Collectors

Chris is thinking of selling his records. Since high school I’ve known him to collect punk and goth albums, especially by his favorite band, the Damned. He’s spent thousands of dollars. A couple rare singles, he texts, I could probably get 10 grand for. Assuming anyone would buy them.

A few weeks ago Chris had a nervous breakdown. He told us that he’d stopped going to work and was afraid to leave the house. By us I mean the five guys on our group text. We all found each other as teenagers in Anaheim, California, during the late 1980s: a tight circle of punks, goths, and weirdos. We fell out of touch in our twenties and thirties, but over the last decade we’ve reconnected.

Chris was the most elusive among us, having disappeared after high school. He’s since told me that he got hooked on a lot of different drugs, which led to a divorce and his sitting in a closet with a noose around his neck. Now he’s remarried, owns a house, and is in a better place—or, at least, I thought so until he had this breakdown and started talking about selling his record collection.

I just don’t want to regret it, he texts.

Music is what brought Chris and me back together. In 2016 the Damned played the Belasco in downtown LA on their fortieth-anniversary tour. I bought a ticket and joked to the other guys that maybe I’d run into Chris. Then I did.

I’d only recently moved to LA with my girlfriend, Diliana, having pieced together the shards of my own life following my second divorce. My ex and I didn’t have children or own a house, so the dissolution of our marriage had been quick and painless—the paperwork, anyway. Now I was living in Los Feliz with a new woman, a new life, and a new desire to see more shows.

I recognized Chris immediately. Long gone was the padlock-chain necklace, and his black liberty spikes had been replaced with respectable short brown hair, but there was no mistaking him. Despite being in his forties, he still looked like he didn’t need to shave, while I was bald and heavier, with a beard turning whiter by the day.

“Chris,” I said. “It’s Clint.”

“Clint?” he said, not as if he didn’t know it was me, but as if he couldn’t believe it. “Holy shit. I thought I might see you here.”

The first thing we did was take a selfie together for the guys in the group text, our heads tilted, eyes slightly red from beer, arms around each other. Look who I found! Chris came outside with me to have a smoke—a habit, despite all my attempts, I’d never been able to kick. Some addictions ruin your life; others just kill you slowly.

It had been at least twenty years since Chris and I had last seen each other, and he kept looking at me as if to make sure I was real. I don’t remember the order of our conversation, but we were both shy. Chris said he had moved around a lot: Oakland, then Seattle, now the Central Coast of California, where he worked as a grocery-retail merchandiser. He’d driven to LA for the show. Had I not gone that night, it’s possible none of us would have ever been in contact with him again.

Chris knew more about me than I did him, at least superficially. He’d read some of my poems and essays published online in literary magazines. He’d found all four of us online, in fact, but had been hesitant to reach out, fearing our judgment. He felt as if his life had gone off the rails compared to ours. Anybody can look good on the internet, I told him. He didn’t know that most of those publications that printed my work had few readers and didn’t pay. From my point of view Chris was the successful one. He’d kicked some bad habits and been married to the same woman for more than ten years now, longer than I’d ever managed to hold on to a relationship.

After we reentered the venue, the lights went out, the Damned came onstage, and Chris disappeared, headed for the pit as if he were still a teenager. He’s always been fearless, whether going in the pit, doing drugs, or risking getting punched by telling someone to fuck off. He was also bold with girls and always had a girlfriend in high school, whereas I was too timid.

I stood in the back by the bar and watched the Damned play a glorious set. By the time they got to fan favorite “Smash It Up,” the whole middle-aged crowd of ex-punks turned parents, teachers, nurses, lawyers, and machinists were jumping around, singing, “Ooh, smash it up!”

Afterward I found Chris again, and we exchanged numbers. Since then, at the end of each workweek, Chris checks in with the group, sending a Happy Friday text, usually accompanied by a photo of an album cover next to his turntable, the needle placed on whatever record he is spinning.

 

Sell them! says Kyle, another friend on the group text. I’ve seen him more than any of the other guys over the years. In fact, he’s like a sibling to me. We call each other brother.

