daydreams

I

I am not moving anymore. I am completely still and things are moving at me. I do not know whether I am in hell or heaven. I do not know whether I am alive or dead. There is no more evil and no more good; there is nothing of meaning. Sensation and feeling have changed their game. To the left of me was light and to the right of me was dark but now it is all the same. Black is white and white is black. I am in a world where the water is above me and the air is below me. Space and time have evaded me. There is no day and no night. All is night. I wonder if it is still the same for anyone else?

Spiral staircase going down.

I close my eyes.

Suddenly I am lifted off the ground and up into the pit of eternal darkness. This is a darkness so deep that it is beyond any description of words. A great pressure pulls on my chest leaving my limbs hanging motionless. I lay in the darkness forever, hanging in the midst of open space.

I open my eyes.

The world has redeemed me. Objects regain their composure. My eyes recognize and my body feels. I sigh. I feel relief. I feel ashamed. I feel comfort in the agony. There is a battle going on inside of me. It is pulling me apart.

I blink my eyes and roll out of bed. I am not prepared for the day but I have no choice but to carry on. I will get showered and dressed and head out into the unforgiving world, where I will be told that I am loved and cared for. It is just me out there.

The light breaks open the door and the sidewalk jumps to my feet. It moves at me. The sky circles above me. The ground skates below me. A wind carries me to where I am supposed to be, the place a paper has designated for me. The world moves me around until I am in shelter and seated safely away from the storm that has been raging on for days. Voices talk to me and I can hear them but I cannot understand what they are saying. Likewise, they cannot understand what I say. They have never understood what I say. I feel they cannot understand me. They seem to feel they can understand me.

II

Jewel is blind but she sees more than most. I do not really know the story, but I know she was born without sight in her right eye and eventually lost it in her left eye as well. She is kind of old, I suppose, but not too old. Her physical self is fading, but her mind must be sharper than ever. She sits up in a rocking chair on the front porch awaiting my somber arrival.

I do not know what draws us together but I find myself stopping by her porch to talk quite often these days. I could walk right past whenever and she would not know the difference. This gives me the power in our relationship. When I want to talk, I can walk right up to her and talk to her. When I do not, I can walk right past and she will never know. She will sit there in silence, rocking back and forth gently, feeling the world move around her.

Maybe she gives me the matronly touch I need in my life. Things have been difficult for me and she gives me the attention I need- for the things I will never otherwise address. She is kind, caring, and compassionate. She listens. She is far too humble and polite to talk for extended periods of time. I have to drag answers out of her. I enjoy this part of our relationship. I question, she answers. I question more, she gives a little more. I question more until she finally gives me detailed liberations.

However, maybe “answer” is the wrong word. Many times, her answers are quizzical. She questions questions. She never comes to a final conclusion. She questions until questions and answers are nothing but foreign ideas. She opens my eyes up to the reality in front of me. She makes me question the world beyond it.

Jewel tells me she believes in the God of the Bible but I wonder more and more if this is just her way of living. She speaks of God as absolute and she refrains from judgement when I question a superior being. She tells me she likes my questions. She says her faith in God is as her faith in the world around her: blind.

We talk about God often. I question and question. She listens. She cares about my questions. She does not admonish me or rebuke me. When I tell her of my sins and my enjoyment of sins, and ask how I can be damned for things that are so natural and pleasurable, she nods her head and smiles at me. She tells me we are foreigners in this world. I tell her this is all we know. I tell her even this world we think we know does not make sense. I tell her if her God is real, then this is Hell. She tells me I may be right. I know I may be wrong as well.

When we do not talk about God, we talk about music, about school, about government, sex, love, you name it. We talk about the why’s and how’s of things. We ask questions. We question those questions. We feel things and we talk about those feelings. We wonder how those feelings relate to what we can physically feel.

We used to talk about my time in school a lot before I was sent off to war. We talk about my past lovers and she jokes that if I want any chance of finding a new lover, I need to spend less time with her and more time finding a wife. She is probably right. I have not had a steady girl since high school, but I tell her I do not think marriage is a real thing. It is a social and/or religious construct. She tells me I will end up alone. We both laugh. Then she tells me she was joking but she does not need to, I already know.

We never talk about the war. I never talk to anybody about the war. I was drafted right out of high school and sent off to fight the enemy. It was not until I killed another boy that all my childhood questions came rushing back to me. I stopped seeing the people I killed as the enemy. They are our enemy just as we are their enemy. We kill each other for what? To protect our families? To protect some rich guy’s business interests? We can never really understand, I suppose.

Before the war I had dreams of being in a rock band. I practiced guitar day after day. I wore ripped jeans and vintage tees with skate shoes or classic sneakers. I had a sterling silver necklace with a cross, a gift from my late grandfather. I wore old rings I found at consignment stores and silver bracelets as well. I had long hair and a mustache, which I loved but received much grief for. I played all week and even on the weekends. I never really enjoyed life too much, but I was too busy to think too much. I pushed all my questions to the side. That is the way I like it.

The war took the identity I was forming and destroyed it. They cut my hair, shaved my face, took my rings and bracelets, and left me only with my chain. Fitting. They threw me into the battlefield and left me for dead. Some people tell me I am lucky to be alive. I wonder if they are right.

Since the war, I have made a most terrifying realization. When I returned home, I heard people say things like, “he’s just not the same,” “he’s a shadow of his old self,” “I don’t even know him anymore” all the time. Maybe that is why I picked up and left. That is why I never want to go back.

What scares me is this: war did not change who I am, it made me realize who I really am. It enlightened me to the hopelessness of life and made me confused and alone. I watched people die. I killed people. I saw the horror I was capable of. I saw life come and go so quickly, and for what?

I watched people struggle for a life they were never meant to have. I hated myself for what I did under the authority of people who were under the authority of people who were under the authority of people… I wondered if it was all a game to keep us in the dark: religion, politics, war- they all seemed carefully orchestrated to me. But how can I ever know?

Now I smoke weed and talk to Jewel. Sometimes I go out for a drink on the weekend. I never enjoy it anymore. It was fun for a while after I returned home, but it got old fast. At first, it relieved stressed and helped me forget. I was rarely sober. But my mind caught up to me. All the death and greed and hopelessness strangle my every thought. I want to die, but I am afraid of what lies out there.

I am left in shambles. I try to sleep but nightmares wake me up. I am always dying in my nightmares, reaching for help, but no one ever helps me. They leave me to die. In most cases, they laugh and point at me. They watch me die like a dog, like I am supposed to.

Sometimes, my mind wakes up before my body and makes me feel like I am suffocating. I fight desperately for air for what feels like eternity.

I have found that this is a condition called “sleep paralysis.” Some people call it being possessed. It makes me feel like I am losing it. It makes me question what “it” is.

When I was a kid, I dreamed and felt that I would one day die in car accident. I figured I would be rather young but not too young. I used to kind of see it as a joke with myself, but now I feel it may come true. My dreams and nightmares have always been strange. However, they used to be sparse but now they are frequent. I see that dream when I take LSD; I see it when I go to sleep and when I wake up.

Today, I walk up to Jewel’s porch and sit down next to her. I light up a cigarette for her and then for myself. I pull my hair away from my face and take a drag. She lets it sit between her lips. I look over at her and stare at her face. She is quite beautiful, really. I have seen younger pictures of her and she was always very pretty. She never talks about her looks, though. She never makes those old lady jokes about how she is not how pretty she used to be. I guess that is because she has not really seen herself in a long time. She says she could be ugly now and we all just tell her how pretty she is to flatter her and build up her confidence. This always makes me laugh but it is really quite profound.

III

I am sitting on my couch, feet kicked out on the coffee table, just relaxing. The television set is on and I am watching one of my favorite shows. I am laughing. I am not stressing or having nightmares or asking questions. I am not high or drunk, or off some sort of pill. It is nice. I guess I am simply enjoying life right now.

The phone rings and I let it ring until it stops. I do not plan on answering any calls today. Besides, who could that be?

It keeps ringing. Either it is a weird coincidence or somebody really needs to talk to me. I finally give in, walking over to the wall and taking the phone off the hook.

We say “hello” simultaneously. It is the soft voice of a young woman. We pause, waiting for the other to say the next word.

“Hello?”

Again, we break the silence together. This is why I cannot stand talking on the phone.

The voice on the other side is giggling but I am not having it. I do not change expression. I wait. I will wait until she has begun.

“Jamie?”

“Yes,” I reply.

I know who it is; nobody calls me Jamie but her, but I cannot believe it.

“Jamie, it’s me.”

“Julia?”

There is a pause before she begins. “I want to talk to you- I need to talk to you.”

“What are you doing all the way out here?”

My mind goes back to high school- when I met this fascinating creature. I am immediately intrigued but wary.

“How did you know I was out here?”

How could she? I had just picked up and left after I returned from the war. I did not tell a soul. I left on the train and have not looked back.

“You don’t remember, Jimmy?” she questions me. “What is important is I need to see you.”

“Well,” I pause, “Well, I don’t know.”

“I’ll be at Mel’s in a half an hour, be there, won’tcha.”

I start to say something but she hangs up. Oh, how she irks me.

I wish I had the strength to forget it all and move on, but I am curious. Julia was a beautiful young thing who had moved in to my town right before my junior year and right before her sophomore year of high school.

I had moved there a few years prior, and with my rugged good looks, give-a-shit demeanor and rock-n-roll dream, I had become a bit of a ladies’ man. I was not popular, though. I was an outsider’s outsider, not fitting in anywhere, not caring. However, that was quite attractive to about half the girls in my school and many in the surrounding schools. I guess I earned a pretty bad (good?) reputation, but I never put much stock into it. Besides, I was not into reputations, I was into rock-n-roll; high school was just a prison I was just stuck in until I graduated.

But I digress. Up until senior year, I was a free spirit, never committing to anything. Even the music I played daily was not a commitment, per say; it was a dream. I messed around with a number of girls in those few years, but I never committed. Do not get me wrong, I liked some of them, and I even had a couple friends who were girls that I never messed around with, but I always kept my distance… until Julia.

Julia was special. She was different. She was independent. She had beauty, swagger, style, and grace. Boys flocked to her, but she brushed them aside. She liked rock-n-roll but she liked classical, too. Her mom was a single mother who moved in to town bringing a wild reputation with her. People talked good and bad about them, but people always talked about them.

At first, all the attention turned me off. I ignored Julia. She said “hello” to me but I would just barely nod and walk past her. Then we ignored each other. She went to the homecoming dance with our football star, but never dated him, no matter how hard he tried. She went to the Christmas dance with our basketball star, but never dated him. She fooled around with whom she pleased and then disposed of them. To fool around with her you had to have something she wanted, so the number was small. Everybody was in love with her. Boys wanted her; girls wanted to be her. I wanted nothing to do with her… or so I told myself.

Spring came around and Julia’s mean streak continued. I tried to ignore her but I realized I had been keeping track of her moves. In the fall, she messed with the football star; in the winter, she messed with the basketball star; somewhere along the way she supposedly messed around with a local business man- word around town was she broke his heart as well.

So, imagine this gorgeous-young-whirlwind of a girl leaving a trail of tears in her dust, never going back or stopping to comfort her broken lovers. I started to notice that she was on my mind often. All the time, perhaps. I had stopped messing around with my latest fling by the spring and was getting by alone for a while. This was not the first time I had been without a girl for a while, but this was different. This was because my own pride was the only thing stopping me from going after the girl I wanted.

Usually, the girls would talk to me, and say things like, “you’re so quiet, why don’t you talk more?” or, “you don’t care about anything,” and so on, and then they would invite me over to their place where I would play the guitar for them and smoke cigarettes. Some girls were faster than others, but the results were almost unanimous: any girl that showed interest in me at school or at the mall or wherever would come over and fall victim to rock-n-roll’s charm. When I was done with them, I was done with them. I did not lie to them or make ridiculous promises. Breaking their hearts just came naturally. I was more focused on my music.

But Julia was different, naturally.

My house was near a cool little diner that was open 24 hours a day. I often would sneak out and hang out there through the late nights. Sometimes, bands who were playing at local bars would stop by to eat and smoke outside. I would hang around and try to talk to them. Sometimes I would bring a girl around.

On one night in late springtime, I walked over with a young thing named Susie. Susie was wild and rebellious, drawn to the dark side, like me. She was always looking for adventure. I liked her because she did not take things too seriously. This was the first time I had hung out with a girl in over a month. She had taken some liquor from her parents’ cabinet and we got nice and drunk.

Anyways, we made our way over to the diner where a band was hanging outside, smoking what I thought was cigarettes at the time. On the arm of one of them, the singer, I had presumed, was Julia. She was looking as good and confident as ever. As I walked up, Susie a step behind me, I saw Julia look over her shoulder at me. And that was it.

I walked into the diner and sat at a booth with Susie for a short minute. I looked out the glass sides to Julia. She was glaring over at me. She was not like a typical girl, who when caught looking would quickly turn away. She hit me with a devilish grin and flipped her hair to the side before turning back to her singer. Her eyes were red. It was as if she cast a spell on me or something.

From that moment on I did not hesitate. I walked right out. I walked right up to Julia. I ignored whatever the band members were saying. I grabbed her hand and told her I had to show her something. She did not hesitate. Only later did I realize it was probably because she was high and I was drunk. In the moment it just felt right.

I walked her back to my house, stole the keys and drove us to a spot a-ways from my house. We drove to a little place that was up on a hill where you could see far off city lights. It was the type of spot you drive with your lover. I do not think we were the only car up there.

We were overcome with passion; we hardly said a word. We never mentioned seeing each other around or anything like that. She said something about how beautiful the distant lights were and we talked about aspirations for a minute, but the whiskey and weed took over quickly.

I had never a better lover. Not that I had had a lot, but I had had enough to know she was the best.

IV

Julia was like no other. What I liked most about her was this: she was unapologetic. She did her thing and it was fuck everybody else. Most girls, and people in general, try to justify their actions and make excuses, or cast themselves in the victim’s role, but not her. She did as she pleased. She told me she would walk proudly into hell and make it heaven. She was a bad-ass.

However, we were not like a movie. We were not star-crossed lovers, made for each other and only each other. We were too independent, too alone. I think it is was what drew us to each other, but at the same time, it kept us apart. We wanted each other, we made love often, but we were never going to get married or make any plans to. We were just together, constantly. We did not need the crazy love story or burning desire. We were people bored with high school life, doing our own thing unapologetically, making friends and enemies along the way, but never stopping to check which were which, or even caring.

We listened to music a lot. We cruised the city in her car, which she told me was a gift from a past lover whom she had cut off. She introduced me to pot and we smoked and drank constantly. It was not planned; it just happened like that. People called us bad kids, rebels, whatever. We did not care. We were not really causing any trouble. We were not hurting people. We just did not follow anybody’s rules. We did not make our own. We just did our own thing, and we were often together while we did it.

I did not think we would last forever. I never believed in forever. She told me she wanted to be a fashion model. I told her I wanted to rock. We did not want to be famous. We just wanted to get by. I told her I would go to the Golden Coast and make a go at it. She told me she would, too. We might as well go together, right?

I think we loved each other, but we were both too proud to admit it. Julia loved being a girl that did not need a man. She did not talk badly about all the girls that leaned on a man, but she always said no man could hold her. She was a “wild horse,” she said. She needed air to breathe and fields to roam. Shopping was “her weakness,” she said. But she did not need a man to shop, she only needed his money. I told her she would not get a dime from me. She told me she did not need it. “I still got other boys, men, even,” she declared. I laughed. She laughed as well.

We did not really talk about the past too much. We talked about now or the future. We laughed at things. We laughed at each other. We tore each other down. We had the egos to handle it. I hardly told her she was beautiful; she hardly told me I was. Fuck that. We knew we were.

But I am not who I used to be. I am not that rock-n-roll rebel ready to handle whatever this world can dish out. I am a broken man. She is probably still the same old gunslinger, just with new tricks. I did not want to see her but I had to. I had to go see her.

When I had gotten back from the war and taken off for the Golden Coast, I had not even seen her. I did not even know if she was still in town. I wanted to keep her off my mind. Now she was in the same town, wanting to meet me, needing to talk to me. Of course, I obliged.

I arrived later than I was supposed to, but still before her, of course. I sat at a booth in the corner and ordered a coffee. I sat there smoking a cigarette and sipping coffee, hoping she would be here sooner than later.

Ten minutes later, the door opens and in walks the most beautiful girl you had ever seen, and she sets the whole place ablaze.

She had shades hiding her eyes, and her hair up. I took a slow drag and looked up at her. She sat down gracefully, and removed her white gloves.

“I ordered you a fat burger,” I mumbled.

At first, she did not smile at all. Once my grin left, however, she broke out in a small laugh. That same old pretty little laugh. It was a laugh that made you feel like you had accomplished something.

“It was more than a dime, I suppose,” she fired back.

I laughed. She remembered. She remembered everything; she always did. Even though high and drunk, she handled herself always, and she could recollect any detail. Right away, she proved it was still true.

We sat in silence for a moment.

“How did you find me?” I broke.

“Oh, please, Jamie,” she began, “we always knew we would both end up here someday.”

She looked straight at me. “So, how are you, rock-star?”

I fiddled with my cigarette and sipped a little coffee. I looked around for a second and began playing with my hair. She had always made fun of me for that.

“I don’t really know.”

She smiled but it was an unpleasant one.

“You look awful.”

You look beautiful.

“You don’t look so hot, yourself, princess.”

She hated when I used to call her that.

“You’re getting fat.”

She laughed.

“No man dares insult me,” she said. “It’s refreshing, really. Last week I told my date he looked like a frog and he told me if I kissed him, he could be a prince,” she sighed and rolled her eyes, only as she could.

“Still dating down, huh?”

“Why, no, Jimmy, he was a prince,” she replied, “that’s why I told him he looked like a frog.”

There she goes, always bragging to me about her men. Always reminding me that she has endless options, from business tycoons to princes.

“What do you want?” I was not tired of small talk, but wary of where it could lead.

She gathered herself for a moment, then let herself go again. She put a cigarette up to her lips and asked for a light.

“Why? You don’t even inhale.”

I lit her up and waited for her response. She blew smoke in my face.

“I moved out here after you left for the war. I’ve been living a few towns over from here. But I’m moving here as soon as possible-”

“You need a loan?” I joked.

She ignored me and continued, “I’ve been modeling, of course, and boys have been chasing me of course, and I’ve been driving them mad, Jamie.”

She took her cigarette between her fingers and pointed it at me.

“Do you remember the first night we met?”

“No,” I lied.

“Neither do I,” she lied. “I need a place to stay.”

You see, this is what I like about her.

And I’m laying here now, in my bed with her in my arms, wondering what the hell am I doing? I am back in bed with the girl who broke my heart, right before I headed off to the great war to lose my soul. But I like her because she needs no explanation and she gives no explanation. Most people say, “I need a place to stay, but just for a while,” and go on and on explaining why. She said, “I need to a place to stay,” and that is it.

She is in my arms fast asleep but she wakes up and rolls over. She lights up a cigarette and sits up. I take it from her and we pass it back and forth, making it into a flirtatious game, just like we used to. I walk over to the record player and put on some good, old-school music. It soothes us. She smiles at me, cigarette in mouth, looking like a bad-ass.

We do not talk about the past, or how we went our separate ways before I was drafted. We talk about her upcoming job and about my joblessness. She tells me I am a bum and I agree. We laugh, but as soon as she leaves, my life returns to the state of monotony it has been in before her arrival. I am scared that she will bring hope into my life and then destroy it. She is too beautiful, and too cunning. She loves me, I know it, but she will never say it. If I tell her I love her I am done. My current state disallows me from being dependent on anyone. If I become dependent on her, and then lose her, I will fall even deeper into a meaningless state.

I walk out into the dusk and down the old, cracked sidewalk. I watch cars pass by, all going somewhere. I see the world moving at me and I feel overwhelmed. The sky could cave in at any second. Everything is just passing me by.

I see Jewel sitting up on her porch. I think about walking past her. I stop for a second, then continue. I stop again, then continue. I should say something. I have been walking by for a week now. Finally, I decide to go up and say hello.

I sit down next to her and light up two cigarettes. One is for her; one is for me. We smoke and make small talk. She rocks casually back and forth.

“She called me,” I say.

“Mmm,” she breathes out and makes a weird face.

“She’s staying with me. For a week or so now. She looks, well, she, I just can’t say no to her,” I finally get it out.

“She’s still as beautiful as ever?”

“More.”

We talk about Julia. We talk about our relationship. Jewel asks me if it can last. I tell her “No.” I know it cannot.

“Do you want to be with her, Jimmy?” Jewel questions.

I shrug. She is blind, you idiot, she doesn’t see you shrug.

I chuckle for a second.

“Whenever I am with her, it’s just… the moment- Now, yunno,” I say.

“When we’re together… when we’re together, I just don’t think about time or shit,” the ‘i’ and ‘t’ become almost silent. I try not to curse around Jewel; she does not really care, but I respect her so I try to be polite anyways.

She hits me gently with her cane. I am surprised but I laugh.

“Do you love her?”

Damn. I cannot say that.

“I don’t like- I don’t think about it.”

I stop and change the subject. You know the best way to change the subject? Shut up. Stop talking. Wait it out.

“Are you playing, tonight?” Jewel asks.

“Yeah, speaking of playing, I gotta run.”

We say goodbye. I joke I’ll probably be dead before I see her again. She says, “Good, I’ll see you in heaven.”

After leaving Jewel’s, I walk around the small, old, worn-out city for a couple of hours, occasionally stopping and sitting for long bouts. I watch people. I look at them. I watch how they walk, fast or slow, upright or slouched, high and mighty or down and out. They are all the same, they just act different. I walk to the park and sit by a homeless man. We shoot the breeze for a good time.

I walk away from the park and to Louie’s. It is a hole-in-the-wall bar outside of the city. It is dimly lit. There is no price to get in here, but they make money because everybody buys a drink. There is a guy named JJ that sells weed who frequents this place, probably not the only one. That is my guy. The bartender after 9 is a guy named Al. He has a wicked sense of humor. He is quiet, but when he talks, he is quite hilarious, to me, at least. There are two waitresses; they do more flirting than serving. They are not really good-looking, but attractive in a dirty kind of way.

I walk through the back door, guitar in hand, and then out onto the stage. Cigarette in mouth, I begin to play. The owner of the bar, Tony, lets me play every week night after 1. Sometimes I play on weekends if Tony needs somebody to fill in. Most nights, I play until it closes, which is usually around 5 or so. I am always late, but I can play, so Tony lets it slide. In a way, I have become a small attraction in town. People passing through who cannot sleep come see me. Night owls come see me. Regulars come after or before their shifts. A couple of college girls come around sometimes. I have started to notice them more and more.

I play what I would call blues- it is all feelings- I start with guitar usually and sometimes I mess around on the piano. I take requests, I get shots ordered for me, I smoke weed, I smoke cigarettes. I get paid in tips alone, but I do not care. I make enough from this and military checks to get by all right. I do not need a car. I walk everywhere. I eat at the small diner down the street from my apartment. I do laundry another block down. I do not have many clothes. It is cool. I do my thing. It is depressing, but it gets me through.

My dreams are gone. My aspirations have vanished. I strum my guitar and sing into the mic. I am not trying to reach anybody; I just get into my groove. I play some originals, and I play some classics. I even play some little-known songs. If you do not know it, fuck you. I play it anyways.

Tonight, Julia stops by. She walks in and sets the place on fire. I continue playing what feels right. The drunks gawk at Julia; the college girls snarl as she passes by. Al serves her a drink. The waitresses say hello. They seem happy that everybody is gawking at somebody else for once. They have gotten used to being harassed by young gentlemen looking for nothing in particular, with little money and a lot of time.

I play and play, take a couple breaks, and then play again. Julia works the room. A young, handsome man makes his move for her. He buys her a drink and brings her over to his table. I continue to play.

She might leave with him. She really might. I will not get jealous, what is the use? I will play until Tony closes up. Sometimes, if I get too drunk and high, Tony will have to throw me out.

One of the waitresses, a young girl, possibly under 18, I assume, brings me a couple of shots of Jack. I look up at Julia. She is grinning at me. I grin back.

“Do you know him?”

I down the shots and play a more upbeat song. I yell, “fuck politics” and some more gibberish. I have been drinking too much tonight. Oh, well. I continue to drink and smoke my cigarettes.

I look over at Julia. The young man appears upset. He gets up and storms out. She laughs. I laugh. I continue to play.

For the next 30 minute I do not sing, I just play. I play a song that is like a lullaby. A couple dances in the darkest corner. I imagine they are in love. They will be together until they die. They hold each other so tightly and whisper beautiful things into one another’s ear. They will go through hard times but they will make it.

I see Tony waving at me to shut it down. I tell the patrons I got one more song. Tony rolls his eyes and laughs.

“This one goes out to a good friend of mine,” I begin.

“Jack Daniels.”

The 20 or so people left die laughing.

“Either I’m real fuckin’ funny or you’re all real fuckin’ drunk,” it’s funny and true.

“Same difference,” somebody yells. More laughter.

I play a couple of chords.

“Tony wants me to shut it down. Fuck you, Tony.”

“Fuck you, you’re fired,” Tony yells back.

I laugh and play my song.

V

I am with one of my old friends from middle school. It is weird, after I moved, I never kept in touch with him. We are walking to a bar. No, this is more like an old western saloon transplanted into a newer city. It is very dark and cloudy. It is lightly raining. We move in strange patterns and time becomes irrelevant. I cannot tell when things are happening. Nothing is chronological.

We move to the bar slowly. We start to drink. I feel drunk already. Perhaps I have been drinking a lot. We are in there for a while, I suppose. Suddenly, a girl grabs my arm and drags me outside. She is a short, thick girl. She is very attractive. She is smiling and laughing and telling me to “c’mon.” I do not know why but I do. She is with a friend. Her friend is a tall, slim blonde, she is even more attractive.

The girl who dragged me outside pulls me in and kisses me. I start to become paralyzed. I try to kiss her back but my body freezes. I feel like I have two selves. One is struggling to break free; one succumbs to her spell. She pulls back and starts laughing. I am now immobile. I fall to the ground, but it seems to take forever. I cannot breathe. My other body fights for breath, but I have given up hope. I am at her will. I lay there, not moving, but hearing everything they are saying. The tall, blonde friend is mad that her friend is now sitting down holding my head in her lap. She is laughing.

“Leave him, I told you about him.”

She says something like that but I quickly forget her exact words. She looks at me like I am worthless, like her friend should leave me for dead but her friend continues to hold me. I realize people have been passing by the whole time. A man starts to walk over and I hope it is my friend, but he is long gone.

This man is a guy I knew in high school. We kind of got along, but he was very much an intellectual and thought he was better than everybody else. He walks over and says hello to the girls.

“Oh my god, Coby!”

The girls hug him. He looks at me and then away. My other self tries to cry out to him but he ignores it; or maybe he really does not see it. I fight and fight, but I have no power. One man starts running up to me with a hammer. He tries to strike me but I block it, somehow. He is another guy I recognize from high school. He was very insecure and annoying, always trying to prove himself and fit in. Girls liked him but I never understood why. His name was Allen.

In the next instance, something unexplainable happens. The clouds encircle me and let loose lightning and thunder. Rain comes down hard. I am standing on top of a building denouncing all those who are now below me. They laugh at me. In the next moment, they throw their weapons at me and I crouch away in agony. I continue to denounce them. They yell insults back at me. They tell me how small I am. They remind me I am nothing.

I am laying down and breathing heavily. My heart is beating out of my chest.

The two separate selves become one again. My eyes open and I am awake. That strange calm- that mixture of ease and shame hits me. I have returned to the real world, but the nightmare is fresh in my mind. I begin to piece it together. I think about my old friend, then that girl who put me down and her friend. I think about all of those reminding me that I am nothing, that I will never be anything. Who are they to say?

I roll over and remind myself it was just a dream. It was just a dream; it was just a dream. It is slowly becoming harder and harder to tell the difference. My mind is playing games with me.

I look over at Julia. She is asleep. I try to go back to sleep but I cannot. I cannot understand why this keeps happening. Why am I constantly tortured? I wish I could become one with my mind, but my mind seems to have control over me. I try to control my thoughts, but how can you control a dream?

It is outside of my hands. I have no control over my world. I sit up and light up a cigarette. I blow the smoke up towards the heavens. I breathe slowly. I calm myself down. The cigarette helps. Having Julia beside me helps.

The day continues. She drives off in her little red drop top to wherever she is going and I walk to the beach. I spend a couple of hours here, smoking weed and getting my feet wet. I never go all the way in. I think about things I will never talk about like who I used to be and how I ended up like this. I think about how I am a disappointment to my parents. They would say different, but I know the truth. I get it. I know they love me, but do they really love me or do they have to?

The day is beautiful like most days out here. It is warm and sunny. The sky is baby blue and the clouds are sparse. There is a good feeling in the air and the palm trees pass it around. I try to catch it but it evades me. It leaves me with an odd, distant sort of hope.

Night rolls around and I walk down to Louie’s. I am wearing black boots, skinny black jeans with holes in them and a white dress shirt that is too big for me. I have put rips and tears in it. I like the way that looks, I like the way it feels. I have been through some stuff, my clothes have rips and tears, it is symbolic. I like that.

Tonight, I cannot stop thinking about Julia. It is crazy. I am in the hole-in-the-wall joint playing my songs and she is out and about, wherever. She does as she pleases. She could be sleeping with somebody else right now. I feel like it should not bother me but it does now. I want her to myself. I hate feeling that way. I want her to have her space and her independence, but I want her to be mine. She probably thinks I am still sleeping around, but I am not. Maybe I would in some scenario. It is possible. I know myself, and I do not trust myself. It could happen.

But tonight, I hate the thought of her out there with somebody else. You see, in high school, I knew she had seen other guys and probably still did. I know she dated other guys, but I do not know if she slept with them. Hell, I still messed around with Susie a little. I mean, me and Julia were never really together. We did not see things like that. What we did was just natural. It was just life going the way it goes. We did not need a label to make it real. We did not need rules that put pressure on us. We had our own dreams and our own ideas. We liked each other because we worked for each other. We never applied that pressure. And we were the best. We were heart breakers, but we could not break each other’s hearts, so we thought… But then we did.

Now we are just bodies floating through space, occupying some time. We sleep together because we provide each other with great sex. We stay together because why not? We do things together because we like one another’s company. If I start getting jealous, I ruin the whole thing.

My mind continues to wander. What if she has never slept with another man while we were “together” because she understood we had a good unspoken thing? What if there were no need to sleep around when we were together because we were the best, we liked each other, and we never tried too hard? What if I was just doing something to prove I did not need her by sleeping with Susie when really there was no need to?

