Two days ago I found a song by my favorite artist that I had never heard before. It was some shaky concert video of Brian Fallon singing “The Backseat” in 2010. He is covered in neon blue light and he keeps smiling out at the crowd because they know every single word.
I grew up with Brian Fallon. My Dad played The Gaslight Anthem each morning as he drove me to work with him so that high schoolers could watch me during their study hall. I knew all of the songs on the ‘Sink or Swim’ album before I figured out how to spell my last name. In the seventh grade I discovered The Horrible Crows. I remember sitting alone on the bus everyday listening to them and feeling invincible. It didn’t matter that I was by myself; so long as I had their voices, I didn’t need anyone else in the world. By the time I was in high school, Brian Fallon had quit both bands and was working on his solo career. Each album he dropped molded a new part of my heart. I must have listened to all of the songs on ‘Painkillers’ three times after getting asked out on my first date. When that date turned into a two and a half year relationship, I kept listening to that album. Fallon wrote these gritty, heart-wrenching love songs and they became my world as I fell in love for the first time. I was so grateful that someone had words for all of the hard emotions inside of me. By the time my senior year came around, I was coming out of that relationship and I felt broken. Fallon dropped ‘Sleepwalkers’ that fall and it was like the album had been written for only me and my heartbreak.
To find a song that I had never heard from Fallon felt like finding a forgotten piece of my childhood. As I plugged in my half-broken headphones and closed my eyes, I felt like I was back in my high school bedroom.
In the back seats of burned out cars
In the disenchantment lane
The ideal angels twist and turn
And ask for forgiveness for future mistakes
His voice and the lyrics hit me hard. They pulled up this rawness in my chest that I’ve only ever felt once before. I am seventeen and sitting in the back seat of a beaten up Camry. Next to me is a boy named Freddy who I don’t know very well. Freddy throws parties in the abandoned house on Prince street, and once, I watched the frozen ice of the Hudson crack beneath him as he drunkenly tried to get back to the shore. Other than that, we’ve never really spoken.
We are driving back from a party in Saugerties and the car is silent as everyone sleeps off the alcohol and energy of the night. Squished in the back, Freddy and I comment in lowered tones on the shadowy landscapes that we pass and the cigarette butts on the car floor. We talk about his parents’ divorce, and my brother, and whether we’ll ever have kids.
Freddy and I are not particularly similar people but that night it felt like we were in our own little world. After we got back to Kyle’s house, we walked to a park and talked for five more hours until the sun started to rise and my fingers had frozen from the November air. That night I felt so strange, like I was physically incapable of being anything but honest with him. I didn’t hide or push any parts of myself, I was just open and nothing else.
This is not the beginning to a love story, Freddy and I haven’t spoken in years. I know the trailer where his dad used to live in and the dump that holds Freddy’s old car. He used to pick me up after school in it and let me play him all of my favorite songs. Other than that, there is nothing. No phone number or social media account. To say that he was off the grid would be an understatement. Even the memories I have of him are few and fading. A chess game in the pouring rain, him accidentally falling asleep on my couch at 4am, and one date at a closet-sized diner where we both got oatmeal for dinner.
Freddy, you will never read this but I’m sorry. I ended things with you in an empty movie theater parking lot and never told you why. I’m not happy that you came to school drunk or threw eggs at David’s house but I understand. You opened up to me and I left without warning. I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again but I want you to know that I found a song that made me think about you. It reminded me of the moment I first met you in, and the back seat of Kyle’s car. It made me feel sad and young and more like myself than I’ve felt in a while. I hope you know it made me think of you.
