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kleenexwomandepressing D: I was not a happy person that semester, though. I also gave my dad a semi-cameo in this.
Today is not the day he would have picked for what is going to happen, but that’s what makes it so important that it’s today. Because today is one of Marty’s bad days. He’s got a hangover so bad he can barely see, he hasn’t shaved for three days, and he’s pretty much given up on trying to find anything halfway nutritious to eat. Which wouldn’t be so bad, ordinarily—college was worse than this.
Actually, college was pretty good. Entire days sprawled out on the futon with his roommate Aaron, alternating between Devo 8-tracks and Steely Dan albums, ragging on each other’s taste in music and talking about the future. I’m worried about the future now, or maybe this is it. Aaron sent him the new Steely Dan album, the one that won a Grammy, as a joke a few years ago. With a note attached: Told you they’d win one. Where’s yours? Aaron, Marty thinks, always was an insensitive prick. Fun guy, pre-law, always bought the drinks. But a prick. He hasn’t changed in 20 years. What has, really?
He jabs at the remote control to the CD player. Top-of-the-line, five CD slots, quadraphonic speakers. Expensive, but a music critic needs the best stereo system he can get. It’s the nicest thing in his apartment. Everything else is shabby and secondhand; Jennifer took all the good furniture when she moved out, and he hasn’t bothered to go get anything to replace the chairs in the living room or the kitchen set.
The stereo whirs and skips to the next CD. Marty takes the opportunity to head to the bathroom and splash some water on his face. When he comes back, Danny Elfman is singing about razors. Only A Lad. Marty’s always liked Dead Man’s Party best, but he doesn’t think he could handle the cheerful fatalism of that album right now. Only A Lad is just cynical enough for his mood. Maybe too cynical; “Imposter” is next.
And this is how Marty knows it’s a really bad day; he’s listening to music from when he was a teenager. Anymore, he only does this when he really needs to snarl at the world. There’s no good music, any more. It all stopped when that Kurt Cobain kid killed himself. Marty met him once, on an interview for Rolling Stone, and came away with the definite impression that he was a weirdo. Cobain invited him into his van—the biggest star in the world, made millions with Nevermind, and he was still living in a beat-up van.
“It’s about authenticity,” Kurt said, when Marty asked him about it. “I wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in this van. I can’t write anything good if I’m in a fucking plush hotel room or a penthouse.”
“Why not?” Marty asked. “You’ve already made it big.”
“Well, ’cause what the fuck is there to write about if you’re sitting pretty in a fucking hotel?” Kurt slumped on a chair and glared out the window. “My label is called “Kill Rock Stars,” all right? That means I don’t care about making it big. I don’t care about getting girls, I don’t care about my record deal, I don’t care about the assholes screaming in the audience for me to do “Free Bird” or whatever. I care about expressing myself.”
“Do people actually ask you to play “Free Bird” at concerts?” Which was definitely the wrong question, because Kurt just glared at him for a full minute.
Finally, he said, “I want you to listen to something, okay?”
“Sure.” Marty checked the tape recorder while Kurt fiddled with the CD player. He finally got it to work, and returned to his seat while a short burst of cheesy orchestral music filled the air.
“Rat-catching!” A calm, cheery voice emanated from the boombox. “Studies in rat-catching for the use of schools. Chapter one!”
Marty politely listened while Kurt played snippets of the CD for him. “Is that your new album?”
Kurt made a disgusted noise and tucked his stringy blonde hair behind his ear. “No, this isn’t my new album. This is some actor, alright? And…what did you think of it? You thought it was weird, right? You didn’t get it?”
“Not really.”
“See? That’s the point, man. This actor, he made this CD…he’s expressing himself. He doesn’t care who thinks what of it. It’s supposed to be weird, because he’s weird.”
That was the last interview Marty had done for Rolling Stone. Fourteen years later, and he’s had a solid journalistic career of writing two-paragraph puff-piece reviews for lowbrow men’s magazines. Great legacy to leave behind. He’d switched his major to Journalism in junior year, dreaming of being the next Hunter S. Thompson, after a hippie girl he was trying to flirt with lent him a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Should have stayed with electrical engineering. Could have learned something useful.