You see, in high school I had never thought like this, I just continued on doing my thing. Whatever I did was cool and whatever Julia did was cool. Now I think too much, and I fear that because of this, I will lose what I do have with Julia. If I bring it to her, I might be bringing up something she has never let herself think of, and then she will say, “Wow, this is not what I thought, and this is not what we wanted.”

Then I will hate myself even more.

“Aye, dumbass, you’re on.”

I looked up at Tony’s fat face.

I nod and head out to the small stage.

Times drags on sometimes. Usually, my sets go very fast. I stop thinking and just play. I feel the music. I get into a groove. I start talking with a cool accent. I make the audience laugh, I make them dance, I make them love. They feel it. Tonight, I am thinking about Julia the whole time. I fear I have not played well.

The show ends and a couple of young girls come up to me afterwards and ask me if I want to smoke some dope with them outside. How can I say no?

“I loved your show, oh my god,” says a cute little thing in a tight dress and stockings. She is very sexy. Her friends are sexy too. Her and her one friend go on about my set. The third friend, and most attractive- to me, is silent.

I like her the most. She does not look at me like a fan. She looks at me like a regular joe. She is tall and skinny but has a nice shape to her. Her hair and eyes are dark. Her skin looks smooth and sexy. Her eyes are red from all the smoke.

I do not want to think too much tonight. I want this girl, I suppose; not as much as I want Julia, but I still want her, who cares? I finally get her name, it is Candy. I talk to all three girls but my focus is on her. I tell her I want her with my eyes. We shoot the breeze for a while. Our conversation is light and funny. The cute little girl makes me laugh out loud. It is hard to get more than a grin or a light chuckle from me. Maybe it is just because I am high.

The three say they will back soon and start to walk away. I do not say anything, but tell Candy to come back with my lips. I hope somehow, she feels it like I do.

“Get some friends,” the little cute one jokes as she walks away; I think her name was Mandy.

I wait in the alley while they turn the corner. I feel like Candy will be back. She is not. I wait and wait, high as hell, alone in an alley. Be back soon, girls.

I walk to the nearest payphone and call the apartment. Julia answers.

“Come get me, I’m at Louie’s.”

“Hang tight, baby face.”

She pulls up ten minutes later in her little red drop top. Sexy.

“Hey stranger, you’re kinda cute.”

I smile back at her and hop in.

“You’re not bad yourself, sugar,” I reply.

She asks where we are going. I tell her I do not know. She tells me she hopes I was not planning on going back to the apartment. We never call it home.

She steps on it, man. She is flying. I mean, burning rubber, baby. She is really getting after it. Her little red drop top roars but we are in silence. She breaks it.

“You wanna go to heaven tonight?”

I blow smoke out the window. She hands me a bottle of whiskey.

“Little something I picked up for you.”

I look over at her and grin.

“You’re an animal,” I laugh.

“You’re a pig,” she retorts.

“You’re a snake.”

“Oink, oink.”

She is pushing 100 on the freeway. Now she is pushing 110. Damn, woman.

She is flying around any car that gets in the way. It is like 5:30 and traffic is just starting to pick up. Her top is down and her long, beautiful hair blows in the window. She is like something out of movie. I wonder what life would be like without her.

I am so glad she found me out here. She is an adrenaline rush. She is the highest of highs. It is not just sex with her, it is her. She is something else, something I have never seen. I wonder how she feels about me. She probably does not really even think of me. She has told me she only thinks of herself and I kind of believe it. She is a devil in a white dress, an angel with a set of horns. She does not make sense, but it does not matter.

We drive until she gets bored and stops at a random beach.

We get out of the car and start walking toward the beach.

I am nice and drunk and probably still high, who knows?

“Young lady, have you been drinking tonight?” I spit out sarcastically in a deep authoritarian voice.

She smiles back at me and pulls her jean shorts up so her butt cheeks are just hanging out.

“What are you gonna do about it, officer?”

She knows exactly what I am going to do.

VI

I walk my own pace. I have always been like that. I do not know why. It is just the way it is. I am hard-headed about some things. I am weird like that. Some things I can let go easily. Some things I cannot.

But anyways, I walk how I want to. I do not speed up when I “need” to, I speed up when I want to.

“You walk too slow.”

Fuck you.

In high school and earlier, people always complained about how slowly I walked. It never bothered me. If it did, I never let it show.

Sometimes Julia walks fast. She has got places to be. She knows where she wants to go and she gets there. Other times she walks slow, like me.

When she walks slow, we walk together. When she walks fast, she leaves me in the dust. Tonight, she is walking slow. We are walking together. We are not heading anywhere in particular.

The sky is dark and the stars are fading. She is as beautiful as ever. I am as rugged as ever. Her hair is down to her back. Mine is down to my shoulders. She has these cute little freckles under her eyes and across her nose. I have stubble where a beard should be. She has deep, soulful eyes that set the night on fire. I have glossy, unfamiliar eyes that sit back. They do not stare at you, but rather through you.

“I want to catch a star,” she says.

I want them all. I want to pull them down and bury them somewhere only I know.

She goes on:

“Stars are so lonely. They look so close to each other but they’re so far apart, really. That’s what they say, at least…”

I look up at those lonely stars. Their loneliness is comforting to me in some weird kind of way. I am more like a star than a man, I suppose. I lay in the distant darkness and watch things go by.

“Let’s build a car and drive it to that big bright star,” she giggles.

“Let’s drive up there and push it down and watch it fall and crash into the earth.”

She always did have a fascination with the sky. Maybe that is where she was from. I did not know much about her hometown really. I know she told me she lived on a ranch in the south with her mom and her mom’s rich boyfriend. She said she rode the horses almost every day- either that or sat by the pool, or both. I doubted it. “You’re too busy to sit still and do relaxing things,” I would joke, “I don’t believe it, not a word.”

She went on about the stars, but not in an astrological way, never in that way. She talked about them in a natural sense, not stating facts or giving history, but just going on about how they feel and what they do. I like it when she talks like that. I wish I could talk like that. I just do not have anything too interesting to say.

We walk down the street and get in her little red drop top. We speed away into the night. She turns the radio on and lets her hair down. I watch it blow in the wind. She is like a dream.

We do not talk the whole ride back to the apartment. She always seems to find a new route and tonight is no exception. This one takes us down the coast and around the city. It is beautiful.

We go back to the apartment and make love until we fall asleep. When I wake up, she is gone. This is not unusual. I roll out of bed and walk down to the diner. I order a small breakfast.

“Bad hair day?” Camille questions jokingly.

Camille has been a waitress here since I moved here. I guess it has not been too long really. She is quite a bit older than me perhaps, but still rather sexy. We talk sometimes, but we mostly just make small talk and flirt. Nothing will ever become of it; it just comes naturally to the both of us. Sometimes I feel like she is starting to like me but neither of us ever makes a move. I do not suppose I ever will.

“Bad and beautiful,” I say as I grin, cigarette between my lips.

I smoke and eat toast in between sips of black coffee, no cream, no sugar. Camille and I banter a little bit as she passes by. There is only a few of us in here as is normal at this time of day. One guy is sitting in the corner scratching a pencil furiously against a notepad. I presume he is writing some sort of story or script. I am glad someone writes these sorts of things, because I like movies and stories, but I would probably never write one. I cannot say never, I mean, who knows, but probably never.

He ordered a meal but he has barely touched it. We have all had mornings like that.

Camille walks past me again. She walks like a cat. I feel like her strut is just a big tease. I figure if she ever made a pass at me, I would succumb quickly to her charms. I like that she is a bit older than me. Moreover, she never talks about her past in specifics, only in general references. I like that too. It makes her mysterious. Maybe someday I will come in here drunk off my ass and scoop her off of her feet.

I finish my meal and head out.

“See you first thing tomorrow, handsome,” she blows me a kiss as I walk by, that devil.

“Not if I see you first,” I say.

Not one of my smoothest moments. But whatever. It does not matter if you do not think about it.

I walk out into the sun and down the cracked sidewalk. Today, I am wearing sun glasses. I look super cool but they are kind of annoying. I always wanted to wear sun glasses all the time, but the way they sit on my face bothers me. Just not meant to be, I guess. Not yet.

I stroll past small shops and cafés. I pass the bakery and breathe in the aroma. Every time I pass, I feel it pulling me in, but I never stop. Matter of fact, I have only been in there a handful of times, usually high.

Today I walk to the outskirts and walk around, stopping only to sit and relax in random places. I post up on walls, fences, park benches, wherever. I wonder what Julia is doing right now. I never used to do that. I used to be busy with my stuff and she with hers. Now I think about her a lot more.

She could be anywhere. She could be gone for a couple of days, a week even. It is like that. She will be at fashion week this, fashion week that. I imagine she does shoots, attends parties, makes friends with actors and singers, producers and so on, and then leaves them in the dust. That is just her way. She loves you and leaves you in the dust. More like you love her and then she leaves you in the dust. She burns it down.

I wonder for a second if she thinks about me at all. I do not like this thought so I push it away. It is getting to be too much. Maybe I need to keep myself constantly busy like I used to. Maybe I need to sleep more (yeah, right). I need to keep her in my life but off my mind, the same way I imagine she keeps me.

VII

I have not talked to my parents in a long time. We drifted apart in my last two years of high school during my silent rebellion- when I finally told them I was not like them and could not fake it anymore; and therefore, stopped going to church with them and my sister. I was always different, always doing things my own way, but before that we found a balance. Those last two years of high school we lived in the same house but we rarely spoke. We did not do much together. They spent a lot of time with my younger sister and visited my older brother at college. They tried to reach me but I was far gone. I was running around drunk, smoking cigarettes and then weed, rock-n-roll on the mind the whole while.

I was not hateful to my parents. We did not yell at each other or argue all the time. They fought for me but they let me go. They knew I was too distant to reach, I suppose. They loved me and I loved them, but we kept a large gap between us. I kept a large gap between us. Sometimes my mother would snap at me or get frustrated with me, but not often. I tried to show as little emotion as possible.

I got along well with my older brother, but he left for college before we moved and I went into high school. I did not really even know my little sister. She was a bit of a brat, but super sweet. She and my parents got along the best. My older brother had a more emotional road with my parents. They hung out a lot, but they argued a lot. They just disagreed about things. I just watched it all happen.

Now I think about my family more than I ever have. I wonder about them. I wonder if they wonder about me. I wish things were different but I do not really know how. Maybe it would be best if I had never been born.

I should give them a call but I never do. They do not even know how to reach me. It is just me and Julia now.

I sit up in bed and light up a cigarette. Julia rolls over and looks up at me. She sits up and lights up a cigarette as well. We sit there and smoke in silence.

“You don’t play tonight, do ya?” She asks.

“Nah, it’s Saturday.”

“Let’s go to a party, together,” she proposes, “how does that sound?”

“Cool,” I say, taking the cigarette between my fingers. I look over at her.

“Black tie?” I say in a goofy, over-done accent.

“Why, of course, dear,” she jokes back similarly.

“You’re way out, babe.”

“Totally.”

She takes my hand and drags me out of bed. She starts to throw on some clothes.

“Right now?” I question.

“Heavens no,” she replies.

I get dressed anyways. I put on a long-sleeve black button-up and black jeans. I choose my classic sneakers.

I look over at Julia. She has on high-waisted jeans and a white cropped blouse that hangs off one shoulder. She puts her messy hair up and makes it work. She does not wear make-up. Actually, she never wears make up. Well, only for photo shoots. When she is not modeling, she does not bother with it.

I walk behind her and down the stairs out into the street. We hop into her little red drop top and fly off into the sun.

I do not know where we are going. Who cares? Julia drives in her usual manner. She flies through stop signs and yellow lights, leaving a torn-up road behind her. I imagine even the road hates to see her go. She passes cars that do not go the speed of her liking and flies around pedestrians.

The thing is, she never drives angrily. She does not curse or honk or anything like that. She does not even mumble under her breath. On multiple occasions she has almost crashed, but it never slows her down. She has been pulled over but that does not stop her. Nobody tells her how to drive or how to do anything. It is her world; we are just living in it. Who can keep up with this woman?

To me, perhaps the strangest thing is her reaction when a car wrongs her. For instance, a couple of weeks ago or so, a car pulled out right in front of her and almost crashed into us. She did not say a word. It sped away and she sped behind it until they went their separate ways. It did not seem to bother her at all.

Another time, back in high school, she was driving on the freeway and tried to get over when a car sped up behind, angry that she was passing them, I assumed. It almost hit her but she pulled away just in time to get out in front and blow them away. I did not react but I must admit I was a bit shaken inside. She may have been, but did not show it at all. She laughed.

“Bastard,” she said, tickled with laughter she was, and then she sped off into the night. That made me laugh, too.

“You tryna die, huh?” I had joked.

She was not afraid of death. If she was, she never let it show.

We drive into a smaller town a bit away from the apartment. She pulls into a parking lot and we hop out. I follow her into a mall. I know she loves to shop. She loves to spend money.

We eat first and then I follow her around while she tries things on and gets over-helped by every employee at every store. One employee even tries to talk to her as she passes by his store. I watch every teenage boy stare as she passes. I watch grown men steal a peek.

She does not buy anything today. Actually, I buy a cool vintage shirt. We hang around this area for a good time. After we leave, she tells me we are going straight to the party. I do not really know what to expect. As a matter of fact, I have not been to a party since I have been out here. I am surprised we are just now going to a party since Julia has been out here.

We drive and drive until we are in the hills. It is beautiful up here. Every road twists and turns, goes up and down. She takes on every curve, rolling through stop signs and smoking a cigarette. The houses are big up here. They are right by the beach but they all have pools.

“You know where we are going?” She asks.

“Well, let me just read your mind, here,” I prod.

She tells me it is a party for a famous actor. I ask her if it is their birthday. She says, “Every day.” She tells me they used her as an extra in his latest movie and she got invited while she was on the set. She says agents come up to her all the time and tell her she should act but she says no.

“I tell them to fuck off. I like calling the shots. When I model, I decide when and where. When you act they tell you what to do.”

I question her.

“Is that how it works, really? The model has the power?” I laugh a little.

“I do now, Jamie,” she calls me this sometimes. I do not know why but I do not mind. It sounds kind of cool. “Of course, not at first, but I worked my way up quickly.”

“Now, I only work under the premise that I have freedom. Whoever needs a shot can get it, but only under my terms. Of course, they tell me when and where, Jamie, but if I don’t like it then I decline it. They work it out so it works for me. They always do.”

We pull up to a gated house and a valet takes the keys and drives off with her little red drop top. This house is huge. There is a pool and hot tub out back and that is where the party is.

“Oh, you shoulda told me it’s a pool party,” I say.

“Why? We can just swim naked,” she says. I doubt she is joking, but I know she will not. You see, she is modest and ladylike in her own way. She does what she pleases, but she never makes a fool of herself. Even if she were to get naked and swim, I imagine the rest of the party would follow suit. She just has that effect on people. She always has when I have been with her.

I trail her while she meets and greets, greets and meets. She does not introduce me unless they ask. They always do. I meet too many people to remember names. She always remembers every name. That seems weird to me; here is this girl, a tornado of a girl who leaves nothing but dust in her trail, yet she remembers their names and does not pretend not to. She really is fascinating.

Every man she introduces me to talks down to me, although it is always in a different way. Every girl turns their nose up to me. They seem mad at me. Maybe they are jealous. Maybe they hate Julia because they can never be her so they hate me too. Maybe deep down they want me but they think they are too good for me. Either and any way, I do not let it bother me.

Some people swim and some people dance. Everybody here is really good-looking but I do not think about it much. Everybody except Marty.

Marty is the owner of the house.

“I thought a famous actor lived here?” I ask.

“No, the party is for him; this house belongs to the producer, Marty,” she answers.

“Ohhh.”

Marty is a fat, balding guy. He probably looks older than he is. He is with two gorgeous blondes but ignores them as soon as he sees Julia.

“Julia, my love!” He exclaims.

They kiss each other on the cheek and he grips her shoulders in his ugly hands. They make small talk for a minute before he addresses me, reluctantly, it seems to me.

“Who’s your friend, darling? He is just a friend, I hope,” he fakes a laugh.

She looks over at me and smiles.

“This is Jimmy, he plays guitar.”

Marty shakes my hand.

“Well, friend, we got booze, broads, drugs- whatever you need. It’s paradise up here, enjoy it while you can!”

I do not like the way he talks down to me.

“Looks like hell,” I say with a grin.

“Like I said, paradise!”

He gives us a most obnoxious belly laugh.

Julia excuses us and we make out way into the house. We greet a few others then Julia introduces me to a local legend. He plays guitar like myself. He is the first person who seems genuine. Maybe it is just because we can immediately relate. Everybody else up here is actors and models, it seems. Everybody. And they play up to it. They do not have their own identity; they are what their label, “actor,” or “model,” or “producer” makes them.

This local legend introduces himself as Jonny. We talk about music and smoke weed. Julia smokes with us. She watches us talk but hardly says a word.

Jonny breaks out the coke and forms it into nine thin lines. We each do three.

“I only came up here because Julia wanted me to meet you,” Jonny says. “She tells me about you, yunno. You seem quite the character.”

I cannot tell if this is an insult or compliment but I am high now and do not care.

“I’m nothing special,” I say as I rub my eyebrow.

I find myself sniffing and fidgeting around.

He laughs and looks over at Julia. They laugh together. I feel like the butt of the joke, like they are laughing at me and I do not know why.

“I’m crazy,” I say, tossing my hands up in the air.

He laughs at this but she does not.

“You know, this girl here, she is something else, I’ll tell ya,” Jonny says as his laughter decreases.

“Tell me,” I grin.

“Maybe you should tell me,” he says as his laughter hits a crescendo.

“Fuck that, I can show ya,” Julia breaks in softly and smoothly and his laughter hits an all-time high.

She does three more lines then gives me a hard kiss. Her lips feel so good on mine.

I think I am sweating but I feel good, I feel powerful.

“You two are something else,” Jonny is still laughing.

We have only been talking for a short time when he says this. This makes me laugh.

Jonny starts to go on about us…

I laugh because I can feel Jonny falling for us. This happens all the time. People fall in love with the idea of Julia and me. They want us, they want to be us, they want to be around us. Even this guitarist, a local legend, who has had his share of lovers and groupies, traveled the world and seen a lot, he cannot grasp us but he wants to. He wants to so badly.

We joke around for a little more. He tells me, emphatically, he will stop by Louie’s sometime. He might, he might not, I figure. He says we will jam together and what not. He tells Julia he will see her around and asks if she is going to Caesar’s “thing” next weekend. He tells her to bring me. It is probably just the coke. We say our goodbyes and part ways.

As we walk out, I stop and look around. Everybody seems to be watching us. Now all the boys’ faces look like they are looking up to me and the girls look like they want me. I know why.

Julia did her thing. The people that greeted her probably talked about her to people that talked about her to people that talked about her and so on. The whole place talked about her at some point. They shared stories, they asked questions, they wondered about her and who was this nobody she was with.

Julia was not famous with the masses, but she was famous with the famous, I surmised. She was that thing you want but cannot get. Only I can get her because I do not need her. As soon as I need her, she will leave me in the dust like everybody else.

Those faces staring at us or peeking at us need her. They do not want her to leave. When she does, they will wonder where we go. They will talk about her. Marty will curse his blondes because they are not her. Jonny will plot; he will try to get with her. Before you know it, the girls will rationalize and boys alike. The girls will make excuses and justify why they cannot be like her and the boys will convince themselves they do not like her. They do not like her, they need her.

She has done it before and she will do it again. She walks in with a match and sets the place on fire. The fire spreads and consumes the place. When the place is burning down to the ground, she leaves. She does not look back while it turns to ashes. People watch from the outside and hope that someday maybe she will turn their place to ashes. To be consumed by her fire would be worth burning to ashes.

We drive off into the night. As usual, she drives. We are already high, but still smoking weed. She finishes it and tosses it out the window.

“What’d ya think?”

I giggle.

“Radical,” I say after a short pause.

“Righteous,” she laughs back.

“How about Marty?”

“Now, Marty,” I start, “there is something. I thought he would never let go of you.”

She is laughing.

“He wouldn’t if he could,” she tells it like a joke but we both know it is true.

“I see why you won’t act,” I joke.

We laugh some more and continue joking. She says Marty has never actually made a real pass at her. She says he is afraid of her. He should be.

Nonetheless, she tells me he takes her shopping and buys her things, expensive things. She says he always acts like he is just being a gentleman, but she knows he is trying to show off. She is unimpressed but she plays along a little bit. It is fun for her, toying with powerful men like that. There are girls that will do anything for Marty in hopes of scoring stardom but Julia does not care for all that. If she wants something she goes and gets it.

However, in reality, she could be sleeping with him. She could be. She would do to just to toy with him but she might do it nonetheless. I do not know. I never know. I cannot know; it is better this way. Well, maybe it is not better, but it is what it is. Or maybe it is what it isn’t. Either way, it does not matter.

Julia drives fast but we are going nowhere. When we pull into a cozy little town by the water, she slows down. She tells me she loves this place. I do not even know if she has been here before. I have not.

Julia is on fire and I can feel the heat coming off her body. I love that feeling. I have never met anybody that was on fire. It is only her.

She burns down this quaint little town and it is on to the next one.

We drive around until the drugs and drink wear off and we get back to the apartment. She leaves her fire in the car and we walk up the stairs and go to bed.

VIII

Julia has been gone for a couple of days and I have been making it on my own. I have spent the past few days playing at Louie’s, walking around aimlessly, and eating at the diner. It is the usual. I do not like that. I do not like the “usual.” I like change. I like things to be different. I like to be different.

I am sitting in the diner enjoying a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. I look at the clock. It is just past 1am. I should head to Louie’s for my set. He knows I will be late; I am almost always late. He always tells me he is going to buy me a watch but he never does. I would not wear it anyways. I wear a silver bracelet instead; this reminds me that there is not time in reality. Everything goes in circles. We made up time to control people, in my opinion. To give life a pattern. To be born, work, and die.

I go the bathroom before I will walk over. I look into the mirror. I try to stay away from mirrors as much as I can but boy, they are everywhere. You cannot escape them. The more you see yourself the more you think about yourself, your appearance and so on. I am more interested in the world around me.

I look at myself. I am quite gorgeous. I look at the silver chain with silver cross that my late grandfather gave to me. It is real. I have worn it every day for a long time. It hangs down to chest behind my halfway unbuttoned shirt.

This chain is as much me as I am. I wonder if I could live without it. It is not that I see it as some sort of lucky charm, or protection from evil (what the hell is that?), but I see it as a part of me.

The cross does not hold a religious or superstitious meaning to me. To me, it is something tangible I was given, so it is something that symbolizes a real interaction. My grandfather owned it, it was his chain, his cross to bear. Now it is mine. He did not buy it for me, he gave it to me. That means so much more to me. I carry that weight for him, a man that had been through a war before I ever had. Maybe he knew before he died that I would go through the same, or similar, pain as him. Maybe that is why he gave it to me. He died before my war, but his chain went through that war. Two wars that thing fought. Unbreakable.

I wash my hands and head out into the night. I play with my hair as I walk. Julia always makes fun of me when I do that. I cannot help it. I am always pushing it out of my face or twisting it in my fingers.

I walk into Louie’s through the back and pick up my guitar. Tony spots me and we make small talk. He jokingly admonishes me for being late.

“Earlier than usual,” I say.

“How the fuck would you know?”

I laugh. Tony makes another joke and erupts into laughter as well.

I go out and say hello. Then I play. I play and play. I take a quick smoke break and play again. I play from my heart. I feel out the crowd and play songs to fit the mood. I alternate between well-known songs and my originals. One of my songs gets a good reaction so I play it again. This time I add a couple of lines. These lines just flow through me. I do not think about them. I have not rehearsed them. I feel them. They work the music and come through me.

The small crowd, those that are watching, actually applaud. I see some tables talking and laughing, enjoying the night shift. I see loners hiding away in corners. I spot some of the usuals.

One of those usual suspects is a guy named Alexander, but everybody calls him Alex.

“It’s Alexander, but since we are friends, you can just call me Alex,” he will joke. It is not that funny, but it works with drunk girls.

Alex is a soccer player at the local junior college and he uses this as his platform to brag. He also claims to have been a tennis “star” in high school. I do not believe him but I give him the benefit of the doubt because I do not really care.

Alex is good with the ladies. I have seen him strike out, but more often than not, he gets his way. His intentions are clear but girls fall for his bull shit. He says whatever to charm them. He plays the game. They should know better, but they want that excuse to misbehave. They want to hear what he lies to them about. They want to believe it. They want to sleep with him and then be ignored. They want to make excuses for their actions. It is all a game. I watch Alex play it almost to perfection with these insecure girls.

He comes off as very sure of himself, but if you get to know him, you can see his insecurities are great. He overcompensates for everything. He brags a lot, but then he says he is joking if you call it out. He will tell you he is a “player.” He is, but only because he keeps telling you he is. He will tell you is the most handsome man ever; he is handsome, but nothing special. He will brag your ear off, but after a while, he will start to ask you questions about himself: “Is my hair darker than so-and-so’s?” “Should I keep the beard?” “Do you think I look good in this jacket?” And so on, so on. You just start to feel his insecurity.

Alex gets girls so he feels he can back up his talk. He thinks getting girls makes him better than other dudes. When he strikes out, he makes lame excuses. He always bounces back. If not, he lies. He lies and lies; he says whatever to stay ‘ahead.’ He competes with you, even if you are not competing with him.

Julia hangs around here every once in a while. She likes to watch me play, I guess. She likes the hole-in-the-wall scene. It is dark and hidden. It is a world of its own.

The first time Alex met Julia he made pass at her. To Julia, a girl that does not fall for all that big talk and chest-puffing, Alex was an easy “no,” not even worthy to torture and burn alive. When Alex saw us leave together, it must have pissed him off, because he came back the next night, certainly looking for her. When he did not find her, he came to me.

“What’s up with that Julia girl, you know her?” he asked.

“Julia, now there’s an interesting little girl,” I said, avoiding a straight answer.

He questioned more and more, not coming out and saying what I know he wanted to. I played with him some more, not giving any real answers.

“You ever thought about,” he paused, “asking her out or something? Have you ever asked her out- or gone out with her?”

His insecurity was at an all-time high.

“I have thought about it,” that is all I gave him, and that is nothing.

I can be quite cruel, can’t I?

Alex kept coming back after that, more frequent than before. He would never come in two nights in a row- to avoid seeming desperate, but he showed up again and again. He needed Julia. A girl like her, or maybe only her, that could be his real love. That could be the one that makes all the boys and girls jealous of Alex. She could make his life what he needed, but never would.

When she did come, on sparse occasions, she ignored Alex. She would politely say hello, but after that, very little. She did not avoid him- Julia did not avoid people, but rather was unconcerned with his existence. He tried and tried to get her attention, but it was all to no avail. His efforts were hopeless. If she did not want you, she did not want you.

Tonight, Alex greets me after the show as I exit out the back. He never talks about the show or asks me about myself. He starts right in on whatever is on my mind, which always has to do with himself.

“You know that Julia girl that comes in here every once in a while?”

He begins to describe her as if I do not know her. He acts like he does not know that he has seen us leaving together. He talks to me like I am dumb.

“I got her, bro,” he finally spits out, the moment he has been waiting for. He could hardly go a minute without puking it out.

I grin. I tell him “Cool.” I do not even entertain the thought that it might be true. It is simply not.

He goes on about this and that. He tells me she was all right, but far from the best he has ever had. Now I know for damn sure he is lying.

Alex seems to me like one of those guys that only lost his virginity by bragging about sex that he never had. We all know girls who have fallen for that. Even if people did not truly believe it, all his talk made them curious. Some girl, probably younger or just very insecure, fell for it and made him what he had lied to be. From then on, he was not lying, just constantly exaggerating. That is how it works a lot.

All of Alex’s exes will probably tell you that he is a douche bag. He will laugh and call them jealous bitches or sluts and whores. He thinks tearing them down will build him up like they think calling him a douche bag and liar will excuse their actions.

Whatever.

I think you should do what you want and not make excuses for it. If you want to have sex with somebody, why not? If you do not, do not. You do not have to lie and make excuses and play the game and all that nonsense.

Julia does not go for any of that. She tells half-truths and fakes things to play her game, but that is what I like: she does not play the game, she plays her game. Her men might think they are the player, but she plays them. Always and without failure.

Anyways, Alex goes on about his “adventure” with Julia. He says he told her he would call but then he laughs and says he is not going to.

I laugh with him. Why not? I could invite Alex back to the apartment some night when Julia is back from wherever. I could show her off. That would tear Alex apart, break his heart and take his soul. He could try to act like it is no big deal, but I know it would kill him.

I could do that, but I will not. Let him do his thing. Let him spin his lies and live in his miserable world of constant competition with the next man. I tell him I am going to head out.

“Okay, take care, buddy,” he says.

I laugh as I stroll away. He calls me buddy to act like a friend while letting me know that he is superior to me at the same time. Buddy is a word I cannot stand. It is so fake. Some people probably mean it, but it sounds so demeaning. When a man calls another man buddy, it is like he is talking to a child. If you get mad about it, “You’re acting childish.” It is bull shit.

I use to hear it and it would piss me off. Now I hear it sometimes these days but I let it roll off my back. You know why? Because I realized something: it says more about you than me. It says you are insecure and say it to make yourself feel above me, superior to me. I do not say it because I do not need it. Feeling superior has no power over me. I do me and you do you. If you call me “buddy,” then you are the one with the problem to worry about.

I walk home with a cigarette in hand and push my hair out of my face. It is lightly raining, which might be annoying, but it feels good tonight.

IX

Jewel wants me to come to church with her. She never bothers me about it or tries to guilt me into it, but she always asks politely. I go over here less and less. She does not seem to mind. I know she likes talking to me but I also know she can live without it.

We talk for a while about how things are going, music, and so on. We do not get too deep today.

The conversation stops and we sit there smoking. I stare out into the world. Today is what we call a beautiful day but it feels sad. I get a nostalgic feeling that I do not like. It feels like a Sunday when I was a kid, knowing church would wake me up early and school would pounce on me the following day. It is that feeling of wanting the day to stretch on forever and never reach tomorrow. It reminds me that time does stretch on forever. It reminds me that it does not change just because we clock it. We own clocks and ‘time,’ but real time is in the infinite. It plays by its own rules: day and night, season after season, but they are not day or night or seasons because we call them that. They are what they are; they do what they do.

“Are you ever going to bring Julia around again?” Jewel asks.

They have only met once. I brought Julia by a morning after one of my sets to say hello. They got along really well. Julia made her laugh more than I ever could in one sitting. Julia even got her to tell us a specific story of her past, which was very rare for her. I missed the story because I was thinking about how Julia got her to open up so quickly.

