you are supposed to feel amped in Vegas: fists full of cash, dancing for the groping lights, drawn to the seductive smell of brief, hot luck. The buildings seem blanketed in synthetic fabrics stretched tight, the pavement pulsing. You’re supposed to wear a short skirt, to feel like you’re perpetually getting finger-banged by a glittering, generous angel you’ll never have to see in the daylight. Things like water and fresh air aren’t necessary for survival in Vegas, it’s all sweat and swagger, booze and amphetamines, coughing up sequins into your morning-after cocktail. If you don’t leave Vegas with a UTI, you haven’t done it right.
But we’re smart about it this tour. The van stops on the outskirts just short of the fantasy. I feel physically depleted, but it’s my twenty-second birthday, and the hangover has settled into some serious birthday blues. I want to do something. For the first time in ages, I feel a little homesick, probably because I usually wake up on my birthday to a call from my dad singing into the phone. Last year, Amita made me pancakes and we spent the day playing hooky and watching John Hughes movies until we went out dancing. I usually visit my granny at some point close to my birthday, and she makes me a molasses cake in the shape of a bunny, like she did when I was little. But no one can easily phone me here, though Granny and my dad know my tour schedule and have my management’s number in case of emergencies. So I am kind of holding out hope, feeling fragile with my coke hangover and needing a nap. The guys want to go gambling, but I don’t want to spend my birthday inside a dark casino, surrounded by desperate energy and potentially sketchy buffet food. I tell them to go win me some birthday money.
When I wake up, the room smells musty and I decide it’s too nice out to spend the afternoon waiting for a phone call. I debate phoning my dad, just to hear the voice of someone who has known me for longer than a few years, but talking to my dad these days is like reading those free typo-ridden magazines at health food stores that tell you you can avoid cancer by tucking crystal into your pockets. I was used to it; all the parents at Sunflower had been alternative medicine types and free spirits. Taylor’s mom, Tegan, for example, wouldn’t even look up if Taylor was standing on top of the chicken coop preparing to take flight with wings made out of a gingham tablecloth. She wanted to honour our experiments. My mom was the exception. She was the one who took us to the doctor for actual medicine, not just treating us with essential oils and goldenseal. She noticed when Taylor was just pretending to know how to read, and then sat with her every night practising her letters. One time, she told everyone we were going to the thrift store for new sneakers, but really we were getting vaccinated. That would have blown shit up had the others found out. In my memories, my mother was always watching over us. So when she left the farm, we knew we were on our own. We knew we could do whatever we wanted to, but we also knew that our only real parent had flown the coop. Our fathers and the other adults felt like taller kids who knew how to fix things.
That was why it was so weird when she left, out of all the adults. Most of them taking off wouldn’t have been that strange in the grand scheme of things. But my mom, Juniper, she was the one who knew about the world and seemed to care about our well-being the most. Why would the one who was the most invested drop off the face of the earth and never come back, or call, or write, or somehow check in to see if we were okay? Didn’t she ever wonder how we turned out?
Sometimes I fantasized that she had hit her head and had amnesia, like on the soaps I watched with Granny after school in grade eight. Or she had a brain worm and it made her crazy and she thought her name was Brenda and she worked in a shoe store somewhere in Alabama. Maybe she got lost in the woods and became feral.
Then one day in my first year of university I was on the subway, and a kid was screaming and throwing his food on everyone and the mom was shushing uselessly at him, and I thought, Oh, oh, this is why. Being a parent is actually a black hole of never-ending sorrow and boredom and maybe that’s why she left.
I decide to at least check my email, so I find an Internet café in a nearby strip mall. I check my inbox about once a month, and while I wait for the dial-up connection to go through, I doodle in my journal and eat a pack of cherry Twizzlers. I am still feeling a bit hungover.
I expect to see a birthday message or two, and I do have one from Amita, who catches me up on all the goings-on back in Montreal. There’s another message, from my high school crush Steve—random! I’m not sure if this is still your email address, but happy birthday. I saw you on SNL! I press delete.
