Telegraph Avenue Epilogue (I of II)
Nov. 2nd, 2004 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hackthis_archiveSweet Zeus, I didn’t think this would ever get done, but since the new season starts in two days, I really had to get my shit together. Plus, I thought some people might like something to read while they wait to VOTE...
Dedicated wholeheartedly to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
serialkarma who has waited a whole year for it to be written, I present the post-Telegraph Avenue story of Jamie and Ian, with an appearance by some random dude from The O.C.
Telegraph Avenue Epilogue: Check Your Head
If he wanted to, Jamie could recall everything about the first time he met Ian Hurley -- what he said, what he wore, how he smiled, how he smelled... But Jamie didn’t want to remember that kind of stuff, because a) it was depressing b) it was painful and c) it defeated the purpose of having broken up in the first place. Although what exactly the purpose of breaking up of was, was still a matter of serious debate, even eight months later.
Ian had told Jamie that he thought they needed a break, but Jamie had been the one to say it was over. Carrie and Rusty thought it was Ian’s fault that Jamie left the band, and it was the sort of thing that was so muddled that everybody was to blame, and no one was to blame, and everybody had just wound up bitter and hurt.
At least Jamie had wound up feeling bitter and hurt, and for a long time he hadn’t cared about whatever Ian felt.
If Ian had felt anything at all.
They’d been down the road with the sex and the smiles -- and the inability to communicate -- and it seemed pointless to do it again. He knew that Ian hadn’t dated since they’d broken up, and some part of him was fucking thrilled about that. It was the same part that didn’t really consider Seth anything but an interlude. Jamie tried not to listen to that part too much, because it always ended with him making out with Ian in back alleys, and then promising himself he would never do it again.
Ian never appeared to be fazed by that sort of thing, but it wasn’t what Jamie wanted at all. Not that he had the clearest idea of what he did want, but he didn’t think it was that. Plus, they had really different ideas about communication -- Ian hadn’t even told Jamie he loved him until after it was over.
Not that Jamie needed to be told that on a daily basis, because he wasn’t a needy guy, but being told just once before they’d broken up would've been nice. Not that he’d ever been that forthcoming himself, but at least he’d had the balls to say it. He didn’t think a little reciprocity was too much to ask for.
He could’ve been wrong, but he didn’t think he was.
Of course Derrida would have said that he wasn’t really thinking anyway, but philosophy wasn’t going to solve whatever was bugging him so much.
He wasn’t depressed; he’d been depressed before, and he knew the signs: the sleeplessness, the blah feeling he got about everything. The way he sat on the futon, stuffing Cheese-its into his mouth or cataloging his comic books, and watching Jerry Springer and Aqua Teen Hunger Force until Meatwad and Frylock were talking about their baby daddies.
He knew real depression. That was his parents divorcing, and Olivia calling him at night from 3000 miles away and crying her eyes out. Depression was losing his best friend from childhood because he couldn’t accept that Jamie liked girls and boys. That period after he and Ian had first split up, but still hadn't been able to stay away from each other wasn’t depression -- that was fucking insanity.
It was a well-known fact that every relationship required one last fuck as closure, but they hadn’t been able to stop fucking.
They couldn’t -- or wouldn’t -- talk, and couldn’t be in the same room and fully-clothed without fighting, but they never had a problem when they were in bed. Or in the garage. Or in the back of Ian’s car. Or in Dr Mentz’s office, the Econ professor that Ian had been a TA for during Jamie’s sophomore year, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that after breaking up with Seth, Jamie clearly wasn’t depressed.
It had been fun for a while, being the older one in the relationship and having all the experience. Seth was so new to everything, it was like Jamie had a virgin all his own -- or close enough. He could see how incredibly tempting that sort of power could be, but at the end of the day he wasn’t going to be anybody’s hidden secret. He had been on the verge of developing some real feelings for Seth, but it was just 'the verge', and with Seth in the closet and then with the whole Ryan thing, well. It just wasn’t for him; there was too much drama.
It was interesting to see things from a different angle though. In a way, he had developed a little empathy for what Ian must have gone through with him. But he had never been uncertain about what he wanted, and Seth, well... Seth played clueless until forced to decide.
Nevertheless, it was a learning lesson, a good one, and it wasn’t bad being with someone so new, it was just different. It was very different. And now Jamie was different too.
He could see things differently. He could see where he and Ian hadn’t adjusted when they should have. Jamie had changed when they were together, and Ian either hadn’t seen it or had ignored it.
Whatever the case though, Jamie didn’t need recovery time from his experience with Seth; he just needed a good rebound fuck and that would be that. Everyone said so. Rusty had patted him on the shoulder and gotten him drunk; Carrie had said Seth was too young and gotten him drunk; and Ian had tricked him under the guise of jamming together... and gotten him drunk.
Jamie had too many hangovers to be depressed.
He just needed to get laid.
And he needed to stop smoking. Not that he had actually started up again or anything, but he’d stopped at the liquor store during his morning walk with Hamish, and now he found himself standing on the walkway outside his apartment with a freshly lit Marlboro Light in his hand.
The cigarette smoke was wafting in the cool Berkeley breeze, and it smelled... well, it just smelled.
“Jamie Andrew Miller! Are you smoking that foul thing?”
Jamie’s hold on the cigarette floundered as Mrs Epstein’s white-blue-gray hair snapped into his periphery. He straightened up instead of leaning on the balcony railing and dropped the cigarette on the pavement walk. Turning in the direction of the apartment down the hall, he ran a hand through his hair, hoping to look a little less guilty than he felt.
Mrs Epstein stood in her doorway, wearing her puce flowery muumuu, which meant it had to be Thursday. Hamish tottered around her ankles, and when Jamie spoke up, he barked.
“What foul thing, Mrs E?” he said, crushing the cherry with the toe of his sneaker.
“That’s better,” she said, disappearing and then reappearing with a red leash in her hand. “Here, take Hamish for a walk and then bring me your whites. I’m doing the laundry.”
Grinning sheepishly, Jamie walked over to the woman who played surrogate mom to half the building. Zipping-up his maroon jacket over his Turin Brakes tee shirt, he took the leash and the proffered plastic baggie. Stuffing the baggie in one of his jeans’ pockets, he bent down and attached the leash to Hamish’s collar.
“C’mon, man,” he said picking up Scottish Terrier and making a face at the enthusiastic face licking. “Let’s get some air.”
*
There was a seriously bitter breeze at street level, and Jamie set Hamish down on the damp sidewalk and stood back up expectantly. “You’re the one who wanted to go outside,” he said as Hamish looked down the tree-lined street and then back at him as though this nighttime interlude were his idea. “I’m just here to clean up the mess.”
Hamish made a snorting noise and began toddling down Euclid toward the Berkeley campus; Jamie stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed. Hamish set a pretty good pace for such a tiny dog, and Jamie smiled as Hamish yipped at the Irish Setter on the other side of the street. For such a little dog, he had lot of spunk too; Jamie liked that.
It had rained earlier in the day and the smell of damp concrete was oddly soothing to Jamie’s jarred nerves. His fingers brushed against the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, and he sighed loudly. Hamish paused in his inspection of several bushes and looked at Jamie expectantly.
“It’s nothing,” Jamie said.
Hamish made a snuffling noise and continued on with their walk.
They paused on Hearst to cross the street to campus, and Hamish sniffed at the toes of Jamie’s Pumas. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.
Hamish made a noise and turned away, and soon thereafter they crossed the street to the campus. There wasn’t a large assortment of people hanging about on a Thursday evening in the post-rain cold. People moved across the campus with purpose, and Jamie hummed Hank Williams to himself as he let Hamish off his leash to run around.
Taking the plastic bag out his back pocket, he spread it on the steps of Tolman Hall and sat down on the damp concrete. He didn’t expect to have to wait long -- Hamish was a little dog, and he didn’t require long walks like Jethro, his father’s German Shephard, did. Of course, now that his dad had that big farm in Montana, Jethro got all the space and walks any dog could want.
Jamie had spent a few months on the farm that past summer with Olivia and their dad, and while the farm was cool and Olivia loved the horses their dad was raising, Montana seemed a bit empty for Jamie’s tastes.
His dad had said he needed a change of scene, and you couldn’t get much further from Albany, New York than Cascade, Montana. Apparently it even had more snow, which Jamie hadn’t thought possible. His dad seemed to love it though, and he had given Jamie a few open-ended plane tickets so he could come out and visit anytime.
“There are laws against loitering.” The voice came from Jamie’s right, and his heart jumped before his brain kicked in.
Rolling his eyes in the manner of the much harassed, Jamie turned and looked up. And then a little further up. Ian grinned back at him, blue eyes bright.
“Don’t you have other people to harass?” Jamie asked, even as Ian pulled his bag over his head and dropped it on the steps at Jamie’s feet.