“I might,” I say. “You never know with Julia, I mean, she does her own thing.”

“I like her,” she says, “You should bring her back around sometime.”

I laugh.

“I mean it,” she says.

I know.

For some reason or other I switch the topic and tell Jewel I will go to church with her this Sunday. I tell her I will invite Julia. I do not know why.

Later I tell Julia that Jewel wants us to come to church with her Sunday and I agreed to. Julia laughs.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, why not?” I laugh.

“I haven’t been to church in years,” Julia smiles. “What a drag! One of my mom’s old boyfriends used to make us go. I used to tell him I had to use the little girls’ room and then sneak out. One day he tried to spank me- you know what my mom did?”

She is laughing. I look at her and wait. I see something drop in her eyes- her demeanor changes- but she quickly regains composure.

“My mom smacked that grown man right in his face!”

We laugh.

“We left the next day. And she made that motherfucker sleep on the couch!”

She is dying laughing. I laugh hysterically as well.

“So, what you’re saying is you get it from your mama?” I joke.

She fakes like she is going to smack me. The laughter continues.

We joke and laugh until it naturally comes to an end.

“So, what about it?”

“Church?”

“Yeah, church.”

“Heavens no, hell no, and purgatory, no, too,” she says.

Sunday rolls around and I am sitting on Jewel’s porch with her big brother, who owns the house. We have met before, but we spend some time catching up. He makes fun of me for not dressing up enough. He says they really dress up for their services. I tell him this is dressed up for me. He continues joking. It is kind of funny so I give him some laughs but I feel nervous.

Church used to give me terrible anxiety. Terrible, terrible anxiety. I see it still does.

I sit next to Jewel on the far end of the pew, lost in my thoughts and pains of the past that return as the worship music plays and all the members fall victim to its hypnotizing. They raise their hands and ‘shout to the Lord,’ the lord they cannot see. It is just as likely they are praising a God as they are praising the moon and stars. What is the difference?

I cannot fall victim to this cult. I cannot fall for the music. I cannot fall victim to the symbols. I cannot fall victim to the ‘hope’ and ‘peace’ that drags you in, chews you up, and spits you out.

You see, when I was a kid, I had to go to church. I never liked it, but I tried to do what was ‘right.’ Then it stopped making sense. I never fit. I was tired of feeling guilty for wanting to ‘sin.’ I was tired of fighting it every day and night. It was a ton of pressure on a kid to be upright. It was tiresome. I wanted to things that I was ‘not supposed to do.’ I did not want to do what I was ‘supposed to do.’

I started to see religion as a lifestyle that was forced on me. There was no actual interaction with a creator or a god. He was presented to me by humans, humans like myself, with flaws and problems, dreams and failures. I saw God as an idea. He could be true, he could not. What does it matter? He is not here, and we are. Let us make the most of what we do have and not go searching for things we cannot understand. Let us love each other more than we love something that a book tells us is true. What makes this book any different? What makes this one so special? They are all just stories, written from specific perspectives; only some get told, some do not.

Furthermore, the pressure of feeling God’s presence made my whole existence uncomfortable. I tried to interact with God, but what I felt was just human emotion and feeling. How could I make a distinction between what is holy and what is human? How can I believe in a holy ghost without believing in ghosts? What is the difference? Is it different because it is something somebody wrote a long time ago? Is it right because so many believe it? Is sanity statistical?

That interaction I lacked with a life force outside of life on earth made me come to one of two conclusions: either God does not love me, or He does not exist. I did not know which one it was, so I chose neither. Fuck all that. I chose to reject religion and politics all together. They are just words for big groups of people that divide humanity and pit people against each other. In reality, they do the opposite of what they supposedly set out to do. They are fake institutions, built on assumptions and ideas.

Likewise, I threw away all theories of how we got here or where we are going. Who can tell me where my soul will end up? Why do I need to know these things? How can I really, really know these things? While others search and search for answers, I have stopped. Maybe I go to heaven, maybe I go to hell, maybe neither. Wherever I end up, that is where God wants me, right? That is the basis of what you believe, is it not?

I listen to the pastor as he begins his sermon but I quickly fall back into my lonely world of sad thoughts. I hate this cult, this cult that hides itself as a religion. What makes them so different? Does calling yourself a religion make you better than a cult? Does praying in public for healing make you better than a using a magical healing potion? What is the difference?

I catch the pastor say, “God is good, amen?”

“Amen!” the sheep respond. They have been programmed this way. The pastor, the higher ups of the church, who are probably Satanists in reality, can control the way the members think. Whoever wrote their book is God. Whoever wrote their God is their God. Their will is being made through the belief in an idea that they probably do not even hold themselves. They control people with God and this makes them God. It feeds their egos. Fuck that. You will not see me praise a God that has not come down here to meet me. Until then, let it be what it is. Or let it be what it is not. What’s the difference?

The pastor calls for an offering. He asks the members to give from the hearts. Only if hearts had hands. A minute later he calls them to prayer. I think of prayer as a self-brain-washing tool that conditions people to give thanks no matter what:

“Thank you for letting my daughter get raped. Use it for your glory.” “Thank you for letting my wife die. Use it for your glory.” “Thank you for letting me get this new car. Use it for your glory.”

They also use prayer to make requests to a God that already has a divine plan set in motion. The more you pray the less power you have over your own life; you give it all to God. He makes all things work for the good of those who love him, yet my mom loves him and He gave her me.

It is this religion that created Satan. Satan is the scapegoat for evil. God takes no responsibility, for He can do wrong. All wrong is from the one who once was His favored angel, Lucifer. Nowadays, many that worship Lucifer commit heinous crimes and horrifying acts. Without this religion there is no Lucifer to blame. Without Lucifer and God, we take responsibility for our own actions, for our own destiny.

But Satan, now there is a crazy story in the Bible. Nobody ever showed mercy to Satan when I grew up in church. He gets the blame for everything. God gets all the credit. This started to confuse me when I really started thinking about it. What does Satan do? He rebels against God, knowing He will be punished for eternity. He essentially dies for what he believes, whether it is right or not. God will be for eternity; He will see that Lucifer will be sentenced to eternal punishment. All for wanting to be like God. I see this as a story, a tale. I see Lucifer as the first rebel, neither bad nor good. I see God as authority, neither bad nor good.

Even when I used to watch movies, I used to root for the bad guys. In sports, I cheered for the underdog, unless everybody else did, then I rooted for the better team. I always tried to see things from the other perspective. Why do they do what they do? What makes them so bad? What makes the good guys so good? Is it not easy to be good when life has been good to you? Is it not hard to be good when life has been bad to you?

I watch a little kid get baptized. The pastor talks of the symbolism of it all and of the young boy’s life being made new. I see people crying. I want to cry. I feel like this is his initiation into a life of self-hatred, shame, and emotional torture. I feel bad for him.

On the other hand, maybe he will maintain a positive mindset and love others and find peace. It is possible, isn’t it? I try to see things from their perspective. Maybe their religion is a good way of life. It could be a life of love for one another. Maybe people are just using it wrong. Maybe the leaders are just leading people astray. Maybe they have their motives, maybe they are in the dark. Who knows? Surely not I, the most confused man alive.

Either way, if my soul is made for heaven then that is where it will be someday; you said it, not me. If I burn in hell then let it be.

My thoughts are rushing and overwhelming me. I try to calm myself down when something hits me. I have to say it. I cannot. I imagine it instead.

“Jewel,” I would whisper over to her. She would lean over. Then I would press my lips up to her ear.

“If I love you and you go to Heaven and you love me and I go to Hell, then what’s the difference?”

X

I have been depressed for weeks. That church service messed me up, I think. Ever since then I have fallen deeper and deeper into this funk. I do not even like the word ‘depression.’ It is a label to me. Calling yourself depressed puts you in a box. It begs for pity. I do not like that. I do not want pity. I never ask for that.

In any case, I am sad. I am hopeless. Blue skies are gray. The world is pulling me apart. My body is in pieces and my mind is leaving me slowly. It is the slow loss that makes it so rough. I can feel myself slipping away inch by inch. I hate it.

I have not been to Jewel’s since that service. I left before it was even over. As soon as they started the last song I dipped. I walked around and eventually made my way back to the apartment. I have not talked to Jewel at all after that. Maybe I am ashamed like I used to get when I was a kid. I would hide in my room after church. Then I had started playing guitar. That is when I really connected with music. It set my soul free. It became my sanctuary. I started writing songs. Church became inspiration. Those nervous stomach aches became melodies.

Julia has been gone more and more. Maybe that is it as well. We still drive around, we go to the mall, or to the beach. We still make love when we are together and it is still wonderful. We even start going to movies on Tuesday nights before my sets. We decided randomly that this was a good idea.

Everywhere we go, she sets it ablaze. Then we leave it. We leave it in ashes.

I play better than ever at Louie’s. People tell me over and over they loved my set. Some people say they can really feel it. I still feel like I am missing something. I reach for feelings when I play now. I push my borders. I stretch my ragged vocals. I yearn for something, but what for I do not know.

I start writing a song that I find might be about Julia. It comes from feelings and melodies but I recognize it as a product of the way I feel about her. I complete it in one sitting on the piano in Louie’s after closing. Tony tells me it is too sad.

“Sad is good, but that shit,” he barks, “don’t play that shit. It’s too sad.”

I play it again, for myself.

Something in her way

Keeping me from crying

Something in her way

Has me at peace with dying

Something about her

I can’t live without her

Something in her faceless face

Showing me unending grace

Oh, I love your eyes, your legs, your smell

Won’t you come with me to hell

I love your eyes, your legs, your smell

Won’t you come with me to hell

Something in her way

Something in her way

Something in her way, her way, her way

Something in her nature, walk with me through all creation

Something in her way, her way, her way

Something in her way

I don’t need a hope

Something in her way

I don’t need a home

Something about her

I can’t live without her

Something in her faceless face

Showing me unending grace

Oh, I love your eyes, your legs, your smell

Won’t you come with me to hell

I love your eyes, your legs, your smell

Won’t you come with me to hell

Something in her way

Something in her way

Something in her way, her way, her way

Something in her nature, walk with me through all creation

Something in her way, her way, her way

It comes very naturally. The chords come along with it. It sounds beautiful. I do not know why it is so sad but it suits Julia. I do not know exactly what I am saying but it feels right. I will not play it in here, I decide. Maybe someday down the road, but who knows?

I sit here and play around with the piano. A beautiful sound it makes. I play until Tony kicks me out. I wonder if he ever sleeps. He seems too tense to sleep. Do not get me wrong, he is relaxed and cool, but at the same time, he stays on his toes. He is just cool about it, you know?

I walk back to the apartment. The morning is awkwardly cool. I have a black denim jacket on but it does little to keep me warm.

When I get to the apartment, I find Julia sitting in bed, smoking a blunt, listening to beautiful old music on the record player. I take the blunt out of her fingers and take a slow drag. It is almost finished. I put it back in her mouth. She spits it out on the floor.

“I don’t want it now,” she complains as she gives me her puppy eyes.

This is just how she flirts with me, how she plays with me. I know she does not care that I put my lips on her blunt. She just felt like throwing it on the floor so she did it. Now I am overthinking. Stop it.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and put my arm around her legs. I give her a soft kiss.

She is looking deeply into my dead eyes. She is breathing life into me.

“Jimmy.”

“Jamie.”

“Baby face.”

She pauses between each. I wait to hear if she is going somewhere.

“You know what I’m thinking?” She asks.

I rest my head on her bosom. She holds my head and plays with my hair. We stay like this for an eternity. I could die like this I suppose. If I did, she would hold me until she felt like letting go. When she wanted to do something else, she would leave. She would not call anybody to get my corpse. She would leave it for mother nature. She would continue on with her life.

“I wanna go out like a gangster,” I say.

“I wanna go out with a bang. Fuck all that dying in peace. I want an exclamation mark. I don’t care about a funeral. Some people want this and that, or they bitch about not wanting a funeral at all. Who cares? Not me. Death will be my funeral, baby.”

She holds me tighter. She comforts me. She picks up my pieces and strokes them gently. She never puts them back together. She likes them better apart. She feels me.

We do not cry. We never cry. As a matter of fact, I have never seen her cry nor has she seen me cry. She probably never does cry. I would not be surprised if she has never cried at all.

The last time I cried was middle school. It was after church and I was afraid of losing my salvation. I remember my parents trying to comfort me. I remember trying to hold on. Then I started to let go.

“Remember when we were just kids?” Julia asks rhetorically.

“It wasn’t too long ago, really. We were told we only had so much time before we had to grow up and enter the ‘real world’ and settle down. They told us we would find jobs and raise families and go to church.”

She pauses and kisses my head. Her soft lips calm my heart rate, “they told us what to do and when to do it, but we didn’t listen. We still don’t. We don’t live in the world they created.”

I feel closer to her than I have ever felt. I feel closer to truth than I have ever felt.

We do not live in the world they created.

We do not make our own rules or our own religion, or our own government. There is no such thing as rules or religion or politics. We live in a natural, free world. We do what we have to- to get by, but we do it our own way.

Julia has always been like that. She sees things differently than others. She does not accept the reality in front of her. But she does not sit around and complain about it. She lives. She breathes, she moves, she inspires. She walks into your party with a match and lights it. She does not care about ‘big names,’ ‘popular kids,’ or ‘powerful people.’ She drops that match and burns your big mansion down to the ground. She walks into your world and makes it hers, not on purpose, but naturally. She will not let you make the rules. She will not make her own rules. She will do her thing regardless.

Julia calls a brick a brick but she knows that means nothing. She once told me that language and words are a cage that confines us to specific thoughts. She said she understands that nothing anyone says can actually mean anything. For that reason, she told me, she uses words like she uses people, as a means to fool the ignorant mind. She says only actions can really mean anything.

She told me she does not like to think, she likes to do. If she wants a drink, she takes one. If she wants a hit, she takes a hit. If she wants to leave, she leaves. If she wants to stay, she stays.

She said anyone can do it but people are afraid.

“Maybe it’s just my life that made me this way. Maybe it’s just the way I was made to be. Doesn’t matter. Live and let die,” she once said.

I have often wondered if she has shared this with anyone else.

She does not say anything after, “We don’t live in the world they created.” Neither do I. We just hold each other. We hold each other for a long time. Then she gets up, throws on some clothes and leaves. I get out of bed and walk out into the living room. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room. This apartment is small but it never bothers me. It never bothers Julia either. She is the opposite of a hoarder. She buys new clothes all the time but she never really holds on to them for long. When she wants something new, she goes and gets it.

I sit there and watch the television set. Suddenly my mind drifts back to the war. A darkness comes over me. I try not to think about it. It always creeps back in my head when I am alone. It haunts me but I push past it. It is a relentless cycle.

Today, I get a feeling of strange calm. I think about the people I watched die. I think about death. Nobody really knows what it is like. Nobody lives to tell. Some people say they came back from the dead but I think the very idea of being dead is not coming back, ever.

XI

I never could play sports. I always hated being told what to do and how to do it. Every sport I ever played I played my own way. Everybody told me the same thing:

“You could be real special but you don’t listen.”

I listened; things just never registered. I wanted to do things my own way. I could put the ball in end zone, the basket, the mitt, you name it. I just did it how I wanted to.

I played one year of football but I did not like getting hit, so I played wide receiver. I could catch and score, but because I would not block, my coach would not play me. I spent every practice running, doing push-ups, and doing core workouts.

I played basketball for a couple of years. Same story. I spent every practice doing sprints and pull-ups instead of skill work. I would not pass. If you threw it to me, I shot it. I could shoot it, too, but it did not matter. The coaches wanted team players, not ball hogs. The coaches saw I was talented but I would not work with them. They gave up on me and I gave up on them.

I played baseball for a couple of years as well. Baseball, I was good at. I was a pitcher. On the mound, nobody could tell me what to do. At that young age, nobody threw anything but fastballs, so you could not coach me. However, I found a way to make it hard on my coaches. I would not swing at pitches. Either walk me or strike me out, baby. I would not field either. Either pitch me or sit me. When I got tired of people trying to get me to hit and field, I stopped playing.

My father told me I had to play sports to stay busy at least until high school but I told him I wanted to play guitar. My mom convinced him that as long as I kept a log and played at least an hour a day on week days I should not have to play a sport. I played way more than that. I never played another organized sport. Thank you, Mom.

Julia never played organized sports, but she was athletic. She liked to go for runs or swims. I think she did it for fun but it kept her in great shape. She also told me that she rode horses when she was young. I asked her if she ever did anymore. She said on occasion.

She could not play sports for the same reason as me. Nobody could tell her what to do. In school she got Cs and Ds in classes on purpose, knowing it was the worst she could do while still making it to the next grade. It was another rebellion of hers. She said getting good grades would be a win for the system. She said it like a joke but it kind of stuck with me.

Now we sit here watching a basketball game, with tickets she got from a friend, I do not know who. We got really drunk on the ride here but are managing to keep it together. The seats are pretty good seats, and the game is very enjoyable.

Julia asks stupid questions about how basketball is played to be funny. I know she is joking but I wonder if she actually understands the game.

“Do you actually know how to play basketball?” I ask.

“Put the orange ball in the red hole.”

Fair enough.

She decides to start cheering for the away team because she is bored with the home team.

“Gooo team!”

She says like a dizzy cheerleader. We laugh like it is the funniest joke in the world. Maybe it was.

She quiets down and puts on a serious, sophisticated face. She crosses her legs and places her hands around her knees.

“We’re famous,” she says.

I look up to see if we are on the screen or something. We are not.

“How famous?” I play along.

“Too famous.”

“Not famous enough.”

“Never famous enough.”

The game ends. The away team wins.

“How’d you know?” I ask.

“Know what?”

I know she knows what I am talking about. I try to wait her out but damn, she never gives in. She waits me out.

“You always choose winners.”

“Not true,” she says, “I chose you, didn’t I?”

Hilarious.

“My game is far from finished, baby face.”

She likes this answer. I can tell because I notice her eyes light up. I fear they might burn holes through the stadium as we exit.

“I didn’t know you were playing,” she flirts.

I guess I am.

“I’m still getting warmed up,” I say.

“Just stretching?” she retorts.

“Baby, that’s your game.”

Check mate?

“Depends who’s watching.” She flips it.

Check mate for her.

We get in her little red drop top. She turns on the radio and turns it up. She speeds off into the sun. I light up a cigarette for the drive. I never know where she might go. Maybe back to the apartment, maybe not.

Not.

She drives to a beautiful beach that I have never been to. She parks up on a hill. We get out and walk across the parking lot. I finish my smoke and step on the roach.

“I do some shoots up here,” she says.

This is the perfect place for a picture. The beach is gorgeous and the air is fresh. The sun looks down happily at this place, I can tell.

She grabs my hand and walks me down stairs to the beach and out to the water. We kick off our shoes and shed some clothes and then I go chasing her into the big blue ocean. We stay out here until the sun starts to set. She asks me if she should take me and drop me off at Louie’s.

“Sure, why not.”

I walk around to the back but the door is locked. I walk back around to the front and go in. I go sit at the bar and light up a cigarette.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I hear Tony’s loud voice. He is walking towards me.

“An hour early, I’ll be damned.” He emphasizes that last part. A lot.

“I’m turning over a new leaf,” I joke.

I really have no idea that I was this early.

He laughs, I grin.

“I’ll never be late again.”

Tony makes a crude remark about what he will do if that happens before returning to the kitchen or his office. Every five minutes or so he seems to pop up and then go back.

I sit at the bar drinking and talking to the new bartender. His name is George. I decide to call him Georgie for some reason.

“Georgie, this all goes on the boss man’s tab,” I joke.

He winks at me.

I drink and smoke until it is time for my set. I head backstage and grab my guitar. I walk out to the stage and start strumming. I do not say a word tonight. I go right into my singing. Actually, I probably do this more often than not.

Tonight, the bar is dead. Only a few patrons sit around. Tony impulsively walks around, back to his office, over to the bar, around the booths, and then back again. I play and play hard, leaving myself out there but nobody hears it. Some nights are like this.

I get on the piano and play sad songs. It seems to fit the mood better.

“You’re making me cry,” Tony yells as he paces furiously back to whence he came.

I play and play until everybody leaves and then I keep playing. Tony closes early and kicks me out. I sit out back smoking a cigarette.

A man approaches me in the alley.

“You got a dollar, man?”

“I got a few,” I say.

I sit there still. I wait. He waits. We do not move.

“Can ya lend me a dollar? I lost my job, yunno, and I wanna get a burger, just something to eat, man.”

I sit there. I wait to see what he will do. He stands there patiently. He is not going anywhere.

I get up and walk away after putting out my cigarette.

“C’mon, man, you can’t lend me a dollar?” He says, getting frustrated.

I walk away slowly.

“Fuck you, then! Go to hell,” he yells after me.

I keep walking.

XII

There is a battle going on over my body. There are two, maybe more souls fighting for this worn-out man. They wait for him to go to sleep and then attack each other viciously. They go to war. Nobody ever wins.

I feel a numbness over my body. I fight to kick loose of the hold I am under. I try to stretch out, I try to roll over, I try to break free. I cannot. I grasp for air. I fight the forces that fight over me.

There is an intense tingling sensation carried over my body that is driving me mad. It is worse than no feeling at all. There is something going on in my mind but I cannot see it. Something tries to calm me down but it is impossible.

I am caught in an unending wave. It continues for an eternity. I go ‘round and ‘round, waiting to drown. But I never quite drown. I fight for air I never quite breathe. There is no peace here.

Darkness pulls me in and then spits me out.

I am laying on the floor, and the bed is in shambles. Julia is gone.

I sit up and light up a cigarette. I am shaking lightly. I do not have the energy to shake profusely. I feel like I am dead. I am tired and weary. I have no strength in this body. I smoke it away. I smoke it all away but it never really leaves. I just smoke until I cannot see it for a while.

Julia walks in through the bedroom door and throws herself down next to me.

She smiles at me and makes everything all right.

Next thing you know we are on some city street, walking past shops, restaurants, and alleys. She is walking my pace. We do not hold hands. We do not say a word. I watch the world pass me by. She stays by my side.

As we pass by a book store, she stops and points at something. She is laughing.

I look over. I see what she is pointing at. It is a book called “Don’t Give Up”.

“What’s so funny?” I ask with a giggle.

She laughs harder before explaining.

“Jamie,” she says, “do you know what this book is about?”

I pause and shake my head no.

“It’s about this guy who felt he had nothing to live for anymore so he was gonna kill himself.”

What is funny about that?

“He writes about why people facing depression shouldn’t do it. Everybody has something to live for, he says,” she tells me.

It still does not click for me. I feel slow.

“So?”

She laughs again.

“Jamie, what about the people who have killed themselves?”

Huh?

“Has anybody who ever killed themself wrote a book about why you shouldn’t kill yourself?”

But he probably tried to… but he did not. I get what she is saying. It is profound, really. Now I am interested. What would somebody who killed themself tell us? Would they tell us it is not worth it or would they tell us it is actually freeing? Maybe they would have different opinions. Either way, nobody who tells you not to kill yourself has ever killed themself.

She continues to laugh as we walk away. She does not care about offending anyone. If you are offended that is your problem. Get over it, or not, it is up to you; not her.

She struts by my side and it feels right. I watch people watch her. I got my strut going as well, naturally. I walk like a cat, like a beautiful woman, light on my toes. A breeze blows through my long hair. Gorgeous.

We strut up the street and leave a trail of tears behind us. I feel like there could be cars crashing and buildings burning in our dust. We would not look back. We would not stop. We strut.

XIII

I have not stopped at Jewel’s to talk since that church service. I still pass by her and see her out on the porch, and sometimes I wave at her as if she can see me, but I keep walking. I do not stop to talk to her.

I miss talking to Jewel. But now I do not know what to say. I feel like I said it all before I dipped out of the service and out of her life. It is a rotten thing I am doing. Jewel cannot get to me. Only I can get to her.

Her life must be tough. She is wise, and kind, and was once beautiful, but she is blind. People like me must use her all the time. You can have her but she can never have you. You can talk to her when you want but she can only talk back when you talk first.

What makes it even sadder is her wonderful temperament. You might think that she would get so lonely and tired of being ignored that she would talk anybody’s head off that makes contact with her, but she does not. She sits there and listens. She talks softly and asks questions. She cares about people that she must know are using her.

At least she knows I love her. At least she knows I care about her.

Right?

After I think that I hope that I am not rationalizing. I hope I mean it. It is too hard to really tell. It is what it is. Or it is what it is not.

Today I am sitting in the diner waiting on my food. I sip coffee and smoke a cigarette. Camille flirts with me and I flirt back. I love to watch her walk away after she serves me. She can make the littlest things sexy.

I see a man in the corner sneak a look at Camille as she passes him. He is sitting with his wife, who currently has her head down and is talking. I study them. I look at his ring finger. I look at hers. They are married.

Marriage is like religion, I think. It puts a lot of pressure on you that does not need to be there. It leaves you bitter, like it or not.

On the other hand, maybe there is some merit to it. It makes you more committed, it brings you closer with one person. It creates families that love each other.

But what is marriage but just an idea? What makes it a tangible, real thing? Why are people so upset when people who are not married have sex? Is not sex ours for the having? Who tells us what to do with our bodies? Do they not belong to us?

I cannot understand marriage and how it got to be but I try to respect it. I just do not want it for myself. It must be so much pressure to be committed to one human, and to realize you are still attracted to other people, and they are attracted to you. Now you cannot follow your heart, you follow the rules of marriage.

I do not know, maybe it is better that way, with structure. Or maybe not. I know marriage is not something we are born with, though. It is an idea that we, or some god, created and passed down to us.

I watch the couple laugh and seemingly enjoy their meal. They are flirtatious, but refined. I figure they have probably been married for a good amount of time. They look pretty young but older than me. They are sitting across from each other, and not touching each other, so they cannot be newlyweds.

“How is everything for you, sir?” Camille says, approaching my table.

I look outside at the blue sky and then back to her.

“The view’s great.”

She smiles. Now she bends over, moving her chest close to my head and points out the window to the sky.

“If you look closely, you can see everything.”

No more games.

I look. Boy, do I look. She is wearing no bra. And I like what I see. A lot.

I want to make a real move for a second, but I bring it back with the flirtatious banter.

“I‘d like to place another order,” I say.

Guess what I say next.

“I’d like the waitress.”

Then I pause and hit her with my devilish grin.

“Topped with whip cream.”

She laughs.

“Let me see what I can do, babe,” she retorts.

She picks up my plate and coffee and heads back to the kitchen.

I want to go for it. I should ask her when she gets off.

I sit there smoking my cigarette, wasting time.

She comes back out.

“I get off at 5.”

I look at the clock. It is almost 12. I could come back in five hours. I wish I could know if she is serious.

I tell her I’ll be here with a wink. Then I go my way.

I walk out into the world. I light up another cigarette. I pick up my feet and move around. I cross the street without looking. I hear a loud honk. I put up my middle finger in the direction it came from. They hit the horn a couple more time and yell something at me.

“Have a lovely day,” I mumble back as they pass behind me.

I walk up the street. I look at the world around me. People rush from here to there. Lights change. Car tires screech. Pedestrians go from brisk walks to hurried jogs. The sun sits up in the sky and laughs at us. What a mess we have made.

I walk to a clothing store and go in. It is a cool, vintage-looking place. I waltz around, listen to the cool music, and check the place out. I am greeted by an employee who tells me there is some deal going on but I do not listen. I tell her thanks and continue my browsing.

When I am ready to go, I go. I walk back out into the world and make my way nowhere. I might go to a beach. I might go to a park. I might walk up the street to a condo building with a nice pool out back. I have been to parties there before. It is easy to jump the fence and go for a quick swim.

I make my way to the building. I go around back and walk to the fenced in pool. I jump it. It is that simple. Nobody is out there, which makes sense at this time of day.

I sit down by the pool under the shade of an umbrella and chain smoke. I find a bit of peace here. I start writing lyrics in my head.

She’s always on the edge of a break down

She don’t understand but the words in red

She’s tired of people telling her keep her head up

What’s the use in a pretty face when you’re dead?

I decide to go back to the apartment and write it down. There I will figure out the rest with my writing guitar. I might go to Louie’s and play this tonight. Why not? I really like the way it sounds in my head.

I do it. I play around with it until I figure it out. I will play two parts three times over: A, B, A, B, A, B.

I like it. I will play it just like that tonight. It is sad but not too sad. It is cool. And it is easy to play.

I do play it just like that at Louie’s tonight. There is a good number of people and it gets an interesting reaction. People seem to vibe with it. Everything slows down. People pay attention.

After I am done, I go out back and light up a cigarette. A girl walks up behind me and taps me on the shoulder.

“I loved your gig, man,” she says. She kind of spits it out. Maybe she is nervous. I kind of laugh. No need to be nervous. I am nobody special.

I noticed her sitting at the bar alone about half way through my set or so. Then she moved to a table closer. She is cute. Nothing special, but cute. She is short and has big brown eyes.

“Thank you,” I say as I blow smoke into the air.

“What was that one song about? The one that goes like-.” She hums it out.

“You know, she don’t understand the words in red? That one.”

I grin.

“I do know that one.”

She laughs.

“Nah, but it’s ‘she don’t understand but the words in red.’”

“Ohhh,” she starts, “why? Can I ask?”

“I don’t know, really, I don’t,” I say, “but it’s important. She don’t understand but the words in red.”

“No reason? Really?”

The girl sighs.

“But you sing it with such a passion, man.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. What does it make you think?”

She pauses. She makes some weird noises while she thinks about it, some “huhs” and “hmms.”

“Words in red are the words Jesus said,” she says. She continues to think.

She starts to giggle and tells me she does not know.

“Just tell me, please.”

“I want to hear what you have to say, really,” I answer, I mean it.

She pauses again. Then she finally answers.

“This girl, she doesn’t understand anything but what Jesus says, right?”

I grin.

“She is depressed, about to break down, she believes in Jesus.”

She sighs a hard sigh.

“Ugh! I need some time to think about it.”

We laugh.

I tell her she can find me here. I will be here every weeknight from about 1 until it closes. She says she will be back as soon as she can.

“Well,” she pauses, “goodbye.”

She laughs awkwardly.

I wave as she walks away. I wait around, smoking for a little bit. Then I head back to the apartment. As I walk, I watch the sun begin its ascent.

I walk up the stairs and go straight to bed. Julia is laying there, sound asleep. I get undressed and crawl into bed next to her. She rolls over and wakes up.

Then she kisses me. I lay there staring into her eyes. She stares back into mine. In the next instance, she rolls back over and takes the blanket with her.

“Oh, no, ya don’t.”

We wrestle around and end up on the floor.

Wrestling usually ends up in love-making, but not today. We stay on the floor, the blanket around us. We end up talking until we fall asleep in a tangled mess.

