B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

I forgot something, another little bit of weird confluence that seemed perfectly reasonable on the same night the Doctor put a hole through his head.

Patrick and I became friends over both quoting REM's 'Crush With Eyeliner,' one of the only traces of sweetness on the band's ode to bad sex and reptile brain thinking "Monster." The song came up while in email about This Girl and her Rock Star Boyfriend. She's five miles of bad road. She's the real thing. I was in Huntsville and Patrick in New York and meeting in San Francisco was months away, but that did it. Of course it was music, of course it was girls.

This Girl was, is, beautiful. The sort of pretty that just smashes all your brain gear like sledge hammer applied to an old Ford's engine. And she was smart, and funny, she listened to all the right music and sung smokey, harmonica-fueled blues songs. Rock Star Boyfriend was most famous for being in that band we all sorta liked in high school and not being bald, or a girl, or killing friends with his junk habit. The band was dead and we had all moved on but he was still around, thriving on royalty checks and a limping solo career that no one could even nod polietly at any more. At some point, I think between New Year's of '04 and the end of May she came into the record store with a new boy with an actual job and everything, and that was the last we heard of Rock Star Boyfriend.

Until last night, when we're sitting in International talking fictional lives over a shot and a beer a piece, and he's two seats down from us with some friends have a birthday. Still skinny, still the compact size of a twelve year old boy who runs a lot, still wearing those terrible shirts even his heyday '90's snickered at. Paler, and his hair's been bleached and dyed a sick blonde so often it hanges off his head like a dead, brittle thing, like it would snap if you ran your hands through it. Confluence moves over the world like the dealer's brush at a craps table and we all just move along.

posted by chris  # 8:12 PM