When I was a junior in college I did an internship with a software company, and after I graduated in 2003 they offered me a job as a programmer. I pieced together my new life in Chicago over Craig's List: apartment, furniture, car, etc.
In my free time I'm a pretty versatile musician—I had been in some bands in college, but I never let myself get too committed out of fear that I'd neglect school. Now that school was done, I was ready to do it right. Piano is my best instrument, but I wanted to get into a serious rock band. So I advertised myself as a bassist (also on Craig's List) and got about a half dozen calls within the first week.
In all honesty, I'm really gifted when it comes to music. I know theory, can read music, and can jam in just about any style on multiple instruments, so it was never a question of who was going to pick me. I auditioned with four of the bands who had contacted me, and ended up joining one call Schwa. They hadn't played out yet, but they had about a set and a half of really great songs. They had been rehearsing together for about nine months when they lost their original bass player, who moved to New York to get married.
I had great musical chemistry with the guys in the band. The only thing that concerned me was that they had all been friends since grade school, including the prodigal bass player, and I didn't want to be the odd man out. I didn't want to spend hours listening to them reminisce about people I didn't know and shit they had done together that I hadn't been a part of. But it became clear pretty quickly that they wanted to avoid that too, so my solid musical relationship with them turned easily into solid friendships as well.
Brett was the drummer. He loved playing in crazy time signatures with a double bass pedal—he was a drum jock, in short, and a damn good one. He was also a digital illustrator for a gaming company, so we had computers in common off the bat.
Jake was the guitar player, and a librarian by day. He was one of those quiet dudes who had built a shelf from 2x4s across an entire wall of his apartment to house his collection of rare vinyl. He gravitated toward jazz, and toward virtuoso guitarists like Joe Satriani and Jeff Beck, but he was also perfectly happy playing the kind of alternative/hardcore mash rock we turned out.
Dave was the front man and rhythm guitarist. He had a personality that just drew you in. He was handsome, smart, funny, and lived off a trust fund, but he was such a cool guy that nobody hated him for his good fortune. His dad was the vice president of rape and pillage for some big Wall Street bank, so he was set for life. He had the time and money to pursue various esoteric hobbies, the main one being filmmaking. He was really into obscure, Eastern European shit, and had made some shorts of his own that had played at festivals in New York, Amsterdam, and Prague.
When it came down to it, Dave considered himself more of a filmmaker than a musician. He would bring me and Jake to see this completely incomprehensible art house stuff, and then could talk for an hour afterwards about the genius of this cut and that angle. I didn't get much of it, but again, people loved to listen to Dave talking about his passions. He could easily have been an actor or comedian, and was fantastic on stage. Schwa was a great musical unit with solid songs and good technical ability, but I have no doubt that a huge part of the modest success we would go on to enjoy was due to Dave's charm.
We were all single when I joined the band, and once we started generating some buzz none of us had any problem getting laid. Young men plus big city plus and rock and roll translated quickly into a lot of whoring around. We would have these conversations in which we would recount our prodigious exploits, which was of course a lot of fun.
But now, years later, I realize that what we were also doing was checking in with one another to make sure that none of us was thinking about getting serious with any particular girl and diverting attention away from what really mattered, which was the band. We were all having a great time, and like all great things when you're young, you fool yourself into thinking it will last forever.
About a year and a half after I joined Schwa, Dave met Anna. She was a couple years older than him. She had her MFA and was an instructor at the Art Institute school.
There was no mystery as to the attraction. Besides her considerable intellectual and artistic charms, she was also a knockout as far as I was concerned: reddish-brown wavy hair, big green eyes, full lips, and pale, almost translucent skin. I say "as far as I'm concerned" because she was also curvy—too curvy for Brett's taste. Brett was into tall blonde waifs—a "type" that has always baffled me. We would have those disrespectful conversations guys have about their buddies' girlfriends, and Brett always referred to Anna as chubby. I didn't consider her chubby. But whether she was or not was beside the point, because she was just sexy as hell.
Before the veil of privacy descended when they officially became boyfriend and girlfriend, the stories Dave would tell about fucking her would make my mouth water. Anna was adventurous. Once they were walking around downtown before a seminar she had to teach and she took him into the cathedral during the noon mass (they had both been raised Catholic) and gave him a handjob in one of the pews, with just her windbreaker covering it up. She would also buy him porn and watch it with him, just to make sure there wasn't anything she was missing in terms of state-of-the-art depravity. She was short, no more than 5'2", and had wide hips but great legs. But the piece de resistance was her big, gorgeous, natural tits. They tormented me.
