Deep Cuts, page 7
That’s why the song was so short, I decided—because connection, like memories, came in the briefest of flashes.
He stood and picked up his guitar. I felt a bizarre urge to yank it from his hands and gently toss it over the edge of the porch, into the weeds below. But I just followed him silently back into the house. He disappeared up the staircase to the room he was sharing with Zoe and I crawled into his roommate’s bed downstairs, under a fraying quilt that smelled of mothballs.
I replayed the day in my mind as I fell asleep, the dreamy serenity of that last song swirling in my veins. How very weird it was, the divide between Joe and me—how spiky one moment and swampy the next, then poof, just a calm, clear lake. I wondered if that was what made us feel so close sometimes. If the weirder the divide, the sweeter it was to cross.
Just Like a Woman
The split finally happened in spring: a clean break, they called it, which meant the end of our trio. Exactly a week later, it was Zoe and I who kissed.
I’d been giving them space, unsure how to help and frankly obsessed with the idea of what it all meant for me, when she invited me to study in a park. I was so relieved to hear from her, I exhaled loudly into the phone. We spread blankets on the grass and lay on our stomachs propped up on elbows. It was a warm day, bees buzzing around the open textbooks we were ignoring.
Zoe wanted info. “Does he seem okay? Is he smoking during the day? I don’t want him to become like a real smoker. What’s he doing this summer? Don’t let him go home to his dad’s.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s always at band practice.” I didn’t mention that I hadn’t even heard from him since the breakup. That every day I had awoken to a blast of possibility—this might be the day!—and fallen asleep disappointed. “You’re coming to his show next week, right?”
She shook her head. “If we keep hanging out, it will be like we never broke up. That’s all we ever did together anyway. It was codependent and weird and it kept me from becoming myself, you know this, I’ve told you this.”
“But it’s his first show!”
She shook her head again, one sharp, decisive swoop. “What about you guys? Has anything happened yet?”
“No.”
She looked relieved, but she said, “Chickenshit, the both of you.”
I wanted to ask her what she knew—what he’d said about me when I wasn’t there—but I did the right thing for once and said, “What about you, Zo? How are you feeling?”
The question seemed to surprise her, and then her chin wobbled and she started crying a little. “Excited,” she said. “But also scared. I know my parents will take it okay, but I haven’t worked up the nerve to tell them yet. My dad’s got Catholic baggage. Also I just—I don’t know how to be gay! I know how to be Joey and Zoe who both like Bowie, and I know how to be a good student. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
I shifted my elbow so it was touching hers. “Maybe focus on being a good student, then, for a while. Just until you’re not so scared. We can be good students together.”
She nodded, wiping her makeup-streaked eyes. The sight of her made me think, for the first time in years, of Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”: for all her smarts and self-possession, here she was, breaking like a little girl.
“I know it’s selfish,” she said quietly. “But I have this fear I won’t see you anymore when you start dating Joe.”
“When?” I blurted, laughing nervously. “If that happens, of course we’d still see each other.”
“Right,” she said. “That’s what girls always say. What about your roommate? Didn’t you used to be close before she started dating that frat boy?”
I felt a pang of guilt at the mention of Megan, who had become a distant acquaintance with whom I still shared a home. “You guys came between me and Megan more than what’s-his-name.”
She looked unconvinced. “I know Joey—he’ll be all in. He was like that with me. Remember this is a boy with a giant hole in his life.”
She said it like a warning, but it didn’t scare me; I wanted to be all in too. Instead of telling her this I hugged her, which was awkward since we were lying on our stomachs. We ended up sort of rolling around and laughing at ourselves, and then she kissed me. I decided to go with it; I knew it was safe, unserious. She tasted like stale cloves and Jamba Juice. Almost immediately, her hand was up my T-shirt, and she pulled back to ask, “Can I?”
I nodded, and her hand slipped under my bra, traveling over my breasts like a spider—clutching, jiggling one breast, then moving to the other. I rolled onto my back to make it easier for her.
A young family nearby packed up their picnic and left. Zoe had stopped bothering with the kissing now and was just staring at my shirt, at the movements she was creating with her hand.
“You’re welcome,” I finally said.
She looked up at me. “Sorry. These are my first boobs. Can I take your shirt off?”
“No! Zoe! We’re in a park!”
“But you’re never going to let me do this again, I can tell!”
I laughed and rolled over onto my stomach, forcing the retreat of her hand. My breasts, relieved, settled back into my bra. “That’s true,” I said, and picked up my textbook. “But I’m still your girl.”
Black streaks still on her face, I saw a tiny smile. She opened her book, then looked back at me. “Hey, can I ask you something?” Her voice dropped to a hush: “What do girls like?”
I smiled. “Are you not a girl, Zo?”
“I’m a sample size of one. With the body of a little boy, let’s face it.”
I looked out at the park and tried to think. What did I like? I liked talking about music in bars. I liked any contact between my body and Joe’s. A hippie couple was walking through the park, the guy’s arm slung around the girl’s shoulders, her fingers entwined in his dangling hand. She wore a lazy expression and sandals that consisted only of a thin leather sole and a loop around her big toe. She looked like she knew what she liked.
