Keeping Them For Myself
In my hometown, my friend group and I were the outcasts. During this time the town was fairly small, at least by comparison to where I live now. It was less a town that knew everyone and more like several neighborhoods each with their own level of nosiness. I remember a lot of the fucked things those “neighbors” said to me and around me as the four of us, soon to be three, were mourning.
Maybe that was when my disdain for civilization started, or maybe it was just the start of the bitterness that I started to hold towards my town. Either way, when the last of us was finally taken and I heard that bitch Ms. Callaway say “Saw it coming, all the way back in the 7th grade!” I had decided that I wouldn’t let anyone take away, morph, or alter the people I knew.
That developed into something darker. A selfishness. I stopped talking about them. Since then I have had lovers and friends, completely clueless and left astray as to who I actually was or what my past was like. I liked it like that and still do. You see, I have a belief. We are but the stories we carry. Meaning that no matter your name, body or face, no matter your level of skill, character or ego, you are nothing more than the story you present to the world.
In 2023, my partner asked me if they could place the names of my friends on a memorial wall. I refused, stating: “I’d like to keep them all to myself.”
Here’s the issue with that. That response, while true, was reactionary. A sentence loaded into the chamber and ready to fire. No one here knows of them. No one here can say: “Oh, that guy, that guy fucking sucked!” No one can cock an eyebrow and say: “You hung out with that girl?” and then look me up and down as they judge every life choice I’ve ever made. No one knows them here. I had the chance to give them the proper story they deserve. To be remebered not as shit head trouble makers with a noisy band of ill tuned instruments. But as broken kids, troubled youth who were just trying to make the best of it. Maybe one day I will, maybe that’s the goal of Closet Music. To give them their story. The true one.