Wake of Dust
On Living: This was long after our beginning, well after our escape, and after our starting over.
Closing John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, I study its spine. It’s creased and the dried glue peels and sheds like the bark of a melaleuca tree.
In one vibrant rush of memory, I see its faded spine in the little book- shop off Valencia Street in San Francisco. It laid on the bottom shelf. I already had five copies, but I couldn’t help myself. Each one is different with its own story attached to it from the lives it has touched before mine.
Perry reached his hand out to me, palm up — like Dad always used to do — to where I sat on the floor with the books on the bottom shelf. I slid my hand into his. I felt the callouses that built up on his fingertips from playing the steel resonator guitar I bought him for Christmas one year. He pulled me to my feet and kissed my cheek.
“Whatcha got there?” he asked, glancing at the book in my hand.
“A gift,” I said, burying myself in his thrift store coat that was worlds too big for his shoulders, but somehow still looked like it was made for him.
It was raining. We walked the streets of the Mission District with books in our bags and dreams in our heads. Big dreams of lives better than what we started with, better than the beginnings that were handed to us. Dreams of space, a physical space and a mental one, a space in our hearts to create. To create a life that was ours. To create a home.
We watched the threads of lightning explode through the glow of the streetlights. The air smelled wet, of asphalt and gasoline, of mint and honey from the blue gum eucalyptus, and of tortillas from the damp steam wafting out of the taquerias.
The water seeped through the soles of my scuffed leather shoes and collected at the ends of Perry’s curls. His eyelashes were thick and wet, and I wanted to lick the raindrops from his face.
This was long after our beginning, well after our escape, and after our starting over.
We both fled from where we began, from the wake of dust. To the city. To tall buildings and opportunities. To record labels and album deals. To freedom. Or what we thought freedom was.
We signed on the dotted line.
His name scribbled with big capital letters, followed by a line, a squiggle. Illegible, but binding to the record label to create an album, to tour, to do what they said.
The scent of morning.
Twelve tracks. Two singles. Stadiums. MTV.
London. Munich. Paris. Bangkok. Manilla. Through state lines, across America.
The scent of microphones and truck-stop bathrooms, sweat laden with alcohol, jet fuel, and late-night fast-food runs.
The scent of making it.
My name signed in cursive, neat like Mom’s. I signed my legal name. Jessica. It felt like I was signing as someone else, as no one had called me that since I was a kid on welfare in line for free lunch.
“Easton, Jessica,” the lunch lady would shout.
I signed Jessica on the dotted line, but told them to call me Jess or Jessy, please, if you don’t mind. I’d pick up the phone at my desk on the second floor of the Atlantic Records building on Olive Avenue.
“Publicity, this is Jessy.”
Rolling Stone. The Los Angeles Times. Entertainment Weekly. Vogue.
They wanted interviews. Show tickets. Their names on the guest lists.
The scent of magazine pages and bottle service, of nicotine and greenrooms, of expensive leather, and the Sunset Strip.
The scent of empty promises.
Turns out, we weren’t free.
We turned our backs on the music industry, not music itself, but the business of it. The scent of empty apartments and cardboard boxes, of plane tickets, and a blank page.
The scent of starting over.
The starting over had its own beginning. The beginning of us, Perry and me. The us that was free. The us that spread ourselves across the page, sliding off the dotted line, and into our dreams. The us that left Los Angeles, the city of dreams, the city of oranges.
One-way flight to Hawaii. The scent of sulfur from the volcanic fog and the soft flesh of young coconuts. Salt and sea and the pulp of coffee cherries.
The scent of escape.
We slept under the stars in the mango orchards while the mosquitos feasted on our California blood. “I thought it’d be sweeter,” they’d said.
We traded in the warmth and the black sand for wet cobblestone streets and languages that weren’t ours.
Lying in Paris, in the third story of an apartment owned by a woman named Claudia, I listened to the energy flowing beneath me on Rue Montorgueil.
The scent of coffee before my eyes opened, of sex in the copper light, and the night’s one-too-many cognacs.
I touch my nose to the crease of the book’s spine. Inhaling the pages like they give me life. They do. Flipping through, I find a letter from Mom, folded eight times.
First line: I just want to tell you how very much I love you and how much I’m going to miss you.
Last line: Have fun, don’t worry, and I’ll be waiting for you with the same love I’ve always had for you.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she wrote.
I’ve spent my life waiting for her. Forever slipping through my fingers like water.
This is an excerpt from The Scent of Books, a piece from my book of creative nonfiction, From the Dust. You can read the full piece by purchasing the book here. And if you’re a paid subscriber you can get a discount code for 25% off here.