“I don’t really know, if I’m being honest,” I said. “You playing with my boobs like a kid discovering Jell-O didn’t do much for me, I can tell you that.”
“Damn. It did for me.”
The hippie guy had a guitar on his back, swaying with his long blond dreads. “What does Joe like?”
Zoe was watching the couple too. She shrugged. “I don’t know either. Same stuff they all like, I guess—touch it, suck it, worship it. What’s that English-major word for the part being the whole?”
“ ‘Synecdoche’?”
“Men are walking synecdoches. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
I smiled and held her hand. “Me too.”
* * *
—
When I got home that evening I couldn’t find my Blonde on Blonde CD, so I looked the song up on Napster and was surprised to find a version by Nina Simone. A woman singing “Just Like a Woman”? I downloaded both versions and then brought my laptop to my bed. I played Dylan first, then Nina.
I knew little of feminism at the time, beyond what Zoe interjected into unrelated conversations. I had been introduced to the concept as a teenager by late-night talk-show hosts who couldn’t say the word without rolling their eyes, and man did I love those dudes. It’s not ideal for a young girl to discover Letterman before the patriarchy, but that was the order of things for me. Dylan had loomed large over my adolescence too, and introduced me to certain systems of oppression—court-ordered racism in “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” communist fearmongering in “I Shall Be Free No. 10”—but never, of course, gender. I wasn’t particularly curious about the women of Blonde on Blonde, about their stories; I viewed them only through Dylan’s filter, sad-eyed and bony-faced in ribbons and silly hats.
Nina Simone changed that. It took me hours that night to peel back the layers of her song—years, even; I still have new thoughts about it. The wounded bitchiness of Dylan’s version was quickly, finally, laid plain for me to see. Then the power of a woman reclaiming it. (Later: the power of it being a Black woman, and this particular Black woman—brilliant, bipolar, so incredibly singular.) But mostly what hit me that night was the deep womanly kindness of it. She spends most of the song observing another woman’s flaws and pretenses without any of Dylan’s judgment, and then, switching to first person in the final chorus, she finds it all in herself—the taking, the breaking. And the acceptance of her own frailty becomes the thing that makes her just like a woman, the thing Dylan couldn’t do.
I loved this idea, but I didn’t know where to put it. I didn’t know how to use it. It felt bigger than a Ring Finger column, but I wrote it in my binder anyway: “Simone’s acceptance of her own frailty is what makes her just like a woman.” As I fell asleep that night I could see both of their faces—Nina’s and Zoe’s—hovering in the darkness of my almost-sleep. I wished we knew how to help each other.
Never Is a Promise
When I finally saw Joe it was at his debut gig, in the basement of a popular bar close to campus. He killed. Granted, he’d stacked the audience with friends from home, girls with blown-out hair and back-slapping dudes—he was the Beatles to them—plus his many roommates and every college classmate he’d ever chatted up. It was enough to fill the space with a great, buzzy energy. The drummer and bassist had been chosen for their devotion to the cause more than their skills, but they kept a steady beat, and Luke Skinner’s guitar sounded great, at least until he turned his amp up too loud halfway through the set. Joe’s singing had improved too, though it still lacked the round confidence of when he sang alone to me.
I watched from the back like Oz behind the curtain. Nobody knew me. Nobody knew that lyric had been my idea. How lucky he was to take these songs public, to stand up there in the glow of their magic.
He closed with “Funny Strange” in its new form, easily nailing the new lyrics’ complicated, behind-the-beat phrasing. The crowd became destabilized by multiple discrete pockets of dancing girls; the guys either filtered to the back or began nodding vigorously, pumping their fists. I could barely see him now, there were so many hands in the air. “Thanks for coming out,” he said into the mic after the song’s crashing end, and yanked the plug from his guitar.
Immediately he was enveloped by hugs. I waited uncertainly for a while, holding my plastic cup of beer. Maybe it was five minutes, maybe fifteen. When my cup was empty I walked home alone.
It’s fine, I said to myself, over and over. This is fine. My friend played a show and it went well. I opened the door to my apartment: no Megan. I crawled into my bed fully clothed and turned on the TV. This was normal. He was my friend; I had helped him. I thought about calling Zoe, telling her how it went, but that felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
Then the doorbell rang and he burst through the door, sweeping me into a hug, whirling us in a circle, shouting thank-yous into my hair: “We did it, we did it, thank you thank you thank you.” I responded with uncontrollable giggles, all my nerves releasing in tiny pockets of air.
When the whirling stopped it seemed strange that we were still in my hallway, that we hadn’t been transported to another, more colorful dimension. He leaned against the back of my front door, still holding me. I wanted to lift his T-shirt and crawl up in there. I looked at his face. The smile was gone; he looked like I felt now, serious and charged. His forearms rested on my shoulders now, loosely. I saw an opening to pull his hips in until they touched mine—it was such an easy move, I’d seen it in movies, it was right there. I summoned every scrap of courage from every cell of my body and then I did it: I hooked my fingers in his belt loops and tugged.
A tortured sound came from deep in his throat.