XIV

We are cruising up the coast in her little red drop top. She is flying. But tonight, there is nobody else on the road for the most part. It is just us in the world tonight.

We are not listening to the radio. We are just driving, smoking and drinking, being in the right now. We are listening to the world that surrounds us. We are letting the outside come through us. We are busting through the outside.

It is a beautiful Friday night and we have nowhere to be. We are smiling and laughing for no reason. We talk here and there, but not too much.

The stars are not too bright but they sure are pretty. The moon is big and beautiful. The air is cool and refreshing. It is one of those nights that should last forever. Life should always be like this.

We are speeding in her car with the top down and I feel like we could drive right up there to the sky. We would never look down at the world below us. We would look up at the world above us. We would pass by stars and wave.

“Kiss my ass,” she would tell each star as she would fly by it.

Hell, the stars might even fall in love her and chase us through of the galaxy. Maybe we would have to escape this galaxy and search the eternity. Then we would enter new worlds- worlds where the skies are green and purple and moons sit right next to each other and hold hands.

Tonight, we are free. The wind reminds us of this.

With every drink I take I feel freer. With every drink the wind feels cooler and lighter.

We pass by neon lights and hotels. I love those neon lights. No reason why. I just do. Always have.

We pass small diners and rest stops. Every one of them is probably home away from home to somebody.

We drive and drive. I feel alive. I have energy tonight. I have passion and love. I lean back and close my eyes. Now I see blackness. Now I can see everything a little bit clearer.

The car pulls into an old-looking hotel that overlooks the ocean. It is old and worn-down but I like that. It is beautiful in its own way.

We hop out of the car and I follow Julia into the lobby. It is decent, nothing special. She gets us a room that overlooks the ocean. It is a nice little room with one bed, a bathroom and a TV set. There is a sliding glass door that leads to a balcony where we smoke, drink, do lines, and watch the low tide roll in.

Julia sits in my lap while we watch the waves circle. I hold her tightly. Her skin is soft. Her lips are softer. She has on a bra and high-waisted jean shorts. Her hair is down. She is a vision of beauty.

We talk about bull shit but it comes naturally because we are fucked up. She begins singing one of my songs out of the blue. I did not even know that she knew it. She sings it well, too well. I knew she could sing but tonight it sounds better than ever.

“Damn, babe, maybe you should be the singer,” I laugh.

“And you should be a model,” she says.

We talk and talk, laugh and laugh. Everything is light and funny. The mood is perfect. The stars applaud our conversation. The moon winks at me as I slide my hand down Julia’s back. The air refreshes us. The world brings us a melody that flows through us.

At some point we start making love.

We make love until the sun starts showing.

Then we sleep.

XV

I am standing somewhere I do not recognize with two guys I barely know. We are in what feels like a dorm building, or somewhere on a college campus. We are talking but I do not follow the conversation. I start to walk around on my own. As I walk through this unfamiliar building, I seem to know my way around. However, I notice a hole in space that I have never seen before.

I hop down into the hole. It does not take me to a place that is underground. Well, maybe it is underground, but it does not look like what you think of when you picture underground. It is like a collection of rooms from a huge house that have been torn apart and put back together randomly. I somehow work my way down into new rooms and new places.

It does not make much sense but I do not think. I walk around. I see what looks like a large lobby with couches and a fireplace. The ceiling there is very low but the ceilings here are very high. The relationships in size and space are awkward. Things just fit together, how does not really make sense. In this lobby, I find another opening that takes me down to a new setting. There is a spiral staircase that seems removed from a hotel leading down to a beach. The beach is by a man-made river that lies in a bed of steel. The sand is pale and feels unnatural.

There are many people down here. Some I recognize, some I do not. I hear an old friend call my name. I walk over to him. He is up to his head in the sand with his lover. There are many on this beach that are up to their heads in sand. My friend introduces me to her. When she turns around, I see that she has a very ugly face. It is scarred and mashed, very unnatural. I say hello but she does not respond. She scowls.

Next thing I know I am walking by a different old friend. I feel like he is a friend, but I do not know. He is telling me how I can be up to my head in sand like the others. All you have to do is step down hard and you will sink. The sand will come up to your head but never suffocate you. It feels weird but strangely comforting.

Once I have done it a couple of times, I separate from this friend. I look around. There is no sky but no ceiling, really. Everybody down here stays down here. There are staircases and buildings above but nobody even tries to get up there. They have created lives on this unnatural beach. I see homes and buildings and amusement parks. I see a lot on this long stretch of land.

I become depressed. I want out. I cannot accept this beach as my home. These are not my people. I make for the staircase I came down. It does not take me to where I came from. I end up in an upward maze of staircases and war-torn parts of buildings. I see light and I make for it. I climb through a crack that is oddly placed above and diagonal to a staircase. I get through it and into a small room with a window.

Suddenly I hear my mom’s voice calling out to me. She is around the corner below me, from the place I just climbed. I can just see her. She cannot see me. She is telling me things I do not really hear. It seems like she is pleading with me or something. I try to listen but nothing registers. I only hear her say that she cannot make it up to where I am. She is not able. She says goodbye and disappears down a staircase.

I can feel my other body pulling at me, trying to escape this madness. I feel an intense pressure and insane pain. I feel panic from all angles. I am pulled back down into this world.

I feel like something or someone is chasing me. I scurry up dark alleys towards a sky I cannot see. I move up and up. Staircase after staircase, building after building, I climb. I make it to what feels like the top of this world. Maybe it is not the top of the world, but it is the top of this world.

My other body makes another fight to regain itself. It fails.

I continue at the top. I am in some sort of house. The floors are rough carpet and the walls are high and white. There are household objects around but I do not notice any specifically. I push through them, turning on every light I can, but the place stays dark. Random low lighting appears here and there, but never where I need it. I feel like whatever is chasing me is going to catch me. It is terrifying.

I am afraid this is real. I am afraid this is my final reality. I smack myself in the face and it stings. I stop.

All of a sudden, I am pulled back into my other body. I am in bed, physically shaken and confused. I see a hotel room surrounding me. I am alone. I feel dazed and confused. I look around. This is the hotel I stayed at with Julia, but she is gone. I sit there in bed, sheets everywhere, and light up a cigarette.

I sit there smoking for a little bit. The TV is on. It has probably been on all night. I go to the bathroom and shower up. I see a half-full bottle of whiskey on the counter. I take a big swig to wake me up. I reach in my pocket to find a half-empty baggy. I line my gums with coke twice over. Then I walk out to the balcony.

I look out to the beach and see Julia. She is swimming around in the water. It is just her out there. I go back in the room. I pick my head up and head down to where she is.

XVI

This world is just people telling each other what to do and what to think. People are always telling you what you are doing wrong or what you need to change. How do they know? I hate statements about how you need to do this to improve your life. What I hate more is that if I say life is not about telling people what to do then I am making the same kind of statement.

If I were to say this to somebody it would not make sense but it makes as much sense to me as anything else. I try to think of it a different, clearer way, a way that I could tell to somebody. It is like this:

If you say ghosts are real you might be right. If you say ghosts are not real you might be right.

Those are the things in life I try to stray away from, the things you do not know, yet those are the things that flood my mind. I want to deal with what is real, but in a world so full of stimuli and people telling you this and that, leading you one way and another, I cannot tell what it really real.

How can we be natural humans in such a coercive world? How do we know we are not just brain-washed robots, all a part of somebody’s game? I feel like I feel things I cannot control that make me do things I cannot understand. Where do those feelings come from?

Julia splashes me. The water is cool and snaps me out of my funk. I stand up, laugh, and spit out gulps of water. I splash her back. I chase her until she swims away. I do not even try to swim after her. That girl can kick it. I watch her swim away. She is fast but graceful. It looks so natural like she does not even try.

As we walk out of the water and take a seat on the beach, I ask her a question.

“Do you ever do things you aren’t good at?”

She smiles and looks over at me.

“I’m good at everything.”

We sit there and banter, laugh, and soak up the sun.

“Let’s hit the road, jack,” she finally says.

We walk back up to the hotel and grab what little stuff we left up there; I leave with some hotel shampoo. Then we check out and hop in her little red drop top.

She hits the gas and takes off like a bat out of hell. We speed through life with a common disregard for everything else. I watch the sky pass by us. Even the sky cannot keep up with Julia. She moves at the speed of light.

When we get back to the apartment, we go up the stairs and I turn on the TV and hop on the couch. She goes into the bedroom.

A couple moments later she walks out with a travel bag in hand. She gives me a hard kiss and heads out. I lay there stretched out in a daze, feet up on the coffee table.

Julia could leave and never come back. She could just disappear. She could get bored with me, bored with this town, and head out. She would be fine out there. She would never come back. And life would be dark again, but it would go on.

I would still play at Louie’s. I would still walk around and find new places to explore. I would watch people and check out shops. I would sit here on the couch and watch TV. I still would not get any sleep.

I basically sit here and watch TV until Monday night rolls around. Julia is still gone. I head up to Louie’s after I get a quick bite at the diner.

For some reason I am really frustrated with life tonight. This is not the usual hopeless void I walk through. This is anger and passion. This is energy. I am tired of this world dragging me down. I cannot bear the way this world has made me- so bitter and anxious. There is so much pressure here. Every generation is the worst generation yet. The older generations hate their offspring. The younger generations hate their elders. Everybody hates anybody that does not see it the way they do.

That is why what Julia does is so beautiful. She probably is far from happy, but is not here to get happy. She is just here. She has accepted that she is here and there are things that make her feel good and things that make her feel bad. She chooses to ignore the bad feelings and chase the good feelings. She has a fire in her soul that burns bright. People cannot see that fire as a physical thing, but they can feel that heat.

I peek in Louie’s. It is more crowded than usual. I see unfamiliar faces. I go around the back. I go into the kitchen and grab a whiskey bottle from the store room. I kill it slowly. With every sip that anger becomes energy.

Tonight, I feel a fire in my body. It is burning and setting me on fire. When I get on the stage it manifests itself through my body. I spit flames. My fingers burn holes in whatever I touch.

I play hard. I rock. I feel the lonely crowd coming to life. I see them stand to their feet. I set them all on fire. They dance around wildly. I hear some singing along with me. I hear some yelling and clapping. I am on my feet, moving around, beating on that guitar, stressing my vocal cords, screeching and clawing for life.

Fire consumes the whole room. Flames drip off my body and leave ash on the floor. The crowd moves and the fire spreads. I hope it will spread out into the world and burn that motherfucker down.

I sing off the top to a guitar riff I have often played.

Give me your eyes

I wanna gouge them out

Give me your mind

I wanna set it on fire!

I wanna set it on fire!

I repeat that line over and over. I yell at the top of my voice.

I wanna set it on fire!

It becomes a high-pitched screech. The audience screeches with me. For the first time since I have been playing here, I get hit with a bra. I do not even look up. I keep playing. It is like a concert, or something.

When I finally come to a stop, I slam my guitar into the ground. I do it over and over. I yell curse words. The crowd roars- some get scared and cower away but they are in the minority. There must be a few hundred in here but it feels like many more. When I am done breaking my best friend, I bull rush off the stage and stumble into the alley out back. I start throwing up profusely.

My face gets tight, so tight it feels like it is going to break off. My stomach turns and my chest is in knots. I can barely breathe. There is a battle going on inside of me. I puke and puke. I somehow manage to stay calm and keep my posture.

When I finally think I am finished, I light up a cigarette. I am alone in this alley. I am alone in this world. I smoke my sorrow away. I cannot let it show. I must go buy a new companion and play again tomorrow. I must light it up again.

At this moment, Tony busts out of the back door and wraps me up in a strong hug.

“You motherfucker!”

He is super excited. He holds onto me too long. He keeps giving me praise until he sees the vomit on the ground and wall.

“Motherfucker!”

I am leaning against the wall. I hear Tony saying things but I do not know what he is saying. I am trapped in my head. It is a sad and confused place. There is too much going on. I feel like without music I could snap at any second. I could do something horrible. What, I do not know.

I feel Tony lightly slap my cheek to get me out of it.

“Jimmy,” he says in a concerned tone, “Jimmy, snap out of it.”

I feel what is like fists flying into my stomach. I push Tony away and start throwing up again. Those tense feelings return. I give myself over to them.

When I used to get really sick or feel immense pain, I used to wish God was real. I would hope maybe He really was out there and he could feel my pain and would renew me. Sometimes I feel like if He really is real, he will pity us humans and redeem us all.

When I was younger, I kept hoping and praying that God would help me but things kept getting worse. Maybe I was being selfish. I tried not to be, though, I really did. I prayed for my family, I prayed for the world. I did not know what I was saying but I was trying. Now I am just sitting here in pain, knowing that if I am meant to be healed then I will be. There is no need to pray to anything. Besides, people say God heals but maybe it is just positive energy. How can you tell the difference?

I keep throwing up. I keep thinking about positive energy. What do you do when life sucks all your positive energy away? What do you do after you have seen people killed and killed people yourself? You did not even know why. You did not even know who you were killing.

What do you do when you have been through physical pain and suffering? What do you do when you mind starts to fail you? And what do you do when you figure out you have been lying to yourself the whole time? Your pain is real, and it is always nagging at you. It keeps you from enjoying anything. Only sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll can give you a moment of peace. And if that peace is war, then let it be so. Peace is peace. It must be something within, I think.

I fall to my knees, drunk and unable to stand anymore.

“You need some pain pills,” Tony tells me.

“Jimmy, listen to me. I’ma go get you some meds, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

He comes back with a cup of whiskey and some pills. I hate to be taken care of like this. I hate to have to lean on people.

When I stop shaking so much, I take the three little pills and whiskey from Tony. For some reason, I do not know why, maybe I watch too much TV, but I wonder if the pills are poison. Maybe Tony is trying to kill me. Maybe he is trying to put me out of my misery. Maybe he sees through me after watching me perform night after night. Maybe he knows how I feel.

I take the pills. I wash them down with the liquor. I sit there and lean back against the wall. I let my body stay loose. I let nature, or God, or Satan, or whatever you call it, have me. Tony tells me he can get me some more pills whenever I need them. I think he has told me this before actually.

I look over at Tony. He has a big gold chain around his neck.

“Jimmy,” he says softly, “You’re gonna be all right. All right?”

I look down. My neck hurts. I feel like it will not be able to hold up my head much longer.

I tell Tony I need to be alone. He pats me on the shoulder and goes back in. I do not really need to be alone. It just comes out in the moment. I do not think about it when I say it, I just say it.

I hear a couple of guys coming down the alley. I hope they walk past me and do not bother me. I hear laughter and wonder if they are joking about me. I probably would if it was me walking past. Because of that I will not get angry if they are.

“Somebody had a little too much to drink!” I hear more laughter.

“You good, buddy?” One of them asks. He says it like he is being friendly but it really is just condescending.

I just lay there, motionless.

“Hey, buddy- hey buddy!- can you hear me?”

I ignore him until he finally walks away. His friends go with him.

A second later I look up to see one of them has returned to me. He is standing over me looking down at me. His eyes look lonely and sad.

“You need a couple of dollars for a meal or something?”

I wonder if this guy really cares or not. I would not mind if he did not. He just should have kept walking. Care or not, live and let die. How can a couple of dollars save my soul?

“I’m good. Thanks, though,” I say.

I am stubborn. My father always used to tell me that. He said it is in my blood.

“We’re a hard-headed people,” he would say. I liked it when he said that. I never reacted to it, but I liked hearing that.

I lean against the wall. I wait for the good Samaritan to leave.

“I wanna help,” he says.

He stretches his hand out to me.

I look up at him.

“Aww, go to hell.”

XVII

I am laying in Julia’s arms, my head placed on her chest. She is running her soft fingers through my wild hair.

Tony told me to take the week off after my sickness but I told him every week is off for me. I played again last night and I will play again tonight.

“I don’t work, Tony, you know that. Never have, not a day in my life.”

He found that quite funny.

Julia tells me she wants to stay with me all day today. I am cool with that. I like having her around. She grabs my face and gives me a hard kiss. It feels good. I kiss her back. My body lies limp in her hands. I give her my body. I give her my mind. I feel like I have hers as well.

She strokes me gently and kisses my cheeks. Her lips are soft and full. Her body is warm.

“We could just stay in bed all day,” she says.

“You don’t got a shoot today, or something?” I ask.

“Not if I don’t feel like going,” she answers.

Suddenly she gets up and changes clothes.

“C’mon, Jamie!”

I get up and put on new some clothes as well. I follow her out the door and down the steps. We hop in her little red drop top and head out into the sun with the top down.

She takes us to a cool little vintage-looking taco stand. There are cameras and crew here. I figure she is doing a photo shoot her. A couple feminine guys greet her with kisses. A couple masculine girls wave at her. They exchange small talk and she introduces me as her friend.

“Oh, we met at Marty’s,” one of them says.

I watch her do her thing. No make-up; just cameras and skimpy clothes. She gets in and out of cool outfits and swimsuits. She struts around and poses. The crew members do crew things. I do not really know all that goes into taking some pictures but it really is a long, intricate process.

They talk about angles and bodies, and attitudes. They talk about the sun and the shade. Passersby’s stop to watch. Julia does her thing. She sets that little taco stand on fire and burns it to the ground.

Everybody seems quite pleased when the shoot is over. She kisses all the crew and walks over to me barefoot in nothing but sunglasses, a straw hat and a sexy one piece. She grabs some high-waisted jean shorts and puts them on.

I pause and stare at. She does not say anything stupid like, “What?” or “Is there something on my face?” She lets me gaze at her. She lets me like what I see. She hops her pretty little butt up in her little red drop top. I hop in behind her.

She steps on it. I feel the heat coming off the burning taco stand as we fly off into the sky. I watch her hair blow in the wind. She leaves a beautiful picture painted behind her.

Now the sun is starting to set. The world is calming down but the people in it are still running wild.

We drive around for a long time. She stops to gets some gas. As she bends over to fill up the tank some dude whistles at her. I laugh. She looks at me and laughs as well.

“Hey, baby,” the voice calls out. “Why don’t you ditch the freak and come with me?”

He is a tall, dark, and handsome dude with a stupid grin on his face. His car is at the next pump. It is nice, so are his clothes.

“What’s the matter?” He harasses as she ignores him.

She finally looks over at him.

“You wanna go out some time, daddy?” she says to him. I sense sarcasm, maybe it is wishful thinking, though.

“Let me check my calendar,” he says as his smirk widens. He hand-motions like he is flipping through a hundred pages.

“I think I could make some time Friday night.”

“Well, let me check my calendar,” Julia says. She hand-motions like she is flipping through a hundred Bibles. More sarcasm. Playful kind.

“Ope, I’m busy Friday. Maybe some other time.”

He walks over.

“You got a pen?”

“Nope.”

“I do.”

This joker pulls out a pen and grabs her hand. As he grabs her hand, his expression changes for a second before he regains his composure. He felt that fire. He holds it tightly and writes his number on it.

“Is this dude your brother or something?”

Julia laughs.

“I sure hope not,” she jokes with a wink.

He smiles at her.

“I’ll see you soon.”

He is a cocky bastard. He gets in his fancy car and drives away. I watch him speed off, trying to impress Julia, trying to make himself feel like a man.

He does not know what he is in for. He will be lucky if she never calls, which will probably be the case. If she does call, he will be stuck on her forever. When she leaves him, he will call her a whore and a bitch but he will still think about her. He will still wonder about her. He will try to find her, to act like he stumbled upon her. He will try to rekindle the flame, not knowing that her flame was burning the whole time, but not for him.

That flame is hers.

He will fall into depression. He will stay up late wondering why she does not need him like all the floozies he keeps around like play things. Those girls will not feel good to him anymore. He will get bored with them. He will start to wish he could make Julia his. But no one can possess her. She is not an object. Nobody is an object, but she realizes it.

I sit in the passenger’s seat smoking a cigarette.

“Come watch me play tonight,” I say.

“Totally,” she says.

“Absolutely.”

“Awesome.”

“Dude.”

“Babe.”

She takes me to Louie’s and drops me off, telling me she will be back later. She might, she might not. Who knows?

I walk through the back and get a bottle of whiskey. I drink half before going on.

The night is calm. The crowd is attentive, though. They vibe with me. I go through my songs slowly, but with no talking between them. I play song after song. I sing them with my soul; I do not jump around and screech tonight, but I feel it out. I still play hard. I still play from my insides.

I have done most of my songs for tonight when I see Julia enter. I see a familiar face behind her, it is Jonny. As the crowd starts to notice him, I see people go up to him and introduce themselves. Most of the younger people do not recognize him. Everybody else applauds his entrance and yells for him to do a song.

“No, no, no,” he declines, pointing up to me, “tonight, it’s his show.”

He winks at me.

I nod back.

“Pretty good guitar player, that dude,” I say with a grin.

I see him laugh and nod.

“Something like that,” he calls back.

XVIII

I could probably be famous by now, I suppose. I have had chances to sign. When I first started playing at Louie’s I picked up a very small cult following, one of those followers being the member of a local band that had reached relative local success and done some touring.

He had really liked my early sounds, scrambled and hardly conscious cries for personal anarchy. He told me he ‘felt that shit.’ His label started to come by and tried to sign me. I considered, and they ended up making a good offer, but money never really motivated me. Only I motivate myself, nothing you can say can really make me do anything. Maybe subconsciously, but forget about that, I deal with what my conscious sees.

Anyways, I declined for one reason: I wanted creative freedom. I want to do the art work the way I wanted to, make the music the way I wanted to, and do the shows the way I wanted to. They said we could work it out, but they were too sketchy about it for me. I would not have anybody else control me and use me as an image. I am not a marketing tool. I am not here to sell records. I make music from feelings. If people feel it, they will listen.

After they gave up on me, I had a few smaller labels try to sign me, but I was done with it. I will not be used as a symbol for their wacked ideologies. I am not a vessel to be used for some bad religion or cult, or whatever you call it. I have seen what the fame and success can do to people. I have seen them become gods in this world, and lose sight of what they set out to do. They get too much. They hold portions of the world in their hands. They are used by everybody, friends and family. They must be the loneliest people in the world, truly.

But this sounds different. This feels different. Jonny does things differently. He has a label called tEENAGE sUICIDE. He says he likes to sign young artists with their own vision, and he sees that in me. He tells me I am a bit older than most of the teenagers he signs, but he says I have a young spirit.

“I sign you and then let you loose on the world. All I give you is publicity, there’s no dates and no order. I sign self-motivated artists. They work on their own frame and I don’t pressure them. You have the freedom you want. You will find your own way to make it work. Then we’ll get you out to the world; we’ll set you loose like a bat out of hell.”

I like it.

“Thing is, you need people to play with. And I have the perfect drummer for you.”

“I need creative freedom, that’s it. Give me a studio and you got a deal,” I say.

I go on about my vision. I tell him the minute he tries to control me I am out. Fuck a contract. He laughs and agrees.

We discuss and discuss. We make talk about music. We talk about this and that.

He breaks out the coke.

“There is a catch, though,” he says.

“I want Julia to sing. I’ve talked to her about it. She said to talk to you.”

I stop to think for a moment. Would she really do it? She has a cool enough voice, and her looks and bravado should be enough to bring in multitudes. It would be an interesting sound, but it could work.

“You would still write the songs, though,” he continues, “or she could write some, however you want. It is your band, you’re the eyes. And you could still sing, I just want her up on that stage.”

“If she is up for it, I’m up for it,” I answer.

We further discuss for a couple days until I am ready to sign. Julia agrees to sing. His lawyer draws up some contracts. The terms are lenient. It is the perfect setting for me to free my soul.

He tells me they can have me opening for a tour in less than a year if I have an EP ready. I tell him I will not have an EP ready. I tell him I will have music ready. I might not title anything. I might title everything. It depends how I feel.

I guess some people would say I sold my soul but what is a soul, really?

XIX

Julia is better than I ever could have imagined. She can float over the beat in a falsetto, drift through a melody, and even punk out. We write songs together. It becomes a delightful process. We sing whatever comes to our minds. We put our minds together and make beautiful sounds. She stops modeling completely to make this work.

I become closer than ever with my guitar.

Our drummer is a beast. He goes by the name Dave. I never know his real name. It could be Dave but I doubt it. When we met, he told me I could call him “Dave.” If that was his real name he would have just said, “Dave,” right?

He is different, but mellow and feels things like me and Julia. We quickly become compatible. Our easy-going nature makes it easy to get along. We smoke and drink and do lines and make beautiful sounds. We practice in one of Jonny’s garages and then we practically live in the studio for two weeks while we record. We have a number of songs. Only eight really get finished. Six will go on the EP.

We are ready for this change. We are ready to see the world. This is the perfect time. We are bored with this gloomy town. We want to see other gloomy towns. We want to touch people in different areas. We want to make people from all over feel something, whatever it is, for a night. We want to rock.

Jonny promotes the hell out of us. We will open in a Golden Coast Tour for a pretty well-established band from the big city. We work with Jonny and a young up-and-coming artist to create a black and white image of a pretty face with closed eyes shedding a single tear from the left eye and big full lips. This image is used to promote our band, which I choose to call “daydreams”, no capital letters. We will not use capital letters at all. Julia and Dave both love it. We use no established symbols or doctrine, only things that come naturally. We do not really plan ahead; we just go with it.

We get done with our EP. It is six songs, with one image to go with it. I call it “couple of dreams.” We do a couple of photoshoots for local publications and promotion. Me and Dave wear all black. Julia wears black boots, bell-bottom blue jeans, a ripped-up wool sweater and big shades. She kills the shoot as a model should, but more, in only a way she can.

Our first show goes well. We get the crowd more excited than I ever expected the very first night. We do not introduce ourselves as a new band or anything like that. We walk out and rock. We play our six of our eight finished songs, and we throw in some drum and guitar solos. Julia messes around with tambourine. She sings and dances and gets the crowd in a trance.

It is amazing. This girl is amazing. She has never performed a live show before, but you could never tell. She just does not get nervous. She just goes along. Life does not scare her. She does not take anything seriously. She has a way about her that just captivates people. They wish they could be like her but they do not have the guts.

Night after night we rock out. We smoke weed and drink, we party our fair share, then we wake up and rock. Show after show, we kill it. Julia walks up on stage with her fire and burns up the whole stage. Her fire spreads to the crowd until it consumes the entire building. She burns it down to ashes then struts out, leaving nothing for the headlining band. They like us at first, but we steal the show. We are just too good, too fresh. We bring an element that has not been seen before.

We do not box ourselves in as rockers or punks. We play like humans; we interact with the crowd. We do not see ourselves as gods that your kids worship and wish to be like. We give the crowd feelings and emotions. We give them nostalgia and freedom. We give them a hopeless hope. We pour out our heart and then head out into the night. We kill that tour.

Our EP starts to get commercial success as the tour of the Golden Coast comes to a close. The word spreads. Jonny starts planning a tour of the entire country with his biggest band. He tells us to write a full album and he will get us out to the world. This is our moment, but we do not feel like that, we just go with it.

We are dead on the inside. Nothing this world can offer us can change that. We are bored with the ways of this place. We will rock for the sake of being alive. We will rock until we burn out like falling stars.

Julia seems to love this life of constant motion. We are together all the time. Literally. We even shower together in the hotels and studios. We record and record. We do a couple shows for Tony at Louie’s that max out the bar’s capacity. We have a big local following and our fire is spreading quickly.

Jonny tells us that we are even getting listeners in foreign countries, already. Our success is spreading like a wildfire, he tells us. He is amazed and surprised but he says he knew it would happen eventually. Just not so fast.

We continue to write from feelings. I notice that Julia’s writing getting better and better. Dave starts to come to us with his own ideas. Before he has simply confined himself to his drum set, of which he is a wizard, but now he is giving us more.

The substance abuse continues and multiplies. We are tired but we have energy. There is no time to stop and think about it. That is what keeps us going now. We love that pace that disallows us to think too much. Life tries to sweep us up in its rush but we leap at life like a jaguar. We speed through it like we used to in Julia’s little red drop top.

The album comes together wonderfully. This is because we do not try, it is simply a collection of songs, of feelings that need more than words to describe. Music, music gives us the feelings that words alone cannot give us.

We will not do more than one promotional interview. We let Jonny handle most of the promotion. We find we now have a fan base awaiting our first studio album. In the meanwhile, we make appearances at local bars and clubs. More and more people fall in love with us. More and more people succumb to Julia’s charm.

Julia and I do not discuss the fame. We are constantly making music now. She is starting to understand guitar and piano a bit. Her voice is getting better. Her writing is getting better. Her confidence and charm are as high as ever.

We release our first album. I call it “daydreams.” It only seems right. I do not overthink it. I barely think about it at all.

The album sees more than the predicted success. We now have a loyal cult following, eagerly awaiting our tour, scrounging for tickets as soon as the dates are released. We will play for months straight with barely a day of rest. We like it that way.

We design tour shirts. The picture is the same as before but now the lips are in red.

Julia and I start shopping together often. We go to thrift stores and buy whatever cool vintage clothes we feel like. I wear mostly dark clothes as usual. Julia often starts with light wash jeans and goes form there. She finds the best styles to put together, stuff you would never expect.

Before the nation-wide tour, we do one last show in Louie’s. We play for free. Tony charges a sizable fee at the door. Tony thanks me profusely and wishes us all good luck. We do not need good luck. We will just do out thing whether you like it or not.

The night before we set off to start the tour, which takes us north, to east and then back to the Golden Coast for the grand finale, we drive to a beach. We get drunk and make love.

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to light this world on fire,” I say.

“Eh,” Julia says.

I laugh.

“True, true,” I joke.

She laughs as well.

“I like how fast it’s all going,” she says.

“But tonight, I’m just gonna enjoy this sky full of stars.”

I smile at her but her gaze is fixed on the sky.

“Me, too.”

XXI

What is the difference between yesterday and today? Time just continues on because there is no such thing as time. Time is something we have made up. It is a human concept now, but it was not always, I suppose. There must have been a time when man was free from the curse of time.

Papers start writing about us. People spread the word about us. We are a mystery, traveling from town to town, burning them down one by one. Our mystery makes people wonder about us all the more. We get a call from Jonny telling us the press has dubbed us “The Band Nobody Knows, But Everybody Knows,” which gets shortened to “The Band Nobody Knows,” which gets shortened to “Nobodies.” Yes, people call us “The Nobodies.” We again upstage the headlining band but they are more gracious, having already seen large commercial success.

We still call ourselves “daydreams.” People long to know about us, but they cannot figure us out. People say that me and Julia are a couple because people see us together at diners and parties and on the tube, but we do not call ourselves a couple. We just live and let be. We just make music and put on a show.

Almost every night we play a show. We go to packed bars and clubs where sweaty teenagers jump around and scream. Boys and girls show up dressed like reflections of us. Sometimes I look out and see a sea of young Me’s and Julia’s looking back at me. There is every kind of kid you can imagine but they all want to be like us.

