He shook his head, though.
“You’re acting like you know that,” he said, trying harder to read the plants. “But you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You don’t know I’m not fucked up.”
“I do. I promise I do.”
“How could you know.”
I didn’t reply right away.
“How could you know,” he said again, and he looked up and looked at me, and I realized I was smiling at him.
It wasn’t because of anything he’d done. He was still a psychotic maniac who I didn’t recognize. There was nothing for me to be happy or relieved about.
But something took over my face and my brain and I felt happy and relieved anyway, and I was smiling at him in this small, relaxed, calm way, because my face knew that it would help him, because it was something that I could use to douse his crazy panic.
I mean, in that moment I just kind of became someone different, who could see into the future and who saw myself helping Corey back in through the window, and I knew it was going to happen.
“I know you’re not fucked up because I know you,” I said. “I know you better than I know anyone. You’re my friend. You’re not fucked up.”
He just stared at me.
“You’re like anyone,” I said. “You’re like me. You do fucked-up things sometimes. But you’re not fucked up.”
He stared at me a little more, and I saw him just starting to come back to normal, but he was starting to breathe really hard, and shake, and heave, and he was starting to lose his balance, so I did something else. It really seems like it shouldn’t have worked. But it did.
“Give me your hand,” I said to him. And I reached out to him.
And he put his sweaty sticky peanut buttery hand in my hand, and I squeezed it, and I started walking and leading him back to the window, and he followed me, and we made it all the way across the roof. And I went inside, and he came in after me, and I said, “All right.”
And I gave him a hug, and then he started crying and couldn’t stop.
It was a truly epic amount of crying. We stood there in the attic and he put me in kind of a headlock and got peanut butter in my hair and just wept uncontrollably. For the first minute or two I was choked up and sort of sniffling along with him.
But his crying went a lot longer than mine.
COREY: HRN , RN N RRRNNNN, , NK
WES: it’s all good, man
COREY: OORRRRNNN , N , NT NTK K , , , ohhjjh
WES: get it all out
COREY: jjjjjh , jjhhh , h h u u uRRrRRNNN U UUuurrnnt
WES: just get it out
COREY: ooOHhhh god , oh, , g god , jjjJJJJJHHHH
WES: alllllllll good
I was hoping he was just crying and being sad with as few thoughts as possible. Because the more thoughts he was having about why he was out there, the wronger those thoughts were going to be. I knew that for a fact. I just knew what was going on in his head. I knew that he wasn’t going to be able to realize that he was just fucked up on drugs and loneliness and a bad hookup and none of it was permanent.
Finally he calmed down and lay down on his back on the floor, and I got him some Gatorade, and I found an iPad and a Bose speaker, and I asked him if there was anything he wanted to hear, and he said Chutes Too Narrow, so I put on the first track, and we sat there and listened to James Mercer strum and casually sing his way into that big second A section.
COREY, eventually: damn.
WES: you were just way too high, man
COREY: yeah
[james mercer hits that high note on “told” that is the one time in his entire singing career that he sounds not completely in control]
COREY: yeah it’s probably it’s uh
WES:
COREY: it’s uh probably good not to get too deep into uh into coming up with reasons i was out there, right
WES: the reason you were out there is you were on drugs
COREY: yeah.
[james mercer does that jungle-gym melisma on “behind” that sounds a million times easier than it is]
COREY: look, i just want you to know, i wasn’t out there because of shit with you
WES: thanks man
COREY: you’re a good friend and you basically just saved my life and i’m not mad at you for making me a hater
WES: well you’re a good fr
COREY:
WES: wait you’re not mad at me for what
COREY: for turning me into a hater
WES:
COREY:
WES: what
COREY: you’re a hater, you’ve made me into a hater, but i’m not mad
I was almost too baffled to say anything.
WES: when did i make you a hater
COREY: i mean right from the start. like one of the first times we even talked to each other. i played you this exact album. remember?
