24. “Mend”My throat was raw from screaming my head off. Jay took me down to the studio, saying that if he didn’t have to worry about hurting his voice, he would have done it himself. So I screamed for as long as I wanted to, nothing that made any sense, just one long drawn out howl that pierced me deep to my core and threatened to make my lungs explode. The pain, the delicious pain, so different than death, so much better than life. I never wanted to speak again, I just wanted to rip my vocal chords to shreds so that my mouth would fill with blood and I could taste that bittersweet pleasure again. But my lungs gave out first and I ended up on the floor of the studio staring at the ceiling.
It looked like any other ceiling. Sodden with water and slowly turning brown, the pieces of asbestos or cardboard or whatever peeling and cracked. Jay had stayed in the booth writing lyrics..or something. I wasn’t exactly sure if he wasn’t just there to make sure that I didn’t go apeshit and try to destroy and pillage. He needn’t have bothered. I had no energy to even move. Just laid on my back and stared up into the infinite reaches of little square tiles pierced with holes.
After a while I heard the door open and he walked in softly. “I just saw Paige.” he whispered. “I think they’re doing their shit here today.” I sat up instantly and looked at him. He sat down next to me and put his head in his hands. It had been weeks since we had seen them, and the last time Paige had shattered Jay’s entire fragile little world. That was when he had broken down and turned to drink again. I had exacerbated it, of course, but Paige had lit the match. His face was cold and unreadable. I wondered if he was calculating how far it was to the nearest bar.
“Jay...are you okay?” I asked, touching his shoulder gently. He sighed and looked at me slowly.
“How are we ever going to get back together and make an album?” I hugged him to my chest and sighed, letting him play with my shirt and deny his true feelings.
“We’ll think of a way.” I whispered, running my hand through his hair slowly.
Ryan caught us when we left. “Hey, you wanna listen to what we’ve got done so far?” he asked, slapping Jay on the back. Jay gave him a baleful look and tried to break free, but I pulled him aside for a minute.“Aren’t you curious?” He stared at me for a moment and then sighed, shaking his head.
First some bass, then a whiny sound like thousands of helicopters on the horizon. An intermittent drum beat occurred at different times, screwing up the rest. Then a nasal whine...words that I couldn’t make out because they slurred together with the rest. They all collided into a cacophony of shit. Ryan was beaming as if this was the epitome of beauty and girls would throw themselves at his feet. Not like he would care all that much, seeing as he had two perpetually horny guys at his beck and call already. Jay stared at the control boards and didn’t do anything except flex the muscles in his jaw. I had to restrain myself from covering my ears and maybe savagely attacking something in a vain effort to make it stop. Then it ended in a flurry of percussion and bass. Ryan turned it off and grinned, like “hey, that was just our multi-platinum single!”
“What do you think?” he asked. “It took us a long time to get everything just right.” He touched Jay again and Jay practically shot out of the chair away from him.
“I think that maybe you guys should just come and work on the third album instead of fucking around with this shit.” he snapped.
Ryan stared at him for a long time and shook his head. “Jay, you’re just mad that I get to fuck Paige every night. And I don’t have to resort to using aphrodisiacs to get him hard for me.”
I recognized the warning signs of a fight and stepped in. “Look Ryan, I’m sure that this is one of the most important things in your life right now...but isn’t Orgy more important? I mean, after we finish our album, you guys can work on yours and have more publicity.” I said. Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier? He made a show of considering it. Jay was snarling under his breath. I patted him on the back gently and tried to get him to calm down.
“I’ll talk to Paige and Amir...when they get back from the bathroom.” That was a visual image that I never wanted to have.
“Why aren’t you in there with them?” Jay snapped. “I thought you three were a team...”
Ryan got up in Jay’s face. “Why aren’t you in there sucking them off?! You’ve done practically everyone in the band and pretty much every groupie that even walked near the bus!”
“That’s so fucking not true!!!” Jay screamed at the top of his lungs, lunging for Ryan. I got in the middle of them and pushed Jay into the wall.
“Don’t fucking start anything.” I hissed. “If you do, you can practically kiss Orgy goodbye.” His nostrils flared for a second and I thought he was going to try something else, but eventually he calmed down and stopped.
Ryan smiled smugly and looked like he was about to say something. I got up in his face too. “I know what you did to Jay, and if I remember correctly, you had just about every groupie that Jay had. So maybe you should just fucking shut up unless you want me to carve my name into your ass!”
He glowered at me for a moment and then slumped down, shaking his head. “You used to be nice Bobby.” Why had everyone decided that I was suddenly the bastard from hell? Had I really been that much of an invisible creature lurking in the background?
“Maybe I got sick and tired of everyone walking all over me and pretending that they cared.” Before I even thought about it I pulled up my sleeve and showed him the scars. “Did you even care about these?! I mean, I’m sure that you noticed them, it’s a little hard to overlook a huge fucking scar on my arm that wasn’t there before...but why the fuck didn’t you say anything to me?! Jay was the only one who gave a shit and that was because you all were totally ignoring him too!!” I was tearing my throat to shreds, everything turned to a vague gurgle. Jay pulled me away and started to shush me.
Ryan stood by the door petulantly and shook his head. “I’ll talk to them. That’s all I can promise.”
“That’s all we ask.” Jay said softly, propelling me out into the hallway. I started to cry hysterically and sank down against the wall, putting my head in my hands. “Bobby, it’s okay.” he said, hugging me.
“They never cared...they just pretended to.” Footsteps neared, Paige and Amir were staring at me. Paige opened his mouth but Jay shushed him with a glare. They went back into the studio and left us alone in the hallway. I sensed a pattern.
We were so stupid and idealistic. Ryan and the rest agreed to work on the third album, Jay got out the lyrics and all that shit, we rented a house, we were going to stay there until the album got done...which meant that Jay and I were going to be locked up with three people who had no reason to like us or even have a grudging respect for our feelings because we had fucked with theirs. No promises were made to even tolerate us, Amir still looked at me like I was going to surprise him at night naked sometime and fuck him senseless. Paige wouldn’t touch anything that Jay had. And Ryan wouldn’t speak to either of us.Shane said I could take Gavin whenever I wanted to, of course, the months covered were the months that I was going to be away. I couldn’t be bitter. Bitterness had already been replaced with a cynicism that was descending into hell. If this didn’t work out I was finding that car and hugging it with my broken body.
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” I asked Jay the night before we were going to go. “It might be too much stress too soon.” He had his arms around me, I was hugging him desperately. I knew that we probably weren’t going to sleep much tonight. Memories of going to camp with people that I hated filled my vision. He didn’t say anything, just nuzzled his head further against my neck. I knew that deep down this was his last gasp of regaining his lost friendship with Paige, regaining the friends that he once valued so much. I had already given Ryan, Paige and Amir up for lost. But I would do anything if it would make Jay feel better, in the hopes that if he was well I could go along my own path to recovery without worrying about him.