Helplessly Hoping

It was really hot for mid-July. Sweat rolling down your back hot. And I was wearing a pleather jacket. It was the best jacket you’d ever have seen; it had a pin proclaiming my love for George Harrison and the back of the jacket said ‘Beatlette’ in rhinestone and pink thread. The bikers absolutely hated it and constantly mocked me – which sucked considering I lived right near the Hells Angels headquarters, but they wouldn’t have hurt me, because of who my grandfather was (he was dead, but y’know, even dead people still have influence) and the problems hurting me may have caused for their criminal activities.

I probably should have stopped wearing the pleather jacket once my father called me up to inform me of the possibility of my death for being a ‘fag’, but if you adore something as much as I adored that jacket, you wouldn’t stop wearing it. Plus, Alice Fontaine loved my jacket.

I had left Lauren two nights previous. I had a feeling she still may have been at my house, which was why I was staying with Freddie Elias, my best friend and the bassist for our band, the Accident. He’d sent me out to buy coffee granules when I bumped into Alice.

Literally, bumped into. She poured her smoothie onto my Ronettes shirt and I felt to cry, I wore that shirt almost every day. I don’t know, I was one of those creeps who loved girl groups. It could have been the flawless production and dark undertones, but… anyway, I had walked into Alice Fontaine and she poured a smoothie on Ronnie Spector’s face.

I let out a cry, something that you’d hear from a cat, kind of like, “Mwraaaah!” I began to wipe at the shirt and flicked the mango and passion fruit smoothie into the air wildly with my right hand, the other hand carrying a pot of value coffee granules.

I had looked up after realising that the fruity drink wouldn’t come out without water, I then noticed Alice in a pair of oval sunglasses with thick white frames, her red lips in an ‘o’ shape. The bottom of her jaw twitched and she rolled her blue checked over shirt onto her hand, dabbing at the yellow mess on my favourite top. She bit her lip, getting lipstick on her front tooth and lowered her sunglasses. “You wanna get a smoothie to compromise the one that’s all over your…” She cocked her head and squinted, “Ronettes tee?”

I said yes and we walked in the direction she had just come from. She stopped in front of this psychedelic looking store and pushed the door open, wind chimes chiming (I think that’s their purpose…) and the strong scent of patchouli incense hitting my sinuses and making my eyes water, as well as setting off my asthma and giving me those burn-y throat coughs.

The patchouli incense was to cover up the even stronger smell of marijuana in the back rooms, which was where everyone who wasn’t a ‘square’ sat when drinking their smoothies. I’d never even been to this place before. Never even seen it, but I guess you wouldn’t. A café on a busy street, with no windows, just a glass door with a sign on the door along with beads, concert posters and a picture of a walrus – it just looked like a… not a café. Or a shop for that matter.

We left quickly after buying our drinks. Alice said, “There’s a guy I fucking hate in there. He’s an arrogant sleaze ball with greasy hair and a Greek accent, which he thinks gives him an excuse to make obscene sexual comments about me because his English isn’t perfect.” I nodded and sucked the smoothie through the straw. I followed her and she continued to rant, “Like he’d say all the sexual favours he wants to a girl when he’s in Greece. It’s simple morals – nobody’s that blunt about things when you don’t even know someone.”

Her apartment hadn’t changed much in the two days that passed. The bed was made, the curtains were closed and the whole room smelled like vanilla, courtesy of the small candle burning on the small tray next to the bed. I didn’t know where to sit down, so I just stood there awkwardly, my legs crossing at the knees.

She disappeared behind a curtain that separated the main living area from the kitchen and came back holding a damp cloth. My eyebrows had furrowed in confusion until she started to wipe the mango off of Ronnie Spector’s face. “I saw your band at a club once. You sound kinda like the Doors, but without the pretentious lyrics and the Hammond organ.”

I was taken aback. No one had ever called the Doors pretentious in my company before. I had stumbled to find an answer, “Yeah, we’re shit.” My eyes were shifty. I could tell because I was still feeling weird after the Doors statement. Sure they were pretentious, but GODDAMN, THE END. “The End is the best song in the history of man. I refuse to hear anything different.”

She shrugged and continued to wipe my shirt, “Opinions are opinions. You’re the Doors without the Hammond, pretentious lyrics and really heavy bass. Your music is very distorted and kind of spacey, like you wrote it all when you were tripping, or stoned.” I nodded. It was all true. “I love it. When’s your LP coming out?”

“They’re done with it at the studio, so in about a month.” I had blagged. Like fuck if I knew. “About the time I’m shipped off to Vietnam, so, I won’t see if it’s well received.” I basically asked for the reaction I got, which was a hug and kiss on the cheek.

She began to scratch at her knuckles and her face went a bit red, “My brother was in ‘Nam. Uh, he got his leg blown off by a grenade and obviously couldn’t get up, due to pain and the lack of his leg. Some guy in his platoon shot him seven times in the stomach to put him out of his misery. Adam came back in a body bag three weeks later.” She pulled out some dog tags from under her white vest top and pressed them to her lips, “Is there any way for you to avoid going?”

I wiped her tears with my thumb and grabbed her hands, pulling her down onto the carpet where we sat cross legged and just kinda looked at each other. “I’ve been drafted. There’s no way of stopping it because I’ve not been educated highly, my parents aren’t rich and none of my family are government officials.” It wasn’t exactly the truth because Uncle Enzo could have definitely got me missing the draft, but I didn’t want myself lowered to blackmail and my duty being passed onto another kid who, just like me, wanted to become the next Jim Morrison.

She shook her head and smiled, “I don’t want you to go. You have to see the latest production of Streetcar with me as Blanche DuBois. It’s going to be fabulous and apparently Marlon Brando’s going to come! Imagine meeting Marlon Brando, it’s like meeting…” I muttered under my breath the gap, “Jim Morrison for you!”

I promised I’d try and come and then I stared at her for a bit. “You wanna drop some acid?” She nodded, getting up and going behind the kitchen curtain, coming back with two sugar cubes. I had a whole piece of blotting paper in my pocket, so I got out two tabs and put them on the sugar.

Before Alice put the tab in her mouth, she held my face and said, “You’ll come back fucked in the head – that’s what Adam’s friends were like, the screaming in the night types. They’re really cold people now – they seem to lack emotion. They’re not right anymore, come on, half of them signed up to do another tour and those ones are convinced that we’re gonna win. We’re not. You can’t change an entire government’s mind with over the top battles and harming innocent civilians. They’re convinced that what our country is doing is right. It’s not fucking right.” She put the sugar cube in her mouth and let it dissolve. “Promise me you won’t be one of those cold people who scream in the night? Promise me once you come back you’ll be the same person?”

I swore to my death those things. I instantly regretted it. You never know what lies ahead, what if it’s as bad as it the stories go?