Just Kids
We did go back for the cat. We also stole his Mother’s ashes, $86 in small bills, and a box of photos from his childhood.
Sophie:
I’ve been back in Chicago for nine days. As resistant as I’d been, I have to admit that it's undeniably nice to be somewhere that feels like home. I stood leaning against the sticker clad bar as the second band of the night was nearly finished tearing down after their set. There were two? Three? More before the night was over.
“Hey Soph…” Dustin cooed. He was looking up at me through his set of false lashes that were shimmering from the golden glitter that had fallen from his lids.
“Yes, honey?” I did my best impression of a disinterested 1950’s husband. I knew that tone.
“I’m about to use the last of the vodka I have up here.” He grabbed two glasses, artfully giving each a pumped splash of a horrid blue liquid. He dramatically tipped the aforementioned bottle upright, pouring into each glass until it emptied completely.
“Oh man, good thing you have the basement keys. Do you need directions to the store room or can you find it on your own?” I grinned at him and turned back towards the stage where the next band was about to begin playing.
I heard him giggle and then felt the wood creak as he half climbed up onto the bar from behind it and slung a lanyard around my neck with a key clipped onto it. I turned back towards him and snatched the folded paper he had written a restock list on.
“Do you need directions to the store room or can you find it on your own?” He cracked open a few cans and handed them to a sweaty man who had been impatiently waiting next to me.
Without turning around I headed towards the basement, one middle finger held high above my head. I stuck the key into the lock and made my way down the rickety stairs to the ill-lit basement I’ve been in countless times. I lived with Dustin in the third floor apartment above the venue and worked the bar for a few years before the charm of hearing bands play until two am most nights of the week wore off.
In middle school we were latchkey kids, happily walking home at the end of the day. Eager to do nothing but flip through magazines and watch MTV in my bedroom. We’d sit on my floor, having raided my mother’s vanity, deftly painting each other’s faces. To varying degrees of success, we did our best emulations of a 90’s Liv Tyler, messy and pink like Avril, moody liner like Paris, or Frank-N-Furter on special occasions. Over apple slices and peanut butter we would devise schemes to get enough cash to buy whatever CD we were eager to get our hands on.
In high school I showed him my love after his inaugural session of torment, better known as state mandated gym class. When he was confronted in the locker room by some seniors, the natural course of action was to become his beard. Our time in my bedroom was largely the same as it always was, plus practice-kissing to perfect an air of nonchalance in order to bore our peers. In what felt like an Oscar we were awarded for our performance, we once got detention when Dustin too convincingly grabbed my ass in front of a humorless math teacher during a hallway farewell. We made it just over halfway through the misery years relatively unscathed.
Dustin met me at our lunch spot on a Monday during our Junior spring semester. On the verge of a meltdown, I coaxed it out of him that someone stole his phone. We’d spent much of the weekend giggling while we passed it back and forth; he didn’t need to say anything more for me to know that he was fucked. In true coming-of-age movie fashion, he was outed before the end of the day.
Aside from occasional thought-revoking disparagements, it was a regular week. There were a few stand out moments when a group of personified action figures donning letterman jackets felt emboldened by their numbers and gave him shit. Drenched in aerosol bravado, they tugged on each other’s pull-string voice box cords, cycling through three unique phrases, as advertised by their would-be packaging. We still walked home hand-in-hand. We really did love each other, we just didn’t have any interest in each other’s junk.
Dustin showed up at my house in the middle of the night a week later after his Dad cornered him. Towering over his scrawny 16-year-old son, spewing every vile thing he could muster while demanding to know if it was true. Staunchly dedicated to the straight and narrow mindedness of his fellow congregants, he was a true champion of perverse righteousness. Apparently, no one ever informed him that the Bible Belt is not actually a buckled leather weapon to be used on children. To this day, I doubt I could walk by him on the street without spitting in his face.
His Dad gave him the option to go to the Faith & Grace Rehabilitation Center or pack up and leave. He opted to not spend time being tortured into giving a hollow declaration of intent to have a nuclear family some day.
It was a brutal few days getting things in order but my parents took him in as their third child without a second thought. They only wanted to know two things: Do we need to go back for his cat and do we want a queen-size bed or twin bunks. Moments of levity kept our newly expanded family afloat. Realizing that the conversion camp’s acronym was FAG helped soften the blow during a particularly tearful evening.
We did go back for the cat. We also stole his Mother’s ashes, $86 in small bills, and a box of photos from his childhood. He didn’t hear from him again, and still hasn’t over a decade later. We Google his name + obituary every year on his birthday; family traditions are so important, after all.
My younger sister and Dustin adored each other when we were growing up. Even before our parents took him in, the two of them spent a lot of hours huddled in front of her chunky pink mid-00’s laptop. With a CD reader/writer combo, their combined collection of legit discs in abused jewel cases, a LAN cable and LimeWire, they were set. They were constantly downloading songs, viruses and voice clips of Bill Clinton denying sexual relations with an intern. When both the literal and figurative trojan horses were avoided, the successfully stolen and ripped MP3s were meticulously ordered in what was proclaimed playlist perfection. They went through piles of blank CDs, filling a binder that either of them would’ve grabbed in a house fire.
Rebecca has always been my own personal tastemaker. Even when we were kids, she took on the roles of stylist, DJ and event coordinator. We didn’t rely on much screaming or hair pulling to find resolutions, despite the fact that I had my little sister bossing me around. We thrived together with those tables turned, since she was rarely wrong. A single memory that epitomizes what it was like to grow up with her: she came barging into my room kid-sibling style, put a Skullcandy earbud into my hand and played No Place For You with a grin the size of the moon on her face. To this day I’m not really sure how a 14-year-old girl from Janesville, Wisconsin found herself knee deep in Paul Westerberg’s solo endeavors in 2011. I’m glad she did, though.
I opened the folded list and saw that it was much longer than he’d let on. I sighed loudly to myself and grabbed one of the ancient plastic milk crates we used for hauling things up and down the stairs. After a few minutes I had it all but the blue raspberry syrup. I scanned the shelves and saw that it was on the highest one. I had no hope of reaching it without a ladder.
“Oh, come on. You fucking dickhead.” I grumbled towards the ceiling as if Dustin would hear.
“I hope you don’t mean me?”