Page 202 of Wicked Angel
Johnny seemed to take it in stride, but with him, it was so hard to tell what he was really feeling about these things.
He mentioned to me that Amber had done a photo shoot with JC, to accompany some magazine interview. But he didn’t seem upset about it, just… neutral. I wasn’t sure if that was evidence of growth or not.
Maybe he was just shutting down on that subject.
When our dinner came, Lamar walked us out to Johnny’s car. Then Johnny drove me home while Lamar took a cab so we could be alone. In the car, Johnny told me about how Noah had signed some endorsement deal with one of the big drum companies, despite him and Johnny being “regrouping” their band; it meant he’d have service at concerts on both sides of the Atlantic when they got touring again, which was a step up in his career. In turn, I told him about how Courteney had started work on her next book, a retrospective on the Vancouver music scene, and maybe she’d want to interview him for it sometime.
Lots of good things were going on around us. Maybe we were hoping that some of it would rub off on us.
When we got home, Lamar vanished into his suite. He seemed to have a knack for knowing exactly when to disappear. I unpacked our food at the long dining table between Johnny’s kitchen and living room. He made us both a vodka and juice and we sat down to eat, and to continue our talk.
“What does Rory say about it?” I probed gently.
“About what?”
“About the dick thing. You know, your habit of hurting people.”
He blew out a breath. “He says I’ve been living inside a fortress.”
“What does that mean?”
“He says I’ve built a wall around myself, to keep myself safe. He said I did it when I was a kid, after what happened. The shooting.” He swallowed. “He said that it’s the place where the boy I was went to hide from what happened. It’s the place we have to go sometimes, to find out what I’m feeling. Because I don’t know how to tell him how I’m feeling in any other way.” He stopped.
“Go on. Please. What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that emotionally, I’m numb. I’ve been that way for a long, long time. I don’t know how to go inside myself and put whatever I’m experiencing into words. The boy in the fortress, that’s how we talk about it. It makes the feelings more accessible to me. The boy might be in pain, but I’m just… numb.” He shook his head a little. “I sound crazy.”
“No. You don’t. But… I’ve seen you have emotions. Like anger, for sure.”
“Yeah. I’ve gotten angry lately a time or two.”
“So then you’re not really numb.”
“Maybe just not as numb as I used to be. But anger, frustration… I think those are the only feelings that have ever run rampant in me as an adult.”
“What about good feelings?”
“Like what?”
“Happiness. Joy.”
“I don’t know if I know what happiness is.”
“I know you feel pleasure when we’re together.”
“Pleasure.” He seemed to think about that. “Yeah. But it takes a lot. Like drinking or music, I have to do those to the extreme to get a rush off of it. It’s not one drink, it’s gotta be twelve. It can’t be a top 100 song, it’s gotta be number one.”
“And when that doesn’t happen?” I was pretty sure, from my research on his career, that Breakneck had never had a number one hit on any chart.
“That’s where the frustration and anger sets in,” he admitted. “And with women… hooking up with some fan or some woman I meet at a party doesn’t really do it. It’s not the same rush as the girlfriend of my bandmate taking me back to her hotel room.”
I tried to digest that. My meal was getting less appetizing by the minute.
“I know that’s wrong,” he said.
“So… what about sex? Isn’t that pleasurable?”
“Sex is… discardable. It’s barely worth it. Having to potentially deal with another person’s needs, their emotions, for any length of time… Sex often comes with those things, at least for the woman, if not for me.”
