Sound Bites: A Rock & Roll Love Story

by Sound Bites (epub)

  On my way home from work, I grabbed a bottle of wine and a romantic comedy to mask my depression about spending another Friday night alone in my apartment. After settling down on my couch with a glass of Cabernet, I picked up the phone and dialed Beth’s number.

  “Do you remember that guy I was telling you about the other night?” I asked her. “The one whose van I backed into in the parking lot?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  I proceeded to fill her in on my night with Dylan. For once, she didn’t interrupt me until I was finished.

  “Well he definitely scores points in the music department if he listens to Jeff,” she said. I had turned Beth onto Buckley’s music years ago, and she now always referred to him as “Jeff,” like they were on a first name basis. “So, what’s up with this new guy? Is he cute?”

  “Sort of,” I replied. “In a dangerous, tortured kind of way.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You know, the type of guy who doesn’t own a hairbrush or a razor and looks like he hasn’t eaten in a really long time.”

  “Oh, gotcha. But other than the hobo look, is he attractive?”

  “Yeah, you know, the bed head look actually suits him. It gives him character. But, he’s kind of a dick. And he has a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, bummer. Well, how’s everything else going? You all unpacked?”

  “Yeah, I just…” My response was cut short when I heard a knock at my door. I told Beth to hold on and opened my door, only to find myself face to face with Dylan. He jutted his chin out at me as his way of saying hello, then darted his eyes nervously around my living room.

  “Hey,” he greeted. “Bad time?”

  I held my index finger up, motioning for him to hold on. “Beth, let me call you back, okay?”

  “I hear a guy in the background!” she yelled. I prayed that my phone volume wasn’t loud enough for Dylan to overhear. “Is it that guy that lives upstairs?”

  “Yes, it is,” I replied, trying to sound casual. “I’ll call you tomorrow okay?”

  “You better.”

  I hung up the phone and motioned for Dylan to come inside. He followed me into the living room, peering around like he felt out of place.

  “I saw your car outside,” he explained. “I didn’t know if you were doing anything tonight. I’ve been working on some songs that I thought you might want to hear.”

  I was psyched that Dylan’s performance wasn’t going to be just a one-time thing, not to mention the fact that I wouldn’t have to spend another pathetic Friday night alone. “Sure, sounds good,” I said, making a horribly failed attempt at sounding cool. “Why don’t you go grab your guitar and bring it down here? My apartment is a little, um, cleaner.”

  “And green, not to mention. What’s up with the neon walls?”

  “Oh,” I said, laughing. I had gotten so used to the color that I was completely oblivious to it now. “Apparently some gay guys that lived here before me had taken a liking to bright colors.”

  “Guess they don’t call ‘em flaming for nothing,” he joked, as he made his way out the door. He reappeared several minutes later, guitar in hand, and propped himself down on my floor. As he fiddled around with the strings, I noticed his gray t-shirt exposed three Chinese symbol tattoos that ran vertically down his right forearm.

  “What do those mean?” I asked, pointing to the tattoos.

  “Courage, strength and faith.” He looked down at his arm as if seeing it for the first time. “Three of the most important traits.”

  “Sounds like something I could use right about now,” I said, more to myself than to him.

  Dylan continued to toy with his guitar for a minute, and then placed it on the rug next to him. “So, were you serious about why you moved back here? You know, because…” His voice trailed off.

  “Because my best friend slept with my boyfriend?” I asked. “It’s okay, you can say it. And yes, I was serious.”

  He winced. “You want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head, because in truth, I didn’t. But after a moment, I could feel the unspoken words hanging in the air, like some sort of silent presence, and I knew the only way to make them disappear was to acknowledge it.

  ***

  Conquering the quarter-life crisis is much harder than you’d think. It changes the way you look at everything, your job, your goals, your relationships. As soon as the dreaded twenty-five starts creeping around the corner, you feel like the world is going to end. You have so much to do, and so little time to do it. Your passions and goals in life suddenly spring out of left field, reminding you that you only have five years left to backpack through Europe, land your dream job, and find the person you’re destined to spend forever with. Because once you turn thirty, you could wake up one day married with three kids, working a dead-end job, and realize you never traveled or pursued your career goals, and now, all of a sudden, it’s too late. Or, even worse, you could end up thirty and alone.

  Part of me suspects that I think this way because of how I was raised. My father, for some unknown reason, has always been in a giant rush to marry me off. He always told me that I had to act fast because once I turned thirty “all the good ones would be taken.” Those were his exact words. Like I had a choice as to when I would cross paths with The One.

  Luckily for me, the career aspect of my crisis was covered now that I’d landed a job as a music writer. And the traveling, of course, was something I could arrange between now and the next five years. But what was really weighing on my conscience was the relationship aspect of things.

  “Hey J,” I’d said to Justine, who was sprawled on our living room sofa watching an E! True Hollywood Special on Angelina Jolie. “Do you ever think about marriage?”

  She looked at me like I was insane “As in, do I ever think I’ll get married?”

  “Yeah.”

