Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,68
are off and running. We are catching up to the present. We are in top form.
The tour snakes throughout the Southwest—Phoenix, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Santa Fe—and down into Texas, skimming along the Mexican border (we campaigned hard to take a detour into Juárez), shooting east to San Antonio and Houston, a hard north to Dallas. The tour bus slinks along through the night, taking us up into Oklahoma and Kansas. Our bus driver is a chain-smoking, delightfully acrid road dog named Vincent, who used to drive for Ozzy Osbourne and doesn’t have time for your shit. He stares out at the open road—the same road he’s stared out at a thousand times before—and tells us stories about Ozzy snorting just about everything you can imagine, chasing women, and pissing on things, namely the Alamo. “Shit, you guys are pussies compared to him,” he sighs. He’s probably right. We are stopping at Indian casinos to play nickel slots, and places like Truckhenge, outside Topeka, where a guy named Ron shows us the rusted-out trucks and buses he’s stuck in the ground for no reason. Admission was free. Some nights we stay in hotels—each of us in our own room, finally—and terrorize the staff and our fellow guests. We toss furniture into the pool. Run the housekeeping carts down the hallway. Flush bizarre things down the toilet. Vincent drinks beer in the hotel bar and shakes his head. The following morning, the managers always give us dirty looks, but they don’t say anything. I don’t even have to use the business centers anymore . . . we’ve got wireless on the bus.
We head into Kansas City, two shows at a venue named after a cell phone company, then begin the long drive across Missouri (nothing in the middle except for Columbia). Hit St. Louis on a Tuesday and then head up into old Illinois, past Springfield and Decatur, heading home to Chicago. The show there is sold out, has been for weeks. My parents are coming, and so is my high school music teacher. Unlike at our last hometown show, she is going to be there too. I left Her two tickets and VIP passes at will call, just in case she wants to bring anyone. You know, Her roommate or whoever.
We get into Chicago a day early, and my parents take the Disaster and me out to dinner, ask us questions about California as if we’ve just returned home from a semester abroad or something. I will never grow up in their eyes. I am okay with that. After dinner, the waitress asks if she can take a picture with me. I laugh and pose for the shot, holding a goofy smile on my face while we wait for the flash to go off (the flash never goes off when it’s supposed to). I glance over and see my mom and dad smiling. What must this be like for them? I am thinking, getting slightly emotional, when all of a sudden my dad sticks his tongue out and I crack up and the waitress and I have to take the picture again. My mom wraps up all the leftovers and has me take them back to the apartment, just in case.
My apartment is hermetically sealed. Frozen in time. An inch of dust is on everything. My bedroom is still filled with cardboard boxes, just like I had left them. Reminders of my previous life. I decide to unpack and put T-shirts I will never wear again into drawers I will probably never open again. It feels good to do it: I’m burying my past in a Hemnes dresser. I can remember the night she and I put it together, me getting all frustrated and Her trying so hard not to laugh. Her stuff is still in the bathroom, and I find myself staring at Her toothbrush, contemplating putting it in my mouth. It’s almost as if she died or something. The Disaster is fumbling around with something in the living room, so I put the toothbrush down and turn off the light. I grab my coat—the one I had missed in New York—even though it’s summer, and tell the Disaster I’m going to sleep at my parents’ house. He doesn’t object, probably because he knew I was going to anyway. My mom is so happy when she hears my key turning in the lock. We stay up and talk in the kitchen, then she touches my arm and tells me not to