Blazed

by Jason Myers

  Kristen scoots her bottom closer to me, and part of her right leg falls into my lap.

  My face turns bright red.

  “Well, hey there.”

  I push her leg away and say, “Come on. That’s fucked up.”

  “I just moved my leg, Jaime.” She’s smiling.

  “Stop.”

  “Stop what?” she asks, after taking another drink. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We’re not blood related. It’s a fucking boner.”

  “Right,” I say, while running a hand down my face. “Anyway, I don’t believe in needing a girlfriend. It’s a waste of time. Even when you’re giving them all the attention you can possibly give, it’s never enough. You all just want more. I’ve watched dudes attempt to give the world to their girlfriends, only to have it not be enough. They get dismantled instead. And then they get crushed. Like, I have no problem if a girl isn’t into it anymore and wants out. Just say something. But most of you don’t ever do that. Instead, you torture that guy. It’s so sick. While he’s saving up money to buy you something nice or he’s spending all his free time writing a song for you, you’re fucking trashing him to all your evil friends and laughing behind his back. While he’s opening himself up, you bitches are out talking to other dudes and flirting with them and exchanging fucking phone numbers, then playing it off like the guy just wants to be your friend. Bullshit.”

  Kristen looks almost stunned. Appalled even.

  And I go, “Trust me. Every guy you’ve met since you started middle school was only being nice to you because he wants you naked, and your legs spread. Regardless if that ever happens or not doesn’t matter. All you sluts want is attention, and more attention. It’s so gross. It lets you get close to this new guy and figure out if he’s got more money and a nicer car and more popular friends. None of you even care what you’re doing to the boy you already have. The one you supposedly like so much. You’re all whores, ya know.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she says.

  “It’s a fact. And this is why I don’t need a girlfriend. Just like I don’t need a group of friends, just like I don’t need anyone else to justify my tastes in music and books and movies. I watch these girls who go to my school, right. And they’re so pathetic, some of them. It’s like they need to have a boyfriend and when they break up with the guy they just wrecked, they jump right into another relationship. It’s twisted. My happiness will never be defined by my inclusion of a girl in my life. A relationship will never make me feel more complete or whole. From what I’ve seen, they cause more misery than joy. I can’t even fathom wasting the amount of time some people do talking about this other person and how much this other person sucks or doesn’t make them happy. They spend hours doing it. They spend hours shitting on the person behind their back and saying the meanest things about them. All those hours spent doing something so meaningless and trivial while they could’ve been using that time to do something significant. Something the world might remember them by.”

  “I get it now,” says Kristen. “I just wanna know who the little cunt is who did this to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Clearly some girl destroyed you, Jaime. That kind of bitterness doesn’t come naturally. You have to earn that kind of hate, dude.”

  “Right.”

  “Somebody fucking hurt that heart of yours.”

  I take a drink and shrug. “It was my mistake.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I trusted her.”

  Pause.

  “That’ll never happen again.”

  My phones buzzes, like, eight times right after I say this. I take it out of my pocket and am shocked to see, like, six texts from Dominique. The last one saying, It would be better if you told me to fuck off than ignore me, dude. Grow a pair.

  This feeling of loss and sadness quickly sinks into me. I’m confused. She actually wants to kick it with me. After reading the other texts, it’s clear she wants to see me and spend time with me.

  I don’t get it.

  Kristen stands up and walks back over to the Babyshambles record and I go, “Question for ya.”

  “Ask away,” she says. “Whatever you wanna know.”

  “Do you know some girl named Dominique?”

  Kristen immediately looks back over her shoulder and goes, “Totally, bona fide, like hot, like plus-ten black girl Dominique whose mother works for my father’s galleries?”

  I nod.

  “Yes, I know her. I love that girl. She’s the coolest bitch I know. Why?”

  “I met her today at the Transmission Gallery. She asked me for my number and keeps texting me.”

  “Whoa,” snaps Kristen. “Come again?”

  “She asked me for my number and I gave it to her and she keeps texting me to hang out while I’m here.”

  “And you’ve said yes, right? You’ve totally made, like, ten million plans already and are gonna see her every chance you get.”

  I make a face and watch her lean down and pound another rail. Then I say, “Not exactly. I shut my phone off after she texted me a ton.”

  “Are you crazy, Jaime?”

  “I don’t know, actually.”

  “You know how many guys would fucking kill to have Dominique Taylor texting them to hang out?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t. And that’s why I’m fucking skeptical. Like, why the hell would she be all over me if all these other dudes you know would line up for her? I don’t trust it.”

  “She’s a sweetheart, Jaime. I know her. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”

  “I just think it’s strange.”

  Kristen slams another drink of white wine and goes, “What were you doing when you met her?”

  “I was playing the piano. She interrupted me. It was rude.”

  “You’re some kind of piano master, right? You’re like this amazing pianist.”

  “I’m good. Sure.”

  “Well, that’s it, man. Dominique is a great musician. Her band is dope.”

  “What band?”

