She had fangs. Figurative ones, but also her incisors were sharp which made her look like a vampire. The first time I saw her I thought of the books all the girls were reading when I was in high school, the one about the beautiful vampire who falls in love with a mortal girl. I was the mortal boy and this girl—godlike—made me feel plain and insufficient. Later she told me that I made her feel the same way, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be—two people in awe of each other, who feel lucky to be with each other. I came back to see her again, thirsty for her attention. I wasn’t exactly starved for attention, but lately hers was the only attention I wanted. Maybe the first time was a fluke, an off night for my masculinity. But when I went back I felt the same thing—if not stronger. I flirted with her and she flirted back, but not with the soft pliability that most women flirted with.

“Hey splinter guy,” she’d say because she knew it annoyed me. “Are you going to write a song about that?

She threw barbs, they were well aimed and they made me laugh. If I were a different man I’d have a bruised ego. I took her jabs and molded them to me. She was something I knew existed but had never met: the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow. Terrible analogies, I know.

Yara

And then she told me, after a lot of prodding—Yara.

Her name was music.

I’d leave the bar and think about her hair. Not her tits or her ass—her hair. What the fuck was that? I told my best friend, Ferdinand, about her hair and he called me a little bitch.

A little bitch I was.

“Do you want to run your fingers through it?” he asked. “Stick your face in it and get that good smell?”

I did.

“Fuck off,” I said, but he’d just laughed.

“I’d rather have my fingers and face somewhere else, but suit yourself.”

I invited her to my show. Once, twice, three times. I’d never had to beg a woman to come to one of my shows before. And then to make matters worse, she never came. Each show I’d climb onto the stage and look for her, her blonde hair—even if it was tied back I’d be able to see it. And then I’d climb off stage disappointed. She didn’t work the same way other women did. Other women had dials, knobs; nothing was labeled. Yara had only one switch and it was either Off or On. I wanted to speak her language. I wanted to be her language. This was obsession and I welcomed it. A nice change to not feeling anything at all or to feeling disappointed.

We played The Crocodile the last Saturday of the month. I’d invited Yara again, but by then expected her not to come. We usually sat around in their greenroom drinking until it was time for us to go on. But, on that particular night, I couldn’t sit still.

“Give David a hit of that,” Ferdinand said to Brick, who was smoking a joint.

I waved it off.

“It’s like you’re strung out on something, man.”

Ferdinand knew me pretty well, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Yara had been different with me the last few times I went into The Jane—not as talkative and friendly. I took a shot to appease them a few minutes before the show started.

“Who are you looking for?” Ferdinand asked as we walked onto the stage. Ferdinand knew who I was looking for but he liked to ride me about it.

“Yara,” I said, without thinking.

“The one you’ve been obsessing over? Dude…”

“You haven’t seen her. You don’t know. Actually I don’t want you to see her.” I picked up my Charvel and ignored the way he was looking at me. Ferdinand was the bassist, but he got more ass than I did. As the face of the band, lead singers got the most ass; their name was the one most called out and remembered. He was six foot four and wide like a bull, women thought Ferdinand was a combination of mysterious and dangerous. In reality, he was a man of few words who had a kitten screensaver on his MacBook. He didn’t like to talk unless it was about music or his mother, and he cried when he got a nosebleed, but hey, the illusion was half the fun. It worked out well for his social life.

“Who’s that?” Ferdinand asked.

He jutted his chin toward the bar as he turned the E peg on his Fender. I lifted my eyes, tried to see past the bright lights that shone on the stage. A flash of platinum hair, but it could be anyone. Girls with that hair color were a dime a dozen. Her hair was so long it kissed her hips, hips that sashayed when she walked.

“A blonde,” I said. “Wrong one.”

“There are plenty of blondes you can pick from right here,” Ferdinand said. “An entire buffet of blondes.”

I flipped him the bird and picked up my guitar. A buffet. Right. That’s what it had become. You could swipe left or right, go on two hookups in one night. If you didn’t like one there was another. Around and around you went, fucking groupies, girls on Tinder who said they wanted to have a good time but were looking for a husband. You could fuck your way through the Pacific Northwest if you were halfway decent looking and carried a guitar. It was all unfulfilling. Barren experience after barren experience.

Time to start. Brick was on the drums. “One…two…three…”

It was her. I realized that halfway through our first song. Energized, I moved around the stage with new vigor. Ferdinand raised his eyebrows, tilted his head slightly toward her as if to ask, That her? I nodded. He pursed his lips, dipping his bass guitar and closing his eyes. This was his favorite part of the song. What would be Yara’s? I sang, played to impress. I didn’t want to scare her and for that reason I didn’t make eye contact until we were three songs in. She was here, she had come. I was into it. She wasn’t just going to be my muse, I was going to make her my wife.

A lot of good that did me. A lot of fucking good.