger donned a top hat and a cane—Here it comes…here it comes—and sang, “Please allow me to introduce himself. I’m a mean of wealth and taste…” That’s my line! The entire stadium sang the, “Woot, Woot!” right on cue, and the look on Jagger’s face read, “I am amazing. I am a God.”
And then, it stopped.
Not the song. The song kept going. Jagger’s eyes fell wide as his jaw becoming unhinged on national television, dropping three inches straight down. But he didn’t stop singing; he never stopped singing. And his body still contorted in that strange way that only he can make sexy. Keith Richard’s head began to rapidly twitch to the side, gaining momentum as it swung from left to right; his right arm continued strumming, strictly and perfectly up and down, mechanical-like. His shaking head was gaining speed, until it was a brown blur of his rat’s nest hair, with a single red stripe through the top.
The third chorus began; “Hope you guessed my name!” Fiery horns shot into the sky from the backdrop of the stage just in time, as Keith Richards own head shot straight up off of his shoulders, leaving a trail of sparks behind it like a shooting star flying back into orbit. His body remained unmoved, its posture just as naturally crooked as before, but with flames and wires pouring out the hole where once his head was connected. His arm still snapped to its proper strumming positions; the song played on, and upon its completion, the station clumsily went to a commercial break. The announcers and hosts failed in their attempts to mask their shock and unease. Paul just stared in silence as a single tear escaped beneath his eye. You make a grown man cry…
Chucky Ellis started his day like any other: his alarm went off at 6:20 am. He hit the snooze, got ten more minutes of sleep in, before walking blindly to the shower. He put on the clothes that he laid out the night before, and his mother handed him a buttered English muffin on his way to catch the bus. The bus arrived at 7:06, and always stopped at the opposite corner, even though Chucky himself stood alone across the street. He would get to school at 7:21, and proceed directly to class, which began at 7:31. First period was math; second, gym. Third period was Mr. Spector’s American Literature class, and although Chucky never quite formulated how literature and poetry worked, he still looked forward to it everyday. As soon as he turned the doorknob to enter the class on that Monday, however, something felt off.
Chucky entered the room and found most of my classmates seated in silence, for once, staring at the front of the room. He focused his attention on the whiteboard, which was bare except for the words, “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” Mr. Spector sat upright in his chair, the bags below his eyes hanging nearly to his shoulders. He was silent; save for the deep breaths he would take every five seconds. Chucky took his seat in the front row, just left of the center. The late bell rang, and everyone sat in silence, awaiting Mr. Spector’s response. A full minute had passed before he addressed the class, although he remained seated.
“Did anyone watch the Super Bowl last night?”
Silence.
“Does anyone know what this saying on the board means?”
Silence, but for the turning of the door handle. Paul swallowed hard as he turned his head to face the door; the class was too afraid to take their focus off of him. The door opened inwards, just enough for Mr. Pitney to stick his head into the room.
“Psst…hey Paulie…get off of my cloud, buddy! Haha! Hey…since when is your door bright red?” he jested.
“Shouldn’t you be teaching, Mr. Pitney?”
“Actually, this is my free period. And I just thought it’d be fun to gloat. Not only did the Pats win the game last night, but it seems the whole world can finally agree on who the real Rock n’ Roll Gods are after all, huh? I guess this pretty much explains that whole falling-out-of-a-tree thing…” Jim Pitney smirked, showing no teeth but oozing with arrogance.
“Could you please maintain some level of professionalism in front of the students, James?” Paul snarled, finally standing up from his desk.
Jim threw his arms in the air and turned back towards the hallway. “Robots, dude. Robots.”
Paul Spector pounded his fists on his desk, clinching in the pain. “Class is dismissed.” Most of the students ran like hell.
“Um…Mr. Spector?” asked Chucky Ellis, trembling in voice and body. “Where should we go…um, until next period?” Chucky looked up at Mr. Spector, his eyes wide and bloodshot with fear. Paul stared back, and breathed in deep only once. Chucky grabbed his things and bolted for the cafeteria.
Everywhere I hear the sounds of marching, charging feet, boy.
Jim cautiously re-entered the classroom; Paul sat back down at his desk, relieving his tension through a deep exhale. “Robots. Fucking robots,” he began. “The greatest Rock n’ Roll band of all time, and they’re fucking robots. The progenitors of sex, drugs, and counterculture!...robots.
Jim corrected his posture and straightened his face. “Maybe now’s the right time, but it could put things into perspective...” He swallowed hard. “This whole…’counterculture’ fascination you have? It’s pop culture, man. The Stones play on national television to billions of viewers. They charge three hundred fucking dollars for concert tickets, and still manage to sell almost a hundred grand, every time. There’s sex and drugs, man. But everything else is just an image.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong. That’s what you’ve been missing this whole time,” Paul said, shaking his head. “They were the first. Sure, they’re old and greedy now. But the Rolling Stones made Rock n’ Roll because they had to. Everyone before that just wanted to dance, just wanted to have a good time and all that, and they got pushed underground, because that kind of thing was unacceptable. The Stones, though? Those guys were already underground; it’s the only place that they belonged. And they made it cool to not fit in. The Beatles just wanted to hold your hand; The Stones wanted to burn your house down. They paved the way for the future—they weren’t afraid to be edgy. Everyone else just followed in suit, trying to live up to that standard they set. But it only ever worked for them, because it was real. Everyone since them has a copycat. And now? Now it’s all bullshit. It’s a lie. And that cheapens everything that came after it. The Sex Pistols would never have been so pissed if they hadn’t gotten it from the Stones, but if what the Stones had wasn’t real…”
“Not quite the uh, best example there,” Jim interrupted. “The Sex Pistols whole anarchy thing was designed as a marketing ploy. And I mean, what about The Doors? Morrison was going to get naked anyway. Woodstock? The New Wave Movement? Okay, maybe not New Wave…”
Paul heard a bug skittering beneath his desk, and pressed his heel against it, slow and forcefully. He heard its exoskeleton crumble and crack under the weight of his foot. “None of it means a goddamn thing. The music’s still there…but the attitude, the essence of what made it Rock n’ Roll…it was never really there to begin with.” The school bell rang, signaling the end of the class period. “Want to cover my classes for the next weeks?”
“Weeks? Why?” asked Jim, his face contorting.
“I’m going to England. I just…I need answers, man. I need to be where they’ve been. Walked where they’ve walked, and all that. I gotta make sense out of this, somehow. And Jersey’s not the place to do it.”
I step onto the platform, off of the train, still with no real understanding of this whole “Jubilee” thing. I follow the crowds as they head above ground; that sounds a lot more proactive than “I stood on an escalator for three minutes and let it carry me to the top.”
This station is called St. John’s Wood, conveniently named after the neighborhood in which it’s located. How clever. Although, I find it odd that it’s “St. John’s Wood,” and not, “St. John’s Woods “ or even “St. John Wood’s.” Instead, we are faced with a singular wood in St. John’s possession, whomever he may be. It’s hard to find wood as a singular thing, unless the station name refers to a literal single piece of wood, though I know of no tourist trap by this name. Then again, in an urban setting, it wouldn’t be that surprising to find only one tree or piece of wood.
I shouldn’t have come here. I’ve been to every Rock club, every bar in London. I even watched the stupid fucking guard change (which was painfully dull). St. John’s Wood, and, more specifically, my presence here, serves as an insult to everything I’ve ever wanted or believed in or stood for. But after all this nonsense, I don’t even know if I ever stood for or believed in anything at all. But here I am. Drawn here, called here, by some force of irony greater than myself.
I walk to the nearest convenience store, and ask the clerk if I can use the “head.” He looks at me funny. I repeat my inquiry for him, this time motioning by my crotch to make it clear that I want to piss. A look of recognition washes over his face; “Oh, the bathroom!” he says with pride. “Down the cereal aisle, take a left. Cheers!” Cheers.
I use the bathroom, not for pissing, but to change into this suit I bought. It’s dark, almost black, with a blue-grey tint to it. I’ve never worn this suit before, but it fits quite well; the threads are smooth and fine and all that, and they allow the suit to adjust to my body while still maintaining its general shape. Like any suit, the shoulders make me look broader, and arguably, manlier. I look at myself in the mirror, but buttoned and unbuttoned, and although I prefer the former option, I settle with the latter; it is far more appropriate. I remove my shoes, and stick them in my bag, ignoring the questionable coating on the bathroom floor. I head back into the store.
I thank the clerk once again for his hospitality, and ask him for a pack of fags. Apparently, he does not find my attempts at adapting to their vernacular to be at all amusing. I ask him for a pack of Everest smokes, and he complies, but not before kicking me out of his store for not wearing shoes. I am laughing inside still.
I round the corner from Acacia Road, and reach my destination far sooner than I had either planned or hoped. The familiar zebra stripe of the pavement hits me hard, and I vomit a bit in my mouth. I look at the street signs, just to make certain that I am in the right place.
Abbey Road.
A part of me feels dirty right now. But the rest feels as if this is the only viable option; this is the only final destination on this trip that would be appropriate for an aging hipster English teacher like myself. It always bothered me that American Lit was an English class—why could I not have been an American teacher, as opposed to an English teacher? I never understood it; I didn’t have to. I re-focus my attention on the cross walk.
Cars barrel down the road, similar to Nascar, but in more of a Jetsons kind of way. They hardly ever stop, as the law declares they do; but who can blame them? It is a busy road for cars, overwhelmed and consumed by tourists who desire nothing more than to walk across the street. There is no memorabilia; you probably won’t get a very good picture; there are no official tour guides or stops or info or toys. But you do get some exercise after crossing that road enough times, which is somewhat of a benefit that it has over other tourist traps.
The people walk; the cars fly by. Neither one cares for the other. Neither for me. It takes me several minutes, but I finally light a cigarette and drop my bag; I hold the cigarette in my right hand, and unbutton my blazer. I begin to walk. The soles of my feet feel uncomfortable after having lost their calluses over time, their familiarity with rocks or gravel forgotten over time. I take a single drag from the cigarette and cough viciously for another minute or so. So I take another.
I step first on the pavement with my right foot. The texture of the street reminds me of low-gritted sandpaper. I step left. I step right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Finally, I stand precisely in the middle of the left car lane, with zebra stripes below me, and God way above, and automobiles from every other possible direction. I stay in position, with my right foot forward. I take another drag of cigarette, and close my eyes.
I can hear the cars slicing through the malleable, formless wind itself as they careen through the city and just past my person. Car horns blare as they pass, and it startles me from the daze that has grown over me. I try to act surprised; I know that I am not. I lie, and tell myself that it will be an accident, that I will not expect it. But I do, and it is impossible for me to deny or ignore this.
