Page 46 of Dirty Like Seth
“Doingwhat?”
“Inspecting what you’re drinking. It’s like I keep checking to make sure there’s no beer can or crack pipe next to you.” I was embarrassed to admit it, but there itwas.
“Well…” he said, processing that, “caffeine’s my only real vice these days. And crack was never my thing. Sorry to disappoint.” Then he smiled a little, the dimple flickering in and out of his leftcheek.
It was the first time I’d seen that dimple since we’d played together in Vancouver earlier this year. I’d almost forgotten he hadone.
“I’m sorry, Seth,” I repeated. And maybe I was apologizing for a whole lot more than just scrutinizing hiscoffee.
“Don’tbe.”
I watched as he lay the guitar he’d been playing back in its case. He was wearing the BADASS cuff bracelet I gave him when he joined Dirty ten years ago. He was always wearing it, every time I saw him, and in every photo I’d ever seen of him over the years. It was pewter, a little worn now; I would’ve thought he’d replace it with something… well, moreexpensive.
But he neverdid.
“It was a lot of fun,” I told him, “playing with you again, at the show inVancouver.”
“Yeah. The big reunion.” He settled back in his chair. He was wearing linen pants now, rolled up below the knee, and a pale-green T-shirt with the logo of a local restaurant on it; in the early-evening light it made his smoky eyes look more green than usual as he studied me. “I was glad you all let me doit.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “You fit right in, just like you alwaysdid.”
He did. Right from that very first day Zane brought him home to jam with us at nineteen. So quiet, kinda shy… until he strapped on his guitar and plugged in and played “Free Bird”—and we all flipped our shit overhim.
All the way to that last night… the final show of the first world tour, after which we’d fired him because he was such a fuckingmess.
A mere month after he’d OD’d on the tourbus.
He’d come back from the hospital strong, telling us everything was fine, that he was off the heroin. Lying to us, the way addicts did. But we all knew he was sliding down a very deep, dark hole, and none of us knew how to save him from it. We were young enough, maybe, to think we could, for awhile.
But then that night, after the last show, he’d gotten high again. Disastrously high. And the rest… washistory.
“You were clean at the Vancouver show,” I said bluntly, because he was. I could see it in his eyes. “You’re cleannow.”
“Yeah,” hesaid.
“How long have you beenclean?”
“Four years. And four and a half months, give or take a day or two. I used to track the days. Now I just do the months.” He was looking at me, squinting a bit in the setting sun. “But you know that. We went over it when you guys hired me back. I told you everythingthen.”
He did. He’d sat down with the band and Brody and told us exactly that.Still…
“I’m asking you now,” Isaid.
And so he toldme.
For an hour or so I just sat and listened while the sun went down and the stars started to come out, and he told me everything. What happened after he was dismissed from the band. The almost three years of bouncing in and out of rehab, trying to get clean, trying not to get clean, and the last time, when he actually did get clean—and stayed thatway.
I wanted to know about all of it. I wanted to know what it took to overcome that kind of addiction. And when I asked him, he simply said, “Underneath it all, my motivations had tochange.”
“What were your motivations forusing?”
He seemed to consider that for a moment, searching for the right words. Then he said, “I had some demons to battle. Getting fucked up was one way to avoid thatbattle.”
“What kind of demons?” I asked, though I had someidea.
Demons from his life as an orphan. As a foster kid. As a street kid. Demons from his rapid-fire launch into fame. And demons, maybe, that looked like JessaMayes.
But he just said, “Allkinds.”
