I played the piano while staring at her picture. The way her eyes looked back at me under the flash of lights, and that glimpse of her happiness. Her eyes spoke to me every time I sat down on that wooded stool. She whispered her dreams into my ears at night. I saw her everywhere I went. At the grocery store, I saw her pushing the cart with a kid in the seat, and a kid on the end holding on. She would be buying grapes and bananas. I would look at her and look away to avoid an awkward moment. She knew and I knew. People are always in tune to when they are being preyed upon.
I had worked as a steel worker in a factory where no one really has a first name. I was Jonesy. My real name was Gabriel Allen Jones. I am one of the guys who have a trademark behind their name. I wasn't just Jonesy for Jones, I was also "Loverboy," the name of the angel of love. Gabriel=angel and Jones=jonesing. As if I were Jonesing for drugs. Which I'm not, it's just an example.
I gave her the world when we met. Our first date, I took her to this house outside of Houston and we watched the fire works under the light of the moon in the bed of my F-150. She didn't need to know the fireworks were in celebration of the execution of Robert Miller, a wife killer.
A mother killer. My mother's killer.
I took her to wherever and made her whatever she wanted. I didn't want to know the details. I have never been a person to want to know exactly what is tormenting me. She would ask and I would look off in another direction. I was never a person to dwell on the details.
The detectives tried to tell me about my mom so I turned up my iPod and looked straight ahead.
...
So many things happened. I'm not the same guy. I haven't been Jonesy for a while. My wife left me because of my obsession with my mother's death. She took my kids and went across the country. I lost everything else pretty fast. I applied to a school of music and someone saw something in me.
In my audition, my fingers crossed over the keys like they were the next step in a scientific pattern. I refused my face an expression. I let my heart out because I didn't care anymore. My entire person danced with my anger and rage and sorrow. This was my last chance.
Letting everything out is likely to produce your greatest performance. The real problem is in finding that second beauty. I worked so hard in school but I found no inspiration beyond what I had given at the audition. I gave all of me at the audition and found myself empty after. After that, I could only copy the same chords of my sorrow from before. There was nothing before or after. I was just living in the vibrations of the strings of my one wonderful performance. The one time I was able to open another person's eyes and show them my heart.
I eventually left school before I lost my scholarship. I didn't much care. I didn't have anyone left to be ashamed of me. I just lived.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I would play piano for the Weston hotel bar. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I would teach the piano at a local music shop.
Sundays were church and then alcohol. Repeat and repeat and repeat.
One week before I was to give up, I found him. The killer of my mother.
We were at an AA meeting. I had just started AA because they found me passed out on the freeway without a car. He showed up to the meeting wasted and talking too much. At first, I accepted the distraction from the day old donuts and coffee smell in the moldy basement of a moldy church. But as he spoke, things became familiar. He told me that he had done some jail time for assault, and that he had hit his wife with a bat. I only saw my mom's smashed head.
He spoke about the woman's husband being blamed and going to death for it and I lost my mind. My head tilted to the side and stayed there, blazing into him. He looked at me funny. He asked me "You ok?" "Yeah, I'm ok'" I would reply. I wasn't ok. I instantly realized that I was somewhere else. I found myself later standing over a bloody body and brain fragments all over the room.
The police found me laying in a corner of a small room in a nearby factory a quarter mile from his body. His blood was all over me. I didn't remember anything.
...
My fingers passed over the keys like they were the next stroke of a painting. The guards looked at me and shook their heads. My peers looked at me in amazement. I was special.
In that place I played things live, that my mind wouldn't conceive of in public. I played my entire heart into the air for only murderers like me to hear.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
I had worked as a steel worker in a factory where no one really has a first name. I was Jonesy. My real name was Gabriel Allen Jones. I am one of the guys who have a trademark behind their name. I wasn't just Jonesy for Jones, I was also "Loverboy," the name of the angel of love. Gabriel=angel and Jones=jonesing. As if I were Jonesing for drugs. Which I'm not, it's just an example.
I gave her the world when we met. Our first date, I took her to this house outside of Houston and we watched the fire works under the light of the moon in the bed of my F-150. She didn't need to know the fireworks were in celebration of the execution of Robert Miller, a wife killer.
A mother killer. My mother's killer.
I took her to wherever and made her whatever she wanted. I didn't want to know the details. I have never been a person to want to know exactly what is tormenting me. She would ask and I would look off in another direction. I was never a person to dwell on the details.
The detectives tried to tell me about my mom so I turned up my iPod and looked straight ahead.
...
So many things happened. I'm not the same guy. I haven't been Jonesy for a while. My wife left me because of my obsession with my mother's death. She took my kids and went across the country. I lost everything else pretty fast. I applied to a school of music and someone saw something in me.
In my audition, my fingers crossed over the keys like they were the next step in a scientific pattern. I refused my face an expression. I let my heart out because I didn't care anymore. My entire person danced with my anger and rage and sorrow. This was my last chance.
Letting everything out is likely to produce your greatest performance. The real problem is in finding that second beauty. I worked so hard in school but I found no inspiration beyond what I had given at the audition. I gave all of me at the audition and found myself empty after. After that, I could only copy the same chords of my sorrow from before. There was nothing before or after. I was just living in the vibrations of the strings of my one wonderful performance. The one time I was able to open another person's eyes and show them my heart.
I eventually left school before I lost my scholarship. I didn't much care. I didn't have anyone left to be ashamed of me. I just lived.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I would play piano for the Weston hotel bar. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I would teach the piano at a local music shop.
Sundays were church and then alcohol. Repeat and repeat and repeat.
One week before I was to give up, I found him. The killer of my mother.
We were at an AA meeting. I had just started AA because they found me passed out on the freeway without a car. He showed up to the meeting wasted and talking too much. At first, I accepted the distraction from the day old donuts and coffee smell in the moldy basement of a moldy church. But as he spoke, things became familiar. He told me that he had done some jail time for assault, and that he had hit his wife with a bat. I only saw my mom's smashed head.
He spoke about the woman's husband being blamed and going to death for it and I lost my mind. My head tilted to the side and stayed there, blazing into him. He looked at me funny. He asked me "You ok?" "Yeah, I'm ok'" I would reply. I wasn't ok. I instantly realized that I was somewhere else. I found myself later standing over a bloody body and brain fragments all over the room.
The police found me laying in a corner of a small room in a nearby factory a quarter mile from his body. His blood was all over me. I didn't remember anything.
...
My fingers passed over the keys like they were the next stroke of a painting. The guards looked at me and shook their heads. My peers looked at me in amazement. I was special.
In that place I played things live, that my mind wouldn't conceive of in public. I played my entire heart into the air for only murderers like me to hear.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
