by Anna Dorn
“I was about to come check on you,” Yumiko says when I finally exit—with a towel, thank you.
“It’s called self-care,” I say. Then I check the time: 5:10. Fuck. Time is moving at a glacial pace. I return to the bathroom and take another five milligrams. When I exit, I step directly into cat vomit.
NINETEEN
I’m more buzzed than I wanted to be when we arrive at the venue, but it could be worse. We’re fifteen minutes late because Yumiko had a small “wardrobe malfunction” with an accompanying freak-out.
We’re standing aimlessly outside of shut black doors when Jax and Pilar arrive. Jax runs up and puts his arms around us, pulls us all into a tight quartet that makes me feel safe. Then we spend several minutes trying to figure out how to get inside.
A large man in all black escorts us to our “green room,” which is not green. It’s black with chipped paint and cracked leather couches, like the break room of a shitty office. To my chagrin, there is a small fridge filled with domestic light beers. There are also bottles of bourbon and gin, which I vow not to touch. Pink cans of LaCroix. Haribo gummy bears. Two blunts.
I crack open a beer and sit down on the couch while Jax puts The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on the speakers. I start rolling my shoulders and go into the nice, timeless zone. I forget that I’m about to perform and feel like I’m just at a normal party with my new friends. Then the large man returns and says “sound check” and Jax pauses Lauryn and we all head to the empty stage. Jax starts plugging things in and communicating with the venue’s sound engineer in what sounds like a foreign language. I zone out and think about how I will pass the time before the performance, how many milligrams I’ll consume, whether Wyatt is here yet and what she’ll be wearing. The beat to “Dearly Queerly” drops and I jump a little. Jax starts going eyyyyyy and Yumiko does her little scream and I rap my verse vacantly into the empty ballroom.
When we return to the green room, Pilar pulls me over to a chair in front of a bulb-lined mirror and starts doing my makeup, which feels relaxing and very Old Hollywood. I ask her to do dramatic 1970s wings, like Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons, which is not set in the 1970s (nothing about that movie makes sense). I think about whether I should tell Wyatt that I watch YouTube videos of her sister, Stella, to figure out how to do my makeup. Then my stomach sinks a little. I wonder if we’ll see her before we go on.
When my makeup is done, Jax and I dance to M.I.A. while clutching perspiring beers and everything feels good and normal.
Then the fat man peeks in and says, “Ten minutes.”
And then I begin to freak out a bit. What if I freeze? When I saw Cat Power in college, Chan Marshall had a major breakdown onstage and her career could not be better. I’m in the right profession, I tell myself, then try to calculate how many milligrams of Adderall are in my system.
Yumiko interrupts my internal calculations. “Cigarette?”
“Please,” I say.
We go outside. In the hallway I imagine Wyatt or Agnes popping up at any moment.
“How are you doing?” Yumiko looks into my eyes with a sincere expression that makes me uncomfortable.
“I’m great!”
She grabs my shoulders. “Don’t fuck with me.”
I grab hers. “Don’t freak me out.”
“I’m being a friend,” she says.
“Don’t!” I yell, then I light my cigarette.
As soon as we get back inside, people are yelling at us. Arms and voices urge us down the hall. Yumiko hits my butt and we both run. My heart is beating out of my chest. I can no longer make out shapes or figures. The colors and people blur together into a kaleidoscopic mess that alternates between beautiful and terrifying between seconds. I’ve never taken psychedelics but it feels like I’m tripping.
Soon there is noise everywhere. A screaming faceless mass. A hand caresses my back—Jax or maybe Pilar. We take our places, “blocking” like we practiced. Another wave of screams rushes at us and my body freezes. I’m paralyzed, just like I feared. I meant to bring a beer onstage, but I forgot. I clutch my fanny pack, which cuts diagonally across my black T-shirt so that I look like a crossing guard in The Matrix. At least that’s what Yumiko said before we left.
