31. “Sacrifice”The ceiling was crushing the life out of me. I could barely breathe underneath its pearl glow. Or was it smoke, antique, cream, buttermilk, gods, I really didn’t care! All I knew was it seemed like it was constantly hovering above me, that if I sat up and tried to move it would whack my head, tie me to the bed and destroy me before I had the chance to scream. Some part of me longed for that. I’d gone to bed early, hoping to catch some sleep before the threesome started up their escapades again.
It was a new moon, so there was little light in the room. I insisted on keeping the shades open so that I could have some proof that there indeed was a world outside the one created by walls, ceiling, and floor. There was some light...the digital display from the clock cast a green glow that caught in my eyes and fizzled out before it disturbed Jay. I sat up and clutched my legs, trying to deny the lure of the scissors in the next room. I hadn’t realized how much they represented letting loose my stress, getting rid of the anxiety. Maybe the blood loss just lowered those endorphins and shit in one’s brain and left only a few options open, such as cutting more, sleeping, or passing out. I just wanted to pass out.
Jay stirred a bit and his shoulder twitched. I looked at him and shook my head. He’d been trying to hide it from me, but he’d been looking increasingly at Paige with eyes that used to mean fucking hard, fast, loose, anywhere there was an open space. Accepting it was the only option, because I knew that I was only the fallback position anyway. He had never truly loved me, it was more the comfort that I provided, the unconditional love. And...gods, I wished that I could pretend that that was all it was for me, that all he was was a replacement for Shane. But he wasn’t. He was more than Shane had ever been. That was why I didn’t yell at him for constantly staring at Paige and all but ignoring me, for all the little subtle ways he let me know that I was not what he wanted.
We were finished with the album, everything was complete. All that remained was to stay here for the remaining days of the lease and then get ready to go. Whether it was on tour or not, I couldn’t say.
That decision was made for me. “Paige...” Jay moaned in his sleep, twisting and turning. I stared at him, praying that the tone had been off, that he was running away from Paige, or maybe he had said “pig”... When it was repeated a few seconds later I knew that my time here was up. It sounded like Paige was jerking him off, going down on him, fucking him. The moan was not one of pain or loss, but of supreme ecstasy. I got up and found a piece of paper, wrote down the names of three drummers who would be available and capable of handling learning all of our repertoire in the least number of days, dashed off a short note to Jay. Mostly it said that I was giving up, he could go and have Paige if he really wanted to, I realized that I was only a consolation prize. Yes, I was much more tactful in the letter. I didn’t want to crush him like I had been crushed. It seemed like it had been eons ago that I was reading a similar letter from Shane, saying that it was time to see other people, to get a divorce. Somehow the parallels missed me.
My apartment was essentially unchanged, except for a few spots of peeling paint. I didn’t care. Slumped down on the couch and slept for what felt like days. I noticed that it had three cushions, one that smelled of spaghetti and pizza, one that smelled of beer, and another that must have been the dogs. I didn’t care, at one point or another my head rested on them all. The color...well, it must have been a mixture of vomit and rust, swirled in with a liberal amount of cinnamon. My couch led a more complex and fulfilling life than I did. But I stopped cutting. There didn’t seem much of a point.“Bobby? What is it?”
“Um...Shane? You said that you needed someone to take care of Gavin, like a babysitter or something...”
“Bobby, that’s really nice, but isn’t Orgy on tour?”
“I’m not going with them.”
“Why not?!”
“It’s not important.”
“I think it would be, I mean...Jay really seems like he loves you.”
“Jay’s heart has always belonged to Paige, I just was borrowing it for a while.”
There was a long pause pregnant with tension and death. “Isn’t it going to hurt to have to come over here and see all your old stuff?” she asked, trying to nudge me away.
“Shane, all of that never belonged to me. I’ll be fine. But I’ll understand if you don’t want me to do it.”
She had a hushed conversation with Terence. “I guess it’d be okay, but it is kind of weird. Are you sure you want to do it?”
“I think this is the only thing that I’m capable of doing. And I’m really sorry for...for all that I’ve done to you.” I said, my voice cracking on the last words.
“Look, Terence told me to give you a chance. Please don’t abuse that.” Gods, what had Shane done to deserve someone like Terence who either didn’t care to such an amount that he would let his wife’s ex-husband come over and take care of, well, I guess he didn’t really have any reason to care about Gavin. Whatever, I just had to accept this for what it was, me crawling back to Shane and begging for some way to make money.
Gavin was continually running back and forth, showing me the new toys that Terence had bribed him with. I watched as they piled up around me, surrounding me with plastic and fake fur. Tried not to think about what Jay and the others were doing right now. Had they waited an hour after they discovered me gone to contact one of the drummers on the list and then to have a mass orgy?“Gavin, do you want to go for a walk?” I asked as the latest version of some new action figure landed on my lap. He nodded, beaming at me.
