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I was not awake in time to be alone. Someone was already in the bathroom, running the water. Soon I would be doing the same, washing my bangs in the sink.
I peeked up from where I was stretched out on the floor and saw the covers pulled away from half of the bed. They were still tucked around our drummer at the other side. His face wasn’t visible, but his hand stuck up over the horizon of the bed’s edge, his phone screen a meek sunrise.
How could I have neglected my quiet phone alarm? I suspected that a morning alone would sustain me. And yet, here we were, all together again.
It takes time to adjust to a new pace. The only way to settle in is to live through it, so before I know it I’m drying my bangs with a hand towel, then rolling up my sleeping bag, then meeting the stranger whose apartment we just slept in.
And now I’m ignited again. We’re going for breakfast at a place with flavored lattes and arugula on the breakfast sandwiches. I decide to paint my nails at the table, a gesture of spontaneous glamour and etiquette anarchy.
The band and our host accept refills on drip coffee and talk hungrily about shows and music videos and record labels. By the time I’m filling in a tip on my receipt, I feel like I’m on to something. I won’t be sustained by solitude. I will be resuscitated every morning by a shared, desperate love of music.
A few hours later, we’re parking in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It’s time to meet our next hosts, a bandmate’s college friends, trust-fund kids with an affinity for Phish. We lounge on their sectional with a tiny dog, the evening sun entering the room directly through their ninth-floor windows.
Eventually it’s time to fluff up our hair and head off for the second show of tour, where drink tickets and a crowded room await us.
I really enjoy entering your world.