Watch Him Fall


Hether Fortune

A part of me is always focused on death, waiting for it like an AIM response from a swoopy-haired boy. It’s gonna be a letdown. The anticipation is the point. Jay Reatard used to say his life was a race against time. He was waiting, too.

My first interaction with Jay was wordless. A confused glance from me to him followed by a nod of appreciation as he crept on stage to place a cement block in front of my drifting kick drum. It was summer 2009 and I was weeks away from twenty-two. I’d been in Memphis for a few nights on my first full U.S. tour as a drummer. My kit was in shambles. The person at the helm of that band was a Memphis native who’d photographed Jay for the Blood Visions album cover. His excitement over seeing Jay was palpable. He told me and our other bandmate Paul wild stories on the drive to Tennessee. “Jay’s a maniac. I could totally see you two hooking up,” he told me. “I wouldn’t touch him with a 10-foot pole wrapped in a blanket,” I snarked. I remember it verbatim because of its weirdly misogynistic tone, the result of being surrounded by gross dudes too long. I couldn’t imagine getting along with, let alone fucking, a guy who’d nicknamed himself “retard.” My bandmate shook his head laughing, unconvinced. “You’ll see,” he said.

That night after we finished playing our set, Jay was waiting at the end of the bar with a shot of tequila— chilled and shaken with lime, his go-to. I thought I should be the one buying him a drink, considering how he’d spared me the humiliation of my drum kit slipping away from me in the middle of a song, but he insisted. “The drummer always gets the shaft!” he said. “Cheers to that,” I said, and the glasses clinked.

We lurched onward from bar to bar, gathering more and more people at each stop. I got the feeling he wanted to impress everyone from the way he dropped hits of glamour into bored Memphis mouths. He rented out the top floor suite of a rundown mid-century hotel called “The Artisan” that was anything but. It’s where all the cool underground musician types stayed when they came through. They liked the tacky irony of the decor. We all filed in, touting brown paper sacks and clear plastic baggies.

The conversations were vapid and forgettable. His childlike curiosity toward me was not. He wanted to know everything. Jay was a feverish ball of energy when he went out in the world. His natural state, heightened by his proclivity for cocaine, tequila, and Red Bull. He was only six years older than me but already a well-established cult celebrity. After just a few hours in his presence, it was obvious to me how he’d gotten there: he was magnetic. I hated how right my bandmate had been.

We climbed out one of the windows to sit on the ledge, escape the noise and be alone. I felt safe, feet dangling ten stories over the sidewalk. I was high. He asked if I wanted to jump. I said Yeah. All the time.

Eventually we made our way to the pool. It seemed like everyone he knew was there, including one of his exes. She did a cartwheel on the cement while we waded and laughed. I liked her. It was clear Jay was romantically pursuing me but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Their relationship had been volatile, he said. They’d realized they were better as friends. At some point she wobbled over and said that if I could quiet the monsters in his head, she’d be relieved. Strange thing to say to someone you’ve just met. Probably the coke talking.

In the pool Jay spoke of the abuse he’d endured as a child and I told him about mine. We curled up beside our mutual chaos. I could see how close to the edge he was, but then again so was I. I hadn’t learned enough lessons to know when to run. I probably wouldn’t have anyway.

Something happened between Jay and his friend Matt that pissed him off so we left the hotel room he’d paid for and headed to his house. The sun was coming up and the drugs were wearing off. As we walked he vented. He said he felt like a clown. I felt such tenderness for him. The birds were singing their sunrise songs. I wanted him to feel loved. I took his hand and we fell into silence, the reality of dawn setting in.

I wasn’t sure sex was on the table. We hadn’t even kissed and we were wiped the fuck out. I stood in his bedroom counting pairs of sneakers against the wall. His sheets were black and white polka dots, remnants of his ex. While I was imagining all the times they’d fucked on those sheets, he kissed me. The kissing got more and more intense until we were on the dotted bed. I decided not to mention my period just to see what would happen. Then my shorts were off and his fingers found the tampon string. He yanked it out in one swift motion and chucked it across the room. The soft thud of bloody cotton against plaster.

