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chapter song the killers: tranquilize "steady boys, i'm thinking she needs me"
1985
"It still just boggles my mind that we went from Jimmy Carter to this fuck," El snarled in disgust as she watched the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan with Del and Jude.
"Why do you even care?" Del asked as she hung upside down on the couch of El's living room reading the newest edition of Vogue.
"Because unlike you," El glared at Del, "I actually give a shit about the state of our nation."
"Is this what happens when you get married?" Del popped her gum, flipping to the next page of her magazine, "You start to care about the news and the state of our nation? Because if it is, remind me to never get married."
"I won't have to remind you," El scoffed, "you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who'd want to spend a lifetime with you."
"You managed to do it so it can't be too hard," Del retorted, earning a harsh smack to the shoulder which solicited an Ow! Cunt.
"Hey, hey," Jude mumbled from his crouched position on the floor, flipping through the pages of El's songbook she kept from her time away, "this is actually pretty good." He circled in red pen the lyrics that caught his eye and tossed the book to El.
I got this feeling that they're gonna break down the door I got this feeling that they're gonna come back for more See I was thinking that I lost my mind But it's been getting to me all this time And it don't stop dragging me down
El furrowed her brows, unsure of his choice. "Really?" She questioned. "I was kind of fucked up on blow, it doesn't really make any sense."
"No offense dude, but the best songs you've ever written are when you've been fucked up on something," Jude replied.
"Well, full offense because that's not true," El defensively, but knowingly, cocked her brow at him.
"Tomato, tomahto," he shrugged, earning an eye roll from El. He read over the lyric-filled page of sporadic writing during her binge and slowly nodded his head, piecing together the idea of the song. "Okay, what doesn't make sense?" He asked her. It wasn
"They're just words. They don't mean anything," El was dismissive, hardly leaning over to look at the lyrics he had connected with lines and circles. The words did mean something to her. In truth, they meant everything to a version of her she didn't want to be anymore. She didn't want them to make sense, didn't want to relate to that pain she felt.
"It makes perfect sense to me," he scoffed, "this is your state of mind in a bender." Yeah, I fucking know it is, she thought to herself. "Your reality is altered, you're living fast, nothing makes sense, and it catches up with you," he said as he circled back to the initial stanza. Her eyes dropped to the carpet beneath her. Her wound was still fresh and bleeding, and she was detaching from reality by the second the more she looked at these. Jude groaned. "Okay," he sighed, "let's break it down." He began to speak the lyrics he had connected out loud.
