Have Your Music And Eat It, Too

1 pm Saturday Afternoon

I woke up, the blinds unable to keep the sun’s rays out of my room any longer. This was a quasi novel experience; I rarely saw the sun anymore. It was more like I saw its end, the part that matters, an image that graces the EP cover every of tween band that has ever produced one. To make matters worse, I have that parched feeling in my mouth, that feeling that makes everything taste of cardboard. Still half asleep, I look at the various parts of my room that may warrant some investigation with one eye closed. The white fan that circles around and around, the copious empty cans of Dr. Pepper, my dark dress clothing. I woke up a boy barely able to stand, much less seize the day. Off with the covers and into the bathroom.
Brush my teeth. Put up my hair. Wash my face. Take a shower. Ring Ring.
The phone vibrates and serenades me with an Arctic Monkey’s song. I look at the little square screen on the front, which tells me that Todd’s Cell is calling. Well they say he changes when the sun goes down; yeah they say he changes when the sun goes down around here… I pick it up.
“What’s up, dude?”
“Hey kid. Can you come out today?”
I’ve been waiting for this call. Time to show the world that I can play as well as any twenty-two year old addict. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a Rockstar. Do what they do, live like they live, know what they know. Now I could stay up all hours of the night doing naughty things while a murder of groupies throw themselves at my feet and dust off my white Aldo biker toe shoes.
Todd was about six foot three, but one would never have guessed it since he slouched so much. His waist size couldn’t have been larger than twenty-six inches, and his extra small shirts always allowed you to see the bottom two packs on his stomach. He always looked like he was two or three days behind on his shaving, and had fairly long, wavy brown hair that fell in front of his face and made his chin and cheekbones stand out. Todd was easy to pick out of a crowd, but was entirely forgettable if you didn’t work closely with him for a while. What an awful in between to be stuck with.
“How much are you giving me?” I asked him, ready to accept the job even if it meant building up my volunteer hours.
“Two hundred.”
“Alright, I guess so. Tell Roxy.”
“See you at nine kid.”
Hm. This could be an interesting opportunity. I’d never played with people like this before, people that would starve (in all aspects of the word) if they didn’t have music. These people are fickle, but always seem hungry for my music. I decide that I’d better practice; I can’t mess up anymore. I’ve grown past that now. Time to cash in my chips, pay off my tabs, and climb over that ominous mountain that the sun sets behind every night with its empty threat of never returning.

9 pm Saturday Night

Roxy was supposed to come and pick me up about forty-five minutes ago. Todd and I are still sitting on the curb in front of his Thai-town Melrose apartment, the kind that are beige and try to have a classy name like “The Palms” or “The Sundial” with a stucco four car garage in the front with an army colored overhang and with some type of ornament above it to try and make it unique, despite all of the other buildings on the block. Monotony for sale a mile in all directions.
Roxy decides to finally roll up in her once red vintage nineteen-eighty-six or so POS Toyota Celica. She stops in the middle of the street, headlights on, then turns to us and snickers.
“Traffics a bitch.”
“Good, you’ll have some company for the ride,” a visibly perturbed Todd retorts.
“You shut the hell up. Get in here baby boy.”
I climb into the passenger seat over boxes and boxes of intact and broken guitar stings and various auxiliary inputs and microphones. The car has a staunch scent of cigarettes and spilled coffee. Roxy surveyed me with one eyebrow up and an amused line formed on her face where a mouth may once have been.
“Big night tonight for ya, huh baby boy?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Roxy would have been pretty if she hadn’t caked on her makeup. She was the type to wake up to a stiff vodka and soda, followed by a quick couple of lines. Her haircut made her face look like a box, with little strips of hair running down her cheeks all the way to her shoulders. Her eyes were ice blue, that could cut through diamonds, the kind that you could get lost in if you stared too long. The kind of woman that bought a shotgun on her fourteenth birthday and forever took the Owl of Minerva out of the sky.
“Hold on tight baby boy. We’re running late.”

