I sat there going through the old business cards I still had in my wallet, searching for the one for Tavish Michelson.
If no one else answered my emails, I knew he would, as long as his contact information was still the same as when he’d given me that card. It had been a few years since we’d spoken last, a brief exchange in which he’d tried to open my eyes to the direction my band was headed in, and I’d just laughed it off and asked if he was going to take a turn on the mechanical bull or not.
His answer has beenno. Mine had been to get up there and tell them to turn the son of a bitch up to the highest setting, which they had, right before I’d ridden the hell out of it, sticking in the saddle for the full eight seconds, just to earn a free beer and jumbo platter of wings I could have easily afforded to pay for. He’d been after me about collaborating with him on some songs, not to play on stage together, but for an up-and-coming band he was working with at the time.
“Your words are honest, raw, and dripping emotion from every syllable,” he said while I’d been enjoying my free wings and beer. “When was the last time your band recorded anything that wasn’t trying too hard to be a war cry for excess and depravity?"
“I don’t know, man, our fans seem to dig that shit.”
“Your new fans do,” he pointed out. “Trust me when I say that your old ones are starting to give up hope and move on to other bands.”
“The songs for the albums are determined by majority vote,” I explained.
“And?”
“And what?”
“What happens to the notebooks full of music they won’t even consider? The shit you play in dive bars and pool halls with your damned hoodie pulled so low that if it hadn’t been for the guitar you were playing, I wouldn’t have known it was you. Fortunately for me, the air brushing on her is so distinctive she’s impossible to forget.”
“A friend did the paint job,” I muttered. “Was one of his last before he gave up on his artwork altogether and let his old man get him a job with his advertising firm. Last time we talked, he said that the only thing he’d drawn in the last year was big red x’s through the images he wanted swapped out in the ad layouts that landed on his desk. He’d even cut his hair and had fucking product in it. He used to have the coolest hair, five shades, mermaid hues, like someone had taken the time to paint every strand with a different brush.”
“See, that right there, is why you and I need to work together,” he said. “At least come out and meet the guys, hang out with them, listen to them talk about the shit they’ve been through to get this far. I know you’ve got songs that would resonate with them. I’ve fucking heard you playing them.”
“What are you doing, stalking me now?”
“I found you here, didn’t I?”
The band he’d been working with had probably sorted out their songwriting by this point, but Tavish had been in the industry for over two decades, so the chances that he’d know of a few bands who were looking for fresh material were high. Rightnow, they were just words in a notebook, worthless as the paper they were written on and of absolutely no good to me when it came to getting on my feet properly and being able to contribute to the household Payden and I now shared.
After I hit send on the email I’d typed and retyped until it, hopefully, didn’t sound as pathetic as I felt writing it, I went through the rest of the cards I had, throwing some away I knew I’d never reach out to, emailing others who might be willing to point me in the direction of someone who might be interested in, well, something that would allow me to help out with the bills around here.
When I finished with that task, I started going through the classifieds, looking for music stores with job openings, and filling out the few applications I came across. My heart started pounding an excited beat when, an hour later, I received a response to one, only to have a bunch of laughing emojis at the top, along with a message telling me to maybe not pretend to be a widely known guitar player if I wanted someone to take me seriously.
Well, shit.
That was unexpected.
Maybe it was desperate, but I lifted the computer, carefully balanced it, and used my phone to take a picture of myself with his message open on the screen to prove it was me before I sent one back, explaining that I was sincerely seeking employment and would like to be considered for the position. It rankled a bit to have to do it, but for Payden, I was willing to restrain my fingers and stay composed. If living on the streets had taught me anything, it was humility. It didn’t matter who I’d been, everyone out there had known a different life, once. Some had even fallen farther than I had.
Still, it was disheartening to realize that one of the challenges I was going to run into while trying to put myself out there in theindustry was that people were going to question if it was truly me or not. I checked out a few of the music studios in the area, but most were only looking for classically trained musicians who had actual degrees and accolades involving the symphony and classical orchestra.
I could play any goddamn thing I heard enough times, including a few classical pieces, though I’d always gravitated towards somber compositions with darker undertones. When I crafted a song, it was through sheer repetition, adjusting, tweaking, cursing out the chords, and waiting for what the song sounded like in my head to mesh with what was coming out of my fingers. It wasn’t a skill that came with any paperwork, so I kept scrolling, checking the job listings I came across, occasionally filling out a new application if I thought I had a hope of qualifying.
I hadn’t been in any of my social media accounts in well over a year, but I’d always used the same password, one I knew I’d never forget because it was the name and birthday of the one foster mother who’d truly made living with her feel like I’d had a home, which for a thirteen-year-old who’d already been bounced around a ton the way I had, was huge.
My caseworker had removed me and Griff and put us back in a group home when he found out she was undergoing cancer treatments, which sucked, because we were family support, despite his insistence that we were too young to care for the person who was supposed to be caring for us. He hadn’t even allowed the staff there to take us to see her, though she’d made the trip to see us when she could, looking frailer and weaker each time we saw her, until one day, the visits just stopped.
No one had wanted to tell us the truth, but we’d insisted on knowing anyway.
Maybe it would have been best to wonder or assume she’d forgotten about us the way others had, but knowing she’d diedand been buried in a cemetery that we could at least slip into from time to time to visit had brought closure.
We used to go back on her birthday every year to lay flowers, even when life was truly fucked up. Next year, I’d take Payden with me and maybe even take him to a few of the early places my band and I used to play back in the day. Well, the ones that were still standing, anyway. We’d seen a lot of bars come and go over the years. Hell, we’d even been in one the night it caught on fire.
Shit.
Focus.
I checked the time and saw that I still had plenty before I needed to start supper, so I logged into the first social media account, stunned to see that I’d been tagged several times since I’d been on the platform last. Several were photos people had taken with me while I’d been playing on the streets, despite my insistence that I wasn’t who they thought I was. Beneath one of them, about five months back, Griff had posted a message, asking where in the city the photo had been taken. I’d been in Corpus Christi at the time, having been drawn down there by the offer of a two-thousand-dollar payday to appear and play at a local metal festival.