“What? Me harass you? I was walking home, minding my own business after an extensively taxing study session at Goldman, and I come across this vagabond sitting on the steps of Tolman Hall… You think I’m harassing you?” Ian asked, clapping his hand across his chest and his tone mocking soap actresses everywhere. “I’m hurt.”
“Please,” Jamie’s tone was a bit more derisory than he could help. “A Mac truck couldn’t hurt you. I think you were born to harass people.”
Ian’s hurt look slipped into a rueful grin, and he scratched his jaw. “If it helps, I only harass people I really like.”
“You must love me then.”
“Never stopped,” Ian said, sitting down on the steps on Jamie’s right.
“You’ve got a great way of showing it.” Jamie fixed Ian with a semi-serious glare, before turning away to make sure Hamish hadn’t gone far.
The tiny black dog was sniffing a bike chained to several newspaper dispensers, and he seemed to be chewing something rather vigorously.
“I never claimed to be perfect,” Ian said even as Jamie got to his feet and crossed to where Hamish was.
Dropping to his knees, Jamie picked Hamish up and tried to pry open his mouth. “Give it up,” he said as Hamish squirmed in his grasp. “You know better than to eat the crap around here. For all you know it’s acid-laced, and you’ll hallucinate and start humping a cat.”
He pointedly ignored Ian when he knelt down next to him.
“Are you going to let me help?” Ian said after several seconds of Hamish wriggling around, and Jamie making no headway at all.
“I’m not sure I want your kind of help,” Jamie said.
Ian sighed and scratched his head. “Jay, I thought we were past all this. What was the point in all the jamming together we did last week if we can’t even hang out? I thought all that was over. I thought we could be friends.”
“We’ve never been friends,” Jamie snapped. Hamish stopped wriggling at the tone of Jamie’s voice and looked up with huge black eyes.
Ian was quiet for a moment “All right, that’s true, but that was before. I mean, I’d like to think we know a little better now.” Reaching out he cupped Hamish’s muzzle and tapped him on the head. “Spit out, little man.”
A wad of green, slippery gum fell into Ian’s hand.
Ian gave Jamie a wry look. “Dogs are as bad as kids.”
Jamie opened his mouth to ask after Ian’s younger brothers and then thought better of it. Instead he pulled Hamish’s leash out of one of his pockets and clipped it on. Setting Hamish back on the ground, he got to his feet. His legs didn’t feel terribly steady underneath him, and his chest was tight.
“I need to get him home,” he said, shaking Hamish’s leash.
Ian looked at the wad of gum in his hand and then back at Jamie. “Right.”
Turning away, Jamie tugged on Hamish’s leash and began walking back towards Arch, he took four steps, stopped, and turned back around. “Did you want to get a drink sometime?” he asked.
Ian stood up and wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“All right,” Jamie said. “We’ll try it.”
*
The Albatross was practically deserted on Monday night, Big Jake wasn’t even at the door, and Jamie stopped just inside the entrance and glanced around, wondering if Ian had stood him up. Taking a few steps inside, he unwrapped his scarf and peered into the darkened room. It took a second for the bright blue and yellow board to get his attention, but really he should’ve known the back of Ian‘s head anywhere. His hair grew in this cowlick that went out of control.
Ian looked up from his solo game of Connect Four as Jamie slid into the booth across from him. He was wearing a dark green sweater that had been missing from Jamie’s closet for eight months now.
“You’re red,” he said, pushing the checkers across the warped wooden table.
“Starting without me again?” Jamie said, slipping his jacket from his shoulders and picking up a red piece. He looked at the board for a second before dropping the piece in.
“I always end up waiting for you.” Ian pushed a cooling brown bottle around the side of the board. “We need to get you a watch.”
He dropped a black piece into the board.
“I have a watch,” Jamie said pushing up his sleeve and displaying the battered black band.
Ian‘s eyes widened. “You still have that?”
Jamie shrugged. He could feel the heat in his face, and thanked whatever higher power that probably didn’t exist that it was dark inside the bar. Being a philosophy major made it a bit difficult to be spiritual. He pushed around a few red pieces before making a selection and dropping it in. “It’s a good watch,” he said.
“It’s waterproof,” Ian said matter-of-factly. He dropped in another piece and then picked up own his bottle of beer.
Jamie looked around the empty room and tried to figure out why he felt so warm. He wasn’t over-dressed or under-dressed. There wasn’t even a fire going in the fireplace, which meant it had to be coming from him, but he didn’t want that. He couldn’t force his body not to respond to Ian, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.
They were friends; this was what friends did. They hung out. They didn’t notice cowlicks. Or when people were licking their lips a lot. He picked up a checker and dropped it into a slot.
He was finding it really hard to focus on the game. He kept moving around on his side of the both, and then, when he caught Ian watching him, he stopped, but then his leg began twitching and when he tried to stop that his foot began tapping.
Eventually he just gave up and let his foot tap out a random beat.
“You’re getting a line from doing that.” Ian gestured in Jamie’s direction with the checker he was holding.
“Doing what?”
Jamie twitched when Ian leaned across the table, and his finger stroked the between Jamie’s eyebrows. “You’re kinda young for worry lines, Blondie.”
Jamie pulled away belatedly. “Connect Four,” he said, dropping in his winning piece.
Ian frowned. “Now I remember why I dumped you,” he said.
Jamie made a derisory noise. “You didn’t dump me -- I dumped you.”
“You did? I thought we broke up.”
“That too.”
Ian‘s smile was a beautiful thing. Sometimes Jamie forgot. Or at least he tried to forget.
“Since when?” Ian said.
“Since it happened.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Jamie took another pull of his beer. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I have a really good memory,” Ian protested good-naturedly. “I never forgot your birthday, did I?”
Jamie opened and closed his mouth once. “No,” he admitted after moment. “You never forgot anything like that.”
“So what did I forget that made it so terrible to be with me?”
Jamie stopped tapping his foot and looked around the bar. He hadn’t come here spoiling for a fight or wanting a great, big discussion. He’d come here to try to be friends –- but maybe that wasn’t ever going to happen for them. He sighed and put his hands on the table. “You forgot that I changed.”
Ian’s look of disbelief was etched into every pore. “Of course you changed, Jamie. I’ve known you for three years –- I’d be a little worried if you hadn’t.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Jamie picked up a leftover checker and drew it around the table top with the tip of his finger. “I’m not the same guy I was when we first started going out. I don’t –- I didn’t need you to look after me all the time.”
“You thought I was suffocating you?”
“I’m your equal, Ian; I’m not your project or your make-it-yourself perfect gay boy.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ian snapped. “I never treated you like you were my project!”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what it felt like.”
Ian knocked over a near-by chair as he slipped out the booth and got to his feet, glaring at Jamie the entire time. “I just couldn’t make you happy, could I? I gave you everything and it was never what you wanted, was it?”
“Ian.”
“Fuck you, Jamie.”
Every atom in Jamie’s body told him to get up, follow Ian, and explain what he meant, but he didn’t. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he really didn’t know what he meant either. How could he explain himself if he couldn’t even figure out what had gone wrong?
He was really tempted to go home and call his mom -- not necessarily for dealing-with-your-ex relationship advice, since she was a big Ian fan -- but just to make sure he wasn’t really as evil as Ian had just made him feel. That’s what moms were for -- except that Jamie had this feeling that when his mom took Ian's side, this time she would be right.
*
The Rockridge Café seemed to be full of traffic twenty-four hours a day, and Jamie made a noise of impatience as his chair was bumped for the third time in five minutes by another waitress. “Have you ever considered sitting at the counter, where we’re less likely to be accosted every thirty seconds?” he asked as Rusty placed his napkin in his lap and picked up a piece of bacon from his plate.
“I dunno,” Rusty said between bites. “There’s a certain ambiance to sitting by the kitchen.”
“It’s called going deaf,” Jamie said as he picked up his knife and fork and began cutting his omelet into pieces.
“Somebody’s tetchy this morning,” Rusty said with a smirk. “Did you not get enough sleep last night or something? You know the average American doesn’t get enough sleep -- it makes people cranky and impairs their ability to perform. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
Jamie scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rusty just smiled. “Of course not.”
“I’m still pissed at you for that thing at the Albatross you know.”
“I can’t believe you’re still hashing up that old history. I forgot. What the hell more do you want from me? I told you, like, five times that I was sorry.”
“You forgot you made plans with me and Ian to have drinks at the same place, at the same time, on the same night?” Jamie’s disbelief was evident. “And then you just happened not to show up?”
Rusty shrugged and picked up his knife. Taking a liberal amount of butter from the little bowl provided, he spread it liberally over the powdered sugar on top his French toast. “I TA for three classes and still have a course load of my own -- shit happens.”
