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WitFit Jan/Feb 2013

90's Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll

Word Prompt: Inch

-PoM-

It was . . . weird.

For months—ever since Tyler had told me about the notebook, really—I'd been dying to read it. I could have read them anytime I wanted to if I wanted to be sneaky about it, but I had wanted him to want to share them with me because that seemed like it would be more meaningful.

And now that he had, I hesitated. Instead I sat on the couch with his words in my lap and a cup of rapidly cooling tea at my elbow. Daytime had already said its goodbye, dinner had already been cooked, a shower already taken. I knew the power of written words because I lived it daily. In writing down our thoughts we could be as brutally honest as we shied away from being in real life. There were probably things in here I had yearned to hear.

And yet I hesitated.

Maybe it was his warning that there were things in the notebook that he didn't want to tell me. Maybe it was the hurt and anger I still clung to like armor.

Or maybe I was just a giant sissy.

With that thought and a deep breath, I opened the cover and was met with a pen drawing of a skull and the Megadeth logo; remembering his long ago insistence that he was raised on metal made me smile a bit.

Instead of reading it from cover to cover I thumbed through it, pausing here and there. If I was expecting pages and pages of lyrics, I was wrong. There were original lyrics, of course, and the chords were scratched above some of those, but there were also thoughts and drawings as well as some lyrics from other bands, too. I wondered if they were his favorites or just meshed well with whatever mood he'd been in when he jotted them down.

Intrigued now, I flipped back to the beginning and scanned the first couple of pages. It was more journal than the rest: entries filled with the passion and ideals typical of a young guy in college; short passages about girls that frustrated or captivated him for a short time—those I found fascinating. A little bit of indignant metal lyrics thrown in for good measure.

"There's nothing I hate more than all these plastic people/with all their plastic promises and all their plastic deal/they just can't be themselves and live their own lives out/they're just an imitation of what life's all about . . ."

It called to mind an old conversation where Edward had told me he dug me because I was different . . . and made me try to figure out where my independence had become such a bone of contention.

Sighing, I flipped past the page and read further. An entry about his grandfather's death made me tear up and I was sad I'd never heard Edward talk about him. Seemed like he'd been a neat guy who was way into music and cracking jokes. Lyrics of his own began to form after that; it was interesting to see the emergence of that talent of his I loved.

Things were pretty straight forward until I landed on a date I was very familiar with: the night we met. Slowing my pace, I read each word, wanting to absorb what was there. The entries were sporadic, more Kerouac than formal, as if he wrote them as they came to him.

She's so fucking beautiful. My eyes follow her around the room watching her presence brighten everywhere she goes and I want her. Whatever it's going to take, I want to know who she is.

"I'll sing for you if you want me to/I'll give to you/and it's a chance I'll have to take/and it's a chance I'll have to break . . ."

Hearing the croon in my head made my heart beat fast. A flip of the page made my breath hitch.

She's fucking gone. I look for her everywhere, bother Angela every time I see her. She's not from here, though I think I already knew that—nothing that good can possibly be real.

"If I should be short on words/and long on things to say/ could you crawl into my world/ and take me worlds away? Should I be besides myself and not even stay?"

"My heart is broke/but I have some glue/help me inhale/and mend it with you/ we'll float around/and hang out on clouds/and then we'll come down/and have a hangover . . ."

The desolation scribbled into being there caused my eyes to sting and I struggled with holding the tears at bay. I'd wondered for so long what he'd thought of the brief time we'd spent together in Phoenix, and his words when I'd asked were nice . . . but nowhere near as raw as this.

It was strange to realize I'd affected him this much.

He moved to Seattle after, hooked up with the guys. Wrote haunting lyrics about a girl who had been lost and never found, and then nothing but a passing moment. I tore through those pages, terrified of a mention of Tanya—but aside from a repeated Anthrax lyric that could fit, there wasn't one.

She was a convenience—an ear to bend when he was too melancholy and shitfaced to realize he was spilling his secrets.

I saw that, now. Didn't like it, but I understood a bit better.

Then there was a steady occurrence of songs and chords, difficult to read because of their resigned, hopeless air. And then the night we met again.

What are the fucking chances that she walks into my life, here, now, at a time when I had given up her ghost? Those eyes, so wide and trusting then, aren't the same. Scared, now, untrusting. They should be—I want to crawl right back inside her and never leave.

Then the words were sweeter, things I would never be able to get him to say out loud. The night of Bumbershoot was a one word entry.

Heaven.

As I read through his version of us I laughed and cried, remembering the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place. He even made notes about my favorite bands and foods. One entry read: Don't ever eat the last cookie.

Then things began to happen for the band, and I was spellbound reading his chronicling of significant landmarks for the band. I clutched my chest reading how, in every one, he made sure to mark my reaction or make a note to be sure he shared something with me.

And Tyler's words floated back to me. I'd taken them with a grain of salt back then—a muse?—but Edward really had made notes about things we did together, the way it made him feel watching me. There were little pieces of lyrics scribbled everywhere, and it was evident that my opinion of him was important in everything he did.

This was love. It shone through his words, made me feel it just the same.

And that was . . . a lot to take in.

Giving up for a minute, I set the book on the couch and headed to the balcony for some fresh air I would pollute with smoke.

It was a different world outside, one where Edward wasn't talking to me in my head and telling me his secrets. My gaze sought out the notebook constantly as I shivered in the cold, like I thought it would grow legs and run away if I wasn't watching.

