AMBER

Before we went to the party I was hanging out at my friend Adam's house drinking. He still lived with his mom, Shelley, and she was not only drunk but dying of breast cancer, so she was feeling really 'fuck-it-all' and uninhibited.

Adam mentioned Tom was playing at the party-he's a guy we all knew, about forty-five years old, a pure rock and roll guy-he's devoted himself to rock and roll in all forms-he's the kind of guy you see on the streets belting out all the best radio songs, and a few incredible unknowns you immediately love. As far as I know he's never had a real job.

Adam left the room and his mom began talking shit: "Yeah, I really hate Tom's music, the things he plays, you know?"

Me: "Yeah? I like him a lot. He's got a lot of soul."

Shelley: "Well, he's got a big dick."

Me: "….uh…"

Shelley: "Yeah, we had sex. He rocked my world." She's god awful ugly by the way-I don't want to hear this shit.

Me: "Ah, good for you, huh."

Shelley: "Adam said he was gonna kick his ass, but I mean, hell-I'm dying over here-I've got fucking breast cancer! Can I get laid every once in a while?"

Me: "Why not? You've got a right to fuck as much as anyone else."

Shelley: "Exactly."

Me; "Hey, do you have an ashtray?"

Shelley: "Yeah, let me get you one." She wandered off drunk and I ended up using a cup as an ashtray-then we went to the party.

It should have been a balls-out crazy ass party. The band had a great field to play into, and there was a keg, but nobody showed up. Soon the cops busted it up for being too loud, on account of the band. That's the kind of fuckin town we live in. Idiot pigs, and they didn't even notice li'l old underage me standing five feet from them drinking a beer.

So the band quit playing with amps and stuff and just played acoustic in the parking lot. Now the party's shit dead, but I don't care because I met a couple of people there who lived nearby and had some weed to smoke. I followed them into their apartment.

First thing that happens to me, I walk in and this girl in a black tank top and black pants and black hair dyed red, says "Who the hell are you?"

"Hi, I'm Nate," I said, and went to shake her hand.

"Nate? What the hell's that supposed to mean to me?"

"Is this your house?"

"Fuck no this dirty asshole's not my apartment. I'm not living in like, 1969-peace, man!" She did a squirrel face and made the peace sign.

"Yeah," I wrote her off as a drunk bitch. Fuck her. I talked to a couple of people and went and smoked some weed. It was a good crowd. Almost everyone had weed. Soon we went out into the parking lot and listened to the band, which was still playing because, hell, they were getting paid.

There was about ten of us standing around talking, but eventually I became aware of what we call a king hell flaming bitch on wheels. The drunk bitch I'd met an hour or so before. She was berated the band like a bastard. "Ooh, yeah this is great! Watch me dance!" Imitates a retard dancing.

"Hey buddy where'd you get that jacket, fuckin a flea market in Buttfuck, Kentucky!?"

"Yeah, classic rock is where it's at, man, Freebird, man!" Sarcasm-the refuge of all those crippled with the combination of brains enough to know things in general are fucked up, but not enough brains to see through the insanity to the real and beautiful things. Or at least without the courage to admit the real and beautiful things.

She seemed to be mad at everything. To a girl there :"Hey, what's that you're wearing, you goin' to 8 Seconds tonight?" 8 Seconds is a cowboy bar. That was an insult.

The girl, whose name was Maria: "Why do you have to say something about everything, Amber?"

"I'm just being Amber!"

Right then a couple of stone Bitches arrive. They look like they just busted out of reform school in 1955-wearing jean jackets and haircuts they would have called, in 1961, 'mod'. First thing one of em says, "This blows." They've never met Amber but they immediately gravitate to each other. I lost track of them, I started talking to a girl who worked in a head shop. She'd cut her fingers on a bong earlier that day.

Eventually I wandered back out to the keg, after smoking massive amounts of weed, zoning out, screaming at people, and talking bullshit about art, which I know nothing about, but can fake it since the people I was talking with knew nothing either. So by the time I got back to the keg, it must have been two hours later. The band's still out there playing, and who else is out there, but Amber? She's got to get her beer. The band's playing two feet from the keg, and you can tell Amber is nervous when the guys in the band surround her.

Tom, totally cool as always and laid back like a lifelong pothead: "Hey, I was kind of hurt by your feelings about our music, uh…I don't know your name.."

Amber, a tenth of the woman she once was, all confidence gone in the face of overwhelming odds: "Well, it's not like we're still living in 1975, you know…"

Tom: "Well, what kind of music do you like?"

Amber: "Nothing you'd know," She's trying to be the bitch she was a couple hours ago, and failing miserably.

Tom: "How bout some Pearl Jam?"

Amber: "Uh….Pearl Jam?"

Tom: "You like 'em?"

Amber: "Yeah….uh, do you know…..Elderly Woman Behind….the.. Counter in a Small Town?" Yeah, 'nothing they'd know'-they even play that one on the radio!

Tom : "Oh, yeah, I do know that, hey Eddie, you know that don't you?"

