The Scar Boys

We Can Work It Out

When I got home that afternoon, I opened my guitar Case and stared at my Strat. It was a sleek guitar with an all black body, a black pick guard, and a maple neck and fret board. Id covered the beast with stickers acquired at various gigs-a skull and crossbones, Scooby-Doo, The Clash which were already starting to peel and flake.

There was a deep gouge next to the volume pot, the injury a reminder of smashing the guitar into Richie's ride cymbal on stage at the Bitter End. The mark was a badge of honor. I wanted to pick the guitar up, but something was stopping me. It was like touching it would rip a hole in the fabric of space and time and catapult me backward to a place I didn't want to be. I closed the case and used my foot to nudge the whole thing under my bed. Like it was diseased.

Even though I couldn't bring myself to play the guitar, I knew Dr. Kenny was right. I was being a real real dick. Everything I'd wanted had been laid at my feet, and all I'd ever done was complain and feel sorry for myself. Maybe that's the way I was wired and I couldn't do anything else. But maybe I could.

I decided to call Richie.

"Dude!'" he answered when he heard my voice. "Where the fuck you been?"

"Just kind of hanging around," I said. "How're you doing?"

Richie spent the next ten minutes describing every last detail of his new skateboard-its length, the kind of wheels it had, the paisley pattern on its underside-as well as the time he'd spent hanging out with the local skate punks and riding an improvised pipe in Valhalla. Turns out he'd been bit by the skateboarding bug when we were in Athens and couldn't shake it.

"You playing drums?" I asked, when he finished.

'Yeah, of course. That and killing time until school starts."

"I'm kind of jealous you get to go back to high school." Richie laughed. "You hated that place."

"Yeah, well, the devil you know." We made a plan to get together that coming weekend and were about to hang up when Richie asked, "So have you been to see Johnny yet?"

"No," I said, "I'm pretty sure he won't want to see me"

"I don't know, Harry," he answered. "The dude's in pretty bad shape. He wound up not going up to Syracuse. He's talking like he's never gonna go." I wasn't surprised to hear that. Trauma is great at changing plans.

"A visit might do him good," Richie added. Not knowing what else to say, I muttered, "Okay" and
we said good-bye. I knew that the growing chorus-Richie's voice now added to Dr. Kenny's and to my parents'was right, that I really did need to go see Johnny. Problem is, I didn't want to. It didn't take a genius to figure out that I was scared, that I felt responsible for everything that'd happened. But I wasn't a genius (and even though I know admitting this won't help me get into your college, I can tell you that I'm still not a genius), and I can be thick as molasses when I want to. 

So if you had asked me back then, I would've told you that I didn't want to see Johnny because I didn't care about him. Not because I was afraid. Cheyenne was a different story. I was definitely afraid of seeing her. I didn't want to let the universe taint the memory of our kiss or of the gig at the fund-raiser. They were the only things holding me together since we'd left Athens, and I was wrapping them in a protective cocoon.

But the universe, as I seem destined to learn again and again, has a funny way of changing the story. The day after talking to Richie I decided to go for a walk. A long walk. A walk like the one I took that night in Athens.

I moved with the energy of an over-wound toy and did everything I could to think about nothing. I tried counting states and listing presidents. I went through the periodic table and Triple Crown winners (baseball and horse racing). I calculated that with sixty-two years left (if I made my life expectancy), I had a mere fifteen presidential elections, Olympics, or World Cups left to enjoy; only seven hundred and fifty full moons to admire; just over three thousand two hundred New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles to attempt; less than twenty-three thousand mornings to open my eyes; and fewer than two billion beats left in my heart, a large but horrifyingly finite number.