I am overwhelmed, surrounded by the whirring sounds of cars and the bursts of their horns, as well as the cries and pleas and speculations of the people on the sidewalk. My eyes close tighter, and I smile. The car’s shrieks grow louder, and more intense, as it grows closer, closer still, ever rolling forth; its headlights feel warm against my skin. The car shrieks again, banshee-like, but he does not apply his breaks, nor swerve to avoid my flesh.
It’s a strange street to walk down.
Oct. '06
Showing posts with label prose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prose. Show all posts
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Revelations
The sound of screaming seraphim outside tears John from his evening daze. The crack of their brittle, feathered bones echoes in his ear as his torso snaps to attention, and he pulls himself out from amongst the clouds of couch cushions that had consumed him. He fumbles for the remote control that sits between the cushions, and turns to the local news network. He puts the remote control down again, and crosses his arms over his chest, noting the texture of the bones that lie just below his thinly stretched flesh as he rubs his upper arms for warmth. There is no muscle on John’s entire body without a distinct purpose, no tone to show through his youth large tee shirt. John silently watches the collage of footage of the riots that had surrounded the Vatican for the past few weeks: billions of people, trampling each other like elephants gone mad, screaming and shouting and fighting one another for the attention and the blessing of the Pope.
The news crews mostly filmed from the ground, in the midst of the disorder and disarray, occasionally offering viewers a glimpse of the war-torn and blackened skies. Beautiful, androgynous Angels and horned devil beasts, grotesque and misshapen with tentacles, boils, and other unimaginable vexes, fell from above, their freshly slain bodies landing viciously amongst the debaucherous mobs of people. The greediest of them charge towards these strange, surreal creatures, groping and clawing for feathers and horns like some sort of apocalyptic souvenirs, only to be struck down by a stray lightning bolt, or worse, another human being. They panic like fire ants; the Vatican is a stick, shoved into their hill by a cruel and twisted child, and no one knows another way to get home but to fight their way through it. The news anchor plays her role well, seemingly oblivious to the madness and death and fear that surrounds her, and brings her viewers up to speed, calmly and matter-of-factly like the news always does: everything foretold in the Biblical “Book of Revelations” had come true, and in case a glance out the window wasn’t obvious enough, today was Armageddon, the Eschaton, the end of the world, at least according to the prophecies.
John mutes the television; he knows what’s happening, and doesn’t need an overpaid television narrator to spell it out for him. He stands and makes his way towards the stereo receiver unit that rests below the television. He thumbs through his dad’s old record collection, stops at “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and removes the album from its sleeve. The turntable is somehow free of dust after all these years; at least my mother’s compulsive cleaning habits are good for something, he thinks as he drops the needle to the vinyl and starts the record. He walks back to the couch and lets his body turn to deadweight; his fragile frame free falls through the air for a moment before the white leather cushions engulf him entirely.
Without the screams and voiceovers and white noise that normally accompany on-location news broadcasts, the footage seems almost comedic as lips synch to lyrics; “What would you think if I sang out of tune?” the reporter begs the audience, mascara oozing down her face from the Hellish heat-induced sweat that overcomes her. Of course, it reads more like a low budget Japanese movie rental, but John still finds some comfort in the awkward humor of it all. The ambient, drug-induced waltz of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” makes the angels and demons above dance in awkward masculine embrace, surreal and unsettling like a Salvador Dali film. The tumultuous flock of devotees that fill the Vatican streets roar, “It’s getting better all the time!” as they tussle for the Pope’s affections. This mystifying incongruity consumes John with a rush of feeling that is as disagreeable as it is comforting. He shifts in his seat and disrupts the supple pillows that surround him and tries to re-adjust himself, but is far too enchanted by his fragmented video fantasy soundtrack to notice his mother’s long, thin, broccoli silhouette run over him from behind. John had always hated broccoli.
“Turn it off,” his mother, Catherine, states sternly, gripping the crucifix that hangs from her necklace. “I don’t want to hear or see anything, and I don’t want to upset the baby. Turn it off now.”
John’s lips tighten into a line, his lower jaw grinding hard against the top. “I’d like to know what’s going on,” he responds. He turns his head to find his mother standing behind him, holding his baby brother, Patrick, in her right arm. She is dressed in her Sunday best, though it is Thursday.
“What time did you get home last night, John?” she asks him, beginning the interrogation.
“Late. Please, mom, I’m watching TV. I want to know what’s going on out there.”
“You don’t need to watch that; you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on just by looking outside. Now, answer me. Where were you last night? Did you have anyone in the car with you? You know you’re not allowed to have any passengers for the first six months…”
“Out, mom. I was out with some friends. In case you haven’t caught on, it was probably the last time I’m ever going to see them.” John smirks with righteousness and turns his attention back to the television.
“I was up all night, waiting for you, young man! I was worried to…you could have been killed out there! What were you thinking?”
“That I’d rather go out with a bang than spend my last day on Earth rotting in this house, waiting for death to come and sweep me off my feet,” he retorts.
Caroline’s face changes instantly from anger to solemnity. “John. That was out of line. I’m a mother, and I was concerned for my son. That was out of line.”
John shrugs his shoulders, as if signaling the end of the conversation, but Patrick’s wail suddenly interrupts the moment and pierces through the silence. Caroline thrusts her left hand down towards John, and pries the remote control from his grip; she shuts the television off before he has a chance to react.
“That is a slap in the face, John William Miller! Now your poor brother is scared and crying and screaming and…and you’re too selfish to even realize it, or help, or offer him any kind of respect at all! You just ignore everything I’ve ever said to you, and…God, as if it isn’t scary enough outside, you have to subject poor Patrick to all these footage of death and destruction and…He’s family—I am family—and we are all you have, young man,, and all you do is insult and disrespect us with this…unmitigated defiance!” She stops a moment to catch her breath. Her checks flush red as her chest expands, and when she exhales for the third time, the wind that leaves her mouth is followed by a nervous laugh, building slowly and slowly in volume and scope until it drowns out the song on the stereo. John’s grey-green eyes get wider and throat gets dry; his mother finally has his undivided attention.
“Is this your father’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s album?’” she asks between breaths.
John nods, slowly and cautiously, so as not to upset her anymore.
“He used to sing ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ to me when we first started dating. Too bad we never got that far…” Her beautiful, sullen laughter subsides as she shakes her head. She calms herself down before she begins to speak again. “I thought I had told you not to touch your father’s things, John…you know you’re not supposed to touch his things, and, and once again, you just…disrespect me. Patrick, he never even got to met him, and…oh God, he has William’s eyes, and…” she says, disappointment pouring from lips; she looks down at the child in her arms.
“We’re gonna see him real soon, mom,” John says, trying to console her from a distance. His mother doesn’t hear it.
“William would be so proud,” she continues. “From the day he was born, I knew he was going to be just like his father, but Patrick, baby, you’ll never get a chance to know him…” She shifts her attention to the child, as “Fixing a Hole” comes to a close on the record player. Patrick’s cries slow into a childish coo, and Catherine cradles him in her arms. “Your father would be so proud of you if he was here today, if hadn’t closed his eyes that night on the road...”
John falls back into the couch, facing away from his mother’s romantic projections, and snaps. “Mom, Patrick’s not even two years old. You can’t even tell what he’s going to look like in ten years, let alone thirty. And, besides, I thought you didn’t want us to talk about dad, so why are you bringing it up?” As the words leave his mouth, John knows that he shouldn’t have let them escape from this thoughts.
“Your father was a great man,” she replies.
“I know, mom. And I never said he wasn’t. I just think you put a lot of pressure on Patrick is all. He’s just a kid.”
“Well, maybe I just wanted a son that I could be proud of,” she says, her words cutting through John’s thin, tender skin like razor blades.
The room goes still; side one of the record comes to a halt with an audible squeal, and even Patrick’s subtle cooing is suddenly hushed. For the first time in his life, John looks his mother straight in the eye and stares her down.
“Go to hell,” he says, before shifting his vision to the abysmal dark and chaos that await them outside. He reflects for a moment on the words that passed his lips—he didn’t mean them. He doesn’t mean them. A bolt of lightning, visible from the window, burns a hole in the back yard, and John returns his gaze to match his mother’s. “No. Fuck you,” he says. “Dad killed himself, whether you’ll admit it or not, and it had nothing—nothing—to do with me. How dare you.” John turns his back to his mother, and marches to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
John looks to the swimsuit calendar that hangs above his desk and feels nauseous. It is December; the first through twentieth had already been crossed out, and John had blacked out every day from the twenty-second to the thirty-first himself. The box marked for December 21st is circled in yellow-green hi-liter. John notices “Tina,” in all her airbrushed and fake-tanned glory, looking back at him, taunting him. He scowls as he tears the calendar down the wall and rips it down the center. The shredded halves of glossy pages float to the ground.
John takes a breath and brings the air deep into the center of his gut in order to prevent another outburst. His chest inflates like a bass drum, his heart pounding like a snare, and as the rhythm section slows, he is drawn to the dusty book that rests on his desk: Finnegans Wake. It was his father’s favorite book, and John remembers when he received his own copy as a gift about three years ago. Though he’s hardly even touched it before, John opens the book for the first time and turns, as he always did, to the last page. He skims to the bottom, and reads the last sentence to himself: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the,” without so much as a period to end it. Confused, he turns to the first page, and begins the book proper: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation…”
John puts the book down when he hears three sharp raps that come through his wooden door. Cautious and confused, he opens the door to find his mother standing in her apron. “Supper’s ready, sweetheart,” Catherine says. It takes her a moment to get the words out, and she turns back towards the kitchen as soon as she is done speaking. John hesitates for a moment—he cannot recall the last time that his mother did more than yell to announce dinner, nor does he remember her ever referring to it as “supper.”
John enters the kitchen to find Patrick and his mother already seated at the table, arms extended in anticipation of his arrival; eyes closed, they are waiting to pray before the meal begins. John opens the cabinet and takes out a wine glass. He looks beneath the counter, finds a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and fills his glass before sitting down. He is reluctant to take his mother’s hand at first, but he does, and she begins to pray as soon as she feels his hand in hers.
“Bless, O Lord, this food for thy use, and make us ever mindful of the wants and needs of others. Amen,” Catherine says. Patrick joins her in this chorus with a childish exuberance. John, too, punctuates the prayer, though he mumbles his response. Still, a slight smile grows outward towards his left cheek from the center of the mouth. John takes the wine glass in his right hand, and carefully extends his pinky like he has seen on television and in movies. As he begins to raise the glass from the table to his lips, his mother awakens from her moment of prayer and opens her eyes.
