(2138 words)
(Davey/Whatsername’s POV)
I was looking down at the Starbucks cup that held my soy chai latte (you know, only the best things ever) when I heard the little bell above the colorful doors rig. I paid no mind to it, just staring at my neon blue painted fingernails. Quiet, unsure footsteps increased in noise as they came closer to my table. My head snapped up as that figure stepped in front of me.
“You better not be fucking around Whatsername, ‘cause I didn’t come out here for nothing.”
Whatsername… no one had called me that in years, not since I had cut my hair and actually went to high school. I knew immediately who stood in front of me, even though he looked much different.
“Of course I’m not fucking around, Saint Jimmy.” I paused. “Or, should I say Gloria, now?”
“Dammit, you’re starting to sound like Tré.”
I watched as Billie Joe Armstrong, my ex-boyfriend and now apparent equal, pulled out a chair and sat down across from me, green eyes focused beneath a shock of greasy blonde hair. Then, quietly, he spoke once more: "Why'd you call me up here? I've been kinda trying to hide out, you know."
I sighed and looked back up at him from behind my long black fringe. "You know, I just happened to be around, so I wanted to talk to you... I mean, I broke up with you over a damn letter."
"True enough," he stated calmly.
I sighed and looked up at him. “So, um…”
“What about?” he asked, and even though his voice was casual and somewhat subdued, it felt as if he was challenging me to tell him.
“Well…” I started. “I’m sorry.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” I admitted. “The letterbomb… it was sent on a destructive, hateful, self protecting impulse.”
Billie Joe nodded solemnly. Silently, he pulled out a crinkled piece of worn notebook paper – a piece of paper that I immediately recognized as the so called letterbomb that I’d sent him. My eyebrows shot up, my eyes widening as I gently took the letter. This paper was indeed the letter bomb, covered in tearstains and what appeared to be dried blood. My real name was scratched out, illegible – and it seemed to be signed by only Whatsername.
“Wow, you still have this?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I do… I mean… I just can’t get rid of it. It’s the last thing I have… I had from you, you know? And you were my first real thing… my first real love. Dammit, I sound so fuckin’ sappy.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, I feel the same way.”
“I mean --” he continued. “-- I mean, I even wrote a song after what happened… well, lyrics, a tune, but a song all the same.”
“Really…? Could you, um, sing it, maybe?” I asked.
Billie Joe sighed. “Yeah, I guess. It’s called Whatsername… obviously, heh.”
And so he started to sing it to me. It was soft at first…
“Thought I ran into you down on the street. Then it turned out to only be a dream. I made a point to burn all of the photographs. He went away then I took a different path. I remember the face but I can’t recall the name… now I wonder how Whatsername has been.”
The beat continued through the second verse stanza thing…
“Seems that he disappeared without a trace. Did he ever marry, oh, whatshisface? I made a point to burn all of the photographs. He went away and then I took a different path. I remember the face, but I can’t recall the name. Now I wonder how Whatsername has been…”
He paused for a moment, as if counting out beats or a guitar solo in his head. His singing started again, crescendo-ing to an epic sound…
“Remember, whatever, it seems like forever ago. Remember whatever… it seems like forever ago. The regrets are useless in my mind, he’s in my head, I must confess. The regrets are useless in my mine. He’s in my head, from so long ago…”
His singing voice calmed again, heading into one last peaceful declaration, directed toward me…
“And in the darkest nights… if my memory serves me right. I’ll never turn back time.” He paused. “Forgetting you but not the time…”
“You wrote that?!”
“Um, uh huh. Yeah.”
“Wow… that’s just… amazing. You’re also really, really good at singing.”
He smiled at me, sadly this time. “I’m glad you like it.”
“And, by the way, yeah. Me and Jade are, um, official now.”
Billie Joe laughed faux lightly. “I coulda guessed.”
I smiled back at him, flicking some of my long black fringe out of my face. “So, you know Billie Joe, you’re like… well… Gloria’s like the new Whatsername, almost.”
“I can tell. Did you really fail as badly as I did, your first time around?” he asked. I just nodded.
“I did,” I confirmed with another short nod.
“A thousand, like me?”
“Well, more like two and a half thousand,” I laughed, “but yeah, pretty much.”
“That’s… wow… just… wow. Heh. Yeah. I didn’t expect quite that much, but you know, yeah… couldn’t say that I really… dammit, I’m babbling, right? Not again.”
“Naw, don’t worry. It’s one of your endearing traits,” I said, smiling at him. That’s when I noticed the tired black bags under his eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s not too noticeable… I mean… well… how tired are you? Have you been sleeping okay?”
“Yeah. Well, I guess. I haven’t been able to sleep well since… well, um… since…”
“The riot?”
“You could say that,” he answered. “And I stopped taking the sleeping meds because they made me forget stuff and really screwed me up.”
“Try melatonin or something. It’s natural.”
He just smirked. “Nah, it’s fine… the sleeping pills are. Ambien. You know. Pretty damn terrible but not as bad as Novacaine, at least.”
“I can understand,” I agreed with a nod. “Well, sort of. I only really do, ya know, natural stuff… I mean…”
He laughed quietly. “You’re still that suspicious of poisoning?”
“No,” I whispered, barely audible to anyone outside of me. “I mean… you know, Novacaine’s a doctor’s medicine. You wouldn’t expect to get hooked on it, not as bad as you were.” He tensed. “I mean… you’ve made me sorta paranoid, Billie Joe Armstrong.”
