The Scar Boys

Hallelujah

The fund-raiser turned out to be a keg party. A big keg party. A really, really, big keg party. Tony and Chuck made crude signs and enlisted the help of their friends to post them all over town:

Help the Scar Boys finish their tour. Rock and Roll fund-raiser at 810 Hill Street this Friday (three nights hence). $10 to get in, larger donations accepted. Live music, cold brew, and riding the pipe. We start tapping the keg at 9 p.m. Spread the word.

From what they told us, the fund-raiser was the only thing anyone was talking about. Athens was like that. It was a small town and word spread fast, especially when it involved beer. There were no formal invitations, there was no arm twisting, just the grapevine. The party was, according to Tony and Chuck, going to be huge.

Like always, I stayed away from other people, so I had no idea if they were blowing smoke or not, but I figured not, and I started to freak myself out. This was going to be the first time we played in public without Johnny, and the first time I would be singing in front of other people. I had no idea what to do, or worse, what to expect of myself.

On the afternoon of the fund-raiser I wandered around the house waiting for the sun to go down. I was trying to kill time, but I think it was killing me instead. I finished an unfinished crossword puzzle. I watched Mayberry R.F.D. on the television in Tony's room.

I took two walks around the block, counting the individual cement squares on the sidewalk (567). I even washed the dishes. I ran out of things to do and wound up on the back porch chain-smoking, staring at the empty pipe and the crude stage we'd built in front of it, and going over the set lists in my head, again and again and again.

The sun was low over the horizon, throwing tangerine soup at a herd of passing clouds, when I heard the door close behind me. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn't realize it was Cheyenne until she was sitting next to me.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," I answered.

She seemed to collect her thoughts for a moment and then said, "This doesn't feel right."

"What?"

"Playing this party without Johnny. Finishing the tour without Johnny. Being here, without Johnny."

Since the police had stopped our jam session three mornings earlier, Chey had kept mostly to herself. She stayed in her room, only coming out when we gave her updates on the plans for the fund-raiser, or to rehearse.

"So what do you want to do?" I asked, trying to be gentle. "Do you want to go home?"

"No," She said, "but it still doesn't feel right."

"I think we sound pretty goof as a trio," I offered.

"We do." She kind of smiled. "Somehow that makes it worse."

"Look, Chey, if you want to go, we'll all go. We'll do whatever you want to do."

She took my hand and I squeezed her fingers, maybe a little too hard. The next thing I knew, she was kissing my mangled cheek. Her lips were soft. Softer than her hands. Softer than anything in the world. They were the most wonderful things I'd ever felt in my life.

"Thank you, Harry," she said.

"For what?"

"For still being here."

Without think about what I was doing, I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her neck a little squeeze. I could feel her muscles release all of their tension, like they just needed human contact. She turned her face to mine.

"Cheyenne . . ." was all I could muster. Our faces were so close that it was mostly an accident when our lips touched. Both of us had our eyes open, and we both froze. Then she closed her eyes and kissed me.

I didn't know what to do. Literally. Was I supposed to pucker up? Press my mouth forward? Open it? Jam my tongue in there? Luckily, kissing is one of those animal instincts I guess we all have, because before I knew what was happening, I was kissing her back---innocent middle school kisses, gentle, PG-rated kisses. 

I would later learn---researching it, like Dr. Kenny taught me to do---that in those few seconds I was kissing Cheyenne, more than thirty muscles in my face and neck were working in concert as a dozen cranial nerves were busy zipping messages from those muscles to the pleasure centers of my brain--the right ventral tegmental and right caudate nucleus if you're keeping score --- which woke up with a vengeance, probably for the first time since I'd weaned off of methadone.  

I learned that Chey's kiss were causing the posterior lobe of my pituitary gland to release a hormone called oxytocin into my blood, filling me with feeling of generosity, social connectedness, and all over goodness. (Oxytocin is a drug that can turn any rational person into the village idiot, and is just crying out for someone to market it. Hey, FAP, maybe I should major in marketing!)

And had I been paying attention, I would've noticed that my blood pressure and heart rate were spiking, my pupils were dilating, that I was getting seismic level cutis anserina (goosebumps), and that I was horripilating in the best possible way. (Some more SAT words for your reading pleasure.)

Interesting stuff, but pointless. The truth is, I was beyond reason, beyond thought. It was the closest thing to playing guitar I'd ever experienced. I can't find my own words to describe kissing Cheyenne, so I'll share a Chinese proverb we'd learned in tenth grade English:

Kissing is like drinking salted water
You drink, and your thirst increases

A total of five seconds later---though the concept of time had lost all meaning---something snapped Cheyenne back to the moment and she pulled away.

"Harry, I'm. . .I'm sorry."

Cheyenne got up and walked down the driveway. She was gone.