Thunder

I once embraced the "starving artist" cliché wholeheartedly, belting out endless raspy laments in dive bars. Before dawn, I'd scrub grungy toilets, often cursing my talents on hands and knees, only to sling skunky pints until 2 am.

That's why when a prophetic, black and white image from 1978—four years ahead of our present day in 1974—found its way to me, my eyes were like lightning bolts striking the earth.

The photo in question was a picture of me and my band, one that up until later that night, wasn't even official yet. I nipped the corner of the monochromatic snapshot with my fingernail. My other hand gripped my stomach as sickening euphoria churned (and it wasn't just the quaaludes). Even in the muted hues of the picture, the light refracted off our Grammy statues like diamonds in a sunbeam.

It felt as though gravity momentarily ceased to exist—or maybe my spirit floated outside of my body altogether—as I stared at this momentous photograph. I had laid awake many nights, staring at the ceiling with an amber-tipped Marlboro in my mouth, yearning for such a reality. And there I stood, in a pivotal picture from a moment in time I had only ever fantasized about. I was a Grammy Award Winner.

Lindsey, my longtime, on again off again lover and musical counterpart, stood beside me in the image. We had toured together as a duo for almost a decade, but he'd been by my side since way back in highschool in the sixties.

Lindsey played guitar with the intricacy of an ant colony building its nest of precise tunnels and chambers. His songwriting was as though he'd turned your heart inside out and was reading it out loud to you. Mine and Lindsey's musical gifts fit together like a closed fist in an open palm. Anytime he'd perform alongside me, he was as tall as Everest. Lindsey was a mountain I would have risked death itself to conquer.

My relationship with Lindsey was just as hot and heavy as it was tumultuous, and I'd often used my intuitive nature as an excuse to keep us tethered. "We're here to change the world with our music, babe. You gotta trust me." I'd plead such fables with him whenever we'd find ourselves, yet again, on the rocks like a glass of Johnny Walker Red.

"My God, you're such a fox." Lindsey couldn't resist the fuck me eyes I flashed him from under my fringe. He was putty in my hands when I'd string together a poetic melody about him, on the spot. But even more so, he frothed at the mouth at my emotionally manipulative, tall tales of success. He was just as intoxicated by the idea of fame as I was. Our thirst for stardom was like squeezing water from a stone: it couldn't be quenched.

As I stared at the picture, my heart ticked like a metronome. The sight of me holding a Grammy—my Grammy—froze me, as though I was looking at Medusa herself. Even from a glossy still from the future, Lindsey's intense gaze penetrated mine. Behind his fiery glimmer, there was something deeper that pulled me in, though. There was a heaviness behind his eyes that not even his wildest dreams being realized could hide... not from me, anyway.

Like a submarine with a pin drop leak in it, it eventually burst from the pressure. Lindsey was heartbroken in the photo, and it drowned me in catharsis.

My insides rose up to my throat. The room seemed to distort around me, like I was suddenly standing in a Fun House. Winning the Grammy with the other band members—three people Lindsey and I were scheduled to meet later that evening, in hopes of joining their musical act—would cost us our romantic relationship, for good. The soul crushing pain of our hearts' agony would fuel our pens to paper, creating an album that would put us on the map as one of the world's top-selling bands of all time. We would finally tower high on our pedestals, a thousand proverbial miles away from each other.

My lip quivered as I held the photo against my chest. I swore I could smell Lindsey's musk of earth and tobacco as I imagined caressing the nape of his neck with my nose.