Our music speaks to a confused youth. We do not do it on purpose, it just happens that way. We sing of uncertainty and stars, loneliness and pain. We sing of joys as well, but everything comes off kind of depressed. Even our upbeat songs are sad in a way.

After the shows, we go to studios and parties and kick-backs and so on. Sometimes me and Julia just get a cab and tell the driver to take us around the town. Every party we go to is the same, no matter how different it is. We go into some building and out of the cold, where people crowd us and try to talk to us. We get all the free drinks and drugs one can imagine. Girls throw themselves at me and guys try desperately to get Julia’s attention. We stay together at these parties. We usually get bored and leave early.

Tonight, we get done playing and head to a kick-back. We walk into an apartment with our road manager/driver and Dave where a small circle of people are smoking weed. It is mostly girls and two or three boys. On guy is sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking about history and government and all that bull shit. They greet us with hugs and we join in the circle.

“You’re so smart,” one of the girls says. She looks like one of those high school girls that grew up before everybody else and only has so long until they all catch up to her.

The cross-legged chap continues on about the system in our country and all of the injustices going on in the world. I feel like he is trying to impress people with his smartness. Does using big words and talking about heavy concepts make you any smarter than anybody else? Do not the wise and foolish die alike? What is the difference? Is it not better to be happy and dumb than smart and sad?

He goes on for way too long. Some of what he is saying sounds good but it really just irks me.

Out of nowhere, Dave just erupts with laughter.

“Does this guy ever shut up?”

The place goes silent. I grin over at Dave. He is losing his mind with laughter.

“We’re all gonna be dead by the time this genius stops talking!”

Dave continues to lose it. The wise man is shaking his head with disappointment.

“This is what I mean! People just don’t wanna talk about it, they’re always shushing each other! ‘Just go on with life!’ they say… Why? I say! Why not stop and stand up for something?!”

I like his passion but I wonder how much he would care about all this stuff if there were not pretty girls in here listening to him.

Dave is still laughing. He is super high and I figure he might laugh all night.

Julia laughs a little bit, too. She stays quiet, however.

The dude starts back up about the perils of the world we live in. Then he gets into his politics and how if people would just listen, his party could change the world, starting here.

I look over at our driver.

“You ready to go?” he asks.

We get up and leave, saying our goodbyes. The girls tell us again how amazing our show was. The boys do to. Except for our wise man. Dave looks over at him.

“You didn’t like it?”

The man looks up for a second and then around. He makes a face like he is in deep thought.

“I mean, you’re talented, but honestly, I think you’re just another group of Neanderthals doing drugs and having sex and distracting people from what really matters- from what’s real.”

Dave laughs. I start to walk out.

Julia turns back to him as we head out.

“But what’s real?”

She delivers the corny line through squinted eyes with a beautiful sarcasm that appears to infuriate the genius.

She winks, laughs, and starts to walk out.

Then she drops her match and burns that sucker down.

XXII

Tonight, I am back in the sunburnt city, relaxing in my apartment, drinking wine and watching old movies on TV. It is a Friday night, and every kid’s worst nightmare is my reality: no plans for the weekend.

However, I am cool with that. I have just gotten back from months of touring and hard living. I have poured my soul out on stages across this great country. Jonny is busy getting a tour set up across the oceans, but we are taking a quick hiatus. We all just need some time to relax- me, Dave and Julia. She is staying with a friend up the coast. I am literally doing nothing. No plans. Dave has started renting a little condo uptown about ten minutes from us with a co-sign from Jonny. He is up there relaxing.

I am fine with being alone. Julia is like that too. We are creatures that need space. We like to be alone from time to time. It does not bother us. Life goes on as usual. All that changes is what is around you. What is gone is gone. What will be here tomorrow will be here. It is what it is. Or it is what it is not. Either way, life moves ahead, regardless of your clock.

We need new songs for the overseas tour, which starts in a few months, but we will not force it. We will not rush. We will let the music come to us as it has in the past. If it does not then it is not meant to be. I cannot screw over my fans. I cannot put out music just to sell it. It has to be real. They have to feel it. And it has to be from us, the people playing it. We cannot become an image alone, with writers who speak through us.

Our relationship with the fans is carried through the sounds we make. However we make them feel is how they need to feel. Many of them live in a world that we do not, a world that has been laid out and herds them along. Many of them wish to be us but they do not really know us. To be us means to see the cruel world the way it is. It is a difficult road.

While touring up north, we played on a popular Television program, which was seen all over the world. This show was shown towards the end of our tour. We were announced as “daydreams, but you probably know them as ‘The Nobodies.’ Given their explosion onto the music scene, they can also be called, ‘The Next Best Thing.’ Give it up for daydreams, playing their smash-hit, ‘waves!’”

After that we became popular everywhere. We are famous now. And growing. We have listeners all over the globe. It is crazy to think, people everywhere can hear the sounds we make.

This was my dream as a young man, to get my sound out to the world, to rock-n-roll. Now it is my reality, and it is just like playing at Louie’s- it gives me the only freedom I ever feel.

As soon as we finish our set, which always goes over, sometimes I stay out there alone and play until security kicks me off, which the fans love. Sometimes I dive into the crowd and incite pandemonium. At one show, I spent a couple hours in jail after “inciting a riot.” Our manager bailed me out and the show went back on the road.

When the music ends the sadness begins. Playing next to Julia is beautiful, but not even her charm can save me from the harsh world. We have good times together, and we spend a ton of time together, all the time on the road, but there is a darkness pulling me down.

I sit on the couch and watch the black and white screen flash in front of my eyes. I love old movies. They do not make them like they used to. With old movies, you really have to listen to the dialogue. You really have to watch the characters expressions and body language. You have to infer things and catch innuendo. If you do not pay close attention, you miss things. And then you mistake the movies for boring and miss the point.

The wine helps me chill out as well as a cigarette. I got my feet kicked up and I am really bumming it. Life is good right now but if it stays like this then it sucks. All the rush makes these moments so much better.

It has been a couple days since I have picked up a guitar, played piano or wrote a lyric. Some have popped into my head, but I did not write them down. I let them fall into that abyss of the subconscious where they will live forever in the shadows. They might never be freed. They will fade away and disappear.

When I get bored with TV I decide to walk over to Louie’s and see who has replaced me on the weekday graveyard shift. On Fridays, a guest band will play from about 10–12 and then I would go on at 1 or so. I imagine it is still the same. I go into the kitchen and look at the single clock in the apartment. It is past 3. Now should be an interesting time to go.

I do not want to be recognized. Our band has now become a legend at Louie’s. Tony has put our pictures on the wall. He has one of me when I used to play there that I really like. Sometimes I wish I could just go play there at 1 for fifty lonely people just like the old days. Shit, it was not too long ago. It is all happening so fast.

It is the getting mobbed at parties and hotels that has gotten out of hand. For the last stretch of the tour, we could not even go out in public. That TV show worked magic for our careers, but we never cared about a career. We got super-famous super-fast, too fast, and life went from no love to a surplus of love. Splashing waves turned into screaming fans. I still wonder how we made it so fast. I wish it were slower. I wish we could enjoy a lowkey phase, but that is easy to say once you make it.

Besides, Jonny promoted the hell out of us. With our mysterious back ground, strange antics, and different approach we make for a great story. The press ran with us. Then there was no option but to blow up. The world needed us, Jonny said. I guess he was right.

I throw on some shades. My moustache has been joined by stubble on my face. My hair is on my shoulders. I still look recognizable. Maybe shades will be too much of a tip.

I go back to the drawing board. Maybe I am being pretentious. Maybe I can walk down there and just Tony and Georgie will recognize me. Maybe just a few customers or something. Still, I cannot take the chance.

I throw on a black over coat to go along with plain white shirt and black skinny pants. I slip on some casual court shoes. I put my hair up and hide it in a big straw hat. I decide to hide my eyes with dark shades. This should help, as my fans know me with my hair down and eyes showing, shaven besides moustache.

I walk down the street smoking a cigarette until I get to Louie’s. By habit, I start to enter through the back. When I catch myself, I go back around to the front. I enter. There is now a fee at the door. The place is packed. It always was busier on Fridays, but rarely like this. There is a band playing on a new, re-vamped stage. The whole place looks nicer.

I spot Tony. I walk over to him. When he recognizes me, he stays cool and pulls me into his office. When he closes the door behind us, he wraps me up in a big hug.

“We’re all eating now, Jimmy, all thanks to you, did you look at this place?!”

He raves. I listen with a smile. I am happy for Tony’s new found success. He looks thinner and healthier. He tells me he will have enough money to pay for his youngest daughter to get through college if business keeps growing like it has been. He says he packs in bands every night and closes early. He closes on Sundays and Wednesdays now as well.

Tony says after we played on that famous TV show, where I said, “Uncle Tony, thanks, Louie’s, thank you,” after our song, Louie’s has blown up. Bands want to play here now. Music fans come from all over the Golden Coast. The place is becoming iconic. And fast, too fast. But it is all good. I am happy for Tony, I really am.

He goes on and on.

“And did you see our new sign, with the neon lights?! Oh, what a beauty, go look at it!”

I walk back out and look at the marquee, which I totally missed somehow. For some reason I feel like I will never play here again. I miss the old, hole-in-the-wall Louie’s, but I feel like that part of my life is meant to be over.

From top to bottom the sign looks like this:

“Tonight !

Al Burress 10–10:30 .

Sunny & The Nightcrawlers 11–12:30 .

All About a Blonde 1–2 .

Losing Hope 2:30–3:30 .

“Original home of Daydreams!”

The capital “D” makes me chuckle.

XXIII

A revelation is a just a giving in point. It is a time when something feels right in a moment, and you give in to it as true. You give your whole self to it, maybe until you die, maybe past that, or maybe just until your next revelation.

Feelings change, they come and go. After a revelation comes a battle. You battle the forces of nature to make your realization real. Life keeps going, throwing new stimuli at you, but you are grounded in your revelation. You are stuck in a moment of the past. You tell yourself you are growing, but are not the flower that grow and the flower that wilt both dead by the harsh winter?

A revelation is just accepting a feeling as the truth. Truth is just a concept that man invented to box people in. If you accept a revelation as true, you’re accepting some feeling as enlightenment. You are living based on some type of standard.

What I am saying could be called a revelation: there is no truth! But that is not what I am saying, I am saying how can I know? I am not even telling you that truth is relative and we are our own gods, capable of wonders when we open our eyes. I am not saying that. I am saying our idea of truth is just an idea. It is not something we can physically hold.

Some people say they hear voices in their head. Some people say it is God speaking to them, others say it is Satan. Either way, they have a voice in their head that does belong to them. We might call them “crazy,” but that could be their reality. Who knows if they really hear a voice or not? If they are not just lying then they live in a world where a voice in their head controls them.

If that person attributes that voice to the God of the Bible and says He told them to reach people for his kingdom, we praise that God and thank Him; we thank him for bringing in a soul to the kingdom of God. However, if a person attributes that voice to the same God and says they are called to kill people, we feel a call to bring them to “justice.” We say our calling trumps theirs. We clap as we send them to the electric chair. We applaud for “justice.”

I have always felt pity for the condemned. They never had a chance. We stand in our shoes and condemn their path, the same path that we say God has laid out for every man. We say God has a plan for everyone, and that He loves everyone and wants them to be saved; then we kill them for crimes that we see as heinous, while we commit sins that God sees punishable by death as well. All sins are punishable by death, right?

We use God as our standard for society, but we make the rules here. God is irrelevant on this playground. We kill those that say God told them to kill; I imagine we would have put Joshua to death in this society. We say vengeance is the Lord’s, well, who is the Lord? Are we the Lord? If we trust in God, will he not see to it that each man is punished according to his sin and each man is called according to his purpose?

I could be wrong but I am not saying I am right. There’s a goddamn revelation for you.

We have many new songs. Jonny tells us a few that should go on the album and one that should drop as a single to draw attention to the album. We go along with it.

We work on art for the album, we do photo shoots and even some publicity. We are high and drunk all the time, and more agreeable and less stubborn than ever. However, our music feels stronger than ever.

Then life becomes a tornado. Time loses place and value and we fly through every moment at 1,000mph. Julia, me, and Dave stay close but there is barely even time to think. We get on a plane to foreign lands and play and play. We come back and tour and play and play. Every place feels the same. Every place feels different. We grow more and more famous. We cannot go anywhere anymore.

We have money and fame now. We do Late Show appearances high off our asses. We get drunk before shows. We start doing a good deal of coke. We do LSD occasionally. We trip and makes songs about it. We make songs about how we are dazed and confused. We make soulful, reaching music. We reach for the stars we will never grasp.

Life is moving way too fast. Sometimes we wake up in our hotel room and there are random strangers lying around. I have woke up in bed with multiple people and no recollection of prior nights. Sometimes I go out with groupies and make love to them. It feels good in the moment but it leaves as quickly as it came. I spend great amounts of time with Julia but we become more distant. We still make love a lot but we do not hold each other the way we used to. We have no time. We are here and there and it is always the same.

The band is famous, the music is good, and the drugs are abundant. We are living my old dream but it feels more like a nightmare. I still have nightmares and my mind wakes up before my body but life moves too fast to stop and think. I am on a runaway train with a one-way ticket to hell.

I lose track of names; dates have become completely irrelevant. Everything is in a haze. In foreign countries I fall in love with a new model or groupie every show. They have sexy accents and wonderful bodies they love to explore. I love to explore them as well. They provide me with quick bursts of passion and releases of tension. They mean nothing more to me than a good time and it makes me sad.

I am distressed about what I have become and what I have become is what I used to want to be. I realize that Julia and I are nothing more than sex symbols now. We set out to bring a new wave of feelings and connect with crowds, but people see what the world wants them to see: sex symbols. There is no way to escape from the box life throws you in.

We are drugged-out, strung-out rock-stars with long hair and piercings, wearing cool clothes and sleeping around. We make beautiful music for people to feel but we have been reduced to sex-crazed monsters. We are an image of freedom and love that the public eats up. They never felt our music, they just want to sleep with us. We are their fantasies in flesh form.

People dream about us and touch themselves to our posters. They do drugs to be like us. They give away their bodies to be like us. That is not what we want. We want people to be themselves. We want people to live and let be. We just want to convey our feeling in hopes that people will get in touch with theirs. We are not leading you to truth, we are getting you into a groove.

But how can we break out of this box? If we die now, we will be glorified and mystified in history forever. We will be the talented youth that died too young. We will be the bright morning star that burned out in a flash of lightning.

If we live, we will become the reformed rock-stars, who found new meaning. We will be sober (or somewhat sober) and find our “revelation.” We will be redeemed singers, who sing with a purpose and have turned from their wicked ways. We will just become an image of hope, a light at the end of your tunnel.

How can we make music that has real value? Real meaning? The world will box us in no matter what.

When I was younger, before the war, I made music about movies, daydreams, and things I saw. I did not deal with feelings and emotions. I just carried on with life. I was a reserved teen, rarely having outbursts and controlling myself when I did. I just wanted to rock in a pure, unadulterated way. I wanted the life I have now on the outside, but not on the inside.

When I used to play songs for girls, they would tell me how deep I was and how they really dug it. They would find meaning in a song I wrote about something as simple as taking a walk. They would talk and talk, sometimes sharing secrets with me and go deep into tough topics. Back then I would just listen and say with a smile, “it ain’t all that, baby, it’s just rock-n-roll.” And that really was how I felt. Now, I write songs from what I feel and all girls want to do is have sex with me.

The world sees what it wants to see, I guess.

XXIV

In many artists lives, the grand moment comes in the form of award ceremonies. It is the peak of a life of hard work and dedication. Getting that trophy means getting the recognition you deserve. It is the fulfillment of your life’s work. It gives value to your creations. It gives you a platform to say what you need to say.

We are two albums into our “careers” right now. But that is the stuff we are trying to stray away from. We do not regard ourselves as famous, bad-ass musicians; we see no titles or special honors. We just want to rock and connect. We do not want historic careers and longevity. We want to light it up and then burn out.

We get invited to the biggest music award ceremony in the country, maybe the world. We are nominated for “Best New Act.” We win it, but we are not there to pick up the trophy. We do not protest the show, we just want no part in it.

It backfires. Not showing up to receive the award gets us even more media attention. It solidifies us in rock-n-roll history. People try to get the scoop on it: “Are you protesting the show?” “Is there something wrong with ceremony that offends you?” “Are you guys breaking up?”

We are more famous than ever.

We are working on new music and it is still coming very naturally. We have taken to dressing up in suits with top hats and dress shoes almost all the time. We get nice high-class-looking haircuts. It is our new way or rebelling: we are rebelling against the box that rock-stars fall into or get pushed into. It is our way of saying “fuck you” to the order of the music world, which is a mirage of no order, anarchy.

Julia does not shake it at the shows anymore. We do not jump in the crowd anymore or get over-the-top hyped. We play long and hard, going anywhere from 2–3 hours depending on the energy, but we are more refined than ever.

I stop sleeping around. Like old times, I only have sex with Julia. Honestly, it feels better that way. The more models and groupies I sleep with the more I feel used- the more I become nothing more than a sex symbol. Julia and me are tight again. We hold each other and breathe together. We are not oozing over each other or sharing our deepest-darkest secrets, we are in a place between space and romance that fits us well.

The media has no idea what to do with us anymore. They try to box us in but they are lost. They say we are caught in some existential crisis. They say we are doing a tribute to the old days. They call us wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Old folks say we are trash.

Christians say we are satanic.

We are none of the above. We try to shed off labels as quickly as they toss them at us, but, wait: now we are trying! Was that not what we set out not to do?

How hard is it just to make music that real people can feel?

When touring stops and we decide to stop doing any publicity, we get invited to a huge party up the coast where many famous will be. We have been notified that many want to meet us. Dave is not too excited. He will not go. For one reason or another, me and Julia decide we will go.

The night arrives and we throw on our suits and top hats. I grab a cane. She grabs a bag and drapes it over her left shoulder. We get high and then smoke cigarettes on the way there in her little red drop top.

Do I really need to describe the place? It is big and beautiful. The cars are insane, the yard is insane, the house is insane; it is all crazy. We pass by it all with our common disregard and are led into the mansion.

Everybody starts greeting us and telling us how much they love us. They say this and that, they try to be our friends. They try to figure us out. They blabber and blabber. They tell us they can get us drinks and drugs. “On me!”

They long for us but we politely dismiss them all and move around. Some get awful clingy but we do not react. We let them follow. Let them be.

Some people say they like the new stuff or the old stuff, or the new look or old look or whatever. To us, there is no chronology. It is all one. We are just moving in a world that is still- captive to the clock.

We are treated like kings and queens by people that would have spit on us a time ago. We are not people they want; we have things they want. We are what they want to be. Many people here are more famous than us, and try to belittle us, but it back fires. We give them no reaction; we grin at them. We let them go on while we ignore them. We watch as they struggle to keep composure, surely falling apart within. We kill them softly and leave them for dead.

Julia is not the most physically beautiful girl here nor am I the most beautiful man. But we are natural; we are human. We are not “stars.” We have had no work done, we do not cover our faces up with masks of beauty and pretend our false beauty makes us better than other people. We are just people, and that tears the “stars” apart. We are what they will never be. What they never can be. What their egos will not allow them to be.

I stop for a second to think as we move around the party.

We move from here to there; we get on our tours and so on. We still live in that one-bedroom apartment but we are hardly there. We mostly sleep in different studios and buses and planes. We are never really still. We get out to the beach at night to avoid cameras. Those nights are the best to look back on. These are the nights we never look back on.

Julia gets approached by famous actor. He is one of the most handsome men I have ever seen, I suppose. Many would say he IS the most handsome man ever. He walks straight up to Julia. He takes her hand and kisses it gently. Then he introduces himself with a witty line. Well, it is not that witty in all honesty, but he pulls it off with charm and swagger. Or bull shit, call it what you want.

“I must know,” he says after some small talk, “are you two together?”

He emphasizes the together.

We look at each other.

We are standing next to each other, so really, we are together.

“Yeah, side by side,” Julia laughs.

“Don’t play with me,” he demands with a grin.

“We don’t know what that means,” she says.

You can feel him getting frustrated but he keeps his cool, as a gentleman would.

“I haven’t time for games, dear, you see I have had my eyes on you.”

He pauses for affect.

“You move like something I’ve never seen. Daydream is fitting for you, dear, but sometimes you seem more like a nightmare.”

“But you’ve never felt me before,” Julia replies.

I cut in, I do not know why, I just do.

“Get the fuck outta here,” I say. And then I shove him, hard. Again, no reason. I do not know what I am feeling.

He starts yelling and comes at me and swings. I duck and come up with a mean uppercut that leaves him cut and bleeding on the floor. Two men hold me back before I can do anymore damage. I can feel people gathering all around me.

He starts to yell up at me.

“You don’t deserve that angel, you fuck! What can you do with that? What can she possibly need from a freak like you!?”

He is probably right, but maybe wrong.

She crouches down next to him on the floor and gives him a kiss on the forehead.

She says his name gently as she holds his head. I just stand there and watch. There is now a big crowd around us but I pay no mind to it.

The room is now silent.

Then she does something I never expected.

She kisses this beautiful superstar on the mouth, hard.

He tries to hold her but she moves.

She gets up and walks towards me. She grabs my hand and we make to leave.

He yells at her, calling her a “stupid bitch.” He says he will press charges. He will not; it is bad publicity getting your ass kicked when you play an action hero in every movie.

As we head out, we do not look back. People try to stop us, to console us, but we do not need anything. We ignore them and leave them in confusion. We are still holding hands. We walk out the big front doors and have valet pull the car around. We hop into her little red drop top, light up cigarettes, and fly off into the night.

“Beach?”

“Of course.”

Julia loses a car that tries to tail us.

We drive up to the beach in the middle of the night. We kick off our shoes and throw off out hats. I chase her through the sand and into the water. Then she evades me, swimming off into the distance, too fast for me to catch her.

I imagine that big mansion and all those beautiful stars are burning alive behind us. By now, they might be nothing but heaps of ashes to be blown in the wind. Julia’s way is beyond compare. Her fire consumes all, high and low, because her fire sees no difference; it just burns, burns, burns. It burns everything in her path. Even when she spares you, her fire sneaks into your body and burns your heart out.

Humans of this world cannot withstand that fire.

XXV

You are born into their world and if you are not like them then they try to fuck you. School separates the alike from the different, the conformists from the non-conformists. If you get good grades and go to college, you get a job and make good money and have a family and so on. If not, they toss you into a shit job and tell you that you are a bum. Or, you join the military and they send you off to die like a dog and tell you it is for the good of your country.

I could never focus in school and for a while I really believed the lie: that I was “dumb.” But what do those scores really mean? I mean, really? Is that real knowledge? I have observed and thought and found that maybe- probably- it is not. Knowledge is what they want you to know, how they want you to see things, not how they really are.

One man thinks he is better than another because he can get a higher score on a standardized test, but what does that really mean? Is any man really better than the next? Are we not all individuals with struggles and pain? We compete with each other in everything because we are told that this is a dog-eat-dog world and this is the only way to survive. We conform to a bogus education, bad religion, and lies spun as truth- As if there is a tangible truth we can all find and agree on.

We kill each other in this world. We put enormous pressure on the next generations and constantly remind them how bad they are. Every generation becomes the worst generation yet. We tell them to have humility while we humiliate them. We tell the “dumb” they are “weak” and “smart” they are “strong,” but that is only according to some ancient man’s definition of “smart.” And we never stop to question it all- really, why not?

The youth is hopeless and confused. They are demeaned by professors who think that years and years of schooling makes them superior. The only wish of the young becomes to grow old so they can possess the “wisdom” of the world and demean the next generation, and feel superior. We watch the youth battle it out like dogs and we tell anyone that cries for peace they are crazy.

Then we all die, we all die, we all die, we all die, we all die, we all die. So, you tell me, who is better than the next man? One’s genius IQ and one’s retarded IQ both end up dead with nothing to show for it but a number that is tossed in the trash.

Maybe that is why I play music. Art is the only way to escape. But that is why I will not call myself an artist. I am nothing but a man, and Julia a woman, and the spark we create is the only thing that feels real to me.

But what is real? What you see or what you feel?

I get up for one second to write that down, “what is real, what you see or what you feel?” It will make for a beautiful song.

I lay back and close my eyes. Time loses its place and stars enclose me. The ceiling and sky become one. My mind drifts away but my body remains.

I see great trees of great wonder. They stand high above the world, looking down on the tiny creatures below them. But they never get any higher. They stand at one height, the same height. They hate each other but they stand together as one class- above the rest.

I chop them down one by one but there are always more. I chop and chop until I am too tired to move. They remain high, looking down on me and laughing, reminding me that I will always be too small. Nothing I can do can really make a difference. Knowing and understanding that I am far from truth has not made me any better than those who think they have found truth but have not.

Maybe it is better to accept the world the way it is than to try to find another way. Maybe it saves you the broken, lonely heart, and nagging hopelessness. Hope without action or possibility of action, that is real hopelessness, for man is never without the hope of something. To hope to live, to hope to die, to hope to not exist is all to hope. It is when that hope has no way of manifesting itself that it becomes hopelessness.

I could wither away but a fire burns within me. Maybe I would rather chop the great trees down until I die than give up and fade away; even though both are just as futile.

Maybe a lie of hope can fulfill a false joy in a world of fake love and real despair.

My eyes stare into the distant worlds I can never reach. The stars give me that lonely comfort I have felt many times. I recall a poem I used to love, which was written by my older brother, before I understood what it really meant- to me. It ended like this:

In peaceful wars

fought miles apart

Lonely stars

find broken hearts

XXVI

We have toured and toured, recorded and recorded. It has been a non-stop roller coaster. Life has been crazy, but it has been keeping my mind busy, which I like.

For now, we have stopped doing any shows or any publicity. It just happens like that. We are not planning anything, but we are still writing when it feels right. I spend all of my time with Julia. We get together with Dave a good amount. Sometimes we make songs, sometimes we just play. Sometimes we just drink and smoke and sit around and shoot the breeze.

Wherever we go, we end up in back-rooms and hideaways. We are so famous that we can barely go outside anymore. Once the press found out about the apartment, Julia and I had to move. We found a small condo up the coast away from the world. A lot of rich people live up there, which we do not like, but it is our only chance at solace. We spent a lot of time there before we decided to head to an island by the southeast coast to get away from it all for a while.

So here we are, two “superstars,” nestled away on some beautiful island, taking in the peace and hiding from the world. We are actually staying in a rich friend’s place near the beach. Of course, everywhere here is near the beach.

We have been here for a couple of days and life is cool. It is relaxed. There are no screaming and wild fans out here. We have only been in to town once for groceries and were only stopped for a few pictures. Our taxi driver did not even react. Everybody down here is more relaxed and I guess they are more used to seeing famous people.

We spend most of our time drinking rum and making love out on the beach or in the water. Why do you have to be rich and famous to enjoy this kind of relaxation? Some people dream about this kind of thing their whole life, but the forces at work push them into hours and hours working in factories with nothing but hopeless dreams and blistered fingers.

I am lucky, I suppose. Maybe blessed. Yet I am never happy. I think happiness is a lie at this point. Maybe content is a better word. Maybe all these words just make us hope for things that we will never get, things that are not real at all. Maybe if we were not so worried about being “happy” we could actually find something that resembles it.

My heart is broken. I always had a broken heart. I was born like this. Life is sad to me. It is tiring. It is hopeless. It takes you, makes you, and breaks you in the blink of an eye. You dream something, you work for it, then it gets stripped away. Then you see things that drag you down into darkness. Then life gives you what you wanted but that darkness has consumed you. You cannot see it the way you once did. Your dream was better served as a dream. Its reality in this world is one of agony and distress.

Maybe only to dream can give purpose, because nothing of this world can bring joy but the thought of a future joy.

I watch Julia swim around in the warm waters. It amazes me that she has lasted this long as a singer. It has not been long relatively, but she is a free-spirited girl, she changes things up faster than you can blink. I figured the touring would get old to her but it has not. She seems to enjoy being on the road constantly, playing shows, meeting new people, finding new places, and never having time to think. But then she transitions to this sort of life so smoothly.

Julia does not seem to have ups and downs; she just keeps pushing forward, eyes fixed on the heavens. She moves about gracefully, but quickly. It is confusing almost. People try to stop her so they can hold her but nothing can hold her. She has been freed by herself, and she will not stop to please anybody. She will not give in to anything that is presented to her by the world. Her body is only trapped here, her mind is somewhere beyond.

She told me that stars comfort the lonely, or something like that. She was right. She is right. Stars are paintings in the sky to keep us dreaming. I still have dreams. I got dreams to remember. I got nightmares to forget.

We have disconnected the phone and turned off the TV. Yes, we keep the kitchen running and we shower in the morning, but we keep outside stimulus away. We are experiencing life as natural as we ever have. We are not running around naked, but we might as well be. I dress in boxers and jeans. I barely put on a shirt but socks are still a must for me. Julia wears over-sized t-shirts with nothing else or jeans and bras. She has a straw hat and some shades.

I might be the luckiest man alive and yet I am still sad. What irony.

Could any other man spend the time I do with Julia he might be the happiest man alive. But me, my plight remains through all. My mind will find new ways to torture me no matter what. When thought is not enough it inflicts physical pain on my body. The amount of pain I deal with seems crazy to me, but pain must be captive to the individual. I feel that everybody feels pain differently. People always try to compare injuries and ailments, but how can a diagnosis tell you how you feel? You feel how you feel. Your pain is yours and yours only. It belongs to you and then you belong to it.

I have popped pain pills along the way, but I am too busy to be what they call “addicted.” My mind finds other ways to torment me. My mind will not become fixed on any one thing for too long.

Julia comes out of the water and towards the beach like a goddess. But what would that look like? Has anybody seen a goddess come out of the water? Maybe I just have.

She throws her hair back and struts up to the beach. She is looking at me in my ripped-up jeans, socks, and sandals. She waves and blows a kiss with a laugh. Then she runs up to me and dives on me. We roll around in the sand. I feel like I am in a movie. It is a good feeling.

She smiles at me and says between kisses:

“Let’s start a fire.”

We already have.

XXVII

Another beautiful night on this island. Another beautiful night away from the terrors and beauty of the world over that horizon.

Julia and I have decided to go for a long walk. My mind is still in pain but has relaxed to a place of blissful hopelessness. I do not know how to perfectly describe this feeling, but it is my favorite of all feelings I have ever felt. It comes when I have nothing to do. It is when I realize there is nothing out there and find peace in knowing that when my dreams come true, they will not be the same beautiful dreams they once were.

