by Pete Wentz
I am writing Her an e-mail from a Super 8 hotel in Muncie, Indiana (they don’t have continental breakfast, in case you were wondering), because I’m feeling guilty. Guilty for all the fun I’ve been having, guilty for the close calls I’ve had in darkened corners. Guilty for forgetting about Her and letting my life run free. Guilty for feeling good.
For whatever reason, it seems like we’re against love. Everyone. People think love equates to weakness, or gullibility, or an unwillingness to deal with reality, so they try to ruin it, the social scientists and the admen, with studies and lingerie shows and boxes of candy. They try to invalidate it, dirty it up, but they can’t, because people in love know the truth. They know love is good and pure and really the most beautiful thing in the world. They know love is greater than anything, greater even than God. At first, I didn’t believe it, but I do now. You have made me realize it. Being away from you has been the hardest thing I have ever done. I am shaking and sweating. I am going into withdrawal. I need you. You are my withdrawal. You are my blood.
I want to protect you from all of this. When it’s all over, I want to run away with you and never come back. I want to be buried in the ground with you. It’s the only way we can keep this pure and beautiful, I’m afraid. We have to stay away from this whole life. We have to be normal. We have to get married and move to Berkeley. Our love can’t survive like this, no matter how hard we try. I’m quitting the band. I’m coming home. I need you.
I stare at the e-mail for a while, then I delete it. We’ll be back in Chicago in a few days and she’ll never know the difference. My conflicts of conscience are about the only battles I’m fighting these days, and I’m willing to fight until the end. There is something freeing about this life, about living out of a single backpack and disappearing into the night. About smelling terrible and never remembering people’s names. About never having to say you’re sorry. We exist outside of society. We stay up late and sleep even later. We are bandits, pirates, serial killers. The dregs. Someone should lock us up and never let us out again. But instead, they give us their money, they offer us their beds. We are not going to pay for the beer. We are not going to be back here for a good, long while. We have prior engagements. We have the money in a duffel bag. We have no shame. Fuck guilt. Back to life.
8
We are reunion sex. We are a freeze-dried wet dream. That’s it, like an old song with a great chorus that never dies. Reunion sex is like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” It’s like AC/DC’s “Hells Bells,” only with foreplay. The hits last forever. It’s confidence. It’s an ego boost. It’s my best summer crammed into a stacked, five-foot-three-inch brunette. It’s old hat. I know Her better than I know myself. I know Her better than anyone should know anyone, ever. I whisper this into Her ear, and she moans. I push all the right buttons, watch Her rib cage jut out as she gasps. The hits just keep on coming.
I’m only back in Chicago for the weekend. Come Monday, we’re off to Madison to start work on the new album. But until then, we’ve decided that it would be best if neither of us left Her bedroom. We’ve turned it into a political endeavor: we’re staging a Bed-In, for love. We’re a modern-day John and Yoko, and Her tiny apartment on the North Side is our Amsterdam Hilton. All we are saying is give love a chance. We will strum guitars and sing. We will mail acorns to various heads of state. We might even invite members of the press, we’re not sure yet.
We are joking about it, naked, wrapped in sheets and each other, when I realize that this is the happiest moment of my entire life. I want it to last forever. I want to be fixed, but, for the first time, it’s not because I’m broken. I want to be fixed like a cat, so I never go and screw this up. She is all I could ever ask for, she is perfect, and right now, with those big, green eyes and pillowy lips and alabaster thighs, the idea of doing this for the rest of our lives doesn’t seem all that daunting. She’s the last reprieve. The stay of execution. She gives me hope.
But times are tough for dreamers. And even if my dream is a simple one—all I want is for Her to be in love with me forever—I know it’s still a long shot. Life ruins everything. So I’m determined not to leave Her bed, because in here, life can’t get at us. This is a restricted area. No trespassing. Which is why I don’t tell Her about the parties and the girls and the notes stuck beneath the windshield wipers. I don’t tell Her about feeling alive on the road . . . that’s all life, the bad, dirty, savage kind. The kind I don’t want spoiling this, the kind I have to keep separate from love. It’s apples and oranges. Zoloft and Ativan. Church and State.