[james mercer gets to that low register part where he sings in his talking voice like he’s putting his kids to sleep]
WES:
COREY: i was super psyched about it, because i was super psyched about the shins. i thought they were our beatles. so i was like, hey check this band out, and we listened to it and you just had this look on your face of completely refusing to like it
WES:
COREY: and then after a loooong time you were like, this is the band from that movie garden state? and i was like yeah. and you were like, the band where natalie portman says this band will change your life? and i was like yeah. and you didn’t say anything more than that. but that was all you needed to say. because we sat there and kept listening to it and it was like, well, yeah. this band isn’t changing anyone’s life
WES:
COREY: and all i could think was, holy shit i’m glad i didn’t tell you the shins were our beatles
WES:
COREY: and that was it. i couldn’t love the shins anymore. i couldn’t love anything. i had to hate on everything. like you
That did happen. I remembered it. I did say, This is the band from Garden State? The band that will change your life? And I did mean it like, this band isn’t changing my life.
But I didn’t remember it as me hating on Corey’s favorite band, the Shins. I remembered it as me and Corey finding a way to hate on the Shins together. Because that was what we did. Because Corey had already made me a hater.
Honestly, I really kind of liked the Shins, but I hadn’t thought Corey was putting them on for us to like.
WES: yeah but corey that was only after you showed me how to be a hater by hating on kool & the gang
[two james mercers sing that harmony on “confrontation” where it always sounds to me like the levels are completely fucked and it’s sort of hilarious but maybe only i hear it]
COREY: what? no. the shins was first
WES: no man. kool & the gang was first
COREY: no because you hating on the shins was the whole reason why i hated on kool & the gang
WES: no, you hated on kool & the gang, and then together we listened to the shins, and i wanted to show you that i could hate on stuff too, because i thought that was the thing that you liked to do, so
COREY: dude. no. come on. shins were first
WES: no. it was definitely kool & the gang
COREY: shins
WES:
COREY:
WES:
COREY: the shins, man
WES:
COREY: i’m 90 percent sure
WES:
COREY:
WES: i mean i really think kool & the gang was first
COREY: maybe like 80 percent
WES: but now i’m thinking about it and i guess i can’t be totally sure
COREY: fuck
WES: i guess there’s a chance because i’m going through my memories and i guess i don’t know for sure what the order was, like i can tell you what it feels like but maybe i’ve always been remembering it wrong, or maybe now i’m remembering it wrong
&n
bsp; COREY: oh my god. why do we have to be stoned right now
[james mercer hits that one plaintive note on “heard” the third time through the chorus that is the first moment in the song where he allows himself to feel true painful emotion and it takes the song to a completely different place somehow]
WES: maybe we need to just drop it for the time being
COREY: yeah. we need to drop this immediately. because trying to remember shit stoned feels like it’s destroying my memories forever
Yeah. That was how it felt for me, too. It felt like my memories were old crumbly photographs and the act of pulling them out was smudging and blurring and breaking them, and the closer I tried to examine them, the tighter I gripped them, and the worse it got.
WES: well, hey
COREY:
WES: i’m sorry. i’ve b
COREY: don’t worry about it
And by this point his voice was back to normal. It was back to being Corey’s dry cool kind of surprisingly deep voice, and it told me we were exiting the raw hot gooey place we had been in, of crying and being vulnerable and saying unspeakably honest things to each other.
WES: no but just let m
COREY: seriously, don’t worry about it, because if you start apologizing, then i’ll start, and we’ve both got like a million things to apologize for, and it’s just too much shit for right now, so don’t worry about it
WES: all right
[track three starts with that suspended chord from the guitar that then breaks off into that bouncy little mountain-goat descent with the stamping bass-drum into the cymbals and the big minor strum and james mercer triumphantly yelling]
Part of me was definitely sad to be leaving the raw hot gooey place. But maybe a bigger part was relieved. And then a third part was thinking, If you and Corey were girls, you would probably be in that raw hot gooey place all the time. You would constantly be telling each other brutally honest truths about your relationship, and it would cement your bond but also provide you with constant pain. You would probably be a gibbering lunatic by now.
