by Pete Wentz
• • •
It’s way past noon when I finally crawl out of bed. I’m so hungover, I can’t even see straight. My folks have decided to have mercy on me—they’ve left a pot of coffee on the burner and gone out for the afternoon. A year ago, they would’ve given me such shit for rolling in at 6:00 a.m., but now, things are different.
I sit in the kitchen while the rest of the world carries on without me. Somewhere someone is mowing a lawn. Somewhere someone is beeping a horn. My parents’ dogs are going nuts about something in the backyard, but I’m too sick to get up and see what it is. I drink my coffee and move my eyes around the room . . . the bowl of fruit my mom is constantly refilling, mostly because the apples keep going bad. The wallpaper that my dad hated hanging, golden fleurs-de-lis entwined with fingers of ivy. The big, stainless-steel fridge, with a picture of my brother playing soccer and an old promo photo of my band (me with long hair too). I’ve been in this room a million times over the years, but it’s never seemed as still and sad as it does in this moment. It’s like sitting in the kitchen of someone who’s just died. The cabinets are filled with cans they’ll never open, the freezer stuffed with meat they’ll never thaw. The air is heavy and you don’t want to disturb anything because, you know, that’s the way they left it. Maybe it’s just because I’m hungover though.
I reach across the table and pull a stack of mail toward me. There are offers for credit cards, a newsletter from the Wilmette Public Library, and a letter from the Columbia Registrar’s Office, addressed to me. I don’t even open it, just rip it in half and toss it toward the garbage can. I miss by a mile, and the two halves of the envelope flutter harmlessly to the floor. I’ll get them in a minute. I finish my coffee and put the mug in the sink, run some water for no particular reason. The dogs are chasing each other around the backyard, stopping, staring each other down, then bolting off again. I watch them through the kitchen window and smile. I can hear kids playing next door, making up simple games with infinitely complex rules (“You can’t touch the grass because it’s lava,”), and I can remember me and my brother doing the same thing. It seems like that was fifty years ago for some reason.
I stand there for a while, the water running, the kids burning up in the imaginary lava, and I start to think about Her. I wonder if she knows the girl I was with last night. I wonder if she’ll even care? And I wonder if she thought about me the first time she had sex with the philosopher? Probably not. Then, out of nowhere, an overwhelming sadness comes over me, makes me shiver, and I decide to never come back to this house again. I decide I’m going to move far away from here, I’m going to hide and never come back. I turn off the tap, then throw up in the sink. It’s still red. Probably from the blood.
13
The cities start to blur together. The shows do the same. The days are indefinable, and time is only marked by events: In May, we get a full-time publicist from the label. In June, we get a manager. In July, we say good-bye to the van and get a tour bus (which we’re sharing with another band to cut costs . . . our manager wasted no time in proving his worth). The shower on the bus is like an old phone booth. The bunks are like coffins. None of this matters to me in the slightest. We’ve been out on the road for months now, living out of duffel bags, washing ourselves with tiny bars of soap pilfered from hotel supply rooms, sleeping when the sun comes up, and none of that matters to me, either. Every day is a new adventure, every city a new opportunity.
After a show in Las Vegas (I think it was Las Vegas) I meet an actress who used to be on a show I watched as a kid, and we hit it off. She is drinking whatever lowers her standards and laughing at all my jokes and touching my knee with her hand. She’s got downtown legs that are too tall for every single pair of pants she owns. People would pay to have problems like that. She looks at my eyes, darkened around the edges, and I can tell it gets her going because she thinks I can relate to her troubles. She doesn’t know I’ve always been this way; that I’m just a rainy day kid and have been from the start. Or, she doesn’t care.
She asks to see our bus. I take her on, and before I know it, she’s sliding into my bunk. The light is so bright that it hurts my eyes, but I don’t want to turn it off because I need proof that this is actually happening. I don’t know what to do with my hands, so I leave them at my sides, soaking with sweat. Kissing. Hand at the button on the front of my pants. This girl is out of my league—I know it, but she knows it too. She knows where this is going even when I don’t have an idea. She climbs on top of me, her face inches away from mine, and closes her eyes. For whatever reason, I can’t stop thinking about that show she was on, how she was just a kid like me back then, and how everything in her life transpired to bring her to this moment, to this bunk on this bus in the desert, with a loser kid like me inside her. It sort of makes me sad. Then she says something like “Cum in me” or “Cum on me,” barely whispered over the noise of her panting, and I don’t catch it. But I realize there is a pretty big difference between the two options.
