All Our Pretty Songs

“How very.” I smirk. Aurora hits me with a pillow.

When the movie is over it’s time to go out. Aurora puts on Joy Division and turns it all the way up, knots her bleach-white hair, paints her mouth vampire-purple, puts on dresses and takes them off again, dancing around the room in her underwear. I pretend to be bored. It’s our ritual. When she’s ready we drive downtown in the old Mercedes that used to be Maia’s, windows down, the Jesus and Mary Chain cranked so loud we can’t hear ourselves talk. We have fake IDs, but we rarely need them. I’ve never seen anyone say no to Aurora. We’re barely inside the club before someone’s buying her one drink, and then another, boys and girls getting in line to cajole her into a smile. Every other drink she hands to me, but I give them back most of the time. Somebody has to keep us safe on the way home. Aurora never thinks about what comes after; she’s all now, all the time. This moment, this kiss, this second holds everything. People like Aurora don’t have to live with consequences. The stage lights go down and push our way to the front, ready for magic, for wild rumpus, for anything. Ready to go ecstatic.

Tonight, we aren’t disappointed. This band is on fire. The singer’s tiny, her shaggy red-dyed hair sticking up like a ragged halo. She’s wearing a long-sleeved thermal, its fraying sleeves hanging to her knuckles, her bony fingers barely visible against the guitar strings. The music is heavy, a sludgy mass of guitar that makes the room seem even darker. When she opens her mouth to sing the voice that rips out of her is a banshee howl climbing to an operatic shriek. She paces the stage in smaller and smaller circles, pivoting around the axis of the mic stand, energy crackling off her in waves, never once looking at the audience. The drummer is moving so fast her arms are blurs. The bassist plays the way I love best, cigarette dangling, eyes closed, completely still except for his fingers. Like he’s asleep standing up, too cool even to acknowledge how good he is.

Here’s me and Aurora in the pit: hot press of bodies, humid smoke-thick air, the two of us up against the stage, elbows planted on the dirty wood. When the music starts with a roar we throw ourselves backward into the crush of people behind us. All the way inside our bodies and all the way outside them at the same time. A wall of noise crashes through us, washing us clean. Like when we are on the edge of coming and the whole world blows wide open for a second and we can see all the way to the center where everything is still. Guitar so loud we can feel it in our chests. Someone else’s hair in our faces and someone else’s knuckles in our teeth and sometimes, when it’s really good, a current charges from body to body and everyone around us is part of it, part of us, part of the drumbeat thundering through us so hard our breathing shifts to follow its pulse. Music turns us inside out with hunger, the need to hurt ourselves, get drunk, fuck, punch strangers, the need to take off all our clothes and run around in the grass screaming, the need get in a car and drive off in the middle of the night with a pack of strangers. We let the music shake us loose from the moorings of our bodies and hearts and brains, until we are nothing but sex and sweat and fists and hot hot light.

Up front we are often the only girls, and we learned early to make a space for ourselves, to punch if anyone gets too close in the wrong way, kick out like boys, throw ourselves at everyone around us like our bodies are stones. People know who we are now, know Aurora’s face and my fists, smile at us, leave room. Sometimes a boy will kneel down, weave both hands into a step for one of us, let us put one booted foot into the cradle of his fingers and then catapult us over the crowd, hands rising to keep us aloft, carrying us to the edge of the stage and then back again. Our bodies are rafts moving across a sea of brothers, fathers, lovers. The air is charged and reckless. Up front is when I feel all the way alive, deep in my animal body, a live wire humming electric. Me and Aurora together, like sisters, like twins. Do you know what it’s like to be a girl pieced together out of appetite and impulse? We do. In that place of heat and noise I forget everything, forget being poor and being scared, forget the looming misery of school and the adult world, forget walls and masks and pretense. Up front I forget everything except drum and guitar and heat, the anchor of Aurora’s hand in mine as we’re tossed across an ocean made out of bodies, breathless and alive and blooming with sound.

When the show is over we are soaked and panting, holding each other tight. Aurora’s eyes are huge. “Oh my god. That was, like, the best.” The boy standing next to us is already trying to ask her name, but she ignores him. “Come backstage,” she says to me. “I know that girl.”

This is the part I hate. I like to keep the magic close, not ruin it with people. “I kind of want to go home.”

“Are you kidding? You’re no fun.”

I sigh. “Okay.” She takes my hand and tows me after the band. Backstage, she hops in place while they drag their amps offstage, take apart the drum kit and cart it to their van. I stand, awkward, digging the toe of my boot into the concrete floor. The singer comes over to us and gives Aurora a hug. Up close she’s even more beautiful than she was on stage. I’m so shy I don’t know where to look. She and Aurora jump straight into gossip. The bass player, still cool, lurks nearby, pretending not to pay attention.

“You got a light?” It’s the drummer.

“Yeah, sure.” I follow her outside. Behind the club the alleyway is dark. I light her cigarette for her, and then mine. “You guys were great.”

“Thanks.” She smokes like she wants to chew on the filter, taps her fingers against her thighs. She’s wearing a white men’s undershirt. The muscles in her arms ripple as she brings the cigarette to her mouth, patters out a rhythm with her free hand. “You know Aurora?”

“Yeah. She’s like my sister.”

“Same mom? You don’t look alike.”

“No, grew up together.”

“Yeah?”

“We lived in the same house for a long time. Our moms are old friends.” This is not exactly the truth. Our moms were old friends. Our moms haven’t spoken since I was a kid.

“You knew her dad?”

“I mean, kind of. I don’t remember him. We were really young when he died.”

“Fucked up.”

“Yeah.” I wait for her to pry. I’m used to deflecting questions about Aurora, about her dad, about her life, about her money. But she drops it.

“Sorry. That’s messed up to ask. I can never think of the right thing to say to people.”

I laugh. “Me, either. Aurora’s the one who’s good at that stuff. I stand around.”

“You play?”

“Me? No.”

“She doesn’t either, right?”

“No.”

“I guess that’s some pretty heavy stuff to carry around. Shit,” she says, exhaling. “There I go again. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

We smoke the rest of our cigarettes in silence. Back inside, the bass player’s made his move, slinking up to Aurora as she chirps away. The euphoria of the show has worn off. My ears are ringing and I’m tired. I can tell by the way Aurora is leaning into the bass player that it’s going to be a long night.

The band invites us over. I make Aurora let me drive, follow their beat-up van to an old industrial neighborhood down by the water. Their apartment is the whole third floor of an abandoned factory. It’s obviously supposed to be a practice space, but they have a hot plate plugged into a wall and a curtained-off toilet that I guess passes as a bathroom. Every surface is covered with overflowing ashtrays, coffee mugs stuffed with cigarette butts, empty beer cans, half-empty bottles of whisky. There are nests of blankets and clothes in three corners of the enormous room. Somebody, more ambitious than the rest of the band, has gone so far as to hang a moldy shower curtain from the ceiling for privacy. I walk over to the huge windows that overlook the bay and try to ignore the smell. This place must be freezing in the winter, but underneath the filth it’s pretty amazing. I can see the streaming lights of cars on the viaduct, and past that the wine-dark water. Far away, the firefly glow of a ferry moves toward the far horizon.

“Pretty great view, huh?” It’s the drummer again. Behind me the bassist is pouring Aurora a drink. I can hear him apologize for the lack of ice, and she giggles.

“Yeah. I want a place like this someday.”

“What would you do with all this space?”

“I paint.” I try to say it naturally, but it sounds funny. I’m a painter. Maybe in my dreams. Lah-dee-dah.