Someday the Dream Will End

     It was the winter of 2019, and I was riding shotgun in my band’s tour van as we drove through frozen hell. The ancient Ford van from the 1990’s groaned in agony as it steadily trudged through the snowy backroads of rural Oregon. I was very eager to get home—especially after playing a Portland show where the only attendees were the cockroaches that inhabited the shit smelling bar. At that point my bandmates and I had been on the road for over a month, and each day brought another disappointment. A plague of tragedies from canceled shows to van troubles seemed to follow us throughout every state we visited, and each of the additional relentless days were like heavy weights added to my back. My once youthful and fiery passion seemed to have dulled, and now was as dead and frozen as the February trees that surrounded me. The darkness of despair seemed to have finally spilled out of myself and poured into the already black night sky. As I looked out my passenger side window and into the surrounding miasma, I couldn’t help but wonder if that veil of darkness would ever lift, and if it would ever be sunny again. 

 

     Nearly one month before I entered the frozen hellscape of Oregon, I was staying at my parents’ house and packing for tour. The years of constantly being on the road had left me in a financial grave of my own making. All my worldly possessions, which consisted of two pairs of black jeans and two Metallica t-shirts, easily fit in my small Jansport backpack. I had nothing else to my name—I had sold everything else in order to buy more equipment for the band. As I zipped up the small backpack, my dad walked by the open bedroom door. Having been gone so often on previous tours, it was only at that moment that I realized how old he had become. His once dark and curly hair was now entirely grey and cut close to his scalp. His once bright blue eyes were now dimmed and dark. His once smooth tan face was now pale and carved with lines that only time could create. My dad’s eyes darted between my mostly empty backpack, and then into my mostly empty room, and finally to my bright hope-filled blue eyes. His face was as solemn and dark as granite rock. I tried to reassure him with a smile and an itinerary of our next months’ worth of shows, but I was met with a disapproving shake of his head and a long painful sigh. As my dad left me alone in my empty room, I wondered why he seemed so upset. The band was slated to play our biggest shows yet. Finally, after ten long years of shitty underpaid tours, we seemed to be making our musical dreams come true. Just as I was pondering my dad’s doubt, I caught my reflection in my bedroom mirror. For the first time I noticed that my beard had started to turn grey, and the same lines of old age had begun to form across my own face. 

 

     Our white and rusted twelve passenger Ford van continued to cut through the infinite winter darkness like a knife through butter. As we approached an unnamed mountain pass the van’s radio began to distort and disintegrate into static nothingness. I checked the cracked screen of my iPhone and saw that I had no cell phone reception, which resulted in my GPS app displaying blank coordinates. Jerry, the band’s drummer, and member behind the wheel, put the van in park, and let the engine idle as his trembling mocha-colored hands ran through his dark afro. Slowly reaching into his torn denim jacket, he produced a joint and lit it, taking a long drag then expelling the smoke out of his mouth with a stress-filled groan. No words were exchanged between us. A deathly silence had washed over the interior of the tour van, and every member had their lungs filled with the oppressive waters of truth. We had to blindly go through this stormy mountain pass with no GPS guiding us. My stomach felt like a witch’s cauldron, boiling, and bubbling, with hot volcanic fear and doubt. I wanted to turn back, I wanted to avoid the dark unknown path. But my pleas fell on deaf ears. Jerry took another long drag of his joint, put the van into gear, and began to ascend the steep ninety-degree mountain road. 

 

     Two weeks before we were at the mountain road the band played a festival in Gainesville, Florida. Our set went exceptionally well, and we played to a sold-out show with more than four hundred people in attendance. Dozens of people also bought merchandise from our small table of goods. I was beaming with pride the entire night, and admittedly, very relieved that we were going to make some decent money. The previous nights’ shows were ill-attended, and we really needed this financial boost. When the evening ended, my two band members and I approached Paul, the man running the club. Paul looked more like Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars than a normal man. He was impossibly large, easily towering over my own six-foot stature. His stomach hung low to his knees, and he spoke in a low octave roar that shook the walls and every bone in my body. Paul had a mischievous look on his face—at least I think it was mischievous. It was hard to discern human emotion through the mountains of bright red flesh affixed to his skull. 

