Static

Story contains the following sensitive content:

Substance abuse, mental health, discussion of self harm/suicide.

Static

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” said Jessica. She sat across from me at the coffee shop where we used to meet. It was the first time we had seen each other in about six months. I looked away, still embarrassed to hold her gaze for longer than a moment. The smell of freshly ground coffee wafted through the air. An old Chet Baker recording drifted into my ears from the tiny black speakers in the corners of the café.

I fall in love too easily

I fall in love too fast

His smooth, straight tenor contained an air of sorrow and loneliness. I felt it carrying me away someplace. Resisting the urge to shudder, I said, “I’m clean three months tomorrow.”

“That’s great Conn,” she said with a sympathetic smile. I wished she wouldn’t call me that.

“Thanks,” I said gruffly. I could tell she wanted to ask me more. Her eyes were locked on mine and she leaned forward in her seat, elbows on the table. 

“You don’t have to tell me but, I mean… what changed?” asked Jessica, unsure how to broach the subject.

“It’s not easy to explain,” I said, still avoiding her eyes, one ear on Chet.

My heart should be-

“It’s alright, you don’t have to.” She was too amiable. I wasn’t used to this, not anymore. 

“Let me… I’ll try, okay?” I said. She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, waiting for me to start. I took a sip of my coffee, then I began to relate to her the following events of a summer night.

__

It was hot and I was alone. I think I was in Austin, it could have been San Antonio. I moved around a lot after Jessica left me. I felt the world had gone back on its promises. I was just trying to tune it all out, fill my head with static. The drinking was bad before, but the problem progressed to include anything I could find. Pills, coke, weed, whatever I came upon was good enough. For months I scrounged enough money from odd jobs to support my habits. On this particular night I was finishing a drink at some dive and figured I’d go find another. A couple of guys at the end of the bar were eyeing me suspiciously. I probably said something to one of their women, but I couldn’t remember. I stumbled out onto the street, picked a direction and started walking. The dark heat felt close around me and I remember feeling so tired. Not the kind of tiredness like the need to go to sleep, something deeper than that. Like I was going to quit. Just lie down and quit.

I found another dive and went in. I did a few bumps of coke in the bathroom to see if I could get myself going. It didn’t work. I still felt so tired. I had a few drinks there and I remember some big guy with a beard getting in my face about some comment I made. He shoved me and I fell back, crashing into a bar stool and sprawling on the floor. I remember feeling like I wouldn’t get up. Not that I didn’t want to, just that I wouldn’t. I lay there on the sticky floor of the bar and my bearded assailant kicked me a few times for good measure. A couple of his friends grabbed him. I heard someone say, “Jesus Don, let the poor guy go.” 

I slowly got on my hands and knees, then to my feet. I wobbled out of that place with my head hanging low. I had to find somewhere to rest. Everything sounded muffled in my ears, as if they had cotton stuffed in them. I just kept walking, looking for a bench or some grass. I thought that if I was this tired it was probably better to be dead. My situation wasn’t improving. It wasn’t going to. There wasn’t anything left to do but lie down and let it come to an end. I couldn’t go on feeling tired like this, robbed of everything. I resolved that if I woke up the next morning and still felt this way, I would end my life.

__

Jessica’s hand had drifted up to cover her mouth. She was a great listener, she seldom interrupted. Even for her, this had been a long silence. I paused and looked at her, my glance asking ‘Do you want to hear the rest?’ 

“Connor,” she said through her hand.

“I know,” I said, looking down again. Without waiting for her to say more, I continued.

__

I remember scenes from my life flashing through the static that filled my head. I saw my parents, my sister, my first drum lesson, the first time I met Jessica.This disturbed me, but I couldn’t resist the flood of memories. I had no energy. I could feel the approach of something, some event of great significance. At the time, I assumed it was my death.

I kept walking. Flashes of memory continued surfacing in my mind like vignettes. A youth baseball game, senior prom, things I hadn’t thought about in years. They were all gone. All that was left was this gloomy, hostile, wobbly world and the static that failed to drown it out. At some point I heard a brief twanging sound that cut through the white noise. It felt like someone was surfing radio stations in my head and had found reception for an instant. At first I didn’t know what it was. Then it happened again, this time less muffled. It was the sound of an acoustic guitar. 

