Blazed (11 page)

Back to the songs now.

It sorta worked for me doing what I did. Kids really dug it. After a month, both songs had over ten thousand listens, and kids were sharing them on social media and writing reviews of Tiger Stitches's music.

So I pushed forward with it. I decided to release a four-song EP.

The songs were:

1. “Hard Palms”

2. “Night Diamond”

3. “Fogman”

4. “She's Pushing Her Luck (She's Still Winning)”

I needed a better place to record this time, though. After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, the only place that made sense was the band room at my school. So I staked out the place for two weeks. I snuck out of my house at night and biked to the school and did surveillance and figured out who came and went after school hours and before school hours. I got the schedules down perfectly. I saw some pretty incredible shit too.

Like the head volleyball coach, saw her and this freshman girl, who made all-conference, pull into the school parking lot together late at night. The passenger-side door opened, and the dome light came on, and the freshman chick got out, but not before kissing the coach on the lips.

Also, I saw two of the English teachers and the head librarian smoking a blunt in the parking lot one night while AC/DC blared from one of their car stereos.

Rad.

The most fucked thing I saw, though, was the blow job that my, like, fifty-year-old, married-with-three-kids science teacher got from a student, Byron Malone. It disgusted me so much. It pissed me off real bad. Dude called me a faggot at least ten times every day. He would swing at the schoolbooks in my hands while I walked down the hallway. Sometimes it worked and my books would go slamming to the ground, which everyone seemed to get a big kick out of. A couple of times, when I wasn't paying attention, that turd burglar pegged me in the back of the head with a basketball. All this pseudo-macho hate talk directed at me and there he was, on his knees, blowing some overweight science teacher with gray hair, glasses, and brown-stained teeth.

Man, what a loser. I mean, to call me a fucking faggot and a queer every day to get some laughs out of the blubber butts who attend that awful school. Then I see him actually being gay with some disgusting older man.

I was so upset.

I also thought it was sort of funny.

How he was the one on his knees with a dick in his mouth. My first reaction was to expose this douche, out both of them, but then I decided not to. Doing something like that woulda made me no better than him. Actually, it
woulda put me on a lower level, and that's not something I could've lived with. I'm better than that meathead. I'm better than all those trolls.

Like, I'm sure he hates himself, which is why he was so cruel to me to begin with. Just total deflection. If you call enough people a faggot enough times, I guess everyone else thinks it's impossible for you to be one. So I let
that
sleeping dog lie, although I did extract a little bit of revenge against that terrible dude.

One afternoon I snuck out of the school building after I asked to use the bathroom. I walked out to the parking lot and found his new Beamer and broke into it with a hanger. Then I took my switchblade and cut a small hole in the upholstery on the back of the driver's-side seat, dumped a can of sardines into it, then sealed it back up with superglue. I also slashed his back tires and keyed that nice paint job.

Anyway, on the night of April 13, when the janitor left the school for the night and the coast was totally fucking clear, I climbed to the roof and pulled an amp, a keyboard, and two guitars up to me with the three bedsheets I'd tied together to use like a rope.

Then I popped open this access panel with a crowbar, and I was in.

For the next nine hours, I played my fucking heart out and recorded my four amazing tracks. The acoustics of the room were pretty all right (so much better than my tiny garage). It was so sick. So dope. Then, before I left the
building, as the sun slowly rose outside, I took a piece of chalk and wrote this on the blackboard:

Ten best bands of the new millennium:

1. LCD Soundsystem

2. Beach House

3. M83

4. Thee Oh Sees

5. Lamborghini Dreams

6. Youth Lagoon

7. The Fresh & Onlys

8. Tycho

9. Future Islands

10. Deerhunter

Then I wrote,
Run out of school now & go listen & learn, bitches!!

Then,
Dickpigs! All of you!

Then,
James Morgan is God!

And then,
Purity Ring & Salem rule too.

Also,
The principal is a total d-bag. Fucking Hallway Monster Booger Pussy! Yeah!

Then I threw away all the stained black pieces of foil, the empty six-pack of Coronas I'd taken from my house, and the half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich I'd made, and fucking bailed back home.

When it was time for me to get up and go to school
just an hour later, I told my mother that I wasn't feeling well, then shoved a finger down my throat when she wasn't looking to make myself throw up (which I did. A couple times actually).

My mother called the school and told them I wasn't going to be there. She left a couple of hours later with her Realtor to go look at buildings for the dance school she's been talking about starting for at least ten years and never will. She just never will do it. She doesn't have the toughness to do
that.
To be responsible for more than just me. I mean, she's struggling just trying to take care of me.

While she was gone, I got to work mixing the tracks. This time I used Pro Tools. She bought me the program after I played her my first two recordings. When she heard the songs, water flooded her eyes.

Then this soft, sweet smile spread across her face. I remember thinking how I hadn't seen her smile in three days when that happened.

“Blood Zebra” ended and there was silence for at least a minute. My heart was beating fast. The thing is, I don't share my art with my mother. She knows I'm great at the piano because she hears me practice and comes to my recitals. But those songs aren't mine. They're somebody else's.

Truth is, before that night, I was terrified to show her my own, original work, because she's a harsh critic. She takes art
that
serious. It's as important as breathing to her. My mother's favorite quote is from Nietzsche: “Art is
the highest task and proper metaphysical activity of this life.” That quote lives in at least ten different places in our house.

My mother was a pure artist. At one point, she was considered one of the top artists in her medium. That's insane. She was that good.

I've seen tapes of her dancing. She was mesmerizing onstage, under those sharp, hot lights. Me, I know nothing about dancing. Nothing about the ballet. It doesn't interest me. But every time I watched her on those tapes, I was transcended into the story she was telling with her body. Watching her dance was like reading a book. I understood what she was saying and I didn't want it to end.

