Bad News

In 2004, the band Modest Mouse released their album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News. In 2004, my friend died three days before her 20^th birthday.

I had been driving when I got the news. I pulled over into a gas station parking lot and began howling. Twenty minutes later, I drove home. When I came to, I called the boy who had broken up with me three weeks earlier. I went to his apartment and cried some more. I guess we kind of got back together.

 

Later that summer, he bought tickets to the Modest Mouse show at Headliners Music Hall, a venue I still equate with emotional trauma. I wore purple and green tights, a jean skirt, brown boots, and a maroon zip-up hoodie. You could still smoke inside in those days and inside my purse, there was a yellow pack of American Spirits and a Bic lighter. 

 

I don’t remember too much about the actual show. The boy I had gone with had made a quick departure to the front of the stage with his friends. I was lonely. I stood next to the plastic trash bin outside the bathroom leaning against the red wall smoking and sometimes crying.

 

My friend had been gone for two months and I couldn’t make sense of my place in the world. I could see the top of my boyfriend’s large head bouncing up and down, his arms rising and falling in the air. I could barely comprehend movement. Why wasn’t he looking for me?

 

It’s impossible for me to hear the song “Float On” without being taken back into the year that filled me with pain, confusion, and really, no language for young death. I expected more from him even though I felt more alone with him than I did by myself. But it’s not a loneliness I can describe to you. I just know that I hate that fucking song and don’t understand why movement continues to follow that particular beat.