by Shey Stahl
Fuck her.
Fuck her for being stupid, tasting like grape Jolly Ranchers and sweet sugar lips.
Fuck her for kissing me behind the bleachers and the way she gave me her virginity after that championship game sophomore year.
Fuck that night, fuck this place where I’m stranded surrounded by nothing but pain and desperation while I’m reaching out to nothing.
Fuck her.
Music used to be my escape—hours of me, the sound of my guitar, and lyrics holding my attention. Yet somewhere along the way, it’s turned into another piece of my life I can’t control, as if the music that once brought me relief only causes me grief because it feels as though it’d become a dependence and in turn, holds me hostage. I’ve been playing the guitar since I was six and singing just as long. Most of the time I can reach a place where nothing else exists but that; only it’s harder now.
Beck’s voice breaks through my thoughts, the darkness of the night fading, seeping through me, shading my decisions with the weight of my actions I made. “Where to now?”
I tell myself leaving is for the best. She’ll be happier without me. They’ll all be happier without me.
“I need my guitar,” I mumble as he pulls out to make the drive to my house, blue dawn glowing throughout the car.
“Do they know you’re leaving?”
I shake my head. I haven’t told anyone I’m leaving today. It’s not like it matters anyway. It never will. While the setting sun destroyed the light, I did and said things I shouldn’t have yesterday. The shit I just pulled with Sophie, it can’t be taken back, and the reality is, it’s time I’ve moved on.
Opening the door to his car, I step out, the early minutes of the sun breaking over the dry land giving me just enough light to see the lock to get my key in the front door of my childhood home. Pulling the key out of the door and into my pocket, a lady bug lands on my hand and I flick it away. I hate bugs.
My mom isn’t up yet, but I see the pictures on the walls as I climb the steps with heavy legs, it feels like they’re watching me, judging me for all the fucked-up choices I’ve made in the last twenty-four hours. If Mom was awake, I know what she’d say. She’d tell me to grow up and start acting like a fucking man. And she’d be right. I’m nearly twenty-one. I should be acting like a man but I don’t. I act like a fucking jerk because it’s who I am, who I’ve essentially become.
My shoulders bow and my back bends as I make my way inside the house. There’s a photograph of my father on the wall and it catches my eye. I look like him, in some ways. A resemblance in appearances is the only thing that’s ever tied me to him. It’s been over a year since he passed away and while I miss him, I can’t forget the way I treated him the night he died.
“Rawley, stop blaming everyone else for your problems. If this garage isn’t what you want for your life… you know, that’s fine but you need to figure your shit out. If you decide you do want to work here, be here. That’s all I ask of you.”
What did I say?
“Yeah, well, I’m so fucking sorry I don’t have all my shit figured out at nineteen like Red, but stop trying to make me into him! Fuck off.”
That night, my dad died of a massive heart attack and I was never able to right the words I said in anger.
Memories from that night might be one of the reasons why I’m leaving. No, I know it is because ever since that night, I’ve been asking myself if there are some things you can’t come back from and yeah, I think there are. I think there’re places your mind can take you, dark places you’ll never find your way out of.
That’s where I’m at now. Lost, unbound… unable to make a distinct thought stick, so I move through a life I don’t understand, get lost in substances I shouldn’t and hold onto memories that haunt me.
Maybe that’s why I’m leaving. No, I know it is.
Rubbing my eyes, I sniff, my chest tender, raw like it’s been split open, tears sliding over chapped lips. Soft steps down the hall and to the left, I enter my room. There’s a towel from yesterday near the door as I step in and when I bend down to pick it up, I realize it’s still somewhat damp. Though I can’t quite remember, I think I pushed it up against the bottom of the door after my shower so Mom wouldn’t smell the weed I was smoking.
Against the wall near the window is my bed, its sheets and blankets on the floor and a condom wrapper on my nightstand.
Couldn’t tell you who I’d been with the night it was used, but it’s there, a reminder of the fact that most of the time I’m in here, I’m wasted.
