Yes, My Accent Is Real (15 page)

So with Caleb and a few other friends, we practiced an a cappella version of “The Still of the Night.” They took it really seriously, and
we all rehearsed it like our life depended on it. Well, at this point, I really felt that my life did.

The plan: I would knock on the door to surprise her, we would start softly with doo-wops, and when the chorus kicked in, I would ask her to slow-dance with me on her front porch.

On the night of her birthday, we showed up at her doorstep. Parked in front, like always, was the green bus. I didn't care. At that moment I didn't care if he was inside the house with her. This was my chance to win back Grace, and no amount of tattoos could get in my way.

I knocked on the door.

She answered. I caught a glimpse of Jeff on the couch as she closed the door behind her.

“Listen,” I said.

She stepped out onto the porch as the guys began . . .

Doo-wop dooby-doo

Doo-wop dooby-doo

“Dance with me,” I said, not asking a question.

She wrapped her arms around me as the lyrics began to flow—

In the still of the night

I held you, held you tight . . .

We began to dance slowly, gently, tenderly. I ran my hands through her hair, and she turned to jelly. I could feel her tears on my neck. I could smell her Egyptian Musk.

I'm thinking
THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME
. Jeff and his green bus
could go take a shit somewhere; I just wanted Grace, for the rest of her life, to remember this moment.

She looked at me. “Thank you. I love you.”

She went back inside and I can imagine that she probably cried some more, and Jeff probably held her, and then, later that night, they probably made love.

Many weeks earlier, before the dance, before things had soured, I had offered to drive her to her parents' house when she graduated (a
six-hour
drive). Now we were broken up, but I didn't want to back out. I wanted to see her off. I felt like I owed it to her. Or maybe I just wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.

I helped her pack up all her stuff. We drove the six hours and when we arrived, her parents, whom I had met before, invited me to stay for dinner and the night. I accepted.

Grace and I slept in separate rooms (it
was
her parents' house), so when her folks went to bed I said good night to Grace, slipped on my pajamas, and went to sleep in the guest room. Tired from a long drive, I fell asleep instantly.

At 2 a.m. I heard a knock.

I know that knock.

I knew what was coming next.

“Koooooooooonel.”

Wordlessly I opened the door.

Déjà vu.

“Come sit with me in the living room,” she said.

I obliged.

We didn't talk. We had already done all the talking. Instead, right there on her parents' couch, boyfriend and girlfriend or not, we made love.

And as she closed her eyes and drifted off I remember studying her face. Her breathing was not so gentle anymore; she was no longer gently smiling. She had said good-bye already.

The next morning it was actually time to say good-bye. For real this time. I opened the trunk of my car and threw in my bag.

“I love you. I'll miss you,” she said.

“Same,” I said, hopping in the car to drive off.

“Oh shit, I almost forgot!” she said.

My key was already in the ignition when she dashed into the house. She returned with a small brown sack. “I made you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I even cut the crusts off.”

At the words “peanut butter” the floodgates opened and she began to cry. I hugged her through the car's window, accepted the sandwiches, and drove off.
I won't cry. I won't cry. I won't cry
.

I flipped on the car's stereo and inserted a CD.

True love waits on lollipops and crisps.

True love waits on lollipops and crisps.

I played the song on a loop for hours, and I bawled my eyes out. I mean it just gushed from me, tears upon tears upon tears. And then, hours later, after driving for hundreds of miles, something strange happened: I began to feel good. It was as if I had been cleansed. It was as if the poison of Saruman had washed away and the trees could grow again. I was free of the anxiety. Free of the jealousy. And I realized what I had known all along: the problem
really was me
,
and that it was my fault for pushing her away. You see, love doesn't belong to anyone. You can't force it on someone and you can't take it away from someone. The more you try to hold on to it and keep it for yourself, the more fleeting it is.

Or maybe I just realized that I should have spotted a few red flags when I first connected with the girl of my dreams by licking her eyeball.

As I pulled into Portland I felt a lightness in my spirit. I looked at my phone and saw a name that intrigued me: Miyuki, a cute Japanese girl from school. Hmmm. I stopped for gas, and as the tank was filling I sat on the hood of my car eating an ice-cream cone, looking at the pink and mauve hue of the dusky sky. I flipped open my phone. “Hey, Miyuki, wanna hang tonight?”

I
. In hindsight, I think I may have thought of that line later, but for the sake of this particular story, let's just say I came up with it right then and there.

II
. That one I did say.

III
. I like it when the name of a food is also the recipe for making it.

