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Ibloody love this song. The bass line kicks arse. It’s like heroin, or at least how I imagine the opiate would feel hitting your bloodstream at a million decibels.
I’m throbbing and thrumming as Carlos D liquefies my insides on this track, growling at me as he snaps his strings and threatens to eat me alive.
Classic Interpol, man. Fucking aural heroin, this band.
Music is my life.
It’s the thing I wrap around me when darkness descends. It’s the shield I hold up when my enemies are at the gate. It’s my laughter and my tears, my greatest joy, and the absolute expression of my pain.
Music is my one and only love. Which is why my job is so important to me. It’s the only thing that has ever truly been mine, and I wouldn’t give it up for the wide world. Not for anyone.
Which means Garrett and I are done. At long last.
When I left his apartment tonight to drive to work, he didn’t say goodbye. Neither did I. After the conversation we’d had about the future, our future or the lack of one, goodbye seemed redundant. When someone tells you they’ve had it all and done it all, and feel no need for more when you’re still reaching for every goddamned thing life can offer, what is there left to say?
“We want different things, Frankie,” he’d said, and it hadn’t come as a surprise.
I was a pit stop for Garrett. Deep down, I’d always known. He was the first guy I really connected with when I moved to Philadelphia from Glasgow. We were friends for a few years, dancing around the attraction before he finally let me suck him off in a Home Depot carpark. An inauspicious beginning, to be sure.
And even though I’ve always claimed not to believe in happily-ever-afters, I still thought, maybe he and I would eventually… I don’t know.
Well, it doesn’t bloody well matter what I thought, now does it? We’re done. But I still have my music. Always that.
I pull into the pockmarked lot outside the 91.9 WKMP studios and kill the engine of my 1978 AMC Gremlin. I love this little car. My mates think I’m crazy to drive such an old clunker, but it suits me. This two-door hatchback is an under-appreciated classic. It’s a car most people would call ugly, but I love every inch of it.
Right, okay, so the passenger window doesn’t roll all the way down, the back glass has a long, ragged crack in it, and it burns through petrol like a motherfucker, but it’s all mine. This car gets me.
I guess I have two things, then.
The only upgrade I’ve made to the Gremlin is the sound system, removing the old cassette rigging and adding a CD player with an input jack for my mobile phone.
I carry gigabytes of music on my person at all times. For emergency situations, you see. You never know when you might need a bit of Janelle Monae or Red Hot Chili Peppers. Or the perfect Kinky track. My music library has gotten me out of a lot of sticky social situations. And it’s gotten me laid.
It also got me my gig as a disc jockey.
The air is thick and humid as I step out of the car. It’s only May, but the sun’s been nipping at the ripening peach of summer, eager to take a bite. I leave my window down a smidgen, lest I return to a portable sauna in the morning and double-check that I’ve set the brake before I grab my backpack, lock up the car and head up to the one-story, brick building.
Once, I forgot to set the damned brake and came out from my shift to find my car at the bottom of the hill, almost in the middle of Main Street. Not pretty.
I’m in a reflective mood tonight, it seems. It’ll make for an interesting set. Maybe some Joy Division, a little Sigur Ros, a bit of Bilal, definitely James Blake.
“Yo, Frankie, how’s it going?”
“Hey, Mario.” I greet WKMP’s general manager as he sets a crate of records on the ground and unlocks his 2012 VW Golf. “You need help with that?”
Mario shakes his head, his jowls jiggling. He’s a jolly sort. A kind of Sicilian Santa Claus.
“Nah, I’m good,” he replies in his thick, Northeast Philly accent. “I culled some duplicates from the archive, thought I’d give ‘em to the library.”
The streetlights glint off his wire-rimmed glasses as he opens his car door and sets the crate on the back seat. ...
