Blazed (22 page)

“No shit,” she says. “That was such a fun show.”

“It was a great fucking show.”

“I love the Saint James Society,” I say. “That's so dope that you played with them.”

Dominique almost seems awkward now, with all this attention. “It was a dream come true,” she says. “That song of theirs off the first EP, ‘Of Silver and Gold,' like, that song made me fall in love with them.”

“It's so good,” I say.

“Makes my pussy wet,” she goes, laughing after saying it.

“Oh hey,” says Eddie. “Damn.”

He winks at her and like that, this surge of jealousy washes through me. It's weird even though it feels so damn natural. So violent. So angry. I actually feel anger toward Eddie for saying that.

This is when Dominique does the coolest thing yet. She hooks an arm around mine and then slides her hand into the back pocket of my jeans.

Total
Wonder Years
style.

And Eddie, he looks shocked that he's seeing this. That this is happening between me and her.

“So what about Devil Feeder?” Eddie asks.

“Shredded,” I say. “It was fierce, too. I gotta hear more, though.”

“But you liked it? What you heard at least.”

Both me and Dominique say yes, and Eddie gets stoked.

I can see the excitement on his face.

Brandon comes over now, holding the folded table and the rolled-up banner.

“Vicious Lips,” he goes. “I love your band.”

“Cool,” she goes.

“You guys live was so perfect. You guys brought it that night. When I was having a cigarette outside after the show, I heard at least six or seven people saying that they thought y'all were the best to play that night.”

“What about you?” she asks.

“What about me?”

“Did you think we were the best?”

“Shit,” he goes. “I don't know. It was close between you and the Saint James.”

“I thought they were better,” she goes. “Hands down. They were the best band that night, and they're the best band we've played with.”

“Not Social Studies?” I go.

“No,” she says. “Although it's really close for me. Like, super-duper close, but I gotta go with my boys and girls from Austin in the end.”

“That's nice of you,” says Brandon. “How do you two know each other?”

Me, I go ahead and tell those dudes how me and her met, and then I slide my backpack off and open it.

“I got beers and champagne,” I say.

“That's right,” says Eddie. “For last night. Rad.”

“Let's pop over to Dolores Park and have a few there,” Brandon goes.

I look at Dominique, and she says she's cool with that.

“Perfect,” says Eddie.

“I'm pumped to see that place,” I go. “I read about it in this book,
Dickpig Sux
, and I've always wanted to just fucking lie in the grass and become cool or something.”

“I remember reading that book too,” Eddie says. “That dude really fucking romanticized it. He made it seem like the Garden of Eden or some shit.”

“I remember hearing that some of those kids who came to SF because of that book, like, filled Ziploc bags with Dolores Park grass and were making smoothies with it,” Dominique tells us.

“That's not real,” says Eddie.

She shrugs. “That's what I heard. More than once and by different people.”

“Fucking turds,” Eddie rips.

“That pool still there?” I ask.

“Nah,” says Eddie. “This boy and girl, super young and shit, maybe like eleven or twelve years old, they read that book too and got wasted on the roof.”

“Oh shit,” says Dominique. “I remember that. Fuck.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“They started fooling around up there, and somehow they lost their balance and they rolled off and landed headfirst on the concrete around the pool and they both died.”

“Jesus,” I say.

“City closed that place after that.”

“Fuck,” I go, feeling like I just got punched in the stomach. “That's horrible.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “What a shitty way to go. Like dying as a virgin right as you're about to lose your virginity.”

“Cos you knew they were gonna fuck in the pool.”

“Right.”

“I'm just hoping the boy maybe got his dick sucked a
little bit before they fucking popped against that ground,” Eddie goes.

“Damn, dude,” Brandon snorts.

“What?”

“That's fucking morbid,” he goes.

“We have a song called ‘Narc Dies Hard,' you faggot. A song that's on an EP that we just gave to a fucking cop.”

Me and Dominique are laughing.

