goldenspine:

so heres your song. its twisting me. i’d give anything to make you scream. 

Oh well, oh well
I can live with myself
As I’m climbing in your window to get to your bed
And I’ll be what you need
You can call me anything
Just as long as we’re still friends.

I was on the river walk with my headphones in, just enjoying the sun settling down the sky as everything became a dark and cloudy pink when I heard music. I realized someone was busking in the circle of benches around the empty fountain that was still closed for the season.

I won’t lie, my breath jumped in my throat for a moment and my heart felt like it collided into the front of my ribcage, I stopped so fast. But the moment I pulled out my headphones and heard the shaky strum of a chord, I knew it wasn’t you. That wasn’t the sound of your playing. There was no heart in it. It was too self-conscious and still trying to figure out it’s own sound.

But I sat on a bench anyway and listened to this high school kid finish his rendition of Creep, then a few more before ending with a Tom Petty number. I watched as a bunch of screaming, giggling children ran around the circle dropping their coins in his open guitar case. Another high schooler in black leather and some punk band shirt smoked while I smoked, chatting with his similarly garbed friends. I felt old then. Not that they made me feel ancient. But I just remembered who I was when I was their age, not even so long ago, and all the things I would have yet to go through before getting to where I was now.

The guitarist sat on another bench quietly after he finished his last song. And a girl in leather with blue hair came up to drop some money in his case. Just as he was putting away his guitar I made the choice to pull out five wrinkly dollars out of my wallet and asked if he knew any Jeff Buckley. He said he didn’t.

“Bob Dylan?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What do you know?”

“Uh, I can play Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright….”

“Ok, I’ll give you five bucks if you’d play it for me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Sure, customer knows best,” he replied gamely.

As I walked away back to my backpack and bench he called out, “Do you know the words?”

“Yeah,” I replied over my shoulder “but I’m not singing it.”

I sat down and wondered if he asked because he didn’t really remember the words. But after a lengthy intro, he started to sing. And I watched him from across the empty pit of the fountain.

It was an effort. I think maybe he did try. But something essential was missing. Maybe the brokenness. The honesty. Maybe he didn’t know what it felt like yet to walk away from something that meant so much. Or maybe it was something else. I could be over-thinking it.

He finished the song and I applauded. He packed up and chatted a bit with the kids in leather. When he finally left the fountain, he waved at me and said, “Bye.”

I stared at the empty fountain and lit up another smoke. I already knew what was going to happen tonight. I was alone, in this place. And you were on my mind. But this time there didn’t seem like I had a reason to stop me like so many times before. The need was just too strong, too consistent, too habitual.

But I didn’t do it right away. I wanted to be sure my friends weren’t going to come through with our plans and meet me. I waited until I knew for sure she couldn’t come. She apologized but she didn’t have to. My phone had been dying for the past half hour. Before I did anything else, I knew I’d have to charge it or I’d be stranded. All the shops were closed so I walked and stared at the lower half of building walls until I found an outlet in an alley.

I waited there as my phone charged and stared emptily at the mural on the wall. I waited as long as I could stand, but my feet wanted to move. I had made the choice with my emotion and now my body wanted me to go and follow through.

Leaving downtown on foot towards the tree-lined neighborhoods, I shoved my headphones back in my ears. The opening strands of Ocean played faintly and I looked up as lightning started to light the clouds.

This wasn’t logical. I knew that. I was acting on a desire. A desire that seemed as old as my current notion of self. I always wanted to come here. It’s a habit or an addiction. Either way, when I get this close, it becomes magnetic. On my compass, you were North. And because for so long, logic told me North was not where I should’ve been going, I was able to hold out. But I only ever really hold out for so long before I have to make the venture back up again. It’s cyclical, the way it is now. Unending, as it stands. But for now, that is the way of things with me. Even if I know it’s wrong.

Maybe that’s why I posted that I needed someone to stop me. I wanted someone to stop me. If I wasn’t supposed to get there on this night, I feel like someone WOULD have stopped me. But I was a block away and I got no response. My feet were moving me forward. My habit was driving me closer. The desire, this concept of NEEDING to go propelled me. But the logical part of me knew, that in that moment, there was nothing more than that desire, that thought of needing to do it. So I passed by once and heard voices in the backyard but couldn’t see who they belonged to in the dark. It spooked me and I lost my nerve. So I walked around the block again.

I asked myself what I was doing. I beat myself up a bit over it. I called myself an idiot. But I was this close. I wasn’t going to get this close and just turn tail. I wasn’t going to create another “what if.” As I walked up to the front of the house a girl came out with wavy brown hair and a peasant skirt.

“Hi,” I called out as she closed the screen door behind her. “Is there a Tony that lives here?”

“Um, I don’t know, actually. Would you like me to ask?”

“If you could, please.”

She stuck her head back into the house and I heard her ask if there was a Tony that lived there.

