From all tragedies,
Will we write new endings?
Charged pain turns into wisdom
born from what we've learnt.
The fire's awake,
consuming secrets for
the world's shame
is now only fuel.
What else you got?
Nothing.
Listen close,
I said nothing.
—"Scar Clan" by Rooster Red's Silver Static
Her name was Debbie. Not short for Debra, it was just Debbie. Her skin was so fair both Mary's little lamb and Snow White were jealous. We were classmates for two years, and I'd see her at the old church on weekends for catechism. That was all it had taken for me to discover the exquisite torture of unrequited puppy love. I was seven. I don't think we actually ever spoke.
Well, there was that time, some years later . . . We were ten, maybe eleven. Her backpack had fallen to the floor in the canteen. No one was around. I ran over and hoisted it back up on the seat. Somehow I had the time to scribble a note before darting away unseen. Fuck knows what I wrote:
"Your bag's such a klutz, it fell when you weren't looking. Fret not, I got ya bag, babe. Luv, your S.A."
She came right up to me with a friend by her side. I saw the note in her hand. This was the moment right? No-brainer. Instead, I just kind of acted aloof, pretended she wasn't there or that I couldn't see her. Like I was guilty for feeling the way I did. Like it was wrong of me to desire another person. Now how on earth did I get to think and feel that way so young, before puberty was even a thing?
It was dark enough outside, the streetlights had come on. I watched the cars passing by with their headlights on, smiling machine avatars of the humans operating them. I blew thick streams of smoke out the window, and a strong gust sent most of it right back in my face.
Anyway, I quickly discovered that what I'd taken for "true love" at the time was not confined to old Debbie. In fact, venturing into secondary education, and with the hormones kicking in full force, I found I could develop feelings for almost anybody in a skirt who so much as looked my way. Knowing what I know now about attachment theory, even going as far as to self-diagnose myself as fearful-avoidant, I'm surprised I didn't intuit then just how much of my utter failure to make it with the fair sex was rooted in my turbulent relationship with my mother.
The pattern repeated in a dozen configurations, but with a little more rage worked in each time. I was spending large chunks of time alone, watching everybody else perpetually getting attached. My fucking friends just stepped out of the house to get the mail and someone would come crashing into their arms.
Me? I got the ones who didn't really want me. If they did, they didn't want me for me, ho no no. They wanted me well-trained, a pet. So they'd throw a little attention my way, and then I was doomed to chase and grovel for more. Some lovesick Oliver Twist. And perhaps most sickening of all was that if there was no chase, I wouldn't be into it at all. And this alluring trait was firmly established even before I started getting fucked up on booze and whatever else I could get my angsty little mitts on.
And no matter which way I went, whether I obeyed or not, it ended the same. I'd watch as they ditched me once they were done chewing me up, get with the guys who were utterly as vapid as they were, so they could travel and go to cafes and all the other shit I used to want because that's all people ever talked about.
It was as if nature herself had spat in my Doc Marts before forcing me to wear them.
So was this what it was all working up to? Is this the new self-love? Have I graduated from looking outwards for a partner to transforming into her? That's messed up and creepy right, like the killer in Silence of theLambs? Was that what my psyche had resorted to when it got fed up with the usual M.O? And where did it leave me, sexually speaking? It was a fact that I wasn't interested in men. I could barely tolerate being near one.
And yet, I was never good enough for a woman, either. What do you do with that? Do I go and look up subliminals for cold-approaching women, take a pickup artist course? Fuck. How's it possible to fail so completely at something you're genetically disposed to doing?
All I knew was that I was older now. They say that every seven years all the cells in your body are completely different, and you're practically a brand new being. I should know; I've been selling that anecdote to anyone who unwisely decided to open up to me about how they'd mangled their lives. Well, I am quite literally another I now. And I'm old enough to begin the process of letting go proper.
In a flash, I knew exactly who I could talk to about this stuff.
Baccha Yelin. Of course!
Baccha and I got introduced in the scene, we were in rival bands at the time. That didn't last very long, however, and we wound up working alongside each other in a multitude of projects.
I started for the shelves, the memory box. In it I found passes from shows we played, some demoes, trinkets.
There.
Within dirt-encrusted borders of the polaroid were two people who looked like extras from a Marilyn Manson music video. I looked closer at Baccha. His hair was longer than mine, though we both started growing it out at the same length. His eyes had the familiar gleam that said I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm here, but I'll make something up right now and you'll believe me.
He was an outlier even then. He had both Native American and Indian blood, which should qualify him for some kind of minority award, especially for playing punk gigs in a small suburban and predominantly white town.
If that wasn't enough, he would go onstage in a ball gown, or you'd bump into him at the mall, this crazy hot girl on his arm, both of them about to waltz into Francesca's to score some party dresses. He was never feminine though, from what I could recall. It's not like we ever opened up about our feelings. We literally jammed and played video games and ordered pizza and tried to find the heaviest, most disgustingly brutal heavy metal we could. I still remember how stoked he was the day he discovered Periphery. So I had just figured he relished making people do a double take, enjoyed watching these super macho guys catcall him and then get all flustered when he turned around.
On top of all that, the dude was a walking encyclopaedia of the esoteric. I remember him talking about chaos magick, telling our mutual friend Beverley how he'd summoned an egregore to haunt his ex and all. If there was anyone who could point me in the right direction . . .
Aunt Constance's admonishment echoed in my mind then. I have to name the terms by which I lived, lest others do it for me. Not a lot of mental gymnastics required to overcome that; in this instance I would be just getting a consult, catching up with an old mate. In the end, the decision would still be mine to make.
But it had been years, and if I turned out like this, who knows what could've become of Baccha. Maybe he wasn't in town. The field of possibilities ranged from school janitor to lawyer to astronaut. I didn't have his number, and his social media presence, well, there wasn't one. No trace of him online, not a single picture. Once again, I felt like my narrative was pilfering from The Crying of Lot 49: as Oedipa got more and more spun out on the mystery of Pierce Inverarity and the Tristero conspiracy, all the men and allies in her life started vanishing. As if removed from the chessboard by an invisible hand . . .
Well, fuck that shit. I've got belief, and uh, the other thing, baby.
I went and pulled The Godfather off the shelf. He'd lent it to me saying You wanna know all about the world, you just read this, man.
I flipped through its pages, then placed over it a demo we'd both played on in the second iteration of a band with a most unfortunate moniker: Rooster Red's Silver Static. The music sounded worse, an atrocious blasphemy of country-funk-grunge. Girls screamed and fainted at our shows, not in a Beatlemania way.
I hovered my hand over the items and shut my eyes. I thought it was clear enough what I had to do. Only through entering the state of gnosis would I be able to locate him.
I don't know if it worked, but not more than a few seconds later my eyes snapped open. I knew where to find him. It was so obvious that I wondered if the universe doubted my intelligence.
Baccha would be at the Invisible Scorpion.