Sinister: post-show malaise disguised as art

[aaron tieger]

My roommate told me I should post this to the list.
Sorry if it's a bit long.

"Hardly Getting Over It"

The clouds rolled darkly across the black night sky
as Jenna trudged homeward through the cold Cambridge
streets. The last strains of the band she'd just seen
showed no signs of fading from her ears, and she rued
the picture in her head of her bedside table: next to
her diary and her driver's license lay three sets of
earplugs. It was hard to say which bothered her more,
for while the lack of earplugs meant that her head
would still be ringing in the morning, the fact that
she'd forgotten her ID had meant that she'd had to
cadge a few drinks off various members of the
audience: cadaverous indie-rock geeks who spent more
time checking out the guitar player's gear than the
gaggle of girls who tried in vain to catch an eye--
anyone's eye. The result of all her haggling was that
she was now barely drunk at all, and would be
completely sober by the time she walked the two miles
back to the house she was staying in, and so the
vague emptiness she was just starting to feel would
almost definitely deepen before she went to bed, and
would probably linger throughout the following day,
which was Sunday, which was bad enough without having
to add further reason to mope.

The pale blue-green of her wristwatch told her it was
1:45, and she still had about thirty minutes of
walking ahead of her. Her bobed and dyed black hair
fell about her face as she hung her head and thought
that after so many shows over the summer at the
Middle East, she should've learned by now not to get
seperated from her friends who drove.

She passed some bars, which were just beginning to
empty out for the night, and some shops and cafes,
all of which had long been closed. Neon remained on,
and the eerie glow the signs cast made Jenna feel
especially surreal as she regarded herself with
passing glances in windows. She sometimes wondered
what the point was in the dyed hair, combat boots,
and thrift-store dresses. She told herself it was
identity thing, that she dressed like everyone else
in order to feel that she belonged to something
reater than a fantasy world; she told herself it was
economical; she told herself the boys liked it. She
told herself many things, many times, and often she
believed some of them.

Eventually she found her way through Harvard Square,
past the sealed-up entrance to the Red Line (devoid
at this hour of the crusty punks she would look on
with a vague nostalgia), and out Mt. Auburn Street to
the house she was spending the month looking after.
Upstairs the answering machine followed her weary
movements with an unwavering red eye; the clothes
she'd rejected earlier in the night still littered
the bed; and the window was wide open, letting the
breeze she'd just left, the breeze of a loud, lonely
Saturday night at the end of an unusually cold
September.


     Christ, it was a little longer than I thought it
was. Anyway, now I'm off to work.

aaron
===
atieger at rocketmail.com
auger/anvil

"Strike another match, go start anew
and it's all over now, baby blue."
	--Bob Dylan




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