Johnny Ruin

by Dan Dalton

  In 1990, Jon took a road trip on his motorcycle. After four hit albums and back-to-back world tours he was beaten, worn down, burned out. He put the band on blocks, stepped away a while. He cut his hair, rode between small towns, worked on songs that would become Keep the Faith.

  Then he wrote the soundtrack for Young Guns II. Most people forget that was a solo project. He won the Golden Globe, but Sondheim beat him to the Oscar. It didn’t matter. He’d found what he was looking for. In the desert, he cast off the old and remade himself anew.

  In this desert, he’s standing in his seat, pointing at a billboard advertising an unflattering picture I accidentally took of myself on my phone. Oh, buddy… how many chins is that.

  She said she loved my body, kissed every inch of me to prove it. I can still feel her lips on my skin. Her soft, soft lips. The ones that remade me anew.

  We drive past Steve McQueen, more rust than car, lying desolate where I parked him, at the side of the road in my mind, somewhere along the highway in the Land of Lost Things.

  Maybe I should put the band on hiatus.

  But you’re not in a band, Jon says.

  It was a figure of speech, I say.

  You’re a figure of speech.

  In 2005, I took a road trip across the US. I drove 10,000 miles, hit thirty states in thirty days. Most of it looked like this. Miles of nothing, then endless suburbs littered with strip malls and chain restaurants. You can drive anywhere in America and find yourself exactly where you started, on a six-lane highway between a Sizzler and an Outback Steakhouse.

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  Billboard: Kill yourself.

  Another car I had was a 1985 Mitsubishi 4x4 named Magnum PI, on account of the bull bars looking like a moustache. The front seats had independent suspension, which you’re meant to use for off-road driving, but I used for car sex. A girlfriend and I would spend nights driving to quiet spots so she could straddle me while we rode around, let the seat do the work for us.

  We drive past the scene on the opposite side of the road, her face contorted, mine straining to watch the road as the seat rocks us towards ecstasy. As the 4x4 fades in the rear view, Jon punches my arm, congratulates me on sex I had a decade ago.

  Somewhere out in the plains, I see a boy, laughing, riding his bike. Behind him, another boy doing the same. My brother and me. We must be eleven, twelve. We’re happy. I guess I’ve lost a lot, I say.

  An old friend stands at the side of the road, thumb raised, trying to hitch a ride. Paul. I don’t stop. Paul and I haven’t talked in a long time, and the reason we haven’t talked is I’m kinda embarrassed about the way my life has gone. I don’t want him to see me like this.

  Jon is standing up in the passenger seat, arms out like this boat of a car is the goddamn Titanic. He’s grinning, trying, failing to shout things into rushing air. I ask him what he’s doing. Living, he says, and I tell him none of this is real. He grins. I’m just making the best with what I have.

  On a passing billboard we’re forty feet high and happy.

  I guess what I’m saying is I don’t want another sixty years of being alone.

  You can be too happy, I say, to Jon, to no one in particular. Horse shit, he says. Look at dogs. Dogs are just about as happy as you can be. I shake my head, ask if he’s heard of Happy Tail. It’s where a dog wags his tail so hard against something that it splits at the tip and bleeds, I say. They end up spraying blood everywhere. We drive in silence a moment. You can be too happy.

  Jon says: You have a unique talent for ruining everything.

  Jon says: Pick the guy up, I’ll drive.

  We switch seats. Jon spins us around, sailing the car on to the dirt, back across both lanes. Dusk falls, the sky glowing orange where it meets the desert. High above, light blue gives way to black. I look up and realise that the stars are just scratches. The night is worn, faded like an old photograph, processed through filters that replicate analogue wear.

  How long will this take.

  You mean picking him up.

  This whole thing. This journey.

  How long can you go without water.

  Depends, I say. Five days. A week maybe.

  Then we should probably try and finish before that.

