and bury my face in her shoulder like I’m five, not twenty-one years old. I feel her kiss the top of my head, and yeah, I’m aware that all of Ween and their girlfriends are hanging out right there where we are, playing Frisbee with an old drumhead under the tent. But I don’t care who sees me getting a kiss from my mom. Not right now.
I look over and see Travis lovingly tending to the real casualty of this ordeal—my Gretsch. He’s hunched over it on a table with Montana, Mickey, and Cole, looking like a surgeon about to do a triple bypass. I hobble over there and he breaks away from the group and puts his hands on my shoulders.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“How bad is my guitar?” I say. “Answer that first so I can decide how okay I am.”
“You’re lucky, it was a clean break,” he answers.
This isn’t really what I want to hear, but at least I didn’t crush the body when I fell. That would have been the end of it. But my guitar is valuable, vintage, and this isn’t some Sam Ash hack repair we’re looking at. I let out a big sigh when I see it looking like a car accident victim all laid out on the table. Travis gently fiddles with it, showing me how the break will be relatively easy to repair.
“You’ll get it fixed and it’ll be as good as new,” he says. “Better, because it’ll have a badass battle scar.”
“Now you’re just trying to make me feel better,” I say.
“So?”
“So? It’ll never be the same,” I say like a bitch, choked up, stupid tears in my eyes. I look away before they fall. Travis takes my hand, but I pull away because I’m so keyed up again that his touching me, comforting me at all, makes me feel like I’m going to fall all the way apart. I don’t want to fall apart. I want to be strong. I want to belong with the big kids on the playground. Or be drunk at Lollapalooza.
The rest of the guys look awkward, so I just ask someone to please get me a beer or methadone or something and then I realize I need to explain to everyone there who doesn’t know me that I’m kidding, I don’t do methadone. Or heroin. Jesus. Travis walks off, shaking his head, muttering, and I know I’ve done it again, this thing that I’ve come to learn I’m very good at—hurting his feelings.
I also know that I am in love with him, but I just can’t seem to handle him.
Carl comes over and hands me a Red Stripe. I gratefully chug the entire thing. It’s no longer thundering and lightning, but it’s raining like we’re in the middle of a monsoon. Welcome to another lovely spring in New Jersey, the “Fuck You, Asshole!” state. Travis, Joey, and Cole are pulling our gear under the tent, stacking it into a corner, and pulling a tarp over it. I’m watching from a couple of folding chairs when Mickey comes and sits next to me. He’s got his Strat and it’s got little dents and dings all over the body when I see it up close. It’s been all over the world, after all. He starts noodling around and sings, “The world breaks everyone . . .” He has to be at least halfway to drunk. Drunk is what Ag Field Day is essentially about, after all.
“Hemingway?” I say. “Really?”
“. . . and afterward many are strong at the broken places,” he finishes.
He hands me his guitar and I take it, not sure what he expects me to do with it. I sure as hell am not playing it. The rock force is nowhere near strong enough with me for that.
“Turn it over,” he says.
I do, but I still don’t get it.
“Look here,” he says, and points to a giant black curve behind the headstock. A big-ass crack. “I did that at a gig we played at Red Rocks in ’91.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got a guy in New Hope who can fix that for you. He’s the best.”
I breathe a big sigh and finish my second Red Stripe. I’m not expecting falling off stage during the biggest gig of my short career and busting my family heirloom Gretsch to somehow make my life better. But it feels like maybe it does.
That is, until I’m alone with Travis again.
***
We’re sitting in my driveway later that night.