I nod my head. I begin to realize that “hot” girls come with crazier flaws than the rest of us—the hotter they are, the crazier the flaws. Our knees touch. We shiver in the heat. Our skins stick together like leather in the summer. If only my friends could see me now. She pulls her dress back on and puts her number into my phone. We both know it’s a meaningless gesture. Then she steps off the bus, back into her life. I fall asleep with a smile on my face. I am living the dream.
• • •
Months, miles, who’s counting anymore? Only the events stand out. One night, I am inexplicably getting drunk at a motel in Daytona Beach (I think it was Daytona Beach), some morbid, Mid-Century Modern place called the Thunderbird Motel. I only remember the name because I still have the postcard I stole from the lobby. The parking lot faced the highway, the balconies faced out to the Atlantic. Landlocked tears versus limitless possibilities. I remember thinking that was way symbolic. I was pretty drunk at the time.
Girls were there, poor, wide-eyed things from tiny, hopeless towns, and they just stared at us, stood there biting their lips because they didn’t know what to say or how to say it. You could tell their minds were blown. Maybe that was just the pot though. The Animal and I did our best to chat them up, but after a while, we just gave up. It wasn’t worth the effort. So mostly we all just stood out there on the balcony, watched the moon ripple on the Atlantic, listened to the traffic on the other side of the building. No one was talking. The party was kind of dead.
Then, from inside the room, came a hideous crash. A scream. We ran back inside to see a kid—long hair, jean shorts, no shirt—lying flat on his back, blood pouring from his head. He was covered in white powder, and crushed ceiling tiles were scattered around him. We thought he was dead. But then he sat up, stared at us, and smiled. There were several gaps where some teeth should’ve been. Without saying a word, he got to his feet, walked into the kitchen, and came back with two tallboys of Natural Light. He drank one and offered the other to me. Dumbfounded, I took it from him.
“Hey, yer that guy, right?” he said, wobbling slightly.
I nodded.
“Oh, man, you fucking suck.”
Everyone in the room was mortified. They were looking at the hole in the ceiling, the tiles on the floor, at everything except this bleeding maniac standing in the middle of the room. Nobody knew who he was, nobody knew where he came from. He was the first real person I’d met in almost a year. He had balls instead of brains, and you need people like that in your life because they keep you honest. I liked him immediately.
“Why are you bleeding?” I asked him.
“I tried to jump through the fuckin’ ceiling but I missed.”
It made sense. I liked him even more.
• • •
The sun is coming up now over the Atlantic, big and red, setting the sky on fire. We’re standing on the balcony, the Animal and me, drinking tallboys. The crazy kid is out there with us too, still shirtless, the blood dried in m
idtrickle down his face. Pretty much everyone else had passed out, the girls curled up in chairs, eyes closed tight, mouths small and taut, peaceful, innocent, beautiful, the way all girls look when they’re asleep. It was kind of magical, the air effervescent with ocean mist, the morning sky glowing like embers. Beneath us, the waves rush the beach, then quickly retreat with a soft hiss . . . God’s white noise, the kind psychiatrists pay good money to fill their waiting rooms with. My old life seems so far away now. I’m stoned and happy. My eyelids are getting heavy. I’m not long for the world. Then, without being prompted, the kid starts talking.
“I wuz pretty much born in an abortion clinic,” he says, waking the Animal and me from our trances. “I wuz born in Tampa in May of ’82. They razed the hospital, and by January ’83 it was an abortion clinic.”
He’s just staring out at the Atlantic, his face expressionless, and I can’t help but laugh. Lines like that are showstoppers, and I definitely heard the record skip in my brain. Finally, I’m compelled to ask this crazy kid what his name is, and he tells me it’s John. John Miller. It’s sort of a letdown. He deserved a better name than that, something like Talon or Falcon or Buck, something befitting a wild-haired feral child, the kind that crawls out of the jungle once every fifty years. The kind of name suitable for a big-game tracker, or a roughneck on an oil derrick, or a drunken, dusty gunslinger. Instead, he got stuck with John Miller. It makes him sound like a chiropractor. His parents really fucked him over.
“Well, John Miller,” I said, eyelids drooping like some cartoony drunk’s, “your name fucking sucks.”
“Yeah, I know it,” John Miller winced, finishing his umpteenth tallboy of the night (or morning). “My parents really fucked me over.”
