35. “Blame”But those four words couldn’t alleviate the almost all-consuming guilt that I felt. I couldn’t just pretend that he had decided to do that all by himself, that I had no part in his quest for self-destruction. So I distanced myself. Hadn’t he said it was enough that I was around? I took him at his word. I’d let him hang all over me if that was what he wanted, but I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. I just couldn’t touch him on my own. Especially when I knew that lurking on his body was my name, as if I had done it to him instead of one of the knives. Maybe a part of it was that somewhere deep inside I thought that he might have picked up some disease from the needles and powders, something that lurked beneath the flesh, waiting to claim him...then find its way to me.
The knives were all lined up on the dressing room table. All stainless steel, all kept almost meticulously clean. They glittered in the light and could have made a rainbow of metal. A small one for in the morning, one a little larger for afternoon, then they were grouped for small shows, bigger shows, and arena shows until they turned into huge vicious things that could have cut through bone with little to no human help. His fingers traced the cool metal on the side opposite the razor edge almost as if he was touching a long lost lover. He hadn’t cut yet...he had been too busy puking in the bathroom. One could have blamed all the crap he’d done last night if one wanted to point fingers. Finally his fingers curled around the smallest one and he picked it up slowly, closing his eyes.
I grabbed his hand gently and pulled the knife from it. He sighed and opened his eyes, brown turned to blood. Paige and the others were in and out getting ready...he just sat and stared at me holding his knife. I put it back in its wooden home. “You want to look normal again, right?” I said. He nodded. He had asked me to help him get better, to help him clean up and return to being more put together than he was now. It seemed like the days when he looked like he could have modeled had gone. It appeared that he had forgotten about personal hygiene and eating as much as I had. When he went on stage he was a different creature than the cocksure fashion plate he had been before, now he was almost a monster, a wild man with no care for anything. Someone whose buttons you could push quickly and easily, getting him to do whatever you wanted with no talking back.
“Yes...” he answered softly, his hand touching mine. I restrained myself from jerking away. “I just...I don’t know if I can remember how.”
Makeup spilled out in front of me, he pointed to what he used to wear with quavering fingers. I knew that he wanted this more than anything but he didn’t know if it was too late for it or not. I helped him as much as I could, I had never cared as much about it as he had seemed to. His skin was just dead, lack of proper nutrition, sleep, and blood had left it pasty and blotchy. I let him silently command me, foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow, all done to his liking with little to no input on my part. Still, it was almost like making up a mannequin. I let the lip gloss slide over his lips, remembering when I had felt able to kiss him, when that had been pretty much all that had got me through the day.
His hair was greasy and unkept. It slid through my fingers like worms...it felt almost like mine had before Shane had yelled at me and practically made me take a shower. There wasn’t any time or point in getting him to take a shower now so I just combed it.
Finally I made him put on something opaque with long sleeves so that it wasn’t obvious that he had ripped himself to shreds. I winced away from his weeping wounds. Antiseptic had done little to disguise their depth and range. I had the sense that if he moved too much they’d break and he would fall apart. But I forced myself to get him dressed and presentable. If you looked at him and squinted, you could pretend that he was the Jay from before. The attitude was missing...the one piece that I couldn’t just pull out and give to him. He didn’t look like he was prepared to get it back by himself either.
He hugged me desperately before they went on. I forced myself to hug him back, it was so hard to resist the urge to just stand there and be limp. If he noticed he didn’t let on. I knew that part of him was just trying to pretend that everything was the way it had always been.
I sat on one side of the stage and watched. My replacement was doing a far better job than I could have. I felt no regrets about not being out there myself. I’m sure the fans didn’t give a fuck, they were busy gaping at Jay. I thought I could hear vague yelled questions about why he didn’t look like he’d just crawled in off the bus.The last song of the set was usually the one that followed his cutting. As the concert dragged on, a chant started calling for his blood. He seemed to ignore it, until it came to that part. Up until that point he had seemed like he was in his own little world where he could sing and no one expected anything else. And maybe that was part of the problem. Because included in that was something that could maim and destroy.
He paused before the last song, sweat dribbling down his face, his eyes wide and haunted as he stared at the crowd. As if he had no idea where he was or even who he was anymore. They started to chant the little catchphrase, “This song is for...” His hand fumbled with his pocket, finally came out with a knife. Lips curled into a sneer. I threw myself at the stage, screaming his name. Security caught me and held me back, they still thought this was all part of the normal performance and that I was just trying to raise trouble. The knife was one of the larger ones and it gleamed like diamond in the lights.
