60. Phoenix St. Pierre
PHOENIX ST. PIERRE
SEPTEMBER
Nothing Personal’s tour bus chugs along the rainy Pacific Northwest, and the feeling of forgetting something grows stronger throughout the week.
I left half my soul in New York.
Tom isn’t on the bus, and I’m trying not to be an angsty fuck about it. Maybe I didn’t fully comprehend how attached I’d become to him after spending every single day together for eight months.
Or maybe I knew being here for my little brother is worth this momentary painful longing. Tom knew it too.
“You aren’t missing much.” Tom’s voice plays through my headphones. An audio message. I listen to my favorite noise while I lie on my bunk. “New York has a stench.”
I murmur out loud, “It always has a fucking stench, Tom.”
The message keeps going. “Ever since you left, the odor is pure piss and trash. You were making it smell like heaven on Earth here. You think eucalyptus is the scent of the gods? Just don’t come back right away, dude.
Like I will suffer endlessly in smelly Manhattan.
I am already full-on thriving. So…” I hear him swallow a knot in his throat.
“And I…” He intakes a sharp breath. “I really love you, Phoenix. It keeps building and building every day. My love for you grows so powerful in your absence, I wonder if it’s to torment me or to protect me. ” He pauses for so long.
My chest aches while I hear his unsteady breath. I reach for my journal, biting off the cap to my red pen.
“Probably to torment me, right? Anyway…” He clears his throat. “I’m not fucking crying. I know, I know, you really want to see me finally shed a tear, but it’s like a shooting star, dude. Okay. Jerk off to this later. Bye.” It ends.
I jot some lyrics, his words crackling and flaring inside me like sparklers in a dark end-of-summer sky. Then I answer with a quiet voice memo. “I’ve already seen you cry, nepo baby. When I railed you so hard, you came.”
He responds about twenty minutes later. “I professed my undying love to you, and you talk about fucking me. Love is dead. BYE.”
I laugh under my breath, doing my best not to wake up the band and crew sleeping on the bus.
I send him another audio message. “Guess your love wasn’t so powerful after all, Cobalt god.
” I pause. “And I hope you never doubt how much I love you, Tom.” I rub my red-stained fingertips together.
“I like what you said earlier. To torment or to protect. Think it’d make good lyrics.
I know we agreed to hold off on the second album until I get back, but maybe we make music like this. ”
Music has always welded us together. It has the power to fold all miles between us, shrinking them down to nothing. Until his heart is where it’s meant to be. Beating against mine.
“Second album material?” I ask. “What do you think?”
His response comes in the morning. “I think yes. Send me the lyrics you’ve written. Listen to this guitar riff. See if you like it.”
The sound is sad and melancholy.
I just want to hold him.