gray ghost (the dead trilogy)

alone in boston

He was a boy I had studied adjacent to when we attended the school of Satriani together. I knew I was about to go places with my music, and thus I needed a master of sorts, someone to show me the way through it all. He and I met almost by chance, given I was the only girl in the whole class at the back of a music shop who wanted to take things to the next level with my musicianship.
Scott and Danny had run off and formed their own little band, Anthrax, a name to stand out amongst the rest given most of the bands at the time had names like Motograter and Carburetor. Every time I turned around everyone was forming a band in the heart of New York City. I almost felt like an outlier given I was a solo musician with nothing more than her set of strings and a pen with a bit of paper.
Add to this, I was alone in New York with my dysfunctional family and the guitar on my back. Playing was the only escape I had from it all. The new kid no longer the new kid and the feeling remained with me, even as all my friends moved on with their own lives.
And yet, by some mere stroke of luck, I still managed to get my ass to the school of Joe Satriani over in California: I had gotten word from a certain friend of a friend by the name of Steve Vai that he was headed out there to teach some kids guitar. All I knew about him was he was easy to work with, and he could make the most reclusive of students come out of their shell—at least that was what I heard about him; "Satch" as everyone called him. I was a folk musician, but I was a guitarist at the end of the day. I needed to be around a guitarist, much like how I blossomed being around Scott and Danny.
I needed to be out there, given Scott and Danny had left Queens already: I looked at my surroundings and I figured it was time to do something about it. Add to this, my mom was missing the west coast.
I didn't want to be left behind. I barely knew Steve and yet he was willing to give me his plane ticket out to San Francisco so I could be a female student under Satch. For all I knew, I was about to be the only girl, given Steve said every person Satch had taught so far was a boy. I could go out there first and then my mom would follow. Make a home for myself first.
The next thing I knew, I had been whisked away to California, an eighteen year old girl with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a guitar case down by her knees. I had no idea what to think when I landed in the Bay Area and I was met with a thick bank of fog out beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and the first rays of bright morning sunshine at my back. I met with my driver and he drove me to a little loft overlooking the waters. For all I knew I was to be the one girl there, not just studying under Satch, but actually staying there.
Indeed, I was glad that Steve had gotten me a ticket for the red eye and I had touched down early in the morning because the first lesson started in a few hours.
I had no time to get settled into my loft, let alone brush my silvery blonde hair and change my clothes.
I headed on downstairs and made my way across the narrow stretch of pavement to the front step of the room where we were all supposed to meet up. Indeed, the second I stepped inside there, every student in there turned his head to see me. There was twelve of them, including a boy with thick curly black hair and bit of a baby face and another boy with a head of hair that seemed to stand in every which direction. Satch stood before them, with a fedora atop his head, glasses on his face, and a bright red acoustic in hand. He showed me a grin as I strode my way over to the circle: my ankle length skirt billowed behind me with every step.
I took a seat between the frazzled looking boy and the baby faced boy, and I sighed through my nose.
"Well, gentlemen—lady," he flashed me a smile. "Let's get this started then."
The baby faced boy turned to me with a thoughtful look on his face.
"I think we've got a good crowd here," he said in a soft voice, "wouldn't you agree?"
"Oh, yeah," I agreed with him. The frazzled boy to my right extended me his hand.
"I'm Alex," he introduced himself in a little squeak of a voice.
"Kristina," I said, and I spotted a silver Magen David medallion around his narrow neck. Ah, Jew boys.
"And I'm Kirk," the baby faced boy told me. "You look new. Like, I haven't seen you around here."
"Came here all the way from New York City," I told him.
"Wow—did you come out here by yourself?" Alex asked me.
"I did. It's a new adventure for me."
He showed me a sweet little smile.
"That's so cool."
"For sure. It's really cool."
All I could think about was Scott, but I had a strange feeling about this boy next to me, Alex. I wanted to know more about him.
Even though I had taken lessons with Satch in that back room of the music store, I knew I wouldn't stay there on the West Coast. But I relished in my growing up alongside Alex and Kirk; apparently the former was the youngest of the bunch, just a little twelve year old boy with long smooth black hair that seemed to have a mind of its own. Every so often, he stopped playing and he adjusted a piece of hair that had fallen onto his face.
He hung onto Satch's every word with every class. Kirk did, too, but he would often look out the window to the birds and the fog outside beyond the loft. There was something hypnotic about him, this little boy with shaggy jet black hair, a little knit yarmulke on his head, wrapped in a Kiss T-shirt, and with a little black guitar resting on his lap. For seven weeks, I sat next to him, and right next to Kirk, and I followed along with him. The boy was a born player, and in fact all of us were as far as I could tell, and by Satch's words as well. But it came to him so naturally, like he had crawled out onto the earth with that guitar in hand.
Kirk meanwhile often left early, about ten minutes before Satch dismissed us, and he never gave an explanation, either. I spent a lot of time next to Alex as a result. I followed along side him even more: even though he didn't talk much, I felt a strange closeness to him at one point.
Once the guitar lessons had completed, Kirk finally told me where he went every day.
"I'm in a band," he said with a tone of glee. "We're called Exodus!"
"I want to be in a band so much," Alex lamented.
"Keep your eye out, man," Kirk told him.
"Yeah, that's definitely something to look out for," was all I could think to follow up to that.
That was the last time I saw Alex because I returned to the East Coast within a week. I didn't want to be in New York again, but I knew the East Coast was my home. I vowed to my mom that I would bring her back out to there with me again so she could be close to me; I decided on Boston instead of New York City.
A little place of my own about a block from the Cisco sign.
