Deep Cuts, page 10
I followed Joe’s tour through his mass email updates, which read like an enthusiastic travelogue—he was always falling in love with some small American city, encouraging everyone to pack up and move to Austin one day, Missoula the next—and through his phone calls, which struck a different tone. He called when he was lonely, once every week or two, late at night. He’d begin with gripes about sleeping arrangements and other realities of their underfunded tour, and then we’d transition into talking about the new Walkmen, the new Flaming Lips, the new Cat Power. We talked until we were murmuring sleepily, and then we fell asleep. He had started to feel almost like an imaginary friend; in the morning I couldn’t remember how much of our conversation I’d dreamed. The idea of seeing him in person at a loud, raw rock show seemed exciting, like it would reactivate some portion of me I was starting to miss.
The night before the Interpol show I bought a pair of scissors at Duane Reade and cut bangs at my bathroom mirror, which sounds like the beginning of a cautionary tale, but was actually one of the most subtly powerful decisions of my life. For the first time since puberty, I felt like my face looked correct. A tentative happiness clicked into place as I inspected myself from every angle. I liked New York, I remember deciding in that moment. I liked working at home, then slipping out anonymously into a loud, churning world. It was just two different flavors of aloneness, but they complemented each other: when I had maxed out on solitude, the city made me feel observed and alive. I nodded firmly at my face in the mirror and went to bed.
In a prolonged trickle of communications, it had become clear that most of the classmates who’d said they’d gotten tickets had just meant to get tickets, and that the only ones attending the show would be me, Nomi, and Harrison. We met after lecture and walked to the subway as if we made perfect sense together. I was wearing clompy boots with black tights and no jacket because I didn’t want to carry it throughout the show, a California logic that rendered me dangerously cold.
Harrison was from the Pacific Northwest and claimed to be friends with Modest Mouse. He had ’90s heartthrob hair, floppy and sand colored, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a pale blue handkerchief always hanging out his back pocket. I knew girls liked him, but he wasn’t my type—or more accurately, I found his nervous tic of constantly pulling his shirt away from his neck to be uniquely repellent—and Nomi was out of his league, which gave an air of pointlessness to our trio. They were both older than me, like almost everyone in the program, hovering somewhere just under thirty. Nobody had told me you were supposed to go to grad school at thirty.
“My friend Joe is opening at Webster Hall tonight,” I said. We were holding the same center pole, Nomi’s elegant hand on top, my stubby one on the bottom, Harrison’s tattooed knuckles in between (a punctuation mark on each finger). “He’ll get to the Bowery as soon as he can.”
“Is this the guy you write songs with?” Nomi asked.
I was hoping she’d forgotten. “I mean, yeah, I help him out,” I said, which sounded crushingly lame. “Sometimes.” As if that made it better.
“Don’t you want to see his show?”
“He’s playing in Brooklyn tomorrow, I can catch that one.”
I thought Harrison was ignoring us until he said, stooping to look me in the eye, “Is he any good?”
“Extremely,” I said, and looked up at him. “Is your fiction any good?”
Nomi laughed.
“Seriously though. You seem like the king of the fiction boys, but I’m just basing that on, like, the Lion’s Head. Our view from the cheap seats in nonfiction isn’t great.”
Nomi nodded vigorously. “What’s your vibe? Bukowski? Denis Johnson?”
He smiled and stuck two fingers in his T-shirt neckhole, gave it a quick tug.
“The Beats,” I guessed. “Not Kerouac, too obvious, but—”
“Richard Brautigan,” Nomi finished.
“Sure,” I said. “Yes. Never actually read Richard Brautigan but I can tell by your confidence, Nomi, you have nailed it.”
The train stopped and a big group shuffled out, creating room for Harrison to move off our pole. He leaned near the doors, folding his arms, watching us. When we didn’t say anything else, he feigned surprise. “Are you done?”
