What if Jefe’s never got condemned, if
The Backyard never changed management, if Tiny
Robots still played gigs. What if the raspados trucks
were still allowed to park in that empty lot up near
the frontage road, if the Radisson Inn & Suites never
got built there instead. What if when we coined the term
“desert goth,” people understood it as something more
than just some adolescent trend, and what if there was still
a place for us to mosh together like the summer after
graduation, when we had my car and pooled $20 a week
for gas. What if we saved that money instead of blowing it
on Hot-N-Ready pepperoni Crazy Bread at Little Caesars
and drove out to your cousin’s place in Encantado, or what if
we got those tickets before Warped Tour and My Chemical
Romance both dissolved. And what if we started a band like
we’d promised since forever. What if I learned guitar—not just
picking Beatles covers—but really learned chords and riffs
and I had my own amp and electric six-string and what if you
played the bass and sang and we found a drummer. What if
we got so rich and famous we moved out to California because
we always said we would, because we were always so sick
of living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and Los Angeles
is so beautiful and brutal and full of artists like us, and at least
someone from our high school had to grow up to do something
interesting, so why not you, me, and Jesse? What if that track
we posted to YouTube with the dryer set to “delicates” tumbling
in the background cycled into eternity. And what if our music
was so good that Jesse heard it all the way on the other side
of that freeway in December 2012, and what if she stopped
for a second on her typical midnight powerwalk, just to listen,
which would have been a second long enough to avoid the minivan
that skidded across the Michigan ice and hit the curb. Maybe
we can’t change what happened that night when you
were in Jalisco and I was stuck at home with my family
for the holidays. But what if our jam was so good it brought
her back, even if it was just long enough to feel her breath
spread across the passenger side window glass, watch her
finger-paint in our peripheral memory. What if that was all
we needed to survive, to save ourselves and fix everything
this whole fucking time. What if I said we still could. What then.