It’s a strange feeling, to be known by strangers, but to feel lonely. I suppose it’s a cliché. When we play festivals—which we actually are doing here in Vegas—and I watch some of the bands, how closed off they are from even the other bands, so accustomed to being asked for photos and followed around, it does look lonely. I’m beginning to get a tiny taste of that.
I make my way back to the motel and drag a blue chaise longue beside the pool. Everything about the motel is made to look fancy, but up close everything is totally cheap—plastic flowers, plastic wineglasses, inexpensive wine disguised in champagne bottles, clusters of plastic jewels bedazzled onto the furniture. I massage my sore hip with some Tiger Balm, and pull my grey tube dress a little further toward my knees.
The pool is the nose in the C-shaped smile of drive-up rooms, and two little girls in matching lime-green bathing suits cannonball into the water while their father sips a take-out cup of coffee on another chaise longue. He is the kind of guy who winks at me when his daughters aren’t looking, and I briefly consider how his skin might feel against mine. But then I see a Confederate flag tattoo on the biceps he is faux-casually flexing.
Most depressing birthday ever? I write in my journal.
I draw a sad, wilting flower before I remember this is probably a hangover mood, not real feelings. In reality, my life is pretty great.
These feelings will pass, I write.
I manoeuvre under a tented motel towel to keep from burning and try to write some new lyrics, which results in a scrawled list of progressively awful clichés and forced rhymes. I fold the failed pages in the middle and rip them out, stuffing them in a coffee cup. Some musicians can write on tour, but I’m not one of them.
Several bands from the festival have also booked the same motel, so when a gangly tomboy walks by with drum sticks in her back pocket, I’m not surprised. She nods at me from behind giant sunglasses and I recognize her as the drummer for a riot grrl band. To best describe her, I’ll just say she is often mistaken for David Bowie. Everyone notices her, and by that I mean everyone wants to fuck her. When we crossed paths at a festival in Atlanta earlier on the tour, she flirted with me by the snack table.
She has tattooed arms and wears several bike-chain and leather-band bracelets, and an open plaid shirt over a white tank top that says Daddy. I can’t remember her name.
“Hi there, Ms. Alamo,” she says, stopping to block my sunlight. I peek out at her from under a cupped hand.
“Hey there, where’s the rest of your band?”
“Trying to find a macrobiotic food place.”
“Good luck to them, this is fucking Vegas. Want some of these?” I proffer a bright green bag of sour cream and onion chips. She nods and reaches in to grab a handful, then offers me a cold can of beer from her canvas army bag.
I take a sip while she settles into the chaise longue next to me, loosening her plaid shirt, then taking it off. The beer helps with my hangover. One of the green-bathing-suited kids turns from the diving board and gives us a semi-toothless smile.
“Are you a boy or a girl?” the little girl asks, fixating on Amy? Alissa? Not remembering is going to get embarrassing.
“Neither.”
“That makes sense.” She jumps off the board. Her father offers us both a scowl.
I laugh, but hope she wasn’t uncomfortable. “Does that happen to you a lot?”
“Yeah. Kids say what adults are thinking, but they’re usually a lot nicer about it.”
I feel like a shy teenager, unsure what to say next. I take a generous sip of the beer that is rapidly warming in the sun.
“So, what are you guys up to today?” I ask.
“I dunno. The band wants to go get their tarot cards read.”
“Mine went gambling,” I say.
“Ha, so gendered. Is it tough being the only girl in your band?”
“There’s more performative farting than I wish, but it’s generally not bad. I grew up on a commune so I’m used to being around lots of people. Is it hard to be with all women?”
“Well, there’s too much emotional processing and our periods are all synced, but I prefer it to gigging with dudes, which I’ve done a lot.”
We watch the girls in the pool do handstands. I press my fingers into the empty beer can, wishing I had another. I’m not sure that we have much in common, and my high school shyness has returned with a fierceness. Just as I’m about to make an excuse to sneak back to my room, she hands me another beer from her bag and tells me she’s rented a car since the band will be here for a few days, then asks me if I want to go to a lake until sound check.
“Fuck yeah, I do.”