“And…what do you think you’re doing, exactly?” she says, with eyebrows raised.
“C’mon mom,” he responds. “It’s my last supper; let me enjoy it.” John brings the glass to rest on his lower lip, and takes a gulp of the red wine like child drinking milk; immediately, he spits it out. “Ugh! That was disgusting…I think your wine’s gone bad, mom. You should’ve probably refrigerated it,” he says, salivating heavily to wash away the taste that lingers in his mouth. Catherine smiles and laughs, and passes the plate of lamb chops to him. He serves himself, and takes a drink of water to wash the taste of wine away. The family begins to eat their last meal together.
Several more minutes pass in comfortable, familial silence. Catherine’s lips are the first to break the air, and she takes a pause from eating. “It’s funny,” she says. “The Republicans have been in the White House for twelve years in a row, and they finally elect a Democrat—a black man, no less— for president, and he’ll never even get to serve.” She looks to John for his response, but all he does is nod and make an affirmative sound as he chews his food. Catherine takes another forkful of food into her mouth, and tries again. “Did you ever get a chance to say goodbye to Judith?” she asks him.
John swallows a mass of tender meat that has not been chewed enough, and forces it down his throat. “Yeah, that’s what I was doing last night, Mom” he responds.
“I see,” she says, a wave of understanding finally starting to overcome her. “You know, I always thought that there was something going on between the two of you. And if there wasn’t, there really should have been—I mean, she’s beautiful, John, she really is, and you two always got along so well.”
“Yeah…” he says, nervously. John swallows again, as if forcing another wad of food down his throat without chewing. He takes another bite.
“So, was there anything ever going on with you two? Or, is there?” Catherine asserts.
John puts his fork down, allowing it scrape against his dinner plate. He closes his eyes, folds his hands together below his chin, and then places them on the table, just past his plate. He swallows once more, and pauses between his breath and the words that follow. “Mom?” he finally speaks, “I wanted to tell you…” John crafts his words in silence for a moment.
“Yes, dear?” his mother asks, more anxious than concerned.
“I think…” Another pause. “Mom…I’m gay. I mean, I don’t know, like, I’ve never done…anything, uh, gay. I just…I thought you should know. You know, before…” John chokes and begins to clench his fists again, pulling them under the table to muffle the crack and pop of his knuckles. He bites his lower lip, and looks to his mother, waiting for some kind of response.
Catherine looks down at her plate and moves her food around a bit. There is silence for several minutes. When she finally speaks, the only thing that comes out is, “Can you pass the applesauce?” She doesn’t know what to say, but she knows that wasn’t it. John hands the bowl to her, and storms away, leaving his plate and the glass of wine on the table. Before he is even out of the kitchen, however, the sharp, raucous sound of shattering glass and crunching steel roars through the home, shaking the windows and knocking every framed picture off center, if not to the ground. It startles Catherine enough to snap her out of the shock that concerned her only moments earlier, and sends Patrick into a frenzy of tears and screams; John, on the other hand, hurries to the source.
He throws the front door open just in time to see the last of the shrapnel from his mother’s car fall to the ground; his eyes catch the shimmer of the moon as it bounces off the glass splinters. He looks towards the car, incorrigible and accordioned, and is dumbstruck by the awesome beauty of the winged Aryan man that stands triumphantly on the roof. Though his features seem feminine, his poise and stance is very purely masculine, and it reminds John of the Greek and Roman marble statues he had seen in art history. He keeps a demon pinned between the roof of the car and his left foot: its skin is a nauseating shade of mahogany with deep green undertones, and yellowed teeth and eyes. Catherine joins John in the doorway, and flips the switch on for the outdoor floodlights. The angel flinches and soon flies away, but not without smiling at John and Catherine first; it is perhaps the most compassionate smile that either of them has ever seen.
“It was beautiful…” John whispers to himself, allowing the final syllable to resonate in the winter air before it sublimates.
“God dammit,” Catherine says. She does not hear her son, perhaps by choice, and she screams in frustration, “God Dammit! That was my car! How dare you! Now how am I supposed to get to church tonight?” Catherine lets out one last exasperated, “Fuck!” before exiling herself to the bedroom, leaving John alone and cold on the doorstep. He stands there for a minute longer, before heading back towards the kitchen, where he can hear the pulsation of Patrick’s cacophonous cries.
When he enters the kitchen, John does not only find Patrick left unattended in his chair at the table, but he also notices that the evening’s dirty dishes had been left lying around as well. John calls his mother’s name once, twice, three times, but there is no response. He shakes his head, and continues to the bedroom in search of her: Patrick’s wailing drives John insane, and he knows that he himself is incapable of silencing the banshee toddler.
John finds the door to his mother’s room left slightly ajar, so he pushes it open just enough to fit his head in the gap. Although he does not notice her at first, John finally finds his mother kneeling beside the far end of the bed. He sees that she is holding a picture frame against her chest, squeezing it tight like an anaconda squeezes its victims. She looks towards the ceiling, though her eyelids are clearly closed tight; her cheeks are red and slick with tears, as she mumbles a prayer to herself: “…and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” she recites. John continues to watch her through another cycle of the prayer, though he himself remains silent. She finishes the prayer, and collapses in on herself, at which point, John decides to check up on his baby brother.
Patrick’s crying has greatly subsided by the time John leaves his mother’s bedroom, so on the way back to the kitchen, John stops in the living room and turns his father’s “Sgt. Pepper’s” album over to side two. He places the turntable needle back on the record to start it up, and then proceeds to the kitchen to attend to his brother.
John finds a bottle of milk in the refrigerator and gives it to Patrick to occupy and comfort him. He picks Patrick up, first with both arms, then with one, and shifts the small boy to rest against his chest and upper arm, while his forearm supports the boy’s head and neck. Patrick continues to drink from his bottle, and John starts to gather dishes from the table with his free hand. One by one, he drops the dishes in the sink while the water runs hot from the faucet. His arm eventually gets too tired to carry Patrick anymore, so John puts the boy down in his chair and continues cleaning all the spices, serving dishes, and silverware off of the table. After he moves everything into the dishwasher, he finds the Dish Washing Liquid Soap on the next to the sink, fills the detergent trap in the dishwasher, and begins the cycle. He realizes just how foolish it is to clean the dishes when the end of the world is nigh, but he just laughs it off.
As the dishwasher starts to whir, John thinks of his father’s book that was left on his desk, and the puzzling lines that he had read earlier that day. With Patrick under control, John runs to his room and picks up the book one last time. He reads again the final sentence, hoping to figure out the rest of the story, but he does not understand; the absence of punctuation in this final sentence resonates in his thoughts, as “A Day in the Life” reaches its bittersweet finale and the music fades away into the abyss of this final night.
He then hears his mother scream from the kitchen.
John follows the scream, and finds his mother standing in a pool of soapsuds that had spilled out of the dishwasher and on to the floor, with a giggling Patrick in her arms. Though she smirks when she looks at him, he can clearly see the tears that she holds back, and all those that have already dried on her face. “Let me guess—you used the Dishwashing Hand Soap on the sink?” she asks, her annoyance clearly overpowered by the humor of the situation. John tries to speak, but she cuts him off: “That was rhetorical. At least I won’t have to clean the kitchen floor this week. Do you see what time it is?”
John looks to the clock on the stove: 11:57. Three minutes until the end of the world. He looks to his mother, and she motions towards the back porch. They smile at each other, and Catherine leads them outside.
As John walks through the sliding screen door to exit his home, his eyes are immediately drawn to the glowing mass that has begun to fill the sky, a sky so black that it supersedes the color spectrum. John’s gaze is fixed tightly on this growing light, and it reminds him of a solar eclipse that his father made him watch when he was younger. He remembers the way that the sunlight clawed over the edges of the moon that had fought so hard for the attention and affection of the people during daytime. He remembers the sun’s brilliant light and its triumphant escape from the dark, and he remembers the hope that this instilled in him, as he steps up to meet his family.
John stands still for a moment at his mother’s side before he takes her hand in his. “I love you,” he says, squeezing her hand. Silence. She does not squeeze back. John sees her take Patrick’s hand in hers, and for the last time, he lets go.
Instead, Catherine stretches her arm out, across John’s back, and with her hand gripped firmly on his right shoulder, she pulls him in to her chest and kisses him on the forehead as she holds him. John stands up straight to face the incoming sky, and his mother’s arm stays fast and steadily with him. Two more minutes pass, and the incoming ball of light from above continues to grow in size and intensity, but the heat does not burn. John checks his watch: 11:59, it reads, glowing in a digital red. John looks to his mother, and she matches his gaze; she sends it to Patrick beside her, who returns it to John.
“Are you ready to see dad again?” he asks.
“He won’t be waiting,” Catherine responds with a sad smile. “But I think I’m okay with that.” She lets these tears fall for the first and last time.
Dec. '06
The news crews mostly filmed from the ground, in the midst of the disorder and disarray, occasionally offering viewers a glimpse of the war-torn and blackened skies. Beautiful, androgynous Angels and horned devil beasts, grotesque and misshapen with tentacles, boils, and other unimaginable vexes, fell from above, their freshly slain bodies landing viciously amongst the debaucherous mobs of people. The greediest of them charge towards these strange, surreal creatures, groping and clawing for feathers and horns like some sort of apocalyptic souvenirs, only to be struck down by a stray lightning bolt, or worse, another human being. They panic like fire ants; the Vatican is a stick, shoved into their hill by a cruel and twisted child, and no one knows another way to get home but to fight their way through it. The news anchor plays her role well, seemingly oblivious to the madness and death and fear that surrounds her, and brings her viewers up to speed, calmly and matter-of-factly like the news always does: everything foretold in the Biblical “Book of Revelations” had come true, and in case a glance out the window wasn’t obvious enough, today was Armageddon, the Eschaton, the end of the world, at least according to the prophecies.
John mutes the television; he knows what’s happening, and doesn’t need an overpaid television narrator to spell it out for him. He stands and makes his way towards the stereo receiver unit that rests below the television. He thumbs through his dad’s old record collection, stops at “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and removes the album from its sleeve. The turntable is somehow free of dust after all these years; at least my mother’s compulsive cleaning habits are good for something, he thinks as he drops the needle to the vinyl and starts the record. He walks back to the couch and lets his body turn to deadweight; his fragile frame free falls through the air for a moment before the white leather cushions engulf him entirely.