The past few days, Julia has started talking more about where we came from. She says sometimes she wonders about her mother these days. She says sometimes it almost feels like she is worrying. She says she hates to worry about her mother because it feels condescending to be concerned about the one who raised her.

I tell her I miss my family but I do not have the guts to go visit them. I do not mention Jewel but I miss her, too. I have hardly stopped to think about her, pushing her from my mind, but I really do miss her deep down. She was a good friend to me; I never returned the favor.

Julia says more and more she wants to explore space but she refers to it as the beyond.

“I want to go past that big bright light they call the moon. I want to see the world the way it really looks. I wanna shoot past the heavens and see if there is a world above ‘em.”

I joked with her that the only way to go above heaven is to loop around to hell.

She laughed and said maybe we will find out one day. She grabbed my hand and said come with her. I did not respond. I went. She is the only one I would ever want to go with. We have stared up at the stars and talked about the space above us a lot since we have been here.

She told me the world is flat.

I laughed and nodded.

“Probably is.”

“It could be, yunno,” she continued, “Just as it could be round, it could be flat.”

I suppose she is right. Does a science book telling you the world is round make it round more than a “rock” telling you it is a “rock” makes it a “rock?”

I know what she was really saying. There are things we do not know that we say we know with absolutely certainty are true, just because the world tells us. If school books told us the world were flat, we would believe it just the same, and scoff at any one who disagreed. All the information we get comes from somewhere, but do we ever question where?

Tonight, there is a most wondrous cool breeze in the warm island air. Julia and I are walking side by side. She struts even when she is not impressing anybody. She really just walks like that. She would walk like that if she was completely alone. She must.

I wonder what she is like when she alone. Nobody knows who anyone else is when they are alone.

As we make our way down the beach with no destination in mind, we stumble upon a couple of teenagers at a fire pit; they are drinking beer and laughing, having a good time.

“Oh my god!” One boy exclaims. He is excited but not overly eager. None of them fan-out but they all look up and gasp a little bit. The boy continues.

“I know this sounds crazy, but are you guys’ Julia and Jimmy from daydreams, or I am I just way more drunk than I thought?”

The teens laugh and some say “no way!” but some say “it is!”

We laugh and look at each other. I shrug.

“Whaddaya think?”

Julia shrugs.

“Only if you guys wanna share some of that beer.”

We all burst into laughter together.

The one boy cracks a beer and tosses it to her. They toss me one but I toss it back. God, I never liked beer, but I thank them for the gesture.

“No beer, that doesn’t sound like the Jimmy we all hear stories about.”

I grin.

“That Jimmy prolly don’t exist,” I joke.

I pull a cigarette from my jean pocket and light it up.

“That’s more like it,” one of the girls says.

They all start to tell us how amazing our music is and how it touches them and so on. They disagree over which album was better: the first, the second, or the third.

“No offense, but the EP was my favorite,” one says.

I tell them the truth.

“We don’t put those together, even. We just make music and our label puts together songs for the track list. We are more interested in the feelings we are trying to reach, yunno. We don’t see ourselves as a band, or artists, or nothing, we just make sounds for you to like… just to get people through the days, yunno.”

They all nod and say things like “groovy” and “cool.”

Julia smiles at me and as I start talking.

“It’s nice to meet kids like you all, though, who really listen to it and really feel it. The media tries to make us out to be these wild animals and use us as sex symbols, but we don’t go for that. We just live, man.”

I do not know why I am just opening up like this.

Julia is still smiling at me. She is so the coolest. I grin over at her.

“Having sex don’t make you a symbol,” I say.

“It makes you a human. It’s a beautiful thing, and possibly the only real thing there is.”

The kids laugh and make a few stereotypical teenage sex jokes. They still make me laugh a little. Julia just smiles, just like she used to when she was in high school.

“So,” one of the girls starts, “we just gotta ask, I’m sorry, but I just can’t help it any longer, like, are you guys- dating or something?”

She keeps going before either of us answer.

“I mean, not to make it awkward or anything, but damn, I just, we just have to know.”

The other teens agree. They must know; they have to know.

I smile at Julia. She nods at me to answer. I will go for it.

“Well, what is dating?”

The kids pause as if it is a rhetorical. It is not. The kids scramble for an answer for a second until they agree: it is when you have an exclusive “thing: together, and you hang out and “stuff.”

I question further, like I used to with Jewel.

“Well, is dating when you just have sex with that one person?”

No. They say it is not like that. It is something more. It is like “love” and “stuff.” It is when you love someone.

“Love & Stuff- that’s the name of our next album,” Julia jokes.

We all laugh. I think.

“Dare I ask what love is?” I come back with.

They all have a different answer for this.

One kid gives up, chiming in with a joke, “just tell us, are you dating or not?” We laugh but I continue on.

“So, if we can’t even agree on what love is, then we can’t say what dating is, more than just having exclusive sex, right?”

They argue a bit but I see their facial expressions change. I think they begin to understand where I am going, or they have completely given up and are humoring me because I am a celebrity.

“Life can be what they tell you, or you can try to figure it out for yourself. Either way, I’ve never really been able to make sense of any of this. So, to answer your question, no, to say we are dating is to box ourselves in to something that does not really have a meaning beyond what society has decided. We strive for relationships, but without labels: no marriage, no dating, no this or that, we are just two people making our way through the world, yunno?”

That’s deep, they agree. They like that. One girl says that is the scariest thing she has ever heard. She says she has always dreamed about falling in love and getting married someday. I tell her that may be a truth but when I look around, I see that as a fantasy- a fantasy sold to young girls and young boys by the media.

She looks at Julia.

“Don’t you ever wanna settle down?”

Julia laughs, but not a mean or condescending laugh.

“I don’t really stop to think about it,” she says, “I learned when I was young that I didn’t wanna just accept what I was told. I just started doing things and stopped thinking so much. If I ever do wanna settle down, I just will. And then if I don’t, I won’t.”

She says it so beautifully. She just stopped thinking and started doing. Maybe she does still think deeply, she just never shows it.

We continue to talk to the teens and joke around. We have a good time. We hang with them on the beach until the sun returns. They leave us with hugs and kisses and tell us they love us and do not want us to go.

We tell them it was a pleasure to meet them. We treat them like friends, not fans. We always try to do this. People are people to us. Some are more fun than others, that is all. We still try to find the fun in them all, though.

As we are walking away, I look over at Julia. I start to think about something and I let it out as I think it.

“I think I’m a idiot,” I say, “the biggest yuck in the world.”

Julia looks over at me.

“Whattaya mean?”

I pause.

“We are connecting with people. Even if it’s just those teens, and even if they’re still caught up in their own little world and trying to be popular or whatever, they still feel it. They try. It’s more than just sex and rock-n-roll. It’s something they can relate to, something that helps them get up in the morning. Even if it’s so deep and it’s being used for things so simple, it’s still making people feel something…”

She smiles at me.

“We can’t worry about that, Jamie, we just gotta do what we’re gonna do. We can’t control what this world makes of us.”

I shake my head.

“You always just know what to say,” I say.

She shakes her head.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Julia says. “I just say it, whatever it is.”

So natural, so beautiful, so different.

We walk some more without speaking. We just walk. She is a few steps in front of me but I am not complaining about the view. I am watching her strut. She has the perfect wiggle to her walk. That is the model in her, I think to myself with smirk and a brain laugh. It is not though; she always had it down. Julia was born with it down.

We walk some more until the sun has almost made its full way into the sky. There is still a gloomy feel to the beach and I like it. I look up at the peaceful sky and breathe it in.

“What would we be like if we were born a thousand years ago?” I ask.

Julia stops in her tracks. I stop and turn my head to her.

She laughs.

“Well, Jamie…”

She pauses.

“Well, we wouldn’t be us.”

I laugh.

“But we’d probably be asking the same question.”

XXVIII

We head into town to go eat and then eventually do some dancing. Julia has told me she has the urge to go to a club and let loose for a while. She has done her share of dancing on the beach alone, but I guess she is ready to hit the hot-spots on this island and burn them down.

We pull up to a nice little family restaurant a couple blocks and corners away from the little big city. We tip the taxi driver and get out. We are taken to a booth in the corner. I look around and see families and friends enjoying a meal.

This place is pretty cool. It is a throwback, a nod to the past, but nothing in your face or out of control. It is just simple. Julia tells me she likes it and continues on about the scene around us.

I listen to what she is saying but I am fading in and out. I am noticing something. I am watching a family by the middle of the restaurant. Every once so often, likely in a drunk or high stupor, I watch families, trying not to stare. I watch them laugh and joke and have fun, and I miss that. I miss how young I was when I could go out with my family and I was too young to care too much about anything.

Tonight, I am sober, and I am watching this family that reminds me of mine a number of years ago, when I was but a child. It is two middle aged parents. They have three kids, two older boys and a younger daughter. They all laugh and joke, but I watch that middle child.

He is a reflection of me. He laughs and goes along with the rest. He occasionally shows some eagerness in telling a joke or story. He seems to enjoy himself.

But I know better. I know better. I look at his eyes. They are dead like mine. They never had a childlike innocence. He was supposed to be like this.

His hair is short but not too short. It is a nice haircut. He is a good-looking young boy, in good physical shape; he is probably pretty athletic.

The waitress comes over and we order our food.

That young boy’s smile is reminiscent of mine. It is non-existent. His naturally somber expression goes right to a laugh. Only a small grin stands in between. He tries to keep that small grin as long as he can so nobody can see his pain, but every so often space distracts him and he is caught off guard. Then his sad expression makes its appearance. He snaps out of it and goes back to talking, laughing, grinning, but that same ghost distracts him again and again. In the spaces between talking, his eyes go down or out.

Julia nudges me.

“He looks like you.”

He does.

“He is me,” I say to her as I turn.

“Well, I just hope they don’t catch you staring at yourself.”

We laugh as the waitress brings out our food.

“Do you miss your family?” Julia asks.

I do.

“Yeah, and it’s weird.”

I pause.

“It’s like, I know I will see them again, just like I used to, day after day, but I never do…”

She holds my arm.

“Jamie, you’re the most beautiful thing ever when you’re in pain.”

I am always in pain.

“I mean it,” I say, but I smile at her.

“I miss my mommy, too,” she says with a smile. It is not condescending. She means it.

We enjoy our meal and change the topic to clothes and jewelry. I tell her I miss the old clothes and piercings and so on, but I like the old-school suits and top hats we have traded them in for. It always makes me laugh.

She talks about how it is rather fun to confuse the media, and the audience as well. She says a lot of reporters and people ask her if we are trying to bring that style back. She says she always tells them it cannot come back. She tells them nothing that is gone was ever here.

“They eat that up, but it don’t really mean anything.”

When we are done with our food, we order big-ass chocolate malts. Delicious.

We sit for a while longer, talking some and relaxing before the night grows dark and the freaks come out. The restaurant owner tells us the place is closing, but we may stay as long as we like. We get it. We call for a taxi outside and head over to the little big city.

We pull up to what looks like the most hoppin’ club. We are disguised in plain clothes tonight. We have on shades and my beard has grown in. I still cannot grow a nice full beard and it bothers me but whatever. Julia has her hair up. I hope nobody recognizes us; I think the night will disguise us.

We wait in line just like everybody else. When we get in, we get drinks and get to work. We dance like crazy kids. We do what we want. In here, with the flashing lights and darkness, Julia’s charm may seem hidden, but I have seen this before. Her combination of wild and graceful dancing will draw the crowd to her. She will light up like a fire and burn the place down.

There are a good number of people in this place but it is not too crowded to where you are bumping into people every few steps. We dance in a corner of the floor with drinks in hand, straight whiskey, getting wasted quickly. I move and drink until I cannot think, which ironically is a line in possibly our most popular chorus.

Like I thought, men start to watch Julia. I see them glancing over. I need more to drink. I do not want to notice this stuff. I want to dance, to be free, to not give a fuck for a while. In this place, you can offend no one, you can move freely in a small space and not worry about anyone or anything.

I am not the best dancer but I dance with a reckless abandon that makes people think I am on to something. Julia is her usual smooth self, balancing beautifully on the liquor-soaked ground. I have never really seen her trip or lose her balance. I mean, she has not made every single move as smoothly as ever, but her lack of worry provides her with a nonchalance that makes her movements perfect. She does not think about falling; therefore, she does not fall.

I laugh as I see some dudes desperately on the prowl for girls and girls desperately avoid them. I see a girl wearing barely anything shoot down a couple of guys. I watch a wasted girl make a fool of herself in the middle of the dance floor. I see a couple of dudes begin to circle her like vultures.

I am sure I have been that fool before. I just grin and take it in. My body keeps moving. Then I let it go.

At the end of the night, the slow jams come on. I hold Julia in my arms. I am enjoying this, but after the first slow jam she wants to go. I tell her I can meet her back at the place. I am going to stay a little.

I watch her leave. I watch heads turn. I wait for her match to start burning. She looks back and blows a kiss at me. That is it. The boys look from her back to me. I feel jealousy in their faces, though it is too dark to see. The flame has been born in this building. Soon we will all be in ashes.

I still feel like slow-dancing. The floor has cleared up a little bit and there is more space about. I see a cute girl standing with her friend by the few stairs that led me down to the dance floor. I feel like slow-dancing, and I figure she will do.

I walk over and touch her arm. I ask her if she wants to dance.

“What?”

“You wanna slow-dance with me?”

She shakes her head.

She mumbles something and I hear the word “boyfriend” in there.

“Just one dance?”

Still no.

I kind of want to laugh.

Most men feel anger and bitterness to be in this predicament: “She don’t wanna dance with me?! Fuck that bitch!”

I am oddly happy about it. I mean, I wanted to dance and all, but to hear somebody say “no” to me feels good. I feel human. I feel like any man. Surely, she did not recognize me, but that is what makes me happy. If I was not famous and rich, the way this girl sees me, I would still be treated the same as I once was: as a “nobody.” Now that I have money, I am a success in their world. In reality, I am still nothing.

I slow-dance by myself. I probably look like an idiot.

After the place has cleared up, I walk up the small staircase and outside. I call a taxi. I ride back to the place. Julia is asleep on the couch. I lay down on the floor beside her. As I do, she wakes up and pulls at me. I get on the couch with her and wrap her up.

“Guess what?”

She waits.

“I asked a girl to dance, and she said no.”

She starts to die laughing.

“Millions of girls out there want you and you choose the only one that doesn’t!”

We laugh together.

But then I think. Julia is right. All of the girls out there that worship me, worship our band, they are just waiting for a chance to touch me, and this girl who does not know who I am wants nothing to do with me. I miss those days sometimes. This is one of those times.

“Have you ever been turned down?” It is her turn to answer.

She smiles and starts to giggle.

“When I first got to your school there was this one boy who didn’t say nothing to me. I tried to say hello at least several times but he ignored me,” she pulls at my hair and kisses me.

“I think he nodded or something, though,” I joke.

“Nope, didn’t even nod- nothing,” she says.

XXIX

Is this it?

I am sitting on a plane back to our condo up the Golden Coast. This is the first time I have been sober on a plane… ever?

I feel like I’ve been way too fucked up for way too long to think straight. Or maybe being so confused is actually thinking straight, seeing things how they are and not how they appear to be. This thought makes me wonder if all the drugs are actually pulling me apart. Am I just a strung-out rock-star, with nowhere left to go but down? I got a lot of money, and it is still coming, but not enough to live on forever. Luckily, I will probably die soon and have no need for all this paper.

Julia is in the seat next to me by the window. On the other side of the aisle is a couple, it appears. I can hear them whisper-arguing about something. I look over and try to get a peek at their ring fingers. Sure enough, married.

It is a long and boring plane ride. Being sober on a flight is weird. Maybe being drunk and high is even weirder but I cannot remember.

I sit here next to Julia. I wish we were back on that island, but would I not get tired of that at some point? I would, right?

I wish our captain would take us straight up into the sky. I want to fly through the heavens until we explode into a million pieces. I want our fire to stay burning in the night sky forever, even when our souls are long gone.

I do not want this plane to land.

XXX

I feel like my other body must be shaking and convulsing in these strange moments. This darkness will not have my soul! My soul fights to escape back to my dead weight body, which fights to feel alive. All the while, wild thoughts and fiery hail consume what I call my brain.

I walk the halls of a campus I do not know but somehow am familiar with. I am with my brother who is not my brother who I have never met. Somehow, I know he is my brother but he is not my brother. We walk the halls in a pattern that makes no sense and time passes in a way that does not add up. There are strange movements and nostalgia all around. There are hints from my past blended with signs in my future. My present is being bent.

I make my way through these halls in a strange manner. My brother is beside me, above me, and under me all at once. He is near me. This campus building is built like an endless corridor. There is a dim world out the windows but it does not catch my attention.

Suddenly I run into people from my past. Random people. I cannot imagine why. We make movements and do things and talk, I suppose. I do not really know. My soul kicks at my body as I walk around these folks I once knew. It is now desperately trying to make a break.

I get the oddest feeling I will ever feel, perhaps, that I later realize is a layer of dreams within dreams. I awake from one to find myself in another and so on. In each, my soul breaks through the heart of each further body until it has awakened the next. Each startled body kicks and screams in agony, each has a wild vision of its own.

“You know you’re dreaming, right?”

Suddenly, I feel a kick and I am back in the world I believe is mine. I am in bed with Julia, this is the bed at our condo up the Golden Coast. I recognize things and I jump up and try to move around so I will forget the nightmares I have suffered in the stillness of my body but motion of my mind.

I realize that I am losing my grip. My dreams have dreams. And they are all scary as hell. In one I cannot recall; I can feel that I went to Hell. I guess I always wake up feeling like that after these episodes. I hope it is not some sort of weird omen. If it is, I have no control. If my soul was destined for this hell before I was born then that is where it will end up for eternity. What can I do about it but ask God, any god that is the real god, for pity? I have been led astray by the creation of the creator, if there is one, so why would he not show pity on me? Why would he not show pity on this confused and confusing world? Maybe He will.

I go back to bed and grab a hold of Julia to find she is awake. She reaches her hand back over my head and caresses my hair and then neck. If I was alone, trapped in my nightmares without her, I might lose track of this reality and replace it with the many others I am confronted with. I hold her now like I will never let go.

But I will let go. I do let go. We get to work on some more sounds that Jonny will put together into our fourth album. He has recently released some of our unreleased music as a project he called a “teaser.” It does what it is supposed to. It gets fans, fans everywhere, ready for our fourth album.

Hopes are high, but we do not let it bother us. We are just here to make beautiful sounds. When we cannot, we will not. As of now, we can. So, we do. We make song after song. Some take longer than others but they all come out with a meaning, a purpose. They bring forth things I see in my nightmares. I paint pictures of outer worlds and falling dimensions that lead me to singing choruses like the following:

And I want your body tatted on my heart

Just so you know how I fall apart

Somebody took my mind and built a cave

In mirrors of fire, I see but a slave

They hit hard, but I wonder if fans will hear more than catchy melodies and good music.

Julia’s writing is a smaller part recently, but it is better than ever. She is really playing with sounds and her voice. For a couple of songs, she plays a guitar. She writes a solo on acoustic that she says she will break out at shows when the mood is right.

Every day and night we write music and record. We are drinking less and smoking more. Weed and cigarettes. We might just smoke ourselves to death. It really is out of control, but what the hell. I am in physical pain and back to pill-popping.

We barely go out. Dave sticks with us through the process. He says he is feeling this more than he ever has. He writes a few songs and I make sure that Jonny puts one on the record. I really do like it too; it is not just a favor-for-a-friend type deal. It is a good song. Dave goes into the stresses of life on the road and the difficulty in finding a balance.

It is weird. I have spent so much time writing and writing, and Dave writes a couple of lyrics and I find they mean as much to me as almost anything I have ever written.

The sky is moving at me, son

This road don’t never end, my friend

The blues and grays become the same

Anymore I can’t but sin, my friend

That is how it starts and that speaks to me. That fourth line says it all for me. When the good and bad becomes one, when the light and dark come together, it is all sin down here. Nobody is selfless; nobody can be. We are survivalists down here. We move on, we have to. We cannot sit on a throne and judge a world below us. We have to push through the bull shit. We only hope to not become a part of the bull shit.

When we have completed a great number of songs and we go through and choose an order for the record, Jonny is really laid back. He tells us this will be our biggest work yet. He says he loves it, absolutely. He praises all of us, but mostly Julia. I have noticed his seemingly harmless advances towards her. They have started to aggravate me. I try to be cool, but it is what it is. I cannot help but feel annoyed with Jonny.

Anyway, we get through the record, the artwork, and the promo, and so on, and Jonny tells us we will release the album soon and then we will be touring before we know it.

I tell him just to remind us because we do not keep track of time like that.

“Your time don’t apply to us,” I say with a grin.

Jonny loves this about us. He loves our rebellion against the idea of time. He says it is so unlike people from where we are from, not talking about the Golden Coast. He says people from our parts are always pressed for time, always planning. He is right about that, but Julia and me, we are not your normal kids. Nor are we your normal rebels. We are not rebelling against anything specifically. We are just in a world we do not belong in or to.

Julia is happier than ever to get back on the road. We have tours scheduled for our country and then we head off to the foreign lands. Unconcerned with times and dates, we will just go where we are taken and play. We will try to connect with people, whether we really can or cannot.

XXXI

We finally have a night to ourselves. We are trying to figure out plans, Julia and me. What can you do when you are a “superstar?”

We have basically three options:

One, we can squirrel up to “Happy Acres” with all the other rich people where we will be safe from swarming media and crazed fans, but we will be with people we avoid the most: the people who see themselves as gods, who compete and compete for more and more. More of everything, more money, more this, more that. That world is fake to Julia and me, so we rarely enter it.

Two, we can go out in public and get stormed by fans and media and lose our minds. We will only be able to take pictures, sign autographs, and be pulled this way and that. In the beginning, that could be fun, but it takes a toll. We just wanted to connect with our fellow man, not be worshipped by them.

Thirdly, we can do what we usually do and go to some forgotten beach and enjoy our own company. We can lie in each other’s arms and stare up at the sky. We can have our own fire, just us two.

Any way we choose to go, we might drink or smoke, or even do some coke tonight.

It is sad, this world of fame and fortune. It has made us something we cannot escape. We are immortal. Our sounds will live on for the rest of time. We could feel like gods because of this, but death will come to take our bodies just like anybody else.

We cannot have real friends. If we do, we could never know. Fans love you too much, other famous people only want to use you to get more famous, and everybody in between just wants to get to the fame. Everybody starts to use you and the loneliness eats you up.

That is why Julia and I have to stay close. We are the only two in the world that can know we are not just pieces in one another’s game. We have been through what people call the “thick & thin.” We have seen it all, done it all. We have conquered their world without even acknowledging it.

But Julia makes ‘friends’ everywhere we go, with anyone. She does not keep friends and clique up like regular folks, though; she finds new people everywhere. In high school, she might hang out with any group you could imagine. People tried to make fun of her for going out with “geeks” but she never cared. And it ate those people up. How can she just do and be what she wants and still be so desirable?

Still today, she can be a friend to anyone. This does not mean she is going to do you any favors, though. A friend to her is not somebody she shares her deepest secrets and hidden feelings with. A friend is just somebody she talks to and does stuff with. It is anybody. She will not call somebody a “friend,” or refer to somebody as “not my friend,” she will call them by name or not at all.

I had a couple people I was cool with in high school, but I was never a part of a friend group or anything like that. I just floated. Outside of school it was just me, my music, and an occasional girl. I rarely hung out with anybody unless I just happened to run into them or make the rare plan.

Tonight, we might go to a movie. The problem is, most of the movies in theatres right now are horror movies and we do not like horror movies, never have. Julia said she got bored with them.

“There is no substance, no good dialogue. It’s just jump scares and gore. There are a couple good ones, but it is too rare to bother.”

I agree. I like a movie where you pay attention to the story, not sit on the edge of your seating waiting to piss your pants.

Julia says she picked up on this in high school: horror movies are like mainstream music. While they may be entertaining, and some are really good, most are just pure entertainment; you know what you are getting.

She explains it so well:

If you are with a group of people and they tell you to put some music on, you put on something they will likely all enjoy, or will all be fine with. You do not take a chance, you go mainstream. Likewise, when they tell you to choose a movie, a horror movie is a safe choice to prove you are not afraid, and you can all “enjoy” it without worry that you will be made into a joke. Even a bad mainstream song or bad horror movie will work. There is little risk there.

But we like the risk. We can laugh at each other’s taste and let it roll off our shoulders. We like to take the chances to actually enjoy music and enjoy movies. I think that is why we listen and watch a lot of old stuff. We are not opposed to the new stuff; it is just harder to find developed stories anymore.

Where our tastes really coincide is gangster movies. Old gangster movies. I introduced these to Julia in high school and we have loved watching them together ever since. I like the way the main characters go out with a bang. I like the clothes and the cars. I like the feel. I like the settings. I like the girls.

So does Julia.

We often talk about going out like that. We joke about moving dope and robbing banks so we can make it come true. We talk about who would go first. I tell her I would go first and then she would not be able to carry on without me. But she would not kill herself, she would go out taking on the biggest bank robbery in the history of the world or something like that. She would kill a great deal of men before she would be blown to pieces.

She laughs and tells me we would go out together in the getaway car, being chased by the whole world.

“It would take all these motherfuckers to catch us, Jamie.”

With no plans made, we decide just to drive out into the dark world with no destination. We hop in Julia’s little red drop top and drive up the coast. Julia is driving slower than usual. It throws me off but it is a comfortable pace, I suppose.

I lean my neck against headrest and look up at the sky. I watch it fall down and cover me. Streetlights become stars and the stars become streetlights.

The radio is off. Neither of us turn it on. We listen to the world as it flies by us. I love the night. I love those neon lights. I love the distant stars and faded moon. I watch them stay still while everything else continues in motion.

Julia steps on it and burns up the coast. She must be getting quite a rush. We pick up speed until I feel like we might actually take off into the sky and never return. What a way to go that would be. “Presumed Dead,” that is what they would say about us.

“Declared Dead in Absentia.”

I would like that. Imagine, carrying on a life in a foreign world, presumed dead to the world you had once inhabited.

We were never meant to be there anyways.

Julia gets off the highway and pulls into a cool little diner, open 24 hours a day. We get out and walk in and take a seat in the corner. I sit facing the rest of the diner. I always sit in a seat where my back is to no one. I do not know why but I have always done this. I look at the clock. It is almost 3am.

The waitress recognizes us and praises our music, saying how much she loves it. She says she has been to one of our shows and it changed her life. She is blown away to meet us, and happy we are the only customers in here so she can fan-out without drawing attention to us. She calls the cook out of the kitchen telling him to grab the camera and we all take a couple of pictures. It is just those two working the night shift in here.

Soon enough we are all sitting down, having a nice conversation over a hot meal of breakfast food. I am not bothered, but rather enjoy their company. Julia smiles and laughs and makes them feel comfortable.

This waitress is a pretty little thing. She has dirty blonde hair and big blue eyes. She has a very nice shape to her and a hometown kind of feel. She says she is a student at the nearby community college, a freshman. She gets cuter and cuter as she talks. Her name is Jessie.

The cook is a little older. He is a very average looking fellow. He has brown hair and dark brown eyes. He says he dropped out of school and has been working here since. He says it gets hard at times, but he would not have it any other way. He loves our music as well, telling us he is dying for the fourth album. His name is Jordan.

We talk and joke for a time while we enjoy our meal. It is the nights like these I wish we could have more of. It is just us, two “famous stars” and two “regular fans,” and yet we are all just chatting it up, having a swell time. There are no labels, titles, or pressure here. She is not a waitress and he is not a cook. We are not superstars. We are all just people. We are just going about our business, pushing through the bull shit…

Oh, dammit, my mind always gets away from me. Why can I not just enjoy this beautiful night without making it some sort of social experiment? Maybe I am to blame for the way the world is because of how I view it.

I light up a cigarette and listen to the waitress tell us about how she and her friends waited outside our hotel all night just for a chance to meet us after that show she went to. She starts to sob. Julia scoots over next to her and embraces her. The cook smiles at me. It is one of those smiles that says “sorry about her” but I just shrug and pat him on the back.

The waitress goes on.

“It’s like a sign from God or something,” the whimpering continues. “I wanted to meet you guys so bad.”

Now she waits until she has gathered herself.

“I was really depressed in high school and stuff, I had a lot going on- what with my family and boyfriends and… and your music just got me through a lot, you know? And then I finally got tickets to a show, and we drove an hour and showed up and I prayed and prayed I could meet you, just to tell you how much it helped… but I never got the chance, and I was mad at God, and I was mad at myself for not trying harder… and now, here you are!”

She stops.

“And I was trying to get tonight off!”

The tears come back harder than before. I look at Julia. She is still holding Jessie in her arms. For some reason, I feel like Julia just knew to come up here tonight.

Jessie finally stops crying and we have some more good laughs and make some conversation. I look back at the clock. Clocks always seem to be the main focus of every room and it bothers me, but nonetheless it draws my attention. It is half past 4.

A couple of new customers pull in and Jordan gives us each a hug and heads back to the kitchen. Jessie gets up and hugs and kisses Julia, then me. She tells us each she loves us.

“Oh, do come back, sometime,” she says, along with the usual times she works.

We walk out and hop in Julia’s little red drop top. Julia pulls out slowly and drives us back down the coast.

XXXII

We hop on a charter plane and take off to the big cities of the east to kick off another headlining tour. The album is apparently going crazy. Jonny is ecstatic in telling us it will be gold in no time and platinum after that. Whatever. Let us get on this tour and do our thing.

When we get off the plane we are coming down from our high ironically. We hop onto the tour bus and take off. We briefly drive through the ghetto, oddly enough. All I see are liquor stores and churches. There are kids and adults alike out on the street. The media would have us believe they are all “criminals” and “prostitutes.” I look at their faces, their eyes. They may be, may not be, who knows? All I see is more desperate people. Nobody is too different.

We are all just hopeless souls with our hands to the sky.

We get to the hotel and pull up to the back and run in. We take the service elevator up to our suite. Jonny has really gone all out for this tour. The planes, buses, suites- everything is over the top. It is too much.

Even the tour itself will be out of control. The lighting is insane. The venues are big theatres. We have a few festivals along the way. We finish by headlining one.

In the room, one of the crew members whispers something about a model outside the room who wants to see me. I do not stop to think about why or how she knows exactly where we are. The crew member, Al, tells me she says she knows me from high school. He says it seems like she is telling the truth. I tell Al to let her in.

Julia is taking a nap in the bedroom. I am sitting on the couch shooting the breeze with some crew members while watching TV. The door swings open and in steps this model that knows me from high school.

“Hello, Jimmy,” she says.

Jasmine? Oh my god.

“Jasmine?”