By the time we get to Lake Mead I learn her name is Andie. She’s older than me, though I would have guessed younger. She has a habit of playing with the little hair she has left on her head, growing out in tiny spikes from a recent shave, running her hands through it to punctuate what she says. A vegan but not an asshole about it, she’s been surviving on bean burritos, backstage fruit bowls, and packs of peanuts for the last few months. She’s been in bands since the late ’80s, when she wasn’t even old enough to get into bars, and pretty much lives on the road, but has a steady girlfriend in Los Angeles.
“When I’m home I like to be really domestic. I’ve started making pickles and jams. Right before we left, my girlfriend and I canned enough tomatoes for like, years.” She tells me about how they worked all day putting tomatoes in jars. She felt so fulfilled and tired, and they fell asleep really soundly, and woke up to what they thought were gunshots—they live in LA, so it isn’t inconceivable—and they dove under the bed. Finally they emerged and crept into the kitchen and all the jars had unsealed, and there was tomato and glass everywhere. At first, they wondered if the jars had been shot, but then they realized that they hadn’t properly sealed the jars and so the air had tried to escape, causing them all to explode. She still has tomato sauce stains on her sneakers.
I can tell she is the kind of shy I can deal with, relate to, but I know that other musicians think she’s snobby and remote, too cool for school. That’s notable, since everyone is affecting too cool. “The way I deal with music industry bullshit from dudes is to just keep my head down, play harder, play better. That’s what has got me here,” she says, “and it’s nice to have a break from all that in this new band.”
We trek out to a quiet spot away from the tourists. Andie shuffles her motorcycle boots in the sand, like she’s trying to figure out how to be at a beach. Everything about her is the opposite of the surroundings: the leather boots, the black jeans, the tank top. We watch some teenagers trying to hide a bong under a beach umbrella as we walk by.
“Were you a skid in high school?” she asks.
“I was in the school orchestra and never had boyfriends.”
“That cannot be true! Not with what I’ve heard about you,” she says.
“Band geeks are always the pervs.” I shrug.
We find a slightly private spot and I lay one of the towels I swiped from our motel down on the sand.
We drink a few more beers and trade gossip about the bands we both know. The sun and beer have an anesthetizing effect.
“So what have you heard about me?” she says.
“I dunno. Only that you’re gay.” That really is the only thing I’ve heard. Most dudes in bands, the same ones who think they’re so liberal, reading Malcolm X biographies and wearing pro-choice T-shirts, are so weird about gay people. Usually it’s some guy watching Andie walk by who whispers, “She’s a dyke,” and then seeing my expression, adds quickly, “and a really great drummer.”
“Ugh, I hate that that’s my only notable tidbit.”
“One guy couldn’t believe Team Dresch are all dykes. He was like, ‘They’re too good!’”
“They are the best.” She laughs.
“I guess there are few of your people in the indie rock world. But I also heard you banged Courtney.”
“She was very drunk. But in my defence, I was much drunker.”
“What have you heard about me?”
“That you’re some kind of cello prodigy, and that you’re, um, pretty wild.”
“Wild, eh? Is that a euphemism?”
“Hey, no judgment! I am very pro women getting what they want in this life.”
“You are, eh? So, what do you want?”
Andie blushes.
“How do you stay faithful on the road?” I ask.
“Faithful. What an antiquated word, I love it.”
“But for real?”
“We’re non-monogamous, my girlfriend and I. But it’s still hard. We write a lot of letters, which is pretty romantic. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend back home who’s understanding of, you know, this life?”
“Nope. I’m free to do whatever I please.”
“That sounds like a pretty good deal,” she says. “I hear you’re a heartbreaker, too. That even the most aloof boys kind of follow you around until you ditch them.”
“Nah, that’s not true. I just meet them where they’re at, and then I play to win.”
“Win what?”
“The balance of power, I guess.” No one has ever asked me to elaborate before.
“I hear James Clark got so tired of you throwing him in the garbage over and over that he hooked up with that girl from that female Megadeth cover band because she’ll, quote, ‘never leave him.’”
At the mention of James’s name, I feel a truly uncomfortable sense of longing.