Without the screams and voiceovers and white noise that normally accompany on-location news broadcasts, the footage seems almost comedic as lips synch to lyrics; “What would you think if I sang out of tune?” the reporter begs the audience, mascara oozing down her face from the Hellish heat-induced sweat that overcomes her. Of course, it reads more like a low budget Japanese movie rental, but John still finds some comfort in the awkward humor of it all. The ambient, drug-induced waltz of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” makes the angels and demons above dance in awkward masculine embrace, surreal and unsettling like a Salvador Dali film. The tumultuous flock of devotees that fill the Vatican streets roar, “It’s getting better all the time!” as they tussle for the Pope’s affections. This mystifying incongruity consumes John with a rush of feeling that is as disagreeable as it is comforting. He shifts in his seat and disrupts the supple pillows that surround him and tries to re-adjust himself, but is far too enchanted by his fragmented video fantasy soundtrack to notice his mother’s long, thin, broccoli silhouette run over him from behind. John had always hated broccoli.
“Turn it off,” his mother, Catherine, states sternly, gripping the crucifix that hangs from her necklace. “I don’t want to hear or see anything, and I don’t want to upset the baby. Turn it off now.”
John’s lips tighten into a line, his lower jaw grinding hard against the top. “I’d like to know what’s going on,” he responds. He turns his head to find his mother standing behind him, holding his baby brother, Patrick, in her right arm. She is dressed in her Sunday best, though it is Thursday.
“What time did you get home last night, John?” she asks him, beginning the interrogation.
“Late. Please, mom, I’m watching TV. I want to know what’s going on out there.”
“You don’t need to watch that; you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on just by looking outside. Now, answer me. Where were you last night? Did you have anyone in the car with you? You know you’re not allowed to have any passengers for the first six months…”
“Out, mom. I was out with some friends. In case you haven’t caught on, it was probably the last time I’m ever going to see them.” John smirks with righteousness and turns his attention back to the television.
“I was up all night, waiting for you, young man! I was worried to…you could have been killed out there! What were you thinking?”
“That I’d rather go out with a bang than spend my last day on Earth rotting in this house, waiting for death to come and sweep me off my feet,” he retorts.
Caroline’s face changes instantly from anger to solemnity. “John. That was out of line. I’m a mother, and I was concerned for my son. That was out of line.”
John shrugs his shoulders, as if signaling the end of the conversation, but Patrick’s wail suddenly interrupts the moment and pierces through the silence. Caroline thrusts her left hand down towards John, and pries the remote control from his grip; she shuts the television off before he has a chance to react.
“That is a slap in the face, John William Miller! Now your poor brother is scared and crying and screaming and…and you’re too selfish to even realize it, or help, or offer him any kind of respect at all! You just ignore everything I’ve ever said to you, and…God, as if it isn’t scary enough outside, you have to subject poor Patrick to all these footage of death and destruction and…He’s family—I am family—and we are all you have, young man,, and all you do is insult and disrespect us with this…unmitigated defiance!” She stops a moment to catch her breath. Her checks flush red as her chest expands, and when she exhales for the third time, the wind that leaves her mouth is followed by a nervous laugh, building slowly and slowly in volume and scope until it drowns out the song on the stereo. John’s grey-green eyes get wider and throat gets dry; his mother finally has his undivided attention.
“Is this your father’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s album?’” she asks between breaths.
John nods, slowly and cautiously, so as not to upset her anymore.
“He used to sing ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ to me when we first started dating. Too bad we never got that far…” Her beautiful, sullen laughter subsides as she shakes her head. She calms herself down before she begins to speak again. “I thought I had told you not to touch your father’s things, John…you know you’re not supposed to touch his things, and, and once again, you just…disrespect me. Patrick, he never even got to met him, and…oh God, he has William’s eyes, and…” she says, disappointment pouring from lips; she looks down at the child in her arms.
“We’re gonna see him real soon, mom,” John says, trying to console her from a distance. His mother doesn’t hear it.
“William would be so proud,” she continues. “From the day he was born, I knew he was going to be just like his father, but Patrick, baby, you’ll never get a chance to know him…” She shifts her attention to the child, as “Fixing a Hole” comes to a close on the record player. Patrick’s cries slow into a childish coo, and Catherine cradles him in her arms. “Your father would be so proud of you if he was here today, if hadn’t closed his eyes that night on the road...”
John falls back into the couch, facing away from his mother’s romantic projections, and snaps. “Mom, Patrick’s not even two years old. You can’t even tell what he’s going to look like in ten years, let alone thirty. And, besides, I thought you didn’t want us to talk about dad, so why are you bringing it up?” As the words leave his mouth, John knows that he shouldn’t have let them escape from this thoughts.
“Your father was a great man,” she replies.
“I know, mom. And I never said he wasn’t. I just think you put a lot of pressure on Patrick is all. He’s just a kid.”
“Well, maybe I just wanted a son that I could be proud of,” she says, her words cutting through John’s thin, tender skin like razor blades.
The room goes still; side one of the record comes to a halt with an audible squeal, and even Patrick’s subtle cooing is suddenly hushed. For the first time in his life, John looks his mother straight in the eye and stares her down.
“Go to hell,” he says, before shifting his vision to the abysmal dark and chaos that await them outside. He reflects for a moment on the words that passed his lips—he didn’t mean them. He doesn’t mean them. A bolt of lightning, visible from the window, burns a hole in the back yard, and John returns his gaze to match his mother’s. “No. Fuck you,” he says. “Dad killed himself, whether you’ll admit it or not, and it had nothing—nothing—to do with me. How dare you.” John turns his back to his mother, and marches to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
John looks to the swimsuit calendar that hangs above his desk and feels nauseous. It is December; the first through twentieth had already been crossed out, and John had blacked out every day from the twenty-second to the thirty-first himself. The box marked for December 21st is circled in yellow-green hi-liter. John notices “Tina,” in all her airbrushed and fake-tanned glory, looking back at him, taunting him. He scowls as he tears the calendar down the wall and rips it down the center. The shredded halves of glossy pages float to the ground.
John takes a breath and brings the air deep into the center of his gut in order to prevent another outburst. His chest inflates like a bass drum, his heart pounding like a snare, and as the rhythm section slows, he is drawn to the dusty book that rests on his desk: Finnegans Wake. It was his father’s favorite book, and John remembers when he received his own copy as a gift about three years ago. Though he’s hardly even touched it before, John opens the book for the first time and turns, as he always did, to the last page. He skims to the bottom, and reads the last sentence to himself: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the,” without so much as a period to end it. Confused, he turns to the first page, and begins the book proper: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation…”
John puts the book down when he hears three sharp raps that come through his wooden door. Cautious and confused, he opens the door to find his mother standing in her apron. “Supper’s ready, sweetheart,” Catherine says. It takes her a moment to get the words out, and she turns back towards the kitchen as soon as she is done speaking. John hesitates for a moment—he cannot recall the last time that his mother did more than yell to announce dinner, nor does he remember her ever referring to it as “supper.”
John enters the kitchen to find Patrick and his mother already seated at the table, arms extended in anticipation of his arrival; eyes closed, they are waiting to pray before the meal begins. John opens the cabinet and takes out a wine glass. He looks beneath the counter, finds a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and fills his glass before sitting down. He is reluctant to take his mother’s hand at first, but he does, and she begins to pray as soon as she feels his hand in hers.
“Bless, O Lord, this food for thy use, and make us ever mindful of the wants and needs of others. Amen,” Catherine says. Patrick joins her in this chorus with a childish exuberance. John, too, punctuates the prayer, though he mumbles his response. Still, a slight smile grows outward towards his left cheek from the center of the mouth. John takes the wine glass in his right hand, and carefully extends his pinky like he has seen on television and in movies. As he begins to raise the glass from the table to his lips, his mother awakens from her moment of prayer and opens her eyes.
“And…what do you think you’re doing, exactly?” she says, with eyebrows raised.
“C’mon mom,” he responds. “It’s my last supper; let me enjoy it.” John brings the glass to rest on his lower lip, and takes a gulp of the red wine like child drinking milk; immediately, he spits it out. “Ugh! That was disgusting…I think your wine’s gone bad, mom. You should’ve probably refrigerated it,” he says, salivating heavily to wash away the taste that lingers in his mouth. Catherine smiles and laughs, and passes the plate of lamb chops to him. He serves himself, and takes a drink of water to wash the taste of wine away. The family begins to eat their last meal together.
Several more minutes pass in comfortable, familial silence. Catherine’s lips are the first to break the air, and she takes a pause from eating. “It’s funny,” she says. “The Republicans have been in the White House for twelve years in a row, and they finally elect a Democrat—a black man, no less— for president, and he’ll never even get to serve.” She looks to John for his response, but all he does is nod and make an affirmative sound as he chews his food. Catherine takes another forkful of food into her mouth, and tries again. “Did you ever get a chance to say goodbye to Judith?” she asks him.
John swallows a mass of tender meat that has not been chewed enough, and forces it down his throat. “Yeah, that’s what I was doing last night, Mom” he responds.
“I see,” she says, a wave of understanding finally starting to overcome her. “You know, I always thought that there was something going on between the two of you. And if there wasn’t, there really should have been—I mean, she’s beautiful, John, she really is, and you two always got along so well.”
“Yeah…” he says, nervously. John swallows again, as if forcing another wad of food down his throat without chewing. He takes another bite.
“So, was there anything ever going on with you two? Or, is there?” Catherine asserts.
John puts his fork down, allowing it scrape against his dinner plate. He closes his eyes, folds his hands together below his chin, and then places them on the table, just past his plate. He swallows once more, and pauses between his breath and the words that follow. “Mom?” he finally speaks, “I wanted to tell you…” John crafts his words in silence for a moment.
“Yes, dear?” his mother asks, more anxious than concerned.
“I think…” Another pause. “Mom…I’m gay. I mean, I don’t know, like, I’ve never done…anything, uh, gay. I just…I thought you should know. You know, before…” John chokes and begins to clench his fists again, pulling them under the table to muffle the crack and pop of his knuckles. He bites his lower lip, and looks to his mother, waiting for some kind of response.
Catherine looks down at her plate and moves her food around a bit. There is silence for several minutes. When she finally speaks, the only thing that comes out is, “Can you pass the applesauce?” She doesn’t know what to say, but she knows that wasn’t it. John hands the bowl to her, and storms away, leaving his plate and the glass of wine on the table. Before he is even out of the kitchen, however, the sharp, raucous sound of shattering glass and crunching steel roars through the home, shaking the windows and knocking every framed picture off center, if not to the ground. It startles Catherine enough to snap her out of the shock that concerned her only moments earlier, and sends Patrick into a frenzy of tears and screams; John, on the other hand, hurries to the source.
