Feels strange to be back in Orange County. Like returning to the scene of a crime. I don’t remember everything I did when I was here, but it was sex and drugs and punk rock, a laundry list of unpunished misdemeanors and—I’m sure—a felony or two. Still, it’s been over a decade. Statutes expire and memories fade.
I sit up, turning to look through the front seats. A SoCal dusk greets me, framed through the windshield, wisps of cloudlike scars on a canvas of purple and orange. I feel dirty and sticky, the beginnings of a headache tapping a heartbeat rhythm through my skull. Back, hip and knee resume their grumbling, a low murmur of constant complaint at my poor posture, at days spent sleeping in my car. The dashboard clock says it’s a little after eight. Almost showtime.
It’s not quite summer in Anaheim, but in a city where summer’s never very far away, that isn’t saying much. The sun’s out of sight, but the heat of the day still radiates from every surface. I can feel it coming off my car, from the asphalt beneath my feet. I could use a shower, but the best I can hope for is a whore’s bath in the restroom of the bar. The Duchess, it’s called. I’d say it’s seen better days, but I think this is about as good as it ever got for this place. We played here, of course, more than once, on a tiny stage in a tiny room downstairs. I have a vivid memory of opening my eyes between songs and seeing a congregation of expectant faces looking up at me, red with exertion, glistening with sweat, ready for my anger to explode out into that space, to wash over them on a wave of distortion, slam them into one another, into the walls.
Walking in is like going back in time. The bartender’s an old punk like me, shirtsleeves rolled up to his biceps, tattoos all the way down to his knuckles.
“I’m Bill Anthony,” I tell him.
“Good to meet you, man. Get you a drink?”
“Bourbon. Neat. Beer back.”
“Any particular beer?”
“Whatever’s cheapest.”
“On the house for performers.”
“Humor me,” I say.
“You’re the boss.” Then, as he pours, “Gonna be a turnout tonight, I think.”
“Yeah?”
“Most of what we get in here is jazz and blues. Good stuff, but the same every night, you know? Soon as we put you on the schedule, people started asking. They remember you.”
“Triumphant return of the hometown boy,” I say, taking a sip of the bourbon.
“Where you been?”
I down the rest in a couple of quick swallows, drain the beer in turn. “Around,” I say.
I never went far, in truth. Just needed to get out of town. The scene got old and then it got dangerous. The vibe changed. We were all drinking too much. I felt like I was leaving my soul onstage most nights, shouting myself hoarse to be heard over the music, watching the pits get ever more violent. In August of that year, oh-two or oh-three, a kid got his face destroyed at one of our shows, a shattered nose and a broken orbital bone, blood everywhere. The camaraderie that used to be there—the silent code that said you weren’t there to hurt anybody else, that if somebody fell you helped them up—was gone, an early casualty of the new suburban angst, of hockey shirts and back-to-front baseball caps and waved middle fingers.
Then Sonny died.
I didn’t even know him that well. Lucky Dragon 3 was Jake and me. It was our band. Drummers came and went. Sonny was the fifth and last. He joined the band the same summer that kid got fucked up in the pit, played maybe twenty shows, then got drunk and totaled his car out on the 5 one night, just lost control and drove off the road. Jake called me in the early hours of the morning to give me the news, and we ended it right then and there. He asked me if I wanted to stop and I said yes. We haven’t talked since.
I went north. Grabbed some shit from my apartment and took the 101 up the coast. I thought about Canada but never got farther than Seattle, where I bummed around until the money ran out then worked a succession of McJobs, saved up enough money to buy a guitar, and started thinking about the music I’d grown up on, the LA, Orange County, and Bay Area bands of the Eighties and Nineties. I reworked my favorite songs, slowed them down and bluesed them up a little, played some open mics, got some gigs, then started adding in my own material. After a year or so, I didn’t have to do the shitty jobs anymore. I slept in my car sometimes, sure, but a choice between eight hours spent sleeping in a beat-up Camaro and eight hours spent pretending to give a shit for minimum wage was no choice at all.
After three drinks and a quick trip to the bathroom to freshen up, people are starting to show up for the gig, and I catch a few glances as I carry my equipment through the bar, a few nudges and “look over there”s. This amount of booze is normally just right for a confidence buzz, but I feel uncomfortably warm and a little nauseous. Only a few of them have made their way downstairs, but I can feel their eyes on me as I set up. It isn’t much, just a couple of amps, a microphone, and a stool, but it helps me get focused, takes my mind off the sound of people pulling up chairs, talking amongst themselves.