“Sure it does,” Jamie said, stabbing several potatoes on his plate.
“I’m sorry,” Rusty said. “Does that make it better?”
Jamie narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, I can’t help that -- although you know suspicion and paranoia are a sure sign that you’re not sleeping enough. That and taking out your bitterness on everybody around you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’re you picking on Ian for, Jay?”
“What? Who said –- did he say I was picking on him? What the fuck!” Jamie’s fork and knife clattered onto his plate loudly.
“He didn’t say anything like that,” Rusty began, and Jamie sighed. He had seen this coming from the moment Rusty had shown up at his door at 8am, red hair sticking up everywhere and eyes way too wide. Rusty never wanted to have brunch; his idea of breakfast was a McGriddle sandwich on his way to the Psych building.
“But you know, he’s been looking kind of rough recently,” Rusty said.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Rusty raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything further, and Jamie watched in amusement as Rusty realized the sleeve of his striped Oxford was dragging through his French toast. Making a face of disgust, Rusty retracted his arm and wiped ineffectually as the stain.
“And you two haven’t been fighting or anything either, right?”
Jamie picked up his fork and savagely speared a potato. He really wanted to smirk over the mess Rusty had made, but chose not to since it was too early for another fight.
Still, it served Rusty right that he’d ruined his shirt. Meddling fucker.
“Being in love is like syrup,” Rusty said as he tried to mop up the butter with his napkin.
“Oh, yeah?” Jamie said pushing his omelet around his plate. “How’s that?”
Rusty folded up his sleeve and made a second pass at the syrup. “It tastes really sweet when you first have it, so you think you want more and more,” he said, pouring syrup over his French toast. “But later on you feel sick and you need to throw up.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “That is the worst analogy I have ever heard,” he said between bites of egg.
Rusty emptied the carafe of syrup onto his plate and then picked up his fork and knife once more. “What the hell do you want at nine-thirty in the morning?” he asked. “I could do an entire analysis of the co-dependence of your relationship with Ian, and how other people just don’t stand a chance because you’re both so fascinated with each other, but that’s boring.”
“We’re not co-dependent,” Jamie said, setting his cutlery down and picking up his orange juice. There was something stuck in the back of his throat.
Rusty snorted. “Sure you’re not, tell me the part about how you two are hanging out again, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re fucking, and then the band is back together, and you’re driving each other insane. Again.”
Jamie’s mouthful of juice went down the wrong pipe, and he started coughing. “We’re not fucking,” he protested between coughs.
“Not yet,” Rusty said, waving a forkful of syrup-drenched toast. “But you probably should be. After you figure out what the fuck is wrong with the two of you. You’re one of those couples who would be fine if they would actually, like, talk to each other.”
“I’m not getting back together with Ian. We’re just friends.”
Rusty put down his fork and looked at Jamie as if he had suddenly sprouted another head. “Sure, because I’ve never heard that one before.”
“We’re not,” Jamie insisted.
“You two don‘t know how to be friends,” Rusty said. “All you know how to do is be in some crazy, obsessive, dysfunctional mess.”
“We’re not dysfunctional.”
Rusty’s eyebrow shot directly into his hairline. “Whatever.”
“This from the man who hasn’t dated anybody in a year?”
“Just because I don’t date doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Rusty said. “You don’t have to be insane to recognize it in other people.”
Jamie sighed. He didn’t want to be in crazy, obsessive dysfunction with Ian anymore.
*
Jamie stood outside the Goldman School of Public Policy in the rain for seventy-eight minutes trying to figure out what to do with the current state of his life. Rusty thought he was insane; Ian was pissed at him, and Jamie – he didn’t know what the hell he was doing dredging up stuff that he’d sworn was long since buried.
He wanted to apologize to Ian for his behavior; he just didn’t know what to say. Something to the effect of ‘You used to be the most important thing in my entire life, and I loved you more than anyone else, and probably still do,’ didn’t seem like the sort of thing a friend would say to another friend. And saying ‘I used to look up to you, but now, I don’t’ didn’t seem quite accurate. He had looked up to Ian, and in a way he still did. Ian had traveled all over the world, and he spoke all these languages. He was “well-rounded” and cosmopolitan and all that shit, and Jamie had always liked that.
When they’d first met, Jamie had been a hick from Albany, New York. He’d kind of thought the sun shone out of Ian’s ass, except for when he was being a prick. Once upon a time he’d been really impressed by Ian, but the same things didn’t impress Jamie anymore. After three years at Berkeley, he didn’t need a boyfriend to educate him; he needed someone who wanted a reciprocal relationship. He wanted to give and be given, too.
But that didn’t seem like the smartest thing to say when Ian was obviously pissed at him for accusing him of stifling him.
It wasn’t true, the stifling thing. Ian had only encouraged Jamie in everything he’d ever wanted to do, and maybe it was Jamie who just felt he was being held down. Maybe he really couldn’t appreciate a good thing when he had it, like his mom had suggested.
Ian had been there to pick up the pieces during Jamie’s freshman year when Jamie’s mother had announced that she was divorcing his father, and Jamie had gone out on a hedonistic spree involving fucking and drugging and eventually being pulled in by the Berkeley PD for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. Ian had been the one to encourage him to go abroad the summer after his freshman year and backpack across the Andes. He had even helped finance it, something Jamie was still paying him back for since he’d refused to accept it as gift.
The last person to suggest that Jamie could just work it off had wound up with a black eye, and while Rusty did have deadly left hook, it had been firmly decided that this was not a subject open for general discussion to anyone. Ever.
As for he and Ian, they’d dated casually during the end of Jamie’s freshman year, but when he’d come back from Chile he’d pretty much announced to Ian that they were together.
It had been cute -- in a really bossy sort of way. Ian said he found it charming. He might’ve been humoring Jamie, though. The point in all this being that Ian had given, and Jamie had taken, and then one day he’d woken up and felt as though he hadn’t given anything back; or that Ian wouldn’t let him give anything back, and it pissed him the fuck off, because who was Ian to turn him down?
He was just Jamie’s boyfriend after all.
And then he wasn’t.
Instead he was just some guy who Jamie stood waiting for in the rain, because maybe they were a little obsessive and dysfunctional, and life was boring without Ian, and Jamie missed him. They didn’t talk about it, but they didn’t talk about a lot of things.
Jamie knew Ian had Agroecology on Wednesday afternoons, because talking or not, together or not, they kept tabs on each other pretty fervently. Carrie said it was cute; Rusty called it ‘Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior.’
Ian was among the last students to leave the building in the four o’clock rush, noticeable by lack of umbrella, and when Jamie called Ian’s name, at least he stopped. He didn’t actually turn around though.
“What do you want, Jamie?”
Jamie watched as Ian’s shirt went from light gray to dark with rain in less time than it took for Jamie to open his mouth and say something.
“I want to talk to you.” Jamie took a few steps closer to Ian until he was covering them both with his umbrella, and only then did Ian turn around.
“I think you’ve said enough, don’t you?” Ian’s tone was flat. He looked tired and cold, and he wasn’t wearing a coat. He shifted his weight from one leg to another as Jamie licked his lips and tried to think of how to fix something that had been broken a long time ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean what I said the other day.”
Ian made a derisory noise. “Yes, you did. You wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”
“I didn’t mean it the way it came out,” Jamie amended. “I don’t think you stifled me.”
“I tried to give you space!” Ian shouted. His face was tight with anger, and Jamie flinched. “I said ‘if you need space, you should take it!’ I didn’t say leave me!’
The umbrella wasn’t big enough for both of them, and rain was trickling down the back of Jamie’s shirt. It was cold, but he could feel the heat in his face. “I did need space!” he shot back. “I needed you to know that I could be on my own! I wanted to make sure I didn’t need you to survive. I didn’t want to be some parasite.”
Ian’s face fell. “I never said you were a parasite. I would never say something like that.”
Jamie shrugged. The back of his shirt was getting drenched, and his teeth were starting to chatter. “You didn’t have to say it for me to feel it. I felt like my entire world was about you, and it was fucking with my head. I needed to be me.”
“You are you.”
“That’s very Zen, but that’s not what I mean. I mean I needed to know that too. I needed to know that I could be me and not some guy you created.”
“What kind of bullshit is that? I’m not Dr Frankenstein. I didn’t make you. You’ve only ever been yourself.” Ian reached up to push damp hair off his forehead.
Jamie sighed, and when he reached up to scratch his head his umbrella flew out his hand. “Let it go,” he said when Ian moved to go after it. “It’s not really important.”
He batted at the rain falling in his eyes. “I know you didn’t make me, but I just needed to make sure that I could be somebody who wasn’t dependent on you to feel like I was alive.”