“What do you want?” I ask Her.
“I want this,” she answers.
Exactly.
I’m a lifer, sweetheart, I’m here till the bitter end. I’m the floor covered in trash after the last dance, the remnants of the night that was. I’m real, I’m the tangible part of the memories. I’m the proof. You make me want to be this way. It would be easy to disappear into the darkness, to pile into myself and sail on to the next port. It would be easy to not give a fuck. But our love isn’t easy because it’s not meant to be. It requires work and sacrifice and protection. And I wouldn’t want it any other way, not right now, with the morning sun making the curtains glow and Her arms around my neck and the sounds of the street so far away. I’m in it for the long haul, I’m not going away. Not until Monday, at least, when we must go on, when we are required to let life back in. Not because we want to, but because we have to. Life always wins.
“I don’t want to go to Madison,” I tell Her. “I don’t want to leave you again.”
“You don’t have to go,” she whispers, as she begins kissing my neck. “You can just stay here with me. Nobody knows you’re here, not even the guys. You can disappear. We can hide out. Stay with me. . . .”
She keeps whispering stay as she kisses my body. She whispers it as she slides on top of me, wraps Her thighs around my waist. Stay . . . Stay with me. It’s not fair, and she knows it. But I’m not going to object, at least not right now. She moves Her body up and down slowly, and things go electric. Neurons fire and pop. We play “More Than a Feeling” again. It’s a great song.
After, we lie in Her bed and she asks me if I care if she smokes. I’ve only been gone for a month, and she’s started smoking. It’s because of school, she says. The stress. I laugh and tell Her I don’t mind, even though I do. She fishes a Marlboro out of the pack, lights it up. I watch the smoke rise to the ceiling, drift over to a corner, and hide there. My mom smokes. The girls who hang around after shows smoke. The room feels different now, as if there were a window open, and life were pouring in through the crack. Things have already changed, just as I feared.
That’s the problem with all of this. No matter how hard I try, I can’t make it perfect. I can’t keep it in a bottle, can’t ignore reality. Chemicals are involved, the kind scientists try to synthesize and put into pill form, and they’re making tremendous advances every day. They’re winning the war against love. It’s probably inevitable now. There are only two ways to see the world: either no one and nothing is connected to anything, or we are all a random series of carbon molecules connected to each other. Tell me if there’s room for love in either of those scenarios.
I suppose there’s no point in even trying anymore, so I let life back into our bed.
“I have to go, you know,” I say, watching Her eyes for a reaction. “I can’t stay here. We’re booked in the studio and there’s money involved and—”
“Oh, no, I know,” she lies. “I was just kidding when I said you should stay. You can’t after all.”
She added emphasis to that last bit just to let me know how ridiculous she thinks it all is. Suddenly, life is lying between us. She rolls over and lights up another cigarette. Here we go.
“You can’t just say something like that, it’s not fair,” I sputter. “I mean, do you think I want to leave you again? Do you think I enjoy doing this?”
“Of course you do,” she sighs, blowing a colu
mn of smoke skyward. “Why else would you be doing it?”
“I’m doing it for us, for our future.” I sit up. “I want to do this so I can take you away from here. So we can go to California and be together.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. How are we supposed to stay together if you’re gone all the time.” She laughs. “How are we ever going to move to California if you’re not here to begin with? I mean, you’re not even living here, really. You just blow into town from time to time. And that’s now. What’s going to happen six months from now? A year from now? Have you even thought about any of this?”
“Of course I have,” I fire back. “I’m not an idiot.”
• • •
I hadn’t thought about it at all. Not even in the slightest bit. I have no plan, no idea of the big picture. It makes me feel incredibly stupid that I was willing to ignore the facts and put so much stock in something as pointless as love. Maybe the scientists and admen were right. Love is just something that can be made in a lab or put on a billboard. It has no practical place in life; it serves no function other than tying us up into knots, making us chase fantastic ideals such as “happiness” and “hope.”