He throws the front door open just in time to see the last of the shrapnel from his mother’s car fall to the ground; his eyes catch the shimmer of the moon as it bounces off the glass splinters. He looks towards the car, incorrigible and accordioned, and is dumbstruck by the awesome beauty of the winged Aryan man that stands triumphantly on the roof. Though his features seem feminine, his poise and stance is very purely masculine, and it reminds John of the Greek and Roman marble statues he had seen in art history. He keeps a demon pinned between the roof of the car and his left foot: its skin is a nauseating shade of mahogany with deep green undertones, and yellowed teeth and eyes. Catherine joins John in the doorway, and flips the switch on for the outdoor floodlights. The angel flinches and soon flies away, but not without smiling at John and Catherine first; it is perhaps the most compassionate smile that either of them has ever seen.
“It was beautiful…” John whispers to himself, allowing the final syllable to resonate in the winter air before it sublimates.
“God dammit,” Catherine says. She does not hear her son, perhaps by choice, and she screams in frustration, “God Dammit! That was my car! How dare you! Now how am I supposed to get to church tonight?” Catherine lets out one last exasperated, “Fuck!” before exiling herself to the bedroom, leaving John alone and cold on the doorstep. He stands there for a minute longer, before heading back towards the kitchen, where he can hear the pulsation of Patrick’s cacophonous cries.
When he enters the kitchen, John does not only find Patrick left unattended in his chair at the table, but he also notices that the evening’s dirty dishes had been left lying around as well. John calls his mother’s name once, twice, three times, but there is no response. He shakes his head, and continues to the bedroom in search of her: Patrick’s wailing drives John insane, and he knows that he himself is incapable of silencing the banshee toddler.
John finds the door to his mother’s room left slightly ajar, so he pushes it open just enough to fit his head in the gap. Although he does not notice her at first, John finally finds his mother kneeling beside the far end of the bed. He sees that she is holding a picture frame against her chest, squeezing it tight like an anaconda squeezes its victims. She looks towards the ceiling, though her eyelids are clearly closed tight; her cheeks are red and slick with tears, as she mumbles a prayer to herself: “…and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” she recites. John continues to watch her through another cycle of the prayer, though he himself remains silent. She finishes the prayer, and collapses in on herself, at which point, John decides to check up on his baby brother.
Patrick’s crying has greatly subsided by the time John leaves his mother’s bedroom, so on the way back to the kitchen, John stops in the living room and turns his father’s “Sgt. Pepper’s” album over to side two. He places the turntable needle back on the record to start it up, and then proceeds to the kitchen to attend to his brother.
John finds a bottle of milk in the refrigerator and gives it to Patrick to occupy and comfort him. He picks Patrick up, first with both arms, then with one, and shifts the small boy to rest against his chest and upper arm, while his forearm supports the boy’s head and neck. Patrick continues to drink from his bottle, and John starts to gather dishes from the table with his free hand. One by one, he drops the dishes in the sink while the water runs hot from the faucet. His arm eventually gets too tired to carry Patrick anymore, so John puts the boy down in his chair and continues cleaning all the spices, serving dishes, and silverware off of the table. After he moves everything into the dishwasher, he finds the Dish Washing Liquid Soap on the next to the sink, fills the detergent trap in the dishwasher, and begins the cycle. He realizes just how foolish it is to clean the dishes when the end of the world is nigh, but he just laughs it off.
As the dishwasher starts to whir, John thinks of his father’s book that was left on his desk, and the puzzling lines that he had read earlier that day. With Patrick under control, John runs to his room and picks up the book one last time. He reads again the final sentence, hoping to figure out the rest of the story, but he does not understand; the absence of punctuation in this final sentence resonates in his thoughts, as “A Day in the Life” reaches its bittersweet finale and the music fades away into the abyss of this final night.
He then hears his mother scream from the kitchen.
John follows the scream, and finds his mother standing in a pool of soapsuds that had spilled out of the dishwasher and on to the floor, with a giggling Patrick in her arms. Though she smirks when she looks at him, he can clearly see the tears that she holds back, and all those that have already dried on her face. “Let me guess—you used the Dishwashing Hand Soap on the sink?” she asks, her annoyance clearly overpowered by the humor of the situation. John tries to speak, but she cuts him off: “That was rhetorical. At least I won’t have to clean the kitchen floor this week. Do you see what time it is?”
John looks to the clock on the stove: 11:57. Three minutes until the end of the world. He looks to his mother, and she motions towards the back porch. They smile at each other, and Catherine leads them outside.
As John walks through the sliding screen door to exit his home, his eyes are immediately drawn to the glowing mass that has begun to fill the sky, a sky so black that it supersedes the color spectrum. John’s gaze is fixed tightly on this growing light, and it reminds him of a solar eclipse that his father made him watch when he was younger. He remembers the way that the sunlight clawed over the edges of the moon that had fought so hard for the attention and affection of the people during daytime. He remembers the sun’s brilliant light and its triumphant escape from the dark, and he remembers the hope that this instilled in him, as he steps up to meet his family.
John stands still for a moment at his mother’s side before he takes her hand in his. “I love you,” he says, squeezing her hand. Silence. She does not squeeze back. John sees her take Patrick’s hand in hers, and for the last time, he lets go.
Instead, Catherine stretches her arm out, across John’s back, and with her hand gripped firmly on his right shoulder, she pulls him in to her chest and kisses him on the forehead as she holds him. John stands up straight to face the incoming sky, and his mother’s arm stays fast and steadily with him. Two more minutes pass, and the incoming ball of light from above continues to grow in size and intensity, but the heat does not burn. John checks his watch: 11:59, it reads, glowing in a digital red. John looks to his mother, and she matches his gaze; she sends it to Patrick beside her, who returns it to John.
“Are you ready to see dad again?” he asks.
“He won’t be waiting,” Catherine responds with a sad smile. “But I think I’m okay with that.” She lets these tears fall for the first and last time.
Dec. '06
Scenes
“Pack of fags, man.”
“…Excuse me?”
“Ci-grr-ettes. Fucking Marlboro, Jesus Christ.”
True, Abi was never known for her tact. She was, however, pretty well renowned for being the only girl with homemade X’s on her hands and a tattoo on her back that said “My body is a temple,” who also found pleasure in leaving puddles of cigarette butts and spit in every parking lot she met. Occasionally, some new kid would confront her about it, but it always produced the same response.
“I only smoke when drink,” she’d say.
“Oh…so you’re drunk right now?” the kid would ask.
She’d take another drag, and just say, “No,” through the smoke.
The same kid would find himself bowing down at her feet in a matter of days, worshipping her as some kind of unconventional Atheistic Goddess. That is, until the black widow deep inside her bit his head off for questioning her British accent. This routine ran in approximately three-week streaks, meaning that tonight she’d find her newest victim.
Abi left the convenience store, cigarettes in hand. She rounded the corner, and drove into the parking lot of the local Knights of Columbus, cutting across diagonally and blatantly disregarding the crowd of kids standing in the way of the Camry that her supposedly un-loving parents had given her a year ago. She parked out back, the only passenger ride amidst a fleet of refurbished junkyard vans. After making sure her rear fender was still in place, she made her away all the way around to the front of the building.
“Five dollars, gimme your hands,” said the guy at the door in painful monotony. His right hand moved forward with a Sharpie marker, while his left hand stayed behind, palm up, waiting for the cash.
“Carl, you fucker, it’s me!” Abi said as she walked past him.
“Oh, hi Abi. Yes, it’s five dollars tonight,” he responded with the same monotony.
Abi laughed, removed Carl’s glasses from his eyes, and began to massage his shoulders with a little more pain than passion. She gave him a kiss on the top of his shaved head, and said “C’mon, Carl, I never pay.”
Unaffected by her advances, Carl simply told her, “I know, and I’m sorry, but we need the money to break even. We had to put down an extra deposit after that kid kicked a hole in the men’s bathroom wall last time, you understand.” Abi gave him the cash, and stormed away. “Hey…I need to mark an X on your hand!” he cried after her.
“I already got ‘em, hot stuff,” she snarled back, as she headed inside.
Carl muttered something to himself before getting back to work, collecting money at the door. “Five dollars…gimme your hand…Five dollars…gimme your hand…” His actions were almost mechanical, like a veteran factory work, as disillusioned as he was dedicated to his job.
Sixteen X’s and eighty dollars later, a fresh face interrupted Carl’s routine of collection and entry.
“Hey…uh, I’m looking for Jenks…Chris Jenkins, I’m an old friend, umm…do you know where he is?”
Carl didn’t even bother looking up from his tally sheet. “Jenk’s inside. It’s five dollars…gimme your hand…” he said, with the same impersonal disdain he addressed everyone else.
“Sure…do you know what time his band goes on?” asked the patron.
“Yes, there’s a set list hanging up on the wall right…there…” In that moment, Carl finally realized that Abi had stolen his glasses. “Goddammit…that fucking whore…” he cried, pounding the table at which he sat and throwing his chair backwards into a crowd of people. He turned around, slammed his fist into a wall, and screamed, “Abi! You fake little bitch…give me my fucking glasses back!”
As the obscenities and fists continued to fly, the patron left five dollars on the table and slipped past Carl’s violent outburst, heading into the show. “I need to X your goddamn hand! Get back here,” he heard Carl scream afterwards. More than moderately concerned for his health, he chose to ignore Carl’s cries and keep walking. He looked straight ahead, carefully avoiding all eye contact in the room.
“Holy shit…is that Bobby Drake!” The voice came from behind him, at the merchandise tables. He pretended not to hear his name, hoping that to use the volume in hall as an excuse, until he realized that there was no band playing at the moment. Apparently, he hadn’t done such a good job of staying below the radar.
“Hey Jeffries…” Bobby said as he turned around, making his lack of enthusiasm entirely too obvious. “How ya been?”
“No man, how have YOU been! I haven’t seen you in ages, aww man…The scene’s just not like it was, all this fucking kids keep comin’ here, and they’re so young and lame, ya know man? They just don’t…get it, ya know? Like, we got it. But whatever, I mean, the kids are comin’, so that’s cool I guess. Hey, are you still dating Tori?”