But now is not the time to regret the past; he will be able to do that in the flesh in…he glances at the digital clock. Less than an hour. What is there to do? He could clean up the apartment, get the old pizza boxes off the floor and the socks off the lampshade. But who cares? This is his life. He’s not going to try to make it look better than it really is. His guest doesn’t deserve to be lied to.
Only A Lad is over. Marty pulls the shades open and cringes as the sunlight hits his eyes. His head pounds, and he jerks the shades back into place and flops onto the sofa. The next CD is Appetite for Destruction. Came out when he was nineteen. Nineteen was a good year. Guns ‘N’ Roses was a good band. Slash was a great guitarist. Axl was a great singer. Not a bad album to listen to with a headache, surprisingly enough. He’s pretty sure that Slash’s chainsaw blues licks aren’t really helping, but at this point the only possible sound that would lessen his pain is the sound of a nuclear bomb detonating. Or—
The door opening. He glances at the clock again. It’s the right time. It’s even the right song; he remembers this. He’s got a smile that it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories… And it does, déjà vu ebbing at the edges of his consciousness as he watches his seventeen-year-old self (sans smile) enter his apartment.
He remembers how it was last time. The dank, moldy air of the apartment hitting his face. Picking his way through the trash on the floor, his quiet and disgusted exploration. Sitting on the end of the couch, watching his 37-year-old self snore and wondering how he could have fucked up his life this badly. Slipping out of the apartment while his older self was still sleeping, resigned despair coiling in his lungs and weighing his steps.
It’s not going to be like that this time. It wasn’t fair, last time. He never even got a chance. There will still be the dirty apartment, of course. And the despair. But this time, he’s going to stay awake. He’s going to change things. He doesn’t know how yet. And he’s still got a headache.
“Hey,” younger Marty whispers. His voice is surprisingly high. “You’re here? You’re…”
“Hi. Yeah, um, sorry if I don’t get up. I kind of have a headache.”
“Oh.” His younger self stands in the middle of the room, hands behind his back. “Uh…Doc said that it probably wasn’t a good idea to let you see me.”
“Well, the universe hasn’t exploded yet.”
“Yeah.” He watches his younger self look around the tiny apartment, taking in the dirty clothes, the scratched CDs, the trash, the blank spaces on the walls where paintings were. “Do you want me to get you some aspirin or something?”
“Aspirin would be really, really good. Then we can talk. Bathroom’s on the left, by the way.”
Young Marty is halfway to the bathroom when he stops. “Talk about what?”
“Your future.”
“But won’t that mess up the spacetime—”
“Doc doesn’t know everything, okay? He’s just guessing on a lot of it. I’ve been through all this, remember. I know what time’s like.”
“Right, right.” Young Marty disappears into the bathroom. He reaches for a pillow and puts it over his face. That’s better—no light.
In a few minutes, he feels the couch shift slightly, and a hand touches his shoulder. “Here.” Two aspirin are pressed into his hand. Somehow, he manages to get them into his mouth. “Here.” A glass of warm water. He didn’t know he had anything besides plastic cups. Jennifer must have missed them when she was packing up the silverware.
He takes the aspirin, gulps down the water. “Thanks.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Not yet. But you have time.” The headache is already ebbing. He flicks the pillow off his face and onto his chest. Young Marty is perched on the arm of the sofa, staring pensively down at him. His eyes are still clear, his face is still smooth, his hair is still feathery and light. “Come down here. I can’t do anything with you leaning over me like that.”
“Okay.” He slides down until he’s sitting on the floor, and their faces are level. “Is this better?”
“Yeah.” He closes his eyes, waiting for the throbbing to go away. Soon.
There’s something on his face. Light, soft, almost moist. He opens his eyes. His younger self is tracing a line down his nose.
He jerks his hand away. “Sorry.” A pause. “It’s just…weird. Seeing you. I mean, me. Seeing me older, you know?”
“I remember.”
“It’s like I’m not really here.”
He laughs. “From my point of view, it’s like I’m not really here.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Young Marty tilts his head back against the couch and closes his eyes.
He lets the back of his hand brush against his younger self’s cheek. Still downy, none of the stubble that plagues him at 37. “No, you’re definitely here.”
“I guess so.” Leaning into the touch, like a cat being petted. His eyes barely flutter as Marty strokes his cheek, the soft line of his jaw, his mouth…how could he have ever been this young, this sweet, and not have known it?