“So please, dude. Fuck that morbid bullshit.”

Brandon pulls a pack of cigarettes from his tight white jeans and goes, “I guess you're right.”

He hands a smoke to Eddie, then lights his own, and then the four of us bounce to the park after packing Eddie's white pickup truck with the gear.

“WAIT,” BRANDON SAYS, TURNING THE
bottle of champagne in his hands. “This is, like, a hundred-dollar bottle, man. You steal this shit?”

“Sure,” I say. “You can say that.”

“From where?”

“My father's wine cellar,” I say. “Took the beers from the fridge, though.”

“He's so loaded, huh,” Eddie goes. “Like really fucking rich.”

“I guess so. I mean, it seems that way.” Holding my hand up and squeezing my thumb and index finger nearly all the way together, I say, “I know this much about the guy. Like, I prolly know more about you all than him. It's kinda weird.”

This, like, collective sigh followed by a collective “Bullshit” immediately follows what I said.

“I've been living with my seventy-eight-year-old grandma who's been in a wheelchair for most of the last seven years,” Eddie goes. “I haven't seen or talked to my dad since I was five, and my mom took off six years ago and I don't know where she is.”

“I was adopted when I was four,” says Brandon. “Don't
know who my biological parents are and don't fucking care.”

We all look at Dominique now. She turns her eyes away from us, though, and doesn't say anything.

“You okay?” I ask.

“What?” she whispers.

“You okay?”

She nods and her lips squeeze tightly together.

“Hey,” I say.

“I'm fine,” she says. “Totally, Jaime. I am. I'm good.”

“Fuck talking about this shit,” Eddie snaps. “I hate wasting time and oxygen talking about people who are dead to me. Who never fucking cared about me for a second.”

I reach into my backpack and hand Eddie and Brandon beers, but when I try to give Dominique one, she shakes her head.

“Really?” I say.

“Really, man. I don't drink anymore. I don't get high either. Not anymore. But thank you.”

“Sure,” I say, popping the cap off my beer with a lighter. “I'm glad we're hanging out.”

Her body language changes like that and she's smiling again. She reaches over and puts her hand on my knee.

“Me too,” she says. “It's really nice.”

We're all somewhat sprawled out in a semicircle on the grass near the bathroom at Dolores Park.

Prolly like a hundred other people are there too.
Dominique's iPhone is lying in an empty plastic cup on top of my backpack. We're listening to
Live Execution
by Babyland. It's one of my favorites right now, and I'm stoked all these guys know about it too.

It's a live album from their last show ever at the Smell in Los Angeles in 2009. Man, I wish I woulda got a chance to see these guys live. The music is filled with so much rawness and emotion and edge.

James Morgan flew down to L.A. with his girl, Caralie, just to see the last show.

I know this because there's this rad video on YouTube of him being interviewed on the rooftop of the Standard Hotel during the trip.

Watching the less-than-five-minute clip is really a pretty amazing experience. You can tell he hasn't slept in days. He looks out of his mind.

And he's mumbling about some band he used to be in when he was nineteen called the Loiterers and this song called “Sleeping with Other Women” he wrote the night before with Devendra and how after he sang it to Caralie, she packed her shit and flew back to San Francisco, and how now he's gonna stay in L.A. for two extra days to try and bang M.I.A. or a minor Miley Cyrus (“make Billy Ray watch and give that creep a real achy breaky heart, that cunt”) or Karen O (“but there's always gonna be Karen O left to slay, I guess”), and how he's definitely gonna beat the shit out of one of “those douchebag Good Charlotte
brothers again,” even though he can't recall which one he destroyed in Nicky Hilton's hotel room a couple years earlier (it really happened), and how he'll probably end up just living in L.A. now since he's got enough cocaine “to stay awake for a year.”

Then he does two shots of tequila before singing “Sleeping with Other Women.”

It's a pretty good song, too. I think the first verse goes . . .

