The Day Before

I was walking alone.  I was dirty.  Scared.  I wanted to die so badly.  I thought about how I would do it.  It would be so easy, too.

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​The day before, my band got back together with a whole new lineup.  It was originally me, Jeremy, DP, and Harry.  Now, it would be me, Andrew, Bill, and Samantha.  I was so excited to play again.  Even more excited to see Samantha again.  We were broken up now.  Around the same time the band went on hiatus, our love story fell to ashes.
The practice was at our new drummer Bill’s house in New Hampshire, and since Andrew, who I had met a few weeks earlier in college, lived in Haverhill, MA, right on the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, I would ride the train to Haverhill and Andrew would pick me up and drive us to practice.
 
I arrived in Haverhill with my backpack full of new song lyrics, a microphone, half a bottle of Jack, and a small bag of coke.  I looked around the lot but there was no sign of Andrew.
In the corner of my eye a red pickup truck backed out of its spot, turned slightly, and then gunned it at me full force.  My nerves were on overdrive.  I dashed out of its path.  The truck stopped there, and the passenger door popped open.  I looked up into the cabin, and saw it was Andrew.
 
In the first leg of the drive, I turned to him and said: “Mind if I drink?”
 
He said: “Not at all.”  Pulled a bottle of Jäger out from behind the seat and took a hit.
 
I removed the bottle of Jack from my backpack and did the same.
 
The cocaine, on the other hand, I was saving for Samantha.  I owed her, and I was to woo her back to me today.  But after I was all lubed up with the whiskey I was sipping, it slipped out of me.
 
I said: “You ever done coke?”
 
He looked at me and smiled.  “Nah, why?”
 
“I got some if you wanna try it when we get there.”
 
“Yeah, definitely,” he said.
 
And so it was settled.  I asked Bill when we got there if he’d ever done coke and he said he had, so I didn’t feel obligated to share any with him.  But really, I just didn’t like Bill.  I liked Andrew, though.  Andrew was fun.
 
We huddled in the bathroom and I made lines and we alternated hits.  Samantha still wasn’t there.  She was running late, she told me.  Boy would she be psyched to see what I brought her.  Too bad there wasn’t too much left by the time she finally got there.
 
Practice was fun.  We wrote new songs and played them.
 
Afterwards, Andrew and Bill drove out to some hardcore show in New Hampshire.  Samantha offered to give me a ride home.
 
We stopped in Harvard Square on the way.
 
I remember this day the crowd was sitting behind the entrance to the train station, against the slanted wall.  We were among them.  Tanya was there too.  Since Samantha and I had broken up, Tanya had been my new plaything.
 
One night I met Tanya in Harvard Square and she and I bought a bottle and sat on the front steps of some church and talked.  She had a really annoying New York City accent.  She was a philosophy major and she said my ideas reminded her of those similar to Nietzsche.  One thing led to another and we made out on those steps.
Another night she and I went to a show at Regeneration Records and it was raining that night and she pushed me into the mud behind the venue, mounted me, and screamed that she was a lion, biting me and scratching.
 
Little did I know, she had been falling for me, but I had my sights on Samantha and Samantha only.  She was just someone I was having fun with till I got back together with Samantha.  This would be the first night she met Samantha and Samantha invited Tanya to come down to the river with us.
 
The three of us hung out down by the river.  Tanya kept her eyes on me, I kept my eyes on Samantha, Samantha kept her eyes on the bottle.  It was the classic love triangle.  The night progressed and Tanya’s jealousy took on a drunken low.  She started yelling, getting belligerent, knocking over trashcans.  She didn’t want it to seem as though she was in love with me, but it was obvious by this point.
 
The trains stopped running at around 1AM and it was 2AM and Samantha was planning to drive me home.  We were about to leave but Tanya was a complete lovesick mess.
 
Samantha said to me: “Maybe you should help her get home.”
 
“Why don’t you just give us both a ride?”
 
“I can’t,” she told me.  “My mom would be worried about me.”
 
“Then how are we supposed to get her home if the trains stopped running.”
 
Tanya lived in Summerville, I lived in Newton.
 
“You can walk there with her,” she suggested.  “Just make sure she gets there safe.”
 
“But then how am I supposed to get home?  I can’t walk from Summerville to Newton, that would take all night.”
 
Tanya interjected: “You can crash with me?”  She was beaming.
 
So that’s what I did.  The two of us walked to Summerville together.
 
When we got there, her grandmother was still awake, waiting for her to get home.  Tanya opened the door and brought me inside.  She asked her grandmother if I could crash here.
 
“No,” her grandmother said.  “No way.”
 
“Please.”
 
“No,” she said again.  “He’s dirty.  He’s probably got diseases.”
 
Tanya turned to me and said: “You can sleep in my backyard.  I’ll sleep out there with you.”
 
The ground was wet and muggy and we lay there together and fooled around and first thing when the sun came up, I walked to the Davis Square train station all alone.  I was so depressed.  Crashing from cocaine and hungover.  I was dirty and gross.  I wanted to die.  And it would be so easy….