him the second time. I figure a cooling-off period will help. I’m probably wrong. As usual.
Tonight he barely says anything to me and it sucks because this cave of sound is like my padded finger-painting room. It’s your average New Brunswick basement, part faded memories, part unfinished laundry, part weed-smoking, video-game-playing emporium, but this is the Soft band basement, so there’s no weed smoking here (weed makes us sound like a jam band and fuck that). Just our gear all lined up against the wall, like shadows of ourselves that live underground until they’re released out into the wild of the greater New York City metro club scene. We rehearse across from a large mirror so we can practice not looking like dicks on stage. There are four cheap mismatched area rugs on the concrete floor that we got from Joey’s father’s warehouse and we’ve hung black packing blankets on the walls so the sound doesn’t bounce off the cinder blocks. It’s not perfect, but it works okay and we rehearse at full volume, so that’s an accomplishment. There’s even a couch for hanging out at the other end, near the washer and dryer that is always full of laundry in various stages of being folded.
The band cave isn’t much to look at (unless you like to look at amplifiers, like we do), but it’s a place I love because I can come here and let go and create whatever I want with some of my favorite people in the universe. And while Bean may be topping my favorite-people list right now, much like I wish he was topping me right now, I can’t even make direct eye contact with him. So tonight the cave doesn’t feel like my safe place at all. It’s feeling like the inside of a grenade, and I have no idea who’s holding the pin.
But the strange thing is, Travis and I are playing better than ever, like we’re in some guitar battle of wills but instead of fighting each other, our guitar riffs are having beautiful, sexy, angry sex together. Oh Jesus let me not think about beautiful, angry sex with Travis right now because if we were alone, I’d probably rather just be on my knees with my head between his Les Paul and his dick.
Why do I keep thinking like this when I know it’s fucking everything up? Stupid sex hormones, that’s why. But I’ve got a mind, I can rise above biology. I think.
Travis doesn’t say much of anything to me all night, but he gives Cole a hard time about stepping all over my short lead on “Come On Over.” Then he loses patience when Joey misses the drum fill in “Short Shrift.” He storms out of the basement when it’s over and the beat brothers ask if I know what the hell his problem is, but I can’t bring myself to tell them. I never knew Travis could be so pissy, but I guess guys can be like that sometimes, if my limited experience is any indicator.
I say “limited” because the Michael Bolton fan was the last technical boyfriend I had, and that was nearly two years ago now. I met Josh in my Shakespeare survey course. He was a graduate student who was a TA in that class and ran my discussion section. He was from North Carolina and in his first year of the PhD program, and I should have known it would never last when he confessed that Soul Provider was his favorite album to “make love” to. In hindsight, it seems so obvious now that it was never going to work, not that I didn’t try. I even let him fuck me to “How Can We Be Lovers.” More than once! Sure, now the subliminal (or conscious, overt) message is obvious. But back then I was still smoking a lot of weed, okay? (He also apparently had no idea of what a clitoris is, or its function, or where to locate it. I really hope he’s sorted that out by now or has realized he’s gay.) Josh would get really moody like Travis is now, usually when I couldn’t do something lame like go out on a Friday night because I had a show to play or to be at. He would come out with me sometimes, but he said he thought my band was “brackish” (no, really, he said “brackish”) and too loud and I’d be better off with an acoustic guitar so my