Diaries of the Mind

July 29, 2005
Mike's Mind

I can't believe I finally gathered up the guts to ask Trix out. Why was I so worried in the first place? I drive along the Chicago streets, her new home, to her club Green Bay. I park the rental car and get out. I look around and everything seems to be locked up, but regardless I start banging on the door.
"Trix!" I yell. "Trix!"
"Mike!" I hear from some unknown place, "Mike up here!" I back up to see Trix sticking her head out of the second story window. "Use that door, I'll buzz you." and with that she disappears. I go to the door and hear a faint buzzing so I pull open the door and head up the flight of stairs.

"You live above the club?" I ask as I see her standing in a doorway.
"Why yes." She laughs, "I eventually bought the whole building. I rent out the other apartments." I walk up to her and kiss her lips. I wonder what things would be like if I had this confidence back then. "Come in, you're early and I'm not ready yet." She heads into her apartment. I look around, it looks like her teenage room expanded into a flat. She had band posters on the walls, a shelf full of DVDs another full of books.
"Your sense in room design hasn't changed much," I say casually, she just laughs.
"Make yourself comfortable, or at home, or whatever shitty cliché you want." She calls as she goes off to one of the rooms. I sit on the couch and see a photo album sitting on the coffee table. I pick it up and start flipping through it.

The first page is Billie and Trix when they were little kids, then it was of the three of us a little later on. Then there were several pages of the old 'gang' when Green Day first started out. Then I came to a blank page I turned it to find some pictures which must be from her college years. There are quite a few pictures of her and a certain guy, must be Drew. I also see a picture of her kissing some other college girl on the lips.

"Trix!" I call out through her flat.
"Yeah Mike?"
"Are you bi?"
"Yeah, but don't tell Tre!" She calls back. I look over the photo again, call me a sick perv but I can't help but be a little turned on.

I flip through some more of her college pictures till I get to four or five pictures of her wedding day. Its pretty simple, I think they might've gotten married in a back yard. The rest of the pages are filled with photos of her working at Green Bay with various strangers and bands.

"Oh so that's why you asked if I'm bi." She says chuckling as I put the photo album back where I found it.
"Yeah." I say sheepishly, "I'm surprised you kept your wedding pictures."
"Well I threw most of them out, those are the only survivors of the great fire."
"Where'd you get married?"
"Backyard of my dad's house."
"Oh that's right, he moved after you left."
"Yeah, to Washington state, it's where all Carina's family is." She says simply, "So let's go then?"
"Yup."

I find out the movie theater is walking distance from her flat. On the way there we talk about music. Its like we just picked up from where we left off fifteen years ago. During the movie we don't talk too much, we decided to see Wedding Crashers.

We step out of the movie theater and just as I do so my cell phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Hey baby!" Tre squeals.
"Hi Tre."
"Am I ruining your date?"
"Yes you are."
"Do you love me?" he whines.
"Not at this moment."
"Does Trix love me?" I turn to Trix.
"Tre wants to know if you love him."
"With all my heart." She laughs.
"She hates your guts." I say into the phone.
"Hey! I heard what she said." Tre pouts.
"Is there a particular reason why you're calling?" I ask as Trix and I head back to her flat.
"Yes actually, the tires on our tour bus have been slashed so we've been delayed a couple of hours." Tre says seemingly serious, "We wanted to have dinner with Trix."

"They wanna have dinner with you," I say to Trix, she grabs the phone from me.
"Hey......I'm sure you didn't have anything to do with those tires....well come to my place then, I live above the club....sure, bring the kids...what do you mean-" and with that we see Tre and Billie's rental cars parked in front of her building. She flips closed the phone.

"You retards!" she yells. Tre gets out of one of the cars and smiles evilly. "What if I said no?!"
"Then we'd come anyway." Tre laughs.

Trix leads us inside and the boys head straight for the TV. Meanwhile us so called 'adults' stand around her kitchen.
"Right so dinner." Trix says glancing around, "I'll order pizza."
"YAY!" Tre yelps, we all laugh as Trix picks up the phone and heads into one of the separate rooms where its quiet enough to call.

"So how was your date?" Billie asks in a very feminine tone. "Did you get any back of the theater action?"
"I can't talk to you guys." I laugh.
"But its Trix." Tre laughs, "You can't talk about her!"
"Leave Mike alone," Adie says firmly.
"Thank you."
"I mean, its not like he's getting lucky or anything."
"Oh you're going down!" I exclaim.

