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Picture this.
An hour-ish late to a gig I was supposed to be two hours early to, but the car is rolling up about eight minutes early to the main band. It is not my worst.
I’m 16 going on 28 – a denim jacket and some Victoria Secret perfume entitled Love Spell.
It’s broad daylight at 7:45PM.
Phoenix, Arizona.
On my left: 104 pounds of pure gothic rage, we’ve got my right-hand man – Charity.
On my right, I’m slamming the door to my mom’s Civic and Charity towards the club entrance.
When my first boyfriend broke up with me, I laid out on the kitchen floor and my body rang with a deep hollowness. Hormones and insecurity, there’s nothing worse than that pure desire – of the kind of love you don’t understand how to have.
Until 15 and a half, love meant these fading epic pains – turned pieces of a fantasy. A strong grasp, a trustworthy smile. Grazes along my spine, the soft pad of a hand’s palm.
Whispers in an ear. Tickles under the skin.
Something like moths.
When I stumbled into Wyatt – the shoulder graze of butterflies. It felt like how you were supposed to fall in love. Poems and handholding, sticky ice-cream and intense eye contact. He stumbled when I leaned into our first kiss.
The club is damp, pubescent humidity. I lock my gaze on a set of broad shoulders, stiff cotton hem. Twenty feet apart, rich mocha eyes lighten up. His face creases, tongue flicked across his teeth. Smirking. I can’t feel my toes.
“Next up: Room 17C!” Wyatt saunters on, followed by Zion and James. I miss the introductions getting a spot, “… Daveed couldn’t make it tonight, so lucky to have a bassist neighbor willing to help out in a bind: let’s hear it for Melrose!”
I cocked my head around Charity and there she was.
All but a black shag curtaining peaks to soft skin and smudged glitter,
I felt like something about this girl glowed.
I was enraptured by the big
The band begins to play
turquoise belt buckle hooked around her
They sing: “1! 2!”
bare waist.
1,2,3,4!
My palms are sweating, and this cropped hoodie –
Standing on the edge of the curbside!
Smashing Pumpkins, I want to remember.
Waiting for some cigarettes and a new ride!
Just barely make it out – her teeth between bangs
The heartburn got me thinking about this girl!
– gums and lips contorted in ecstasy and I just can’t take it.
Maybe steal some time, maybe make her mine!
Body whines, my eyes plead – ‘Look up from the bass!’
Charity slams into my ribcage – mosh has begun. My eyeline – it catches my boyfriend’s idling stare. I force up the corners of my mouth in a millisecond, eyes wiped of desire. His attempt at a serenade. I lock my attention on him, but it feels out of requirement. The boy is standing on an amp now, smiling down. Stunned to have so easily forgotten why I was here, but my face feels plastic. I can’t shake the shame of my curiosity for Melrose. He reaches vaguely in my direction. Why does my reaction feel prepared?
Strangled in a moment of romance that is fraudulent to me and I pretend to fight my way towards the stage bumper. I feel myself playing out the role – the series of ‘good girlfriend’ actions and I feel sick with the realization that I have been doing love on autopilot. Charity squeals at me. This is so fucked – I glance toward the other end of the stage to see Melrose scanning the audience.
I see Melrose.
Jaw slackened, heart racing, mind blank – the room was struck by lightning, it took everything in my power to keep standing. Her face is full of exciting grit, eyes full of heart and thinned arched brows flippantly dangerous. You could see the concentration in the cock of her mouth, she came at her instrument with a need rather than a talent. I floated towards her, I can’t assume what Wyatt must have thought, bobbing towards him and then gone.
The chord progression faded out and I got caught along the wall, tangled in fantasies. Suddenly, I caught myself in the mind of someone I never let myself be. Stripped bare, my thoughts swarmed around me as a confession – but no one seemed to take notice. The clothes were imagined for me.
The concert is ending and I have a decision to make. Do I feed the falsehood of romance, button-up into a costume and a life I imagined, or jump head first in the mystery of what I feel – naked and afraid?
The lights are coming up now. What do I do?
Angela Friedman is a third-year undergraduate student at UCSB, currently pursuing a double degree in Sociology and Film/Media Studies. Her decade of experience in storytelling through the performative arts – as a creative and as a performer – has encouraged Angela to expand artistic bounds and explore her auteur style through alternative mediums.
Once simply a writing hobbyist, “Melrose” is her first contemporary published work and hopefully it isn’t her last!
