Free American Goth by J. D. Glass Page A

I’d written the address and number down.
    “Does that watch work?” he asked just as I was about to leave.
    I shoved back my sleeve to check my right wrist almost reflexively. Of course it worked, I knew it worked: I wound it every morning before I buckled the tan leather over my skin. “Yes.”
    “Good, because we’ll meet for dinner later, then,” and he gave me the address where we’d meet. “It’s one of the oldest bars in London, that one on Compton Street,” he told me.
    In spite of my map, I promptly got lost, confused by Tubes and rails, parks and greens, squares and circuses, and more than once got off at the wrong stop. Finally, though, I found my way to Palmers Green, where I tried, one, two, three, four—and the moment I played it, I knew it was mine: I was in love, smitten with an old Fender Precision bass, complete with traditional tricolor flameburst that followed the contour of the body. I’d held it on my lap when I first tried it, then welcomed the weight of it across my shoulder once I selected a strap, an ox-blood leather that spread to three inches wide. I liked the way it contrasted with my black shirt.
    What I loved, really loved, was the way the neck felt in my palm, the thick strings under the pads of my fingertips, the deep, low rumble that echoed through my body when I leaned my ear against the headstock. When I asked the clerk for a patch cord and plugged into an amp, it was even better, and I spent the next hour deciding which amp had the best tone, presented its vibrated voice most accurately.
    Affording it wasn’t an issue, which it would have been just two years ago, I reflected as I pulled out a credit card that I hardly ever used, and that an accountant Stateside made sure was paid out of the trust fund I’d been left: the insurance paid to me by the City of New York’s Fire Department for my father’s untimely death in the line of duty.
    I’d been left moderately wealthy, but I would have gladly traded it to once more hear my father’s voice while we worked on the car he’d bought me in anticipation of my driver’s license, traded it twice over for one of his hugs and the smoky smell when he got home, and yet a third to have Nina eat dinner with us, then sit and play guitar on the porch while my Da lit a cigarette and kicked his feet up on the railing and listened. Such were my thoughts as I hefted the dirty-blond tweed hard case in one hand, after arranging for the small, forty-pound Hartke amp I’d settled on along with a gig bag and various electronic accoutrements to be delivered to the shop. I couldn’t quite think of it as home yet. But no matter; my instrument I’d carry myself. Everything else could be shipped.
    The way back to Soho was quite the adventure as I discovered that New Compton Street was quite far away from Compton, at least on foot. It figured, of course, that neither was near Old Compton Street.
    When I did finally get the proper bearings, I met Uncle Cort right outside the door of the pub with fifteen minutes to spare, and it turned out it was on the corner of Dean, which we actually lived on, only a few blocks away from the place I slept.
    “You found everything all right, then?” he asked me with a big smile, a clap on the shoulder, and a nod to the case in my hand.
    “I take it you expected me to get lost?”
    “Yes.” He laughed. “Come on, dear heart, let’s get some dinner.” He opened the door and ushered me in.
    The pre-dinner crowd was light as we entered past the sign that announced dancing after dinner, and the smell of old wood, varnish, and spirits over the unmistakable scent of something roasted filled my lungs as a young man—I stopped half a heartbeat—greeted us.
    It was automatic, the reach beyond the skin to the aethyric double. Him. The sandy blond hair that curved over the delicate face that perched over a slender neck and slight shoulders said one thing, but the energy signature, the soul the skin wore… I tried