Nomi groaned. “Oh no. He’s about to tell us he writes true crime or something.”
His eyebrows did a little dance. The train stopped again and he flattened to let more people off. Then he leaned toward us. “Love stories.”
Nomi looked at me. “Bukowski,” she said.
* * *
—
It was my first time at the Bowery Ballroom. We used the opening act to drink Jack and Cokes and find the bathroom, then Interpol took the stage and it was perfect. Almost disappointingly perfect, in that it was everything I’d expected it to be: the lights, the deafening volume, extended but otherwise note-for-note renditions of almost every song on the album. We lost Nomi a couple songs in; she liked standing near the back because her height blocked the view for other people, even though she wasn’t much taller than Harrison. Joe did not appear in the crowd, nor on my cell phone screen.
“Don’t opening acts usually end at the same time as each other?” I shouted at Harrison between songs, halfway into the set. We were so close to the stage now I could see sweat dripping from the guitarist’s chin.
“What?”
“Just wondering where my friend is. Don’t shows tend to have like, the same schedule?”
He shook his hair out of his eyes. “As soon as you told me this plan I thought no way that dude is coming.”
The opening guitar chords of “NYC” started, quietly at first, then momentarily drowned out by cheers. Disappointment descended on me—I had so wanted to share this with Joe—but I forced it away. Maybe it made more sense to experience this song with a fellow New Yorker. I threw a look of anticipation Harrison’s way and he caught it, returned it. And in that moment, I got what the girls saw in Harrison. I still couldn’t have articulated it; I understood it only with my body. My shoulder seemed to move magnetically toward his arm as we swayed to the music, until finally it stuck there, my sweater against his leather jacket. A thick cloud of pot smoke wafted by and we both inhaled it.
The final crescendo built longer and louder than on the album, until it felt like we were endlessly suspended inside the song. Everyone onstage was singing. Everyone in the audience was singing. Our bodies were all touching by now, one giant organism, surging toward the stage. I closed my eyes.
One of the singing voices was quiet, a murmur in my ear: Harrison. He was behind me now. My eyes flew open as I realized the pressure I’d felt at the small of my back for the past few seconds was him, and now it wasn’t just pressure but a repeated jabbing, in time with the song. An arm snaked around my collarbones. I tried to jerk away, but another arm braced across my pelvis, locking me in like one of those metal bars in a roller coaster car.
The singer sang the same line over and over, the album title line, “turn on the bright lights.” The thrust moved lower, under my skirt. It was clear that he had removed himself entirely from his jeans. His kneecaps bent into the backs of my legs. A bright spotlight swept over us and I looked around wildly as if someone would see what was happening, but of course nobody was looking at us—they were looking at the band. I grabbed the waistband of my tights in case he tried to pull them down, but he didn’t. He just went at it over the Lycra, faster now, no longer keeping time with the song. I widened my stance to create space and then I thought maybe I shouldn’t, friction would make this over faster, but then he put two hands on the sides of my thighs and jammed my legs together so I didn’t have to make that decision and then it stopped.
The song was over, a home chord sustained. He bit my ear lightly, licked the lobe. “You are amazing,” he said. “Seriously, I fucking love you.” Something like that. And then: “The way you were moving, I was like, okay, wow, why not.” A chuckle.
The band started playing the lead single and the people around us freaked out, but he just kept hugging me from behind like a boyfriend at the big game. How had I been moving, exactly? At the reading, Nomi had said I was dancing when I thought I was standing still.
“Where’s the…stuff?” I shouted. I couldn’t think of what to call it, of the current parlance. I kept thinking of a Neutral Milk Hotel line about semen-capped mountaintops.
“Oh, babe, I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said.
I twisted around to see him, and felt a strange recognition upon seeing his face, like it had been someone else back there before. I looked at our feet, but it was too dark, and wet with spilled drinks anyway. I felt my inner thighs: my tights were dry.