With Satch's lessons under my belt, I could go forth and do my own thing as a folk musician. But I must confess that I could never go past busking and performing on chosen open mic nights in coffee houses. I watched my peers join bands and rage against the world. Apparently Kirk had left that band Exodus and joined a new one called Metallica: I knew about them because I stumbled upon their demo tape, No Life 'Til Leather when I was shopping for some new records in a shop down the street from me. I tried to get back in touch with Scott and Danny, who had already gone away with their own projects Anthrax and Nuclear Assault in that respective fashion.
For several years, I tried to perform and catch people's ears, but I could never ascend to their level, however. I went to work as a custodian and then practiced playing my guitar and wrote some songs.
At one point, I had something like around two hundred songs. I needed to record something and get myself out there. Metallica did it, so did Anthrax and Nuclear Assault.
I knew I had to work and save my own money before I got my hands on a recorder and a bunch of blank tapes. Given it was just me in my apartment, I could sing in a soft voice and jam along on my guitar. Most of the songs were ten minutes: the shortest was three minutes.
Every single day for what felt like an eternity, after my menial job, I sat down at my desk with a pen and a sheet of paper, and I wrote down any and all lyrics that came to mind. Being alone allowed me to write out everything I was feeling. I had become my own best friend.
My own best friend. My own muse. I was alone in Boston with no one to talk to and this had become my life now.
Everything else around me was quiet and I never really spoke to anyone in my building. But every so often, I thought about Alex in particular. I thought about his little boyish face, and his mere enthusiasm with everything. Given his parents were older, he seemed a lot more mature in comparison to everyone else in that guitar class.
There came a point at the end of the decade when I heard his name again, and he had joined a band called Testament as their lead guitarist. They had done a new record called Practice What You Preach, and they seemed to be en route to being the next Metallica. It was that record that I decided to fetch my own tape recorder and put something down for myself. I could feel the clock ticking over me.
Such raw recordings, I wondered if anyone would take them. It was right around that time Anthrax toured in Boston and I had enough money to buy a ticket for myself. A ticket and a backstage pass. Before the show, I tucked the tapes into my purse because I knew Scott was going to be there.
Indeed, once I was let into the backstage area, I spotted him over by the refreshment table. His dark hair had dropped down past his shoulders and his eyebrows were thick and jet black to contrast his pale face. There was another guy next to him who almost towered over him.
"Alex!" someone called out to him, and I recognized his prominent aquiline nose and the full, round shape of his face.
I wanted to tell him that he looked so good and healthy, as round and sweet from my memory of him, and the thin wispy beautiful pale white shocks about the very front of his head caught my attention from far away. Like a little ghost.
I could see him from a mile away with those stripes. He grabbed my attention even from across the room. I wondered what he was doing there.
He showed me the sweetest little smile I had ever seen him show before. One that was soft and gentle, as if he was a young boy again.
But I never did get to talk to him again until well after.
It was three years following that record in which he left Testament to pursue something beyond thrash metal. I managed to find my way into the cafes around Boston with my guitar in hand and my own lyrics for the world to hear. So many days in which I watched other women rise to the occasion, and yet it felt as though I had missed the boat somehow. They all sang and played guitar, but nothing like how I played it. I had somehow found myself on the outside, away from the simplicity and the quickness.
I found myself even more alone than before.
In the meantime, that streak haunted my dreams for three years. I could feel him following me and watching my every move. He had become like a ghost of sorts, even though he had merely disappeared into the grand stretch of oblivion. He was still there, but where he had run off to was another question.
I needed a record deal and yet I never made the cut despite the love from the small crowds in coffee houses all around Boston and Providence. I yearned to see him again, such that his absence left me with something more. Alex's departure from Testament had left a gaping hole in my heart. A hole that was half black and half that beautiful shade of silver. I wished for Scott, but there was Alex. There he was all along.
And yet I swore I would never see him again. The young boy now a beautiful man had escaped me.
The holes within me widened, and I needed a bit of relief, and it never helped matters that I was still alone in Boston, even after all that I had done for myself.
I had become my own best friend, but the pains in my chest told me otherwise. I had become as much of a ghost as him. I needed something to relieve the pain. I never got to speak to anyone other than to those in my audiences, but I always went home alone. I watched my blonde hair darken to a deeper shade of brown, and I finally decided it would be best to darken it even more to a solid black. Solid jet black just like the hair of the two men I loved.
The pains in my chest were so strong that I could hardly breathe. I found myself descending further into the shadows, away from the men I loved, the boy I loved, my own best friend. The love of my life.
I swore I would never see him again...
I walked home from a show one evening as the New Millennium drew nearer and nearer, and I felt a soft tap on my shoulder. I turned and there he was, the ghost of my dreams, with his jet black curls now shorn down to past his shoulder's length and his lanky body having softened up a bit. The streak had enriched to something beyond a pearl, like a lightning bolt. His eyes had deepened with the intense amount of age. The pain in my chest remained but to see him before me proved to do something for me.
My love had returned.
"I was just thinking about you," was all I could muster for him.
"And I had a feeling that was you," he said in the deepest voice, and yet his tone was soft, as soft as my memory of him. "I just felt it in my bones that it was you." And I wondered if the guitar case on my back had anything to do with it. "Where are you headed?"
"I was just going back home," I said as I adjusted the strap on my guitar case. "What brings you here?"
"I've been visiting the Northeast more," he replied. "I kinda wanna be around here. You know, my parents are from New York City, so I feel more at home around here than I do the West Coast."
"Just like me," I whispered; I then cleared my throat. "Well, would you like to come in for a cup of tea?"
"I can't," he confessed, "I've got some more things I need to do up here, but where do you live, though? I might visit you again at some point."
"I live right down the street here, the apartment two doors from us."
"Okay. I can't believe I'm actually seeing you again after all these years, Kristina." He opened his arms for me and he held me close to his body. As soft as the young boy I had known so well.