“All right,” I say into the mic, settling myself on the stool. “Not much point sound checking in here. If the levels are off, just yell. My name’s Bill Anthony. A long time ago, I had a band called Lucky Dragon 3…” A couple of whoops make me smile despite myself. Nobody’s recognized the name since I’ve been playing alone. “Now it’s just me. Same songs, but I got old and stiff and kinda sore, and these days I prefer to do them like this.”
I play some Black Flag and TSOL, a couple of my own, then Bad Religion and the Vandals. They’re into it, singing along when they know the words, listening politely when they don’t, applauding enthusiastically between songs and calling out requests. I usually do Social Distortion’s “Story of My Life” at or near the end, but the kid who asks for it is so desperately sincere about hearing it that I go early.
That’s when she walks in.
I don’t stop playing or fuck up any chords, but I do forget the words to the second verse for long enough that I have to start singing the first again, which isn’t the smoothest thing to do when you’re playing acoustic and the song’s a narrative, but for a few moments, the only word in my head is her name.
She’s older, of course, different hair and different clothes and a different way of carrying herself, but I know her face as soon as I see it, and when she makes eye contact and offers me a hesitant smile, I know she came here for me.
Sadie. I don’t remember what city we were in, but we were playing an all-ages venue with no bar, supporting some hardcore straight-edge kids who were about as fun as a brick to the face. When we finished our set, we immediately headed out to the parking lot and our van, where we’d left a stockpile of alcohol. As the front man, I usually got more attention than the others, and I was held up chatting to a gang of sweat-soaked teens who wanted to tell me how much they’d enjoyed the show as if I hadn’t had the perfect vantage point from which to watch them throwing themselves around with joyful abandon. By the time I got outside, there was already a gathering around the open back doors of the van, where I could see Jake and Connor, our drummer at the time, holding court.
I usually liked these little postmortems, the drinking and the talking and the girls, but it was our third gig in three days, my stage-high was wearing off and I found I wanted nothing more than to get something to eat and then lie down somewhere comfortable, quiet and dark.
“You guys killed it.”
I turned my head and there she was, five-feet-nothing of contradictions, this little porcelain doll of a girl, all pale and fragile and absurdly pretty, skin still shiny with sweat, jeans marked with dirt from the dance floor, ill-fitting T-shirt so stretched from being grabbed and pulled in the pit that it hung off one shoulder like a dress.
“Thanks,” I said. “You didn’t stay for the rest? I hear the headliners have good things to say about orange juice and broccoli.”
She smiled and I was done for, all plans for the evening traded in for whatever this girl was doing.
“You don’t like them?”
“Their music’s okay,” I said. “I just don’t really…connect with their message. My edge is quite curved.”
“So how come you’re not drinking with your boys?”
“Tired. Not in the mood for it. Really want a doughnut.”
“You sure are punk compared to those straight-edge guys. There’s a Krispy Kreme up the street. It might still be open.”
“Lead the way, mysterious savior.”
“Sadie,” she said.
“I’m Billy.”
We turned away from the van, heading across the parking lot to the street. I felt better already, feeling the breeze on my face and drying my clothes, sneaking glances at Sadie as we walked.
“Are you here by yourself?” I asked her.
“I came with friends, but they were just hanging out. I don’t go to shows to sit and chat, you know?”
“You look like you’d get absolutely killed in a mosh pit.”
“I hold my own. It’s kind of an advantage. Imagine being the guy that knocked a skinny little girl like me on her ass. It doesn’t happen much.”
“Never thought about it like that. I’m not in pits that often.”
“No,” she said, and looked at me with a frankness that made my insides do a lazy backflip. Her eyes were a washed-out blue that was almost gray. “You inspire them, though.”
“I scream at people,” I said.
“I work at Starbucks.”
“Touché.”
“Your Krispy Kreme, sir,” she said, as we rounded the corner.
“Sadie, I think I love you. I’m buying.”
We were just in time. There was nobody else in the store, and the kid behind the counter was clearly annoyed at his closing ritual being interrupted. Disgustingly smitten by the idea of a doughnut filled with custard and dipped in chocolate, I ordered four to go, and we went outside and sat on a low wall in the parking lot, where Sadie looked dubiously into the bag I handed her and then started laughing as I tore into my first doughnut.
“Jesus Christ,” she said.
“This is amazing,” I said, through a mouthful of doughy sweetness. “This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“All my preconceptions of what it is to be in a punk band, shattered.”
“Try one. These are punk. They’re a ‘fuck you’ to diabetes.”
She laughed again, reaching into the bag to pull out a doughnut, holding it between her fingers like it was toxic as she took a tiny bite, eyeing me all the while.
“All right,” she said, “it’s pretty good. You have custard and chocolate all over your face, dude.”