“No, we broke up almost two years ago…”
“Oh. That’s cool, man. She still around? I used to think her little sister was cute, too, but I mean, that’d just be weird, if the four of us were all dating. Well, not like, dating each other, like, all four of us, but you know…”
Bobby had to find an exit, fast. This was exactly what he didn’t want to happen. “Yeh, hey, listen…I need to find Jenks, so…”
“Oh, yeh dude, totally. Look out back, by the load-in doors, where all the vans are parked. He’s probably in the van or somethin’. You remember what the van looks like?”
“Wow, they still have it? I’m surprised it hasn’t exploded yet…well, thanks a lot, Jeffries. Take it easy.”
“Peace, dude.” As Bobby walked away, he could faintly hear Jeffries mention his name to the girl signing the mailing list.
“Bobby Drake! This dude like, invented you. If not for him, we’d never have shows here, we probably wouldn’t have half these bands. The man is a God! How have you not heard of Bobby Drake!?” Jeffries heckled the girl; apparently, he was better at selling people’s egos than he was merchandise. She didn’t particularly care; she was just picking up free stickers. Naturally, being the Merch Guy, Jeffries considered himself part of the band, and, by extension, believed he possessed the same delusional seductive mysticism of the rock star ethos. He adjusted his stance, deepened his voice, and got to work.
“So, I, uh…I haven’t seen you at any shows before. You know, I, eh, went on tour with these guys this summer.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeh…so who are you here to see?”
“I’m here to take care of my little brother. He’s thirteen. He loves this…shit.”
“That’s…that’s cool. Ya know, I’m just here ‘cause these guys are my friends, and I wanna help out…they’re like…they’re like a fucking family, ya know? And we gotta support each other, support our scene, ‘cause like, that’s what we got, ya know?” Less than one minute in, and he’d already blown it.
She gave him a pity smile, blinked once, and walked away in silence. She headed towards the bathroom, hoping it would offer her some kind of refuge from the loud, obnoxious noise that reverberated all through the hall. Before she even reached the door, the bottoms of her shoes were drenched in some kind of liquid that faintly reminded her nose of bleach. She decided not to think about it, mainly because she realized that any acknowledgement or affirmation of what it was she stepped in would pretty much ruin her already-lousy weekend entirely.
As it turned out, the bathroom was far from a refuge camp. She was greeted by a thick cloud of perfume and cigarette smoke, the scent of which only faintly covered up the smell of fresh vomit in the sink. There was a lone dark haired girl, sitting with her legs spread on the sink counter, taking a slow drag from a cigarette.
“I fucking hate them,” she said. “Cigarettes. They make me sick. The smell. The taste. Everything. It’s gross.”
“…So why are you smoking in here then?” asked the other girl.
“I’m not,” the first girl replied. She took one last drag of her cigarette, and it put it out in the pile of her own vomit that lay in the sink. “My body’s a temple. A goddamn temple.” She stood up from the counter and extended her hand. “My name’s Abi.”
“I’m Laurie…” the other girl replied.
“That’s nice. We’re both whores,” Abi said, looking to her recently extinguished cigarette with anguish and longing. “Funny how these things work out.”
“I am not a whore…” Laurie argued.
“Baby, we’re all whores. Some us are just a lot more fucked than others.”
“I don’t even know what that means…are you alright? Are you upset or anything?” Laurie had never felt so uncertain about a situation in her life. This entire night she had felt out of place and awkward, but this was, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable encounter she’d had in quite a while. “Do you want to talk or anything? Or I can leave…”
Abi threw her head back and cackled. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. That vomit was there when I got here. I just came in for a nice, peaceful smoke.”
“Oh…well, why didn’t you just go outside with everyone else and smoke out there?” Laurie tried to wrap her head around Abi’s riddles and logic, but she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Because the only thing I hate more than the insipid shit these kids call music, is the people,” Abi replied as she headed for the door.
“So why do you even go to these things?”
“’Cause this is the only place that I belong,” Abi said with a sigh, storming out of the bathroom and letting the door slam behind her. She continued to walk through the hall, through the crowds of people that she hated, and the people that hated her back. She heard them talking about this band, and that band, and who was breaking up, and who sold out, and who else just got hired at Subway. She lowered her head, and, breathing heavily, she marched towards the stage, feeling the thundering, rhythmic blasts of the bass drum stir vibrations all over her body. Her eardrums wanted to bleed from the incessant mic’d screaming, and the trebly thrash of talent less guitar playing.
She pushed her way into the middle of the room—there was a circular clearing in front of the stage, right in the center of the crowd. She stood there, angst dripping from her face, her lips curled up in a snarl. She slowly turned her head from side to side, surveying the crowd—these motherfuckers are all scared of me, she thought. They’re all a bunch of scenester scum anyway, they don’t even get it. They don’t know what this is even about. This is my fucking hall. These are my fucking bands. And I hated them first, just like I hate you.
She turned her head to look over her right shoulder, shooting even more death glances at every kid she could connect with. She noticed a man in the back corner of the room, by the load-in doors. He was tall, and clean-shaven, with short, un-styled hair, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie. Nothing in particular stood out about his appearance—there weren’t even logos on his clothes. It was his face that caught her eye. He was attractive, sure, but that wasn’t it—he was about as attractive as anyone else in the room. But he looked familiar, like someone she had known once. Or someone she had known many times. There was something different about his face, and his expression. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her, but something in his eyes made him look so much older, so much wiser. He looked out into the crowd with equal shots of longing and disdain.
“…Bobby?” As her jaw dropped down, spilling out a name that had long been forbidden—or was it forgotten?—she tasted blood on her lips, and a fist in her face. The last thing she saw was an elbow flying towards her; the last thing she heard was the crash of cymbals and the screams of boys imitating men.
March '06
“…Excuse me?”
“Ci-grr-ettes. Fucking Marlboro, Jesus Christ.”
True, Abi was never known for her tact. She was, however, pretty well renowned for being the only girl with homemade X’s on her hands and a tattoo on her back that said “My body is a temple,” who also found pleasure in leaving puddles of cigarette butts and spit in every parking lot she met. Occasionally, some new kid would confront her about it, but it always produced the same response.
“I only smoke when drink,” she’d say.
“Oh…so you’re drunk right now?” the kid would ask.
She’d take another drag, and just say, “No,” through the smoke.
The same kid would find himself bowing down at her feet in a matter of days, worshipping her as some kind of unconventional Atheistic Goddess. That is, until the black widow deep inside her bit his head off for questioning her British accent. This routine ran in approximately three-week streaks, meaning that tonight she’d find her newest victim.
Abi left the convenience store, cigarettes in hand. She rounded the corner, and drove into the parking lot of the local Knights of Columbus, cutting across diagonally and blatantly disregarding the crowd of kids standing in the way of the Camry that her supposedly un-loving parents had given her a year ago. She parked out back, the only passenger ride amidst a fleet of refurbished junkyard vans. After making sure her rear fender was still in place, she made her away all the way around to the front of the building.
“Five dollars, gimme your hands,” said the guy at the door in painful monotony. His right hand moved forward with a Sharpie marker, while his left hand stayed behind, palm up, waiting for the cash.
“Carl, you fucker, it’s me!” Abi said as she walked past him.
“Oh, hi Abi. Yes, it’s five dollars tonight,” he responded with the same monotony.
Abi laughed, removed Carl’s glasses from his eyes, and began to massage his shoulders with a little more pain than passion. She gave him a kiss on the top of his shaved head, and said “C’mon, Carl, I never pay.”
Unaffected by her advances, Carl simply told her, “I know, and I’m sorry, but we need the money to break even. We had to put down an extra deposit after that kid kicked a hole in the men’s bathroom wall last time, you understand.” Abi gave him the cash, and stormed away. “Hey…I need to mark an X on your hand!” he cried after her.
“I already got ‘em, hot stuff,” she snarled back, as she headed inside.
Carl muttered something to himself before getting back to work, collecting money at the door. “Five dollars…gimme your hand…Five dollars…gimme your hand…” His actions were almost mechanical, like a veteran factory work, as disillusioned as he was dedicated to his job.
Sixteen X’s and eighty dollars later, a fresh face interrupted Carl’s routine of collection and entry.
“Hey…uh, I’m looking for Jenks…Chris Jenkins, I’m an old friend, umm…do you know where he is?”
Carl didn’t even bother looking up from his tally sheet. “Jenk’s inside. It’s five dollars…gimme your hand…” he said, with the same impersonal disdain he addressed everyone else.
“Sure…do you know what time his band goes on?” asked the patron.
“Yes, there’s a set list hanging up on the wall right…there…” In that moment, Carl finally realized that Abi had stolen his glasses. “Goddammit…that fucking whore…” he cried, pounding the table at which he sat and throwing his chair backwards into a crowd of people. He turned around, slammed his fist into a wall, and screamed, “Abi! You fake little bitch…give me my fucking glasses back!”
As the obscenities and fists continued to fly, the patron left five dollars on the table and slipped past Carl’s violent outburst, heading into the show. “I need to X your goddamn hand! Get back here,” he heard Carl scream afterwards. More than moderately concerned for his health, he chose to ignore Carl’s cries and keep walking. He looked straight ahead, carefully avoiding all eye contact in the room.
“Holy shit…is that Bobby Drake!” The voice came from behind him, at the merchandise tables. He pretended not to hear his name, hoping that to use the volume in hall as an excuse, until he realized that there was no band playing at the moment. Apparently, he hadn’t done such a good job of staying below the radar.
“Hey Jeffries…” Bobby said as he turned around, making his lack of enthusiasm entirely too obvious. “How ya been?”
“No man, how have YOU been! I haven’t seen you in ages, aww man…The scene’s just not like it was, all this fucking kids keep comin’ here, and they’re so young and lame, ya know man? They just don’t…get it, ya know? Like, we got it. But whatever, I mean, the kids are comin’, so that’s cool I guess. Hey, are you still dating Tori?”
“No, we broke up almost two years ago…”
“Oh. That’s cool, man. She still around? I used to think her little sister was cute, too, but I mean, that’d just be weird, if the four of us were all dating. Well, not like, dating each other, like, all four of us, but you know…”
Bobby had to find an exit, fast. This was exactly what he didn’t want to happen. “Yeh, hey, listen…I need to find Jenks, so…”
“Oh, yeh dude, totally. Look out back, by the load-in doors, where all the vans are parked. He’s probably in the van or somethin’. You remember what the van looks like?”
“Wow, they still have it? I’m surprised it hasn’t exploded yet…well, thanks a lot, Jeffries. Take it easy.”
“Peace, dude.” As Bobby walked away, he could faintly hear Jeffries mention his name to the girl signing the mailing list.