Soon the beat drops and my mouth is opening and making sounds and people are screaming. I can’t hear myself or distinguish between the sounds really, but I’m glad the audience isn’t quiet. I’m also glad I can’t make out faces or even distinct bodies. It’s just a shiny black mass. But as soon as my inner voice latches on to that language—”shiny black mass”—I think of outer space and start to feel vertigo. I feel trapped and like I’m dying, which I am, technically. We all are, everyone in this shiny black mass.
I try to remember what I’m supposed to think about to calm myself down. My breath? It doesn’t feel like I’m breathing. The present moment? Nope, too terrifying. I think about Das Racist making no sense onstage, chugging vodka. I think about Cat Power having a mental breakdown and shouting incoherent obscenities into the audience. Between bars, I briefly scan the stage for a bottle, something. As soon as I turn, Yumiko is handing me her trademark plastic bottle of Maker’s. Bless her manic little heart.
I snatch the bottle and chug a big sip. The crowd goes wild and I feel dizzy. I crave silence and wonder how much longer I have to be up here. Before I know it, I’m edging toward the front of the stage, pouring drips of bourbon into the audience, trying to channel Chan Marshall. The crowd is screaming and Jax hops over to me, starts pouring his beer into the crowd.
“‘Dearly Queerly’!” someone shouts at the top of his lungs.
A familiar beat drops, and I again go into autopilot. While I’m rapping, my mind is elsewhere. I think about high school choir, before I was medicated, about that desperate need to escape the stage. I think about how I was in love with my best friend, Maddy, and how I liked giving hand jobs to my boyfriend, Michael, and how I didn’t know about the Kinsey scale or the word “hetero-romantic.” And now I’m singing a song called “Dearly Queerly” to an audience of screaming fans. Yet I still feel that same sinking incurable dread. It does not “get better.”
I want to go back to being backstage, dancing with Jax. My whole body is hot and my heart is beating like crazy. I think about how I could get away with popping a benzo and the audience would probably cheer, but I’m too afraid to do anything but rap and flail my body around.
I spend the rest of the set in a state of terror, occasionally comforted by a neutral memory or the thought of returning to the green room. When the fifth beat drops, I feel a glimmer of hope, like when the airplane starts to descend or when I see a sign for my freeway exit. The light at the end of the spiral.
The final song is “Genius,” and for a quick second in the final bars, I get into it. I feel present and alive, like when they say performance is a drug. But as soon as I realize that I’m enjoying myself, I’ve left the moment. I’m back in the terrors of my brain, afraid and paralyzed and desperate to leave.
When the crowd erupts, I feel an immense relief. We run offstage just as quickly as we entered. Once backstage, I expect to feel better, but the dread quickly returns.
“Vaga,” Jax says. “You killed it.”
I continue to drink and smoke weed and take pills, but the dread remains, it’s simply coated in a chemical sheen of false comfort. Several times I go into the alleyway by myself to smoke a cigarette and pace while staring at the moon.
At one point we’re funneled out of the green room to watch Dead Stars from the side of the stage. I mostly feel nervous watching them, remembering what it was like to be up there myself, the sensory overload and the dread. It’s hard to look away from Agnes, who runs around the stage like a banshee in between moving the wires of the Buchla, which scare me again, like they did at the Mirror Box. I imagine the wires coming to life, moving toward the audience and toward the side stage, wrapping around my body and strangling me like a python. I shake my head to snap the image, refocus on Ag
nes’s confident expression. Her tan skin is covered in a glittery sheen; her white hair sticks up in a billion directions. She doesn’t look afraid at all. She’s in her natural habitat, in complete control.
My gaze moves to Wyatt, whose stage presence is more understated. I’ve always been drawn to her for this reason, the fact that she doesn’t look like she’s trying. On her TV show, she would float across the screen as though she were unaware she was being filmed, as though it were reality. I watch her flip her heaps of hair to the other side of her head and wonder if she’s afraid, then take a sip of my beer.
After the set, we funnel back into the green room. Our group has expanded. Beau is here, cutting lines on a gold tray. I remember watching Heems do heroin backstage and remember it could always get darker.