  She laughed wickedly. It was a stupid question. Justine was the biggest commitment-phobe I’d ever met. While most people acquired a handful of lasting, meaningful relationships throughout the course of their life, Justine acquired a new one just about every weekend. She had dated every type of guy under the sun, but typically got bored with them after a few dates and moved onto the next one.

  “I’m serious,” I’d insisted. “Have you ever been with someone that you could picture yourself marrying?”

  “No,” she’d said, without hesitation.

  “What about Mark?”

  Justine’s longest relationship to date was with Mark Wheeler, an adorable real estate agent who was the poster boy for the ideal husband. For the likes of me, I couldn’t imagine how this guy ended up with Justine. Considering the fact that she and I had been friends since age fourteen, I knew more or less the type of guys that she was into. No job? Check. Motorcycle? Check. In a band? Absolutely. Long hair? Tattoos? Double check. Tom Brady look-a-like with responsibility, brains and a great resume? Not so much.

  Mark was perfect on paper, but I knew exactly why Justine grew bored with him. He was just too damn nice. He was the one of those guys that you really wanted to like because you knew your mother and grandmother would adore the shit out of him, but when it came down to wanting to rip his clothes off, the burning desire just wasn’t there. Women never liked the nice guys; it was an unspoken rule. We liked the dickheads, the pompous asses, the narcissistic bastards. We wanted a guy to act like they didn’t give a shit about us because then they presented a challenge. Of course, women never said this aloud. We always said “Oh, I wish I could find a nice guy” but what we really meant was “Oh, I wish I could find some arrogant prick who loved me.”

  Justine shook her head. “Definitely not with Mark. He was so routine. The most exciting thing he ever did was throw away the Sunday paper without reading about the stock market section first.” She crinkled her brow. “What are you getting at?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I love David and everything, but I just feel like something’s… missing.”


  Deep down, I knew exactly what it was. It was that profound, meaningful connection with another person. That spiritual soul connection. That feeling that you’d known each other forever. That share of common beliefs and interests. That painful aching for each other. I enjoyed David’s company and loved being around him, but when I thought about true love and all the things that came with it – weddings, honeymoons, having a family, committing to spending all of eternity with one person – that blissful feeling that I searched for was nowhere to be found. And not to mention, there was no way I could visualize spending forever with a guy who thought Muse was a clothing brand.

  Justine leaned forward in her seat. “Renee, are you saying you want to break up with David?”

  I shook my head, because in all honesty, I didn’t want to break up with him. I just hated the fact that, once your mid-twenties caught up to you, you actually had to take these things into consideration. You couldn’t just date someone for the fun of it anymore. You had to think about marriage, kids, forever. And the more time I spent with someone who I didn’t see myself marrying, the more time I was wasting. Or so my father would say.

  When I explained this to Justine, she looked at me, again, like I was crazy. “Renee, honestly, I think David is great. But if you’re having doubts, maybe you should take some time apart from him to really think about it.”

  Fortunately, this wish was granted to me less than an hour after Justine made the suggestion. My mother called and informed me, through broken sobs, that my grandfather had unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack. I was on a plane back to Boston the following morning, secretly grateful for the time I’d have to myself to think things through.

  When I arrived back in L.A. the following week, I had a new and improved attitude. I told myself that I would stop over-analyzing every aspect of my relationship and start living one day at a time. Maybe my forever feelings about David would change in time. Maybe they wouldn’t. But I loved David, right now, at this moment in my life. And with my new outlook in mind, I went right from the airport to his house to surprise him.

  I surprised him all right.

  I strolled in his front door, through the living room, down the hallway, and threw open his bedroom door, not expecting what was waiting for me on the other side.

  I stood there in a momentary lapse of paralysis, taking everything in, as David’s eyes stared back at me in horror, followed by another pair of eyes. Eyes I knew all too well. Eyes that belonged to someone I loved and trusted more than life itself. Eyes I knew that, no matter how many times I stared back at them, would never look the same again.

  Somehow, after gathering the scattered pieces of my brain and piecing them back together, I managed to unbuckle my feet from the floor and back away from the deluded scene that was unfolding before my eyes. My legs guided me in the reverse direction as the outline of their figures became smaller and smaller.

  And then I did the only thing that I could manage to do in my state of shock. I ran.

  And I never once looked back.

  ***

  “Did you have any idea that was going on?” Dylan asked. His back was propped against the living room wall, eyes trained on the ceiling, like he was trying to visualize the horror show I had just laid out for him.

  “Not a clue.” I thought back to all the times David had hung out around the house with Justine and me. Sure, they got along great, but I’d never picked up on anything that revealed it was more than purely platonic.

  “Why don’t you call your friend and talk to her about it?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. Maybe someday, but right now I can’t.”

  “Understandable. So, what’s up with this David guy? Did you have any idea he was like that?”

  I shrugged. “No, but it’s just as well because we were totally different. He’s a sports fanatic, I’m a music fanatic. We didn’t really have much in common.”

  Dylan cocked his head to the side. “Then why were you with him?”