His eyes flashed. “Don’t worry about it.” He extended the arm, an invitation. I remembered the handkerchief in his back pocket and thought I might throw up.
“Bathroom,” I said, and began fighting my way through the bodies, prying apart tangled limbs. Finally the density loosened and I saw Nomi’s head above the others.
“There you are,” she said with a relieved smile. “It’s a sausage fest up in here.”
A lanky dude standing next to her slunk away. I took his place and faced the show, waiting for it to be over.
* * *
—
Afterward Nomi got on a train to Brooklyn and I had just started walking across town to the 1/9 line when Joe called.
“So sorry,” he said. “We were the second opener, it turned out, and everything started late. Is Interpol done?”
“Yeah.” I was walking fast, keeping warm. He was just a couple dozen blocks away but his voice sounded far.
“Sorry. I caught them in Philly anyway. Awesome, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so where are you?”
“I’m walking to the subway. I decided I’d rather do a long walk than transfer at Union Square but I’m kind of regretting it now.”
“What? How do I meet you? I’m in the Village.”
I sighed. “This isn’t Berkeley, Joe. It’ll take some time for you to get down here and I’m not sitting in a bar waiting for you. I dressed like a damn teenager tonight.”
I heard a long honk on his end, street noise. “Are you saying you don’t want to meet up?”
“I can see you tomorrow, right?”
“Percy, I—I had planned on staying with you. Should I not have done that? Just for one night—we drive to Boston after the show tomorrow. I have music to show you, and hotels are crazy expensive here.”
My head hurt. The final chord of “NYC” was like a razor blade embedded in my frontal cortex.
“I mean, whatever,” he was saying. “The guys are staying in Brooklyn with someone I sorta know, I could crash there—”
“Joe, it’s fine. I’m going to give you my address, okay? Just meet me there. Take the one or nine uptown to 116th.”
By the time I got home my feet were numb from cold. I changed into pajamas and was soaking my feet in a shallow, scalding bath when the buzzer rang. I answered with my sweats rolled up above my knees.
The sight of him was an instant salve. “Perce,” he said. He leaned down to hug me. Same old peacoat and worn-soft Levi’s, same strong, warm arms. But his face looked stubbled and tired, and he smelled like showers were hard to come by.
He pulled back. “Wow, you look good,” he said. “What’s different?”
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Bangs. My room’s this way.”
His eyes widened when he saw the room. “Efficient.”
“Fully furnished by Columbia. I use the kitchen to make coffee and sandwiches, otherwise I am right there, all the time.” I pointed at the wooden desk where my laptop waited.
“There’s a couch somewhere, though, right?”
I shook my head. “The living room has a door, so we sublet it to a med student. She’s probably asleep.”
He started to laugh. “Oh man, I’m sorry. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
I nodded. “Okay. Thanks. It’s hard to explain but I feel this very strong need tonight for, like, space around my body.” I tried to laugh, but that was taking the performance too far—it came out sounding comically fake.
He dropped his bag and stood quietly for a minute, shifting his weight onto one leg. “Did something happen, or something?”
I shook my head, but I felt my chin wobble. I knew I couldn’t tell him. I hated it too much. I hated the way it made me look, and I hated what I knew he would say.
“Percy,” he said. “What happened.”
My face got hot. I was close to crying, and the only way out was anger. “I’m sorry, is this another promise you forced out of me? Am I required to tell you everything about my life?”
He took a step backward, stumbling over his backpack. “No—sorry.”
I took a breath, then another, steering myself back to an equilibrium. “It’s okay.”
He nudged the backpack out of his way and looked at me. “That whole promise thing, I know it was only—what, two years ago?—but it’s like remembering the thought process of a child.”
I pressed my fingers against the razor blade inside my forehead. For fuck’s sake, I thought—tonight? “I’m over it,” I said. The dismissiveness in my voice surprised me, as if his rejection had been some minor blip in my life, and I could tell it surprised him too, because he was standing there with a frozen expression, like he wasn’t sure whether to say the next thing he’d planned to say. “Let me get something to put down so you’re not just sleeping on a hardwood floor,” I said briskly, and left.