I look around for Nina but don’t see her. Then I become filled with rage, directed only at myself. For not enjoying this moment. For being afraid onstage instead of alive like a banshee. For not being excited that at any moment Wyatt or Agnes could come into our room and talk to us like equals.
“You okay?” Yumiko asks.
I look at her big blue eyes, slightly blurred by my current chemical cocktail. My gaze floats behind her head, to avoid eye contact, when I see something that makes me think I might be hallucinating. Ellie? Jax is hugging her.
“Be right back,” I say to Yumiko. I push past her and slink out of the room, down the hallway, outside into the cool night. It must be in the low 50s. I’m just wearing my T-shirt dress, but I feel neither cold nor hot. I think about how it’s weird that I hate space, but the moon comforts me. Then I try not to think anything at all. After a few drags, my not-thinking is interrupted by someone asking me for a light. I look up, prepared to be annoyed, then realize it’s Wyatt Walcott. The chemicals in my brain confuse me, make me think I’m looking at a screen. @WYATTLOOK.
“Ah,” she says, eyeing my cigarette. “Parliament Lights.” She does a little body roll. “I didn’t think there were any of us
left.”
I want to tell her that I smoke them because of her, but I resist the urge. We’re equals, I tell myself. I thank the chemical cocktail in my brain at this moment for preventing me from feeling a fucking thing. I glance down at my hand and it’s still and clammy, not even a little bit shaky.
“You were great,” I say.
She flips a mass of hair from one side of her head to the other. I should be freaking out that I’m just inches away from the primary object of my fascination over the past few years: Wyatt Walcott’s hairography. Just masses of golden blonde waves. When we’re big time, I could get extensions that look like hers. But this career isn’t for me. I can’t handle it. I’ll crack under the pressure. I have nothing.
“So were you,” Wyatt says as she exhales. “Agnes and I have been loving the EP. I’m so proud of Jax. He was the only person I could tolerate at that horrible… facility.”
She drags and my heartbeat quickens. I suppose it’s my turn to speak, but my mind is blank. I just want to watch her, like she’s the northern lights and I’m a tourist in Sweden.
Luckily, she saves me: “Even my idiot sister likes ‘Dearly Queerly.’”
“Stella!” The name leaps out of my mouth and I feel like a crazed fangirl.
Wyatt seems amused. She drags again, looking at me for the first time as she exhales. “I like your hair,” she says.
My heart rises up into my throat. I’m suddenly hyperaware of my body in relation to the earth’s core and imagine being sucked into the blazes. I wish I had something to lean on to steady myself.
The door opens and a man in all black says, “Encore time.”
Wyatt drops her cigarette and stomps it, and I follow in unison. As I crush the ember, I remember that Ellie is in there. I want to escape. Did Wyatt really say she liked my hair?
Back on the side stage, it’s hot and sweaty and noisy. I instantly feel dizzy and on edge. I’m surrounded by people I don’t recognize, yelling and screaming and looking happy. I’m in a different world from them, a scarier and bleaker one. I focus on Wyatt, her charm and her energy. But looking at her just makes me more afraid and more sad.
The colors darken and I feel dizzier. I need to sit down. I’ll be mad at myself for ditching the encore, but I have no choice. Someone screams in my ear and I turn around and then everything turns black.
When I come to, I’m moving in the back seat of an unfamiliar car. I’m terrified, more afraid than I was in the crowds of the side stage.
“Oh, thank god,” a voice says. “You’re awake.” Jake Perez whips his head around. “Prue,” he says, interrupting my scream. “It’s just me. You fainted and I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“I know it’s you,” I hiss. I’m furious. How did Jax let this happen? How did Yumiko? They’re supposed to have my back. “What happened to the Beemer?” I ask. I’m sitting on gray cloth seats.
“Jesus, Prue, the things you decide to fixate on,” he says as he turns the wheel. “It’s a rental. You know that car is a piece of shit, you just like it because it’s shiny—”
“Take me back to the Teragram or I’m calling the cops.” I reach into my fanny pack and pull out my phone. I dial 911 and wave the phone in the air so he knows I’m serious.
“You need to go to the hospital,” he said. “You passed out. You were out for almost ten minutes.”