With great effort, I peeled my eyes off of the pavement and looked up. My vision was blurry, but I could just make out a man sitting under the dim golden light of a streetlamp with a guitar, a block or so ahead of me. He was tuning his strings. My feet carried me toward the sound. I was barely conscious. As I approached him I caught sight of a bench nearby. I trudged to the bench and dropped onto it. I was facing the man with the guitar, whose backdrop was a park engulfed in darkness. It felt like a stage, my own private show. He had no other audience, he was still tuning. He saw me on the end of the bench and gave me a smile and a nod but said nothing. I was transfixed. Something held me to that spot.

He was an older man. Hispanic, maybe in his sixties. He sat on an old wooden chair and wore a cabbie hat, faded jeans, and a red button down. He had a gray mustache and crows feet around his eyes that became more pronounced when he smiled. His guitar looked like it had come from another country and a different time. The finish was faded and scratched, but the strings looked new. It was evident that he cared deeply for the instrument. He handled it with great precision and ease.

He finished tuning and there was a moment of silence before he began. He started strumming a slow, sad song. It had a curious lilt to it that seemed to make all the sense in the world to me, completely bombed on that bench.Then he took a short, deep breath and began to sing. It was the most haunting and beautiful thing I have ever heard. His voice reminded me of one of my grandmother’s old quilts, worn with age but still so warm and soothing. He had this solemn, far away look in his eyes when he sang, like he was remembering something from another life. I couldn’t understand the words, but it didn’t matter. I understood the man and his sorrows. They were mine. His voice carried a sort of universal sympathy I had never felt before. He seemed to be telling me that he too had been promised a life that had never come to be. I had heard great music in the past but this was different. This was no spectacle, he was singing because he had to sing. He was tired like me, like all of us, but this was his way of getting through it. By the end of his first song, I had tears in my eyes.

A handful of people stopped and listened. From time to time someone dropped a few dollars in his open guitar case. I sat there completely mesmerized, absorbed in the percussive strumming of his guitar and the dulcet cry of his scratchy, wonderfully sad voice. I felt the static subsiding. All of the flashing memories faded and the only thing in my world was this man and his guitar. He played for what I think was a few hours. I never moved. Almost all of his songs were slow and melancholy. That far away look only left his eyes when he finished a song, and came back as soon as he started the next one. After a while the streets were nearly empty. He began packing up his guitar. As he did so I realized that I didn’t feel so tired anymore. Yes, I was in desperate need of sleep, but there was a vitality that had been transmitted to me through this man’s music. I no longer felt as if I were simply waiting for the end.

“Thanks for listening, my friend,” he said to me with a casual smile as he picked up his case. 

“You understand…” was all I could manage. I was at a loss to convey my feelings. His eyes turned solemn again and met mine.

“I don’t understand anything. But this,” he lifted the guitar case in his hand, “this understands every kind of sadness known to man. Music is the only thing left when everything else is gone.”

“That was beautiful,” I stammered. “You save–, thank you.” I said, tripping over my words.

“You’re welcome my friend.” He held out his hand to me. I took it with both of mine and shook it firmly. “I hope you find what you’re searching for. Goodnight.” With that he turned and walked off down the street. 

The next morning I woke up feeling awful as usual, hungover and slow. My first thoughts upon waking were of that man and his music. I remembered the kinship I had felt listening to him. There was someone else out there who knew my sadness, and I knew theirs. If he could find a way through it, then so could I.

__

I looked up at Jessica when I was finished. Her hands were in her lap, her moist eyes on her coffee which had gone cold. I could tell she was trying to understand.

“Connor, I’m so…it's so sad.” 

“I know,” I said.

More silence passed between us. My ear had caught the tune of yet another melody coming over the speakers. Above the din of the café I could hear Ella Fitzgerald singing…

Oh, where is my angel eyes

Excuse me while I disappear