PERSONAL JESUS

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Then we had another day off. This time we went to Boston, where Carynne had cozied up to the Lyons brothers, so we were given the VIP treatment, by which I mean we had access to the VIP room at the Citi Club. I hadn't quite realized it, but I guess Citi was trying to be like Limelight or Danceteria. I had never thought of Boston as having that kind of celebrity culture, or maybe it was just that I had never been treated like one there.

A whole bunch of our friends showed up and after carousing at the club until they kicked us out we ended up back at the Allston house, where a fairly epic party took place. When I say epic I mean the kind where the next day you go around trying to figure out how the furniture got where it is and what those stains on the porch are and how many people had sex in the bathroom and were they all in there at once or at separate times? I'm not sure why the cops didn't get called for noise. Maybe because all our neighbors were at the party, too. Or maybe they did get called but I was already upstairs in my room with the door shut by then.

Yeah, it was such an epic party that I actually drank to the point of making myself ill and then I retreated from the field of battle. Can you remember the last time I drank until I threw up? I couldn't. Thankfully at the point when I had to throw up there was no one having sex in the bathroom.

And after I did, I felt physically better, and I drank some water and it stayed down, and I drank some Gatorade and that stayed down, too.

I say I felt physically better because mentally and emotionally I crashed. Too many people, too much fun, something like that? I don't know. I was alone in my room and mostly feeling relieved but it was like everything just came crashing down. I ended up lying on my bed...crying. You'd think by now admitting this kind of thing wouldn't embarrass me anymore, but I still feel weird admitting it.

I don't think it makes a crying jag any shorter to have a voice in your head shouting at you to stop. You know what I mean, right? This is what was going through my head: What the fuck are you crying for? This is stupid. Don't cry. Don't be a wuss. You have nothing to cry about. Stop fucking crying.

The thing is, if you're yelling at yourself to stop crying, then what you think about while you're crying is the crying itself and you totally avoid thinking about whatever it actually is that made you cry in the first place.

I still feel kind of stupid about it, actually. I should know better. But there it is.

I have no idea how long I was crying. It was weird. I think I dozed off a couple of times, but when I woke up my cheeks were still wet.

Then I heard someone saying my name. I thought it was Christian at first and I rolled over to look.

It was Colin. He looked strung out, with dark circles under his eyes, and worried, because he was looking at me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Had to come home to take a shower and get clean clothes," he said. "What are you doing here?"

I looked at the palms of my hands. "Coming apart at the seams, apparently."

"Oh, Daron." He hugged me easily, sliding alongside me on the bed. I pressed my face to his shirt. I don't know if I've mentioned this before. I've always had a deep appreciation for the way Colin smells. I don't even think I can describe it. Right now, with him unshowered and overworked, it was like sticking my nose into a pot of incense, heady and intense.

I didn't cry exactly, at that point, but I shook like a leaf in his arms, kind of like you do it you're screaming, except I wasn't screaming. I was just...letting go of something, I guess.

When I lay back he brushed my hair away from my face. "And here I was just going to make sure you hadn't passed out in your own vomit or something. Something going on?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Not really. I don't know. I drank too much and put myself on some kind of downward spiral, I guess?"

"Like a bad head trip?"

"Yeah. But no drugs, just my fucked up mind, I suppose." I curled up away from him. "I don't want to go back to therapy."

He wrapped himself around me, the way I liked him to. "Okay, checklist time. Did you eat today?"

"Um, yes. Some anyway. A slice of pizza around eight. Some chips and dip around two in the morning, too."

"Hydration?"

"After I puked I drank a bunch of water and a bottle of Gatorade."

"Half a bottle," he said, reaching for the half-full container on the shelf by my clock radio. He handed it to me and I finished it. "Are you on any meds?"

"No."

"Sex?" Colin asked.

"What?"

"Have you gotten laid lately?"

"No. Not since..." I tried to remember when I'd seen Ziggy. "About a week or ten days ago."

"You've played how many shows since then?"

"Six or seven."

"Jeezus Christ, Daron. Why is your skull so thick?"

"What do you mean?"

"You practically fuck a hole in the back of the guitar every night of the week. You're the one who taught me it's a fucking aphrodisiac."

Okay, I kid you not, the words that came out of my mouth were these: "But I'm a professional."

"Shut your professional mouth," Colin said. "Or...don't. How about you open it instead."

He didn't have to hint twice. I liked the way Colin tasted even better than how he smelled. Full-on sex followed.

And then I felt better. Lying there next to him with my sweat cooling on my skin I said, "You really think that was it."

"Daron, you're like a rubber band and you just get wound tighter and tighter and tighter unless you have some relief, you know?"

"The show itself is a big release every night, though."

"I'm sure it is. But maybe not for your testicles."

"Point."

He kissed me then, which was a lot more affectionate than I could remember Colin being, and then he got out of bed. "No rest for the wicked."

"You're seriously going to go back to the office now?"

He nodded. "Well, after a shower. That'll wake me up, and they're having donuts delivered with coffee at nine."

I could see that dawn had already broken since I never bothered to close my curtains. "Shit. And by the time you're done with tax day, I'll be in the midwest."

He sat back down on the edge of the bed, then leaned over and kissed me really tenderly. "You'll be home in like a month, yeah?"

For some reason that kiss made my whole chest ache. Or maybe I was just sore from all the crying earlier. "May fifth," I said. "Oh, except they want me to do publicity for my solo album."

Colin looked torn. "You'll have to fill me in on everything another time. I gotta go."

I pulled him down for a goodbye kiss then and that was a mistake because the ache in my chest only got worse. And then he was gone and I was lying there in bed wondering why I was in so much pain.

And then I remembered the whole thing probably came back to too much drinking. I wrote into my lyric book: Don't confuse heartache with hangover.

I'm not sure if I meant to use it in a song or if I was just trying to give myself some advice.

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