Free Gray by Pete Wentz, James Montgomery Page B

each night and simply pocket the rest. They don’t suspect a thing, mostly because this has never happened before. We eat actual dinners and stay in actual hotels and even consider getting an actual tour bus, but they run about thirty grand a month and we’re not there just yet. But we’re getting close. Like I said, it’s really happening now.
    The tour stretches on, the weeks become months, the shows get bigger and bigger, until finally, on the day our album is released, we return to Chicago for a homecoming show at the Metro. It’s sold-out, absolutely packed, and backstage, in the cramped dressing room, with our parents looking on and bottles of champagne stuffed ina Styrofoam cooler, we meet with an A&R guy from the major label and sign our names on the dotted line. In an instant, our stupid little band becomes labelmates with the likes of Jay-Z and U-fucking-2. We pop the champagne and spray it around the room, the way the Bulls did during the Jordan era, and my mom even cries a little bit. It’s the single most amazing moment of my life. I mean it. It has officially happened.
     
    •   •   •
     
    There’s an actual after-party too, at an actual bar with an actual open tab. I am told by our A&R guy that this is our record-release party. Everyone in Chicago shows up to drink the free booze. Everyone except Her. She was probably studying or hanging out with the philosopher and his mom or something. It doesn’t matter, really. I’m too buzzed to be sad about Her, too flushed with the present to think about the past. I tell myself this with every shot our A&R guy buys for me, and eventually, I actually believe it. Or I just get too drunk to care.
    When they tell you not to drink alcohol or operate heavy machinery while taking Ativan, they’re not kidding. I’m amazingly drunk at this point, stumbling around the bar, bumping into people, spilling drinks all over myself. I’m laughing like a lunatic, shouting in people’s ears, yelling at the DJ to play some good music. I can’t imagine what I would’ve done if they let me drive a forklift. People are staring at me sideways, whispering shit about me in dark corners, but I don’t care. This is my party. Or my band’s. Whatever.
    At some point, I go into the bathroom and lock the door, stare at myself in the mirror, then proceed to puke all over the sink. It’s red from all the liquor I’ve been drinking, or from blood. I remember how in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield used to pretend he had been shot in the gut, used to clutch his stomach and grunt, “They got me . . . they got me good,” so I do the same thing, stumbling around the bathroom, backing into the wall, sliding down, collapsing into an imaginary pool of my own blood. I’m a funny motherfucker when I’m drunk, I think to myself. Then I black out.
    The next thing I remember, I’m in the backseat of a cab, headed somewhere with some scene chick I’ve never met before. I actually come to as we’re making out, my tongue halfway down her throat, my hand halfway up her skirt. We paw and slobber for a few blocks, and every once in a while I catch the cabdriver watching us in the rearview mirror. Part of me wants to ask him for help, but I don’t. Instead I just move my hand between her legs. We pull up outside her apartment, in a part of town I don’t recognize. We grope each other as we head up her stairs, and then we’re inside her place.
    “I just want you to know that I never do things like this,” she admits, but only people who always do things like this say lines like that. We are clumsy as we make our moves. As this stranger fumbles with my belt, I suddenly realize that this officially means it’s over between Her and me. It’s funny the things that cross my mind in moments like this. Depressing too. So I block it out and get to work. I pull at her buckle; it’s turned aroundto the side of her pants. Ten scene points . I grab her hair, which is jet-black and