“And that little fucker didn’t give us any napkins.” I wiped the mess from around my mouth as best I could with my fingers, then sucked them clean.
“Here.” Sadie reached over and wiped a bit I’d missed, raised her eyebrows at me, then slipped her own finger briefly into her mouth.
“Can I ask you something?” I felt like my skin was tingling where she’d touched me.
“Sure.”
“Do you go to a lot of shows?”
“You mean am I a groupie?” She took a bite out of her doughnut, watching my obvious discomfort as she chewed. “No. I go to a lot of shows, but I get my kicks in the pit, not blowing the bass player. Do you fuck a lot of groupies?”
“I’m not gonna say I never have, but Jake’s the reigning champ there.” I smiled at her look. “We’ve got really different stage personas. Some girls like his stoic, relentless rhythm section thing, some like my energy and anger.”
“Passion. Not too many people are attracted to anger.”
“Not too many people are attracted to guys who talk about how passionate they are, either.”
“Touché.”
“I guess it kind of extends to who we are when we’re not performing. Jake can sleep with three or four different girls in a week and not give it a second thought. I’m always overthinking motives or worrying that they’re going to get attached to me or I’m going to get attached to them.” I take a bite out of my second doughnut. “Jake says I put women on a pedestal.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe. A little. Sometimes.”
“I’m not really into the stoic, relentless type.” She tossed what was left of her doughnut back into the bag. “And these are too much. Do I have any on my face?”
“Just a little bit.”
“Seriously?” She swiped a hand across her mouth. “Still there?”
I nodded, throwing the remnants of my own doughnut into the bag.
“And the little fucker closed the store so I can’t go and look in the mirror.”
“Here,” I said. I leaned in and kissed her lightly, briefly on the side of the mouth. “I think I got it.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was low, her eyes holding mine.
I shook my head and kissed her again, open-mouthed this time. She responded immediately, and I heard the paper bag fall to the ground as she wrapped her arms around my neck, her tongue dancing around mine. I could smell the show on her, the sweat and cigarettes. Beneath that, a cleaner, more intimate scent, soap or shampoo. I put my arms around her waist, slid my hands up under her T-shirt, feeling the warm, smooth skin of her back. She sighed against my lips, let her head fall back a little. I kissed her jaw and the side of her face, her neck and then that exposed shoulder.
“Making out in the Krispy Kreme parking lot,” she murmured.
“Does it fit your preconceptions of a guy from a punk band?”
“It’s pretty grimy.”
“You like that?”
She snorted laughter. “Grimy or that?”
The latter was my hand finding one of her small breasts, bare beneath her T-shirt.
“Whichever,” I said, and kissed her again.
“Fuck…” She pushed me away. “Billy, I can’t do this. I mean, I can, but I don’t want to get you all worked up.”
“You’re doing pretty badly. What’s wrong?”
“I’m on my period.”
I exhaled and smiled at her. “I thought you were going to say you had a boyfriend.”
“No boyfriend.” She brushed my lips with hers. “But you can’t fuck me.”
“I wasn’t going to try and fuck you.”
“Why not?” She was grinning, playful.
“Where? Over behind the Dumpsters? The romance.”
“Are you pedestaling me?”
“I…no.”
“I think you are.” She started unbuckling my belt.
“Sadie…”
“Billy.”
“You don’t have to…”
“Shut up, Billy.”
The store was closed and in darkness. We could be seen from the street, but Orange County isn’t known for its pedestrian traffic at the best of times, never mind at close to midnight in a dubious part of town, and I doubt anybody in a car would have seen much.
“Sadie…” I said again, this time because she’d undone my pants and pulled down the front of my underwear, her hand warm around my cock as she took me into her mouth.
It didn’t take too long. I was already so worked up, reeling from her kisses, her scent, the feel of her breast beneath my hand, that I couldn’t have held back if I’d wanted to.
“I’m gonna come,” I muttered, in a low, breathless voice.
Sadie went harder, faster, stroking me as her lips moved and her tongue teased. I groaned as I reached my orgasm, my cock twitching and pulsing in her mouth, sweet relief running through my body so that I wanted to slump back on the wall and just close my eyes.
She pushed up off her knees and straddled me, put her arms around me and let her head fall on my shoulder.
“Not to pedestal you,” I said, when I’d caught my breath, “but that doughnut is now the second greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You’re a dork.”
“And you’re amazing.”
She sat back a little, on my thighs, and stared at me for long enough that I started to feel uncomfortable.
“Your guys won’t leave without you, will they?” she asked.
“What time is it?”
“After twelve, I bet.”
“I probably should get back. The show was over a while ago.”
