Duo: Fifth Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

Just two more shows and you’re done, that’s what you keep telling yourself. Two more shows and you can go home, although you’re filled with dread over the prospect of what things will be like when you get back to LA. You don’t even know if it’ll still be home when you get back, don’t know if you’ll have survived the drive over in his company without bashing his skull in. You feel irrationally angry with him, and as you sit alone in your hotel room on your double bed that he should be sitting on with you, you realise you’re more upset than you like to let on. Damnit if you’re going to spend the last few hours leading up to the show crying, but you can’t be sure you won’t burst into tears in front of him if you don’t let it out now. It makes you feel sick. It makes you feel like you care about this more than he does.

He’s late to the venue. Nobody’s heard a word from him. You can check your phone as many times as you like; a message isn’t going to magically appear from him letting you know where he is. You’re all full of apologies as you sidle up to the organisers of the show twenty minutes before you’re due to go on, ready to lay yourself on your sword. They can barely hear you over the opening band, but before you can get your point across you spot him on the other side of the club. He’s looking around like he’s lost—you think maybe he’s looking for you. You decide to put him out of his misery and make your way over, brushing between groups of friends and couples as you go.

‘You’re late,’ you tell him.

You figure he knows he’s late, figure he doesn’t give much of a shit or he wouldn’t have been late in the first place. You’re readying yourself for an argument when he reaches out and touches your arm.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

The apology rings in your ears for the rest of the night. It’s not the sort of thing he makes a habit of saying, so even just a throwaway ‘I’m sorry’—no explanation, no fanfare—is progress. You’ve been with him long enough to know it took a lot for him to say it, and whenever you catch his eye during the show, you can’t help wondering with an excited little flutter of your heart if he was apologising for more than just being late.

You finish a little earlier than you normally would since another band is set to go on after your performance. They’re some hipster duo; the lead singer bears a harmonica and the waifish blond at his side—waifish and bearded—jams on a Moog not dissimilar to yours. About halfway through the first song you feel a hand take yours and look to your left. His face is turned toward the stage but his fingers are laced through yours and, without looking at you, he smirks and says, ‘They’re like us, if we grew up in Silver Lake.’

You don’t know what’s different between you two as you leave for the night. Nothing has changed, not really, and yet you can’t seem to stop smiling as you walk back to the motel side-by-side in silence. Maybe it’s the fact that he apologised. Maybe you were the problem all along, and it took one little concession on his part to make your stubbornness melt away. Maybe it’s just this city.

For the first time in what feels like forever, you write together. He shows you the song he’s been working on for the past few weeks, the one that he assures you will never see the light of day, anyway. You can see why; it’s a little disjointed and some of the lines are condensed purely to fit into the meter. It’s better than nothing when you know he’s been struggling through writer’s block, though, and when you scan down the lyrics you spot a line about the smell of the city when it rains. You’re brought back to four nights earlier when you said those words, when everything was all right. You don’t know if you want to cry or scream but it doesn’t matter; a big, dumb, ever-hopeful part of you points out gleefully that he does care.

You work on the rhythm of his lyrics while he strums shamelessly on his guitar. It’s a motel, some sleazy place that cost less than a drive-thru attendant makes in a day, but it’s close to the venue and was the best you could do on short notice and you can make all the noise you want in a place like this, anyway. You decide to take full advantage of that fact and the two of you take turns belting out the lyrics while he provides guitar and you drum out percussion on the nightstand.

You sleep better than you have in what feels like a lifetime, even though it’s only been a few days. As fights go, this was probably one of the shorter ones—and there were no threats of leaving each other, either. Maybe it’s getting better. Maybe you’re just growing up.


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Rowan, July 14th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: Fourth Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

When he doesn’t mention what happened the night before, you figure he’s going to leave it alone. As the morning passes without event, you’re left wondering if maybe things have returned to normal, or if you’re both just doing a great job of ignoring the elephant in the room. Normally you’d hope it was the former, but as you’re driving to the next town with all of your gear loaded into the back of your car—he’s too hungover to drive, and you don’t much feel like risking your life today—you notice after a while that he keeps shooting you sidelong glances. It makes you nervous, like you know he’s going to say something you don’t want to hear. Just when you start to feel like you can’t take the tension any more, he looks away. He has his eyes trained lazily on the road ahead when you hazard a glance in his direction and just like that, the moment’s gone. You wonder fleetingly what exactly it was he had planned to say to you before deciding it’s better if you don’t know.

You start to regret the decision to leave the travelling until today when you hit traffic coming into the city. With you being the practical one, you would normally have convinced him to travel yesterday when you were both free of obligations. It’s at that moment that you’re reminded all too clearly of how mad you were at him the day before, and you’re tempted to irritably snap that he should have spent the day packing instead of getting wasted. While you form the words, perfecting them so that they have just the right bite, it occurs to you that you were so busy avoiding him you didn’t think to suggest you both get a move on. You promptly shut your mouth; that’s another pointless fight you just don’t have the energy for.