“Bobby Drake! This dude like, invented you. If not for him, we’d never have shows here, we probably wouldn’t have half these bands. The man is a God! How have you not heard of Bobby Drake!?” Jeffries heckled the girl; apparently, he was better at selling people’s egos than he was merchandise. She didn’t particularly care; she was just picking up free stickers. Naturally, being the Merch Guy, Jeffries considered himself part of the band, and, by extension, believed he possessed the same delusional seductive mysticism of the rock star ethos. He adjusted his stance, deepened his voice, and got to work.
“So, I, uh…I haven’t seen you at any shows before. You know, I, eh, went on tour with these guys this summer.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeh…so who are you here to see?”
“I’m here to take care of my little brother. He’s thirteen. He loves this…shit.”
“That’s…that’s cool. Ya know, I’m just here ‘cause these guys are my friends, and I wanna help out…they’re like…they’re like a fucking family, ya know? And we gotta support each other, support our scene, ‘cause like, that’s what we got, ya know?” Less than one minute in, and he’d already blown it.
She gave him a pity smile, blinked once, and walked away in silence. She headed towards the bathroom, hoping it would offer her some kind of refuge from the loud, obnoxious noise that reverberated all through the hall. Before she even reached the door, the bottoms of her shoes were drenched in some kind of liquid that faintly reminded her nose of bleach. She decided not to think about it, mainly because she realized that any acknowledgement or affirmation of what it was she stepped in would pretty much ruin her already-lousy weekend entirely.
As it turned out, the bathroom was far from a refuge camp. She was greeted by a thick cloud of perfume and cigarette smoke, the scent of which only faintly covered up the smell of fresh vomit in the sink. There was a lone dark haired girl, sitting with her legs spread on the sink counter, taking a slow drag from a cigarette.
“I fucking hate them,” she said. “Cigarettes. They make me sick. The smell. The taste. Everything. It’s gross.”
“…So why are you smoking in here then?” asked the other girl.
“I’m not,” the first girl replied. She took one last drag of her cigarette, and it put it out in the pile of her own vomit that lay in the sink. “My body’s a temple. A goddamn temple.” She stood up from the counter and extended her hand. “My name’s Abi.”
“I’m Laurie…” the other girl replied.
“That’s nice. We’re both whores,” Abi said, looking to her recently extinguished cigarette with anguish and longing. “Funny how these things work out.”
“I am not a whore…” Laurie argued.
“Baby, we’re all whores. Some us are just a lot more fucked than others.”
“I don’t even know what that means…are you alright? Are you upset or anything?” Laurie had never felt so uncertain about a situation in her life. This entire night she had felt out of place and awkward, but this was, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable encounter she’d had in quite a while. “Do you want to talk or anything? Or I can leave…”
Abi threw her head back and cackled. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. That vomit was there when I got here. I just came in for a nice, peaceful smoke.”
“Oh…well, why didn’t you just go outside with everyone else and smoke out there?” Laurie tried to wrap her head around Abi’s riddles and logic, but she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Because the only thing I hate more than the insipid shit these kids call music, is the people,” Abi replied as she headed for the door.
“So why do you even go to these things?”
“’Cause this is the only place that I belong,” Abi said with a sigh, storming out of the bathroom and letting the door slam behind her. She continued to walk through the hall, through the crowds of people that she hated, and the people that hated her back. She heard them talking about this band, and that band, and who was breaking up, and who sold out, and who else just got hired at Subway. She lowered her head, and, breathing heavily, she marched towards the stage, feeling the thundering, rhythmic blasts of the bass drum stir vibrations all over her body. Her eardrums wanted to bleed from the incessant mic’d screaming, and the trebly thrash of talent less guitar playing.
She pushed her way into the middle of the room—there was a circular clearing in front of the stage, right in the center of the crowd. She stood there, angst dripping from her face, her lips curled up in a snarl. She slowly turned her head from side to side, surveying the crowd—these motherfuckers are all scared of me, she thought. They’re all a bunch of scenester scum anyway, they don’t even get it. They don’t know what this is even about. This is my fucking hall. These are my fucking bands. And I hated them first, just like I hate you.
She turned her head to look over her right shoulder, shooting even more death glances at every kid she could connect with. She noticed a man in the back corner of the room, by the load-in doors. He was tall, and clean-shaven, with short, un-styled hair, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie. Nothing in particular stood out about his appearance—there weren’t even logos on his clothes. It was his face that caught her eye. He was attractive, sure, but that wasn’t it—he was about as attractive as anyone else in the room. But he looked familiar, like someone she had known once. Or someone she had known many times. There was something different about his face, and his expression. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her, but something in his eyes made him look so much older, so much wiser. He looked out into the crowd with equal shots of longing and disdain.
“…Bobby?” As her jaw dropped down, spilling out a name that had long been forbidden—or was it forgotten?—she tasted blood on her lips, and a fist in her face. The last thing she saw was an elbow flying towards her; the last thing she heard was the crash of cymbals and the screams of boys imitating men.
March '06
Walking Girl
Summer time. Some might say the living is easy. For some, this means spending entirely too much money to see scantily clad women battle space aliens before making out with a variety of different leading men. Others slave away at shit jobs for sixty hours a week in an effort to buy a new car or a new guitar or some other fancy toy in order to impress said scantily clad woman, while others still get to travel to exotic locations on their parents’ paychecks, and come home with made-up stories of an exotic foreign belle, when really all I ever got was excessive amounts of sand in inopportune places.
But that’s summer: three months full of sweat and ideas that result in nothing but disappointment once you’ve realized that summer flings are complete fallacies, invented by the entertainment industry to make your life miserable and continue to excuse the existence of movie musicals.
Naturally, this summer was no different. Alec had scored a job pushing buttons and a mop at the local 7-11, while Peter and Ben just hung out in the parking lot drinking Slurpees. Peter would brag about Shannon Reilly giving him sex eyes on the last day of school when she was writing in his yearbook, Ben would smack him in the back of the head, and then they’d go inside the 7-11 and steal things while Alec kept the manager busy. As faithful as they were as friends, Peter and Ben were jokers, never taking much of anything seriously. But Alec was a dreamer—quiet, idealistic, and often distant, always looking to the horizon for something that no one else could see, and that he himself could never put to words. The trio’s radical dynamic was anything but subtle to the common passerby, but somehow, it worked for them.
Routines catch on fast in suburban summers, and nearly a month of un-adventure atop the torrid pavement of the 7-11 parking lot had passed, with little to no excitement or relevance. On days too humid to move, when even high school locker room talk became a chore, the boys would spend hours spitting at the asphalt and watching their saliva sizzle and dissolve against the steaming black tar. On one such day, the air conditioning unit in the 7-11 had broken down, and Alec spent his break with his face pressed against the glass of a drink cooler, hoping that the little condensation that had gathered would offer him some relief. On days like this, there were usually no costumers either, because no one wanted to leave their homes, or because their car engines had all overheated anyway. Just Ben and Peter, loitering like usual.
At some point, Ben decided to swim through the humid air and throw open the doors in a frenzy, disrupting Alec’s drink cooler meditation session. “Dude kid, ya gotta see this! Petey’s shoe just melted on the pavement!” he exclaimed, and then promptly ran back outside. Reluctantly, Alec gave up his spot by the refrigerators, and braved the summer heat outside. Sure enough, Peter’s shoe had gotten a little sticky—it was hot and gel-like to the touch, but nothing remarkably captivating.
“Cool. Bye,” muttered Alec, the heat driving his normally colorful speech into monosyllabics. He took two steps back towards his soft drink haven and froze, staring across the parking lot in awe. “There she is,” he whispered to himself, a smile cutting into his face.
“What, is it a mirage, or an oasis or somethin’? You look like you just seen Jesus walk on water. It’s nasty enough out here that it’s kinda like walkin’ on water…” said Peter, never bothering to look in the same direction. Alec was unable to form a verbal response—it was either too hot, or he was bewildered. He simply raised one hand, and pointed towards the street.
“Alright, so we’re not the only assholes who go outside on a day like this. What’s your point?” Ben nagged.
But he didn’t understand. “Every day. Every day she walks by here, three times. I don’t know where she’s going, where she’s coming from, or who she is, but she’s here, every day. Doesn’t matter what time I’m working—she’s always there, she’s always just…walking,” Alec murmured, as if in a dream.
“Awesome. You’re crazy. You’ve gone completely nuts. Let’s bring you back to your Gatorade cooler now…” His friends chastised him and laughed, and Alec went back to work. But he knew he’d see her tomorrow. He saw her every day.
The next day, Alec worked the ten-to-six shift, and, like always Ben and Peter would be outside waiting for him the whole time, so that when he got off work they could continue to hang out in the parking lot for hours on end. They’d pretty much forgotten about the whole walking girl infatuation from the day before, and just took their usual places on the curb in front of the store.
The whole situation was still fresh in Alec’s mind, however. Of course, it was always on his mind, and today, he was going to make his friends understand. But he couldn’t find the words for what he wanted them to know. Sure, there was a girl, and she walked, but there are a whole lot of girls that walk. And none of them are Walking Girl.
It was 10:57am, and Peter was going off on one of his daily tirades, this time about how Mary Ellis was a better kisser than Susan Carlisle. Ben responded in turn, the same way he always did, when Alec stormed outside and took a commanding stance on the sidewalk. Ben and Peter just looked at him funny, and continued in their daily conversation.
“There. Watch,” he said, directing their collective attention towards the sidewalk. And sure enough, just on schedule, she walked by. “Walking Girl,” he said, with a smile like a boy on Christmas morning.
“Walking Girl?” Peter retorted. “Is she some kind of Super Hero chick or something? Like the Invisible Woman, or Mary Jane or whatever?”
“Just watch,” Alec responded quietly, as his eyes lit up.
“Also, just for the record—Mary Jane wasn’t a super hero, she was…oh,,,“ Before he could finish his sentence, Ben saw her, too, and he was left standing dumbfounded.
Naturally, Peter still didn’t get it. He never did.
It only took her about a minute and a half to cross the street and walk out of sight, but that was more than enough. With a glow, Alec said “I’ll see you guys at three,” and walked back to the store.
A similar scene took place at three o’clock, and then again at five o’clock. Peter still didn’t get it, but Ben and Alec stopped caring; it was like trying to force someone to see the dolphins in one of those Magic Eye books. This ritualistic voyeurism became part of their daily summer routine for the next few weeks. No one spoke a word out loud of Walking Girl, but in those few glorious moments that she paraded down the sidewalk, she consumed their thoughts.