12 am Sunday morning

“You look tired Steve. Are you tired?”
I immediately take my face out of my hands, more out of surprise that someone actually used my name than to offer back a response. A short white girl stared back at me, with long dirty blonde hair, mole on the right side of the lips type, with a little gap in between her teeth. She wasn’t from around here; her words were drawn out, making her sound Southern. Her unusually chic frilled purple and black dress made her look like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be a prom queen or a Topshop princess. Roxy had explained to me that this girl had some problems, dealt with them as she saw fit, and usually woke up the next morning with problems a million times worse. But she looked like the type of girl that had the right reputation, went to the right schools, went out with the right boys. The unlit cigarette in her mouth looked out of place.
“Well?”
“I guess so. I mean, I’m a little, like, sketched out, you know? I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Just lay down a beat. Don’t fuck it up. You’re getting paid now,” she said as she and Roxy looked at each other and laughed.
She lit up her cigarette and then lit Roxy’s with the end of her already lit cigarette. I’d never seen that done in real life before.
“You smoke?”
“No.”
Dis chuckles quietly to herself and takes a drag. I simply couldn’t imagine commissioning my tongue to push back that chemical loaded ethereal grey noose around my lungs, then tighten it and kick away the chair as I exhale, going into my bloodstream and filling every nook and cranny with nicotine that it could possibly find.
“Then start warming up.”
I hear the quick slaps of fingers on her five string Fender jazz bass, hitting poor Ernie Ball against a rosewood board. Roxy unleashes a barrage of scale work and all too clever hooks and riffs, string bending that seems superimposed to the point of absurdity. Somehow, the two harmonize and seem to make some kind of music, despite the absence of a staff and any written notes. They were a tribute to Terpsichore. A Bosch painting in F minor.
Feeling especially useless (it is nearly impossible for drummers to warm up without causing a royal commotion), I get up and look around the artist’s loft. The carpet is a hideous orange brown, with stains where adult beverages had accidentally tipped over. The black leather couches were surprisingly supple and comfortable, but I had to wonder if they were designed to be like that, or simply had grown to be as such from years upon years of overuse and neglect. There was a dark corner that I dare not venture into; who knew what indirect madness may be lurking there. A glass table in the center of the room reflects light much like a prism would, creating a rainbow on the floor, which I doubt was on purpose. The names of the artists on the wall who were lucky enough to have their picture placed there have no meaning to me. I wonder if anyone will smell the smoke on my shirt after we return to the cold dread of the outside world.
I turn around and see Roxy holding one nostril on her ruby colored nose and inhaling vigorously. She asks for a Coke and drinks about half of it in one sip. I watch her close her eyes as she sits down, her body vibrating like a sequence of elaborately linked tuning forks, playing a chromatic scale up through her shoulders. After that, she is completely still aside from the fluttering that is occurring on her left breast. It reminds me of something a bodybuilder might do to show off.
The band on stage sounds like a compact disc player that is running low on juice. The uproarious applause for a mediocre band strikes me to be more of a polite gesture rather than a group of fifty or so who truly enjoyed what they were hearing, applause enough so that the group would likely develop an Ozymandias complex. Jack, Jim, and that Captain named Morgan must be doing their job adequately. Amplifiers are dragged across the floor and a cymbal crashes to the ground, waking Roxy from her somnambulatory state.
She looks through Dis. “Guess that means it’s our turn.”
“Let’s go baby boy.”