Ian cocked his head to the side and studied Jamie intently as rain ran in rivulets down his face. “So we broke up so that you could make sure you were you and not part of me –- do you know how freaky that sounds?”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Don’t say that to Rusty or he’ll start analyzing us again.”
Ian sneezed and rubbed his arms. “You want to get of out the rain, Blondie? It’s fucking freezing out here.”
*
It felt strange to play with Ian again.
This was the fifth time they’d practiced together since the whole Seth-mess, and while Jamie was grateful to Ian for inviting him over the first time… and the second time… and all the times after that, he still felt seriously unsettled.
Things had changed, and yet they hadn’t at all.
The garage behind Ian’s apartment was still just as messy and dusty ever, and there were a few new playbills on the wall advertising The Breaks playing at various places in East Bay. The garage was still un-insulated, and Carrie’s drum kit still took up half the room. There were unopened boxes from Ian’s various moves interspersed with the amps and a couple of textbooks that proved that Ian still preferred studying in the unheated room to the comfort of his apartment.
Jamie cradled his guitar in his lap and re-adjusted the microphone in front of him. As always, the sleeves of the sweater he’d borrowed from Ian were too long for him, and he had to keep pushing them further up his arms. His stuff would be out of the dryer eventually though, and then he would change.
Exhaling softly through his nose, Jamie glanced over at Ian who was humming a tune under his breath as he replaced a broken string on his guitar. His hair was damp from the rain and stuck up in little tufts all over his head.
His hair was growing longer, which meant it was probably four inches long instead of the normal two inches of black fuzz that he preferred. Jamie had actually measured it once -- a long time ago. The dark shadow of stubble along Ian’s jaw was even darker in the weak light from the naked 40-watt light bulbs that hung overhead.
It took a few moments for Jamie to catch on to what Ian was humming, and he sat up and tapped his foot to catch the beat. He blew on his fingers to get rid of some of the numbness from the rain, and then he began to sing.
Ian glanced up briefly from the guitar in his lap and offered Jamie a small smile before joining in on the chorus. His voice faded out after the second verse and Jamie kept singing.
He turned away when he realized Ian was staring.
“You ever think about coming back?” Ian’s question threw off his rhythm, and he stopped mid-strum.
“Coming back where?” he asked.
“The band.”
Jamie looked back over at Ian who was still fiddling with his A string. He was focusing way too hard; it never took him that long to tune his guitar. “Why would I do something like that?”
Ian didn’t look up, but he shrugged. “Dunno, just a thought I had.”
He didn’t see the appraising look that Jamie gave him. “I haven’t played with a band in a long time,” he said.
“It’s only been eight months.”
“Yeah, but eight months can be a long time for some people.”
Ian finally stopped fiddling with his string and sat up straight; he didn’t meet Jamie’s eyes. Instead he adjusted his guitar in his lap and pulled his microphone closer. “It’s hard to have a band with no lead singer,” he said matter-of-factly.
Jamie gestured towards one of the newer playbills on the garage wall. “Not that hard apparently.”
“Appearances can be deceiving you know.” And before Jamie could answer, he carried on. “You seem to be doing well for yourself though. I caught your act at the Freight a few weeks ago.”
This threw Jamie off-guard. “I didn’t see you there.”
Ian shrugged and strummed a few open chords, but he didn’t say anything.
“Marty’s been good to me,” Jamie said. “He let me come in and play when nobody else would take me.”
Ian fixed Jamie with a piercing look. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Jamie scratched his head and turned away. “Okay, Marty let me play there when there was no place else I wanted to play.”
Ian held the neck of his guitar with his left hand and rubbed his head with his right. “You were always welcome to play with us, Jay.”
“The Breaks are your band, not mine.”
“The Breaks are everybody’s band,” Ian corrected. “Carrie’s, Rusty’s, yours…”
“You didn’t want me anymore.”
The look Ian gave Jamie was as helpless as any look Jamie had ever seen. “You left us, Jamie.”
They were getting into extremely dangerous territory here, and it was the last thing Jamie wanted. More importantly, it was the last thing they needed. “I like doing the solo thing,” he said, trying very hard to keep any sort of desperation from creeping into his voice.
Ian sighed and sat up a little straighter. For Jamie the conversation was over, but Ian looked as though someone had run over his dog.
“You want to take it from the top?” Ian said eventually.
Jamie tried to smile. “Where else is there to start?”
*
Mod Lang was the first record store that Ian ever took Jamie to after he’d agreed to sing with The Breaks, and Jamie’s first impression of the store was that it was small. Really small.
He couldn’t understand why Ian was so excited about this tiny store with only a few rows of CDs when Rasputin or Amoeba had so much more variety, and then Ian introduced Jamie to Natalie and Dominic, the owners of the store, and pointed out all the gold records that bands had given them. There were photos from in-stores by pretty much every British band that had ever come to California, and Jamie had to respect people who were able to get Radiohead to come in and play a few songs ‘when they were in the neighborhood.’
It had taken Jamie a little while to feel comfortable coming into the store without Ian, but three years later he knew all the sales clerks and nine months ago he had been granted access to what Ian called the Holy Grail of Rare Music - the Mod Lang attic.
The attic was the size of a large classroom and stocked high with demos, vinyl, CDs and various bits of memorabilia; it was also musty, airtight, strictly pest controlled and kept in a special order that only made sense to Dominic. There were no windows so the sunlight couldn’t warp the merchandise, and there were only two light bulbs in the room. It was like a bank vault, but Jamie didn’t really mind because of the Golden Rule: If you could find it, you could keep it. It was like a big treasure hunt, and Jamie had come across a Verve demo three months ago and masters of Radiohead playing in the store after the release of OK Computer.
Today, after six straight Tuesdays spent looking, he had found a promo copy for Coldplay’s Brothers & Sisters; and he was blinking and taking in huge gulps of air as he descended the stairs carrying his find, when he caught sight of a dark head moving around on the other side of the counter.
There were thousands of people at Berkeley and hundreds came into the Mod Lang every day. Only the really geeky people came on Tuesday mornings, and Jamie grinned and waved the promo at Natalie, who was on the phone.
Slipping around the corner, he tucked the promo firmly under his arm. There was no hesitation in his stride as he approached Seth, and he was slightly surprised at his lack of sadness for what might have been.
“Are you finding everything okay today?” he asked in his best customer service voice, grinning when Seth did a double take.
He hadn’t seen Seth in weeks, but he was just as attractive as Jamie remembered. His dark curls were just as unruly as ever and he smiled like Jamie was the only person in the room… it kind of reminded Jamie of Ian, except for the curly hair thing.
“Long time, no see,” he said.
Seth just nodded his head. “I was just thinking that too, well, I wasn’t thinking that it had been a long time since we’d seen each other, but more a long time since um – yeah, okay, so how are you? How’s things? How’s school and Ian? Are you still playing at the Freight, I mean I’m sure you are, because you’re really good, and I’ll be quiet now.”
It amazed Jamie how Seth could get out so many words without taking a breath, and if he was anxious he seemed to talk even faster.
He was going to pass out one day from oxygen deprivation to his brain.
“Breathe, Seth,” Jamie said.
Seth’s laugh was a nervous thing, and Jamie shifted the record under his arm. “I’m fine,” he said. “School’s good, Ian can speak for himself, and my music is – well, it’s the same. And how about you? How’s Ryan?”
For a moment, Jamie thought today was the day Seth was going to pass out, but instead he just said, “Ryan’s – Ryan’s good. He’s really good.”
Seth couldn’t seem to control the smile that crept across his face, and Jamie had to smirk. He knew that smile. It said, ‘I’m having sex three times a day!’
“I’m playing at the Freight next weekend, you should come,” Jamie said.
“Are you sure? Because you know I don’t want to, like, mess up your groove; I mean if you have a groove or anything. Or is that too R &B for you?” Seth shifted back and forth; Jamie had forgotten about the fidgeting, too.
He had to laugh. “It’s fine, you won’t ruin my groove.”
“Oh, okay – that’s good. I can do that.”
“And you can bring Ryan if you like; I’ll put your names down on the list.”
Seth’s eyes were huge and Jamie just smiled. Seth was a good guy. A little confused about what he wanted, but Jamie knew how that kind of thing went. He’d spent a year pretending he wasn’t really crazy about somebody when he was; and then he’d spent another year and change with that same somebody he was happily co-dependent and dysfunctional with, and then he’d left him because Plato was right -- love made you insane. Jamie had wanted to make sure he could be on his own, and then, when he was on his own, it aggravated the shit out if him.
After eight months without Ian, Jamie still didn’t know what he wanted. He might’ve had a better idea who he wanted, since a fling with Seth had pretty much put Jamie off the idea dating/sleeping around thing, but he was still just as fucking confused as ever.
At least he could admit that.
“I’d, um, we’d like that. That’d be really cool, thanks, Jamie.”
