Chapter 1 #6
“I guess,” Eliza says. “Or we could just keep hanging out in the bathroom.”
Susan can’t tell if she’s kidding or not, but Eliza follows her out when she leaves.
The band is setting up onstage and soon Jonny Lakes walks out. Susan and Katie grab each other’s hands and begin to scream.
“Hi, we’re What-What,” Jonny says into the microphone. He’s got an easy smile, a warmth to him. He’s not too cool to enjoy this. “Thanks for coming out.”
They open with Susan’s new favorite: “Pink Days,” that sad love song she now knows from the first chord.
Instantly forgetting about Eliza and the others, Susan and Katie push their way to the front until they’re standing directly in front of Jonny.
Susan puts her hands on the stage, looking up into his gorgeous face, which is partially hidden behind a mop of soupy brown curls that he keeps tossing backward.
Jonny is wearing a T-shirt that’s just slightly too short, showing the bottom inch of a flat, hairless stomach. Despite his slender figure, he’s larger-than-life. Susan can’t take her eyes off him. She’s never seen someone who is so clearly a star.
I was born in the shadows under your eyes / In the salt of your sweat I was baptized, Jonny sings, his voice angelic and sweet, soft, like he means every word. Maybe it’s overly earnest, a little saccharine, but Susan doesn’t care. To her, it’s transcendent.
The world wasn’t ready for me and you / We were black-and-blue, but golden and true / Till you withdrew.
The chorus comes and Susan is singing along at the top of her lungs.
I remember pink days, pit stains, heat waves, baby / I remember bite marks, false starts, damp in the dark.
The music swells here. So now I’m a time traveler / Searching for when I stopped being enough / Now I’m a medium / I speak to the ghost of our love.
And here the music stops and everyone starts clapping on the same beat, singing together: Black, blue, golden, true / I never really knew (and now the music comes back all at once, an orgasmic crescendo) you.
Susan’s heart aches with a kind of euphoric empathy. She feels like she’s lived this, though she definitely hasn’t. Not yet, at least.
Jonny Lakes looks down at her as she sings every word. The next time the chorus comes, he takes the microphone off its stand and holds it in front of Katie and Susan. He lets them sing the first line together—I remember pink days, pit stains, heat waves—before pulling it back.
Katie hugs Susan.
“This is the best night of my life,” Susan says.
For the rest of the set, Jonny smiles and winks at Susan, dancing at her with his guitar. She feels like she’s dreaming.
When they finish, Jonny says, “Thank you, Long Island!” And then he walks offstage.
His bandmates follow. The floppy-haired drummer is last to leave.
Before he does, he stops in front of the mic stand and mutters, “Bush did 9/11,” and then he pushes it to the ground.
It falls with a squeal of feedback and a thud.
A single woo echoes from the back. And then it’s over and the venue becomes just a basement again. Susan is drenched with sweat.
Kyle, Jake, and Eliza are all leaning against a wall in the back, looking bored.
“You guys are no fun,” Katie says when they rejoin the group.
“I just like to watch you dance,” Jake says.
Susan makes a gagging noise.
They’re getting back into Susan’s car to leave when Katie says, “You know what? I think Susan should go wait for Jonny.”
Susan slides into the driver’s seat. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah!” Jake shouts from the back, banging his hands on the headrest of Susan’s seat so that she jolts forward and back. “Go get his number.”
“No,” she says. “First of all, he’s old. Second of all, no.”
“I think you should,” Kyle says.
“Wait,” Eliza says. “Who? The lead singer?”
Katie nods vigorously. “He was totally into her.”
Eliza starts laughing.
“Is it funny that he would be into me?” Susan says, her face beginning to burn.
“No! Of course not,” Eliza says. “It’s just, that guy is gay. Like, obviously gay.”
They all turn toward her.
“What?” Eliza is still laughing. “Was it not obvious to you? ‘The world wasn’t ready for me and you’? ‘We were black-and-blue’? Give me a break. Even that song is about being gay.”
“Do gay people get baptized, though?” Susan asks. “That’s in the song, too.”
“No,” Katie says with certainty, shaking her head.
Susan doesn’t know anything about gay people or baptisms.
“Have you guys heard of metaphors?” Eliza says.
Katie ignores this and says, “He’s gay in the way Jake is gay, which is to say, he just looks like he is.”
Katie has told Jake he looks gay so many times that it lacks the bite of an insult and is instead just an observation.
Jake nods, putting on the faux-academic voice that he uses sometimes now that he’s in college, pushing imaginary glasses up his nose. “I am the expert in this subject and I declare he is not a homosexual.”
“As if we’d go see some fag,” Kyle chimes in.