  I take out my notebook, start writing. Jon reads over my shoulder. That really how you’re going to start. I cover my notes with my hand. He pushes a cassette into the stereo. Brian Eno. It doesn’t fit the scene. It’s utterly perfect. Hey, he says. It’s your story.

  He puts his foot on the dash, taps a beat on his thigh with the flat of his palm. He smiles. It’s a smile that’s sold a million albums. Here, now, among forgotten memories and discarded lives, I realise I haven’t listened to a Bon Jovi record in a decade.

  Sample tweet: You won’t be alive to see it fade. Buy JoeSeal.

  Three

  Nevada / Unremembered, Part II

  We crossed into darkness without realising. The night is subtle like that, draping slowly then all at once. It’s cool out, not cold. We keep the top down. Jon wouldn’t have it any other way. He has one leg hanging over the door, his bare foot resting on the wing mirror, driving at 88 miles an hour exactly. I know this because he made a point of telling me. He has a single finger at the bottom of the steering wheel, tapping his free hand on his thigh, keeping time with a beat I can’t hear. It’s been half an hour since we picked up our hitcher. We still haven’t said a word.

  I’m twenty-two. My best friend Paul and I are sneaking out of Los Angeles before daylight brings gridlock. We plan to hit thirty states in thirty days, drive more than 10,000 miles. It’ll be the trip of a lifetime.

  Here, now, in the back seat of the Cadillac, Paul sits quietly, riding bitch with the friend who left him behind and his rock-star valet. He leans forward. Are you really Bon Jovi. Jon nods. Mate, I love that song you did. What’s it called, ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’. Absolute tune, that one. Jon grips the steering wheel tight, mutters, Thanks. I don’t try to hide my smirk.

  I don’t remember my first car crash. Mum told me the story. We were stopped at a red light when someone hit us from behind. My bottom teeth went through my lower lip. I still have the scar. It’s like a diary entry someone wrote for me, a souvenir of something I don’t recall.

  I’m twenty-two, on my road trip with Paul, drinking stubbies in a Motel 6. He’s drunk, screaming at the top of his lungs. What’s in the box! What’s in the box! I have to punch him in the face to get him to go to sleep. He’ll wake up in a few hours with an aching jaw and I’ll tell him he fell over.

  Jon taps the brakes twice, swings the steering wheel so the car swerves in the lane. I wake from a half sleep. What the fuck. He laughs, tells me the car is dancing. Mum used to do this, when I was a kid. It was hilarious then. You don’t have any fucking music on, I say. He brakes in time with his beat. No, champ, he says. You don’t have any fucking music on.

  I turn around, kneel in my seat. Paul looks up. Remember those sisters we picked up at that karaoke bar, he says. Took a bullet for you that night, pal. Yours was all right, mind. I wince at his words. There’s a pause that carries too long. I try changing the subject.

  Where is it you’re off to.

  Oh, you know. Here, there.

  This is the middle of nowhere.

  Remember that dancer I fucked.

  Where is it you need to get to, I say.

  Great legs. Why didn’t I see her again.

  Maybe the girlfriend you were living with.

  Oh, true, he says. Shame though. Great legs.

  The exchange is a little unfair. These are his words, but they don’t represent him, all of him. And yet they’re the reason he’s here, in the back of my mind. We haven’t spoken in years. Perhaps because he reminds me of a me I’d rather forget. Perhaps he reminds me of someone I still am.

  Jon speaks. It’s Paul, right. Paul nods. You two used to be buddies, Jon says. So why don’t you talk any more. I already know
the answer. Jon should too. The night is crisp and my breath fogs a little. But I’m not cold. It’s never cold here. Honestly, Paul says, it gets a bit boring after a while.

  The first car hits us from behind. Shunts us forward. There’s confusion, the cry of torn metal. Tyres screech. We’re hit again from the side. A different car. What the fuck is— Jon starts. He doesn’t get to finish. Another shunt pushes us out of our lane, into oncoming traffic. Jon swerves us back into the right lane, straight into a broadside from a four-wheel drive. Jon speeds up, goes on the offensive, but one of them hits our rear right side. The back of the car swings out. Jon fights the wheel as we spin across the lane divider. The car is dancing, but not to our beat.