I turned around and faced the street. A last-minute panic flying through me. An adrenaline spike, a worry, a hope.

Behind me a male voice boomed, “Ho-ly shit! I have not seen you in… years!” It was the wrong voice.

I turned around and saw his best friend, Matt beaming at me amicably as he walked down the front steps and opened his arms wide.

Surprised at his candor, I hugged him and said with pleasant shock, “Matt!”

He was different than I remember. Friendlier, more talkative, pleasant. He was always quite reserved when I had met him before. We didn’t hug before. But like he said, it’d been years.

We made a bit of small talk. I caught him at a good time, just after he got off work.

He lived in the house now. Tony did not. He moved to some apartment complex in Lisle, one town over from my parent’s house.

“I think he might be engaged now.”

“Really?” I had played that scenario in my head. I didn’t think it’d happen this soon. But ultimately, it wasn’t too surprising.

“To Nicole. Did you ever meet Nicole?”

“No. I think the last time I was here, he never mentioned a Nicole.”

Apparently she was dating another roommate in the house Keegan, but tensions and drama ensued - she left Keegan for Tony.

And he transferred to the Joliet branch of his work.

Then the worst news.

“I don’t know if you heard,” he said, his voice suddenly taking on a grave tone.

“No. Probably not. What?”

“You know his brother Adam?”

“Yeah, I remember Adam,” I replied smiling, remembering the slightly angsty kid that he was way back when.

“About three months ago…. Adam passed away,” his voice dropped in tone and volume.

It was strange. It was unexpected. I actually felt the sensation people talk about when they say the ground fell away. That wasn’t a scenario I had played. I felt how unequipped I was to handle this news this way. We weren’t even close all those years ago, Adam and I. But we saw each other fairly regularly. In our awkward ways we were sorta-kinda but not really friends. Trying to smooth things out for the sake of the one we both loved. We didn’t NOT get along. We just didn’t know who we were. Didn’t have anything really in common. Except Tony. But I wasn’t processing it. I still don’t think I’ve processed it. I don’t think I know how. It’s too much, too distant, too shocking, too… sad.

“What?” I ended up asking, dumbly.

“Yeah,” he said. With a look in his eyes like… sympathy.

I think I started realizing then, that maybe Matt didn’t know anything about my relationship with Tony. Or maybe what he knew, what Tony told him, was so different than how I experienced that reality. Because I didn’t think I had the right to hear this. It was too personal. It was too big. But Matt immediately saw and welcomed me as a friend. And with this news on top about Adam. I couldn’t gain a foothold on what the situation was.

“How…?”

“Well, he was in Colorado. And he was up in the mountains. Snowboarding.” He paused then, for whatever reason as possibilities raced through my mind. Some sort of freak accident. Collision, exposure, failed surgeries, infection. “But he made it down the mountain fine.” Car accident. He was run over by a massive truck. “He just went to bed. And his heart stopped.”

I… couldn’t process it. I just couldn’t. My mouth auto-piloted as my brain drained itself of any useful thoughts. “Oh my god” I heard myself whisper.

“Yeah. I can’t even imagine what Tony was going through during all that.”

“No. Of course not. That’s horrifying.”

A beat passed. Matt went inside and asked if I drink. I said yes. He came out with a can of Icehouse for me and a tallboy of something else he had been working on since before I arrived.

He took over the conversation again. He told me about how he was planning on moving in July to Pittsburgh. He asked if he knew that he took Graphic Design. I told him I remembered he was doing design stuff at COD when we last hung out. Turns out he got his Associates at COD and Bachelor’s at Robert Morris. And he had an aunt that really needed another hand to help with her company. Printing shirts, brochures, coupons, you name it.

He asked me where I was going for school. I told him about how Japanese Studies, Depaul, Japan. We talked about languages. He asked me questions. I answered them. We didn’t talk about what I came there to talk about. It was okay. This was unexpected and I felt like I was floundering. It was distracting but it was also a tease. His best friend. Close, but not the real thing. Not close at all, it turns out.

Eventually he mentioned he had to pick up his brother. I needed to get home anyway. So he told me where I could possibly find a cab. He goaded me on to chug the rest of my beer and we parted ways.

I walked off into the darkness of the unlit neighborhood. My insides were whirling. I was okay with the choice I made. But there was still a part of me that felt guilt because I knew I acted on a weakness. A weakness that needed to be acted upon though. I haven’t been able to purge it from me. Not in all the ways I’ve tried so far.

I couldn’t find the taxis. So I called Chibi and she said she could pick me up and give me a ride home. She came with her boyfriend Tony. And on the way to come get me they spoke to me on the phone.

What it came down to was this: Do I know why I want so badly to talk to him? What would it help? What happens if I get the information I want, but the habit and the desire remain? What if I don’t get the information I want?

And all the answers will have to wait for another long post that no one will ever read.

(via helplesslyamazed)