His younger self reaches up and tangles his fingers in Marty’s hair. He’s let it grow, out of a misguided attempt to be Bohemian or maybe just laziness. It doesn’t look as good on him as he thought it would, but his younger self seems entranced by it. He’s wrapping it around his hand, letting it slip through his fingers.
“Who is this?”
“Hmm?”
His younger self gestures towards the speakers. “This band. I’ve never heard them.”
“Oh.” He grabs the remote and skips to the first song. “Here, listen to this.” His younger self nods, looking at the speakers as Slash’s chords echo through the room and Axl gasps. “Guns ‘N’ Roses. Probably the best hair metal band to come out of Sunset Strip.”
“What about Motley Crüe?”
“Second best, maybe. Just listen.”
Young Marty lets his hand slide out of his older self’s hair. “What’s this?”
He’s holding up a CD cover. A baby in a swimming pool. “Nirvana. You don’t want to listen to them yet, trust me.”
“Why not?”
“You’re still happy.”
He puts the CD case down. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You sure? I mean...I have time.”
No, he thinks, you don’t. Five years tops, then the future closes in on you and you can see the shapes your mistakes have made. “You don’t want to waste your time here. Let me tell you a few things, okay?”
“Future stuff?”
“Advice. That’s all.” He’s made lists, hundreds of things to change. He struggles to remember. “One: When you’re married, don’t cheat on Jennifer. Ever. Even if you’re drunk. She’ll find out, and she’ll be pissed off.”
“What if we don’t get married?”
“Then it’s not a problem, is it? Number two: Around 1990, buy some flannel shirts and wear them a lot.”
“Why?”
“Well, if you’re still in a band by then.”
“I…okay, fine. Anything else?”
“Don’t change your major.”
“To what?”
“Anything. Stick with electrical engineering.”
“Doc keeps telling me I should major in that.”
“He’s right about that, anyway.”
Young Marty waits. “Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay.” He stands up. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I will be if you do everything right.”
“All right.”
“Say hi to Doc for me.”
“I will.”
The door closes, and he can hear the DeLorean starting up. He closes his eyes and waits for the world to change around him.
Today is not the day he would have picked for what is going to happen, but that’s what makes it so important that it’s today. Because today is one of Marty’s bad days. He’s got a hangover so bad he can barely see, he hasn’t shaved for three days, and he’s pretty much given up on trying to find anything halfway nutritious to eat. Which wouldn’t be so bad, ordinarily—college was worse than this.
Actually, college was pretty good. Entire days sprawled out on the futon with his roommate Aaron, alternating between Devo 8-tracks and Steely Dan albums, ragging on each other’s taste in music and talking about the future. I’m worried about the future now, or maybe this is it. Aaron sent him the new Steely Dan album, the one that won a Grammy, as a joke a few years ago. With a note attached: Told you they’d win one. Where’s yours? Aaron, Marty thinks, always was an insensitive prick. Fun guy, pre-law, always bought the drinks. But a prick. He hasn’t changed in 20 years. What has, really?
He jabs at the remote control to the CD player. Top-of-the-line, five CD slots, quadraphonic speakers. Expensive, but a music critic needs the best stereo system he can get. It’s the nicest thing in his apartment. Everything else is shabby and secondhand; Jennifer took all the good furniture when she moved out, and he hasn’t bothered to go get anything to replace the chairs in the living room or the kitchen set.
The stereo whirs and skips to the next CD. Marty takes the opportunity to head to the bathroom and splash some water on his face. When he comes back, Danny Elfman is singing about razors. Only A Lad. Marty’s always liked Dead Man’s Party best, but he doesn’t think he could handle the cheerful fatalism of that album right now. Only A Lad is just cynical enough for his mood. Maybe too cynical; “Imposter” is next.
And this is how Marty knows it’s a really bad day; he’s listening to music from when he was a teenager. Anymore, he only does this when he really needs to snarl at the world. There’s no good music, any more. It all stopped when that Kurt Cobain kid killed himself. Marty met him once, on an interview for Rolling Stone, and came away with the definite impression that he was a weirdo. Cobain invited him into his van—the biggest star in the world, made millions with Nevermind, and he was still living in a beat-up van.