I woke with eyes fixed on the muddy brown mark on the wall from my tampon. I thought about the stain it’d become and how he didn’t care. I think that was the moment I fell in love but it also could’ve been while we were getting pedicures—my first ever. Giddy in the chair beside me as his toes were painted neon green, he told me about one he’d gotten on tour where tiny fish ate dead skin from the bottoms of his feet. What a freak, I thought to myself, laughing. That same shade of green is on my toenails now, nearly a decade later. I threw a tampon against my bedroom wall this morning. Nothing changes.

The terrible band I was in rolled out of Memphis and our van quickly broke down. We were running on like $100 a night if we were lucky so this was a real disaster, stranded in the Tennessee boondocks with no money. Jay and I had been texting non-stop anyway so I told him what was happening. He said, Where are you? and I got out and walked til I found an exit sign. Couldn’t have been more than 45 minutes later and there he was, triple-A membership card in hand, saving my ass yet again. He must’ve driven 100 mph to get to us so quick. We got the van towed to the nearest mechanic and he took us to lunch while we waited.

You gotta ditch these guys, he told me on the sly. I know, I know, I said. He loves me, I thought.

On January 12th, 2010 I was at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco. I’d ditched the terrible band to play guitar in a better band called Hunx & His Punx. I’d gone with my bandmate Seth to see our other bandmate’s other band, Shannon & The Clams. Jay called her Blueberry. My romantic relationship with Jay had fractured because of distance and the destructive nature we shared but I still loved him. We talked every day. At some point the three of us decided to give him a ring. He didn’t answer so we cracked jokes and sang songs in the voicemail.

I poured myself into bed, giggling drunk beside Seth. We were excited to wake up because we were going to be on the cover of The Bay Guardian wearing outfits we’d made out of trash bags. That was a first for me. The cover story and the trash bag clothes.

In the morning we drove around stopping to pick up copies from every newspaper stand we could. We landed at Down At LuLu’s, the hair salon/vintage store in Oakland Seth co-owned with our friend Tina. We were that very specific kind of high you experience as an artist the first time you get big-time recognition. It’s exhilarating no matter how punk you think you are.

My cell phone rang: “Ryan Wong”. My first thought was he must be calling to congratulate us on the cover. Delusional. I answered like a clown, calling him “Big Balls Wong” the way Seth would. But it wasn’t Ryan. It was his girlfriend. Heather where are you right now? Are you sitting down?

Now the voices are syrupy and I’m in the alley behind the shop. I see this pigeon looking beautiful and sad the way city birds do and I think, yeah, I get it. This is Unreality. Then the private hot tubs, a clutched bottle of whiskey, a copy of Blood Visions. Everyone touching me, looking at me with concerned eyes. Silence. Then the sound of splashing water, water from me, the other water, whiskey. How much time went by, circled the drain?

Some kind of blackout. Days went by that I don’t remember. Aimless wandering. Avoided phone calls. I guess I tried to throw myself off a friend’s roof. They said I’d been crying and screaming near the edge until I was tackled by Dwyer. A sort-of wealthy friend stepped in to book and pay for my flight to Memphis. For the funeral.

Got asked to perform a tribute at an Oh Sees show so I did a tearful and terrible cover of “Nightmares.” Somehow, I made it to the airport and onto a plane bound for Memphis. Ryan and Becky picked me up, drove straight to the funeral and BOOM. It’s open fucking casket. Nobody warned me. I must’ve fainted. Total shit show. Some girl he loved some time before me openly charging her phone behind the casket, behind his body. Some preacher who didn’t know Jay at all talking about how you couldn’t strangle the demons out of him and our full row laughing so hard because Jay had tried to literally strangle a lot of us, including me. You can’t make this shit up. Tragic and absurd, just like Jay.

I still hear him laughing.