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That wastwo o’clock in the morning. And it is currently…I glance at the clock and groan. It’s five in the morning. And we’re talking about a former rock god here.
There is no way in fucking hell Jackson is awake right now. I mean logically, there’s no way he’ll be awake anytimetodaywith the amount of alcohol he’s clearly been putting away. But definitely not at five in the morning.
I shuffle into the kitchen, wrinkling my nose again as my eyes slide over the disgusting state of it. I head to the pantry where I remember spotting something yesterday when I went to grab my peanut butter and jelly makings. And, sure enough, when I open the door, there’s the apron hanging there.
I slip it on and then turn to take in the state of the kitchen with a heavy sigh. I’m not about to dive head-first into cleaning Jackson’s house because he “suggested” it last night, as payment for his “grand generosity” of “allowing” me to sleep indoors.
Gee, thanks.
No, I’m doing this because this is my weird Zen thing.
When I can’t sleep, or if I’m stressing, or can’t get my mind to stop chasing itself in circles, I clean my apartment. When I did eventually see a therapist—or two, or three—about my childhood,yearsafter, when I was eighteen, I never really brought up the cleaning quirk. But I’m sure they’d have quickly traced it back to the days and nights I’d spend alone as a kid, while Judy was lost for a week at Warped Tour, or Coachella, or whatever random band’s tour bus she’d managed to slink herself onto.
And when I was scared, maybe a little bored, and alone, I’d start tidying things. Maybe the order gave me comfort in a home life rife withdisorder.
First things first, I get the coffee machine going. The storm is still rumbling around outside, and the sudden bursts of thunder keep jarring me. So, I end up sticking headphones in my ears and turning on some saved-offline music on my phone.
The warm, familiar sound of Warren Zevon purrs into my ears as I roll up my metaphorical sleeves, and dig in.
An hour later, it’s starting to look like a residence a human actually lives in. I collect all the empty bottles. I wash the cocaine dust residue off the mirror in the sink, which gives me flashbacks to the times growing up when I had friends coming over to the apartment and I had to hide my mother’s drugs.
Bottles, mirror, and then the trash littering the entire room. But the tricky part there is some that of it isactualtrash. But there’s also other scraps here and there that onlyappearto be trash until you unfurl them. And the first time it happens, I realize what I’m holding in my hands isn’t trash.
It’s lyrics.
I go still, my eyes sweeping over the handwritten words and rambles sprawling across the crumpled-up page.
It’s… sporadic. It’s rambling, and not too coherent. But these are lyrics written by Jackson freaking Havoc. And recently, at that.
It’s not lost on me that I could smuggle some of these scraps of lyrics home with me and probably sell them for alotonline.
But I’m not going to do that. Instead, I put it to the side and dig into more of the trash. But the more pieces of crumpled paper I unravel, the more lyrics I find.
I put them all in a stack.
A little while later, I finally make it into the disaster zone called the kitchen. And it’s truly a fucking disaster. But just the same, I get to work.
And yes, I do question why the fuck I’m stomping around in my underwear at six-thirty in the morning, cleaning Captain Dickhead’s house for him. There’s a certain Machiavellian streak in me that wonders, or hopes, horribly, that this might… I guessingratiateme with him.
That maybe, just maybe, the likelihood of an interview that lands me this job at Ignition is there if he comes downstairs and finds his place clean and not littered with trash.
But mostly, I know it’s because I'm awake, and because yes, I’m a bit of a neat freak.
After another little while, I step back to admire my work. I grin smugly, pulling the earbuds out as I survey the now-sparkling, biohazard-free kitchen.
I glance at the time. It’s now only seven in the morning. But I’ve hit my wall with cleaning, and the place looks fantastic anyway. Back out in the living room, I sit on the couch with the huge stack of lyrics I uncovered. Slowly, I read them, feeling a strange warmth settle though me.
They’re rough. They’re disorganized and random. But…there’s a poetry to them that moves something in me.
Yes, Velvet Guillotine was always known as this collective of hard-partying, headline-grabbing, shenanigans-seeking young terrors. But if they’djustbeen that, they’d have fizzled out early.
There are a thousand bands out there who partied or still party just as hard as Velvet ever did. But what truly made them notorious, if not legendary, was that that wild, reckless spirit didn’t just materialize in tabloid headlines.
It was right there in the dark genius of their music.
OfJackson’smusic.
I pause, sucking on my lip as the memory of seeing Jackson play yesterday comes seeping back into my thoughts.