“It’s about authenticity,” Kurt said, when Marty asked him about it. “I wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in this van. I can’t write anything good if I’m in a fucking plush hotel room or a penthouse.”
“Why not?” Marty asked. “You’ve already made it big.”
“Well, ’cause what the fuck is there to write about if you’re sitting pretty in a fucking hotel?” Kurt slumped on a chair and glared out the window. “My label is called “Kill Rock Stars,” all right? That means I don’t care about making it big. I don’t care about getting girls, I don’t care about my record deal, I don’t care about the assholes screaming in the audience for me to do “Free Bird” or whatever. I care about expressing myself.”
“Do people actually ask you to play “Free Bird” at concerts?” Which was definitely the wrong question, because Kurt just glared at him for a full minute.
Finally, he said, “I want you to listen to something, okay?”
“Sure.” Marty checked the tape recorder while Kurt fiddled with the CD player. He finally got it to work, and returned to his seat while a short burst of cheesy orchestral music filled the air.
“Rat-catching!” A calm, cheery voice emanated from the boombox. “Studies in rat-catching for the use of schools. Chapter one!”
Marty politely listened while Kurt played snippets of the CD for him. “Is that your new album?”
Kurt made a disgusted noise and tucked his stringy blonde hair behind his ear. “No, this isn’t my new album. This is some actor, alright? And…what did you think of it? You thought it was weird, right? You didn’t get it?”
“Not really.”
“See? That’s the point, man. This actor, he made this CD…he’s expressing himself. He doesn’t care who thinks what of it. It’s supposed to be weird, because he’s weird.”
That was the last interview Marty had done for Rolling Stone. Fourteen years later, and he’s had a solid journalistic career of writing two-paragraph puff-piece reviews for lowbrow men’s magazines. Great legacy to leave behind. He’d switched his major to Journalism in junior year, dreaming of being the next Hunter S. Thompson, after a hippie girl he was trying to flirt with lent him a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Should have stayed with electrical engineering. Could have learned something useful.
But now is not the time to regret the past; he will be able to do that in the flesh in…he glances at the digital clock. Less than an hour. What is there to do? He could clean up the apartment, get the old pizza boxes off the floor and the socks off the lampshade. But who cares? This is his life. He’s not going to try to make it look better than it really is. His guest doesn’t deserve to be lied to.
Only A Lad is over. Marty pulls the shades open and cringes as the sunlight hits his eyes. His head pounds, and he jerks the shades back into place and flops onto the sofa. The next CD is Appetite for Destruction. Came out when he was nineteen. Nineteen was a good year. Guns ‘N’ Roses was a good band. Slash was a great guitarist. Axl was a great singer. Not a bad album to listen to with a headache, surprisingly enough. He’s pretty sure that Slash’s chainsaw blues licks aren’t really helping, but at this point the only possible sound that would lessen his pain is the sound of a nuclear bomb detonating. Or—
The door opening. He glances at the clock again. It’s the right time. It’s even the right song; he remembers this. He’s got a smile that it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories… And it does, déjà vu ebbing at the edges of his consciousness as he watches his seventeen-year-old self (sans smile) enter his apartment.
He remembers how it was last time. The dank, moldy air of the apartment hitting his face. Picking his way through the trash on the floor, his quiet and disgusted exploration. Sitting on the end of the couch, watching his 37-year-old self snore and wondering how he could have fucked up his life this badly. Slipping out of the apartment while his older self was still sleeping, resigned despair coiling in his lungs and weighing his steps.
It’s not going to be like that this time. It wasn’t fair, last time. He never even got a chance. There will still be the dirty apartment, of course. And the despair. But this time, he’s going to stay awake. He’s going to change things. He doesn’t know how yet. And he’s still got a headache.
“Hey,” younger Marty whispers. His voice is surprisingly high. “You’re here? You’re…”
“Hi. Yeah, um, sorry if I don’t get up. I kind of have a headache.”
“Oh.” His younger self stands in the middle of the room, hands behind his back. “Uh…Doc said that it probably wasn’t a good idea to let you see me.”
“Well, the universe hasn’t exploded yet.”
“Yeah.” He watches his younger self look around the tiny apartment, taking in the dirty clothes, the scratched CDs, the trash, the blank spaces on the walls where paintings were. “Do you want me to get you some aspirin or something?”