Let me give you a quick history on this girl. When I moved into town, we became instant friends. She was cute, tall and skinny, but gangly and undeveloped. She was also hilarious. She had a great sense of humor and could make you laugh in a hundred ways. We got along really well, and had classes and lunch together that year. She was pretty popular, but not “pretty” enough to be in the inner circle of that popular group.

By the end of the year, Jasmine started to develop a bit. She simply became more sexually attractive. She started to learn what to do with her once goofy body and it became sexy. She started dating an older guy, a real asshole, and became really popular. She was still funny and we still were cool, but we grew apart. We did not even see each other that summer after school was out.

Come sophomore year, she had disappeared. Rumor was she had got some weird disease, and was now homeschooled. And fat. Needless to say, her and the asshole were no longer together. People began trashing her. It annoyed me, but I let it go. I thought I was being a good friend by not joining in, but I never stood up for her or even reached out to her. I never even checked in on her to see how she was doing.

I saw her at the store one time my junior year, and we hugged and said hello, but that was all. Then she disappeared back into her oblivion of homeschooledness. She was quite large. It was strange.

And that was it. I never saw her after that.

Until now.

Now we start talking and she tells me about how she is a successful model now and so on. And she really is strikingly beautiful. And it is natural. She is skinny again, and tall as ever.

Julia comes out and we go through introductions. They hit it off immediately. They talk about modeling and the industry and all the good and bad that come with it. They laugh and joke and we all start drinking. Now they are sitting here chatting it up, and I am pretty much out of the conversation. I continue to enjoy it, but I give little input. I just listen. No problem with that. Things are going well.

However, I start to hate this situation. I wish Jasmine was still fat. I wish she was fat and gross, and physically undesirable. Then I could tell her I love her and it would mean something. Then I could tell her I am sorry and she could accept it for real. Then I could hug her and tell her she is beautiful and not be lying.

But she is beautiful. She is tall and skinny. Gorgeous. She has long blonde hair and hazel eyes. She has big breasts and a toned body. She still has that old twinkle in her eye, but it is even brighter now.

And she is a successful model. She is highly desired. She must have sharpshooters coming at her from every angle.

What irony.

We talk some more until Julia gives her a free ticket to the show tonight. Speaking of the show, we have to leave to prep. We will prep, eat a little, relax and listen to old music, and then begin the show.

Jasmine says goodbye, giving the both of us a big hug.

“Aww, I love you guys,” she says in her new, sexy voice. I can still hear the old her, but it is different.

She blows a kiss and leaves us with a wink.

Damn, what a fox.

We leave a short time behind her. We go through rehearsals for a while, but we have done this so many times it is second nature. Even with new songs and new lighting, we are ready to go. We never plan our shows too much, anyways. We plan just enough to give the fans the best show, but we want that to come naturally.

After that, we go back-stage to a nice little area where we are served food and wine. We smoke weed and listen to sad old songs until it is time to play.

The show goes on.

XXXIII

People in this world always seem to be on the defensive. The world makes people this way. It tells you to kill or be killed. Get them before they get you.

When you are taught to be gentle and kind you learn quickly that it does not work. You get taken advantage of. You get spit on. You lose.

So, you come to a crossroad. Do you get mean and get ahead? Or do you stay nice and accept that you will get stepped on?

Some nice people do all right, but they break down. They cry and fall into the arms of others. They pray to gods and ask for strength yet they are the ones down here. They are the ones pushing through the bull shit. Still, they thank their gods for their strength, what little they may have.

Thanking gods is like thanking your feelings. How can you explain the difference between a god and a feeling?

On the other hand, whether that god is real or not, that positive energy, that positive feeling, it pushes you through. But this world is full of negative energy. When you have felt it all you start to realize it is just as possible it is all the same as it is not.

Jewel was too nice. She always got taken advantage of. She always gave more than she received. She gave to the church, she gave to her family, she gave and gave. Nobody gave her shit unless it somehow helped them. I guess maybe that is the only reason anyone gives anything. Maybe giving so much was really just the only way that Jewel could make herself feel better than others. Maybe being so humble was her way of putting herself above others. Maybe she knew in her head she was a better person. Who knows?

She was probably the most miserable person ever, but just knew how to disguise it.

I am like this. I am miserable, I always have been. But when I was younger, I could get on that guitar or piano and dream. Now I just forget about everything else. I just play and let it go.

You do not worry about being a good or bad person when the music takes over. There is no right or wrong with music. It comes through me naturally. The music is me and I am the music. I do not just hear sounds and see colors, I become those audios and visuals.

I take another sip. I am already drunk and high.

Sometimes I think this is Hell. I mean, what is hell? It is but separation from God, correct? What does that mean? This is isolation from God. We cannot see him or feel him without people before us telling us how to get to him. They bring us words from books and testimonies, but would we find God without those?

I did not come into this world subject to God. Man made me subject to God. Their God, not mine. I see no God. There may be a God, there may not be.

But I hate God right now. Without God there is no Satan. Without God there is no evil. Without evil there is no good. All religion is bad religion. God is bad religion. Satan is bad religion. Without one there cannot be the other.

But I cannot think much longer. The music goes off and we are on to our next show. I am losing track of how many we have done on this tour. Actually, I am not keeping track at all. There are too many to count.

Julia and Dave are already on the stage. I am in a daze. Am I late? Where were they?

Either way, I pick up my guitar and rock.

Everything goes silent.

Next thing I know, the crowd is roaring for an encore.

“ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!”

Julia screams something I cannot understand.

I stare out at the sea of faces. They have come to let loose with us, tonight. What a bittersweet moment. Here in a world full of hidden agonies and lonesome frustrations, these folks have gathered here with us to catch a vibe. We curate that vibe. It all comes from feelings and grows stronger when they feel it too.

We play and play. Julia finishes with a beautiful solo but the fans want more.

“Okay, one more.”

Dave and I come back out.

Julia looks back at us and turns away from the mic.

“Whaddaya wanna do?”

I remain quiet. Suddenly I become overwhelmed. Next thing you know, my guitar is smashed and the set is all but destroyed. My shirt is off and Julia is walking back and forth, working the crowd. They beg us to jump back in. I do not remember jumping in in the first place. Dave gets offs his drums and dives in. The fans go crazy again. Soon enough we are all standing next to each other on stage, staring out at the crowd, fixed on the masses.

Julia puts the mic up to her lips.

“Tomorrow, you will wake up and this will all be but a dream.”

The crowd goes ballistic. The night has peaked. This means we need to do one last slow song to calm them down before they head out into the world. Julia turns to me and tells me, “You got it.” She and Dave wave goodbye and exit.

I grab the mic from her. Mine is probably somewhere out in the crowd, who knows what I did with it.

“The most beautiful people in the world are here tonight,” I say. I wait for a quieter moment to begin again.

“I’m gonna do one last song, that’s it,” I say with a heaving breath.

I do not pick up my guitar. I do not ask for any music behind me. I sing with my voice alone, whatever comes to my head. The crowd goes scary silent.

Mama showed me the way

But I threw the map away

I never meant to hurt you

I just never know what to say

I pause for a minute.

And papa, you the man

You know I wanna be just like you

But I don’t got the strength for that

I never find the truth

Another long pause.

So now my eyes are open

And I’m hidden from the light

And ever since you left me

I’ve been driven from the right

One more dramatic pause.

Oh mama

I’m dying here alone

I’m dying here alone

XXXIV

I think about the war much less than I used to. It is not the flashbacks and horror anymore. It is a dull, constant pain that is always with me no matter what. I cannot rid myself of the pain. I wish to have the innocence I once had but nothing lasts here.

Life is boring. People separate the good and the bad and tell each other the good outweighs the bad down here, but it all seems the same to me. I am not saying that I have the authority to say I am right, but do I not have just as much (or little) authority as any other man?

Tonight, we have just finished playing a show near the city Julia and I grew up in. While in the hotel, Julia says she is going to talk to her mother. She says they have spoken on the phone on several occasions since she left for the Golden Coast, but their relationship has been reduced to Julia having checks sent to her in the mail.

After Julia leaves, I decide that maybe I should drive over to the house and see if my parents are still there. Certainly, they will be.

I do not even know how they are doing. I have no idea where my siblings are anymore. I have lost all contact, and unlike many families of the famous, they have not come running for me, making grabs at my fortune. I have an accountant that makes sure they are taken care of financially. I tell him not to let me read any letters they write or answer any calls.

My family probably just prays for my soul when they think about me. That always makes me sick. I feel like I have always been an unnecessary burden to them. They have done their best to really love me, but how can you know a religious being loves you when they are called to love you? They have to love you. My family may not like me but they must love me.

I always wondered why my parents were burdened with my life. Why would the God they have spent the greater parts of their lives serving give them a devil? Am I but a stumbling block in their walk with God? Is my sole purpose in the reality of things to be an obstacle to true believers? What good is my soul?

I get in a rental and drive around aimlessly. My body takes me to my parents’ house. I sit outside in the car and stare.

It is not like a movie or a book or something. It is not some romantic story. I am not sitting here reminiscing on my time in this house or town at all. I am not having bittersweet memories. I am just sitting here with the engine on, listening to old music and debating whether I should go up to the door or not.

It is really late. They are most definitely in bed. It is a weeknight. They will probably both be at work tomorrow.

I think about what we would talk about. What would we talk about?

Would they tell me they were proud of me? Would they mean it? How would they react to my offensive lifestyle? I know how they used to talk about people doing the things I do.

The people they would say are like me. Nobody is like me. Everybody is like me.

I turn off the engine and look down the street. I do actually start to remember some of the mischief that took place on this street. I remember sneaking in my first girl when I was 15. I remember taking her into my room through the window on a Friday night when my sister was at a friend’s and my brother was off at college.

We made love. She told me it was her first time, but I think she lied. It was my first time but I never mentioned that. I did not lie to her; I just did not tell her the truth. We got drunk off her mother’s wine. We made love and were filled with life. We jumped out the window and were dancing in the street.

I think about all the hours and hours I spent playing songs and learning melodies. What a time. Things were simple back then, but everybody says that. Things are what they are. Either you change and nothing around you changes or you do not change and everything around you changes. Who knows?

In high school, I thought I stayed the same and everybody else changed. Now I think it was probably the other way around. Who knows?

I imagine my father walking out the front door. In my head, he sits on the stoop and smokes a pipe. My mother joins him on the stoop but does not smoke. She drinks one small glass of red wine. She rests her head on his strong shoulder. I imagine they are worried about me.

But my father and mother do not appear. They are likely fast asleep in the warmth of that little one-story house. The other two bedrooms are empty now. The kitchen must be emptier than ever.

I tell myself this: if my father or mother comes outside, I will get out and greet them. No, maybe I should just walk up there and say hello. I should push through the odd feelings and pressure and let them know that no matter how famous I get, I will always love them. Hopefully they do know that.

I turn the car back on. I cannot bring myself to step out of the car. My body goes numb until I feel the soft rumble of the engine. I put out my cigarette and light another. I cannot face my parents anymore. I love them, but I can never know if they really love me. Is it more than a part of their belief system to love me? Do they love me for me? Am I more than a Proverbs 22:6 baby?

Besides, seeing me will only makes things harder for them. We might even get in an argument. I would hate that. The pressure is just too much. I start to pull away.

I do not look back as I drive off.

They put me through Hell trying to get me to Heaven.

They put themselves through Hell trying to get me to Heaven.

XX

I see a table full of old men. The table is a circle. Their hair is white. Around them are the girls of your dreams- the most beautiful young creatures you will ever find. The old men are eating fat steaks. They grin and drink wine between bites.

A dark sky is around them all. Their eyes are red. They are somehow connected to the sky. The colors are changing. Flashes distract me. Lights interrupt my mind in contrast with darkness. Which is which?

I do not know whether I am in the scene or even if I am present at this dinner, but I am seeing it all. A flame has incinerated my mind. I see pictures of bloody battlefields. I see myself seeing myself. That body is holding a rifle to a young woman’s head. She is screaming for pity. That body of mine, with mind and soul, is torturing this woman with the prospect of death. What did she do to deserve this?

Maybe she does deserve to be killed. Maybe she does not. Who can judge her? Can my body judge her simply because the rifle is in my hand?

A fire is burning within that body. As the fire consumes the body whole, I feel a similar burning in my body. Air escapes me and I lose breath. I panic but another force sends a calmness over the war. The darkness gets deeper.

The old men with the red eyes reappear. The women come too, this time they are naked. However beautiful they are, in the moment I do not notice them other than their presence. The men with the red eyes approach the body with the rifle. I become the body with the rifle. The fire burns through my eyes and I feel it going through me. It is like a great tunnel of lights and sounds unfamiliar to my humanly mind pulling me down. Great bursts of energy separate me and then bring me together.

There is a great pressure pulling at many of my chests. Some are left alone. Dark figures encircle these bodies. Where is my mind now? Can I become singular again?

A particularly handsome old man with red eyes is now in full military uniform and holding a rifle to my head. I am still holding the rifle to the woman’s head. She is still screaming for help.

“Pull the fucking trigger!” A voice commands me.

I do not want to in this body but many of my minds push against me. I fight them off but they are me as well. I fight myself. An intense surge scorches my feet. I kick loose but the heat remains.

I stare this woman in the face. She is crying, begging me not to take her life. The old man remains behind me, gun to my head. He could shoot me either way. He could shoot me and then the woman. I have no power.

One of my bodies pulls me away for a second to a place where many gargoyles have surrounded me. Maybe I am one of them in this scenario.

My only hope is that in killing the woman the old man will release me. A darkness loosens its grip on me and the fire that once consumed me is vanquished. A blue haze forms around this world. My finger pulls the trigger. One shot is enough. Her eyes roll back into her head and her body is lifted into the air.

The old man puts his rifle down. He pulls the woman up or down from the air and buries her in the ground, which looks the same as the sky. He looks into my eyes and smiles. My body is motionless. The fire has left me. I am very cold, very alone.

The old man brings me to a mountain that feels very high, but high above what? He crowns me with a cloud of smoke.

That dark tunnel of confused lights and sounds is still pulling my bodies down.

I think I am redeemed. I kick loose, screaming and crying out. I fight and fight but still feel held down. I continue to fight. I see Julia next to me. I pray she will not notice.

I am yelling things but nobody hears me. I fall deeper and deeper into darkness, a darkness so deep it consumes even our idea of darkness. Please, Julia, come to my rescue! Do not let me go this way! Shake me loose of this pain!

I wake up again. My body is calm. My mind is blank. I look around. Julia is next to me, sound asleep. We are in a hotel room. Where, I do not know. It is very dark. The TV is on but the sound is very low.

I hop out of the bed and walk to the bathroom. I look in the mirror and see myself. I get undressed and get into the shower.

The water is warm. It is very calming. I lean against the wall and let it run down my back. I run my hands through my hair. I wash my body slowly.

Nightmares within nightmares. I can barely hold on. How can I decipher dreams from reality? I feel like this could be my dream’s dream. Where can I find myself in this madness?

The bathroom door opens. It scares me, but I do not jump. When I was younger, I trained myself to not jump when surprised out of the blue. It is very peculiar but I have retained this skill.

Anyways, Julia comes in and joins me in the shower, standing in front of me and pressing back against me.

I grin at her.

“Babe, you know I like to shower alone.”

She smiles back at me.

“Then get out.”

We laugh until it becomes a kiss.

XXXV

Another city, another show, another tour. Life is moving as fast as ever. There is no time to think. We wake and move, move and play. It is a blur. Even without all the hard drugs this time around, this tour is a blur. All the drinking and smoking never helps I suppose. But that is just a saying. The drinking and smoking help a lot.

Julia has been quieter since going to see her mother. I give her space. I figure if she needs to talk to me about it, she will. And I will be here to listen. I will be here to hold her. Whatever she needs, I got her.

We are in the back of the tour bus. Julia is trying to sleep and I am staring out the window. Look how portions of the sky go to battle with one another. Clouds of orange and grey fight a mist of blue and black. The moon has joined the darkest parts of the sky.

The sky makes me think about gods. If the God of the Bible is real, all I do is “sin.” According to the people of this earth, God can still save my soul. But he has yet to. If he has, I am unaware. The idea of God is like the sky. The sky is beautiful and scary. It appears real to us, but what is it really? It could be but a beautiful picture hanging above us, daring us to reach for it. But in the sky, there are no destinations. It is an endless pursuit. You may get further, but further where? Where are you going?

I am a man with feelings and thoughts. But calling them “feelings” and “thoughts” puts them in a box that will lead me to think a way man has decided I should think. Language is a box. I have feelings I could never describe with words. That is why I love music. Music can paint a picture that words cannot. However, there are feelings beyond all things of this world.

Maybe I was once a star. Like Satan, I was in the heavens but have landed on this earth. Only Satan was tossed from the heavens, I jumped. I would rather feel a fire than nothing at all.

What good is a pretty face when you are dead? You can either die unscathed or go out in a flame. That you can know, where you are going you cannot.

I grab a pen and some paper and get to scribbling.

you made my bones

but not my soul

you have my body

but not my whole

I look back to the sky then back to paper.

bury me in fields of fire

where heavenly hosts are high and higher

where skies are gray and heavens gates

are but illusion, for our confusion

I do not know. I put the pen down again, looking for something more.

she looks like heaven but they say she’s hell

i walked for miles and miles to tell

she brought me into fields of fire

she held my hand all down the wire

a warm caress

a worn-out dress

they call her whore

a lovely mess

a summer’s eve

a heartless sleeve

they call her whore

a love deceived

If there were no churches and no Bibles would there still be a god? Is God’s power in the name alone?

I feel a surge of power go through my body. A darkness begins to pull me down but I fight to keep my eyes open. My body seems to be fighting against my mind. I pull but it pulls harder. I fall into the abyss. Darkness surrounds me.

Then light breaks through in the form of Julia.

“Jamie… Jamie,” she is standing over me, tapping me gently.

“Jamie, my mom left last night.”

I get up and grab and Julia’s hand. She tells me her mother took as much money as Julia gave her and took off for foreign lands. She says she tried to really talk to her, to really have a good conversation, but she says her mother does not listen. Her mom lives in a material world- she is controlled by money. Where it goes, she follows.

“Now it just falls in her lap, I just give it to her… I want her to be happy, you know.”

I see Julia at the lowest I have ever seen her. Do not get me wrong, she has troubles, but she trounces over them and pushes through them. Nothing nags at her, she releases things. But this seems to be hurting her.

I pull her in and hold her close. I can feel that fire still burning inside her. It spreads to me until my chest is on fire. It is a good fire. I like the way it burns me up.

We stay like this until we pull up to a hotel and go in through the back and up to our suite.

Another night, another show. The music will set us free. We will forget the “good” and the “bad” for a while. We will be alive. We will celebrate with other people. We will go through our songs as if each is our last. We will not play just to get it over with. We will sing and the crowds will join us. They will celebrate a moment away from the bull shit.

We will walk into that building with guns-a-blazing. We will set that bitch on fire and burn it down.

XXXVI

The young wish to be old and the old wish to be young. The married wish to be single and the single wish to be married. What one man has another wants, but that man would gladly give it away to get what the first man has.

How does any of this make sense?

Am I wrong for believing that the humans of this world have been led astray?

What do we really want in this life? I mean, when you strip away this world, you see it is all created by machines, which are created by man. Books and machines lead us to what we call knowledge, but what is real knowledge?

Our environment may be just another machine. The way we see things is because of the way they are presented to us. That does not make them the truth. But people do not like to dig deeper. People like to hang around the surface.

Even people that call themselves “deep,” or people we see as intellectuals- what makes them any different? Are they not just in another segment of the reality we are being presented with?

It always goes back to that for me: the boxes we are put into, and the boxes we jump into. We love to be in a box, to identify ourselves in groups- even if your group is one that supposedly delineates people as individuals.

How can we break out of these boxes all together?

I want truth but that seems impossible. What about honesty? Is that the closest we can get to truth? To be honest, is that the highest virtue? Surely not in this world we have created. We are told we are supposed to be honest, but that is lie.

I always wonder what thoughts I would have without media and all the “unnatural” stimulus around me. Maybe I would not be the sick, confused man I am if I was presented with an honest world. Because in this world, it seems that what we want is just what is in front of us. Some want money (which man prints), some want the God of the Bible (which man prints), some want Satan (which man prints), some want sex…

We all want sex, right? Maybe not in the form we are immune to- the passionate, aggressive, perfect movie sex- but in a real form. We want to be with somebody who makes us physically happy.

And some want to be artists, but we all want music, right?

Sex and music, that is it. Maybe weed, too. Everything else is a lie- money, politics, religion, it is all…

But what about power, huh? Power fucks up my logic. People want power, right?

Life is far too confusing. It must be better to think you have it figured out, even when you do not, rather than to know you know nothing.

But I cannot help thinking about the honesty that drags me down.

Can you fault a man for being honest? Is it really the desire of man to have a family and work a dead-end job to support them until he retires and dies? Is it really the desire of man to go get his dream and become a famous actor or rock-star?

What do we really want?

I look up at the mirror and see what I call “myself.” It is a face and body, but what is it doing here? What am I doing with it? Where do all these feelings come from and how do they change what I see?

I splash some water on my face. I have seen this in the movies, I guess that is why I do it. Does it really refresh me? Probably not. I should just get in the shower, that always helps. Water can calm me down. Julia can calm me down.

I shower up and try to push my thoughts away. They fight to work themselves into my brain but I sing them away. I get out when I feel good enough and dry off quickly. I throw on some clothes before joining Julia in bed. She is still awake, half-attentively watching TV.

I look at her. Julia is this beautiful woman, physically and emotionally. She has been called a bitch and whore and crazy and all this nonsense since I can remember. But she does not let the world decide what she is. Why is it wrong to have an attitude sometimes? Why is it wrong to have sex when you want to and with who you want to? What is wrong with singing and dancing and jumping around? What is wrong with dressing how you want to?

I am staring at Julia.

“Take a fucking picture, you weirdo!” She exclaims with a laugh that comes out with a breath.

I move my hands like I am taking a picture.

“Three-two-wonderful!”

We laugh and joke, smoke and watch TV until we fall asleep.

I wake up in the middle of the night. I have had nightmares of the war. I quickly leave the room and hotel all together to walk and clear my mind. That is an impossible task- to clear my mind, but a walk will alleviate the pain.

But when I alleviate the emotional pain, I feel the physical pain. This is the pain of a worn-out, sleep-deprived body, always hurting and always sick. It comes with the life, I suppose. I cannot even remember what it feels like to not feel these aches and pains. Only when I am deep in painful thought am I not in physical pain. So, no matter where I go, all I feel is pain.

I walk around this random downtown in the middle of the night, smoking cigarettes and kicking rocks. It is kind of a beautiful night. The stars are bright in this town. This town is vintage. The buildings are old and bruised but it makes them lovely to me. The sidewalks and streets are cracked. Windows are broken. There are neon signs and bars. There are thrift stores and strip clubs. Block after block is so different but still the same.

I like this town. It is odd and quaint. It is so many things all at once. Many would call this place ugly and old, but it has a feel I connect with. Something about the way the wonderful bright sky contrasts the darkness of this town makes it beautiful.

I find beauty in contrast. I root for the “bad guys” in cartoons. I prefer night over day. I prefer the moon over the sun. It has always been that way for me, ever since I can remember.

Does it make sense that I have no memory before the age of 9? I feel like I could have just been brain washed all those years and then let loose on the world. It makes about as much sense as any other conclusions: none.

I walk and walk until I forget where the hotel is. I walk to a street corner and go to ask the first person I see where my hotel is, but I forget the name of it. I fumble around for a second until I find myself trying to describe it.

“Well,” the man says, “there’s only a couple hotels in this town…”

He kind of groans before he speaks again.

“I’ll drive you around ’til we find it, what the hell.”

We get in his truck and drive around the town. I try to remember markers and such but I am lost. We talk and drive, drive and talk for what feels like hours.

I feel something kicking at my insides. Something is wrong, yes, something is off. I get tense. I feel like I am in a puddle of sweat. I look over at the man but my neck is losing feeling.

Suddenly, I notice something that terrifies me. His eyes are bloodshot. They look red but everything is fading. I am losing control of my body. That kicking continues until I am in pain. We drive and drive and I have no idea where we are going. He is still talking like I can hear him but it should be clear I am gone. My body is limp, and it stays that way no matter how I fight it.

I push and push to get out of my body but I cannot. I am trapped. My breathing seems to slow until I am suffocating and my heart leaps again and again. Everything is falling apart.

I am paralyzed in this truck. I have lost sight. Everything gets darker and darker until it is all gone…

XXXVII

Everything is darker here. I try to regain my composure but I do not recall ever having any. I slide through my mind and into this world.

I am in the middle of a show. The crowd is going crazy. I see Julia in front of me, working the crowd from left to right. I look back and see Dave destroying it on the drums. This song goes crazy.

I am thrashing my guitar. I did not think we even had songs this hard. Julia shrieks through hooks and whispers through verses. What the hell is going on?

Suddenly, Julia is pulled into the masses. Dave goes in after her. I drop my guitar and stare off into space. There is a black hole in the sky and it is swallowing my soul.

The whole place goes silent. I wait. I have to wake up. This has to be a dream. This all has to be a dream.

Julia and Dave are both gone. I am losing feeling in my body. I push, shove, kick and lash out. How can I escape this prison? The more I fight the harder it gets.

The whole crowd watches me melt down. They do not try to help me. They do nothing but point and smile. I try to ask for help but I am unable to. I try to reach out but I cannot. My body is numb and my mind is working overtime.

The pain escapes to new levels. A darkness is unleashed. I am swept up in a cloud of all my insecurities. Death must be closing in on me; when I die, I will not fail to exist, but will lose my ability to think. My mind will belong to powers outside of me. I have to fight this death. I cannot let anything have power over this body I live in. I must find a strong mind that can control it.

But I cannot. I slip away into the darkness.

And then light. Julia is above me and shakes me.

“Jamie, we gotta go on, right now,” she says it calmly but damn, we are on right now.

Or wait, is this a dream? Are Julia and Dave gone? Am I dead? Is this … what is this?

This is what we call reality, surely, but what makes it reality?

My mind cannot trust my mind. How can I separate to an “I” that makes it all make sense? “Collect yourself,” people say. Now I know how deep that saying can go. I must collect myself. But how? How?

I cannot think anymore. It is time to do my thing. I will perform and get paid. Do me and get a bag.

Lights, camera, action.

Let us go crazy. Let us burn this place down.

We go up on stage to thunderous applause. I feel like a god to these people the way they praise us.

I look back at Dave. I look over at Julia. She is smooth as ever. Smoother. She picks up the mic and kills the show. She takes it over. Everybody watches in amazement. She sings a collection of songs we have written before I do a couple and she hops on guitar. She wows the crowd with how good she has become at playing. Amazing.

Tonight, the fire is in the sky. Julia is feeding the fire and it is crawling over the audience until it has consumed the sky. Then it rains down and kills us all.

When the music stops, Julia pulls the fire back in. The whole place is in ashes. Everybody watches her flame disappear from the stage. They wish they could feel that fire forever. But they cannot.

We are not done, thought. We hear the cries for an ENCORE! We go back out and do a couple more numbers. Some we have yet to rehearse. Does not matter. Let us do one more; let us kill this shit.

The crowd of ashes reaches and reaches but we are gone again before they know it. They want more. We go back out and give them one more. They want one more. They scream for it. They beg for it.

Julia tells us she wants to go back out alone. I go to the side of the stage and watch her.

She raises a hand to the crowd and goes silent.

“We could play here forever!”

The crowd erupts but she silences them again.

“But we just did!”

She sings one last chorus for them.

Her flame is surely eternal.

The show is over, and we head back to the hotel. It is just me and Julia in the room now. The crew is out and about, partying or whatever. We will hear them in the hallways and room next door when they return.

We are standing by the window looking out over this city. It is a big bright city tonight.

Julia turns and looks me in the eyes.

“Jamie.”

We connect.

“If I go to the top and jump, do you think I’ll go up?”

I pause but I do not think about it.

“If you want to.”

She smiles at me. Her smile is radiant. Her eyes are more than beautiful. No word could ever compare. She licks her lips and I know she has my heart. I know it, I do not need to question it.

Julia is the only girl I have ever needed, but I have never seen it like that. The moment I need her is the moment I lose her. The moment she needs me does not exist. She does not need anybody.

I am still looking at her face. I am so caught up in her right now.

“Julia, you could jump off this roof and swim to heaven and-”

She interrupts me.

“You think I would go to heaven?”

We laugh.

“Way too boring, Jamie, heaven is way too boring for me.”

She giggles.

“You think I would spend eternity kneeled over and obedient, without a mind of my own?”

She laughs harder.

“I don’t like heaven or hell so I just decided they don’t exist.”

I laugh until my eyes are fixed out the window.

I don’t like heaven or hell so I just decided they don’t exist.

Works for me.

“So, what exists?” I say with a laugh, but I really want to hear what she has to say.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I’m too busy living to think about living, Jamie.”

I look back over to her and put my arm over her shoulder.

“Then let’s just get this money, I guess,” I say.

“What the fuck do you think we’ve been doing?”

We burst into laughter. I laugh until it hurts. Julia jumps on the bed and rolls around, still laughing hysterically.

XXXVIII

She deserved better. I always thought she would just fly away and burn a hole through the atmosphere and disappear into the night. Nobody would ever hear from her again. She would vanish, but in a way that was so inconclusive, we would be left guessing forever.

People would speculate and form conspiracy theories. Nobody would really know. Some would be certain it happened one way and some would be certain it happened another. Some would be skeptical. They would all jump into different groups. They would join forces and try to make their argument best.

Who would be right? Who would be wrong? Who cares?

I am numb to it all. Things come and go. People are here today and gone tomorrow. They don’t just die, though. Some you just never see again, for any reason. Some do die. Some you keep in touch with but you never actually see in person again. It’s crazy.

Julia was brightest fire in this world of numbness, but even she couldn’t last. Her body is gone, but her fire will burn forever. That must be the only thing that matters in this grey world.

She left us in a heap on a bathroom floor in a random hotel, on one of our overseas tours. They found her laying there, breathless. She was naked, but clean. They said she had just gotten out of the shower. Then she “overdosed” on pain pills. Pain pills. Fucking pain pills. In the bathroom. The fucking bathroom.

What a foul way for such a beautiful soul to exit the world she brought fire into.

I wasn’t even there. I didn’t find the body, somebody else did. I always thought she would just float away and disappear, never to be heard from again. Where she would go wasn’t important, what is important is that she would have left the world in a more real reality; with nothing but questions, never to be answered.

I wish she could have left in a flame, but she died alone, in some random hotel in a random country. Of course, to me and her, it was all random; names and places and times were irrelevant. Still, I could’ve never pictured her going like this. I must be having one of my nightmares. Who knows? I can’t even tell anymore. Life is just painful and confusing. The beauty comes and goes, the pain is always right there.