We walked back to the street in a silence that was suddenly awkward. I wasn’t sure if I’d said the wrong thing or if she was regretting what had happened. My knuckles brushed hers, and I found myself wanting to grab her hand, to say something.
“Sadie!”
We both looked up. They were waving to her from a car on the other side of the street.
She grinned and waved back. “Hey!”
“Where the fuck have you been?” asked a guy hanging out the passenger side window. “We’ve been looking everywhere.” She turned back to me. “That’s my ride.”
“Yeah, okay. Will I see you again?”
She threw herself at me, almost knocking me off-balance, and pressed her mouth to mine in a brief but fervent kiss. “I’ll come to a show,” she said.
“You’d better.”
And she was gone, running across the street to her friends, waving to me from the car as it pulled away, leaving me alone on the sidewalk, feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut.
I get through “Story of My Life,” extra verse and all, and I get through the rest of my set without casting too many glances Sadie’s way. There are no chairs left, so she leans against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, sipping her drink, watching, listening. At the end of the last song, I look up to find her smiling at me. She mouths two words at me and then disappears up the stairs.
Parking lot.
You can’t just ghost out of the room when you’re the only act in such an intimate setting. People want to tell you it was a great show, talk about the bands, talk about the scene, ask where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. I keep the conversations as brief as I can, but by the time I get upstairs and out to the parking lot, it’s been twenty minutes or more and my stomach’s in knots. She’s there, though, standing side-on to me, watching the people in the street.
“You know, when you said you’d come to a show…”
She turns. “I’m not the one who left town.”
I hold out my arms and she steps into my embrace, presses her face into my chest.
“I’d sort of given up on you by then. That was, what, a year later?”
“Eight months.” She looks up at me. Those eyes. “When was the last time you showered, Billy?”
“I mostly go by Bill now.”
She wrinkles her nose. “It sounds old. When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep, Billy?”
“Shower was a couple of days ago. Sleep, I don’t know. I don’t always have the money for a motel room. Besides, I thought you liked grimy.”
She steps back. “Do you need a place to stay?”
“Need? No.” I point at my car.
“Wow,” she says, looking back over her shoulder. “That is a punk rock car. Did you have it the last time we met?”
“I did.”
“Would you like a place to stay? I have a spare bed and a really nice shower.”
“Is there a Mr. Sadie?”
“No. No husbands, boyfriends, roommates or cats. Just me.”
“Okay. I’ve got to pack up my stuff and get my money first. Can you wait a few minutes?”
“I’ve waited eleven years.”
I open my mouth and close it again. “You make this sound really intense when you say that.”
“It’s not intense?”
“This is where I say the wrong thing and then you get into a random car and drive out of my life.”
“Is that what you…?” She laughs a little. “Get your stuff. I’ll wait.”
It’s a couple of trips to grab my equipment and collect a surprisingly thick pile of bills from the bartender. When I’m ready, Sadie hands me a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it.
“Follow me. If you get lost or that car spontaneously crumbles into rust, that’s where we’re going. Let’s not take any chances.”
It isn’t far, just a couple of exits north. She lives in a gated community, in a townhouse with a beautifully trimmed lawn. When I kill the engine, I’m greeted with the chitter of sprinklers.
“I guess you don’t work at Starbucks anymore,” I say, climbing out of my car.
“I work for an insurance company,” she says. “Executive assistant.”
“I feel so fucking grimy right now.”
She laughs. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Her place is three levels, hardwood floors and a stark black and white color scheme. Everything looks new, and—if not expensive—not exactly cheap.
“This is not how I imagined you living.”
She falls onto the couch. “You’re not the only one. I moved in here a couple of months ago. It feels like a show home or something. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Well, you’re not sleeping in your car.”
“There’s that. Billy, you look exhausted. Why don’t you go take that shower? The bathroom’s upstairs.”
“I really appreciate this, Sadie.”
“I really appreciated hearing you play tonight. Brought back a lot of memories.” The way she looks at me reminds me of when she told me I inspired mosh pits.
“I’m glad I came back. And I’m glad you showed up.”
I head upstairs to the bathroom, where I undress and look at myself in the mirror, trying to reconcile how I look now with how I looked the night we met. I’m a little leaner than I was then, and I keep my hair a little shorter. There’s a severity about my features that never used to be there, a product of my mostly ascetic way of living. I don’t look like I just got hit in the face with a decade, though, just tired, worn down.
Sadie’s shower is hard to the point of being abrasive. It’s wonderful. I turn the heat up as far as I can stand it and let the spray pound my face and my shoulders until I can’t take it anymore, then I wash myself, wondering if she still uses the same brand of soap I smelled on her the first time we kissed, a thought that leads very naturally to considering the idea of her in this very shower, naked and glistening, the spray reddening her skin.