“Aspirin would be really, really good. Then we can talk. Bathroom’s on the left, by the way.”
Young Marty is halfway to the bathroom when he stops. “Talk about what?”
“Your future.”
“But won’t that mess up the spacetime—”
“Doc doesn’t know everything, okay? He’s just guessing on a lot of it. I’ve been through all this, remember. I know what time’s like.”
“Right, right.” Young Marty disappears into the bathroom. He reaches for a pillow and puts it over his face. That’s better—no light.
In a few minutes, he feels the couch shift slightly, and a hand touches his shoulder. “Here.” Two aspirin are pressed into his hand. Somehow, he manages to get them into his mouth. “Here.” A glass of warm water. He didn’t know he had anything besides plastic cups. Jennifer must have missed them when she was packing up the silverware.
He takes the aspirin, gulps down the water. “Thanks.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Not yet. But you have time.” The headache is already ebbing. He flicks the pillow off his face and onto his chest. Young Marty is perched on the arm of the sofa, staring pensively down at him. His eyes are still clear, his face is still smooth, his hair is still feathery and light. “Come down here. I can’t do anything with you leaning over me like that.”
“Okay.” He slides down until he’s sitting on the floor, and their faces are level. “Is this better?”
“Yeah.” He closes his eyes, waiting for the throbbing to go away. Soon.
There’s something on his face. Light, soft, almost moist. He opens his eyes. His younger self is tracing a line down his nose.
He jerks his hand away. “Sorry.” A pause. “It’s just…weird. Seeing you. I mean, me. Seeing me older, you know?”
“I remember.”
“It’s like I’m not really here.”
He laughs. “From my point of view, it’s like I’m not really here.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Young Marty tilts his head back against the couch and closes his eyes.
He lets the back of his hand brush against his younger self’s cheek. Still downy, none of the stubble that plagues him at 37. “No, you’re definitely here.”
“I guess so.” Leaning into the touch, like a cat being petted. His eyes barely flutter as Marty strokes his cheek, the soft line of his jaw, his mouth…how could he have ever been this young, this sweet, and not have known it?
His younger self reaches up and tangles his fingers in Marty’s hair. He’s let it grow, out of a misguided attempt to be Bohemian or maybe just laziness. It doesn’t look as good on him as he thought it would, but his younger self seems entranced by it. He’s wrapping it around his hand, letting it slip through his fingers.
“Who is this?”
“Hmm?”
His younger self gestures towards the speakers. “This band. I’ve never heard them.”
“Oh.” He grabs the remote and skips to the first song. “Here, listen to this.” His younger self nods, looking at the speakers as Slash’s chords echo through the room and Axl gasps. “Guns ‘N’ Roses. Probably the best hair metal band to come out of Sunset Strip.”
“What about Motley Crüe?”
“Second best, maybe. Just listen.”
Young Marty lets his hand slide out of his older self’s hair. “What’s this?”
He’s holding up a CD cover. A baby in a swimming pool. “Nirvana. You don’t want to listen to them yet, trust me.”
“Why not?”
“You’re still happy.”
He puts the CD case down. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You sure? I mean...I have time.”
No, he thinks, you don’t. Five years tops, then the future closes in on you and you can see the shapes your mistakes have made. “You don’t want to waste your time here. Let me tell you a few things, okay?”
“Future stuff?”
“Advice. That’s all.” He’s made lists, hundreds of things to change. He struggles to remember. “One: When you’re married, don’t cheat on Jennifer. Ever. Even if you’re drunk. She’ll find out, and she’ll be pissed off.”
“What if we don’t get married?”
“Then it’s not a problem, is it? Number two: Around 1990, buy some flannel shirts and wear them a lot.”
“Why?”
“Well, if you’re still in a band by then.”
“I…okay, fine. Anything else?”
“Don’t change your major.”
“To what?”
“Anything. Stick with electrical engineering.”
“Doc keeps telling me I should major in that.”
“He’s right about that, anyway.”
Young Marty waits. “Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay.” He stands up. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I will be if you do everything right.”
“All right.”
“Say hi to Doc for me.”
“I will.”
The door closes, and he can hear the DeLorean starting up. He closes his eyes and waits for the world to change around him.