Kyle’s mom died of cancer when he was five. After that, his father moved him and his brother from Michigan to California. During Kyle’s senior year his dad moved back to Michigan, but Kyle wanted to stay near LA to pursue a music career. So he lived with my family for six months, sleeping on my bedroom floor while he finished high school.

It’s just pressed plastic, Kyle texts.

He’s drunk, and he has every right to be. His father died last week. He hasn’t told any of the other guys, but he called me the day it happened. I was driving to Trader Joe’s and answered over the car’s speakers. He’d already told me his dad had been moved to hospice, so I immediately guessed why he was calling. I knew how it felt to lose your father. It had been more than fifteen years since my dad, a smoker like me, had died of cancer at sixty-seven.

They’ll mean nothing when we’re gone, Kyle texts about the records. He’s not wrong. Then again, nothing will.

When Kyle was living with my family, he cut my hair in the garage, giving me the infamous “Rozz cut,” named after Rozz Williams of LA deathrock band Christian Death. It involved buzzing the top part and bleaching it, then leaving my crimped bangs long and black in front—a haircut that almost got my ass kicked by our high school football team, not to mention angered my parents, who sided with the football team about my fashion choices.

Being a goth or punk teenager in conservative Orange County during the late eighties wasn’t easy. People dumped Cokes on us and called us “faggot” daily. We were kicked out of the Brea Mall simply because the security guards didn’t approve of how we dressed. Once, I was jumped behind the Orange 6 movie theater by skinheads who didn’t like my eyeliner and black nail polish.

Buying records was our escape. Chris, Kyle, and I would drive up to Melrose to shop at Bleecker Bob’s and Aron’s. In Orange County we’d go to Black Hole or Music Market, or sometimes to Middle Earth in Downey or all the way to Mad Platter in Riverside. Except for the shops on Melrose, most of the record stores were in ugly strip malls in treeless suburban neighborhoods not much different from our own.

Now Kyle lives with his husband in a nice house in Fullerton and drives an electric car. He’s had a successful music career, recording a few albums on a major label. He’s always been skinnier than me, but now he’s muscular too. He rides a Peloton, works out at the gym, and even gave up his pack-a-day smoking habit. We were supposed to quit together, and Kyle got me to download an app that counts the number of cigarettes you’ve avoided and lists the positive effects on your health and wallet. He sends me updates as to the number of days he’s gone without a smoke. When I slipped up, I sent him a photo of the cigarette in my hand, to which he gave a thumbs-down and then made me reset the app. Going through this with him is the least I can do, since I’m pretty sure I gave him his first cigarette.

Kyle still has his record collection, including many rare and signed Depeche Mode releases. Some are worth a lot. His dad also saved all his Star Wars toys from when he was a kid. They’re in great shape, but he won’t sell them either, now that his dad is gone.

The last I saw of my Star Wars toys, they were a bunch of broken pieces in a trash bag in my parents’ garage. Now there’s no house, no garage—only my mom, who has dementia and lives with my sister.

 

Why do you want to sell them? texts our friend Manny.

It’s an obsession, Chris writes back. I’m on eBay every day looking for something I don’t have.

Before any of us reconnected, Manny’s two-year-old daughter drowned in his pool. We never talk about it, but every year on the anniversary of her death, he posts her picture on Facebook.

One time, Chris asked us if there was any music we couldn’t listen to because of bad memories associated with it. Manny said he’d once paid a mariachi band to stop playing “Amor Eterno,” by Rocío Dúrcal. The lyrics are rumored to be about the singer’s son, who drowned on a family vacation.

I asked Chris once how he thought Manny lived with it.

“He’s tougher than us,” Chris said.

I met Manny in PE my freshman year. I was wearing a Love and Rockets shirt, and he said, “Cool shirt.” He drove a scooter, and sometimes we’d ride across town on it to Tower Records. One night, when Manny’s parents were away on a trip, he invited me over to drink beer and spin some records, which is where I met Chris. I listened to the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa for the first time that night, and the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy. I also smoked one of my first cigarettes, a Marlboro Light given to me by Manny.