It’s easier that way. These days my brain won’t stop. I don’t sleep anymore, a curse I’ve put upon myself, but even when I attempt to sleep, there’s only chaos. A constant chatter of thoughts I can never truly decipher into anything besides the knowledge I’m haunted by my own choices. Ones I’ve essentially created and ignore for what they are. Demons.
Glancing around the room, my eyes catch the Rolling Stones poster on the wall and then my trash can below it, filled with pictures I’ve destroyed, memories I’d give anything to forget. Pulling at my hair, I turn to sit on the edge of the bed and I try to make sense of what I’m doing, but I can’t. This is it. My decision is made. I’m leaving, and I don’t plan on coming back, but the only emotion I have is guilt for what I’ve done and how I treated Sophie.
You’ll never be enough for her. Hell, you’ll never be enough for any of them. Love isn’t enough. Nothing you do is ever enough. Leave and never look back.
Sophie and I met when we were ten, waiting at the bus stop one cold fall morning. She handed me a grape Jolly Rancher and gave me that sweet Sophie smile and from then on, she was all I knew. That all ended senior year when she went away with friends on spring break. She came home after that week, crying, devastated by her actions, but I’ll give her this much, she told me the truth. She slept with someone down there. She said it was a mistake; she was drunk and didn’t intentionally do it. Fuck that shit. She knew what she was doing from the moment she wrapped me around her finger that cold morning at the bus stop.
That night after she told me, I tried to fuck her best friend, Kate, with the mentality of “you fucked me over, I’ll do the same.” Only I couldn’t. I didn’t have it in me to hurt her like that at the time.
I didn’t break up with Sophie right away. She ripped my heart out that night and then I let it fester, the infection spreading until the fever took over and made me hallucinate. At first, I thought I could forgive her. Told her people make mistakes. But then the fog cleared and reality set in. It hit me a week later. The devastation was practically mind-numbing and I was pissed, livid… hurt, and I don’t even remember what I said to her now, but I know I purposely hurt her to keep from showing how much it killed me that she cheated on me. I destroyed her like she destroyed me.
After we broke up, I did sleep with Kate. In my mind it was justified. You fucked around on me so now I get to fuck around on you. I didn’t even try to hide it, and Sophie let me. By her not saying anything, telling me to stop, it was as good as her admitting she deserved it, so why wouldn’t I?
I picture her after I leave, living a life, making plans that don’t include me, the way it should be, but the thoughts of her with someone else, loving someone else, they dig mercilessly into my stomach. It’s like a weight drops in my gut and I choke out a cough. My chest throbs at the memories, distorted images of the life we once had. Of football and making out under bleachers. Of love and laughter. River kisses before the sun went down, crackling bon fires and her hand in mine, haunting thoughts of the girl she is now, who would have given anything to have me love her the right way, not the unsteady way.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell myself. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over.”
It doesn’t matter what I tell myself. My tortured heart still hangs on, still in love, still caught up in if you run, I’m going to chase you.
I close my eyes and try to stop thinking. I rummage through my room and nightstand looki
ng for what I need. Wallet, keys, the dime bags I know I shouldn’t have in here but do. Finally, I reach for my guitar, the only thing besides my truck I own. My truck, fuck. Yet another thing I’m forced to leave behind. Mostly because no one knows this, but I totaled it driving high two weeks ago outside Portland. Hit a telephone pole at eighty. I have no idea how I’m still alive. Maybe punishment for everything I’ve done? One thing’s for sure, I might never know what saved me that night.
My truck’s parked at Beck’s cousin’s house in Eugene because I don’t want Mom or Red to know. The last thing I need is another “get your shit together” speech from them. I’ve heard them so often they have no affect anymore. And here I give Tyler a hard time when I was just as stupid.
When my arms are full and my guitar is on my back, I write a note to Mom and Raven, and then leave it on the counter.
I don’t sign it because why bother? They’ll know who it’s from. I’m the only one who will ever leave a note like this. My twin sister, Raven, she’d never do this. She and Ma tell each other everything.