Amber: "Really?

Eddie: "I think so, how's it go again?"

Tom: "You play it and I'll sing."

Eddie: "Yeah. What's the chords?"

Tom: "D…..G….go to C9" Eddie had an intuitive understanding of the rhythm, he got it perfect, but forgot the chords for it. "Then G" He had it. These guys are it when it comes to rock and roll.

Eddie's playing the song, Tom's gearin' up to sing….

Tom: "I seem to recognize...your face…"

Amber: "Oh my god damn."

Tom: "Haunting familiar yet I can't seem to place it….Cannot find the candle of thought to-"

"Light your name!!" Amber jumps in. Together the both of em:

"Lifetimes are catching up with me
All these changes taking place
I wish I'd seen the place
But no one's ever taken me
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade away"

And they didn't stop singing through out the whole song…I joined in when I remembered some lyrics… "I change by not changing at all" But when they built to the climax I shut up because I didn't know it well and they were really into it. They had a beautiful drunken joy in just standing out there in the parking lot with nobody around but them and me, singing that song. Tom loved it because he just loves music, any kind of music with soul. To sing a song like that with anyone who really enjoys it is beautiful to him. Amber, despite her remarks earlier, sang with him from the beginning to the end, and knew the song like she'd listened to it in headphones in the dark twenty times.

Standing together, in the streetlight, singing

"I just want to scream hello
My god it's been so long never dreamed you'd return
But now here you are and here I am
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away.
Hearts and thought they fade fade away"

With a fearful raucous drunken intensity never heard on the record.

The song was over. Amber for the first time tonight was smiling and, I thought, seemed to mean it.

Amber: "That was great, I really enjoyed it. I can't believe you guys know that song."

Eddie : "Yeah, that's a good one."

Tom: "Do you play anything?"

Amber: "Uh, I play the violin. Yeah, for about eight years."

Tom: "Oh, yeah? Hey, give us a call, we'd love to play with you again. You can really sing." He gave her a business card.

Eddie: "Yeah, I respect anyone who can play a string instrument."

Amber: "Okay….cool, thanks."

Two people came out of the apartment-they've known Amber for a while. Immediately she reverts to her bitch fuck you persona. The guy said something like, "Hi Amber." To which she replies: "Hey, Jeremy, just out here getting some beer so these assholes don't drink it all."

Tom begins to play another song…."I don't remember, I don't understand."

Amber: "Huh, yeah-I don't understand why you're playing this song! Uhhh….Uhhhhhhnnnn" Imitating a retarded guy.

The girl that just came out, Rachel: "God, Amber, they're good. Don't talk like that." Amber, sarcastic : "Yeah, oh, yeah, they're soo fucking good! Yeah, watch me dance…" Horrible imitation of a duck trying to shit a stone….

I wandered back into the house with em-soon it was me, the guy and Rachel on the porch smoking weed, and the conversation turned to Amber.

The guy: "Yeah, she just, she loves to be a bitch to everyone."

Me: "Ah, no, man-she acts like that, but she's totally soft on the inside like a baby, man-you should have seen her singing along with the band a little while ago."

The guy: "Singing with 'em? I just saw her making fun of em."

Me: "Nah, she sang with em when nobody else was around. She was good." The guy: "That's wild-Amber, huh? I've known her about six months and I've never seen her acting nice."

Rachel: "I've seen it like, twice..." Pause, nothing more…

Me: "You ever heard her play the violin?"

Rachel :"No, she won't play it for anybody."

The rest of the night I couldn't get too far away from Amber (until I passed out on the back porch)-she had a burning need to be the center of attention, throwing her obnoxious personality into the middle of everything, and if she wasn't controlling things by ridiculing them, she might as well have not existed. During one of those moments I started talking to Rachel-I'd hardly gotten half a sentence out of my mouth when Amber says "Hey, fucky, I'm holding court here," or something to that effect. I moved my hand like a mouth blabbing and said "blah blah blah" and tried to go back to talking with Rachel. It wasn't happening. Amber gave me shit about my hair my clothes my age, I gave it right back to her, lacing my speech with 'baby' and 'woman' and 'bitch' just to piss her off. Completely afraid to actually commit to something she was, she hated everything, or pretended to, and lacked the true confidence to publicly get behind anything. But behind that elaborate and deeply etched mask, I could still see who she was when she was belting out that Pearl Jam song, obviously a song special to her, with Tom. Everybody wraps themselves in lies to a differing degree, Amber much more than others, but to see through those lies and get to the bare bone of truth at the center of who she was is a thing that's hard to do, harder to recognize, and beautiful to see. She was in fact, beautiful for a few minutes that night, and the sheer power of that beauty stayed with me to the end of the night. She never even hinted at the performance to anyone else but I was there and she knew it, and despite the rude things we yelled at each other I think she knew I thought she was beautiful and amazing, and if I ever see her again I will continue to think so no matter what she says because I know when she's alone at home and pulls out that violin, she plays the most beautiful little notes and maybe even sings along to it and shines her amazing truth to no one.

THE END

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