Sex & Drugs & Dungeons & Dragons

D9. Shared Destiny

Griffin woke up sitting next to Hope on the train. He hadn't been sleeping, but he couldn't remember how he got there. From the moment Hope pulled his arm around her waist, Griffin could only remember the warmth of her body against his. He could remember the smell of her cheek, and he could remember the feel of her hair tickling him with every breeze. But that's all he could remember, because that's all he cared about. But now he'd woken back up to the world around him, because Hope was talking to him.

"I made you something," she was saying, leaning in close. She rummaged in the army jacket's breast pocket and pulled out a cassette tape.

Griffin took it and looked at the handwritten label. It said ♡Hope's Tape♡.

"I can't wait to listen to it," Griffin told her.

"Don't you have a Walkman?"

"No," Griffin said, embarrassed.

"That's okay, we can listen together." She fished her own Walkman out of a deep jacket pocket. Griffin watched as she slowly unwound the headphones, which were coiled around the tape deck. Then she popped the deck and inserted the tape.

She flipped the headphone speakers so they were facing out. She placed one up to Griffin's ear and then leaned against him so the other speaker was against her own ear, and pressed play.

The first song to come on was a dystopian rock anthem that almost matched the rhythm of the L train's clattering wheels. "Eighties," sang a male voice that seemed to be hardened by cigarette smoke. "I'm living in the eighties." The gothic bass and guitar seemed to swim around each other as Griffin watched the L's passengers sway with the train's motion. It was like they were dancing – or fighting – in the flashes of light from the train's windows.

The song dissolved into the psychedelic guitar riff of "How Soon is Now". By this time Griffin could recognize Morrissey's deep voice, and he leaned back and closed his eyes to listen to the lyrics. "I am the son, and the heir" he heard Hope sing softly beside him, "of a shyness that is criminally vulgar." Griffin felt something on his shoulder and he opened his eyes. Hope's head was there, leaning into the crook of his neck, her own eyes closed, also lost in the melancholy of Morrissey's voice. "I am human and I need to be loved," Hope continued, her voice cracking with emotion, "just like everybody else does." Griffin reached out and touched Hope's cheek, stroking it gently as they listened to the rest of the tape. Her lips curled up into a smile as he did so.

When they pulled into their station Hope pressed "pause" and then exited the train. Griffin put his arm around her and pulled Hope close. At first their hips banged together awkwardly as they wound their way through the crowd of the Rush Street station. But eventually they matched their strides and they slipped effortlessly through the turnstile onto Chicago's famous party street.

"What did you think of the tape?"

"I loved it," Griffin answered honestly. "It sounded like..." Griffin continued, trying to explain, "it sounded like the way I felt. Before I met you and then now, how it feels to be me right here, right now, with you." He paused, deep in thought. "It's like the soundtrack to my own movie."

Hope's eyes glistened. "That's exactly what I was going for!" she said with pride. And then: "Come on," she pulled him down the street and toward the glass doors of a record shop.

Griffin had never been in a record store like this. It was huge, with speakers mounted near the tall ceilings blasting "Pride (In The Name of Love)" by U2. But it was also cramped with so many long bins of records that there was hardly any room to move between them. Griffin bumped into a woman with her bangs gelled and swept into a sharp new wave point. He muttered an apology as she glared at him over powder blue eye shadow. But that distraction caused him to bump into a headbanger with waist long bleached white hair, sunken bloodshot eyes and a spiked dog collar around his neck. "Watch where you're going, dude," the headbanger warned in a nasally voice.