  We come to a stop. I start to ask if everyone is okay when a speeding truck slams into us. The car rolls in slow motion. The ground hits me hard. I’m not sure how long I’m out. When I open my eyes, I’m lying in the dirt at the side of the road. Jon is nearby. Then I see Paul.

  The last time I saw Paul he nearly killed us both in a car crash. That was a decade ago. Now he’s a mangled body in a wrecked car in my mind. The night drapes slowly and then all at once.

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  Jon stands up, dusts himself off. He walks over to where I’m standing. Shit. Some ride. I look down at Paul’s body. Tell that to Paul. Jon asks if he’s dead. Either that or he’s really fucking unwell, I say. Jon leans close, puts his arm around my shoulder. You lose some, you lose some.

  I brush his hand away. What good are you, I say. You act like you know everything. You don’t know shit. The road is littered with metal and glass and Paul. I know all kinds of things, Jon says. I know it’s pretty difficult to kill yourself with Ketamine.

  He starts walking. I watch Paul turn to dust and bones, his remains carried away by the wind. Jon puts a hand up to stop his hat going with them. You coming, he says. The coolest man I’ve never met walks from highway into shadow. I pick up my notebook, follow along behind.

  On our road trip around the US I fell asleep at the wheel. I’d been driving all night. Paul was asleep in the passenger seat. It was only a second. Maybe less. A microsleep, they call it. Long enough that I woke up too close to the Jeep in front, had to swerve to avoid hitting it. The driver of the Jeep honked her horn, shouted inaudible insults into my rear view. I pulled over soon after. Paul slept through the whole thing. I never told him.

  I’m thirty-one. It’s our first road trip together. She’s spent the first hour telling me about all the horrific car accidents she’s seen. Decapitations. Drivers who’d killed their entire families after falling asleep at the wheel. A car crushed when a large container fell from a lorry, squashed so flat it was almost impossible to salvage the remains of the driver, passenger and two children. Looked like a panini, she says. She asks if I want to talk about something else. I don’t mind, I say, picturing a panini leaking people juice.

  Jon says: Wanna get a move on there.

  I say: I haven’t written today.

  He says: Write tomorrow.

  I say: Bukowski wrote every day.

  He says: You’ve never read Bukowski.

  At the side of the highway up ahead there’s a giant anatomically correct neon heart. It must be fifty feet high, flickering back and forth between whole and broken. You see things like this out in the desert. Huge concrete dinosaurs. World’s Biggest Thermometer. World’s Biggest Broken Heart.

  The night Paul died he was driving too fast, racing over a quiet stretch of highway in the black of night. When I asked him to slow down, he took off his seat belt, sped up. I’m not going to— he started. He didn’t get to finish. We hit a car stopped in our lane. He went through the windshield, bounced off the back of the car we hit, landed in several different places on the road. The other car was empty. The driver had left his hazard warning lights on, walked to find a phone.

  When they find me I’m trying to account for all his pieces. I can’t find his face, I say, pointing at the rest of his head. Later the police would tell me there wasn’t a face to find. He’d hit the road with enough speed that he slid along the tarmac for thirty, forty feet, shredding his clothes, obliterating his face. It had ground off as he slid, asphalt like sandpaper on soft flesh, a red skid mark in his wake. I’d stood in the remnants, trying to collect his teeth, not realising the jaw that once held them no longer existed. The coroner will say his neck broke passing through the windshield. A small mercy. There will be a closed casket at the funeral.