Jamie patted Seth on the shoulder. “Don’t mention it,” he said winking at Seth as he brushed by and headed for the front of the store.
Telegraph Avenue Epilogue: Check Your Head (II of II)
Dedicated wholeheartedly to
serialkarma who has waited a whole year for it to be written, I present the post-Telegraph Avenue story of Jamie and Ian, with an appearance by some random dude from The O.C.If he wanted to, Jamie could recall everything about the first time he met Ian Hurley -- what he said, what he wore, how he smiled, how he smelled... But Jamie didn’t want to remember that kind of stuff, because a) it was depressing b) it was painful and c) it defeated the purpose of having broken up in the first place. Although what exactly the purpose of breaking up of was, was still a matter of serious debate, even eight months later.
Ian had told Jamie that he thought they needed a break, but Jamie had been the one to say it was over. Carrie and Rusty thought it was Ian’s fault that Jamie left the band, and it was the sort of thing that was so muddled that everybody was to blame, and no one was to blame, and everybody had just wound up bitter and hurt.
At least Jamie had wound up feeling bitter and hurt, and for a long time he hadn’t cared about whatever Ian felt.
If Ian had felt anything at all.
They’d been down the road with the sex and the smiles -- and the inability to communicate -- and it seemed pointless to do it again. He knew that Ian hadn’t dated since they’d broken up, and some part of him was fucking thrilled about that. It was the same part that didn’t really consider Seth anything but an interlude. Jamie tried not to listen to that part too much, because it always ended with him making out with Ian in back alleys, and then promising himself he would never do it again.
Ian never appeared to be fazed by that sort of thing, but it wasn’t what Jamie wanted at all. Not that he had the clearest idea of what he did want, but he didn’t think it was that. Plus, they had really different ideas about communication -- Ian hadn’t even told Jamie he loved him until after it was over.
Not that Jamie needed to be told that on a daily basis, because he wasn’t a needy guy, but being told just once before they’d broken up would've been nice. Not that he’d ever been that forthcoming himself, but at least he’d had the balls to say it. He didn’t think a little reciprocity was too much to ask for.
He could’ve been wrong, but he didn’t think he was.
Of course Derrida would have said that he wasn’t really thinking anyway, but philosophy wasn’t going to solve whatever was bugging him so much.
He wasn’t depressed; he’d been depressed before, and he knew the signs: the sleeplessness, the blah feeling he got about everything. The way he sat on the futon, stuffing Cheese-its into his mouth or cataloging his comic books, and watching Jerry Springer and Aqua Teen Hunger Force until Meatwad and Frylock were talking about their baby daddies.
He knew real depression. That was his parents divorcing, and Olivia calling him at night from 3000 miles away and crying her eyes out. Depression was losing his best friend from childhood because he couldn’t accept that Jamie liked girls and boys. That period after he and Ian had first split up, but still hadn't been able to stay away from each other wasn’t depression -- that was fucking insanity.
It was a well-known fact that every relationship required one last fuck as closure, but they hadn’t been able to stop fucking.
They couldn’t -- or wouldn’t -- talk, and couldn’t be in the same room and fully-clothed without fighting, but they never had a problem when they were in bed. Or in the garage. Or in the back of Ian’s car. Or in Dr Mentz’s office, the Econ professor that Ian had been a TA for during Jamie’s sophomore year, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that after breaking up with Seth, Jamie clearly wasn’t depressed.
It had been fun for a while, being the older one in the relationship and having all the experience. Seth was so new to everything, it was like Jamie had a virgin all his own -- or close enough. He could see how incredibly tempting that sort of power could be, but at the end of the day he wasn’t going to be anybody’s hidden secret. He had been on the verge of developing some real feelings for Seth, but it was just 'the verge', and with Seth in the closet and then with the whole Ryan thing, well. It just wasn’t for him; there was too much drama.
It was interesting to see things from a different angle though. In a way, he had developed a little empathy for what Ian must have gone through with him. But he had never been uncertain about what he wanted, and Seth, well... Seth played clueless until forced to decide.
Nevertheless, it was a learning lesson, a good one, and it wasn’t bad being with someone so new, it was just different. It was very different. And now Jamie was different too.
He could see things differently. He could see where he and Ian hadn’t adjusted when they should have. Jamie had changed when they were together, and Ian either hadn’t seen it or had ignored it.
Whatever the case though, Jamie didn’t need recovery time from his experience with Seth; he just needed a good rebound fuck and that would be that. Everyone said so. Rusty had patted him on the shoulder and gotten him drunk; Carrie had said Seth was too young and gotten him drunk; and Ian had tricked him under the guise of jamming together... and gotten him drunk.
Jamie had too many hangovers to be depressed.
He just needed to get laid.
And he needed to stop smoking. Not that he had actually started up again or anything, but he’d stopped at the liquor store during his morning walk with Hamish, and now he found himself standing on the walkway outside his apartment with a freshly lit Marlboro Light in his hand.
The cigarette smoke was wafting in the cool Berkeley breeze, and it smelled... well, it just smelled.
“Jamie Andrew Miller! Are you smoking that foul thing?”
Jamie’s hold on the cigarette floundered as Mrs Epstein’s white-blue-gray hair snapped into his periphery. He straightened up instead of leaning on the balcony railing and dropped the cigarette on the pavement walk. Turning in the direction of the apartment down the hall, he ran a hand through his hair, hoping to look a little less guilty than he felt.
Mrs Epstein stood in her doorway, wearing her puce flowery muumuu, which meant it had to be Thursday. Hamish tottered around her ankles, and when Jamie spoke up, he barked.
“What foul thing, Mrs E?” he said, crushing the cherry with the toe of his sneaker.
“That’s better,” she said, disappearing and then reappearing with a red leash in her hand. “Here, take Hamish for a walk and then bring me your whites. I’m doing the laundry.”
Grinning sheepishly, Jamie walked over to the woman who played surrogate mom to half the building. Zipping-up his maroon jacket over his Turin Brakes tee shirt, he took the leash and the proffered plastic baggie. Stuffing the baggie in one of his jeans’ pockets, he bent down and attached the leash to Hamish’s collar.
“C’mon, man,” he said picking up Scottish Terrier and making a face at the enthusiastic face licking. “Let’s get some air.”
There was a seriously bitter breeze at street level, and Jamie set Hamish down on the damp sidewalk and stood back up expectantly. “You’re the one who wanted to go outside,” he said as Hamish looked down the tree-lined street and then back at him as though this nighttime interlude were his idea. “I’m just here to clean up the mess.”
Hamish made a snorting noise and began toddling down Euclid toward the Berkeley campus; Jamie stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed. Hamish set a pretty good pace for such a tiny dog, and Jamie smiled as Hamish yipped at the Irish Setter on the other side of the street. For such a little dog, he had lot of spunk too; Jamie liked that.
It had rained earlier in the day and the smell of damp concrete was oddly soothing to Jamie’s jarred nerves. His fingers brushed against the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, and he sighed loudly. Hamish paused in his inspection of several bushes and looked at Jamie expectantly.
“It’s nothing,” Jamie said.
Hamish made a snuffling noise and continued on with their walk.
They paused on Hearst to cross the street to campus, and Hamish sniffed at the toes of Jamie’s Pumas. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.
Hamish made a noise and turned away, and soon thereafter they crossed the street to the campus. There wasn’t a large assortment of people hanging about on a Thursday evening in the post-rain cold. People moved across the campus with purpose, and Jamie hummed Hank Williams to himself as he let Hamish off his leash to run around.
Taking the plastic bag out his back pocket, he spread it on the steps of Tolman Hall and sat down on the damp concrete. He didn’t expect to have to wait long -- Hamish was a little dog, and he didn’t require long walks like Jethro, his father’s German Shephard, did. Of course, now that his dad had that big farm in Montana, Jethro got all the space and walks any dog could want.
Jamie had spent a few months on the farm that past summer with Olivia and their dad, and while the farm was cool and Olivia loved the horses their dad was raising, Montana seemed a bit empty for Jamie’s tastes.
His dad had said he needed a change of scene, and you couldn’t get much further from Albany, New York than Cascade, Montana. Apparently it even had more snow, which Jamie hadn’t thought possible. His dad seemed to love it though, and he had given Jamie a few open-ended plane tickets so he could come out and visit anytime.
“There are laws against loitering.” The voice came from Jamie’s right, and his heart jumped before his brain kicked in.
Rolling his eyes in the manner of the much harassed, Jamie turned and looked up. And then a little further up. Ian grinned back at him, blue eyes bright.
“Don’t you have other people to harass?” Jamie asked, even as Ian pulled his bag over his head and dropped it on the steps at Jamie’s feet.