  “Her band, man. Vicious Lips. They’re pretty incredible. They’ve actually got a pretty nice following in SF.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Duh, man. A bunch of times. I usually design the clothes she wears for the shows.”

  “Dope.”

  “So you got nothing to worry about. If she’s reaching out like that, it means she wants to kick it with you. She likes dudes who know music and can play it. I’m pretty sure you got both those covered, homie. Don’t blow it by being such a dick about girls.”

  Kristen falls back onto the couch again and I go, “Is that what this all is then?”

  “What?”

  “The racks full of clothes. It’s like a section in a department store. You make all of these?”

  “Most of them, yeah. I’ve got my own clothing company called Ambitious Kids. I’ve got over ten contracts with boutiques and shops around the city. It’s good. I’ve made over twenty thousand dollars this year so far. There’s, like, six dope bands I dress for free. They wear my clothes onstage, and people always ask who made it for them. It’s a beautiful thing, Jaime Miles. Now lemme hear this song you wrote.”

  “Sure.”

  I pick up my guitar and drop my notebook between my feet and start playing. She seems to like it too. She’s smiling and nodding her head up and down at least.

  Then I hit the last verse. . . .

  “Blood is simple, tissue tough, bones in the desert, sunsets full of lust, the remains of the day left lying in a pile, these birds of prey just swarming in style, we pillaged and we scoured, we gave away our own, we battled and we won, then we died all alone . . . black vulture coming hard, black vulture coming fast, black vulture gonna get ya, black vulture eats you last. . . .”

  That’s it. I’m done. Leaning the guitar against the couch, I go, “It’s good, right.”

  “It is, Jaime. You’re really good. I can’t believe you’re only f
ourteen.”

  “Age doesn’t matter once you’ve been playing long enough. That’s a beautiful guitar, too. Whose is it?”

  “Your father’s.”

  “He plays?”

  “Ha,” snaps Kristen. “He can play ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and maybe ‘Tambourine Man.’ That’s it, though. He hasn’t touched it in a year probably.”

  “Figures,” I say. “That fake artist.”

  “He owns the galleries.”

  “He doesn’t own the art, though. He’ll never be that.”

  Kristen jumps off the couch again, and she snorts the last line on the record.

  Man, she’s a total babe. And she’s smart with great fucking taste and totally ambitious.

  She’s perfect, and I bet she’d be a fucking monster to date.

  Kristen grabs her bag and pulls out a Sharpie. “We should get tattoos while you’re here.”

  “I’m fourteen.”

  “Who cares?” she laughs. “I know a guy. He’s got a gun and a basement.”

  “Sounds like something I’d hate for the rest of my life.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But say we got words done on us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Write what word you’d get on the place you’d get it done.”

  She tosses me the Sharpie and takes another drink of wine. I think about it for a few seconds before sliding the cap off and writing Yeezus on the inside of my upper left arm.

  “Great fucking choice,” Kristen goes, taking the Sharpie from me.

  Sitting back down beside me, she goes, “I don’t know if I can top that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  And then she writes a letter on the knuckle of each finger on her left hand.

  She turns to me and shows me. The letters spell cunt.

  I don’t say anything, and she goes, “Pretty fitting, right?”

  “You shouldn’t take what I said personally. I don’t even know you.”

  “You said all of us, meng. All of us.”

  “Right.”

  Pause.

  “It’s just how I see it.”

  Kristen smiles and says, “I like that you stand by what you say. Even if I think it’s totally fucked and wrong, you’re honest at least. It’s more than I can say about pretty much anyone else I know.”

  “And it doesn’t make you hate me?”

  “No,” she goes. “It makes me wanna beat up the bitch who did this to you.”

  “Rad.”

  “You’re rad, Jaime.”

  She hands me the bottle of wine. I take a swig and then lean back.

  “So you really think I should see what’s up with Dominique?”

  “I do,” she answers. “At least give it a shot and see what she wants. They broke the fucking mold when they made her, man. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you’ll fall in love with her and stay in San Francisco.”

  “Yeah, right,” I go. “No girl is that powerful.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised, Jaime Miles. If a girl can make you hate every other girl in the world, why can’t another girl make you wanna stay in the city you met her in?”

  “My mother would be all alone without me.”

  “Hopefully your mother would get behind your choice to be happy.”

  “It’s more complicated.”

  “Complications are just excuses, man.”

  “Maybe in your world, Kristen.”

  “Hey,” she says, grabbing my arm. “It’s your world now too. All of this, everything, it’s all yours, and it’s a fabulous fucking world if you let it be fabulous to you.”

  35.

  “LISTEN, FIRST OFF, I JUST wanna apologize about last night. I shut my phone off and forgot that I did. I didn’t see your texts till really late. So I’m sorry. It was lame. And I do wanna see you again, Dominique.”

  This is the voice mail I leave for her before I do two hundred crunches and a hundred push-ups.