Frankito runs up to us with a VHS box in his hand.
"Mommy, can we watch this movie?" He asks waving the box around.
"What movie is that?" Claudia asks curiously. Tre grabs the plain black box from his son and opens it. A smirk whips across his face.
"No, this movie isn't for you." Tre says closing it and putting it down on the counter.
"Why not?" the small boy demands.
"Its really scary." Tre staggers to say.
"I'm not afraid!"
"Oh yeah, you got nightmares from just the toilette creature," Claudia says saving the day, Frankito crosses his arms and walks away.

"Right so pizzas are coming." Trix says coming back into the room and putting down the phone. Tre meanwhile is smiling evilly. "What did you do?"
"Since when do you watch guy on guy porn?" Trix's eyes fall on the black movie box on the counter.
"What are you doing going through my movie collection?" she asks crossing her arms.
"Actually Frankito found it." Billie pipes up.
"Like you guys don't have your dirty mags and channels." Trix sneers.

"Let's change subject shall we?" Billie asks laughing.
"Oh so Billie is the porn addict here."
"Shut up," he says gritting his teeth and nodding his head towards his sons.
"So you're good influences now?" Trix laughs, "I saw you shoving your hand down your pants last night Billie Joe Armstrong!" we all start laughing.

"Trix!" Joey calls, "Doorbell." Trix rolls her eyes and heads over to the speaker box by the door.
"Yeah."
"Trix, its Kyle are we opening up?" a guy's voice asks.
"Uhh, do you think you can open up the club today?"
"Yeah, but I need the keys."
"I'll be right down." She heads over to a desk in the corner and pulls a set of keys out of the drawer.

"Hey boys," she says to Joey, Jakob and Frankito, "Do you want to see my club?"
"Don't we have to be older?" Jakob asks innocently.
"Uhh there's no cops around." She giggles. So we all head downstairs to the club.

Trix unlocks the main door and hands the set of keys to the Kyle guy.
"Cool! There's a stage!" Frankito exclaims as he charges for it. Billie's kids are not far behind. The boys have a field day running around and exploring everything. After signing the signature wall we head back upstairs, because the pizza arrived.

We sit around the poster covered apartment, at this moment I don't know why I didn't hang on to my old band posters. Tre got up to go to the washroom, ten minutes ago, we all know he's looking around Trix's bedroom or something weird like that.

"So Trix," Jakob says very matter-of-factly, "Is it true you used to beat my dad up?"
"Umm." She laughs, "Sort of, I used to play tackle football with Mike and your dad so-" the boy nods understandingly.
"He also said you stole his guitar picks." Joey adds in.
"I did no such thing!" Trix lies.
"Yeah Trix, gimme my guitar picks!" Billie says laughing.
"My dad said you were dating an idiot." Frankito says corkily, we all burst out laughing.
"Hey you have our poster!" Tre exclaims as he runs into the room. "How come its not up on the wall?"
"It was, but it creeped the hell out of me having a jumbo picture of your three staring at me." Trix protests.

"Yeah, Billie did that to me." Adie laughs, "The day they left for this tour I found the poster staring at me while I used the toilette." Billie laughs so hard he's turning red.
"Hey, Tre did that to me too." Claudia laughs, "You guys are sick sometimes." Tre shrugs innocently.

Its only a short time before I find myself saying goodbye to Trix. I wish I could spend more time here with her just catching up and possibly doing some 'other stuff' if you know what I mean. I'm the last one to leave, Billie got the idea right away and volunteered to leave. Tre too, well not so much Tre as Claudia but she dragged him along. Now I'm left here alone with Trix with the slight rumble of the booming club below us.

I step up close to her, her big eyes looking into mine.
"I can't believe I just have to leave like this after finding you." I say carefully, sometimes I'm the king of the wrong thing to say.
"Yeah, this sucks." She says looking down at her stripe socked feet. I find it funny that she wears striped socks but that aside I touch her chin with my fore finger so she's looking back at me. Believe it or not her eyes are watery but she smiles, "We have to keep in touch this time around."
"Definitely." I say nodding, "I got your number and you got mine."
"Maybe we can get together for the holidays, I could probably drive to California or something spend it with you guys."
"I'd like that," I say even though I'm disappointed that I'll have to wait several months to see her again, "But what the hell maybe touring will bring me to a neighboring state so I can come see you."
"Yeah."

I leave her apartment, reliving another awesome kiss from her repeatedly in my mind.