“What? Me harass you? I was walking home, minding my own business after an extensively taxing study session at Goldman, and I come across this vagabond sitting on the steps of Tolman Hall… You think I’m harassing you?” Ian asked, clapping his hand across his chest and his tone mocking soap actresses everywhere. “I’m hurt.”
“Please,” Jamie’s tone was a bit more derisory than he could help. “A Mac truck couldn’t hurt you. I think you were born to harass people.”
Ian’s hurt look slipped into a rueful grin, and he scratched his jaw. “If it helps, I only harass people I really like.”
“You must love me then.”
“Never stopped,” Ian said, sitting down on the steps on Jamie’s right.
“You’ve got a great way of showing it.” Jamie fixed Ian with a semi-serious glare, before turning away to make sure Hamish hadn’t gone far.
The tiny black dog was sniffing a bike chained to several newspaper dispensers, and he seemed to be chewing something rather vigorously.
“I never claimed to be perfect,” Ian said even as Jamie got to his feet and crossed to where Hamish was.
Dropping to his knees, Jamie picked Hamish up and tried to pry open his mouth. “Give it up,” he said as Hamish squirmed in his grasp. “You know better than to eat the crap around here. For all you know it’s acid-laced, and you’ll hallucinate and start humping a cat.”
He pointedly ignored Ian when he knelt down next to him.
“Are you going to let me help?” Ian said after several seconds of Hamish wriggling around, and Jamie making no headway at all.
“I’m not sure I want your kind of help,” Jamie said.
Ian sighed and scratched his head. “Jay, I thought we were past all this. What was the point in all the jamming together we did last week if we can’t even hang out? I thought all that was over. I thought we could be friends.”
“We’ve never been friends,” Jamie snapped. Hamish stopped wriggling at the tone of Jamie’s voice and looked up with huge black eyes.
Ian was quiet for a moment “All right, that’s true, but that was before. I mean, I’d like to think we know a little better now.” Reaching out he cupped Hamish’s muzzle and tapped him on the head. “Spit out, little man.”
A wad of green, slippery gum fell into Ian’s hand.
Ian gave Jamie a wry look. “Dogs are as bad as kids.”
Jamie opened his mouth to ask after Ian’s younger brothers and then thought better of it. Instead he pulled Hamish’s leash out of one of his pockets and clipped it on. Setting Hamish back on the ground, he got to his feet. His legs didn’t feel terribly steady underneath him, and his chest was tight.
“I need to get him home,” he said, shaking Hamish’s leash.
Ian looked at the wad of gum in his hand and then back at Jamie. “Right.”
Turning away, Jamie tugged on Hamish’s leash and began walking back towards Arch, he took four steps, stopped, and turned back around. “Did you want to get a drink sometime?” he asked.
Ian stood up and wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“All right,” Jamie said. “We’ll try it.”
The Albatross was practically deserted on Monday night, Big Jake wasn’t even at the door, and Jamie stopped just inside the entrance and glanced around, wondering if Ian had stood him up. Taking a few steps inside, he unwrapped his scarf and peered into the darkened room. It took a second for the bright blue and yellow board to get his attention, but really he should’ve known the back of Ian‘s head anywhere. His hair grew in this cowlick that went out of control.
Ian looked up from his solo game of Connect Four as Jamie slid into the booth across from him. He was wearing a dark green sweater that had been missing from Jamie’s closet for eight months now.
“You’re red,” he said, pushing the checkers across the warped wooden table.
“Starting without me again?” Jamie said, slipping his jacket from his shoulders and picking up a red piece. He looked at the board for a second before dropping the piece in.
“I always end up waiting for you.” Ian pushed a cooling brown bottle around the side of the board. “We need to get you a watch.”
He dropped a black piece into the board.
“I have a watch,” Jamie said pushing up his sleeve and displaying the battered black band.
Ian‘s eyes widened. “You still have that?”
Jamie shrugged. He could feel the heat in his face, and thanked whatever higher power that probably didn’t exist that it was dark inside the bar. Being a philosophy major made it a bit difficult to be spiritual. He pushed around a few red pieces before making a selection and dropping it in. “It’s a good watch,” he said.
“It’s waterproof,” Ian said matter-of-factly. He dropped in another piece and then picked up own his bottle of beer.
Jamie looked around the empty room and tried to figure out why he felt so warm. He wasn’t over-dressed or under-dressed. There wasn’t even a fire going in the fireplace, which meant it had to be coming from him, but he didn’t want that. He couldn’t force his body not to respond to Ian, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.
They were friends; this was what friends did. They hung out. They didn’t notice cowlicks. Or when people were licking their lips a lot. He picked up a checker and dropped it into a slot.
He was finding it really hard to focus on the game. He kept moving around on his side of the both, and then, when he caught Ian watching him, he stopped, but then his leg began twitching and when he tried to stop that his foot began tapping.
Eventually he just gave up and let his foot tap out a random beat.
“You’re getting a line from doing that.” Ian gestured in Jamie’s direction with the checker he was holding.
“Doing what?”
Jamie twitched when Ian leaned across the table, and his finger stroked the between Jamie’s eyebrows. “You’re kinda young for worry lines, Blondie.”
Jamie pulled away belatedly. “Connect Four,” he said, dropping in his winning piece.
Ian frowned. “Now I remember why I dumped you,” he said.
Jamie made a derisory noise. “You didn’t dump me -- I dumped you.”
“You did? I thought we broke up.”
“That too.”
Ian‘s smile was a beautiful thing. Sometimes Jamie forgot. Or at least he tried to forget.
“Since when?” Ian said.
“Since it happened.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Jamie took another pull of his beer. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I have a really good memory,” Ian protested good-naturedly. “I never forgot your birthday, did I?”
Jamie opened and closed his mouth once. “No,” he admitted after moment. “You never forgot anything like that.”
“So what did I forget that made it so terrible to be with me?”
Jamie stopped tapping his foot and looked around the bar. He hadn’t come here spoiling for a fight or wanting a great, big discussion. He’d come here to try to be friends –- but maybe that wasn’t ever going to happen for them. He sighed and put his hands on the table. “You forgot that I changed.”
Ian’s look of disbelief was etched into every pore. “Of course you changed, Jamie. I’ve known you for three years –- I’d be a little worried if you hadn’t.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Jamie picked up a leftover checker and drew it around the table top with the tip of his finger. “I’m not the same guy I was when we first started going out. I don’t –- I didn’t need you to look after me all the time.”
“You thought I was suffocating you?”
“I’m your equal, Ian; I’m not your project or your make-it-yourself perfect gay boy.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ian snapped. “I never treated you like you were my project!”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what it felt like.”
Ian knocked over a near-by chair as he slipped out the booth and got to his feet, glaring at Jamie the entire time. “I just couldn’t make you happy, could I? I gave you everything and it was never what you wanted, was it?”
“Ian.”
“Fuck you, Jamie.”
Every atom in Jamie’s body told him to get up, follow Ian, and explain what he meant, but he didn’t. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he really didn’t know what he meant either. How could he explain himself if he couldn’t even figure out what had gone wrong?
He was really tempted to go home and call his mom -- not necessarily for dealing-with-your-ex relationship advice, since she was a big Ian fan -- but just to make sure he wasn’t really as evil as Ian had just made him feel. That’s what moms were for -- except that Jamie had this feeling that when his mom took Ian's side, this time she would be right.
The Rockridge Café seemed to be full of traffic twenty-four hours a day, and Jamie made a noise of impatience as his chair was bumped for the third time in five minutes by another waitress. “Have you ever considered sitting at the counter, where we’re less likely to be accosted every thirty seconds?” he asked as Rusty placed his napkin in his lap and picked up a piece of bacon from his plate.
“I dunno,” Rusty said between bites. “There’s a certain ambiance to sitting by the kitchen.”
“It’s called going deaf,” Jamie said as he picked up his knife and fork and began cutting his omelet into pieces.
“Somebody’s tetchy this morning,” Rusty said with a smirk. “Did you not get enough sleep last night or something? You know the average American doesn’t get enough sleep -- it makes people cranky and impairs their ability to perform. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
Jamie scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rusty just smiled. “Of course not.”
“I’m still pissed at you for that thing at the Albatross you know.”
“I can’t believe you’re still hashing up that old history. I forgot. What the hell more do you want from me? I told you, like, five times that I was sorry.”
“You forgot you made plans with me and Ian to have drinks at the same place, at the same time, on the same night?” Jamie’s disbelief was evident. “And then you just happened not to show up?”
Rusty shrugged and picked up his knife. Taking a liberal amount of butter from the little bowl provided, he spread it liberally over the powdered sugar on top his French toast. “I TA for three classes and still have a course load of my own -- shit happens.”
“Sure it does,” Jamie said, stabbing several potatoes on his plate.
“I’m sorry,” Rusty said. “Does that make it better?”