‘Take a left here.’

His voice comes out of nowhere, and you jerk upright in your seat as if he’s just hit you with an accusation of his own. When you realise he’s just giving you directions, you worry at your bottom lip with your teeth and take his instruction, turning off when the road’s clear. You’re usually the route-planner, but it seems this time that delegating the duties to him has done you some good; the street he found is part of a rat-run, and you bypass most of the traffic in time to track down the bar and hurriedly lug all your stuff inside for soundcheck.

Tonight, thankfully, goes more smoothly than the last show you played. You don’t have your usual chemistry, and at times it feels like you’re both as eager to get to the end of it as each other, but considering that there are no hiccups and nobody walks out, you consider it a success. By the end of it, it feels a little as if you’re pussy-footing around each other on stage, neither quite willing to take the lead in terms of tempo even when the song dictates it. It’s not disastrous, but it seems to be no mystery to either of you that there’s something missing. You begin to wonder if this tour was such a good idea; it never feels like this when you play the venues back home.

Once it’s over and the band you’re opening for files onto the stage, you both discreetly make your exit without so much as stopping for a drink. You’ve got another town to be in tomorrow, and once you’ve wrapped up all the last-minute details with the event organisers you’re on your way. You manage to coerce him into hitting the drive-thru of the McDonald’s on the way out of town, your reasoning being that you haven’t eaten since morning and, in charge of the driving as he is, he has a tendency to get cranky when he’s hungry, but after that you stop for nothing and no one.

When you’re on the road again, it becomes apparent once more that there are words left unsaid between the two of you, just waiting to burst out. You’re almost grateful you’re both so busy eating—he stealing a bite of his hamburger every time the traffic lulls and you taking half-hearted bites out of your own—as it doesn’t leave much room for words.

In the end, he doesn’t turn to you and say whatever he had intended to that morning and you don’t give him a piece of your mind. You drift off at some point in the afternoon, and when you wake up he’s just turning into the parking lot at the motel. He tells you, gruffly, that it’s after three so you can use the room to get some proper sleep before the show. He doesn’t explain what he plans on doing and you simply assume he’ll do the same; when you disappear into the bathroom to freshen up and emerge a while later, however, the room is empty and there’s a scrap of paper on the dresser bearing the words ‘Meet you at the venue’. You’re too anxious to sleep.


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Rowan, February 23rd 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: Third Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

You have the next day off, thankfully, and you spend it apart. At some point that night he comes in, flicks on all the lights, bumps into every piece of furniture in the room and finally rolls into bed, smelling like smoke and alcohol and a faint hint of that aftershave he’s used since you first started dating. It’s a nice, familiar scent, though the acrid stench of cigarettes clinging to his skin isn’t quite so pleasant. He doesn’t seem to have realised you’re awake, which suits you just fine; you have your back to him while he wriggles around under the covers in a bid to get comfortable and as a consequence he can’t see the scowl on your face. If he could, it would probably start yet another fight. Lord knows you don’t need that.

‘Hey,’ he says huskily. ‘You ‘wake?’

You don’t reply, of course. Feigning sleep is preferable to having to deal with him after the rough patch you’ve both been through lately, especially when he seems to be drunk. He’s a mean drunk, even when he’s trying not to be, and there are few things you hate more than arguing with him when he’s intent on winding you up.

‘Guess not,’ he mutters, before heaving a long, desolate sigh and finally stretching over to shut off the lights. He struggles with the switches awhile and the one over the desk lights up by mistake until he figures it out and the room falls into merciful darkness. Moving around in the bed yet again, he eventually comes to rest with his body pressed close to your own and an arm draped over your waist. If you weren’t pretending to be asleep, you would probably shove him away; he might have sorted through his own issues with beer and a healthy dash of vodka—if the smell on him is anything to go by—but you’re still mad. So mad you almost consider ending the ruse and throwing his arm off of you anyway. Almost.

You’re lying together like that for the better part of an hour when he starts fidgeting and rolling heavily from side to side, rocking the headboard back against the wall as he does so. A moment later he’s right up close behind you again, only this time he’s kissing your throat and shaking you gently in a bid to get you to wake up.

You screw, but it’s half-hearted for you and drunken for him. It’s a wonder he even manages to track a condom down in his stupor, let alone open the foil packaging without tearing the rubber itself; it’s even more of a mystery to you how he locates his length to roll it on. When he’s apparently finished and you’re left feeling empty but sated, he rolls away without so much as bothering to pull his boxers up from where they’re tangled around his leg and curls up to go back to sleep.