Red, my older brother, he’s too fucking noble to ever leave town. The oldest, the one with the determination and ability to run the family business, he’d rather stay and make a life in a town that’s taken everything from him, including his wife.
Me… I’m not like either of them, and it’s something I’m reminded of daily.
Once outside, I shut the door quietly. The sky’s pink with the rising sun, Beck’s pale yellow Fairlane standing out in the shadows created by the last bits of the night.
I don’t look back once we’re on the road, but I think of Nova. My niece, her chocolate curls and bright eyes peering up at me last night when I lost my head and threw a cooler full of beer. The fear and sadness in her expression is a haunting memory I’ll never shake. She doesn’t need to know this guy, the one who shouts and screams, takes and never gives, uses and abuses until there’s no one left.
I hate Sophie for letting me use and abuse her, inside and out.
I hate myself more for doing it.
Leaving isn’t an action for me. It’s a consequence. It’s a means to an end of something I started. A condition in which I have to live with and is the only place left to go. It’s the rest of forever and my absolute penance.
Maybe then, maybe when I’m gone, these few fragments of what’s left of me might possibly become something more. Even if I don’t understand my thoughts, they’ll be there, and she’ll be better off.
I stare off into the distance, my guitar strung across my body. Hundreds gather near the stage, but I can’t tell you who they are. You’d think, with my name on the billboard outside headlining the night, I’d know some of them.
In the five months since I’ve left home, I don’t think about her.
That’s a lie.
I don’t want to think about Sophie, but I do. It’s all that’s on my mind in a city that’s screaming with excitement and life. There’s no life inside of me anymore, only a hollow mess of lyrics poured through half-mumbled words.
After the initial numbness of isolating myself from her wore off, I got mad. Pissed at the world for causing the events that led me to not being able to have her. Anger, rage, fury, whatever your choice of word be, it’s all I’m left with and the worst part is, I know I’m to blame. I deliberately pushed away everyone who ever loved me. I made the choice to hold onto the bitterness of the past and allow the demons I created to think my only choice was to leave.
It’s here on a stage, lights blazing down on me, I stand, sweat dripping down my back screaming into a microphone about a girl who fucked me over. It’s then, with substance swimming through my veins, I forget. For seconds, then days, and eventually months.
It’s New Year’s Eve. Hundreds are teeming the very edges of a dark bar and I’m opening this night with My Darkest Days’ “Porn Star Dancing” because none of these ignorant fuckers wants anything original. I give them the show they want, regardless of the emptiness it gives me because once again, music has betrayed me. Instead of giving me the escape I beg for, all I get are demands and expectations.
So I stand there belting out cover after cover, occasionally winking down at the half-naked women by the stage, giving them exactly what they came for tonight.
An hour into the night, I’m high, drunk, and still on stage. My head keeps going to a place with grape Jolly Ranchers while waiting for the school bus. I can’t hold it in any longer. The need to scream out loud and get lost in the words that hold meaning to me, but to anyone else listening, they’re just words shouted at the top of my lungs.
My hands grip the mic, my stomach lurching with nerves, every breathe forced. The smoke rises up from the stage, twists, swirls and claws at my throat. It’s like I’m suffocating in front of them and no one gives a goddamn.
Every move I make feels like I have cement around me, weighing me down, a soul bound by the words strangling me.
“Rawley! Rawley! Rawley!” They chant my name between songs, worshiping the asshole in front of them, but not a single oblivious motherfucker in here actually knows Rawley Walker, the front man of Torque. Why would they want to?
Want some heavy truth?
I don’t know him either. Not anymore.
I thought maybe when I left Lebanon, a place where I knew every crack of that barren farm land, I might by chance find myself, but if anything, I’m gone completely now. There’s not an ounce of me to be found on any given night.
