Rachel Cohn - Nick & Norahs Infinite Playlist

CONTENTS

TO MARTHA AND REAL NICK

The Acknowledgments Playlist

1. Tina TurnerThe Best (for Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Lisa Grubka, and Katie Glick)

2. Ray CharlesYou Are My Sunshine (for Alicia Gordon and Bari Zibrak)

3. Lucinda Williams2 Kool 2 B 4-Gotten (for Lorene Scafaria)

4. Belle & SebastianWrapped Up in Books (for Jack Martin)

5. PrinceNothing Compares 2 U (for Joe Monti)

6. Elvis CostelloAlison (for Allison Wortche)

7. The CurePictures of You (for Melissa Nelson and Isabel Warren-Lynch)

8. Louis ArmstrongA Kiss to Build a Dream On (for all the good people of Knopf)

9. The BeatlesPaperback Writer (for our dear author friends)

10. Julie AndrewsThe Sound of Music (for our loving families)

11. Rufus w/ Chaka KhanYou Got the Love (for Stephanie and Al)

12. Kylie MinogueCant Get You Out of My Head (for Billy and Nicolicious)

13. Jens LekmanYou Are the Light (By Which I Travel into This and That) (for Nick)

14. Kelly ClarksonMiss Independent (for Anna)

15. Q and Not UWonderful People (for Martha)

16. The Magnetic FieldsHow Fucking Romantic (for Nancy)

1. NICK

The day begins in the middle of the night. I am not paying attention to anything but the bass in my hand, the noise in my ears. Dev is screaming, Thom is flailing, and I am the clockwork, I am the one who takes this thing called music and lines it up with this thing called time. I am the ticking, I am the pulsing, I am underneath every part of this moment. We dont have a drummer. Dev has thrown off his shirt and Thom is careening into feedback and I am behind them, I am the generator. I am listening and I am not listening because what Im playing isnt something Im thinking about, its something Im feeling all over. All eyes are on us. Or at least thats what I can imagine in my stageblindness. Its a small room and were a big noise and I am the nonqueer bassist in a queercore band who is filling the room with undertone as Dev sing-screams, Fuck the Man / Fuck the Man / I really want to / Fuck the Man. I am punctuating and I am puncturing and I am punching the air with my body as my fingers press hard into the chords. Sweat, malice, and hunger pour from me. This is release, or maybe its just a plea for release. Dev is wailing now and Thom is crashing and even though my feet dont move I am traveling hard. I look past the light and see people shaking, people jumping around, people watching as Dev takes the microphone into his mouth and keeps yelling the words. I throw the chords at them, I drench them in the soundwaves, I am making time so loud that they have to hear it. I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box Im in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart.

I fucking told her not to come. While she was busy ripping me into pieces, that was the one fragment I begged to keep. Please dont come to the shows. I dont want to see you there. And she had said yes, and it hadnt been a lie then. But it turned into a lie at some point, because here she is, and my fingers are losing their place, and my buzz is losing its edge, and everything about me goes from crying out to just plain cryingall in the time it takes for me to see the shape of her lips. And then I seeoh fuck nothat shes not alone, that shes with some guy, and while shell say shes come to watch me, theres no doubt in my mind that shes come so I can watch her. Its over, shed said, and wasnt that the biggest lie of all? I am stumbling through the notes and Dev is onto the next verse and Thom is playing a little faster than he should, so I have to catch up as she leans into this guy and rocks her head like Im making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as shes given me pain.

I try to keep up with Dev and Thom. Were called The Fuck Offs tonight, but thats a new name and itll probably only last three gigs before Dev comes up with another. Weve already been Porn Yesterday, The Black Handkerchiefs, The Vengeful Hairdressers, and None Of Your Business. I dont really use my vote, except to veto Devs stupider ideas. (Dude, I had to tell him, nobody wants to see a band called Dickache.) Devs out to pierce the pierced, tattoo the tattooed, and have his way with the messy punk boys who come to our shows not knowing theyll end up wanting to mess around with the guy challenging How big is your cocker spaniel? into the mic. Devs from a town in Jersey called Lodi, and that makes perfect sense to me, since hes nothing if not an idol in reverse. Thoms from South Orange, and has only had an h in his first name for the past two months. Im from Hoboken, as close to the city as you can get without actually being in the city. On nights like this, with a chance to play in front of more than just our friends, Id swim across the Hudson if I had to, in order to get to this cave of a club. At least until Tris shows up and I find myself bleeding invisibly across the stage.

Take the Power / Fuck the Man / Take the Power / and Fuck the Man. Dev is taking the song somewhere its never been before: a fourth minute. Im rutting now, waiting for the wind-down. Thom looks like hes on the verge of a solo, which is never a good place for Thom to be. I move my feet, turn away from her, try to pretend shes not there, which is the biggest fucking joke Ive ever not laughed at. I try to get Devs attention from the periphery, but hes too busy wiping the sweat on his chest to notice. Finally, though, he gets a burst of energy strong enough to end the thing on. So he throws out his arm and howls and I run us into the ground with a final lurch. The crowd sends us a burst of their own noise. I try to hear her voice, try to separate that single pitch from the shouts and applause. But shes as lost to me as she was the night I cried and she didnt turn back to see if I was okay. Three weeks, two days, and twenty-three hours ago. And shes already with someone else.

The next band is at the side of the stage. The owner of the club is motioning that our time is up. I am not so gone that Im not gratified by the calls for more, by that little sound of letdown when the lights go up to show the crowd a clearer path back to the bar. I am the equipment bitch for this gig, so while Dev jumps into the crowd to find his most willing admirer and Thom blushingly retreats to his understanding-but-emo boyfriend, I have to immediately detox so I can pack up our gear. I go from chords to cords, amped to amps. One of the guys from the next band is cool and helps me recover the cases from the back corner of the stage. But Im the only one who can touch the instruments, putting them carefully to bed for the night. Then I offer to help the new band set up, and am glad when they say yes so I can be connecting them to the soundboard instead of spending all my energy resisting her.

My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distanceanything short of contactis a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. Its over cant kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I cant stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. Im tired, shed said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then shed said,