  “Dylan, something tells me that Christina isn’t much a of a music fanatic herself.”

  He threw his head back and burst out laughing. “Touché. Although, between you and me, I don’t exactly envision Christina as someone who’s going to be around for the long haul.”

  “Yeah, anytime I tried to talk to David about music, he just didn’t get it. When I was in L.A., I landed a writing internship for a magazine, and when they assigned me to research some of the most popular bands of the twenty-first century, I couldn’t even think of one. If you asked me to write about the most popular bands of the eighties or nineties, I could name twenty off the top my head. But when I tried to talk to David about it, he could’ve cared less. I can’t be with someone like that. I want to be with someone who understands me, who sees things from my perspective. Or someone who at least cares enough about me to try to understand.”

  Dylan nodded in agreement. “Well, the way I see it, the world is made up of two kinds of people, the people who live and breathe music and the people who don’t. Your life is either completely consumed by music or it isn’t. Music is something that, I think, brings people together. It forms a bond between people that have similar interests and understand each other. You know what I mean?”

  If I was going to write my own version of the bible, Dylan’s words would have spawned the opening paragraph, not to mention the underlying theme of every other chapter throughout.

  I nodded.

  “But going back to the topic of today’s music,” he continued, “I couldn’t agree more. Most of the new bands on the radio nowadays are shit, which is why a lot of the stations still play Alice in Chains and Nirvana on such heavy rotation that you’d think they were a current band. I think the only great band that’s evolved so far this decade is Muse.”

  Chapter 8

  My mother, being the devoted Jesus-lover that she is, believes that each of us is given a gift, a specific talent that clarifies our identity and separates us from the rest of the world. Given my recent renewal with writing, I’d assumed that was my hidden talent, something I loved as an adolescent and rediscovered as an adult. But it was always unclear to me, sort of like looking through a window lined with fog, when you think you can see what’s on the other side, but it’s never quite as clear as you want it to be.

  For Dylan, this isn’t the case. He knows what his talent is, clear as day. He’s always known. And yet, he chooses to do nothing about it.

  Which is what pisses me off the most.

  After spending countless hours listening to him waste his talent in a three-hundred square-foot apartment, I decided to step it up myself. After racking my brains for answers and coming up with a big fat zero, I dialed a musically inclined friend of mine to see if he had any ideas.

  Eddie was Beth’s ex-boyfriend who I’d labeled the south shore music director because he played the drums in three different bands and knew everyone there was no know in the local music scene. You need to borrow a P.A.? Call Eddie. You need a last minute bass player fill-in? Eddie’s your guy. You have a friend with a voice from God who would rather burn to death than set foot on a stage?

  Eddie was my last hope.

  I dreaded calling Eddie because, as much of a nice guy as he was, he was quite the talker. I had no idea how he and Beth could have dated for so long because I swear if you put them in a room together and shut the door, they’d probably suck all the air out of it.

  After listening to Eddie ramble on for a good ten minutes about my L.A. fiasco, I cut him off mid-sentence.

  “Listen,” I began. “I didn’t call to talk about why I moved back home. I called because I need your help. I need advice from someone who is music savvy.”

  “Okay,” he said. “How so?”

  “Well, I met this guy who lives upstairs and…”

  “Hold up, you met a guy already?” Eddie chuckled. “Didn’t you just get your heart broken not too long ago?”

  I hated the term “heartbroken.” It
was such an understatement. “Broken” typically implied you were talking about something you could put back together. Or replace. My heart didn’t feel like it was broken. It felt like it had been tossed into the blender and liquidized at 180 MPH.

  “Yeah I did,” I agreed, not wanting to argue. “But Dylan’s just a friend. He has a girlfriend actually.”

  “Oh, like that’s stopped you before.” Even though I couldn’t see Eddie, I could tell he was rolling his eyes. “I seem to remember a few instances when…”

  “Eddie, I don’t need you to remind me about my poor lapses of judgment. What I need is your advice.”

  “Sorry. So what’s up with this guy?”

  “He’s talented. I mean, really talented. He’s phenomenal at the guitar and his voice is insane. But he’s a closet musician.”

  “What the fuck is a closet musician?”

  “You know, someone who doesn’t play in front of anyone else. He’s petrified of performing in front of people.”

  “Okay, so what do you want me to do about it?”

  I sighed. The truth was, I really didn’t know what the hell I wanted Eddie to do about it. I guess I was hoping for some sort of insight. I wanted him to tell me that everyone has stage fright at some point in their lives but they get over it. Anything to make me feel hopeful.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I guess I just want some sort of advice from someone who performs as much as you do. I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t think this guy was worth it, but I really think he has the potential to be something. He’s that good.”

  Eddie was quiet for a moment, and I could picture him staring up at the ceiling with a dopey look on his face and millions of thoughts spinning through his head. Anyone who talked as much as he did must think twice as much as the rest of us.

  “Well, my friend Justin was actually telling me the other day how his band is looking for a new lead singer, so maybe we could get them together somehow. Wait, your birthday is coming up soon right?”