Jamie narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, I can’t help that -- although you know suspicion and paranoia are a sure sign that you’re not sleeping enough. That and taking out your bitterness on everybody around you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’re you picking on Ian for, Jay?”
“What? Who said –- did he say I was picking on him? What the fuck!” Jamie’s fork and knife clattered onto his plate loudly.
“He didn’t say anything like that,” Rusty began, and Jamie sighed. He had seen this coming from the moment Rusty had shown up at his door at 8am, red hair sticking up everywhere and eyes way too wide. Rusty never wanted to have brunch; his idea of breakfast was a McGriddle sandwich on his way to the Psych building.
“But you know, he’s been looking kind of rough recently,” Rusty said.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Rusty raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything further, and Jamie watched in amusement as Rusty realized the sleeve of his striped Oxford was dragging through his French toast. Making a face of disgust, Rusty retracted his arm and wiped ineffectually as the stain.
“And you two haven’t been fighting or anything either, right?”
Jamie picked up his fork and savagely speared a potato. He really wanted to smirk over the mess Rusty had made, but chose not to since it was too early for another fight.
Still, it served Rusty right that he’d ruined his shirt. Meddling fucker.
“Being in love is like syrup,” Rusty said as he tried to mop up the butter with his napkin.
“Oh, yeah?” Jamie said pushing his omelet around his plate. “How’s that?”
Rusty folded up his sleeve and made a second pass at the syrup. “It tastes really sweet when you first have it, so you think you want more and more,” he said, pouring syrup over his French toast. “But later on you feel sick and you need to throw up.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “That is the worst analogy I have ever heard,” he said between bites of egg.
Rusty emptied the carafe of syrup onto his plate and then picked up his fork and knife once more. “What the hell do you want at nine-thirty in the morning?” he asked. “I could do an entire analysis of the co-dependence of your relationship with Ian, and how other people just don’t stand a chance because you’re both so fascinated with each other, but that’s boring.”
“We’re not co-dependent,” Jamie said, setting his cutlery down and picking up his orange juice. There was something stuck in the back of his throat.
Rusty snorted. “Sure you’re not, tell me the part about how you two are hanging out again, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re fucking, and then the band is back together, and you’re driving each other insane. Again.”
Jamie’s mouthful of juice went down the wrong pipe, and he started coughing. “We’re not fucking,” he protested between coughs.
“Not yet,” Rusty said, waving a forkful of syrup-drenched toast. “But you probably should be. After you figure out what the fuck is wrong with the two of you. You’re one of those couples who would be fine if they would actually, like, talk to each other.”
“I’m not getting back together with Ian. We’re just friends.”
Rusty put down his fork and looked at Jamie as if he had suddenly sprouted another head. “Sure, because I’ve never heard that one before.”
“We’re not,” Jamie insisted.
“You two don‘t know how to be friends,” Rusty said. “All you know how to do is be in some crazy, obsessive, dysfunctional mess.”
“We’re not dysfunctional.”
Rusty’s eyebrow shot directly into his hairline. “Whatever.”
“This from the man who hasn’t dated anybody in a year?”
“Just because I don’t date doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Rusty said. “You don’t have to be insane to recognize it in other people.”
Jamie sighed. He didn’t want to be in crazy, obsessive dysfunction with Ian anymore.
Jamie stood outside the Goldman School of Public Policy in the rain for seventy-eight minutes trying to figure out what to do with the current state of his life. Rusty thought he was insane; Ian was pissed at him, and Jamie – he didn’t know what the hell he was doing dredging up stuff that he’d sworn was long since buried.
He wanted to apologize to Ian for his behavior; he just didn’t know what to say. Something to the effect of ‘You used to be the most important thing in my entire life, and I loved you more than anyone else, and probably still do,’ didn’t seem like the sort of thing a friend would say to another friend. And saying ‘I used to look up to you, but now, I don’t’ didn’t seem quite accurate. He had looked up to Ian, and in a way he still did. Ian had traveled all over the world, and he spoke all these languages. He was “well-rounded” and cosmopolitan and all that shit, and Jamie had always liked that.
When they’d first met, Jamie had been a hick from Albany, New York. He’d kind of thought the sun shone out of Ian’s ass, except for when he was being a prick. Once upon a time he’d been really impressed by Ian, but the same things didn’t impress Jamie anymore. After three years at Berkeley, he didn’t need a boyfriend to educate him; he needed someone who wanted a reciprocal relationship. He wanted to give and be given, too.
But that didn’t seem like the smartest thing to say when Ian was obviously pissed at him for accusing him of stifling him.
It wasn’t true, the stifling thing. Ian had only encouraged Jamie in everything he’d ever wanted to do, and maybe it was Jamie who just felt he was being held down. Maybe he really couldn’t appreciate a good thing when he had it, like his mom had suggested.
Ian had been there to pick up the pieces during Jamie’s freshman year when Jamie’s mother had announced that she was divorcing his father, and Jamie had gone out on a hedonistic spree involving fucking and drugging and eventually being pulled in by the Berkeley PD for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. Ian had been the one to encourage him to go abroad the summer after his freshman year and backpack across the Andes. He had even helped finance it, something Jamie was still paying him back for since he’d refused to accept it as gift.
The last person to suggest that Jamie could just work it off had wound up with a black eye, and while Rusty did have deadly left hook, it had been firmly decided that this was not a subject open for general discussion to anyone. Ever.
As for he and Ian, they’d dated casually during the end of Jamie’s freshman year, but when he’d come back from Chile he’d pretty much announced to Ian that they were together.
It had been cute -- in a really bossy sort of way. Ian said he found it charming. He might’ve been humoring Jamie, though. The point in all this being that Ian had given, and Jamie had taken, and then one day he’d woken up and felt as though he hadn’t given anything back; or that Ian wouldn’t let him give anything back, and it pissed him the fuck off, because who was Ian to turn him down?
He was just Jamie’s boyfriend after all.
And then he wasn’t.
Instead he was just some guy who Jamie stood waiting for in the rain, because maybe they were a little obsessive and dysfunctional, and life was boring without Ian, and Jamie missed him. They didn’t talk about it, but they didn’t talk about a lot of things.
Jamie knew Ian had Agroecology on Wednesday afternoons, because talking or not, together or not, they kept tabs on each other pretty fervently. Carrie said it was cute; Rusty called it ‘Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior.’
Ian was among the last students to leave the building in the four o’clock rush, noticeable by lack of umbrella, and when Jamie called Ian’s name, at least he stopped. He didn’t actually turn around though.
“What do you want, Jamie?”
Jamie watched as Ian’s shirt went from light gray to dark with rain in less time than it took for Jamie to open his mouth and say something.
“I want to talk to you.” Jamie took a few steps closer to Ian until he was covering them both with his umbrella, and only then did Ian turn around.
“I think you’ve said enough, don’t you?” Ian’s tone was flat. He looked tired and cold, and he wasn’t wearing a coat. He shifted his weight from one leg to another as Jamie licked his lips and tried to think of how to fix something that had been broken a long time ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean what I said the other day.”
Ian made a derisory noise. “Yes, you did. You wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”
“I didn’t mean it the way it came out,” Jamie amended. “I don’t think you stifled me.”
“I tried to give you space!” Ian shouted. His face was tight with anger, and Jamie flinched. “I said ‘if you need space, you should take it!’ I didn’t say leave me!’
The umbrella wasn’t big enough for both of them, and rain was trickling down the back of Jamie’s shirt. It was cold, but he could feel the heat in his face. “I did need space!” he shot back. “I needed you to know that I could be on my own! I wanted to make sure I didn’t need you to survive. I didn’t want to be some parasite.”
Ian’s face fell. “I never said you were a parasite. I would never say something like that.”
Jamie shrugged. The back of his shirt was getting drenched, and his teeth were starting to chatter. “You didn’t have to say it for me to feel it. I felt like my entire world was about you, and it was fucking with my head. I needed to be me.”
“You are you.”
“That’s very Zen, but that’s not what I mean. I mean I needed to know that too. I needed to know that I could be me and not some guy you created.”
“What kind of bullshit is that? I’m not Dr Frankenstein. I didn’t make you. You’ve only ever been yourself.” Ian reached up to push damp hair off his forehead.
Jamie sighed, and when he reached up to scratch his head his umbrella flew out his hand. “Let it go,” he said when Ian moved to go after it. “It’s not really important.”
He batted at the rain falling in his eyes. “I know you didn’t make me, but I just needed to make sure that I could be somebody who wasn’t dependent on you to feel like I was alive.”
Ian cocked his head to the side and studied Jamie intently as rain ran in rivulets down his face. “So we broke up so that you could make sure you were you and not part of me –- do you know how freaky that sounds?”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Don’t say that to Rusty or he’ll start analyzing us again.”