Unlike the rest of us, Manny was able to navigate among different friend groups. At some point he’d even transitioned from being slightly goth into what he jokingly calls his “Mexican-gangster stage,” in which he grew a mustache and wore a Raiders hat. Truth be told, Manny is still probably the most normal among us. Divorced from the mother of his children, he has a long-term girlfriend and does things like ride dirt bikes and take his kids to Hawaii.

In high school Manny played bass and I played guitar in a band we called Surrealism. The only song I remember doing was a cover of Bauhaus’s “Double Dare,” which I only now realize is about being brave: “Don’t back away just yet / From destinations set.”

 

The last friend on this group text, Joel, played drums with us. One night Joel, Chris, and I filled up water balloons with shaving cream, sat on a hillside in our Anaheim neighborhood, and threw them at passing traffic. When we were walking home afterward, a woman and her daughter pulled up in a minivan and accused us of throwing rocks at cars. We denied it, of course, which was technically not a lie. Years later Joel discovered that the woman who stopped us was his future mother-in-law. Her daughter, now his wife, was in the passenger seat.

At least, that’s the story he tells. You have to be careful about believing any of Joel’s stories. In high school he’d make up some outlandish tale about how his car was stolen, and then we’d see him drive into the school parking lot the next day, and he’d laugh and say he was just kidding.

In the summer Joel’s parents would sometimes fly back to Korea to visit relatives, and the five of us would have free rein of their house. We smoked, drank beer, and even dropped acid once or twice. Even when his parents were home, they never seemed to mind us hanging around. Joel’s drums were set up in his bedroom, which had a balcony, and we’d jam there on weekends. His mom always ordered us pizza.

Now he is a tenured philosophy professor and the father of twins. His record collection includes obscure new punk bands I’ve never heard of, like Scowl and Turnstile. He once sent us a picture of a crowd and said, Spot me and win a prize. And there he was, a middle-aged professor blending in with all the kids, a sweaty strand of hair hanging across his still-youthful face, mouth open, singing.

Joel recently texted us pictures of his twins, a chubby-cheeked boy and girl, when they were toddlers. I’m trying my best to be a good dad.

Diliana and I had both just turned forty when we got together, and we thought about whether there was time for us to have a child. Neither of us had had any kids with previous partners, but we’d never completely ruled it out either. Everything was happening so fast. We needed more time, but there wasn’t any. And soon it was too late. Diliana’s not one to discuss these things, but sometimes she’ll say, “You would’ve been a great dad,” and I’ll say, “You would’ve been a great mom,” and we leave it at that.

In high school Joel painted the eclipse from the cover of Bauhaus’s The Sky’s Gone Out on the back of my leather jacket, which I wore even on the hottest days. I was wearing it the night I got jumped by those skinheads. Joel was with me, and he once texted me privately about it: I should have stepped up and defended you. I acted cowardly, and not as a friend should. I think about that night often and I always regret my actions. I know we were just kids, but still, I acted poorly. I want you to know that I am deeply sorry for that.

I replied: Joel, no way you could’ve done anything. We were outnumbered and overpowered. I’m glad you didn’t or you might’ve gotten hurt. There is nothing to apologize for. I’m actually glad that experience happened. It shaped me into who I am.

Not to mention, if those skinheads would headbutt a white guy for wearing eyeliner and nail polish, what would they have done to the Asian guy who stood up for him?

I’ve often felt like a guest in this country, Joel texted the group not long ago, mentioning how our classmates in high school used to make fun of his eyes. He’d had enough racist bullying to last a lifetime, he said.

 

As far as I can tell, Chris hasn’t gone back to work, but he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, so none of us has asked. He just wants to talk about selling his records. Does he need the money? No, he says, but maybe he doesn’t want to talk about that either.

It’s exhausting collecting this crap, he texts.

For years I’ve hauled my own records from house to house, city to city, relationship to relationship. They’ve outlasted two marriages. They’ve outlasted my father. They’ve outlasted pets and therapists. I’ve got a few rare 45s and some treasured signed Smiths albums, but also twelve-inch singles that are warped or skip. I’ve often thought about getting rid of all of them. Like nearly everyone else, I get most of my music from an app these days. But I’ve kept them the way I’ve kept a few good friends. All of us collectors. All of us records of everything that’s been pressed into us over time.

Maybe, I text Chris, you should hold on to them.