She wouldn’t have wanted a funeral. She wouldn’t have wanted a big tribute. Dave told me I should’ve gone but I just couldn’t. This ain’t a joke. This ain’t an opportunity for me to get more fame. What the fuck is that? I want Julia, but I can’t have her anymore. She is gone. Her body was left here in shame. No god would have left such a beautiful, free soul to die like that.

Her soul must be out there somewhere.

I am still here, though. Life will still go on. It will go and go. It doesn’t just stop.

I will not cancel tour. I will do it by myself, fuck Dave. Well, I can understand his retirement, but I cannot retire. I will continue. Why not? It is what it is and what it isn’t. It just continues…

People will still come to the shows. They will cry for Julia, but she is gone. I will go on. I will make harder music. I will jump around and bring an insane amount of energy. I will release everything inside of me. I will go crazy. I will go.

I will carry on her fire, not because I must or I want to, but because I will. I will take that torch around and around this cold world. I will burn up stages and parties. I will leave people wanting something they can’t have. They will beg for it but never get it.

XXXIX

Tonight, we don’t have a show. We have a night off. Jonny has informed us that we are almost through this tour, we have three or four more dates in this “foreign place” and then we head “home.” Sometimes I feel more at home in these places where I can barely understand anybody than when I can. It’s funny, understanding somebody’s language does not mean you understand what they are saying.

Julia and I have rented a small boat to go out on a lonely lake. It’s just us out here. It’s beautiful. The water below us and the sky above us and us in this strange, reflective medium.

Julia is talking a lot about the sky tonight. She loves the sky, she always has. But she is not interested in astrology or astronomy, she loves the sky the way she sees it.

Julia points out patterns in stars and differences in light, but she finds them herself. Or they find her. Either way, she and the beauty of the sky go together well.

We move further and further out onto the water. We talk and talk. There’s pauses in between but that has never bothered us. We let it all come naturally. We let go of things. There’s a wave and we’re on it, but we’re not fighting to stay atop it, we’re letting the wave take us where it will. The water never drowns us, it just carries us in circles. Everything might be new, but it all feels old.

“Julia,” I start, “what would you do if I told you I loved you?”

She kind of laughs and then turns to me and begins to talk, still smiling. There’s little pause in between. She doesn’t think, she answers naturally.

“Jamie, I wouldn’t mind. I would know you mean it different.”

We stare at each other.

“In this world, love is just a word people use to manipulate people. There’s an idea behind it, but it’s just an idea, I don’t think it’s real. I mean, so many people talk about it all the time, but it holds no weight. With me and you it’s different. We don’t label it and force it. We let it come to us. That’s love, if you ask me. Just because we’ve had sex with other people and we’re not always oozing all over each other, just because we don’t wanna get married…”

She stops and laughs.

“I love you.”

She shrugs.

She smiles.

I smile back.

“I love you, too.”

I shrug.

We smile.

Then we both laugh. I couldn’t have said it any better than she just did. Love is a reach when you call it love. It’s a fight for something that you’re being sold. I feel every word she just spoke. So what if it wasn’t the most elegant thing I’ve ever heard, it was real. I could feel it.

Surprisingly, she continues.

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Everybody wants this ‘love,’ but what is love if it’s never presented to you like it is? You know what I mean? If we all weren’t looking for love so much maybe we could all find it.”

“And marriage, well, that’s just piece of paper and a ceremony. That just puts pressure on you to conform. Fuck that.”

We both die laughing.

Now we are just sitting far out on this lake in a foreign country, enjoying each other’s company. Now we have said “I love you,” but that doesn’t make it any more real than it already was. Besides, words are just words. If I had a penny for every time a boy told a girl he loved her just to get in her pants I’d be a millionaire. If I had another penny for every time a girl told a boy she loved him just to get him to do something for her I’d be a millionaire. We’re all just using this idea of love to get something we want.

But there must be people out there that really want love. And I don’t mean they feel like they need it for some ulterior motive, I mean there has got to be people that really want to hold somebody and love them. And they want love back. They want to know it’s real, but how can you know?

I can never really know if Julia loves me because love isn’t real. It isn’t. It’s not physical. Sex is, but not love.

Julia can never really know if I love her either.

And that’s why it doesn’t really matter what we say to each other.

Maybe what is important is just that we are together, we’re together right now. Even if the sex we have keeps us out of heaven, fuck it. We can’t know heaven is real, but we sure can enjoy sex down here. Moreover, we can enjoy each other without having sex. That’s really special, to me at least. But we can have sex, and we do enjoy it, so why not? If God is understanding then he will be sympathetic with us. If He is not understanding, then fuck it, I’ll take my chances with hell.

Julia doesn’t really talk about God. She once said she doesn’t have time to deal with things she can’t see. Really? Really. It’s that simple. Okay, fuck it, I feel that.

“I like connecting with people through feelings,” she told me.

“Why do we need a greater force to connect with others? We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone, but we can bring an energy that brings people together and helps them escape this cruel reality of loneliness. What’s better than that? What else do we need? None of this really matters, or maybe it does, but I don’t see what God has to do with it, you know? If He is real then He is real, right? And He has a plan, right? And that plan is gonna get carried out no matter what, so whatever I do is a part of plan. Saying God did it is the same as saying I did it myself: either way, it’s happening.”

I answered, “Right, it’s just a different way of looking at it, but the shit’s still the same.”

But tonight, I want to take my mind off those things. I just want to sit out here on this lake and talk to this beautiful girl. We’re both completely alone but right now we’re together. Right now, we’re together.

I turn to Julia.

“Julia, you wanna know something weird?”

She nods.

“I think you’re dead in my dreams.”

She giggles.

“Maybe this is your dreams, Jamie.”

We both laugh.

“Then I guess you’re dead for real.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe this is all an illusion, and you’re really alone.”

I shake my head. I move to her and wrap her up in a big bear hug. The boat rocks a bit. We continue laughing. We move around until we find ourselves in a comfortable hold. We squeeze each other tightly.

She looks up at the sky. Her gaze is somewhere in the stars.

“If this is your dream then I’m happy to be a part of it.”

She is smiling.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

I guess it never did, but right now everything seems right.

XL

I want to bridge the gap between what I call my dreams and what I call my reality. Or I want to destroy one and keep the other. I want my reality, for Julia is present there.

But the dreams, the nightmares persist. Reality is dark and cloudy. We have finished tour and Julia and I are back on the Golden Coast, in our cozy condo. We haven’t talked about taking a break from music, but it’s happening naturally. I guess maybe our minds and bodies just need a break. People say it and it’s true, the fast life catches up to you.

We spend our days and nights hanging out on the beach, going to concerts (we have to sneak into and go to the VIP or closed off sections to avoid being rushed), and making love. I don’t think either of us has had sex with anyone but each other for a long time now. Maybe since before the latest tour. I’m racking my brain to remember the last girl I had sex with outside of Julia but it’s not worth it. Who cares? I’m here now and I’m content.

We don’t really talk as much as you would think. We spend a lot of time watching TV and listening to music. Sometimes we just lay around. Sometimes we get drunk or high, but not like we used to. We’re not trying to quit or anything, it’s just the way it is right now. We’re relaxed. We’re steady.

My dreams are strange but I forget them. They wash away like sand on the beach. They are here and then gone. My body seems to be coming together in some sort of peace. We have money and a condo and Julia’s little red drop top. We have everything we need and more. There’s no stress in the outside world right now. Besides TV shows, movies, and music, we are closed off from the bull shit of everyday life.

I hope I am not losing touch, but what I feel right now is better than I’ve ever felt. Maybe money can buy happiness. I mean, there’s things I’ll never understand and there’s physical pains that nag at me, but what can I complain about? Those things are here no matter what. If I can accept that maybe I can free myself. If I know life will always be dark maybe that dark won’t seem so bad anymore.

However, better things are just better, they are not necessarily good. The war still haunts me. There is a tightness in my throat and chest that never leaves. The rain cloud over my head is there to stay. Only accepting that it will not leave can bring me any comfort.

I come to no conclusions; I just keep moving. Julia seems very relaxed. She mostly jokes now. I guess it’s always been like that. Even when we talk about “deep” stuff, we’ve always masked it with jokes. I like things like that. No matter how dark my mind becomes, I try to keep it light and funny in the outside world.

Today we are at the beach. Julia is swimming and I am reading fiction. I have to put it down a few chapters through, however, because I start to feel inspired to write some music. If I start writing then Julia will start writing and we’ll get with Dave and have music in no time and put together an album with Jonny and then tour and tour and tour…

But, wait a second, isn’t that what I’m all about? If the music is coming naturally to me, I should make it. We can tour and tour and die of exhaustion. It will make me no happier or sadder. Those are just words people use to keep humanity reaching for things unattainable. This world just paints a picture of a place nobody can ever get to.

Or can we?

I have some words in my head. I feel some music coming along. I see colors and shapes working together in my mind’s eye. I see flames of blue burning brightly and then low lights surrounding them. Life has called me back. Nature has reached out to me. I must get back in that studio and create. I am no creator; I am but a medium the universe moves through. I must curate the vibe however I am lead.

When Julia gets back, I grab her hand and we head back to the condo, where we have a little home studio. I go right in and start curating. Julia comes in with me. She catches my vibe immediately. We make a song quickly. It might be the best song we’ve ever made.

XLI

The album has come together very quickly. The creativity comes back and it is bright. This album contains a much happier vibe than our prior work, though the lyrics are still dark, you just have to listen closer. There is a grasp at hope in this album. It’s like we’re saying this life is meaningless but you can find meaning in it. It’s ironic. But it’s beautiful.

Julia sings beautifully on this album. I even begin to become more like a singer and less of a mumbler. Dave sings on the single bonus track. He is no singer but the song works for his deep, growly voice.

Johnny is very pleased. He says no album can possibly top our third musically, but this will be a favorite among those who have been with us from the beginning. He says it will do very well commercially because of how popular we are right now, but he says more people will hate this one than ever before. He says they will claim we have “sold out” with this lighter vibe.

“They’ll say you’re soft now, but fuck ‘em,” he says with a chuckle.

Julia says she likes this album very much. She likes the vibe it carries. She loves the melodies. She’s feeling the change of pace.

“I don’t do favorites, that’s boring, but I do love this album,” she tells me.

I don’t do favorites either. Things change too much. I’m stuck on one song and then another. I like one color one day and a different color the next. Every movie that moves me becomes my favorite movie. How can you pick one favorite of all the flavor in this crazy world?

Dave says this is definitely the best album.

“I know you guys and all your idiosyncrasies and shit, and how you don’t like to categorize things, but this is the best music we’ve made so far.”

He pauses and laughs.

“By far.”

I look at Julia. She smiles at Dave and then me.

“I’m loving it!” She replies.

Dave laughs and then looks quizzically at me. It’s one of those mockingly serious faces that masks an actually serious question.

I look over at Dave for a good second without speaking. I hit him with my devilish grin. He speaks.

“Dammit, I hate you, you motherfucker!”

He laughs.

“What do you think about this album, Jimmy, for real?”

I’m still grinning.

“It’s a vibe, for sure.”

He tries to hold a serious expression but quickly gives way to laughter.

“You motherfucker, just answer the question.”

I laugh and shrug.

Johnny plans to release the album in a couple of months or something. He says he’s excited for us and of course tour will begin soon after. Until then, Julia has made a commitment to sing for a free show to raise money for some disaster. She was invited by some friend or something. Besides that, her, Dave and I will probably just hang out and smoke and work on our stuff for the tour.

XLII

Julia and I are sitting on the couch, relaxing and watching TV. I’m still thinking about what Johnny told us.

Johnny said he was wrong. He told me he played the album for a couple of high, high up music executives and they loved it. He said they told him they see it as more of a “we’re here to stay” than a “we’ve switched up.” He said they were impressed with the range. They loved the expansion of the sound, rather than a change of sound. He said they predict it could be one of the best-selling albums ever with their cosign.

It’s crazy to think. Everything I ever wanted is in my lap and I don’t care about it anymore. I’ve seen too much and I know too little. The old me would hate this me. Enjoy yourself! You got it! Everything you worked so hard for is yours!

THE WORLD IS YOURS!

Not only that, but I’m sitting here with the most beautiful human in the history of mankind, and later we will make love. I should be the happiest man on earth. But I’m not. I’m just not. That damn storm cloud always hangs over my head. I try to love people, I want to enjoy this life, but I feel so out of place. I feel out of place in my skin, my mind, and in this world.

I am alone and I know it. This should give me comfort, but it is a tough realization. Like somebody once said, “we’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone.”

How true it is. Love is an illusion that gives us an illusion of hope and peace. If only I could go back and believe these things were real again. If only I were still caught in that illusion.

But I know I will die alone. I know Julia will die alone. Nothing of this world can bring me peace. I feel like knowing this should give me the “fuck it” attitude to carry on and do my thing, but I feel so weak and afraid. I don’t want to die alone. I mean, I will, but I don’t want to. Nobody wants to, right?

I reach out and grab Julia’s hand.

“Reach out and grab God’s hand.”

She smiles at me. Her features are so soft and inviting right now. I could stare into her eyes forever.

Julia gives me a gentle kiss on the forehead.

“I love you,” she says with a laugh.

“I hate you,” I respond.

We both laugh. We laugh and laugh for no reason. When it gets silent, we erupt back into laughter. We laugh over the TV until we forget it’s on.

XLIII

This morning I am having nightmares and I know it. I keep falling in and out of different bodies and different minds. Some of them are connected, I feel. Some are in completely separate universes. I’m trying to make sense of it all, I’m trying to piece it all together and figure it out. It’s impossible. I’m trapped, half asleep, half awake, different parts of me floating in and out through separate realities. I need my hard drugs back.

I am surrounded by a light darkness where I am in the midst of a crowd. There is a very ugly girl in the middle of the crowd and everybody is pointing and laughing at her. She is depressed but trying to laugh along with the crowd as if she is a part of the joke rather than the joke itself.

I see what I see. This girl is unpleasant to look at. Her face is gruesome. She is not fat, but her body is undesirable. It is oddly shaped. It appears she is trying to be pretty but she is failing. Maybe she will never be pretty.

Some in the crowd throw rocks and sticks at her and laugh. Nobody tries to help. I just watch it all. I feel disgusted but I am too numb to move.

Next thing you know I’m in a wave trying to escape the rising waters. I look for land but it’s nowhere in sight. I am losing my breath. I am fading away.

I snap back to a more natural state. I know I am in a bed, but my body is unable to move. My body fights to break free of this hold but my mind tries to remain calm.

I see Julia. She is in a cloud of fire. I am looking up to her. We are walking somewhere. It doesn’t make sense how it is all happening right now. We’re talking about something, I think. There is water around us. The sky is swimming through the water.

I am asking Julia something.

“If you knew how much I needed you, would you abandon me?”

Her fire burns so brightly it burns my eyes. Everything is so cloudy. It is strange that my eyes can be affected in this way.

She tells me something and I hear it clearly.

My body is numb. I wait for movement to come to me. I lay there in agony, but I try to stay calm. Maybe I will move again, maybe I will not. Is it something I can decide? What more or less can I do?

I roll over to find Julia next to me. She is awake as well.

“Bad dreams?”

I stare into her eyes.

“If I told you that I needed you, would you leave me?”

She pauses. A sadness seems to come over her. I immediately regret asking this question. I want to take it back. My stomach feels suddenly ill. I want to die.

Julia’s sadness then overtakes me. We are both under a cloud of darkness. She sits up.

“Jamie…”

I wait. My body calms down. Whatever she says she says. What I asked I asked. It is too late to retract it.

“I haven’t slept with anyone else since I’ve been with you.”

I am relieved and intrigued.

Then I am confused.

How do I know she isn’t lying?

“Jamie, even when you were sent off to the war…”

I lay down patiently. I want to listen to everything she has to say.

“I wasn’t trying to be faithful, and I knew you weren’t always faithful, but it just happened. I never wanted anybody after you. You’re the only one that said what you meant. But most things you keep to yourself. I can’t prove it, but I just know it.”

I’m shocked. I really think she’s telling the truth. All the other boys I know run game on girls, or they rush into marriages and try to remain committed. Some become celibate because they need an excuse to be a virgin. Some lie about having sex. Boys try to manipulate anything they can to manipulate girls. I never did. Girls accused me of it, but I never meant to. I just understood that things change. You can love someone now and think you will love them forever, but you may not. I think it’s better just to be honest about it.

Julia is the only one who has ever seen this in me. Most girls used to think I was either weird or just stupid. They couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t doing the things every other boy was doing to get them. They either thought I was just too weird to get them, or didn’t know how. They never realized that the truth was just I didn’t really want them.

I mean, if they pursued me, and I felt like having them, then I would, but I never held on to them. Besides, there were only a couple before Julia, really. There haven’t really been too many besides Julia. Some came here and there on tour, but not lately. Lately, it’s just her. And we don’t make it that way; it just is that way.

I look deeply into her eyes. I see beautiful things in those fiery eyes. I hope she sees something in mine.

XLIV

I simplify things in my brain. When I am having sex on a regular occasion, I feel better. When I am not, I feel worse. The world as I have found it is a very complicated place. You come into this world and you are hit with a million things at once. You try to sort through them, but it’s rough. People are telling you one thing, other people are telling you another, and more people are telling you something else. They all talk like they have the answers. Then TV and media, billboards, flyers, books… they flood your eyes and fill your mind. It is all so much.

Whenever I simplify things, it comes down to sex. But maybe that’s the way I have been programmed to think. I could be but a robot in this world. No matter how I try to break free there is no hope for me. I recycle the same thoughts over and over in different ways. I want peace, but is peace just another unrealistic standard the world around me has set for me? Where is the truth and the absolute? Not the words, not the ideas, but the real truth. The truth, you know what I mean, the meaning beyond all these words and feelings.

I cannot find truth. If I find an answer, that just means I stop looking. If I accept the God of the Bible tonight, that doesn’t mean I have found the truth necessarily. However, that does mean I will stop looking. I will ground myself in that one truth and work for a positive attitude no matter the circumstances. I will thank God no matter what. I will praise His name when my family gets raped and dies at the hand of others. I will forgive. I will forgive even if I am still angry deep down. Then I will ask God for forgiveness for being angry deep down.

Maybe this is a good way to live, maybe it does free you, but is it the truth? Is there an old gray-haired guy in a white robe getting ready to hug me and tell me I am made perfect in His sight?

I cannot accept truth because then I will stop looking for it. So, while I will never find it, I will never be pathetic enough to choose from the assortment of “truths” the world has handed me. I will not just choose one “truth” and run with that. I need no crutch to lean on. I will fight for truth, and if the truth will set me free then the truth will pity me for searching for it.

We have only but a few weeks until our tour begins. The album is a huge hit and the dates are all sold out. Already. The world wants what we’ve got. We’ll give it to them.

Julia and Dave seem ready to go. I know I will love to play once I get up in those bright lights, but tonight I feel scared and alone. I’m fine with it, feelings are just feelings, but I still feel them. Julia is a few steps ahead of me on this nature trail. I am distracted and lagging behind.

I fix my gaze on her as she graces the land. What a sight to behold. She moves with power and sophistication. The world wishes only to conform to her beauty but it cannot figure her out. Every human wants her soul but to have it is impossible. To want it makes you exempt. She is fine with nobody but herself. She has found some way of getting through life that nobody before her had figured out.

Julia occupies a very beautiful existence. While others strive and strive, she lets it be. Some strive to let it be. They want to be free of burdens. Many people talk of peace and understanding. Julia doesn’t talk like that; she doesn’t live like that, she just lives.

I watch her hips moves from side to side. There’s a way in her motion that moves me. I get a light feeling in my stomach when I watch her. If I could spend my whole life just watching her move about I would, as they say, “die a happy death.”

The sun is setting in a sky full of color. Some people look out at this and point to a magnificent creator.

“How can you not believe in the Creator when you see the beauty of His creation?”

Jesus Christ, all I do is question things. If there weren’t so many things to question life would be so much simpler. There’s too much out there and it’s all the same. You look at it and you walk around it and when you reach out to touch it, it all disappears. It was just your imagination. But if the feeling lasts run with it, that’s the logic.

I look at the sunset. I think of the word “beautiful.” What if I were to make up a word for what I felt right now, let’s say “daychra.” Then let’s say I tell a child I feel “daychra” when I look at the sunset. That child might be feeling a completely different way than I feel, but he will call his feeling “daychra” when he looks at the sunset. Now we are saying the same thing, and we think we agree, but we could feel something totally different. Then all the words we use to describe “daychra” we make up. I control the feeling, no matter what it is, because we assume we feel the same, whether we do or not.

Feelings are weird, even the word we have for them might control what we think- there’s another weird- weird, there’s another…

Goddammit, Jimmy, just enjoy the sunset. Just enjoy this beautiful woman. Just relax…

XLV

Everything I wanted is gone to me now because it never really existed. Everything you want is a picture that somebody else painted. It looks like reality to you but it was just a painting. It’s beautiful but it’s not real. The picture looks good but it’s not what it seems.

I’m racing up the street or down the street in fury. I’m burning rubber in Julia’s little red drop top. We’re a couple days away from touring. Julia and Dave are ready to go; they’re doing great. I’m falling apart, and it’s because there are things I can’t understand. Everybody has answers for everything. Even if they’re wrong, they think they’re right. Life only makes sense to them one way.

I cut off cars and listen as people honk and yell curses at me. One man tells me to go to hell. One girl screams she is going to kill me.

You can’t kill me.

I’m already dead.

Have you ever driven so fast the whole world looks different? I’m on a highway and I feel like I’m in a tunnel. Only the moon and stars watch over me. I’m a runaway soul, and there’s a hellhound on my trail. I dropped out of the sky in a burst of fire. My fire will burn out soon.

I am alone in this world. No matter how you feel connected to others, you are still alone.

I lift the cigarette to my face and inhale. The smoke from the cigarettes makes my high more intense but calms me down at the same time. I feel like I am going in circles.

There’s a rage inside of me that I hate. I want to be relaxed, like people think I am. I want these drugs to work better. I want to be calm and cool. People describe me as that quiet and cool character, but it is far from the truth. Inside is a raging storm, building and building. That energy is only released through music.

I take an exit and get off the highway. I speed around traffic and fly through a red light. I hear a honk behind me. Then I see flashing lights. I pull over to the side of the road.

The police officer recognizes me. Here we go. He wants a picture for his daughter. Apparently, I am her favorite. He lets me off with no ticket, no fine. It’s funny, I am rich and yet have never paid a ticket. I have been bailed out of jail before, but with the company’s money. I am worth too much to the industry for it to let me go like that. If I was poor, I would still occupy the same body and mind, though I would think differently, but I would still be the same. However, I would have gotten tickets. And nobody would’ve got me out of jail, ever. It doesn’t matter who you are in this world, it just matters how much money you got.

I drive around for a while and then back to the condo. Dave is passed out on the couch. Julia is asleep in the room, but on the floor. I join her down there but I can’t sleep. I line my gums with coke. I lay back and light up a cigarette. I wait.

I am afraid of falling asleep. Then I will dream. And my dreams frighten me. Dreams used to excite me but now they kill me. They are closing the gap between my truth and my lies.

XLVI

If your God will send me to hell for wanting the truth then I will march into hell with a smile on my face.

I have this or a similar thought a lot. It bugs me, but I cannot escape it. It comes to me in dreams and when I’m awake. I try to avoid thinking about God all together, but it proves impossible. I was just raised this way. My mind was taught over and over to think a certain way. It’s so hard to break free from years of brainwashing.

It seems like this life is just a lot of people all trying to control each other. We’re like dogs being pulled around by a sled (not the opposite way around). We either run after it or get dragged by it and then we all die eventually.

If your God will send me to hell for wanting the truth then I will march into hell with a smile on my face. I will not be dragged around.

I want to put this into a song but whenever I try to force something it never comes out like I want it to. It feels contrived and I hate that. Sometimes this thought comes out naturally in lyrics, but it comes in metaphors and such. I try to put it more directly but it doesn’t work. That’s not my style; I can’t try; that ruins what I’m doing. I want things to be too good. I’m never satisfied. So, I have to just do what I do and let it go.

Julia probably doesn’t even think about that. Natural is the way she came up. She is a very natural human. She needs no titles or accolades. Her presence speaks for itself. Her expression is hers and hers only. She doesn’t need to protect it. It doesn’t make her angry that everybody wants to be like her. She would just rather they be themselves. But people can’t seem to do that. It’s too hard to know what “you” are.

I’m deep in thought per usual and hating myself for it. I wish to free myself of these lurking feelings. How can I do that? By listening to what man tells me? How can what another man says or writes be my answer? What gives him the authority over me?

She’s all liquored up and ready

But ready, damn, for what?

There ain’t nothing here but nothing

Ain’t no new thing under this sun

That says a lot. It says even more with music behind it. I think I’m going to start my shows with this, no matter where the rest takes me.

Julia has written a sad song that I know is about her mother. I don’t know if we’ll do it live but who knows? I can hear her singing it in the kitchen. I listen to her words as they float softly through the air and bring peace to my ears.

There’s no hope in a future, my dear

We’ll never make it out of here

Cos every town’s the same

And everyone’s to blame

It’s such a shame

You don’t hold me like you used to hold me

Her voice just floats, it really does.

XLVII

The tour has been moved back. I guess the fans are really upset. Johnny cooks up a story for why. He avoids questions about rumored falling outs and weaves a tale of exhaustion and technical difficulties. He says we want to give the best possible show and right now we’re not satisfied with the venues and so on. He’s a good bullshitter.

However, I know the real reason. It’s me. I’ve been absent. My mind is gone right now. Everything is so dark. I refuse to do rehearsals. I just live in the studio. I barely eat or sleep. I just make music and get high. Julia and Dave have been doing their thing and letting me be, but even they’re starting to wonder what’s the matter.

It’s just life, it’s dragging me down. I have recently read an article in a famous publication specifically about me. I don’t really remember doing the interviews, chalk it off to never being sober, but I do recall a photoshoot in a penthouse outside of downtown. I saw the pictures in the article and was reminded of it. The words I don’t remember saying.

The article was read by millions probably. It’s very popular, that magazine. What I read disheartens me. It’s the same old story.

I am described as a brooding loner with an ironically positive energy around me that draws people in. They compared me to past icons, rebels, and innovators. They talk about my mysterious past, and have dug up enough to know that I fought in the war. They write that all I would say about the war was that it has become a blank space in my mind. They wrote that I said it with a devilish grin. That devilish grin. They talk about that too much.

After talking about how much of a workaholic I am, the article goes on to say there’s something about me that hints at a deeper, darker side. They quote lyrics here. They note that what I say in public and interviews, always keeping it “bizarre” and “light,” is different from what I sing. At this point in the article, I had hope, but then it left. They end it by writing this:

“Jimmy smells like pot, and he drinks in public. He passes by hordes of hopeful groupies with a wink. That suave, devilish grin exudes a confidence that brings about a nonchalant and effortless attitude. His swagger is the main course, and it comes with a side of ‘f you,’ but in a way that makes you all the more attracted to him. Jimmy is our broken-hearted hero, a daydream of a man, by the side of a queen, but always alone.”

A sex symbol, nothing more. All I am to them is a larger than life, drugged-out musician; I am no longer human. They love the me they see, but they do not know me. They write that I am “always alone,” but they don’t know what that means. They are right about one thing, though. The things I say are much different than the things I sing. The music I make is the closest to how I really feel. I smile and laugh in public because why not? Does a smile mean you’re happy? Does a frown make you down?

Tonight, I am in the studio as usual, and Julia is with me. Dave has just left for the night. He will be back soon enough. Julia is just watching me tonight. I am recording and recording. There’s no need, we’re already done with the album, but I just have a lot on my mind and this is like therapy to me.

Everything I make I end up hating. It just doesn’t feel right. Am I losing touch? Can I not communicate the right mood through my music anymore? What’s wrong with me?

Now Julia puts her arms around me. She kisses me on the neck. She tells me to just stop for a while. She wants me to go to the beach with her. I hesitate. I decide to go to with her. We leave the studio and hop in her little red drop top.

Everything is so dark outside. The stars are fading away, the sky is black. The moon has no glow. Even the streetlights seem to have lost their gentle aura.

Julia takes off like a rocket. I lean back and feel my systems slowing down. I’m so tired I can barely move, but for some reason it feels good. I get a light feeling in my stomach that takes me back to my childhood. Even then, I would only get this feeling rarely, and it only came when I was still. I feel it now. It makes me feel bittersweet. Everything was so simple. Now we have to “grow up.” We need order. Fuck that. I want to be like a child. I want to be fascinated by “simple” things. I want to see things differently and never be told how I am supposed to see them. Let them be.

Let the children be.

The road moves at us swiftly. I look over at Julia. She is perfect to me. I see her flame burning as brightly as ever. How lucky I am to feel that fire burning. How beautifully it emanates from her soul. Nobody could ever own her.

I feel my body slipping into darkness. I let it go.

XLVIII

I am fading in and out. I see Julia driving. I feel cold blood rushing through my body. I smell fire. My mouth tastes sour. The sound of music invades my ears.

It is not pleasing.

All my senses become mixed up. I see Julia saying something but I do not know what it is. I cannot concentrate on any one thing. There is so much going on. I try to slow it all down.

Now I see the streetlights passing by us. It is like we are completely still and they are flying past us. It is like I am not moving at all; things are just moving at me. Except it is not just me. I am not alone right now. I am with Julia. We are like one and the same.

I watch her as she speeds through what becomes unfamiliar territory. It oddly feels familiar. I try to rack my brain to remember when I have been here but my efforts are to no avail. The world keeps moving past me.

I am tired of trying to chase the things around. I am sick of chasing things I will never get. The whole world is just moving at me right now and I am fine with it. Let nature have its way with me. I am a part of nature, I suppose. Whatever will be will be.

Que sera, sera.

The world is picking up speed. Julia is smiling. Her hair is blowing like crazy in the wind. She is the most beautiful thing in this world. How she ever ended up here I do not know. Why did the world make her the way she is? Why are there no others like her?

In a moment that feels like an eternity, but not in a bad way, the sky lifts us up. I feel a burst of energy around us. I feel an intense heat but it feels good. It burns through me and soothes my cold, broken heart. I could never feel this flame without Julia. She has brought fire into my frozen world.

We burn as the sky moves past us. Stars burn up as they fly around her little red drop top. All of the bodies and minds I have inhabited leave me. They do not align or come together; rather I let them go. I let everything go.

I grin over at Julia. She is glowing. Her eyes are brighter than ever, and remain fixed on the things beyond, the things that are moving our way.

I feel darkness and fire all together.

Then it all just fades away…