“Oh my god, that is not true. I don’t know where you got your info! He knocked a girl up. He turned me down this time around. This world is too small.”
“He was in love with you. Everyone teases him about it. He hitchhiked to see you play in cities where he didn’t even know anyone!”
I let that sink in. “Nah, that’s not true. He just travels a lot. Maybe we should go in the water,” I say. Was that actually true? Was I the one to blow it with James? I’m either too attached or not attached enough to people. It feels like a lonely realization, like I am not ever going to get it right. I realize the music world, at this level, even though it is vast and spread across the country, is pretty similar to high school. It is probably a hundred or so people making it big in a given year, and we all encounter one another in festival green rooms and recording studios, at awards shows. It is a small world of sorts.
The heat starts to feel stifling, so I peel off my dress. Andie stares at me brazenly, then looks away as I cross my arms over my bikini top.
“Can you do that again, but slower?”
I throw the dress at her. “Did you bring a suit?”
“This is it,” she says, standing, pulling off her jeans to reveal boxers. She folds her jeans and places them on top of her wallet, and then takes off running.
“Wait!” But she’s not running to the water, she’s running after something. She catches it and brings it back.
“Someone’s beach umbrella, what a score!”
She plants it in the ground and leans it over so it’s partial sun coverage and partial block from anyone walking by.
We huddle under the umbrella. A pool of sweat gathers in her collarbone. She smells like some earthy kind of citrus oil.
“Missy Alamo, you’re trouble,” she whispers, both hands cupping my waist. Our mouths get close.
“I never kissed a girl,” I say, as she leans in, then pauses. She turns her head, laughing a little.
“Well, I’m not much of a girl,” she says.
And there, on the beach under an umbrella, while a truck speaker blasts all of Paul’s Boutique, another person makes me come for the first time.
That night, I fuck up the intro to a song I’ve played a thousand times. I forget to join on the harmony in the finale, and when I do, I flub the lyrics. All these errors are imperceptible to anyone in the audience, but Tom can hear it, can see me glancing toward Andie leaning against a speaker in the wings, arms crossed, smirking, tapping her drumsticks on the wall. Every time I look at her I think I might come again, just from the way she’s looking at me. Looking at other lovers I’d always felt like they were conquests, to be tackled and climbed. When Andie looks at me I’m the one caught in a net, wishing she’d throw me over her shoulder and run away. This must be what they felt, I think, remembering the way I studied my lovers’ faces in those moments. This is it. I am feeling that. Holy shit. I look at Andie again. She bites her lip and nods my way. I feel a deep longing in my chest, and also a hesitancy that turns quickly to annoyance with every mistake I make.
After our set, I pour a bottle of water all over myself before I’ve even changed clothes. It’s hot, but more than that, I’m irritated. Irritated for fucking up so much, irritated by this flush of emotions I can’t handle.
I duck out early, even though I promised Andie I’d stay for her set. She wanted to take me out somewhere for a late-night special in Vegas, some secret spot with incredible food where real mobsters used to eat. But by the time I get to the green room, it’s the last thing I want to do. Tom and I are jumping in the motel pool before she’s even done her set.
“What was it like?” Tom asks, floating on his back as I crouch under the lip of the diving board.
“I dunno, I guess she’s really skilled.” I shrug. I don’t know why I’m downplaying it, but it feels like the right option. What am I supposed to say—It was the best sexual experience of my life and the way she circled my clit with her tongue without actually touching it until I wanted to die, was, like, expert-level moves? But also, I really hope she moves to Mars?
“Yeah, my roommate in college used to blow me sometimes when we were drunk. It was the best head I ever got, but I never, like, had romantic feelings for him.”
“Did you hurt his feelings?”
“No. Guys don’t really work that way. I mean, I don’t think so. He never said anything.”
“I feel more like a guy in that way,” I say. “So, don’t tell anyone about it, okay?”
“Girl, I don’t think anyone’s gonna think you’re gay with all the dick you suck.”