“You wanna make a bet?” Eliza says, deadpan, unmoved by their arguments, their silliness.
Susan groans. “You’re going to make me go talk to him?”
“Someone needs to settle this,” Katie says.
Kyle says, “I guess you better go before he leaves.”
“Fine,” Susan says, mostly just to make the debate end. “I’ll be a dumb groupie and hit on the musician.”
“Yesss!” Katie cheers. “Really? Oh my god, Susan, you’re so brave. We’ll wait here for you.”
“You have to wait for me, I’m your ride,” Susan says, rolling her eyes as she gets out of the car and heads back inside.
Susan savors the power of this moment; it’s out of character, and there’s some shock value. She looks back and sees all four of her passengers pressed to the windows, watching her. She grins, despite herself. Rarely is everyone paying attention to her.
When she gets back inside the temple, she finds the lead singer of the band packing up his gear. Susan leans against the wall, waiting for him to walk by, and when he does, he looks right at her and grins, putting his guitar case down.
“Hey!” Jonny says. “Thanks so much for coming.”
She hadn’t anticipated he would actually stop to talk to her, and she immediately turns pink, but tries hard to seem relaxed. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “Uh, you’re welcome. You guys were great.”
He smiles. He’s very cute, close-up. “Thanks,” he says.
“Can I ask what made you want to play out here? You guys are way too big for a show like this.”
“I’m from here,” he says. “We like playing hometown shows. Keeps us humble.”
Susan laughs in surprise. “SPIN said you were from New York.”
“Long Island is in New York.” He smiles. “I don’t have to tell the press everything.”
The Masonic temple is emptying out, a few stragglers making out in the corners of the room. The lights come on, and Susan notices for the first time how dingy the carpeting is, how dated the wood-paneled walls of the space are. That it smells like mildew.
Just then another man appears. There’s a red bandana hanging out of his pocket.
He’s shorter than Jonny, younger, too, with a delicate face that strikes Susan as almost elvish and hair that looks like it’s never been out of place.
He loops an arm around the lead singer’s waist as Susan realizes that Eliza called it.
“Baby, can we go?” he says. He’s clearly Jonny’s boyfriend.
Susan wonders if she should feel disappointed, but instead she feels something else: floaty. Lighter somehow. Like her heart is swelling as she watches the easy affection between these two men.
“Sorry, babe,” Jonny says, kissing the top of the man’s head. “I’m coming.”
The boyfriend turns to Susan, looking her up and down. “I know how you love to meet the local baby gays,” he says to Jonny.
“Oh,” Susan says, the floaty feeling replaced with panic, “I’m not…”
The boyfriend cuts her off. “A local?”
Susan stutters. “Why do you think that I’m…” She can’t finish the sentence.
“I’m sorry,” Jonny says, with genuine kindness. “He didn’t mean to assume.”
“I just don’t know why you’d think that,” she says in a small voice.
“First of all, your hair.” Jonny gestures to her mullet. “But it’s more of an energy thing.”
She doesn’t know what to do with this. She feels her mouth hanging open. She’s never considered her own energy before.
A small group of people walk by on their way to the exit and high-five Jonny as they pass. “Great set, man,” a guy says, and a girl adds, “You’re so awesome.”
Jonny smiles and thanks them for coming.
When they’re alone again, Jonny’s boyfriend says, “Do they still not teach gaydar in New York State public schools?”
“Don’t bully her,” Jonny says, and then smiles at her in a way that’s good-natured and kind, like he’s her fairy godmother. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Susan,” she whispers.
The boyfriend says, “God, how old are you, Susan?”
“I’m seventeen,” she says.
“Well, you look twelve,” he replies.
“So do you,” Susan says, and he laughs.
“Thank you so much.” He winks. “Botox.”
The temple is empty and quiet now but for the three of them and the door girl, who is on the other side of the venue folding up her table and stashing it in the corner.
Susan understands that the door girl can’t leave until they do—it’s a service industry job, after all—and feels a twist of guilt that they might be holding her hostage.
Before she can think too deeply about it, though, Jonny puts both of his hands on Susan’s shoulders and looks into her eyes. She’s lost the ability to blink.
He says, “Susan, I promise, one day you’ll get out of this town and your life will become amazing. In ways you can’t even begin to imagine. How you feel now is not how you’ll feel forever.”
It sounds like a song lyric: so perfect, exactly what she needed to hear. She feels as though she’s about to burst into tears. “Do people know?” she asks, when she can find her voice. “About you?”
“Indie rock is very don’t ask, don’t tell,” he says, knowing what she means. “But I’d tell if anyone asked. They just don’t.”
She nods, as though she understands. And maybe she does.