2 am Sunday Morning

“Not so bad, was it?”
I smile. “It’s not too hard to keep people happy when they’re drunk and tired.”
“True story Steve.”
I was thoroughly unimpressed. I entered into this night as a virgin, not knowing what to expect, with fear and apprehension, with excitement and resolve. A little excited to lose my amateur status, but more worried. I left the experience a battle-tested veteran, a new face in the business, a boy into an adult. The set and performance was entirely forgettable, except for the part when a guy had one too many and the bouncers threw him out, drunk and disheveled, onto the street, roaring.
Sad people playing for sadder people. Illegal drugs playing for legal drugs. Openly naughty playing for closet naughty. The hopeful playing for the hopeless.
We met the band’s manager, a dumpy looking fellow who we called Jonathan. He couldn’t have been taller than five foot three, and his stomach was probably at least that size around. He was wearing a wifebeater and a gold watch. He had nearly no body hair and a high-and-tight style military haircut. He congratulated me and handed me four twenties, two tens, and a hundred that looked like it had been rescued out of some storm drain that had recently been a victim of illegal chemical dumping. He slipped me two low grade painkillers and told me that it would calm my heart down and help me sleep. I decided that I would dump them off on Todd; at least he may appreciate it.
We made merry with the high ups, and exchanged pleasantries with some of the fans that stayed, if only to convince them that our gross errors and our drunken melodies were full of profundity. Noticing that I was being generally ignored after the first three minutes or so, I decided to take a seat in one of the red vinyl booths in the corner. I ordered a Roy Rogers, but they brought me something hard, too stiff to enjoy. I stare at my beat up black Saucony Jazz, and realize that I could fit in here. I could be another Weekend Rockstar, live a life already prescribed to me due to socio-economic and educational factors. But the usual clangor of thoughts and emotions that compelled me to play and perform with great facility and desire has left, in its place a dark abyss, a black hole sucking up my soul, fermenting, rotting on the inside. Something in my internal infrastructure collapsed, and suddenly I had nothing where moments ago there had been everything. I can’t be a Rockstar forever. I couldn’t live my life like Roxy and Dis and Todd, relying on the mercy of a sneaky manager and a shady club owner, needing an addiction to swallow up my torment, living fast and dying faster. I had to stop this dream, stop looking for Sybaris. I had to grow up sometime. Tonight would have to suffice.
Roxy informs me that we need to leave. Dis winks at me then tells me that I have potential for a prettyboy- just like Todd she says. As we part ways, she kisses me on the lips. It tastes like cigarettes.
I climb back into Roxy’s car, and we drive down the street. Stopped at a red light, I stare back at the club, the only light in a sea of darkness. I completely tune out whatever it was that she had to say, giving an occasional nod so that she was left with the impression that I comprehended what she was talking about. We drive further and further, and the light fades, as love dies, laughing.

12 Noon Sunday

I woke up in Todd’s bathtub with all of my clothes on and a towel for a blanket. I had no idea what time it was. I looked at the clock. It flashes twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, just a pulse, lacking any sense of time any rhythm. According to Cingular it was eleven forty-three.
I got up and dusted myself off, mostly to make myself feel better about not taking a shower for nearly a day. I walked quietly through Todd’s apartment, being sure to leave the pills on his nightstand. I saw my partner in crime, sound asleep, without a shirt on and some jeans that made me wonder if he ever wanted children. There was a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels on his nightstand and a half naked girl facing his wall. I saw her head there, so still, so perfect, just breathing, up and down, up and down, a bit of life caught within herself, remembering nothing but worrying about everything, just lying there in bed with her catch that night. I ached for her life.
Searching in the refrigerator, I find that Todd only keeps a half empty bottle of ketchup, some turkey, and a carton of Tropicana. I take his orange juice and fill up a glass with a thirsty tongue. I hadn’t anything family friendly to drink for over twelve hours.
Damn. It’s a Screwdriver.
I look at myself in his cracked mirror above the sink as I dump out the cocktail and enjoy some tap water. My face looks like a regurgitated pizza, and my once immaculate skinny fit black shirt is now covered in every color of lint imaginable. My hair does look rather spiffy, though.
Stumbling through the door, I make my way down the flight of stairs and through the gate. Now I need to figure out how I’m going to get home. I guess I’ll just take the bus.
I stumbled out into the middle of the street, swaying, down the broken yellow line, head held up as high as I could bear to, a newly manufactured knight ready to challenge all comers.