After Letterman and Coachella, we sign to a larger label and get word that the tour is going to be extended. We are going to have a bus now where we sleep at night, driving between venues. We’re going to play The Tonight Show, Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Live! A few of the songs get placed in movies, in TV shows, one in a car commercial. It doesn’t even make sense to keep an apartment anymore, because I’m never home. I have to move out the next time we’re in L.A. We are booked in bigger and bigger rooms. The days run together now that we are on a bus, sleeping in small bursts in a kind of rumbling coffin, disoriented and far from home, never quite asleep, never quite awake. Life comes at us like a collage.
We are in Minneapolis. Did I even sleep? I remember the shaking in the dark, twisting and turning through what I assume were hills, though it’s hard to know in that dark little fever dream they call a sleep compartment.
And then Chicago. A friend! We ran together at the front of the pack on graduation day! Do you remember? We were younger and bursting with, what was it? Hope? No. Life? No. Pride? I’m not sure. I was hiding something and now it’s plain. Or it isn’t. I can’t really tell. You’ve married. You’ve had a child. She is beautiful. I’m so sorry your wife has cancer. I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much. No, I don’t have things I love more than anything else. I have this.
And then Cleveland. I’ll be at the casino. I’ll just sit at this table and think of Dad. I miss him. I’m worried about his heart. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s proud of me. I am his son. What is a son? I miss being a son, sitting in the sun with a racing form making jokes, eating corned beef sandwiches and feeling calm.
And then Seattle. A phone call. Mikel, dahhling? How’s the road? Don’t you worry about your grandma Juliette, I’m fine. It’s quiet since Grandpa died. He loved you, you know. He was so proud. No, I know you couldn’t be here. I’m just sad. I miss my boy. I think I hear him sometimes. No, we all understand. You’re in the world now. You’re living your life.
And then Portland again. Jake! Jake! Look at this! Look what we did! Look at all the people! All those lives! Where are they now? They’re at the bar! They’re lined up at the front of the stage! We did this! You did! You don’t know it, but you did! I remember the wedding. Of course I do. Tony spoke and your mother was drunk and your bride did that funny dance in her wedding dress. We laughed until we fell over and I tore my pants and you picked me up and carried me through the room with my boxers hanging out. Your girls are beautiful. You are a man. You have a family. No, I don’t have that. I have this.
Then we are in San Francisco. Then San Diego and finally Los Angeles. I can’t do it, Tony. I can’t. You’ve got to help me. I can’t move a thing. I have to have everything moved out in two hours. I’m supposed to be at sound check right now. There was a time when we were just going to move in together, but I fucked it all up. Of course I did. I let everyone down. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do. I have a flight to London at midnight. You will? You’ll come over and do it for me? No, no, no, no. I couldn’t ask that. Are you sure? Oh, thank you. Thank you. I can just get all my things from storage later. A brother. A brother. How much I need a brother. I’m so glad you didn’t die.
Lights down. A brief silence as the wind whistles through the hills. They came after all. I can’t believe it. I guess I can sing. I can always sing. Good evening. Thank you for being here. This is all I have.
Then we’re stomping. Then we’re screaming. Then we’re clapping. Then the keyboard swells and the violin floats in from the hills, a catch in my throat, a moment to look out and look up and wonder.
Maybe I’ll just walk into the sea alone, carrying these broken pieces with me. That’s how I always imagined it: I was alone as I walked into the waves to disappear. I can feel the water licking my toes, the soft sand beneath my feet. But then I lift my eyes and see there are others, women with lace dresses fanning behind them like wedding veils drenched in sea-foam, men losing their hats in the wind, their trousers stuck to their legs by the waves, hundreds of them, thousands (on a good night, if the promoter did his job), all of us disappearing into the ocean together.
The questions. Why are we? How did this? What was the? When did we all?
There is no one answer. There are as many answers as bodies in the room. There are ten times as many answers as bodies in the room, some terrifying, some charming, some cunning, some innocent, some a hundred feet tall, godlike and invincible, others tiny and frail, beseeching and ironic. Something occurs to me as I stand under that light where I wish to disappear, something I remember like a forgotten milk tooth from a time before shame. There was a book of matches, a river, a red dot of light, something was lost and then I too became lost and then, finally, I chose to lose myself on purpose, to become the ghost that haunts my castle in the sky.
CHAPTER 42
BROKEN
“Hi, I’m Tony, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Tony!”
He stands at a wooden lectern in a community center in Culver City on Washington Boulevard, near the freeway. Seventy-five metal folding chairs fan out in front of him. The smell of burned coffee and cigarette smoke fills the room. I’m in the front row because he asked me to come watch him tell his story. The room is silent. Everyone is watching my brother as he gathers himself. He’s wearing glasses and a baseball hat, his strong, heavily tattooed arms grasping the edges of the wood for balance. He has broad shoulders and a handsome face, ruddy, rakish—a light in his sparkling blue eyes. That’s new. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. When did that happen? Where was I?
He’s been speaking at prisons, telling his story in hopes that it will help others. That’s AA. Build a ladder to the sky. Climb it. Help others up.
“I don’t know where to begin, so I guess I’ll just begin by saying drinking was never fun for me.” He takes a sip of coffee. “And you know, that’s the whole thing with drinking. You say you’re having fun. And I think I pretended it was fun because that’s what we did. We partied. That’s what we called it. So if you asked me, I’d say I was partying too. But the truth is I was sad and ashamed and I drank because I felt bad and I wanted to stop feeling bad.”
The silence is heavy in the room. It’s hard to ignore his voice, his words that carry such weight. The truth just sounds different.
There are old-timers with ten years of sobriety, hands on their laps, listening with quiet smiles, young Dope Fiends with messy hair and disheveled clothes, one week sober, having just detoxed at Brotman rehab center, leaning forward with wild eyes.
There’s literature at the back table, like the pamphlets Mom used to leave around the house, the big book of AA with its twelve steps, the laminated sheets for the meeting chair with the steps and traditions.
“I can’t tell you how many nights were spent like that. You lose track after a while. But I was always first to leave the party, because I wasn’t really there to party. The truth is I felt very alone for most of my life and drinking was a relief. The first time I ever tried that bottle of Thunderbird wine at thirteen years old, the one I stole from the Plaid Pantry, I was in. That moment changed my life. I finally found my best friend. I was drinking every single night by the next week.