Ian sneezed and rubbed his arms. “You want to get of out the rain, Blondie? It’s fucking freezing out here.”
It felt strange to play with Ian again.
This was the fifth time they’d practiced together since the whole Seth-mess, and while Jamie was grateful to Ian for inviting him over the first time… and the second time… and all the times after that, he still felt seriously unsettled.
Things had changed, and yet they hadn’t at all.
The garage behind Ian’s apartment was still just as messy and dusty ever, and there were a few new playbills on the wall advertising The Breaks playing at various places in East Bay. The garage was still un-insulated, and Carrie’s drum kit still took up half the room. There were unopened boxes from Ian’s various moves interspersed with the amps and a couple of textbooks that proved that Ian still preferred studying in the unheated room to the comfort of his apartment.
Jamie cradled his guitar in his lap and re-adjusted the microphone in front of him. As always, the sleeves of the sweater he’d borrowed from Ian were too long for him, and he had to keep pushing them further up his arms. His stuff would be out of the dryer eventually though, and then he would change.
Exhaling softly through his nose, Jamie glanced over at Ian who was humming a tune under his breath as he replaced a broken string on his guitar. His hair was damp from the rain and stuck up in little tufts all over his head.
His hair was growing longer, which meant it was probably four inches long instead of the normal two inches of black fuzz that he preferred. Jamie had actually measured it once -- a long time ago. The dark shadow of stubble along Ian’s jaw was even darker in the weak light from the naked 40-watt light bulbs that hung overhead.
It took a few moments for Jamie to catch on to what Ian was humming, and he sat up and tapped his foot to catch the beat. He blew on his fingers to get rid of some of the numbness from the rain, and then he began to sing.
Ian glanced up briefly from the guitar in his lap and offered Jamie a small smile before joining in on the chorus. His voice faded out after the second verse and Jamie kept singing.
He turned away when he realized Ian was staring.
“You ever think about coming back?” Ian’s question threw off his rhythm, and he stopped mid-strum.
“Coming back where?” he asked.
“The band.”
Jamie looked back over at Ian who was still fiddling with his A string. He was focusing way too hard; it never took him that long to tune his guitar. “Why would I do something like that?”
Ian didn’t look up, but he shrugged. “Dunno, just a thought I had.”
He didn’t see the appraising look that Jamie gave him. “I haven’t played with a band in a long time,” he said.
“It’s only been eight months.”
“Yeah, but eight months can be a long time for some people.”
Ian finally stopped fiddling with his string and sat up straight; he didn’t meet Jamie’s eyes. Instead he adjusted his guitar in his lap and pulled his microphone closer. “It’s hard to have a band with no lead singer,” he said matter-of-factly.
Jamie gestured towards one of the newer playbills on the garage wall. “Not that hard apparently.”
“Appearances can be deceiving you know.” And before Jamie could answer, he carried on. “You seem to be doing well for yourself though. I caught your act at the Freight a few weeks ago.”
This threw Jamie off-guard. “I didn’t see you there.”
Ian shrugged and strummed a few open chords, but he didn’t say anything.
“Marty’s been good to me,” Jamie said. “He let me come in and play when nobody else would take me.”
Ian fixed Jamie with a piercing look. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Jamie scratched his head and turned away. “Okay, Marty let me play there when there was no place else I wanted to play.”
Ian held the neck of his guitar with his left hand and rubbed his head with his right. “You were always welcome to play with us, Jay.”
“The Breaks are your band, not mine.”
“The Breaks are everybody’s band,” Ian corrected. “Carrie’s, Rusty’s, yours…”
“You didn’t want me anymore.”
The look Ian gave Jamie was as helpless as any look Jamie had ever seen. “You left us, Jamie.”
They were getting into extremely dangerous territory here, and it was the last thing Jamie wanted. More importantly, it was the last thing they needed. “I like doing the solo thing,” he said, trying very hard to keep any sort of desperation from creeping into his voice.
Ian sighed and sat up a little straighter. For Jamie the conversation was over, but Ian looked as though someone had run over his dog.
“You want to take it from the top?” Ian said eventually.
Jamie tried to smile. “Where else is there to start?”
Mod Lang was the first record store that Ian ever took Jamie to after he’d agreed to sing with The Breaks, and Jamie’s first impression of the store was that it was small. Really small.
He couldn’t understand why Ian was so excited about this tiny store with only a few rows of CDs when Rasputin or Amoeba had so much more variety, and then Ian introduced Jamie to Natalie and Dominic, the owners of the store, and pointed out all the gold records that bands had given them. There were photos from in-stores by pretty much every British band that had ever come to California, and Jamie had to respect people who were able to get Radiohead to come in and play a few songs ‘when they were in the neighborhood.’
It had taken Jamie a little while to feel comfortable coming into the store without Ian, but three years later he knew all the sales clerks and nine months ago he had been granted access to what Ian called the Holy Grail of Rare Music - the Mod Lang attic.
The attic was the size of a large classroom and stocked high with demos, vinyl, CDs and various bits of memorabilia; it was also musty, airtight, strictly pest controlled and kept in a special order that only made sense to Dominic. There were no windows so the sunlight couldn’t warp the merchandise, and there were only two light bulbs in the room. It was like a bank vault, but Jamie didn’t really mind because of the Golden Rule: If you could find it, you could keep it. It was like a big treasure hunt, and Jamie had come across a Verve demo three months ago and masters of Radiohead playing in the store after the release of OK Computer.
Today, after six straight Tuesdays spent looking, he had found a promo copy for Coldplay’s Brothers & Sisters; and he was blinking and taking in huge gulps of air as he descended the stairs carrying his find, when he caught sight of a dark head moving around on the other side of the counter.
There were thousands of people at Berkeley and hundreds came into the Mod Lang every day. Only the really geeky people came on Tuesday mornings, and Jamie grinned and waved the promo at Natalie, who was on the phone.
Slipping around the corner, he tucked the promo firmly under his arm. There was no hesitation in his stride as he approached Seth, and he was slightly surprised at his lack of sadness for what might have been.
“Are you finding everything okay today?” he asked in his best customer service voice, grinning when Seth did a double take.
He hadn’t seen Seth in weeks, but he was just as attractive as Jamie remembered. His dark curls were just as unruly as ever and he smiled like Jamie was the only person in the room… it kind of reminded Jamie of Ian, except for the curly hair thing.
“Long time, no see,” he said.
Seth just nodded his head. “I was just thinking that too, well, I wasn’t thinking that it had been a long time since we’d seen each other, but more a long time since um – yeah, okay, so how are you? How’s things? How’s school and Ian? Are you still playing at the Freight, I mean I’m sure you are, because you’re really good, and I’ll be quiet now.”
It amazed Jamie how Seth could get out so many words without taking a breath, and if he was anxious he seemed to talk even faster.
He was going to pass out one day from oxygen deprivation to his brain.
“Breathe, Seth,” Jamie said.
Seth’s laugh was a nervous thing, and Jamie shifted the record under his arm. “I’m fine,” he said. “School’s good, Ian can speak for himself, and my music is – well, it’s the same. And how about you? How’s Ryan?”
For a moment, Jamie thought today was the day Seth was going to pass out, but instead he just said, “Ryan’s – Ryan’s good. He’s really good.”
Seth couldn’t seem to control the smile that crept across his face, and Jamie had to smirk. He knew that smile. It said, ‘I’m having sex three times a day!’
“I’m playing at the Freight next weekend, you should come,” Jamie said.
“Are you sure? Because you know I don’t want to, like, mess up your groove; I mean if you have a groove or anything. Or is that too R &B for you?” Seth shifted back and forth; Jamie had forgotten about the fidgeting, too.
He had to laugh. “It’s fine, you won’t ruin my groove.”
“Oh, okay – that’s good. I can do that.”
“And you can bring Ryan if you like; I’ll put your names down on the list.”
Seth’s eyes were huge and Jamie just smiled. Seth was a good guy. A little confused about what he wanted, but Jamie knew how that kind of thing went. He’d spent a year pretending he wasn’t really crazy about somebody when he was; and then he’d spent another year and change with that same somebody he was happily co-dependent and dysfunctional with, and then he’d left him because Plato was right -- love made you insane. Jamie had wanted to make sure he could be on his own, and then, when he was on his own, it aggravated the shit out if him.
After eight months without Ian, Jamie still didn’t know what he wanted. He might’ve had a better idea who he wanted, since a fling with Seth had pretty much put Jamie off the idea dating/sleeping around thing, but he was still just as fucking confused as ever.
At least he could admit that.
“I’d, um, we’d like that. That’d be really cool, thanks, Jamie.”
Jamie patted Seth on the shoulder. “Don’t mention it,” he said winking at Seth as he brushed by and headed for the front of the store.
Telegraph Avenue Epilogue: Check Your Head (II of II)