I end the Bed-In early. I’m a pretty lousy John Lennon. I take a shower, using Her shampoo because mine has mysteriously vanished. I was only gone for a month, and already she’s making me disappear from Her life. The smoking, the shampoo . . . the signs are everywhere. I’ve just been too blind to notice them. I dry off using Her towel. Walk back into the bedroom and she’s dressed too. I tell Her I’m going to go home for a bit, to see my parents. She doesn’t object. We’re drowning in life. As I leave Her apartment, I notice that my hair smells exactly like Hers now. She’s following me everywhere.
I don’t go home right away. Instead, I drive around Her neighborhood, make my way past the last remnants of the Cabrini-Green projects, drift through the Gold Coast, with its fortified mansions and luxury condos. I end up down on Lake Shore, as I always do. I park and walk down to the river, stare out at the skyscrapers, now iridescent in the sun. I’m trying to keep myself from feeling anchored or weighed down, trying to keep my mind off thinking about what kids like me deserve. Desperation isn’t a strong enough word, but it will have to do. Life is going to get me. I’ve opened the box and let the Furies out. I dove into this headlong, went off to pursue this insane dream without so much as a map. I have no plan. I suppose it’s only a matter of time now.
The best gamblers aren’t the high-stakes players or the ones who can read the table. The best gamblers are those who know when to fold and walk away. Everybody gets it wrong. It’s all cards and hearts. Everybody either gives up way too early or holds on way too long. I should’ve folded a long time ago. My wrists are only black-and-blue because I’ve never had the balls to go all the way. I’ve got ringing in my ears, but none on my fingers. I’ve got sunsets on the insides of my eyelids.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Someone knows I’m back in town. I don’t care enough to answer it, but I take it out of my pocket anyway. For a second, I think about tossing the phone into the river . . . maybe I could even get it to skip a few times before it sinks to the bottom and gets washed out into the Mississippi River. But I don’t. I’m not sure why . . . maybe it’s because I need a phone. You can’t get through life without one. Any thoughts that you can are just fantasy.
I am torn. I don’t know what to do. I’ve always been a dreamer, have always believed in the power of love and art and loud, life-affirming rock and roll, but, for the first time, I’m starting to have doubts. Can a dream even exist in reality? Or does it turn to stone the second it leaves your mind? I can still see Her standing on my front porch, hands in the pockets of Her coat, rocking back and forth in her Chucks. I can see every single blade of grass in my parents’ lawn. Can smell everything in the air. I can remember Her jumping into my arms, saying, “Hiiii!”—and kissing me. That’s the dream. The reality is today, right here on the shores of the Chicago River and upstairs in Her apartment on the North Side, in Her empty bed. You can’t have it both ways. Everything has turned to stone, and it’s all sinking. I can’t even pretend it’ll float down the Mississippi and end up in the Gulf of Mexico, either. I know it’s too heavy, so it’ll just sit there, down in the muck and darkness, with the skeletons and the sewage, probably forever. That’s life, after all.
I don’t know who to call or what to do, so I just stand there, by the river, as guys who have it all figured out jog by in Lycra leggings and tops with patented Dri-FIT technology. They said good-bye to their dreams a long time ago, they didn’t dare to stand up against the current of life, and they’re content. They’re not the ones fantasizing about skipping cell phones off the surface of the river, or thinking about the blood pooling in their wrists, just below a thin layer of skin, just waiting to be taken up into the light. They’re not the ones picturing the little blue Zolofts in their trembling hands. They have sex, not love. They have careers, not dreams. And they sleep soundly at night, they rise early and go jogging or throw on expensive suits. Sip coffee with confident, satisfied grins on their faces. Big board meeting today. Briefcases. Windsor knots.
• • •
There’s nobody who thinks like us—Her and me—anymore. And it’s probably for a good reason. We are dreamers. We worship love, we hope against hope and toss practicality out the window. We believe in magic and ghosts and lies. We wear each other’s clothes. We huddle for warmth. We were made for fashion, not function. We have a lot of growing up to do.