  When I’m done showering and getting dressed—tight black Levi’s, white V-neck, red-and-navy flannel, white Keds—I break a blue in half and swallow one half of it, then smoke the other one while I listen to Nirvana’s Unplugged.

  Before I leave my father’s house, I stand in front of the large mirror on the wall. I hate me and what I look like and how alone I am even though I’m glad I’m alone right now.

  My father wants to have a huge dinner tonight at this really nice restaurant called the Cigar Bar & Grill. He wants the whole family there and Savannah, and Kristen’s boyfriend, Tyler, and a few others.

  It sounds terrifying to me. Leslie is the one who told me this when I was in the kitchen eating a fruit plate that I made plus some toast and orange juice.

  Anyway, the only thing I wanted to know was where Amoeba Music was. She told me that, too. She was drinking champagne straight from the bottle, and there was a joint sitting behind her ear.

  I wanted to tell her that my mother likes to smoke blunts in the morning and drink whiskey. I wanted to brag about that until I realized how fucking trivial and stupid it was.

  Like, just go and buy records, dude.

  And by the time dinner comes around, I’ll be so high and numb that none of these people will be able to get to me at all. The castle protects me. Not even a cannonball can dent my glass fortress.

  36.

  THE RECORDS I BUY ARE:

  1. “New Country,” Beachwood Sparks

  2. Matangi, M.I.A.

  3. Life Is Good, Nas

  4. Tropic of Scorpio, Girls Against Boys

  5. Stranger Ballet, Poison Control Center

  6. “Big Black Delta,” Big Black Delta

  This is easily the best record store I’ve ever been in. I’m here for three fucking hours that feels like ten minutes. Aisle after aisle after aisle with records I never even knew existed from bands that I fucking love to death. It’s awesome. I only wish my mother was here. Cos if there’s anyone who would appreciate Amoeba Music more than me, it’s her.

  See, my mother got me into music right away. Not just playing it but listening to it and reading about it and collecting it and educating myself about it.

  We spent so many afternoons at record stores. She played her records constantly and talked about them and what they meant to her life and all the concerts she went to with her friends.

  She even talked about how her and my father both had an obsession with music. She told me once that a couple of times their collection got so big that they had to hold sidewalk sales so they could get rid of them and make more room in their tiny apartment.

  I remember so clearly the night she told me this. She was in a great fucking mood and we’d just finished eating the dinner I helped her make. We were in the living room, and she was pretty buzzed on wine and dope. I could smell it all over her. I put on the Magnetic Fields record Distant Plastic Trees, and this huge smile eclipsed her face and she stood up and started bopping around. While she did this, she said, “There were a few moments, not many, Jaime, when your father was so perfect and wonderful in my eyes. Before you were born, when we first moved into that small and cold apartment on the Lower East Side. We had nothing back then. I was coming up really fast but your dad, he was kind of lost, ya know. He was slowly coming to terms with the reality that he was never going to cut it as an artist and was always going to be on the outside, ya know, just one of those people who hang around, hang on to the creators without having the ability to make something that anyone cares about. But he tried. And it was cute. And he knew what he was talking about at parties and openings and performances, but he never had the talent or the vision or the instincts to grab an audience’s attention, and that’s what you do as an artist. That’s your ultimate job. To arouse people’s curiosity, to draw them into this world, this moment you’ve created, and to give them a reason to care and get lost and forget about everything else while they consume your vision. You elicit an emotional response.
You make them think about the very essence of why they’re alive, get them questioning everything, and when it’s over, after they leave, they’re left haunted. They’ve devoured your vision, and all they want is more. That’s the artist’s job. But even though he was coming to terms with his reality while I was just beginning to tap into my potential, we’d have these nights at the apartment together, just me and him, drinking and smoking and listening to our records till sunrise. We’d dance, we’d lie on the bed and talk about the first time we listened to the Beatles and the Stones and Television and Bowie and the Violent Femmes and the Talking Heads and Joy Division and the Replacements and it was so wonderful. Us doing that. Laughing and forgetting about everything else and not worrying about the future, not thinking about anything except the music we loved that changed our lives.”

  She lowered her head, I remember, after she said that last part. She stopped dancing, too. She went into one of her infamous dazes, and when side A was finished, she looked back up, the magic gone from her face, and she said, “Maybe he was just fooling me then too. Maybe he was never really into any of that. I mean, look what he turned into the minute he had me. It was all about him and his business world and all this material shit that he wanted, that he seemed to need. We never had those nights again after I got pregnant. We barely ever went to any shows or openings. And that’s when the monster revealed itself. That’s when everything in New York began to die.”

  She finished her glass of wine, then walked out of the room, and two hours later, I found her passed out on her bed, clutching her ballerina dress, a recording of one of her recitals playing on her TV.

  As I’m paying for the vinyl, I ask the girl checking me out where I can get a decent taco. She tells me about this place Zona Rosa just a block down from the store.

  I tell her thanks, and then my phone starts ringing. It’s Dominique and like that, I’ve got what feels like a thousand butterflies dancing around my stomach.