Gerard
I remember once I went missing; because I was the next Jim Morrison and life was a bag of shit.

Going missing is a loose term. Missing was to closely associated with lost; like me 'missing' Mikey's lighter at a house party. I think missing shouldn't be used so loosely, that it has a much different meaning than lost. Missing is the absence of something; missing doesn't mean gone. The lighter was gone, lost.

Frank said I was 'missing', and in forty nine seconds summed up everything in a bare minimum way like he was good at doing. I think that was my first time to go missing; whenever I go missing it's because I'm lost inside myself.

The second time I went missing was the week inside my apartment; skipping out on life when we had a few more songs to finish up on the record. The same as I did the first time; but unlike last time he didn't send out a podcast to try and find me.

I was always found.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm still going to be the next Jim Morrison; if I have until I'm twenty-seven years old. I'm twenty-four years old and half the time life still seems like a bag of shit, but lately I haven't been writing notes about it and I've been drinking diet coke instead of whiskey.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm going to live to be old. Older than twenty-seven, old enough to get white hair and wrinkles around my eyes that aren't from pretending to smile for paparazzi. I wonder if I'll be old and say, I was one messed up kid. I'll be old and tell someone, when I was young I went missing twice and both times my best friend Frank found me.

Found me.

Lately I've been wondering if I found you, or if you found me or what finding is all about. I think finding is about chance, about circumstances. I wonder what led up to you moving to Los Angeles, what led up to you asking me something and how it happened that we met again after four years. Chance, fate, circumstances?

If what happened was a finding, then we found one another at either the best or worst time possible. Half of me wishes that you met me when I was cleaned up, when I wasn't taking Adderal before going to meet you and Xanex after. The other half of me says that no, I found you at the perfect time. That maybe if we didn't find one another when we did, I would be the next Jim Morrison.

This time I make sure there's no paint on my face, no smudge under my eye.

When Lindsey first went in that close, I knew what she was doing but I didn't push her away. If she started going at it I would have, because I didn't want her to be embarrassed if she remembered the next morning. But I thought once was alright. One kiss.

I see her in my review mirror when she approaches my car, her own car keys dangling from her index finger. Her own car is still in the bar parking lot.

She smiles when she opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. With her comes the smell of early morning air, perfume, and hangovers.

“Hey,” she says, sheepishly. She swings the keys in a loop on her index finger, and catches them tightly in the palm of her hand. It's only when I notice just how tightly she is holding them that she might be as afraid as I am.

On the drive to her apartment, I had drilled myself in all the things I was going to say to make myself seem refined in her eyes. I had thought of all these things to say that would make up for the way I was the day she came to my apartment, things I could say so that maybe she wouldn't think I was actually like that. I didn't want her to know what a hopeless person I am, didn't want her to think of me as the way I was that day.

But as soon as I saw her walking towards my car all I had built up inside to say fell away. I didn't forget them; but when I saw her nude, hungover face I realized I didn't need to say any of that. She looked human, and I all the nervousness I had slowly began to dissolve.

Me and her both start to talk at the same time, followed by complete silence when we both start blurting things out at the same movement.

“I fucked up,” I say finally when she lets me go first. “I fucked up, really big.”

She shakes her head, rubs her eyes all over. “Oh my gosh, Gerard.” Laughter shakes her shoulders, and slowly she uncovers her makeup-less eyes. “Gerard, Gerard, Gerard.”

Hearing her say my name over and over again brings an immense amount of comfort, before I know it me and her are laughing together. Both of us equally fucked up people, sitting in a parking lot together. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

When we're done, I wipe my eyes and start up my car again.

“I really don't know what to say.”

“It's alright...” she starts slowly. “I'm not upset or ashamed of you.”

I swallow, struggle to find my words. I've never been like this with anyone, respected anyone like I do her. I want to be real with her, even if being real with her means it shatters any good image she had of me in the beginning.

“I, uh...” I stare at the traffic light that turns red right as I think I can make it through. “I'm sorry.”

“I don't think you should beat yourself up over it.” She catches my gaze.

And she is one of the most human people I know. Four years later and I still can see it.

“Shit.” I turn away. “When I met you again at the restaurant, I was hoping you wouldn't ever see me that way. I was hoping I could play myself off as being cool and professional, hoping you wouldn't find out.”

“I don't think anyone is actually professional, and when they act it they're pretending.”

“I hope you don't think of me way to differently,” I say, rub the bridge of my nose. “It hasn't always been like that, I haven't always been like that.”

“I've had my falling out points,” she says carefully. “Maybe not that intensely, but I do understand.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

We're silent for a moment, the light turns green.

“I'm trying to clean myself up again. It's only recently got this bad, I've never had such a bad low like that once before. Sometimes it's like I've got these great years, when everything goes perfect, the band is making it big time—”

“Then it all just kind of goes to shit? Like, it's still good, but something inside of you snaps.”

“Exactly.” I pull on my lower lip with my teeth, release.

“I know what you're saying.” She plays with her car keys. “I've had times like that, and that's why I moved out here. I felt like I needed to escape, leave everything behind and start out new.”

“I'm glad you did.” We're getting close to the bar, and I wish we weren't. “I do mean that.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I regret moving, mostly when I feel lost in a city I don't know. But mostly I think I'm glad I did it, I really do.”

She points out her car in the parking lot, we laugh about how she would have tried to drive home drunk while she still doesn't know her way around L.A if I hadn't gotten a cab for her.