     “Here you go boys,” Paul said with a slight chuckle, “your cut.” 

     We looked at the check he handed us in absolute horror. 

     “What is this shit, man?” Our singer Jaime asked. His voice was as hoarse and brittle as an old man’s voice due to all the screaming he had done during our set. 

     Paul’s chuckle grew into a loud and boisterous laugh that sounded as diabolical as a Disney villain. “Look boys,” Paul began, wiping a gleeful tear from his eye, “after paying the sound person, then the light person, and also the bartender, and of course my cut, this is all that’s left. Take it or leave it.” 

     The three of us were frozen in shock. This check was much less than what was promised to us. I was drenched in anger and resentment, and yet could do nothing with my oceans of hatred. Our only choice was to take whatever money we could and pray that we made enough at the next show to afford the gas to return home. Without saying a word, I took the check from Paul, and stormed towards the exit. Before leaving, I caught my reflection in the mirror above the bar. My beard seemed to have grown even greyer, and there were more old age lines across my face, which made me look as if someone attacked my flesh with a garden rake. It was starting to become clearer to me that the dream of band success was distorting into a nightmarish dark cloud—a dark mark that wilted everything in my life.

 

     After several tense minutes filled with the unhealthy grinding of the van’s gears, we had made it to the very top of the snowy mountain. I was overwhelmed with thick uncertainty as my eyes strained to see anything through the dark sky and white flakes of snow. I saw no road, nor bridge, nor anything that seemed to be able to help us traverse the rest of the mountain. Before I could think of any kind of solution, I heard a loud snap. Instantly, the van lunged forward, and began to zoom straight down like a descending roller-coaster ride. Jaime the singer, who had been asleep in the back seat, flew forward between the two front chairs where Jerry and I sat. His head contacted the center console, and blood began streaming down his pale face. The van continued to shake violently and gained more and more speed as it continued to descend straight down the mountain. 

     “Hit the brakes!” I yelled to Jerry. My eyes stung with hot fearful tears. 

     “I’m trying! I’m fucking trying!” Jerry exclaimed back at me. I saw that his dark complexion was also damp with tears. 

     Low hanging branches exploded upon our van’s impact down the snowy mountain side. I was drowning in the combined noises of my screaming bandmates and the van’s axels grinding against the dirt road. At long last my eyes seemed to have adjusted to the dark, and I could see that the road was ending—and leading to a gorge. The van simply would not slow down despite everything Jerry the driver tried. The three of us threw our arms around each other and began to sob, crying harder and louder than any child had ever before. I closed my eyes and braced for impact; however, there was no destruction. As suddenly and violently as it began, it had ended. The van had stopped, and its ceasing flooded the van with eerie silence. 

     I took a moment to compose myself, and then cautiously opened my passenger side door and stepped onto the fresh white powder. I timidly approached the mountain cliff that led to the gorge and careened my head back towards the van. Quickly, I calculated that we had escaped death by a few dozen feet. Though I was relieved that I survived the crash, I couldn’t help but feel hollow and incomplete. I may have survived, but something within me did not. I began to weep again, this time mourning the loss of something I was not even sure of. As I wept, soft white snowflakes gently fell upon my head. It was like being baptized by snow. I could feel myself becoming something new. I could feel myself finally waking up. The untimely death of my former self birthed a new me, and it also shook me awake. I returned to the van to check on my band members and caught my reflection in the passenger side mirror. My beard was now fully grey, and the lines of old age ran across my face like deep trenches. I had grown too old to die young, and it was at that moment that it dawned on me that someday all childhood dreams will end.