No Shows
There are few things worse than New York in the summer. In June 2014, I was sharing a Bed-Stuy basement apartment room (bed, closet, laundry hamper) with my friend from college. We couldn’t afford an A/C unit, so I bought a standing fan with the Target gift card my aunt sent me. I picked up four sets of ice packs from a Rite Aid on my back from work. At night, we’d place one on bare skin, and switch it out every hour or two, when we’d wake from heat too balmy to bear.
My friend M was back with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, whose parents rented him a nice apartment in Clinton Hill. He had an A/C unit and a coin-operated washer/dryer. A nice apartment. During their on-again weeks, I had the bed to myself. On their off weeks, the room couldn’t bear the two of us, so we pooled together contacts from our respective internships to get on every guest list possible. We had it all figured out. Shows are fun! Venues are air-conditioned!
There was a liquor store around the corner that accepted our China-made IDs. Serendipity. We bought airplane bottles of cheap gin, tucked them into the lining of our bags, and took turns in the stickered bathroom stalls emptying them. Some show-goer would inevitably take mercy on our X-marked, nineteen-year-old hands and donate us their drink ticket. We’d drink, stay for as long as we could after the show ended, and take the train back when we got tired enough to fall asleep.
M and I had a lot in common. We went to the same school. Reviewed music for the same magazine. We co-hosted a radio show. We got our first press pass to SXSW together. We spent all our money on fake IDs (all the good shows were 21+) and subsisted solely on promotional Doritos and Monster Energy drinks for a week. When I felt bad about leaving my prized record collection in storage, she offered to look after it for me. We both landed internships in Midtown and, strapped for cash, decided to continue our partnership as roommates.
And our strategy seemed to be working. We worked the days and went out at night. We saw Perfect Pussy at The Knitting Factory. Swearin’ and Radiator Hospital at Glasslands. Man Overboard at Irving. Cheap Girls at Lulu’s right before they closed. We ran into our idols every other show. The heat rashes seemed almost justifiable. We were inching closer to fall each day.
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One night, when I got back from work, all of M’s things were gone. Well, almost. She left her designer bags and dirty laundry in the hamper. I texted her three question marks. She sent me an essay-length message telling me she was short this month’s rent, and was heading back to Boston.
I took the train to the Village and walked past Webster Hall, one of the venues where we were frequently guest-listed, and watched as a line of roughly-my-age people snaked around the block. Gerard Way was playing a solo show.
My Chemical Romance had called it quits almost exactly a year before. Now Gerard was singing about his dwindling need for sold-out shows to a packed room at Webster Hall. He was in love! Who needs an audience when you’re in love? There was irony in excess.
I listened to the show bleed bass from across the street. I walked down to the water, where the air was cool, and constructed a text to my landlord.
I never saw M again. A mutual friend told me she spent the rest of her summer weekends taking the bus down from Boston to visit her boyfriend in Clinton Hill.
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A few years later, I was back in New York, shooting the shit with my friend B, smoking cigarettes out of my fire escape. I told him about M, all my records still gathering dust in her parents’ basement. Records I’ve owned since I was fifteen. Records handed down to me by family. Thrifted records. Record Store Day special releases. Records gifted to me by friends, lovers, PR teams, employers. Records bought on Discogs under the late-night haze of break-ups. My Everly Brothers collection. A Go-Go’s first pressing. He grew livid. This is bullshit, he said. You need to text her again. He offered to drive.
I sent M multiple texts, asking for a day, time, and place that would work for the hand-off. She was in L.A. now; her family had moved to Marblehead. She’d need to check in with them but they still had my records, she assured me.
⦿
It was summer again, and I was on my first date with E when I finally heard back from M. We’d spent the afternoon walking around in the Village, where I was pointing at every other venue, recounting times I got kicked out with pride. I showed him the text from M, which began with “I am so incredibly sorry to tell you this” and ended with “I wish I could find and rebuild the whole thing.”
I told E I needed to sit down.
He got me a beer and disappeared into the streets.
I pictured my records somewhere in a Boston thrift store, tossed carelessly into a dollar bin. Or sold on Discogs at a considerable margin. I didn’t know which was worse. I realized I was in tears. I thought about all the times M flaked out on me. All the times I went on a limb for her, vouched for her, did her share of work, let her take credit for it, washed her dirty laundry. How she’d never wished me on my birthday, or paid a visit when she was in town. How she couldn’t care enough to safekeep a crate of records for me, as she’d once promised.
E returned to the table, an Everly Brothers record in hand.
We spent the rest of the summer digging through crates. B brought back his family’s old records for my birthday in June. E took me to Pittsburgh, where we raided his dad’s old collection.
We spent August on the floor of my bedroom, two-part summer drinks in hand, listening to records like it was the only god-given pastime. We didn’t need no-shows.