“So, about last night...” Her hand is on the door handle, her face gets flushed. “Yeah.”

“It's cool.”

“I'm so, so sorry if I did something really embarrassing that I don't remember now.”

I smile. “You can call me drunk if you ever need to and I'll drive you home.”

“I don't plan on getting drunk again, for a long time. Thanks for driving me here.”

“Okay, Lindsey.”

“Bye Gerard.”

It's a brief hug, but her arms wrap around my neck tightly and suddenly I realize how much more vulnerable she is than I thought. Like she's just as terrified of life as I am, like maybe she's wondering how long she's going to make it in a big city with virtually no contacts.

As she's getting out of my car hastily, my voice starts before my mind even is acknowledging what I'm saying. “Wait, Lindsey—”

She pauses, looks in through the door as she's shutting it.

“If you ever get stuck, or you feel lost in a city you don't know, you can just call me. I know this place like the back of my hand, and if you're drunk I'll drive you home. Or I can just bring you back to your car the next morning again.”

Something flashes across her eyes, she nods. “I think I'll definitely be holding you up on that one way sooner than later; but I won't be drunk.”

“Bye.”

*

Needles terrify me; beyond the point of logic. They scare me to the point of vomiting, to the point of holding myself, to the point were no one can even reason with me. My mom used to sew a lot, and when I was three years old I stepped on a needle that had been caught in our carpet. It went straight through my foot, and I remember it as vividly as if it had been last week instead of decades.

When I first go in the room and am casting a wary eye over the top of the night stand, Jenny tells me she made sure there were none around her room when she found out I was coming, that she made the nurses do a complete search.

She did the same thing the day before when I came, and the day before that. Even though she went to that extent, the thought of needles still makes my throat feel tighter than it should. At one point Frank started getting shit-loads of tattoos all at once, and he always wanted me to go to his tattoo sessions so he had someone to talk to but I always refused because of needles.

My visit today is only going to be brief; I'm supposed to be at the studio in ten minutes. I'm not blatantly skipping this time, but I'm still putting Jenny before singing which a few people might protest loudly about if they know why I'm late.

“Did Mikey come by yesterday?” I ease into the seat by her bedside; it used to be a wooden chair provided by the hospital but Frank stubbornly brought his own because he said the hospital one was uncomfortable.

She nods, gestures at a vase of daisies perched by the tv on the other side of the room. “He brought that. He was frustrated because the florist was going out of business and that was all they had left, but they only cost him two bucks or something.”

I smile vaguely; it sounds exactly like something Mikey would do. He was always picking up little thing with little or no sentimental value; lighters with boot-leg images and other stupid knick-knacks. If it was cheap, and someone told him it was on sale, he'd probably buy it. There's been many times I find old comic books in bulk outside my apartment door via Mikey, originating from garage sales or pawn shops.

There's still empty coffee cups on her nightstand from yesterday, she isn’t supposed to have excessive amounts of caffeine but I had told her I wouldn’t tell her doctor. Me and her both know there was no point to her denying herself anything at this point; if I was in her situation I'd probably be smoking four packs of smokes a day and drinking espresso when I wasn't smoking.

All of us that have been visiting her have been bringing her things with almost every visit. Today I came to give her some pages ripped out of my journal, folded carefully and stuck in an envelope with her name on it. I finally felt like it was time, finally felt like the song and I were both ready to be presented to her. I felt like I was able to do this now, wasn't questioning myself anymore. Like I'd finally made peace with them—

“I recorded the song a few days ago.” I swallow, pull it out of my coat pocket.

Some nights when I'm drunk alone at home I'll sing to myself. I don't know how I sound, but I'll pull out all my lyric notebooks and sing and sing until I pass out. The past few months, the only song I'd been singing was hers; when I was at my lowest I was singing Bulletproof Heart and now I think I know why.

When she got sick, her eyes seemed to overtake her head. They dwarfed the rest of her features, became the most prominent thing in her face as soon as she lost her body's weight. Now they follow me with a confused look, concerned.

“I thought you were done with that. I thought you said that that story was something you wanted to recycle instead of reusing it in a song.”

“I did it.” I gently open her hand and press the envelope in her palm, close her fingers around it.

“Is this the song, Gee? I...”

“This is the song, the same way I wrote it the first night. I didn't change it at all.”

The night I wrote the song I called my mom and we talked on the phone for three hours; I hadn't talked to her in almost a year before that night. After the phone call, I tore pages out of my sketchpad and made my way around each thin page with a lighter, until I was covered in the ashes of all my best ideas. I went on a destructive rampage, just to punish myself for being a shitty member of my family, for being a shitty cousin to Jenny, for being a shitty human. The song is linked to those memories from a terrible night, looking at it felt like I was punishing myself for the longest time.

“Songs don't ever stop being replayed, Gerard,” she says softly. “It'll always be there.”

I struggle with my words. “I want it to always be there, I want everyone to hear your song again and again. Shit, I don't care if it becomes a radio song and whenever I turn my car on it plays. I'm going to make you platinum so that no one forgets about you and Frank.”

Her hands are shaking slightly when she takes it, looks at me wordlessly. I'll never forget the way she opened it, the way she covered her mouth and how her eyes filled. I'll never forget Jenny, never forget how she forgave me.

Notes

Below is the actual podcast from when Gerard went missing 'life is a bag of shit and I'm the next Jim Morrison'

'People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.' -Jim Morrison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iwNtBb7CqQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_morrison