In the bathroom I locked the door and allowed myself to cry. It made me feel better. It was no big deal, I realized. I was lucky. Nothing had actually happened, really, nothing with ramifications, nothing like other stories I’d heard. Just me and my tendency to incite terrible sexual experiences. At least I felt confident I would not be inciting another one here, tonight, in my depressing apartment. I swallowed four Advil and two melatonin, washed my face, and returned with two towels. Joe was looking through my CD piles.
“Your music is like an old friend,” he said, opening up a jewel box.
“You have a Discman, right?” I shuffled down in bed and hugged a pillow. “Will you be okay? I’m sorry, I’m happy to see you, I’ve just got a headache. Catch up tomorrow?”
I rolled over without waiting for a response. I heard him leave the room, wander around the apartment. Some muffled talking from the kitchen, meeting one of the roommates. I wasn’t sure which roommate. It didn’t matter. They were strangers to me. I couldn’t seem to relax the muscles in my face, around my brow and my mouth. I tried to picture my whole face melting which worked temporarily, but minutes later I could feel the muscles migrating into fighting position again, taut and aching.
I must’ve dozed off eventually because I awoke suddenly to the sound of “Let Down.” It was so loud I sat up in bed, ready to yell at someone. But there was no music. Joe was asleep, fully clothed, splayed out like a crime-scene outline on my white bath towels. I was glad to see him and hated him for being there in absolutely equal measure.
Bay Window
The next morning brought a light, continuous snowfall. I stepped over Joe without waking him and took a long hot shower that restored me more than my sleep had. When Joe finally woke he sprang to the window like a boy on Christmas.
“Let’s get out there!” he said, looking back at me with an open-mouthed smile.
I handed him the towel he’d just slept on. “I thought there was a mangy animal perched on your head and then I realized it’s your hair, Joe. Take a shower.”
He took the towel. “And she’s back.”
This was the perfect thing for him to say. It acknowledged my weirdness the night before while sealing it shut, closing it for discussion. I smiled gratefully as he loped out of my room to the bathroom, my towel on his shoulder.
Outside he was giddy, catching flakes on his tongue, taking pictures with a digital camera. We ate egg and cheeses at a deli on Broadway.
“I burned you some fragments,” he said as he chewed. “Send me your thoughts?”
“Sure.”
He took a sip of his coffee, pausing to appreciate the classic Greek design of the paper cup. He had shaved in my bathroom so I could see his cheekbones again, but there was something different about the way he set his jaw. The time we’d been apart, when he’d been traveling, experiencing America without me, seemed to sit between us on the table. Senior year we’d seen each other nearly every day—he’d helped himself to my fridge, and I to his—and now it had been six months since we’d even been in the same city.
His eyebrows jumped and he reached out, resting his hand on my forearm. “I know what we should do,” he said. “Let’s go to a Guitar Center, or whatever—anywhere I can play a piano.”
“Why?”
“Wanna show you something. Brand-new, a piano song—I don’t have much but I think you can help. Our last venue had this amazing baby grand.” He stuffed his egg sandwich wrapper into its paper bag and looked at the door.
I knew the perfect place, an old-school piano dealer in midtown I’d recently wandered past on a pilgrimage to ogle Carnegie Hall. “I have seminar at two,” I said.
He checked his watch. “Plenty of time.”
I already knew I wouldn’t be going to seminar. The night before was becoming a dream, one of those nightmares that make you feel energized afterward, fueled by the memory of terror along with blinding gratitude for real life. It was a high, so intense I could already sense the crash ahead, the storm on the wind of a sunny day. Or maybe I would never crash. Maybe this was the new me, invigorated to the edge of mania forever. I balled up my foil and followed him out the door into the bright white street.