Great minds. Kismet. All that bullshit. I love this kid.
“I think we should hang out more,” I told him, leaning on the railing of the balcony for support. “You should give me your e-mail address, and the next time we’re in here we should hang.”
“Yeah, definitely, I love doin’ dumb shit,” John Miller said, then staggered inside to get a pen or throw up or something. The Animal and I stare out at the quickly brightening beach. We should be going soon.
“That kid is great.” I laugh.
“Eh, he’s okay,” the Animal snorts. He’s a man of few words.
We go back to staring at the Atlantic. There’s really nothing else to say. The sun clears the horizon, making the surface of the ocean shimmer like a tray of diamonds, and from the other side of the motel comes the sound of the first trucks of the day, downshifting on their way out of town. We should’ve been back on the bus by now. People are probably starting to worry.
Then there’s another crash behind us, and we whirl around to see John Miller standing there, holding a sheet of paper in his hand. On it, he’s scrawled his e-mail address: [email protected]. It’s strangely perfect.
“Nobody ever calls me John,” he said, handing the sheet to me.
“Yeah, I can kind of see why.” I laugh.
And then, the Animal and I are in the lobby of the motel, calling our tour manager from a courtesy telephone. He asks where we are and says he’ll send a cab to get us. He hangs up in a huff. I think we woke him up. We sit out on the curb and watch the trucks rumble by, off to who knows where, back who knows when. You can feel the heat rising from the ground already. Finally, the cab comes to get us, one of those old bangers with the velvety interior that always smells like cigarettes, the kind they have in every city that’s not New York, and we have the driver take us back to whatever the arena was called. I roll down my window, lean my head back on the velvet, and close my eyes. The last thing I see is the cabdriver checking me out in the rearview. He looks like the kind of guy they’d cast to play a Vietnam vet in some movie.
It’s not important. Like I said, after a while, you don’t remember the days, just the events. I’ll remember this day because there were two of them. The first was meeting the Disaster. The second happened when I got back to the bus, climbed into my bunk (the good-luck one), and checked my e-mail before I passed out. Only one new message was in my in-box. Sent at 3:47 a.m. From Her. I stare at it as the bus engine purrs to life, as we slip out of (I think) Daytona Beach. I can feel my heart pounding, and I’m pretty sure I know why. I should probably just delete it, go on with my life, but I don’t. The computer takes forever opening it, as if God or Steve Jobs were asking me, “You sure you really wanna do this?” But then, there they are: Her words, filling my screen, and there’s no turning back. I make it as far as the first line before I feel my heart burst in my chest.
I miss you.
14
I’m drunk and I probably shouldn’t be writing this. But I really miss you tonight. I know I’m not supposed to—everyone tells me that—but I have for a while now, and it’s not going away. I tried calling you the other night, from a pay phone so you wouldn’t recognize the number, but the call didn’t go through. Maybe Ma Bell doesn’t want us to be together. Maybe God doesn’t either. But I do. My life has come off track without you. I hardly know myself anymore. I need you.
I’m sorry about the past. I know I should’ve supported you; I was just scared of losing you. I didn’t want to share you with everyone else. I was being selfish and I know that’s what drove us apart. I forgive you for what you did. I would’ve probably done the same thing. I don’t even care about it, to be honest. I just know that I need you back in my life, in any way possible, because it’s getting harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning. It’s scaring me.
Please write back.
I lie in my bunk, just reading the last line over and over. It’s brutal. Beautiful. The saddest sentence I’ve ever seen. Three little words; so much weight, so much desperation alive within them. They’re either the beginning, or the end, or both. Probably both. Rain pelts the window of the bus. Big, angry drops. Drops with a purpose. I watch the flat expanses of Florida blow by in a blur, nothing but swamps and palm trees and alligators. Things get less exotic the farther north you head: gated neighborhoods that back up to the interstate. Shopping malls on the horizon. Billboards for Jesus. The sky is low and pregnant and gray. The rain makes it even more depressing. I am stalling now.
