“Ayala (outro)”, -1:39
or, how a song can fuck you up and give you life at the same time
“Ayala (outro)” is one minute and thirty-nine seconds long, or short, depending on where your head is at. Mine is wrecked and filled with cotton. I opened the pub at ten am, and now it is past midnight, and although we’ve been closed for two hours, I am still here stalling, trying to get the stink of the day off me with whisky and tobacco. I stayed too late after the chairs were stacked up on top of the tables, the servers’ stations emptied of dish bins along with all evidence of pilsners poured into coffee mugs to conceal just how much we managed to consume in eight hours and still do the math of adding up what we owe the restaurant and what is ours to keep. Now, after the doors are locked, this is the hour we recover from what we put our bodies through. A double shift at a pub in a mountain town at the edge of the Rocky Mountains. Ten hours of grinding through bad knees and bunions and lower back pain and cheeks sore from fake smiling and saying Absolutely again and again while sweat drips into your eyes from the strain of repressing your dignity. Swallow it up. Absolutely, you can have a side of ranch. Absolutely, I will get you more napkins. Absolutely, I can get your dog a bowl of water and jerk him off so you can enjoy your meal. Absolutely you can fuck me if you tip me well enough. Waiters in America are hookers who leave their clothes on for the ride.
//
I drank too much at work. I smoked a blunt and might have done a bump, might have followed that with a Lucky Strike, might have covered that burn with Powers chased by Cazadores. Might have done all of this to stall the return to an empty house. Might have gone home with the tourist who held up the patio facing side of the bar all night long; one elbow slung over the backrest of the barstool, he held his head in that way that let a girl know he could ruin her and he kept asking me where I was from and then answering for me with you aren’t from here, that I know for sure. Might have done none of this and just put Ayala outro in my ears full blast and rode my baby blue cruiser bike home, drawing curly Q’s all over the dark asphalt blacked out from no moon or a new moon, nobody out except the hobos squatting over malt liquor empties calling out to me as I pass by, sister do you have anything for us, we’re hungry.
//
In ninety seconds and forty-five words sung, moaned really, about a love that nearly killed him and definitely left him bent over touching his toes in regret, we meet Ayala. It feels private. A confession written by a man who is used to keeping secrets to stay alive. To stay hard. But he’s not a man. He’s a kid—seven months into his nineteenth year. I remember nineteen. Remember how my teeth felt too big for my face, my hands, and my heart unlovable. Awkward. Sure I’d die alone. My son is twenty, and I cannot forget that fact when I listen to X keen about this girl, his first love, a fake love, a regretful love, unforgettably fucked up. Ayala. The last track on the first studio album from a kid in Florida who will be dead ten months later, not six months into his twentieth year.
//
I can’t forget her, either, and my heart has stayed broken for a long time. For my whole life. But my Ayala has a different name. And she’s not a girl or a boy. Or she’s both. I leave its ninety seconds on a loop, exposure therapy. It beetle burrows into my soggy brain and comforts me. It hurts to remember how many different ways you let life break you down, be it by grinding for coin to pay rent and feed your babies, or your first love who taught you how to do everything the wrong way, or your ex-husband who won’t reply to your text that says, hello, are you getting these, just tell me you’re getting these or your son who you copy and paste the exact text to and get nothing back from except that you are savagely left on read. Coming through from the cold heat of his grave, impossibly, this kid who chose to close out an album that reeks of loss and longing and who is separated from you by two decades knows precisely how you feel.