The Vocabulary of Guns

61.

The funny thing about the music you like when you’re seventeen is that you’ll still be hearing it wherever you turn twenty, even 30 years later. You don’t know this, of course. You think Kool and the Gang sat down and wrote your life out in a napkin in a club and later set it to music and now it’s spinning on a turntable somewhere in the south Louisiana darkness. Late at night, body’s yearning. Restless night, wanna be with you. And the truly important jams, the ones that you slow danced to or heard with your lover for the first time, those will also be recycled into tomorrow’s elevators, 7-11’s, grocery stores. The music that you can’t stand to listen to will invade every corner of your adult life. Cyndi Lauper will be she-bopping when she’s 90 and you’re 75. Van Halen will be telling you to jump from beyond the grave. The Thompson Twins, a three piece, unrelated, will still be demanding that you hold them now. You won’t realize that you’re a market, a piece of meat, when you’re 17. You’ll think it’s all true, all the lies, all the images, the world that they want you to copy, immerse yourself in, judge yourself by. Not just the music, which is positive and ethereal even as it rips your heart out. Baby, baby, what’s your claim to fame? Got me out of bed, heard you call my name. What’s this crazy place you wanna take me to? Tell me what’s the prize if I go with you? And so on. So on into the future when you’ll immerse yourself in Obsession and Guess, when you’ll wear your polo collar up, then down, with an oxford, without. You’ll change your hair color until your hair falls out. You’ll slick it back with hard Australian jell everyday for a year. You’ll dream you are Soloflex, an underwear model, an Esquire Man. All along the way, your soundtrack will dominate your thoughts. You’re my heart. You’re my soul. And my love has got to go. If it’s a thrill, then I will. Hey misled, be for real. It will all feel real, for a few sweet years it will all feel real. And then you’re twenty-one and nobody thinks you’re funny anymore, you’ve wrecked cars and girls and friendships. You’ve stolen from every person you can and now you’ve moved up to felony theft. You get off work at 7 a.m. wearing the black suit of the hotel desk clerk and you trundle down Magazine to Ms. Mae’s bar, the old one on the corner of Dufossat Street. Inside the dark and jolly bar you’ll pound a hundred thousand bottles of beer, tip generously, be mistaken for a bible salesman, and play the jukebox all morning long. You’re a young alcoholic and your nostalgia runs shallow. The tunes of your self-pity are barely five years old. Billy Idol, put him on! And I’d do anything for my sweet 16. And I’d do anything for my little runaway child. They’ll look at you, the old drunken men and the young drunken men and they’ll wonder for a moment who you are and why you’re wasting everything you’ve got. You’ve got a good face, the women will say. Older ones will say Robert Redford. Younger ones will say fuck me now. The old drunks and the young drunks will watch you sway in the light of the juke box, push dollar bills in carefully, select your music with precision, five dollars worth, about 15 songs. Jam after jam will come on and the bar will shake with life, the pool players in the back room will become sure as Annie Oakley, the laughter will peal like silver bells, the tips will pile up and the bartender will work just enough to keep him busy and not enough to get him pissed. There will be joy at Ms. Mae’s and it will be because of you, secret drunkard, waster of mortal flesh, an alcoholic already deep into his fourth year of a lost decade. Playing the juke box, playing the old songs, the remember when. Why don’t you come back, please hurry why don’t you come back, please hurry why don’t you come back please hurry and stay for good this time. And they’ll know, those who see you or pay attention to you, they’ll know that you’re simply paving your way to hell with the best of intentions. You only want to please people, to love and be loved. You can’t say your heart was poisoned when you were less than a major. You can’t say that your emotional growth was stunted like a bonsai. That’s chicken shit and for the birds, all at once. You can’t be that forever man in all the Ms. Mae’s of the world, can you? You can’t/won’t be the guy, the one who can’t leave high school, who still talks about the TD he scored against blah-blah and the time Miguel was late for the NOA game. Please don’t be that guy, become that guy. Stay away from the old music and the old jams. Misled, indeed. Turn the knob when they take you down memory lane. Do anything for your sweet 16 but leave Billy Idol to make an ass of himself, rocking the house with a cane and an ear trumpet. Leave it be. Make new memories, new loves, new growth. Turn the station or turn it off. Remind yourself that you can only feel the way you feel when you feel it. It’s like cutting. It’s never as painful as the first time, no matter how much it continues to hurt.