Three months after Dave and Anna started dating, we all ended up at a party one night after a show. I was pretty drunk, standing in a corner reading a text from a girl named Michelle I had met at the bar. She had texted to ask for the address of the party. I was replying when Anna walked over and started teasing me about her. Michelle was dumb and hot: high leather boots, fishnet thigh-highs, skirt that barely covered her ass, the whole nine. In short, she was no candidate for girlfriend. I don't even remember exactly what Anna was saying, but at one point I had that mortifying realization that I was staring directly at her cleavage. It was August in Chicago, and she was wearing a short skirt, a tight blue tank top, and those high wedge sandals that still failed to make her look much taller. When I finally looked up into her eyes, she arched an eyebrow and gave me a playful little slap across the cheek. Guys on the street must have stared at Anna's cleavage a thousand times a day, but you don't want your buddy's girlfriend to think of you as a letch—or not purely as a letch anyway.
That night I fucked Michelle like a depraved Roman emperor, thinking the whole time about how I would rather be fucking Anna. I was a little bit in love with her, there was no use denying it. But she was Dave's girl and I harbored no illusions. I contented myself with fantasizing about her. Ninety-five percent of the time I jerked off, I thought about Anna. My top fantasy involved me lying down with my head in her lap, sucking her tits while she slowly jerked me off. I dreamed of how those beautiful tits would feel against my tongue and my cock. I found a couple of clips on porn sites where the chicks looked sort of like her and watched them over and over. It looks kind of obsessive now that I see it in black and white, but after a while my obsession it calmed down to nothing more than a typical case of unrequited lust.
Six months after they met, Dave and Anna went for a long weekend to Vegas and came back married. I remember the gasp of horror in our practice space the night Dave told us. Every rock band is haunted by the ghost of Yoko Ono, and Brett and Jake clearly thought that the death knell had sounded for Schwa. To me, it was just one more piece of proof that I would never have Anna, which was never really in doubt in the first place. So I sucked it up and was the first to congratulate Dave. Then Brett and Jake unconvincingly followed my lead. Dave just laughed at all of us and promised it wasn't going to change anything with the band.
And strangely enough he was right. The three of us kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. Practice went on as usual, shows were booked more and more frequently, and our first CD was recorded, mixed, and mastered according to schedule, which is something that almost never happens regardless of the marital status of the band members. Really the only thing that changed was that we were no longer treated to stories of Dave's sexual exploits, which had been by far the most entertaining. They each had their own lives, and neither tried to rein in the other. It was just one more thing for me to be secretly jealous of.
About a year after they had been married, we booked a big show at the Metro to coincide with Dave's 25th birthday. It was a Saturday, and the morning of the show I had gone into work for a couple of hours to finish up some code. Around 11 my phone rang.
"Hello doll," Anna said, which is what she had called me ever since she had caught me staring at her chest. It was kind of cool and kind of heart-wrenching at the same time. Of the three of us in the band who were not Dave, I was closest to her. We probably could have become real friends had it not been for the fact that I tried to keep some distance. The closer we got, the greater the chance I would fuck something up either intentionally or unintentionally.
"What's up baby?"
"I got Dave that vintage tube amp and cabinet you suggested for his birthday."
"That's awesome. He's going to love it. You're the best wife ever"
"Of course I am. And I want him to use it tonight at the show. Can you and the guys come by at 6 tonight and pick it up in the van? It's hidden in the garage, and that's the only time I can get him out of the condo for long enough."
Getting Brett and Jake together in the van three hours before we had to load in was going to be a serious challenge, and I told her so.
"Come on, it's for Dave!" she said. "I know you can work it out with him, darling."
So of course, I did.
When I knocked on the door at six, I was ill-prepared for what greeted me. Anna was wearing a thin black cotton nightie, made of what looked like t-shirt material that hugged her figure perfectly. It was very simple and went down just below her knees, with spaghetti straps and none of that frilly bullshit that I hate. The only jewelry she had on were her wedding and engagement rings and a somewhat prominent cross necklace, which was kind of weird because she wasn't a practicing Catholic (as the pew handjob might have suggested). She wasn't wearing a bra, and I know that I failed miserably to honor my pledge to never gawk at her tits again.
