Lately I’ve been wondering about Jesse, my best friend.
’m not so sure he is my best friend anymore – although technically we still are. But I don’t feel like I know him any more.
We’re at our old hangout, the park. It’s dark and deserted now. Jesse’s dark slim form seems to blur in with the darkness, as he lounges against the fence watching me. I can feel his eyes burning into me.
I try to grasp how had it come to this? Just a few short months ago we had been inseparable, doing stuff together, hanging out, sharing jokes and escapades and whatnot. And music. Rock music to be exact. Listening to our fave bands, messing around on cheap guitars, trying to lure in anyone who had access to a drumkit, making up songs and dreaming of making it big. Not that we were fanatical about it or anything, it was just fun.
But that changed when we met Tony Ridge one night at a local gig. Tony’s a roadie and he knows all the local bands but even more than that, he’s totally immersed in the whole history of rock, I mean, the most obscure corners of rock history –unheard-of bands, unsuspected genres, and all. As I say, that one night he got talking to us about all that stuff and it proved fatal. That is to say, his enthusiasm for woefully-neglected rock music geniuses rubbed off on me – and not on Jesse. Not one bit on Jesse. He didn’t take much part in the conversation and I thought at the time he was just too busy listening, but maybe I should’ve taken the trouble to actually notice his expression.
The first intimation I had that our friendship was no longer perfect was when we were leaving the gig. ‘Dude, was that fucking boring or what,’ Jesse remarked.
‘What was fucking boring?’
‘That Tony guy! Who the fuck cares about all that shit?’
I stopped to stare at him, and he looked back over his shoulder at me. ‘What?’ he demanded.
Well, like I said, that night proved fatal for me. I started researching all manner of obscure bands as much as I could, rhapsodizing about all these sadly-neglected musical geniuses down the ages and disdaining any band who’d had even a whiff of commercial success as irredeemable sellouts. Looking back I can see that I was kind of over-the-top about it but I thought that my best friend might’ve been a little more accommodating. The way I saw it I was just trying to do him a good turn, get him to look outside the mainstream, expand his musical horizons and all.
‘Shut up Mike’, he would say as soon as I got going on my favorite subject, and soon started adding some more choice epithets as well.
‘I’m just trying to educate you dude,’ I would reply – rather unwisely, I can see that now.
‘I don’t want to be fucking educated.’
I should have left it at that, but the trouble was I was pretty much a zealot at that time and Jesse was my obvious and only target, as I really didn’t have any other friends who were into rock. Soon he started avoiding me.
I got plenty of unsolicited advice from other people on the subject of our friendship, the gist of which was, ‘Wind your neck in or you’re gonna drive him away altogether.’ Even my mom, who I thought hadn’t cared over-much for Jesse anyway chipped in on the subject. Some also pointed out that friendships can run their natural course. But for some reason I couldn’t let it go. I don’t know what demon had gotten into me. Well partly it was Tony’s fault. I still talked to him at gigs – I had taken to going on my own – and he advised me that Jesse might come round in time.
Next thing was Tony turned up missing. No-one seemed to know what might have become of him. Incidentally this was after one night at a gig when Jesse had been seen hanging around as well, though he didn’t want to be seen with me. That was just a couple weeks ago. Tony’s still missing.
So it finally has come to this. A meeting at the park, one of our favorite haunts in the old days. I’d asked him to come and meet me here to try for a reconciliation. Also, my fervor had started to wear off and I really missed the old days of us messing around and not taking anything seriously, not even music. I should’ve known better – about trying to reconcile I mean. Like my former religious zeal, it’s obvious from the outset that Jesse is having none of it.
‘I’m done man,’ he says. ‘You pretty much literally bored me to death. Do you think I’d want to risk that happening again, with whatever stupid fucking crazy shit you decide to take up next?’
‘That’s harsh,’ I say. ‘It was only music. Don’t take it to extremes.’
‘You just wouldn’t leave me alone.’ He seems fixated on that idea.
‘It’s all over, seriously,’ I plead. ‘I’m sorry man.’
‘Yea, so’m I. And I bet Tony was pretty sorry too -‘
‘Tony? Tony Ridge?’
‘Yea. He started it all.’
That turns me cold. ‘Shit man, what the fuck have you done –‘
He smiles. ‘Nothing to what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna do you a good turn.’
No doubt I should’ve been high-tailing it out of there at that point but I remain watching him, in a way hypnotized, and certainly curious to know just what he means.
‘You remember what you said? You were just trying to do me a good turn.’
‘So?’ My voice is almost shaking but I still go on standing there.
‘So I’m just gonna return the favor. You remember something else you said?’
I couldn’t.
‘All those stupid obscure bands and their stupid fucking obscure songs. You said you wished you would have a playlist of them at your funeral and not the usual obvious mainstream crap that most people go for. In fact, you said you wished for that more than anything else!’
My mouth drops open, I can’t speak for a minute.
He smiles again. ‘I’ll make sure you get your wish. You can count on me. I’m not into all that shit but I promise, I’ll do it for you. For old times’ sake, right?’
Surely he’s just joking? But then I see the knife in his hand.
I’m wishing devoutly for something else right now – that I hadn’t helped to turn my best friend into a psychopath.