“HEY, KID, WHERE are you from? I haven’t seen you around here?” a man to my left asks. I’m sitting in a booth after our show. We usually sit in the back away from the crowds, which is how I like it because tonight, like every other night, I’ve decided to ignore everyone including Beck and Lincoln next to me. They’re used to it.
“He’s in here all the time,” Linc says, throwing the guy a quick glance then turning back around, shaking his head and bringing the vodka in his glass to his lips. There’s a girl on his lap, one to my right and Beck, he’s got one too. It’s the natural order of things when you’re playing every night at the same bar.
I lift my eyes to Linc with a smirk, his dark hair colored blue on the tips, black on the sides and artfully styled into a Mohawk he rocks the drums with every night. He’s one of a kind, always smiling and the life of the band. Beck, our bass guitarist, he’s the brains and essentially the only reason we ever have a gig these days. If it wasn’t for him, my I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-anything attitude would have ended us a long time ago.
It’s the sometimes fragile combination of Linc’s easygoing attitude, Beck’s head for business, and my distinct voice that keeps this band going. Thank fuck they love me more than they hate me, because without them, I really don’t know where the hell I would be. Probably dead.
“You’re Rawley Walker, right?” the man asks with a relaxed posture while gesturing his hand out to shake. “I’m Sam Young.” He nods to his right to another man. “And this is my business partner, Nick Caulder.” I look at his hand and then turn to look away. He reminds me of a car salesman, talking fast and making promises he can’t deliver, only he hasn’t promised anything yet. “Is this your band, Torque?”
My eyes drift to the bar where Dylan’s watching the interaction, his hands on the bar, leaning in to hear a drink order shouted over the crowd. Dylan Wade owns Bailey’s and already warned me about this guy when he walked into the bar between sets. He’s a local promoter and constantly searching for fresh new acts. Though I wanted the big time, Dylan was constantly reminding us to be cautious and remember what went with it. Or trying to. It’s not like I didn’t hear what he told us, I just chose not to listen most of the time. Story of my life.
“How long you been playing here?” Sam asks, sliding his card across the table to me.
Beck grabs it before I can and holds it up. “Sam Young,” he reads the name out loud, smiling as he says it and peeks around it at me raising an eyebrow.
He leans in, offers me a fir
m authoritative handshake and looks me in the eye. This time I look back.
Sam looks around Beck to me as he stands. “If you guys are serious about becoming someone, call me. If not, it’s a fucking shame.”
There’s certain aspects of the music industry only a good manager can provide. You wouldn’t believe the run around you get from bar owners and venues when they find out you have no manager. Beck does his best, but he doesn’t have the experience or the contacts.
I take the card from Beck and tap the girl next to me on the thigh. “Get up.”
She does as she’s asked, attempting to give me a view down her shirt and hoping it’s enough to get me to invite her back to my place tonight. I probably won’t. I’ll have her suck my dick in the car and leave. Remember when I said I didn’t know myself anymore?
Exactly. There’re times when I don’t even know who I was back in Lebanon. It certainly wasn’t anything resembling this.
Just as I’m getting up, Dylan approaches the table.
“I’ll give you some advice here and you should listen to me,” Dylan says, handing me another shot at the bar, one he knows I don’t need but gives because he’s not going to tell me when I’ve had enough. He leaves that to me.
“Oh yeah? And why should I listen to your wisdom?” My voice is hoarse from all the smoking, drinking, and singing, representing another thing I don’t recognize anymore. I play three nights a week these days and combined with all the other shit, it’s done a number on my vocal cords.
He glares in my direction, but not directly at me and leans into the table, his hands spread about a foot apart. “Because I’ve been in your fucking shoes, kid.”
I laugh when he calls me kid. Dylan can’t be more than a few years older than me but when I see the solemn expression, I stop, wait, watching him, a thump beating wildly in my chest with the base of the music playing behind us. Though I’ve never personally seen it, I know Dylan plays here some nights. The walls are covered with him and his friends singing at shows, some more intimate than others, and some, large crowd venues like when he played at Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve. He was big time but for some reason left it all behind for something. Or more likely someone.
