The Song Remains the Same

Chapter One: The Only Drug I Ever Needed

Chapter One: The Only Drug I Ever Needed

October 14th, 2014

I think I know why people like the idea of music so much. Music is a better drug than the heroine they're shooting themselves up with or the coke they're sniffing every minute of every day. Music makes people feel something incredible, something that any normal event could never do for you. It makes you feel alive.

Some say music brings them into a whole other world, but for others, it brings them into a whole other universe completely. A universe that's so perfect that not even the high you get from acid could relate to the feeling it brings.

Music was the only drug I ever needed in my life. It was like I never needed anything more- if I had music, I had everything. I can still remember the days when I'd steal some of my father's old albums and just play them as I laid on my floor like a rag doll, doing nothing but hum to the tune at hand. The sounds would creep into me like drug-laced smoke and I'd feel that high coming over me as the rhythms and melodies blared louder than a wailing baby.

Almost harmoniously I've found myself being surrounded by the very thing that grounded me to the earth beneath my feet. Almost more of just a pastime than a job (since I didn't exactly need any money) I've come to find myself working at the only place that seemed to ever draw me in past the doors. To everyone else it was called Trax, but to me I just called it home. At times it would even sometimes feel like more of a home than the one I'm legally bound to. It had all I ever needed in the warehouse set aside on the streets of Port Angeles for just the pure love of music and even though I've spent the better half of my life in the shelves of the place I feel like I could go through them again and again until I've memorized every single album, CD, and cassette littered around in the damn shop.

This place is almost an anomaly for a city like Port Angeles, and I use city loosely since there's less people here than in a normal town somewhere else. In Washington there's never been much to do, but for some reason this little record store placed perfectly in the middle of the shady streets of the city was something few and far between. There's always that signature look on the new faces that pass through the door (the few that ever make it here) of amazement at the "ancient" things we sell here, as if they'd never heard of vinyl before. Except if you ask me there's nothing ancient about a few vinyls or tapes- they're more modern to me than any digital music.

The thing was it always puzzled me why people would see Trax but keep on walking, as if it were some place where only gloomy hippies spent their time getting high while listening to Bob Marley. It wasn't like Washington was any more exciting- the entire state's like an Antarctic winter, only the rain seems to be the thing that never seems to stop. I guess I shouldn't be complaining though since all I have to really do at work is occasionally flip over a record I love and help the usual customers that seem to come in on a regular schedule.

It's a Friday night and of course being the party girl of the city I'm working in a desolate store at 10 at night while the rest of the world's out doing God knows what. Sure I'd love to go out and party-it-up, but I'm me and they're them so it just wouldn't mesh well. Spending my nights cooped up in Trax isn't all that bad. I've got my music, my latte, and my magazines and I'm as well off as I'll ever be.

"Hey you can go ahead and clock out if you want Dani," a voice suddenly sounds behind me, making my heart skip a beat and my hand to jerk so much that I almost ripped the page of the Teen Vogue magazine I was flipping through. I'd almost forgotten that my boss was working tonight (since he never seems to be around in the first place), and I turn around in my swivel seat to see the guy's tired eyes as he leans against the doorframe of his office.

"We're open until 11 though shouldn't I stick around?" I honestly didn't mind staying out any later than I already was- it wasn't like going home was any more eventful than this dingy place.