“This song is for the fuckers that leave!” he screamed, then the knife cut deep into his wrist, he carved it through veins and then sank to his knees, dropping the knife to clatter on the stage.
The crowd grew quiet. He had actually done it. In between my screaming his name in vain, hoping that he’d listen to me, I heard them saying that they’d really miss him, that they’d been predicting this for months. One couldn’t possibly keep on like this. Too many drugs, too much cutting. I almost imagined that they’d thought this was all planned for them, that Jay had to die to keep them interested. But I was busy struggling against what seemed like the combined forces of all creation to get onto that stage and hold him. Damn it, why could I handle touching him now when it might not matter all that much, but I had been unable to earlier, when it might have done some good?
He cupped his wrist in his lap and instantly he was back to the real Jay and sobbing. “But he came back...” With his last bit of strength he pulled the microphone from around his neck and howled. “He fucking came back!!! I didn’t deserve it but he came back...” Then he looked at me for the first time since he’d stepped out on stage. “I swear I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t mean to!” I shrieked and kicked in the air as he slumped to the stage and his eyes closed. For a few more seconds everyone else kept on playing half-heartedly, all in their own little worlds. Then they realized he wasn’t getting back up. He was engulfed in a storm of hovering creatures who wanted to devour his pain and feed it to the masses.
Ryan sat next to me in the waiting room. He listened as I rambled on and on about how I really loved Jay, that I hadn’t meant to do this to him. His scowls got me some tranquilizers, some relief from the sitting there and rocking myself, my head shoved against my knees, mumbling apologies that no one could hear or understand. At that moment I forgave Ryan everything. Sure, he had beaten Jay down to the ground, but I was the one who had put the nail in his coffin, I was the one who had...“Bobby, please, just try and stop thinking about it.” he said finally after I’d repeated my mantra for the seven hundredth time. I didn’t deserve Jay because I’d left, followed by a few repetitions of my not wanting to leave but really having to. “What matters is you did come back. What happened tonight wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t anyone’s. He did that by himself. Everything was just leading up to that.”
“But...everyone wanted him to die...they were just watching and cheering him on.”
“He’d led everyone to expect that Bobby...that’s the way it was. If they’d hadn’t been in a large group I don’t think they would have done anything like that.”
I said nothing for a while and just stared at my feet. It had been so long since I had had any new clothes, these were all grungy and... Once the security guards had realized who I was they had let me run after Jay’s stretcher, but there hadn’t been much point by then.
All I knew was that he wasn’t dead.
Ryan was...well, he was acting like a friend again. The kind of friendship that only returns when major crises loom and everything falls apart. I found myself talking to him again, if only to hear myself speak. He said nothing and hugged me uncomfortably.
The doctor came out a little bit later holding a clipboard and sighing disapprovingly. Ryan restrained me from jumping up and demanding to know everything that he could say. “Is he okay?” Ryan asked, slapping his hand over my mouth. I tasted sweat and smelled dirt.
“He’ll live...he’s on a few IVs now. Somehow he got severely dehydrated and it doesn’t appear like he’s been eating very well.” That was accompanied with a glare. “In fact, it’s a wonder he wasn’t in here before. This kind of behavior isn’t very healthy...even for a ‘rock star’.” The last bit said with a sneer.
“Please, can I just see him?” I begged, refraining from grabbing onto his leg and crying for mercy.
His steel-grey eyes met mine. “Only for a few seconds.”
Jay was death incarnate in a white paper hospital gown and light blue sheets. IVs with fluids of almost every color either pumped in or pumped out from his frail body. His wrist was patched up with what looked like a whole package of sterile bandages. His skin was grey, his eyes surrounded by deep black pits. Any and all life seemed to exist in the tubes instead of his body. The doctor wouldn’t even let me in the room, I had to gape in the doorway like a fan. Still...it was proof that he was alive, that even though he had laid his wrist open he could still go on.“Um, could I ask you something?” I said to the doctor. He nodded. “Is there anyway you could...uh...test for diseases and shit like that...he’s been doing a lot of drugs and...well...” I trailed off into inarticulate mumblings.
“Yes. We can do that.” It felt like the utmost betrayal, not even trusting that he had been clean with his destruction.
Ryan gently guided me back outside, muttering comforting words and rubbing my shoulders. I knew that I would be back. Running was not an option this time.