“Did you drug me?” I ask. My hands are shaking and I’m thinking about who to text. Before I can decide, a text from Yumiko pops up: Where you?
“You drugged yourself, dumbass,” Jake says. “You need to go to the hospital.”
I hop up and look out the window. We’re on Wilshire near the Good Samaritan where I get my yearly pap smears.
“I’m fine,” I say. I text Yumiko, I fainted and my “friend” Jake kidnapped me.
Fuckkk!!! Yumiko texts back quickly, thank god.
“Let me out,” I yell. Then again: “Let me out!”
“Calm down,” he says, reaching for my arm.
I swat his hand away. “I’ll have someone pick me up,” I say. “Just drop me here at this corner.”
“Why are you acting like I’m kidnapping you?” Jake asks. “I’m your best friend, remember?” He’s turns onto the hospital’s street.
“You should have left me there,” I say. “The venue probably had a medic.”
He says nothing but does pull over. As soon as the car comes to a stop, I reach for the handle and pull, but the car is locked.
“It was the biggest night of my life,” I say.
“You know I’m just trying to help you,” he responds, a broken record.
“Do you have Advil?” I ask. My head is killing me.
“Are you kidding? The last thing you need is another pill.”
I roll my eyes and start texting Yumiko. Can you get me?
How?? she texts back. I remember she doesn’t have her car or a smartphone; I just recently had to describe to her what Uber is.
Fuck, I say and type at the same time, then rack my brain. I can’t ask Jax, I’m too embarrassed. Anyway, he’s probably snorting lines with Wyatt and Agnes right now and I couldn’t possibly take that experience away from him. I don’t feel comfortable enough with Pilar and I couldn’t rely on her. Same with Beau.
“I think I should just take you inside,” Jake says, eyeing the hospital. “You were out cold for a few minutes and that’s worrisome.”
He’s right. I’m no stranger to a memory blackout, but typically I remain conscious. Although I guess I have fallen asleep in some foreign places and positions. But this was a unique situation. It was our first show, the pressure, the adrenaline. I overserved myself to cope. In the future, I’ll do less.
“I’m fine,” I say. “You’re just ‘concerned’ because my career is taking off just the way I want it to and you can’t handle it. So you’re taking me to the hospital, trying to lock me up.” I look him in the eye for dramatic effect. “Just like they did with all the great f
emale artists of history. Like F. Scott did to Zelda.” I turn my gaze toward the window.
“F. Scott and Zelda were lovers, you sicko,” he says. For a second I feel like we’re at one of our gross diner lunches, Jake stuffing some vile meat product in his mouth while I pick at a salad.
A text from Yumiko pops up. That curly hair girl just asked if you’re okay… I could ask her?
At first I think she’s talking about Nina, and I don’t want to be alone with her. But Yumiko knows Nina; she wouldn’t not use her name. Blonde curls? I type back.
Yeah! she writes back.
Ellie.
Tell her that Jake kidnapped me and I need her to pick me up at the parking lot at the Good Samaritan hospital.
“Someone is coming to get me,” I announce proudly.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he says.
I quickly look away from his face, which looks genuinely hurt, and I can’t face it. I open Instagram. I have a lot of notifications. Wyatt Walcott tagged me in a photo. I can’t believe Jax is probably dancing to Rihanna with Dead Stars while I’m trapped in this shitty rental car.
“Is it one of your bandmates?” he asks. “Because I don’t trust them.”
“Good thing you don’t have to,” I say. I feel dizzy, like I might pass out again, so I look out the window and watch a homeless woman peel a Band-Aid off her face. “It’s Ellie.”
“Ellie?!” I’m not looking at Jake, but I imagine his eyes getting all big and I fantasize about punching him. “I cannot believe you are taking advantage of her savior complex after you cheated on her.”
I bring my gaze back in the car and look into his eyes, which peer right at me. He looks different, as if a layer has been peeled back. He isn’t hiding behind his typical saltiness. And it scares the shit out of me.
“That’s straight-up cruel, Prue,” he says.