I kick water in his face until he ducks under. I’m already trying not to compare the sex between Andie and me, and men in general. I suppose she was more attentive, slower, than most guys. But I didn’t touch Andie after she’d fucked me. I followed her cues that the sex was over. She’d gotten dressed, smoked a cigarette. Maybe that’s just what happens? I have no frame of reference. It was nothing like lesbian porn. But it was hard to discount the Only Orgasm Of My Life While Someone Else Was Present.
We drink beer around the pool until most of the bands return. Tom indulges more than usual, and by the end of the night we are curled in a pool floatie writing a song we insist is our next single. Of course, it’s garbage, but it feels like the best thing we’ve ever written. I am happy Tom and I are cool again.
When Andie and her girls walk by us on the way to their rooms, the singer waves and raises a beer toward us. Andie looks down, casually aloof, doesn’t even glance in my direction. A part of me feels like I should climb out of the pool and follow her, should explain, but I have no idea how. So I shove my guilt aside, as I’d be doing all tour, and flip out of our floatie, staying under the water until I know they’re gone. I tell myself, Just pretend you’re a dude and only your own feelings matter. So far, it has been working for me. But this time, it doesn’t feel totally right.
My bandmates order pizza and before we dig in poolside, they stick a fat birthday candle in the middle. I blow it out just as the singer from Andie’s band emerges from her room, barefoot in a yellow sundress. She nods at us from a chaise longue across the pool, drinks an entire beer, burps, and puts the bottle down before pulling off her dress and jumping into the pool completely naked. She swims toward where we are sitting, pops her head up out of the water, mascara running all over her face like a candle melting.
“Hey, I’m Agatha,” she says to me, not Tom, though we both say hey back.
“You know, no one ever rejects Andie. I’ve never seen it. It’s like science fiction, basically. Anyway, respect,” she says, laughing and swimming back to the other side of the pool.
We watch her stand up, squeeze the water from her hair, and saunter back to her room with her dress in her hands. Sometimes I have a knowing feeling when I meet someone new. I had it with Tom. With Amita when I walked into first-year composition class.
I turn to Tom and say, “She’s going to be my best friend.”
“Yeah, sure. She’s way too cool.”
“I’m cool!”
“You are not. We are not. We’re just having a cool phase right now. It’s not permanent.”
I finally head to my room. I save a message from my father playing “Happy Birthday” on the ukulele. I listen to it three times. I lie back and listen to the click-click of the overhead fan. I think about knocking on Andie’s door. I get up and go outside onto the landing. I flash on the afternoon at the beach. It’s so late but it’s still just as hot out. I grip the railing, second-guessing my desire. I want to see her, but I also want to never see her again, with equal intensity. A crow bops around on a lawn chair below.
“Hey pretty,” I call out. “What should I do?”
I used to ask the sheep questions every night when I was a kid, after they came in from pasture. The crow looks up, cocks its head. We are making what feels like fairly meaningful interspecies eye contact when out of nowhere another crow swoops down and starts attacking it.
“Stop!” I yell uselessly. I clap my hands. I yell again. He doesn’t stop.
I run back into the room and grab a can of Coke from the mini-bar and throw it toward the attacking crow, trying to stop him. But it’s already done. It’s like a horror movie. I run down the steps, slipping on the bottom one and scraping up my leg. The crow’s body is still and bloodied. The murderer is squawking and strutting.
I start to cry, so hard I feel like the full-body shuddering might never stop.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, girl? You hurt?” I look up and see Agatha, holding a bucket of ice from the ice machine.
When I explain what happened she gives me a big hug and says, “Sometimes crows are territorial. They’ll kill other threatening males.”
“That’s so crazy, I thought they were smart. And loving!”
She shrugs. “Why I don’t walk you back to your room?”
We sit on my bed and she paints my nails silver as we watch Desperately Seeking Susan on TV, our mutual favourite childhood movie.
“We have another gig together in Los Angeles in a few weeks,” she says, blowing on my thumbnail. “We should write each other postcards until we see each other again. We could even compile them in a zine or something?”
“I love that idea.” I lean back against the pillow, debating asking her when she knew she was gay. I rehearse a number of ways to bring it up that would sound natural. But instead I take a hit of a joint she offers, and fall asleep.