WES: there’s kind of a good hot tub outside if that interests you
COREY: oh yeah?
WES: yeah it’s pretty big and people seem to like it
COREY: are some of those people girls
I’m just saying, you can only be in that place for so long.
WES: i don’t want to oversell it but it’s a hundred percent girls and all of them are softly moaning in ecstasy a hundred percent of the time
COREY: oh tight
WES: yeah. it’s super tight
COREY: my dick is trying to gnaw itself free from my torso just thinking about this
WES: yeah i wasn’t even in that hot tub for ten minutes before i caught my dick drawing elaborate escape plans on a rag
We headed downstairs and left the Shins playing for someone else to find.
COREY: hey is one of those girls the girl you were chasing around the lawn like a lunatic rapist viking
WES: you saw that, huh
COREY: i’ll never be able to unsee it
WES: look. she wanted me to chase her
COREY: well all right but now let me ask you something
WES: sure
COREY: do you think that last thing you said made you sound like less of a rapist
29.
MAYBE IT WASN’T A HUNDRED PERCENT BUT THERE WAS A GOODLY NUMBER OF GIRLS IN THERE
One of them was ShaeAnne still. It was a younger crowd at this point. Big Pritch had left. So had Ash and Cookie. I tried not to think too hard about where they had gone or what they were doing.
Initially, ShaeAnne seemed to be ignoring me. But soon I realized it was part of an elaborate Courtship Initiation Sequence.
COURTSHIP INITIATION SEQUENCE CHECKLIST
Give long smoky look to Object of Courtship (OoC) as he approaches hot tub and slowly raise leg out of water until big toe is pointing more or less at him
Abruptly drop leg back into water and ignore OoC for about ten minutes
Glance sort of half-eyeliddedly back at OoC, and if he is not looking, which he’s probably not, then I guess just keep making identical half-lidded glances over there every few seconds until he happens to be looking back
Once brief eye contact has been made, giggle mysteriously
Immediately submerge head and entire body underwater
Drift slowly over to OoC’s foot area
Give his shin a brief but painful bite with a lot of your teeth
Drift back across the hot tub and emerge nonchalantly from surface of water as though nothing fucked up has happened
Continue to ignore OoC and instead strike up conversation with Friend of Object of Courtship (FoOoC) despite the fact that FoOoC is clearly in the middle of flinging some big-league woo at a different girl, the girl being that candombe-drum-playing girl from earlier and the woo being it’s hard to tell but based on the angles probably fondling her butt
Respond to OoC saying, “Hey, ShaeAnne, come over here” by craning neck and giggling more mysteriously than before
Turn away from OoC completely
Then, from across the hot tub, drift slowly backward onto OoC’s lap like a car backing into a garage
Refuse to speak not in Spanish
I need to note in passing that Corey was pitching an unprecedented game at the candombe girl. It was like suddenly he had switched brains with Drake. He just walked up to this girl who was at least a few years older than him and eased himself right in next to her, and almost immediately they were having an intimate murmury conversation with their heads like six inches apart, and before long, his hand was almost definitely on her butt. So he had clearly made a full recovery and I was relieved and impressed. Even kind of intimidated.
I mean, I was doing okay with ShaeAnne. Actually I guess I was doing great. She was calling me azucar papi and amor latino, and she was literally smushing my dick under her thigh.
I sort of wanted to correct her Spanish, because it was nonsense garbage Spanish and those phrases didn’t really mean anything. But even if they did, whatever they meant, they didn’t apply to me. I wanted to tell her, I don’t speak native Spanish, either. I’m a nonpracticing Buddhist. My mom’s ancestors are from Poland. My dad’s are from Wales and Sweden.