“What?” I said, panicking. Too aggressive. The wrong move. Oh god. Humiliation inflamed me, burning the entire organ of my skin. Why didn’t I just lean in for a kiss like a normal person?
“They’re waiting for me at the bar,” he said. “I just came here to thank you.”
I flinched. It felt like a violence. “Too soon?” I said, in a voice that didn’t sound like mine.
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
Another flinch, this one worse. “So…never?”
“I can see it all like a movie in my head.” He looked like he was trying to back up, but he had nowhere to go, so his body inched up against the door. “We’ll be happy for a month, or a year, and then we’ll break up and it’s just—you’re too—oh god, this sounds terrible, but you’re too important. You know? Like you said when I asked why you don’t write songs—remember?”
“But that’s me,” I said, genuinely confused. “You’re not a person who’s afraid of trying.”
“Maybe I am,” he said, inching up again. “About this, anyway. Sex is weird and embarrassing, and you’re…you’re my critic.”
This echoed in my brain, louder and louder. I began to feel sick. I stared into the blackness of his T-shirt, the fraying collar, refusing to cry. I hadn’t fully admitted it to myself, I realized, how badly I wanted him.
“And I love your criticism!” he said. “I can’t lose that. I can’t.”
I looked up at him sharply. “Buddy, I can stop helping you with your songs any time I want.”
“No, you can’t.” A coolness entered his eyes, and his body seemed to settle, his heels planting. “You love it too much. You’ve never had this much fun in your life.”
“Neither have you.”
We stared at each other a minute, breathing audibly, his nostrils flaring slightly on each inhale. Then he looked away. “Maybe you’re not my type,” he said limply. He focused on his left forearm, which still rested on my shoulder. “I can see how I might’ve implied otherwise, fall semester. Once the album started coming together I got my head on straight.”
A garish visual appeared in my head of me and Zoe in a split-screen juxtaposition, like they do to celebrities in People magazine: her straight, muscular body and bright black makeup facing off against my curves, my mousy hair, my heavy stare. The sight was so painful I heard myself utter a small cry, and began squeezing my head with both hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I released my head and held up a warning finger. “Look,” I said. “I want you to know I’m not waiting around for you to change your mind. What you’re saying, right now, is never—you and I are never going to happen. And never is a promise.”
This was a Fiona Apple song I had loved in high school. I intended it as a negotiating tactic—fishing for a shrug, a foot wedged in a closing door, a never say never. What I got instead was a look of recognition, and a slow, serious nod. “And I can’t afford to lie,” he said, finishing the lyric.
It made me livid. “Why the fuck are your fucking hands still on me, then?”
He sprang off and pushed past me down the hall, into the kitchen and into the living room, then back into the kitchen. I stalked after him and watched him fumble in my fridge until he produced two bottles of different brands. He placed them across from each other on the kitchen table, then went into the living room and started digging through my CDs.
I sat and opened one of the beers, still adrenal. “I don’t have it,” I called through the open kitchen door.
“I’ve seen it here,” he insisted. He moved to the stacks on the bay window seat, where we kept leftovers from parties and never-returned loaners, and finally held it up. Fiona Apple’s whitewashed face bobbed at the end of his arm. He started “Never Is a Promise” and walked back to sit with me at the table.
The thing about Fiona is she fully commits. She’s not worried about sounding maudlin; she is always 100 percent inside of her emotions. Her songs can sometimes be a little tuneless as a result, weighed down by the heaviness of being Fiona Apple, but not this one. The melody moves with her emotions: low and limited when she’s pissed, climbing intervals with the release of her epiphany. Fiona would never do what you’re doing, I wanted to say to Joe, sitting at that tiny table, both of us peeling the labels from our bottles. Fiona would fuck me.
“Well, that was depressing,” I said when it was over. I didn’t mean this strictly as a complaint—the song had scratched the exact right awful itch, elevated my sadness to the cinematic, if only briefly. But it landed like a cheap shot, and I let it.
He looked miserable. I felt a flash of guilt for ruining his big night—but no, he had ruined it! He had ruined it! What a night it could’ve been, we would’ve stayed up till dawn again, we would’ve worked on his songs in fits of postcoital inspiration!
“Why are you even still here?” I said. “They’re waiting for you.”
His expression hardened at my tone. “Look, I don’t get red A-pluses in the corners of my papers. I don’t get proud parents. This is all I get.”
“Well, they adore you.” I gestured to the door. “Go forth and receive.”
He stood. “You should be with someone better anyway. Someone who doesn’t rhyme ‘bad’ with ‘sad.’ ”
A line I had mocked—gently teased, really—in the original “Funny Strange.” “Good point,” I said, standing, pushing in my chair. “Or ‘frosty’ and ‘costly,’ while we’re at it.”
I saw him wince as he turned away. This was from the final version of the song, an awkward, forced line I had never mentioned because the rest of it was so good and I felt I’d used up my critiquing chips.
I followed him to the door. He turned back at the last minute, in the same place where I had made my big move, his expression suddenly open. “Perce? Is this going to ruin everything anyway? Because if everything is ruined anyway, we might as well just go for it.” He put a hand on his belt buckle. “Seriously.”