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  Above us, stars shoot in slow motion and I wonder if a star shooting in slow motion is just a star. We’ve been walking for what feels like hours. Jon turns to me. What do you want most, he says. Right now. I see her face, her hair, her eyes rolling back as she comes. I want to go home. He doesn’t reply. I can’t tell if he’s nodding or bobbing his head to some internal rhythm. Musicians. I walk with my eyes on my feet, nearly don’t notice when Jon stops, looks up. I follow his gaze to a house in the distance. Wonder if anybody’s home, he says, but I know he knows the answer.

  In the distance, a neon sign flickers in the dark, four red and blue words burn against the black of night behind them: You are not here.

  As I watch, the third word flickers and falls dark, extinguished by my own disbelief.

  Four

  Home

  There is a house in my mind that looks like the one I grew up in. It sits back into the desert, detached from real estate, from reality, a terraced house wanting a terrace. It’s smaller than I remember. But then it wasn’t perched on the edge of a void last time I saw it. Not that it’s entirely out of place. The northern industrial town I’m from sometimes felt like this. Like I was always one misstep from being swallowed by the abyss.

  We walk towards the house along a ridge. The earth falls away steeply on both sides, so far that clouds have formed in the space they’ve left, an ocean of inverted sky stretching out into the dark. By moonlight the effect is eerie, as if we’re walking on clouds.

  In the silence, shadows detach from the night sky and swoop overhead.

  I say: Are those—

  Jon says: Bats.

  Up close the house is out of place, in disrepair, ripped right from the street it sat on. The sandstone brick is jagged like a mouth with missing teeth. Wallpaper and bathroom fittings from neighbouring houses sit intact on the outer walls. Mains water sprays from a broken pipe.

  As we approach the front door, Jon pulls a knife from his boot, starts carving something on the wall. I ask what he’s doing. Checking for damp, he says, flashing me the kind of grin that says he’s up to mischief. He turns back to his work and a minute later walks away. Come on, he says, time’s ticking. He enters without knocking. I stop to read what he’s inscribed on the stone. Two simple words: YOUR MOM. Up ahead I hear Jon laugh to himself like a giddy schoolgirl.

  I’m seven, climbing through a grate in the floor at the front of our house. It’s late at night and we’ve locked ourselves out. The house is old enough to have a coal cellar, and I’m the only one small enough to squeeze through. Later I’ll love being here alone. But now it’s dark, cold. Foreign. The terror of dancing shadows and strange sounds gives way to curiosity, then calm. I take the key from the kitchen, unlock the back door, feeling the house get smaller with every step.

  I’m fourteen, home sick from school. I decide to light a candle, nearly burn the house down. My dad is furious. I don’t know how to tell him it was comforting, right up to the point I dropped it on to the carpet, melted several holes into the pile. He managed to fix it so you couldn’t tell. Years later I found out he replaced the whole carpet without telling me.

  The door of the house in my mind is painted green, chips at the edges showing the colours it used to be: blue, red, green again. The doors of my childhood. I follow Jon inside, but it’s no longer the same house. As I walk, the halls and rooms shift and blur. Doors an
d walls from different houses I’ve lived in, dreams of houses I never will. I strike the wall with my fist like this is ‘Take On Me’, and the decor settles on wood chip, because little says childhood like wood chip.

  Up ahead Jon is shutting doors, shaking his head. I ask if he’s looking for the can. He shuts another door. An exit, he says. I’m about to suggest we just use the door we came through but I turn around to see it isn’t there any more.

  There are things I’d tell her, if she were here now: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to end like this.

  I open a door and I’m in the bedroom of my student house, a chaos of crockery and spent clothing, none of it clean. Inside I’m twenty-one, sitting at my desk, working on my first novel. The book is like Fight Club but with karaoke – gangs of disaffected men, starved of emotional outlets, engaging in underground singing competitions. I watch myself write a while. I’m younger, leaner. I haven’t thought about this book in years. I wrote in a fever, finished the first draft in eight weeks. It won acclaim from my tutors but a girl I was seeing at the time told me she hated it. I put it in a drawer and never took it out again. I shut the door and grip my notebook tight.