“I thought you wanted to see my toys...but taking a walk is better!” he said, smiling madly. I had done nothing more than fuck Shane to bring him into the world, how had that brought about this little angel?
The neighborhood was quieter than I remembered, there was a slight breeze so I zipped up Gavin’s jacket and held his hand when we crossed streets. The trees rustled quietly in the wind and occasionally a leaf would fall down and Gavin would run after it, stopping if it landed in the street. Sesame Street or whatever the hell it was had taught him well.
Finally he came back to me with an fistful of grass and a smile that would have stopped cranky old men in their tracks. “Daddy, where’s Jay?” he asked, keeping that smile.
“He’s out touring.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I’d rather be here with you.” A bald-faced lie, but some of it was true. Really.
“But I thought you were friends. Mommy told me that you loved him.”
“I do.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?!”
“Gavin, can we just change the subject?”
“Okay.” And the walk continued, though I was having a hard time keeping back my tears. This was all my choice, I had decided to leave Jay. Why was I constantly regretting it?
Somehow I managed to remain totally ignorant of their tour schedule and so didn’t realize that they were going to be playing relatively close-by. I heard from the cosmetologist that she’d won Orgy tickets and had an extra...if I wanted it. I took it. Even though I had tried to forget them, I wanted to see just one last time how they were doing without me.I was close enough that I could see the bands as they came on and left...the company wasn’t all that great, the cosmetologist and her mother, but at least I could conceivably see Jay.
And I did. And it was beyond my worst nightmares.
They all came out, Paige with his mohawk that was just starting to grow out, Ryan with one of his daring and innovative fashion creations, Amir with his little sneer, the drummer who wasn’t as good at assembling fashion as the others and...Jay.
He could have been an angel if he didn’t look so thoroughly like shit. The clothes were fine, just that mesh shirt that looked purple in the right light and some black pants. It was just that the spirit wasn’t there. The mesh shirt was a poor choice. He had obviously been taking intravenous drugs of all varieties, track marks littered his arms, he was skinnier than when I had left him, and...oh gods. He’d taken up where I left off. Two huge gashes were on his left arm, a few tore up his chest, then another couple on his right arm. But it was his stomach, right above his belt, that really made me hate myself. Because he had carved the five letters that I now hated most there.
“Bobby.”
I watched with red eyes as they went through the set, Jay growing increasingly erratic and disjointed, he wasn’t the old Jay anymore, the one who seemed to be there just for himself, to only want to do it for the music or whatever had driven him... He pulled a knife out of his pocket, the crowd screamed, pushing forward. I screamed as well, but my scream was nothing compared with everyone else’s. They all wanted blood, I just wanted him to stop. I couldn’t fight through the mass of people, I couldn’t make him stop. “This is for all you fuckers.” he snarled, then cut.
And nobody seemed to care that it bled enough to spatter on the stage, that he sank against the mike stand for support. They just kept on going, leaving him to stand there alone. He trailed off into a long song about love and betrayal, one that I didn’t recognize. One where he bemoaned the lack of trust, where he sang of being left alone and weary, dead and destroyed.
Paige and Ryan had to help him off the stage. They acted like it was a chore.
A few people in the crowd tried to jump on-stage and wipe up his blood with towels, but security stopped them.
I had done this to the one person that I thought I loved.
Security was lax around the back area, I only had to tell them who I was, show them my driver’s license and I was in. I guess nobody told them that everyone hated me. I passed my replacement on the way in. He nodded and thanked me for the cushy job. I didn’t care, I was looking for Jay.But I met Ryan first. He did a double-take and looked guilty. “Where’s Jay?” I asked.
“You don’t want to see him, really you don’t.” he said, his eyes widening. He was scared as fuck.
“Why not? Because you’ve...”
“I didn’t do anything. You’re the one who left. He...he’s been shooting up anything and everything since you went. And picked up your bad habits, luckily the fans think it’s fake. I thought you loved him.” Ryan rattled off.
“But...didn’t he and Paige...”
Ryan snorted. “Paige was just messing with him, trying to do one of those things like you did to us. After you left Jay didn’t try anything, and wouldn’t let Paige do anything either. Amir’s been taking care of him after he passes out.” Ryan shook his head.
I started crying, huge desperate tears that ripped out my tear ducts. “Please, just tell me where he is!”
He nodded towards a room a bit off from the others.
The glint of silver was all I could see in the gloom. I fumbled for the light switch but a stern voice growled at me. “Who is it?” A small lamp clicked on.
Jay sat there, a belt tied around his left arm, a knife hovering over my name on his chest. The half light emphasized the fact that his face was that of a skeleton, his eyes were surrounded by huge bags, and his skin was the color of innermost suffering. He stared at me for a while, as if wondering if I was just something from a hallucination. The knife continued to circle around the O, going deeper. I walked forward slowly and took it away from him. He leaned into my chest and cried.