Rock

Sometimes I can still hear my stepdad’s dark green Acura sedan rumbling up our driveway in Redondo, the stereo cranked, the muffled stirrings of Clapton or Hendrix or Skynyrd. Unless I was in trouble, awaiting a stern talking to, this sonic tapestry—engine sounds bouncing between the stucko walls and a stereo turned up as the classics wailed—was the sound of relief, of excitement, of okayness.

Sometimes I even got to participate in the symphony myself, an opportunity I relished. On the way back from the batting cages or baseball practice, Jack and I would make a point of finding an iconic song, often Stairway to Heaven, and wait until just the right moment, with Jimmy Page ripping a solo, Robert Plant howling “as she winds on down the road” while John Bonham pounds the drums within an inch of their life, cranking the stereo to max volume as we pulled up the driveway, announcing our arrival such that my mom, and probably all neighbors within half a block, would be startled and shake their heads in mild annoyance. It delighted us, Jack and I. Still makes me smile, just thinking about it.

He was the rock in that household. My mom’s source of steadiness. The dad I wished I’d had growing up, the one who got me my first glove, took me to the field, and taught me to throw a ball. The one who ignited my lifelong love of classic rock. Sat down at the kitchen table, mom and Jack informed me he had lung cancer. I didn’t know how to handle it. Retreated to my room. Six months later, he was gone. Our rock.

In the years that follow, I start acting out. I start stealing money from my mom’s purse, then shoplifting. It’s the only thing that makes me feel alive. I shoplift some airsoft guns for my friends and I to shoot at each other in the greenbelt behind our houses. One day, one of them ends up in my backpack on my way to school. I’m promptly expelled, and shipped off to an Episcopalian boarding school in Vicksburg Mississippi. My troubles continue there, as I’m suspended for cussing out the guy who runs the boy’s dormitory.

Somewhere in there, by grace, I find myself desiring more than anything to learn guitar, those old classic rock tunes beckoning, along with the ragged, screaming emo rock that epitomizes my inner state at the time. I suck at first, playing some shitty $99 Walmart guitar that won’t stay in tune. But I stay with it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. For hours a day, before and after classes, until lights out, I’m playing, practicing, picking, as if those rock sounds are lodged somewhere in the depths of me, and I must get them out. In a very real way, guitar saves me from myself. It becomes an outlet for the anger I feel at the world, at my mom, at Jack for leaving us.

As a freshman in a new high school, on a school trip to Peru, I sneak off with two other students to a tattoo parlor. One of them gets a marijuana leaf emblazoned on his foot, complete with the Rastafarian color set. Me, I get Jimmy Page’s symbol from Led Zeppelin emblazoned on my foot. To this day it’s the only tattoo I have.

Two years ago, I return home from a sojourn to the south of France, where I’d run away from my collapsing and confusing life in the States. I went there to gather myself, to get steady. Instead, in the first few weeks abroad, I fell in love with a girl I’d met on twitter. Our first phone call was 11 hours long, starting at 8pm my time and lasting through the entire night, saying our goodbyes as the sun rose. The girl and I met in person for the first time two months later, in Istanbul, and I felt a deep sense that I was in over my head, that I wasn’t ready for the commitment my heart so longed to make. The scared little boy in me made himself known. He started screaming.

Upon returning to Tucson, I move back in with my mom, and on our first night I ask her about Jack, about the man he was, about their courtship, about what I can learn from his memory. She tells me all sorts of charming details, and also that she holds a resentment against him, because when they got married, he made a promise to teach me how to be a man in the world, how to grow up, and then he left us right as I was on the cusp between adolescence and adulthood, and I promptly went off the rails.

In the two years that follow, I try over and over to get my life in order, to fix my finances, to prove myself worthy of the girl, only to crumble back into shame, the scared little boy shouting at the top of his lungs that the only safe bet is to hide, to numb. But through it all, each subsequent failure, I find myself deepening into my commitment to keep going. There’s a steadfastness now that I didn’t have a few years ago, one I’m fairly certain only comes from being profoundly humbled, from flying too close to the sun, and then getting up again.

Sometimes I still hear that Acura roaring up the driveway, and I know that Jack is still with me, guiding me forward when I’ve stumbled and fallen again, helping me get back up, and build, brick by brick, a deep and dense life. The life of a rock, just like his.