singing to the band

by afrose fatima ahmed

when Hopeless Jack said, this song is dedicated to my ex-girlfriend. it’s called, you’re a cunt & i never loved you, the woo girls went about their wooing, & i heard him say, why did you hurt me so badly, i loved you so much? i wanted to brush my hands through his mohawk, tug on his 00 gauged tribal earrings, trace my fingers over his sleeves & neck tattoos & say, darlin, none of us are invincible & none of them are infallible. don’t put the pussy on a pedestal. know that when you are on stage looking all sexy & killin’ it & the girls & boys are screaming for you & your body is making music that courses through their bodies so they’re jumping & dancing like they’re on death row, all because YOU, please know that that is the most alone you have ever been in your life. we are artists & musicians & writers because we are cobwebs on the branches of the most magical jungle plants, & they are heartbreakers & investment bankers & exotic dancers because they are vacuum cleaners with flashlights & machetes. that’s just the way of the world, beautiful, to love that which is so different & horribly dangerous. it’s why they love us, too, because they know, even at the first fuck, that three years later we’ll be standing on a stage in richland, wa, calling them a cunt.

the Handsome Devil stood next to me after the set so i went to him & shook his hand & said, amazing show as per usual, & he asked how have you been & i thought about it for a moment & finally said, you know, i’ve been really good (because the last time we met I had dropped my coffee mug onto my plate i was so lost in the darkness & the drink) & i asked, how have you been & he said some things i can’t remember through the haze that three jack & cokes make, but i remember that it was confused & not all good & i said, well you know that’s okay, i’m full of ecstasy & full of rage in this very moment & that’s how things go sometimes. he didn’t say anything, just drank his drink & watched the headliners & then wandered off. later, i wished i had told him how liberated he looked during that last song while he stood at the kit & then stood on the kit & played like a man possessed. he looked freer than i’ve ever felt. i want to feel like him, i had thought. he is a bendy tree shaped after the ink curling around his rib cage, wild & wizened & whipped. i drove home under the sky & asked the stars, which comes first, the man or the tattoo?