THEN
I told my parents I’d cut back on my hours at Sam’s Club, which made my mom happy because she’d been telling me that I was working too much. I felt like I was lying a little bit less. At least I wasn’t sneaking off to go get high, just sneaking out to go to Petty Crime’s last flurry of shows before their record dropped and they started touring big time.
I also bought a motorcycle with the money I’d made from the “Queen of Hearts” video—a sweet little Kawasaki Ninja with green fairings. My parents hated it—especially my dad. He called me a hoodlum and told me it gave people the wrong impression. If he’d said he was worried about my safety, I might have backed down, but because it was an appearances thing, I dug my heels in and told him I’d bought it with my own money, and I wasn’t getting rid of it. Besides, if I tried to sell it, I’d lose money.
“Mendouna koto ni naru yo,” my dad warned me. You’re asking for trouble.
The video turned out awesome, and awesome wasn’t a word I used lightly. Seth raved about the video being properly taboo and sexually explicit enough to capture the attention of the masses without cheapening its meaning or artistic integrity. Sabrina told me she was glad I was off the drugs, but that I was stupid to believe Seth’s sobriety would last. I reasoned that she’d never had much faith in him to begin with.
All of our attention in those weeks was focused on preparing for Petty Crime’s release of their debut album, Queen of Hearts. There were shirts to be made, party details to be finalized, a new lineup of live songs to be arranged, a video to be screened, tour dates to be determined...
The six of us, which included Jeannie when she was able, came together with the sole purpose of elevating Petty Crime from a local band to a legend, or at least a band with a following outside of Austin.
On the day of the record release, Petty Crime was giving a show featuring their new songs at Corner Bar, which gave me some heartburn because that was where I’d discovered Seth’s infidelity almost a year ago, and it was a place I’d avoided ever since.
But this was a new day, a new Seth and because of it, a new me. I was suffering from that same old malady, an abundance of confidence. Only this time, it felt completely deserved because not only had I overcome my addiction, but I’d help Seth do the same. It wasn’t an abundance of confidence in myself, but in us, our relationship, and our creative partnership, which had never been closer or more productive.
I worked the merch counter at Petty Crime’s show. Jeannie was with me, sitting on a stool because she was about six months along by that point. They were having a boy, and in between selling T-shirts and CD’s… Seth insisted on selling CD’s even though most people didn’t even own CD players anymore…Jeannie told me some of the names Mitchell had suggested—Cash and Guthrie and Tyger with a “y,” which was from a William Blake poem. At one point it occurred to me to tell her, “I can’t believe Mitchell came up with all those ideas. He’s usually so reserved about giving his opinion.”
Jeannie shook her head. “He’s only that way around Seth. With me, he’s an open book.”
That was another revelation to me, that I might only know the version of Mitchell as it related to Seth. The same might also be true for me. How much of my own personality had been overshadowed by Seth?
But just as quickly as that thought came on, I dismissed it because things with Seth were really good, and he was onstage, serenading our creative lovechild to his room of adoring fans, pausing their set to tell the crowd he’d like to dedicate the next song to his one and only. “Hiroku Hayashi,” Seth said from the stage while pointing at me. “You and me forever, babe.”
Then they launched into “Queen of Hearts,” and for once, it didn’t feel so tragic because our future was looking brighter than it ever had before. Seth was giving up control, and I was establishing my personhood without the drugs or his constant overbearing influence.
I look back on that moment now, and much like the year before when I was watching Seth seduce a yellow-haired boy from the crowd, I wish I could stop everyone right there in time like little people in a dollhouse and arrange them just right so that their lives would continue along a happy path forever.
But the problem since the very beginning was that I could only control my own actions, never Seth’s. So, even when I thought I had some semblance of control, it was only an illusion.
But it’s important for you to know, that as I stood there in that throbbing crowd, listening to Seth sing his anthem for me and me alone, I felt like the luckiest man alive.