And suddenly, I realize that I’m sweating. Or maybe crying. Or both. I haven’t felt this way in years. I’m standing there shaking when I decide it’s time to call my parents and tell them I’m back in town for the weekend. It’s time to tell them that I’m crashing, and I need help. Call the doctors. Bring on the meds. If I’m going to limp through life, I might as well use a chemical crutch. Like I said, times are tough for dreamers.
9
The meds take two weeks to saturate my system. Even the US Postal Service works faster than that. In the meantime, I spend my days in the waiting room of my old psychiatrist, leafing through the same magazines, staring at the same framed print (a reproduction of Seurat’s painting—the one from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—touting the 1984 Chicago Art Expo) on the wall. The waiting rooms of psychiatrists are the most depressing places on earth, and they’re always identical, no matter where you go. Old magazines, leather couches, muted color schemes. Coatrack. Potted plant. Vaguely tribal sculpture/Persian area rug. Occasionally there is also one of those machines that replicates the sound of waves crashing or fills the room with the hushed fizz of white noise. The only thing that changes is the name of the city where the art expo has been held, but even then, the image behind the glass is always the same . . . Monet’s Water Lilies or a Cézanne still life or van Gogh’s Starry Night (because, hey, he was crazy too!), something swirly and soothing, meant to put the patients at ease, but instead just makes them want to rip the thing off the wall and smash it and slice their wrists open with the shards and get blood all over the sofa set. It’s amazing to me that psychiatrists the world over haven’t realized this yet.
At the far end of the waiting room is the door to the psychiatrist’s inner sanctum, and behind it, someone is currently spilling his or her guts. As my session gets closer, there’s a rush of anticipation, because I can’t wait to see who will emerge from the room. It’s usually a kid my age, and he never makes eye contact with me, just keeps his head down and beats a path to the exit. He’s like one of those criminals you see on the news, trying to cover his face with his hands as he’s being led away by the cops. I like to imagine what he’s been talking about in there, what sins he’s hiding, what’s devouring him from the inside. I pretend that maybe he’s more screwed up than me, and that, when I go into the room, the psychiatrist will look at me and crack a joke, something like “Boy, you think you’ve got problems,” and we’d both laugh.
Today, t
hough, it’s a girl who comes out of the room, maybe a few years younger than me. She’s got red hair pulled back tight on her head, and she’s wearing a pink sweater. You can tell she’s been crying. I turn my gaze to the Persian rug beneath my feet, pretend to be incredibly interested in the patterns of the thing, as she fumbles for her coat. I don’t want to look up and see her face. I don’t want to know what’s devouring her insides. So I hold my breath and keep my head down until I hear her leave the office. There’s a brief silence, some rustling of papers on the other side of the door, and then the psychiatrist emerges and asks if I’m ready. He doesn’t skip a beat, doesn’t even take a moment to compose himself. On to the next tragedy.
The psychiatrist is wearing khakis and a wool sweater. It looks itchy as hell. His neck gathers at the top of it, folds of pink flesh with a gigantic head perched on top. It makes him look like a snapping turtle. He sits back in his chair, crosses his left leg over his right, and asks me how I’m feeling. His pants are too short, and I stare at his white socks while I search for the correct answer. Fine, I tell him. I feel fine. Haven’t felt anxious, haven’t stood on the banks of any bodies of water and contemplated jumping in, haven’t felt as if life were gripping me and squeezing the air from my lungs. I think the medication is working already, I tell him, even though we’ve both been down this road enough times to know that it’s way too early for that to be happening. But, hey, there’s no harm in trying to bluff my way through this entire process. He nods and scribbles something on his notepad.
“Now, the last time you were here, we were talking about . . .”
He says “we,” but I did all of the talking. Psychiatry is bullshit. I know from experience. You sit there and talk and talk—about your feelings (“How does that make you feel?”) and about your childhood (“You mentioned your mother there . . .”), about your fears and hopes and all of that jazz—because you just want the hour to be up, because you don’t want to be sitting in an overstuffed chair in some stranger’s office, looking at the carefully calligraphed diplomas he’s hung on the wall behind his head, because you get the sinking suspicion that all of this is a gigantic waste of time.