“Billy?”
I didn’t lock the bathroom door. Didn’t even close it. She’s standing right outside.
“Yeah?”
“Just making sure you didn’t drown in there. It’s been a while.”
“Sorry. I got a little caught up in how amazingly brutal your shower is. It’s like a massage. Can you pass me a towel?”
She steps into the bathroom as I step out the shower, takes the towel off the rail but makes no immediate move to hand it to me.
“And you were so shy the last time,” she says.
“Technically, there wasn’t a last time.”
She looks down at my cock, still semierect from my impure shower thoughts. “Is that for me?”
“Inspired by you.”
We start laughing at the same time, and she comes into my arms again, tossing the towel aside as she kisses me, grabbing my cock.
“You’re so…” She breathes laughter, warm against my face.
“So what?”
“I don’t know, but I want you to take me in the bedroom and do things to me.”
I lift her easily off the ground and she wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, kissing my ear and my neck as I carry her out of the bathroom.
“Second door on the right,” she says.
I nudge it open with my foot, carry her in and lay her down on the bed. She watches me as I undo her jeans and pull them down, taking her panties with them. In the light from the hallway, her eyes are half-lidded, her lips wet, slightly parted. I lie down on the bed beside her. This time I kiss her slowly, thoroughly, holding the side of her face, stroking her jawline with my knuckles, then letting my hand stray lower, up underneath her shirt, smoothing the soft skin of her belly. I kiss her neck, sucking lightly, pulling my lips to her skin, grazing her a little with my teeth.
She sighs. “Billy…”
“Mmm?”
“You scared me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was scared of how attracted I was to you. We’d known each other less than an hour.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I want to.”
“You don’t have to explain right now.”
I cover her mouth with mine, slide my hand down between her thighs, finding her wet. She moans and bites my lip, hips moving as I caress her, hand on the back of my head, grabbing my hair. Her desire, her lust, is driving me crazy. I pull away from her hungry mouth, smiling at her as I slide down her body, my hair, still wet from the shower, dripping on her skin, making her laugh as I press my lips to her belly, out to her hip bone and down to her thigh.
“Oh, god…please…” she says, in this desperate whisper that about kills me.
Still, I tease her. I trail kisses up the inside of her thigh, inhale her scent, breathe on her, just brush her with my lips so that she twitches and then half laughs, half sighs as I lick and kiss her other thigh, pull away and then finally press my open mouth to her, exploring with my tongue, finding that hard little bud at the junction of her labia, teasing and playing until she lifts her hips off the bed and grabs my hair again, this time with both hands, urging more.
I listen to her moans, feel the way she reacts, adjusting to chase her pleasure, wanting so badly to get her off. She’s tensing and relaxing, writhing on the bed, quieter than she was, her moans strained, like she’s struggling. I can feel her getting closer, and I try not to get carried away, try to focus on her.
Finally, she’s moving around so much that she’s getting away from me. I grab her hands and pin them to the bed at her sides, hold her in place so she can’t get away, and that’s when she comes, when she stops breathing altogether, her head back and her body rigid, the room silent for a few seconds until the air rushes out of her in a long, low moan and she falls back.
I lie beside her and she smiles at me, breathing deeply, hair damp with sweat.
“I love what you do,” she says, a few minutes later. “The romance of it. I love the way you don’t give a fuck. The first time I saw you onstage, you blew me away. When I came up to you outside, it was just to say that I thought you were awesome, that the show was great, but I just felt so fucking drawn to you. I mean, lust, yeah, but you have something about you, like you know something the rest of us don’t. It scared the shit out of me. I worked so hard and made so many sacrifices going to college and working that stupid fucking job to make ends meet, and sitting on your lap in the parking lot of fucking Krispy Kreme, I felt like I could just get in that van with you and never miss any of it.”
“I’d have let you.”
“I know. The way you looked at me made it real, like we were about to do something crazy. I had to talk myself down, let that rational voice that knows how much guys love blow jobs take over.” She pulls closer to me, puts her head on my chest. “I thought about it a lot, but by the time I plucked up the courage to come and see you again, the band had broken up. You were gone.”
“I’m here now,” I say, “and it’s a hell of a lot better than sleeping in my car. This is the first time in a long time I haven’t been in any pain.”
“Maybe you should stay awhile,” she says, sitting up, crossing her arms over her chest and taking off her shirt. “See how the other half lives.”
I smile, thinking of a song I might play, a song I might write. “Maybe I will.”