Music is fodder for my soul. Without it, I could not have gotten through heartbreak. I could not have traveled so far. I could never have loved the way I do now. Music taught me that. It eased my pain. It has been my lifeline.

ONE GOOD THING CAME OUT
of my breakup with grace. I
lost a girlfriend, but I gained a band. Remember Caleb, who helped me try to win Grace back? We started a two-man acoustic band called the Prince and the Pauper. I was the Prince (cuz I called dibs), and Caleb was the Pauper (slower to call dibs).

Both Caleb and I were coming off an emotional time in our lives. He too had just had a falling-out with a girl he loved, and we bonded over our similar breakups. Also, we were in college in Portland, Oregon, which makes us legally obliged to sing weepy melancholy songs that can be best described as emo.
Emo
is basically short for “emotional rock.” We had the emotional part down.

Our very first tune, a little ditty about Grace, was titled “She's Mine.” It began:

I woke up this morn'

Drenched in love potion and lipstick

And then the chorus, wait for it:

She's mine

She's mine

She's miiiiinne

Yup.
Thaaaaaat kind of song. In retrospect our sound was Radiohead meets Justin Bieber. But, you know, in that moment it was the greatest song that we had ever sung, or that had
ever
been sung, because it was about Grace.

We played “She's Mine” on campus and it was a hit. By “hit,” I mean that we played in front of thirty friends—an audience who would applaud even if we sang an off-key version of “Happy Birthday” in our tighty-whities.
But still
. People did sing along with the chorus.

She's mine

She's mine

She's miiiiiiiine

Let me tell you, when you have thirty people singing along to a song that you wrote, that's really all you need in life.

“Maybe we should take our show on the road?” Caleb said.

“Like play at . . .
real venues
?”

“Off-campus.”

“Um. Okay. I'm in.”

We started by scouring the paper for open mics in the greater Portland area. We were also writing more songs—six more songs, to be exact. Moody numbers that included gems like “So I'm Lonely Again” and “Misery” and “The Taste of Your Tears.” We jammed hard. We practiced. Hard. We were serious.

We found a venue that seemed suitable for our world debut: a coffee shop called Java Bean. In fact it was across the street from
where Dziko and I used to drink coffee and play chess, and they made an incredibly good coffee milk shake. We walked into the coffee shop and asked the manager, “Can we play music here?”

He looked at the two of us. Skeptical. “Do you have guitars?”

“Yes.”

“All right, bring them in and play for me. Let's see what you've got.”

“Right here?”

He shrugged as if to say,
Any better options?
And so, about thirty minutes later, we returned huffing and puffing from taking the bus all the way back to campus to get our guitars and stood right in the middle of the coffee shop, surrounded by the clanking of dishes and the hiss of the espresso machine. And we sang—

She's mine she's mine she's mine she's mine.

Silence.

The guy had a poker face.

Finally he said, “Not bad. Why don't you play on Thursday evening, say from five to seven?”

We felt like kings. We printed flyers announcing our show: “Prince and the Pauper: playing Emotional Love Acoustic Songs.” We put them up all over the university, hoping to draw a big crowd, and of course we texted, emailed, and called all of our close friends.

On the day of the “concert” we felt like a
real
band. I wore torn jeans, a faded red Coca-Cola T-shirt, a white denim jacket, and yellow Converse sneakers. We were
Portlandia
before there was a show called
Portlandia
. We tuned our guitars and set up our mics,
watching as our friends trickled into the small cafe. First just two or three. Then ten. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Then the cafe ran out of chairs. Then thirty. Soon the entire venue was packed with at least forty-five theater kids. Who cares if it was a crowd full of only our friends? It was a
crowd
nevertheless, and they were all there to see us.

“You good?” Caleb asked before we got onstage, and by “stage” I mean a little nook by the dessert display.

Hell yeah I'm good.
Less than two years ago I was a nervous freshman who couldn't make friends or cook ramen noodles, and now I was about to serenade a roomful of groupies. I felt alive. To this day thinking of that moment gives me goose bumps. Too often we focus on the greater schemes in life, like making money, or getting promoted at work, or starting a new relationship—and yes, of course, those things matter—but sometimes it's the tiny, gradual, stepping-stone victories that bring real joy and signify the positive changes in our life.

We did a forty-minute set. I closed my eyes and just sang and sang and sang. There in the tiny Java Bean, I swear I could have died and all would have been all right. It was my Coachella. It was my Woodstock. We finished to thunderous applause. . . .

“ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!” the crowd chanted.

Oh, you shouldn't have.