It’s a rainy summer night in Manhattan. The fetid steam rises from the concrete enveloping the tourists scrambling into storefronts to escape the deluge. In a dismal apartment on the lower East side a skinny, pale man in his middle 20’s sits hunched over on a beaten down futon. His neck is bent and his back is curled downwards. His unwashed black hair sticks out in odd directions from running his hand repeatedly through it. In his hands, commanding all his attention is a roughly used, be-stickered, acoustic guitar. His calloused fingers move nimbly over the strings and pick out a tune that is deceivingly simple and filled with a haunting echo like a black hole.
His feet move with the music as if pushing an imaginary effects pedal, and his lips move in a silent mantra of lyrics no one but he can hear. His dirty stained pants smell of the damp of outdoors and his shirt clings to a chest that has seen too many drugs and not enough hot meals. There is an old tube television, with the dial you have to get up to turn, playing mutely in the corner. The room is hot and stagnant and wet. The windows are open to let in whatever air is available and the sounds of sirens and the drunks at the bar downstairs play a poor accompaniment to his gifted fingers. He is better now than he was. He no longer flies through the night, reeling on whatever powder or smoke, or liquid, he injected, or inhaled, or snorted. His system is clean. His soul is questionable.
From the only other room in the shabby seventh floor walk-up, a soft wail rises. His head snaps up and his body gets rigid, his fingers squeeze the neck of the guitar, and his eyes flash to the door. He hears the bed creak and her footstep on the floor. A soft murmur from behind the door and the seemingly ceaseless steps begin again. The crying never seems to stop. It is a house that could float away on the tears, and they aren’t always the baby’s. The dreams that were broken and the hopes that have died fill his mind and play on repeat as the wailing rises and fills the tiny rooms.
He had tried to leave, tried not to care, tried to claim the destiny that was so truly his. His talent roars from him like a lion, proud and true, refusing to be denied. But it was always there She was always there, telling him “I’m keeping it”. It was always there, the fact that there was someone out there that was supposed to depend on him. It was always there, the fact that he was no better than the Father who abandoned him, in fact he was worse because he had never been there in the first place. It ate at him and drove him to try to fly to higher places. But like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun and his wings melted and he fell, and fell, and fell.
He had come back, but like many things, it was never what he thought it would be. And as he sits, trying to block out the wails that fill the apartment, the people that try to love him, and the life that is trying to eat him alive, his eyes fill with tears and his fingers find their places on the frets. His head drops back down and his back hunches over. His eyes close out the dingy apartment and he plays till his callused fingers open and bleed and the blood washes over the strings and the frets and each strum brings a little splash, a severed artery of pain washing through the night.
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