I thought his idea might be just shy of brilliant. He could talk to me without breaking his stoicism; could defend himself without my getting angry in front of him. His words from earlier on the steps made sense now—my anger was still very real, too raw and on fire to not be combustible. One inch in the wrong direction would have blown us apart.

And still the hardest parts were yet to come.

I went back inside and made a fresh cup of tea to replace the forgotten one, and settled back in.

I miss her every day. I want her here. She's the part of this that makes me feel high; the lows are better with her around.

He didn't know what to do about Tyler. There was a bond between them that surpassed any he shared with the other guys, and while Edward had told me Tyler was fine, he knew that wasn't the truth. But he'd sat back and let it happen, thinking that eventually Ty would snap out of a phase Edward thought would pass.

The parts about him on the road were hard to swallow. He both loved and loathed it, and I could tell when the drinking got to be less than a celebration of a show well done and more of an everyday thing. Reading those alongside the ones about Tyler boggled my mind; he was, in essence, doing the same thing, but didn't recognize it.

"Well you don't understand who they/thought I was supposed to be/look at me now I'm a man/who won't let himself be . . ."

He hated the east Coast tour because it took him so far away from his home and me.

I see her slipping away and I don't know how to bring her back. I wanted this, wanted it all. The fans and the fame, the recognition and the stops in every city. But it's tearing us apart, and if this is all I'll have when she leaves it won't be worth it.

Around the time of Tyler's death there was nothing. Dated pages with ink marks like he'd let the pen sit too long; no words, no lyrics.

There was one last entry, dated yesterday.

"All five horizons revolved around her soul/as the earth to the sun/now the air I tasted and breathed/has taken a turn . . ."

Overwhelmed, I closed the cover of the notebook. Acts One and Two had been written, but it was up to us now to determine how Act Three would play out.

My words the other night had been the end of my tether, and I only hoped he'd been at least sober enough to understand my frustrations. There were things not covered in his words that I needed answers to. All of the cards needed to be laid on the table; every expectation, every dream. Hard talks, maybe some tears . . . and compromise.

There was a fight ahead, one I was willing to make.

-PoM-

When Rose came through the door around eleven that night, I was curled up on the couch with the notebook still in my lap. She flopped down next to me, grumbling a hello.

"You look beat, lady."

"I am. Edward called a band meeting tonight."

I cocked my head. "He did?"

"Yep. I wasn't there for the first couple of hours but Emmett had me come down about nine."

"What was it about?"

"Edward wanted everything out on the table: the problems, Ty's death, the direction the band was going to go, how they were going to do it."

Seemed he was trying to make amends all over the place. Interesting. "I bet that was intense."

She huffed. "You can say that again. Jasper's been pissed at him so apparently he was resistant to Edward stepping up at first. I caught the tail end of that fight. Edward was damn determined to move forward as a unit, including Leah, and Jasper eventually bought in. Dude's first love and only love is music. I guess Edward pulling his head out of his ass made Jasper feel like the band could continue on."

"What brought all this on?" I asked . . . hoping I already knew the answer.

"Do you really need to ask that? I don't know what you said to him . . . because you still haven't told me; which, by the way, I'm waiting on. Anyway, it must have been good enough to wake him up. Or the potential that you'd dump him if he didn't get his shit together."

I didn't like that it'd taken me losing it on him to get him out of his funk, but was also glad it apparently did.

"Huh. And where did you come in on this?"

"You're looking at the new manager," she said, waving her hand. "When they asked me, I threw my demands right out there and they didn't even hesitate."

I screeched. "That's fantastic. Congrats, Rose! Does this mean I won't have to take on another job to help you pay rent?"

"You're such a smartass. But, yeah, it does. Seems momma's getting paid, now. Your boy was adamant about the original members building a solid foundation with trust and retaining it. And I'm sure he was including you in that statement."

That gave me pause. "What's that mean?"

"He pretty much told them that if he had any chance in hell that you would forgive him, you were going to be a top priority. I don't know exactly what he meant by that, or how you two are going to work that one out, but that's up to y'all. Everyone seemed to be on board, though, so . . ."

I played with my fingers. "So, you're saying Jasper was okay with that? Because, gotta say, I just don't see him agreeing to anything to do with me."

"Jasper's a jerk, but he's not always a douche. He's weird around new people. He only started being nicer to me recently, too. Somewhere along the way he either got used to us being around or he started to like us, I don't know. But I do know he reamed Edward over the way he treated you."

"Really? I'm kind of shocked."

"You're singing my song now, chick. It's weird. We're like this big, dysfunctional family. We fight and get mad, but we all try to get through the tough times together. Sometimes some of us are bigger assholes than others, but a kidney shot usually takes care of that."

I smiled, thinking that it sounded a lot like Tyler was behind all of this.

"Why are you smiling?"

"Eh, just thought Ty was doing some spiritual hocus pocus to push us all back together."

"Me too. This has got him written all over it."

-PoM-

Once again, thank you so much. xo

The lyrics taken from actual songs are in quotations and italics and are listed in order from each song I used:

Imitation of Life – Anthrax
Luna – Smashing Pumpkins
Seasons – Chris Cornell
Dumb – Nirvana
Down In a Hole – Alice In Chains
Black – Pearl Jam

Thank you Nic, xo