“Well, I've decided to sleep with other women, didn't mean it to come to this, but this is my only real choice, things ain't working out, the way we talked about, not gonna sit here at night and hold my dick, gonna hit the town, drink that Kentucky Brown and fuck another chick, it's not that I'm not into you no more, it's just the way things are now, I think that I should score with another girl, think that I've given this a pretty good twirl . . .”

It's all so good.

One of the greatest interviews ever, I'm sure of it.

Eddie pops a joint from a pack of cigarettes, and Brandon opens the champagne.

“That Rickenbacker you were playing,” I tell Eddie.

“Look at you, knowing about my gear. What about it?”

“The sound was nice, man. Thing hummed and pierced at the same time.”

He lights the joint and goes, “I thought so too.”

“I've always wanted to play a Rickenbacker.”

Taking the joint from Eddie, Brandon says, “You play or something, homie?”

“I do.”

“Really?” says Eddie.

“You didn't tell them?” Dominique goes.

I take a drink of beer and say, “Nah. I don't really talk about my music that much.”

“Wait,” snaps Eddie. “Your music? What do you play, dude?”

“Keyboard, piano, and guitar. Pretty much I can play anything, but the piano and the guitar are my main things.”

“And you're good?” Brandon asks.

“He's awesome,” Dominique says. “He's got a bunch of music up online under the name Tiger Stitches.”

“What?” both Brandon and Eddie say at the same time.

I make a face. “Yeah. Why?”

“Dude,” says Brandon. “That's the
Peril Alley
EP shit, right?”

“It is.”

“Those songs are dope,” says Eddie.

This is really bizarre. I don't understand how these kids know about my music. I know they didn't Google me after they split last night or at all anytime today.

So I ask them, and Eddie tells me that somebody posted a link to my Bandcamp page in some Growlers chat room and he checked it out.

It all makes so much sense now. This ain't like Joliet. These fucking kids are different. These kids fucking love
music and love art. They're not just listeners or lookers, they're devourers and indulgers, and there's a huge fucking difference there, ya know.

They live for this shit. It's their passion.

And they can't get enough of it, which is why they seek it out instead of waiting around for it.

They're like me.

It's so fucking cool to see it with my own eyes instead of daydreaming about it and hoping it eventually exists and becomes a part of my life.

“Thanks, man,” I go. “That means a lot.”

“We've been dying to get a rad guitar player in Devil Feeder,” says Brandon.

“Really?”

“Shit yeah,” Eddie goes. “But everyone we've tried out so far has been a bunch of pilgrim dicks and mouth breathers.”

“But I'm leaving in a week. What's the point?”

“Fuck you for thinking like that,” Eddie snaps. “What's the point?”

“Yeah.”

“Making some killer songs and puking them up to the world. This whole thing that happens every day,” Eddie says.

I don't say anything.

“Life,” he snaps. “This. All this opening your eyes and breathing and doing shit.”

“What about it?”

“Come on,” Eddie moans. He takes a monster pull from
the champagne, then cashes the rest of his beer and grabs another one. Popping the cap off, he says, “It only happens once, man. This is it. There's not another shot. So who the fuck cares if you're leaving in a week? What we might end up making is the only thing that's ever gonna outlive us. It's art, Jaime. It's timeless. Nobody can hear your excuses when you're dead. But they sure as hell can listen to your music.”

I look at Dominique, and she says, “He's right.”

“I know.”

“Great,” says Eddie. “Tomorrow night at seven.”

“What's that?”

“Band practice at my house,” Brandon goes.

“I'll be there.”

“Now that's more like it, brah,” Eddie snorts while Babyland performs their final song as a band, “Search and Rescue.”

I'm grinning ear to ear.

Five years later and they're never playing again, but here we are, four fucking kids who were born years after that band was formed, getting off to their music at a beautiful park in San Francisco.

Like, what's not to love about that?

This is the only taste of immortality you can ever fucking get.