I go back to that last line. Please write back. It paralyzes me. I close my eyes tightly, pull my blanket over my head, like a frightened kid trying to wish away the monster under his bed. I figure it’s worth a shot. Sometimes I am willing to believe in anything if it means ignoring the reality of a situation. I open my eyes. Please write back. Fuck. I wish I had just deleted Her message. None of this would be happening if I did. I’d probably be asleep right now, dreaming of that fiery sunrise and that shimmering Atlantic. Instead I’m lying here, disarmed. Impotent. My head feels like I can’t sit or lean on anything on the inside because it’s all been freshly painted. Grays and pinks. And open some windows ’cause the air just isn’t circulating the way it should. I realize I am stalling again. Fuck off.
She’s always been succinct, but this line is Her masterwork. Please write back. It’s funny because, according to my shrink, this is exactly what I’ve always wanted, what I’ve moaned and wailed and bled for my entire life: complete and total control. The past, the present, the future, it’s all mine. I can erase history. I can eliminate what might be. I can either write Her back, or not. It’s that simple. Only it doesn’t feel that way. It feels profound, frighteningly, cripplingly so. This is a fork in the road. A Choose Your Own Adventure book. A catastrophe waiting just around the corner. For the first time, it’s all up to me. I realize in this instant that perhaps control isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a reason I’ve never been able to grab the reins: I’m not strong enough to do it.
So now, not only am I paralyzed, but I’m furious at myself. I am useless. Weak. A boy in over his head, hiding behind tattoos and one-night stands. Trying hard to make sure nobody notices that he’s drowning. The rain really gets angry now, hammering the roof of the bus
like machine-gun fire. Heavy bullets from heaven. Heavy thoughts in my head. Do I really miss Her? Did I ever love Her? Can I hurt Her again? I’ve been staring at Her e-mail for more than an hour, and my computer is running on fumes. Just a tiny red sliver remains in the battery icon. I wish humans came with the same kind of indicator . . . it would make things much easier. You would know how to deal with every person on the planet, and I’d always be in the red. Please write back. The computer is dying. The rain is pushing the bus off the road. There’s a twister coming. Make a decision. It’s only a goddamn fucking e-mail. It’s only my goddamn fucking life.
Good morning, I write to Her. It’s a new day.
I press SEND, launch my reply out into the ether. I cannot control what happens next. If it finds Her, it was meant to be. Cosmic chance, divine fate, karma chameleon. Whatever you want to call it. After a few moments, my heart stops pounding and a strange calm fills my body. I am such a smug bastard that I think I’ve learned some sort of deep lesson from all this. I get out of my bunk and walk to the front lounge of the bus, feeling good about myself. A placid, Buddha-like smile slides across my face. I am enlightenment. I am Zen. I am not only the vase, I’m the space around the vase, and the space within the vase. You know, all that really deep stuff. I sit in the lounge and watch the towering storm clouds shower the flatlands and strip malls of Florida. Everyone else is asleep. I probably shouldn’t be feeling good about myself. It was only a goddamn fucking e-mail.
15
It’s a few weeks later. She’s started sending me love letters now. Love e-mails, perfumed and pink, coquettish. Always in lowercase. You know what I mean. The first one caught me off guard . . . it was just a normal e-mail about some dream she had, about how she was standing on this cliff, overlooking the great expanses of the West, and below Her, on another cliff, a guy in a rhinestone suit, a game-show host, was tossing elephants up to Her, and she had to try to catch them on the head of a pin while a studio audience watched intently—that was the point of the game show—and how the elephants would drop out of the sky like great, bouncy balloons, and she’d try to balance them on the pin, only she couldn’t do it, and they’d tumble down into a canyon and explode on the rocks below, in bright bursts of reds and blues, like cans of paint dropped off the roof of a building. Each time she’d let an elephant fall off the pin, the audience would boo a little louder, would hiss and inch a step closer to Her, until she was at the very edge of the cliff, looking down into the canyon, at the husks of elephants and the great, spattered rocks, and the game-show host would smile hideously, would pull a lever, and more elephants would start falling from the heavens, and the audience would lash out at Her, would tear Her clothing off and try to force Her onto the rocks, and how, just as the elephants began to rain down on Her, at the very moment Her heels were tipping back over the edge, Her roommate shook Her awake because she had been crying in Her sleep. Apparently, she had been having this dream ever since she was a child, though I’d never heard Her mention it before. Anyway, that’s what she was going on about, and I was reading along halfheartedly, my eyes skimming over the endless sea of lowercase letters and parentheses (she loved parentheses), until, at the very end, they got snagged on three words, i love you, which she had planted at the very end of the e-mail, like a strategically placed bit of C-4, packed on just out of sight, waiting to detonate.