Until one day, when Alec snapped. “I need to meet her. I need to know who she is. I need to know where she’s coming from, where she’s going. I just gotta talk to her. This is important,” he told the other guys. Ben warned him not to ruin it; Peter called him a maniacal stalker. But Alec was determined to unravel the mystery behind Walking Girl—so determined, that he was willing to sacrifice the one thing that overpowered the grueling heat of the summer
But on that day, Walking Girl never came.
They waited outside at eleven o’clock, three o’clock, and five o’clock, but they never saw her walking. Of course, as they waited, not a word was spoken about her. Even at the end of the day, when the three boys parted ways and headed home, she was never even mentioned—there was no sign of Walking Girl.
Three weeks had passed since they had last seen Walking Girl. The summer waned on, its routines holding steady. With each passing day, the August air grew thicker, until the first drops of summer rain finally fell from the sky. Still, Ben and Peter sat outside the 7-11 while Alec slaved away inside. At eleven, three, and five, Alec went outside and offered his friends refugee from the torrential downpour; they declined, opting instead to spend the day in silence. It rained for a week straight.
The summer was almost over, and they had squandered it in parking lots, infatuating over some mystery woman while indulging in the occasional Slurpee. When school finally started, none of the boys knew what to say. Everyone else was sharing their stories of summer love, making out under boardwalks and never even speaking the same language. They told stories of Italian beaches and little kids from summer camps. Alec, Ben, and Peter remained all but silent on the topic of their summer. “It was alright,” they’d respond in part. But they all remembered Walking Girl, and the forbidden long distance group love affair they shared, but they would never, ever speak a word of it. They simply couldn’t.
It was September 20. The last day of summer. Alec, Peter, and Ben were having lunch in the Cafeteria, when they overheard a conversation at the other end of the table. Some kid who worked at the local record store made mention of a girl that walked by, three times a day. He was trying to explain the significance of the situation to his friends, but they just didn’t get it.
Without exchanging any words, the trio shared knowing glances, and cleared their trays. They left school, headed towards the record store. They walked three miles in complete silence, and just as they arrived, Peter decided to break the tension.
“Guys, this is seriously retarded. I mean, we’re basically stalking a girl we’ve never even spoken to, and who we don’t know a goddamn thing about. We don’t even know if this is the same girl!”
Alec swallowed hard, and looked Peter straight in the eye. He struggled to find the words, and finally said, “This is just something I need to do. Okay?” With that, the three of them sat down on the curb in front of the record store.
Four hours of silence passed them by as they waited. The store closed, the owner went home, and still they waited. It was the last night of the summer, which hadn’t really been that remarkable in the first place, but endings always make the most meaningless events seem sentimental.
They didn’t know where she was going, where she’d been, or even who she was, but none of that really mattered.
Feb. '06
But that’s summer: three months full of sweat and ideas that result in nothing but disappointment once you’ve realized that summer flings are complete fallacies, invented by the entertainment industry to make your life miserable and continue to excuse the existence of movie musicals.
Naturally, this summer was no different. Alec had scored a job pushing buttons and a mop at the local 7-11, while Peter and Ben just hung out in the parking lot drinking Slurpees. Peter would brag about Shannon Reilly giving him sex eyes on the last day of school when she was writing in his yearbook, Ben would smack him in the back of the head, and then they’d go inside the 7-11 and steal things while Alec kept the manager busy. As faithful as they were as friends, Peter and Ben were jokers, never taking much of anything seriously. But Alec was a dreamer—quiet, idealistic, and often distant, always looking to the horizon for something that no one else could see, and that he himself could never put to words. The trio’s radical dynamic was anything but subtle to the common passerby, but somehow, it worked for them.
Routines catch on fast in suburban summers, and nearly a month of un-adventure atop the torrid pavement of the 7-11 parking lot had passed, with little to no excitement or relevance. On days too humid to move, when even high school locker room talk became a chore, the boys would spend hours spitting at the asphalt and watching their saliva sizzle and dissolve against the steaming black tar. On one such day, the air conditioning unit in the 7-11 had broken down, and Alec spent his break with his face pressed against the glass of a drink cooler, hoping that the little condensation that had gathered would offer him some relief. On days like this, there were usually no costumers either, because no one wanted to leave their homes, or because their car engines had all overheated anyway. Just Ben and Peter, loitering like usual.
At some point, Ben decided to swim through the humid air and throw open the doors in a frenzy, disrupting Alec’s drink cooler meditation session. “Dude kid, ya gotta see this! Petey’s shoe just melted on the pavement!” he exclaimed, and then promptly ran back outside. Reluctantly, Alec gave up his spot by the refrigerators, and braved the summer heat outside. Sure enough, Peter’s shoe had gotten a little sticky—it was hot and gel-like to the touch, but nothing remarkably captivating.
“Cool. Bye,” muttered Alec, the heat driving his normally colorful speech into monosyllabics. He took two steps back towards his soft drink haven and froze, staring across the parking lot in awe. “There she is,” he whispered to himself, a smile cutting into his face.
“What, is it a mirage, or an oasis or somethin’? You look like you just seen Jesus walk on water. It’s nasty enough out here that it’s kinda like walkin’ on water…” said Peter, never bothering to look in the same direction. Alec was unable to form a verbal response—it was either too hot, or he was bewildered. He simply raised one hand, and pointed towards the street.
“Alright, so we’re not the only assholes who go outside on a day like this. What’s your point?” Ben nagged.
But he didn’t understand. “Every day. Every day she walks by here, three times. I don’t know where she’s going, where she’s coming from, or who she is, but she’s here, every day. Doesn’t matter what time I’m working—she’s always there, she’s always just…walking,” Alec murmured, as if in a dream.
“Awesome. You’re crazy. You’ve gone completely nuts. Let’s bring you back to your Gatorade cooler now…” His friends chastised him and laughed, and Alec went back to work. But he knew he’d see her tomorrow. He saw her every day.
The next day, Alec worked the ten-to-six shift, and, like always Ben and Peter would be outside waiting for him the whole time, so that when he got off work they could continue to hang out in the parking lot for hours on end. They’d pretty much forgotten about the whole walking girl infatuation from the day before, and just took their usual places on the curb in front of the store.
The whole situation was still fresh in Alec’s mind, however. Of course, it was always on his mind, and today, he was going to make his friends understand. But he couldn’t find the words for what he wanted them to know. Sure, there was a girl, and she walked, but there are a whole lot of girls that walk. And none of them are Walking Girl.
It was 10:57am, and Peter was going off on one of his daily tirades, this time about how Mary Ellis was a better kisser than Susan Carlisle. Ben responded in turn, the same way he always did, when Alec stormed outside and took a commanding stance on the sidewalk. Ben and Peter just looked at him funny, and continued in their daily conversation.
“There. Watch,” he said, directing their collective attention towards the sidewalk. And sure enough, just on schedule, she walked by. “Walking Girl,” he said, with a smile like a boy on Christmas morning.
“Walking Girl?” Peter retorted. “Is she some kind of Super Hero chick or something? Like the Invisible Woman, or Mary Jane or whatever?”
“Just watch,” Alec responded quietly, as his eyes lit up.
“Also, just for the record—Mary Jane wasn’t a super hero, she was…oh,,,“ Before he could finish his sentence, Ben saw her, too, and he was left standing dumbfounded.
Naturally, Peter still didn’t get it. He never did.
It only took her about a minute and a half to cross the street and walk out of sight, but that was more than enough. With a glow, Alec said “I’ll see you guys at three,” and walked back to the store.
A similar scene took place at three o’clock, and then again at five o’clock. Peter still didn’t get it, but Ben and Alec stopped caring; it was like trying to force someone to see the dolphins in one of those Magic Eye books. This ritualistic voyeurism became part of their daily summer routine for the next few weeks. No one spoke a word out loud of Walking Girl, but in those few glorious moments that she paraded down the sidewalk, she consumed their thoughts.
Until one day, when Alec snapped. “I need to meet her. I need to know who she is. I need to know where she’s coming from, where she’s going. I just gotta talk to her. This is important,” he told the other guys. Ben warned him not to ruin it; Peter called him a maniacal stalker. But Alec was determined to unravel the mystery behind Walking Girl—so determined, that he was willing to sacrifice the one thing that overpowered the grueling heat of the summer
But on that day, Walking Girl never came.
They waited outside at eleven o’clock, three o’clock, and five o’clock, but they never saw her walking. Of course, as they waited, not a word was spoken about her. Even at the end of the day, when the three boys parted ways and headed home, she was never even mentioned—there was no sign of Walking Girl.
Three weeks had passed since they had last seen Walking Girl. The summer waned on, its routines holding steady. With each passing day, the August air grew thicker, until the first drops of summer rain finally fell from the sky. Still, Ben and Peter sat outside the 7-11 while Alec slaved away inside. At eleven, three, and five, Alec went outside and offered his friends refugee from the torrential downpour; they declined, opting instead to spend the day in silence. It rained for a week straight.
The summer was almost over, and they had squandered it in parking lots, infatuating over some mystery woman while indulging in the occasional Slurpee. When school finally started, none of the boys knew what to say. Everyone else was sharing their stories of summer love, making out under boardwalks and never even speaking the same language. They told stories of Italian beaches and little kids from summer camps. Alec, Ben, and Peter remained all but silent on the topic of their summer. “It was alright,” they’d respond in part. But they all remembered Walking Girl, and the forbidden long distance group love affair they shared, but they would never, ever speak a word of it. They simply couldn’t.
It was September 20. The last day of summer. Alec, Peter, and Ben were having lunch in the Cafeteria, when they overheard a conversation at the other end of the table. Some kid who worked at the local record store made mention of a girl that walked by, three times a day. He was trying to explain the significance of the situation to his friends, but they just didn’t get it.
Without exchanging any words, the trio shared knowing glances, and cleared their trays. They left school, headed towards the record store. They walked three miles in complete silence, and just as they arrived, Peter decided to break the tension.
“Guys, this is seriously retarded. I mean, we’re basically stalking a girl we’ve never even spoken to, and who we don’t know a goddamn thing about. We don’t even know if this is the same girl!”
Alec swallowed hard, and looked Peter straight in the eye. He struggled to find the words, and finally said, “This is just something I need to do. Okay?” With that, the three of them sat down on the curb in front of the record store.
Four hours of silence passed them by as they waited. The store closed, the owner went home, and still they waited. It was the last night of the summer, which hadn’t really been that remarkable in the first place, but endings always make the most meaningless events seem sentimental.
They didn’t know where she was going, where she’d been, or even who she was, but none of that really mattered.
Feb. '06
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