This is why I was so nervous to play her the songs. When I was recording them, I knew she wasn't paying attention. She was doing drugs and drinking scotch and watching Terrence Malick movies in the living room.

I've heard her scathing opinions about people's work that isn't up to her standards. The things she's said to describe their underachieving, lifeless work, and the cruel, cold delivery and pitch of her words. Hearing something like that from your own mother will wrap your heart in ice and fuck with you for the rest of your life.

It's nasty. And I'm her son. And all she wants me to be in life is a successful, beautiful, popular artist. There's a standard there as high as the heavens, and it would break our relationship if she didn't like it.

My mother, she started clapping. She even stood up like people did for her after she performed.

She loved it. That's when I asked her for the Pro Tools. She delivered that to me, and I delivered my four-song EP,
Peril Alley
, as Tiger Stitches, a week later.

To date, each song has gotten over twenty thousand plays.

To date, Tiger Stitches is the best fucking name ever.

After another gulp of wine, I grab my pen and start cribbing the third verse. Maybe three minutes later, it's done.

And then I play “Black Vulture” for the first time ever all the way through.

I'M WALKING OUT OF THE
basement bathroom when I hear a door open upstairs and this girl laughing and high heels thumping against the floor.

I grab my tinfoil and hit the rest of the pill real quick. Then I look around the room, panicked, then spot a garbage can. I throw away the foil as the heels begin descending the stairs to the basement.

Wipe the sweat from my face with my hand and wish I was upstairs in my bedroom.

Then I see Kristen and do not wish that anymore. Not at all.

The girl is so lovely. So pretty. Just absolutely perfect-looking. I mean, she looks nearly identical to Ivanka Trump. I'm totally serious. It's sort of bizarre, actually. Kinda creepy in the way that kinda creepy can be super awesome.

She's got this really healthy blond hair that's parted in the middle and hangs down past her shoulders. She's prolly an inch taller than me. Her body is very lean and her skin is tan. Her lips are thin and her teeth are snow-white and her eyes are bright blue.

Kristen stops at the bottom of the stairs and grins. “Well,
hey there,” she goes, then winks. “Another stripper waiting for me when I get home. My mother is so rad.”

I don't get it at first until I realize I'm still shirtless and we've never met before.

I'm embarrassed now and I cover my face with my hand.

“She's got the best taste, too,” Kristen continues. “You're a total babe.”

Swinging my eyes back on her, I say, “I'm Jaime. Your stepbrother. The kid that got made when Justin donated his sperm.”

“Ha,” she goes, and starts walking toward me. “You refer to your father as a sperm donor. It's nice to know there's someone else in the world who does that too.”

Kristen stops just a few inches from me. She smells like Chanel, cigarettes, peaches, and booze.

It ain't bad.

“Hi,” she goes.

“Yo.”

She sighs, then reaches toward my face with her hand.

“Whoa.” I duck away. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Helping you.”

“With what?”

She pulls a black compact from her handbag and flips it open, holding up the small mirror in front of me.

“Fuck,” I groan.

“What is that?”

“It's nothing,” I say.

“It's not nothing.”

“It's nothing important,” I say, looking around for a towel.

“I got you.” She pulls out a couple of tissues from her bag and a bottle of water which she opens and pours onto the tissue. “Take it,” she says.

“Thank you.”

I run the wet tissue all over my face a couple of times to rub off the black from the foil I used to smoke.

That shit can get everywhere.

It
does
get everywhere.

When I'm done, Kristen grabs the tissues from my hand and says, “Missed a couple spots, Jaime.”

She leans right into my face and carefully cleans off the rest of the black.

She winks again. “I like people who still play in the dirt. Never growing up is so much fun.”

I roll my eyes when she turns around. A large bulge has formed in the crotch of my jeans, and I quickly readjust myself as best I can.

“Do you often hang around in strange houses without your shirt on and drink very expensive bottles of wine by yourself?”

“Excuse me?”

“This.” She picks up the bottle I've been drinking and turns back to me. “This is a hundred-dollar bottle of pinot noir you've been smashing. I'm surprised this wasn't all over your face too, you messy, messy boy.”

“Shit,” I say. “I had no idea it was that expensive. It was sitting in a basket. Like a gift basket.”

“What's that gotta do with anything?”

I shrug. “It's a gift basket.”

“My mother and your father have very rich friends. Every gift in this house is fucking expensive.”

“Right.”

She puts the bottle to her lips and takes a drink. “Tasty,” she goes. “Out of all the wine in this house, you open this one. You've got great taste.”

“It was a lucky pick.”

“You can't say that here, dude.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything you choose while you're staying here is because you've got great taste. It'll be easier for you that way.”

“Why?”

“Just because.” She takes another drink. “People expect that.”

“I don't give a fuck about anyone's expectations. Like, if not living up to expectations is gonna be a
thing
this week, I'll have a few things to toss around that'll trump my lack of experience in the area of red wine.”

“Great,” she says, and takes another pull.

I like her a little bit already, which is nice because I wasn't planning to.

“Come on,” she goes, waving me over to her. “Come
here.” She hands me the bottle of wine and then gently pushes me onto the couch and stands over me with her hands on her hips.

I take a pull and eye her up and down and up and down.

She's wearing these black floral lace stockings and a very large white Tearist T-shirt with the sleeves cut off of it and a V cut down the middle of it. A large silver necklace with a red pendant hangs from her neck. Rings wrap around every finger. And a pair of scuffed-up white heels cover her feet.