It’s funny. You didn’t think you could be angrier than you were when he came in, but here you are clenching your fists so tight your knuckles ache.


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Rowan, February 22nd 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: Second Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

The show’s a mess. Laughable, really. You know you just can’t focus and, as a consequence, can’t keep up the rhythm. You’re throwing him off, and you both know it. Every time his head snaps toward yours, you’re afraid he’ll just call the whole thing off. You’re playing to a tiny bar room, not even half full—who would care if you walked offstage early and left the crowd to their drinking?

You try your hardest to concentrate, but you still can’t shake the memory…

‘I was just being friendly, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Oh, sure. Because you whisper like that in the ears of all your friends.’

He looked furious, as if he were going to swing his arm back and smack you across the face at any minute. You wouldn’t put it past him; he did it once before, when he was drunk. He had that look of pure rage in his eyes, the one he’s fixing you with now.

‘I thought you got over this jealous bullshit,’ he snapped.

The sudden urge to snap back at him was overwhelming, so overpowering you realised you were the one in danger of hitting him, not the other way around. The words were on your lips—Of course, make this about me. It’s always my problem, isn’t it?—but you bit them back and turned away, putting as much distance between you both as possible in the tiny expanse of the hotel room.

‘You need a hobby. This green-eyed monster thing isn’t working for you.’

You knew he was just trying to wind you up. You knew it from the tone in his voice, you knew it because it was what healways did when you were having an argument. You knew he was provoking you, and you reacted anyway, twirling around with your mouth contorted into a half-snarl.

‘Well, I’m sorry if I get a little upset sometimes when you pay more attention to the goddamn fanboys than you do to me.’

You’ve fucked up again, the discordant twang of the guitar strings and his bitter expression tell you that much. You start to wonder how much worse the show could get, how much more you could screw up the song—his baby, the one he insisted on writing instead of exploring with you when you played Montreal—and you understand now exactly how you can get to him. Fuck with the one thing he loves and that’ll teach him to treat you like dirt…

But you don’t. You don’t throw down your guitar and storm off stage, although right now you’d like nothing more. You forcibly push the thoughts out of your head and slowly you return back to the room, to the music, to the crowd of uninterested patrons. He seems relieved that you’ve got things back on track and the song finishes without further incident.

At the end of the night, once all your gear is packed up and the onlookers have returned to their spots around the bar, you sling your guitar over your shoulder and leave the venue before he can stop you.

If you could fly home to LA right now and never see his face again, you would.

You’ll settle for walking back to the hotel alone.


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Rowan, July 31st 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: First Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, scribbling away in his notebook. You can’t help but notice that familiar wrinkle right in the middle of his brow, the one he gets when he’s focussed on one thing and one thing only. It’s come to be—informally—his ‘Disturb Me and Feel My Wrath’ face. You should know better by now than to distract him, but sometimes he just looks so damn cute with his nose all scrunched up in concentration that it’s impossible to resist.

‘Don’t.’

Maybe he felt the bed shift as you made to lean towards him, maybe he heard your little intake of breath. Whatever the case, he hasn’t even looked up from his writing but you can see his shoulders are tensed, if he’s just waiting for you to do something stupid.

‘Come on,’ you whine, and you crawl up the bed anyway, taking his notebook into your hands and resting your head in his lap instead. ‘What are you writing, anyway? It can’t be more important than dinner, which, oh’—you make a show of looking at an invisible watch on your wrist—‘should’ve been about three hours ago.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ he says, which you know isn’t entirely true. Put a Big Mac in front of him and he’d probably devour it instantly, but when he’s so caught up in writing, things like eating and sleeping and fucking don’t seem to matter any more.

You heave a sigh but you don’t move—won’t move, not until he gives in. He doesn’t, usually, and when it seems like he won’t today, you worry for an instant that this’ll all escalate into yet another of your World Famous Stupid Fights, from which one or both of you will emerge crying. You remember the last one, when you both so stubbornly refused to back down that he wound up sleeping on the couch but you went out and stayed at your friend’s place, anyway. This time it’s different, though; you’re in a hotel with whitewashed walls and no couch to speak of, and there’s a look of defeat in his eyes when his gaze meets yours.

‘Okay,’ he says softly. ‘I’ll take a break. You want to order in?’

You say no, that there’s a pizza place just down the block and you don’t want to waste your minutes calling somewhere up to have them deliver. Really, you’re just scared of how tense things were for a moment there and hope that the change of scenery will do you both some good.

Soon you’re outside, the sidewalk slick beneath the soles of your boots from the earlier downpour. You like the smell of a city after it rains and when you tell him, he laughs and remarks that it would make a good line in a song.

As you pass the assorted thrift stores and boutiques together, you feel his hand clasp yours.


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Rowan, July 26th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing
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