Loganthinks

I've been looking through old writing i did maybe a year and a half ago, and i came across a bit i wrote about the band. There was a period early on where Paul got depressed and wanted to quit - this was right around the end of a schoolyear, and he was leaving town and felt bad about the way things were being done (or not done). I'm sure i was an ass and entirely unhelpful, and i don't remember enough about this particular night to edit what i wrote - I imagine that alot of the dialogue is recreated from more basic memories of our conversation - but i think basically i just wanted to write something and this particular encounter came out. I think it's kind of boring and it's probably not my best writing, but i never put any of my old stuff on this blog so i figured i'd post this. So here goes - Paul's last night:



I’m sitting on the rough concrete curb on the corner of 39th, watching a firefly wink in and out of view in the driveway across the street. A month or two earlier it might have been a bit odd to see a firefly this late at night, but now they’ve moved in like they’ve always belonged and I always find myself watching them when I should be thinking about something else. Paul is watching me and smoking a cigarette, nodding and moving his lips as if the motions of inhaling and exhaling burning paper and tobacco were its own conversation. Neither of us have spoken since we crossed University Parkway, and it is the longest of awkward silences.

It has been one of those dreadfully meaningless nights. As evening came on, we’d each built up the coming hours in our imaginations with the hopes that someone else had some fantastic plan for Paul’s last weekend in town. However, such transparent foundations are bound to fail without proper motivation, and with everyone drunk on lukewarm beer and irritable from the heat, things quickly fell apart in painfully depressing quietude. By twelve, five of the seven friends gathered lay snoring on the mottled couches lining the walls of my apartment’s living room. Some fifteen minutes later Paul announced, somewhat to himself, a desperate need for Nicotine. I’d followed him out into the heat and stink simply for the change of scenery, but ended up tagging along for the ten-minute walk down Charles Street to the convenience store on 33rd. Once there, I’d bought a handful of those little generic candy bags that go two-for-a-dollar and that have candy corn or gummy bears in them. My teeth are now hurting, and Paul is a good five cigarettes into his pack. His lips are moving again, and he’s rocking from his heels to his toes as he stands next to me.

“All I can come up with is freshman poetry. I’m so fucking useless…”

I don’t look up at him when he says this, but I hear him as he grinds his ashes into the sidewalk. He is sweating to the point where his skin glistens in the decrepit tangerine glow of the street lamp. My skin is clammy and warm. I feel stifled by the heavy blanket of night air, and I’m letting my mouth hang slightly open like a dog, my tongue pushing against the inside of my lower lip in search of moisture.

“It’s not like we’re even that far along as a band yet anyway,” he continues, “but I don’t feel good the way we’re leaving things now… like we have nothing to show for it.”

“I don’t suppose you can force it,” I say absently, following more fireflies as they flicker and circle about the bushes across the way. I think to myself that him leaving at the end of the weekend might not mean that much of a difference anyway, as we hadn’t played music together as a band in over two weeks.

“I’m not trying to force anything. I’m too fucked up to deal with this anyway. I want my million dollars now; then we’ll make the band work.”

“Fooled by Glass is a bad name,” I say, smiling at him with a euphemistically empathetic look.

“Yea, it’s great.” He lights his sixth cigarette and laughs. “We’re Fooled by Glass and our guitarist smokes ultra lights. Hardcore.”

“Rock n’ roll.”

“I hate this city.”

“You just want to be in a band for the wrong reasons,” I say, feeling the mediocrity of a conversation we’d already had slow my words.

“That’s not true at all.”

“You don’t think so?”
He looks at me: “Wanting a good name and good lyrics isn’t a bad reason… wait, what are you saying?”

I stretch my arms and pull myself up, turning away from him so I can slouch against the wall of a brick condominium and take a piss.
“No, I want all that too. I’m saying you have the wrong motivation in general.” I realize this will get him mad, but I’ve already said it.
I finish pissing and wait for a response.

“Fooled by Glass is terrible,” he says quietly.

“It sounds appropriately weenie and cop-out-ish for us though,” I laugh, zipping my fly. “We’re definitely not the Masters of Dedication.”

“Your names suck” he says.

“I’ve read yours - they’re not exactly stellar,” I say, wondering as I’m speaking why I seem to be able to consistently say the wrong thing tonight. I’d read his band-name-ideas scrawled on the back of his Linear Algebra notebook one afternoon while copying CD’s in his room. I remember all the stupid dreams and ideas I had written on the backs of textbooks and the insides of English folders.
I’m wincing already.

“Yea, well fuck it,” he says, a wry smile poking out of the darkness chewing on a filter.

“That’s what I mean I guess,” I continue, figuring if I’m going to say what I mean, I’m at least going to get it all out at once. “Like, I know you’re just joking when you say you want to be a rock star to get rich and binge on cocaine so you can be on ‘where-are-they-now’ television, but that’s all bullshit.”

“I know it’s bullshit,” he says defensively , “It’s a goddamn joke.”

“I guess it’s not wrong to want money and women,” I mumble, still feeling bad about knocking his band-name ideas.

“You don’t think rap videos have it all figured out then,” he says. I assume he’s joking, but I can’t figure out his tone of voice.

“Hell no,” I say. “I want to be in a band because I love to play music. I realize I am a preachy son of a bitch.

“I think you’re lying to yourself,” he says, again without any feeling in his voice. His face has retreated back into the shadows, and all I can see is the underexposed silhouette of his hair and shoulders against the night.

“I’m definitely not the one doing that,” I say.

“You’re lying to yourself if you think that isn’t why I want to play, and you’re lying to yourself if you think there’s something noble in it. I’m glad you remember dumb things I say when drunk so you can bring this up.”

I am too caught up to stop at this point.

“Well then do something,” I say, the frustration of a wasted night seeping into my voice. “Fucking take charge, call a practice, sit down and take the lead. Because right now that’s what we need a lot more that a goddamn name.”

He flicks his cigarette filter against my chest and walks quickly across the street and out of the streetlight’s halo.