But the main thing was, I didn’t want to get into it. You bring up race stuff with white people and either they get awkward and defensive and want to tell you why you’ve misunderstood them, or else they want you to drop everything and teach a college seminar for them, and either way it’s just exhausting.
Also I was trying not to think about Ash, which meant that I was.
But part of me was like, Wes. There’s a nice girl here who is into you and who also saved you from a possibly life-threatening panic attack. And she just wants to have fun.
So after a while I relaxed and let myself have fun.
I started giving her a shoulder rub. Then a neck rub and then a back rub. To mix it up a little I added quiet sci-fi sounds to the rubs like bwoyp and bbyyyyyyyeeewwwwwwwWWHIT and ernt ernt ernt ernt. She laughed less mysteriously than before. After a while she turned and sized up my face and kissed me, and we made out for a while, and Corey and the candombe girl were also making out, and everyone who wasn’t me or ShaeAnne or Corey or the candombe girl kind of conspicuously got out of the hot tub and went somewhere else. ShaeAnne’s breath smelled and tasted sort of bad but a comfortable earthy kind of bad like farm animals, and her various areas of skin kept catching on my areas of skin like rubber on rubber. We kept making out and did other dumb stuff like tap each other on the face and make more sound effects and breathe weird on parts of each other’s skin to create weird new sensations. And the sun started to go down and the mosquitoes got worse and we decided to go into the house and we ate some vegan fritters and yogurt and we smoked some more pot for some reason and we played some more music with a bunch of other people except I wasn’t playing bass and instead I was playing these per
cussion instruments that I didn’t know how to play and so was she and both of our playing was pretty much for shit but it didn’t really matter and every now and then we would stop playing to make out some more and my lips were kind of dry and raw but I didn’t really care and then at some point she got up and took my hand and brought me to my feet, and we started walking, and I knew we were looking for a place to have sex, and that’s when my heart started racing, because I was thinking, this is how it happens.
We walked through the house looking for a secluded spot but everywhere we went there were Pritchards lying around and eating and drinking and smoking and playing and ignoring us or giving us these sly little grins that I really wanted them not to make, I didn’t want them to be part of it, and I asked ShaeAnne once if we were going to the studios because maybe that would be private but she said people are always going in there to record, at all hours of the day, and we kept walking and I couldn’t stop thinking, this right here is how it happens, this is where and when it happens, and this is who it happens with, and I was trying to stay calm but my heart was bounding around insanely.
And then we turned a corner and there was Ash, patiently sitting cross-legged on a little cushion bent over her unplugged Les Paul, practicing, and looking at her I just knew immediately that she and Cookie hadn’t hooked up and weren’t ever going to and that I was an idiot for thinking they would and she glanced up at us and I wanted her to be upset and jealous and pissed off but I knew for a fact that she wouldn’t be, and she wasn’t, she just gave us this funny lopsided grin for a couple of moments and then went back to playing guitar and we kept walking past her.
We walked and walked and walked and didn’t pass anyone else and finally we were somewhere pretty dark and abandoned and ShaeAnne put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down onto the floor and I thought this is it and it was it. She guided me onto my back and pulled on the bottoms of my briefs and I pushed them over my knees and feet and I was completely naked and not hard at all. She straddled me and pulled her top off and her breasts flopped out and I heard them more than saw them. She reached behind herself and kind of carefully took my not hard dick into one hand and pretty soon I couldn’t really think about anything else and pretty soon after that I was hard and she took her hand away and I heard her opening some little crinkly package and I felt her put the cool plasticky middle of the condom snugly on the front of my dick like she was shrinkwrapping it and I felt her fingernails through the plastic like the legs of a crab fingernailing their way down my dick and she rose up a little and adjusted her panties and breathed harder and opened her mouth and her breath was like vegan fritters and farm animals and her eyes were dark and I saw them very clearly somehow and her hair was stiff with chlorine and itched like straw on my face. The moment she put me inside her I came. I mean the exact moment.