“That’s just… plain… weird. I’m sorry, but… I’m more sorry to me for… um. Yeah.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, quietly covering his hand with my own. “I get what ya mean. I mean… it was pretty damn traumatic, huh?”
“Must’ve been.” He just shrugged, slipping his hand away. “I mean… I was so fucked up back then, I mean… I’m still so fucked up now but in a different way. It was bad though, really bad. This bad addiction and the other me, you know, St. Jimmy… you saw St. Jimmy more often than you saw me, didn’t you?”
I didn’t reply. But in truth, he’d practically read my mind.
“… it drove you over the edge, didn’t it? And you left. With a simple letter -- a letterbomb. Just askin’ where all the excitement went. And then you told me what I needed to hear to get better -- did ya know that? When you told me that I wasn’t the Jesus of Suburbia… that I wasn’t the Saint Jimmy either… I recognized what’d happened to me. It was a moment of clarity, brief but true. And… and before I went clean -- I…” He trailed off, looking around suspiciously. “I tried to kill myself. I thought I’d dug myself a hole so deep that I couldn’t get out of it. I took a gun. I almost shot myself. Right. Here.”
He pointed to the clear center of his left temple, and I shuddered.
“I threw the gun -- it was my gun, remember? The Saint Jimmy’s… I threw the damned gun into the water. And that’s when Jimmy died. And I was finally free. I was finally me again… and then I started home on foot, getting cleaned up on the way with a few more members of the Underbelly. Jimmy… he haunted… my steps, he followed me until I was back here.” Billie Joe smiled, pained. “Back here in the town that don’t exist… the land of make believe… the city of the dead.”
“Wow,” I breathed. It was the only thing I could say. He looked at me, then away from me, and continued describing what had happened in the three years since we’d last seen each other -- when I was just over 15, and he was on the edge between 15 and 16. Now he was 18, and I was still 17 until the coming November.
“After I fixed myself up, I went back to school. Barely finished 9th grade, scraped through 10th and 11th, barely lived to see 12th… I mean, I graduated with a fuckin’ C-, Grade Point Average of two.”
“Wow…” It seemed like it was the only thing I could say.
“I started the Class of Thirteen at the beginning of twelfth grade. I mean… I was still wondering what you’d been wondering. Where have all the riots gone?”
He directly quoted my letterbomb goodbye, and it was unnerving to hear his echoing voice, his slightly older but still the same vocal chords reading out my departure.
“If you were wondering,” he muttered, “then yeah. I’ve memorized the letter.”
I didn’t question him. It seemed like he had.
“And… graduation night. That’s when Tré came along. We got together. He became Christian. And then, after the riot…” Billie Joe just cut off abruptly. He took a deep breath in, trying to restrain tears, to no avail. They streamed quietly over his cheeks, bringing some of his eyeliner with them.
He couldn’t continue what he was saying.
I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around him, yanking him out of his chair and pulling him into a real hug.
“Billie Joe Armstrong… you know what I have always wanted but never asked for?”
Before he could answer, I answered my own question. “I’ve always wanted a real goodbye. A goodbye kiss. It’s all I need, you know… just give me this. Just give me something cold and clear. The love spent there, as I had feared, means nothing… dear…”
I pulled him into me, before he leaned up and chastely kissed me on the lips, hugging be in return. It was soft and simple, more of a courtesy than true love. It was closure, the closure that we both needed to move on with our lives. Neither of us hated each other.
“Billie Joe?” a shocked and angry, a hurt and betrayed voice asked. Billie Joe pulled away from me and turned around, just as shocked.
“Tré!” he shouted.
“What the fuck?! How -- how the hell did you replace me, so fast?” the other man, who had slightly greasy and half slicked back reddish hair and wide blue eyes, asked. “How?! I mean… just wow…”
“Tré, this isn’t what it looks like…!”
Before Billie Joe could explain, the one who had been called Tré spun around angrily on his heel and left. My once boyfriend’s expression softened, and he turned to look at me one last time.
“Give me something I can take to make the memories fade… poison kiss, remember this: I never was meant for this day,” he whispered, sliding a slip of paper into my hand and walking out, hiding his tears.
Shocked, I opened the paper.
It was the letterbomb…
“Dear Billie Joe, or St. Jimmy,
Nobody likes you, everyone left you, they’re all off without you having fun…
Where have all the bastards gone? The Underbelly stacks up ten high. The dummy failed the crash test, collected unemployment checks, he fucking only went for the ride. Where have all the riots gone? As the City’s motto gets pulverized. What’s in love is now in debt, on your birth certificates, so strike the fucking match to light this fuse.
“The town bishop’s an extortionist, and he don’t even know that you exist. Standing still when it’s do or die -- you better run for your fucking life. Because it’s not over till your underground. It’s not over before it’s too late. This City’s burning. It’s not my burden.
“Where will all the martyrs go when the virus cures itself? And where will we all go when it’s too late?
“And don’t look back.
“You’re not the Jesus of Suburbia and the Saint Jimmy is a figment of your father’s rage and your mother’s love -- maybe the idiot America.
“I can’t take this place, I’m leaving it behind.
“I can’t take this town. I’m leaving you tonight.
“xoxo Whatsername…”
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