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Sometimes my energy is too much for even me to handle.

It’s like, when you’re performing onstage, it’s great. Everything you feel gets channeled into what you’re doing, and the crowd screams and you scream and it almost hurts, it feels so good. It drains you, so afterward you’re just dead, but it’s a good kind of dead, a cleansed kind of feel. You got out what you couldn’t get out any other way.

But I never know what to do when I’m not performing, you know? The energy just builds and builds, and I don’t know what to do with it. Yell. Scream. Fuck. Get drunk. It’s all I can do, sometimes, just to not put my fist through the bathroom mirror when I wake up after a bender and the energy’s still there, thrumming through my skull like the last chords of a guitar riff.

It’s times like this that I call Yoshiki.

“It’s me,” I say, since who else has a voice as annoying as mine?

“Yeah, I had a feeling you’d call.” He says this every time I call. It’s probably a lie but it makes me smile anyway, makes me feel like we have some kind of transcendental bond, Yoshiki and I. It’s a load of crap, that metaphysical shit, but coming from him it sounds good. Reassuring.

I let myself be reassured.

“You busy?” I ask. It’s a stupid question—Yoshiki is always busy, Yoshiki lives in a constant state of busy, which makes me hate him, since despite it all he nearly always manages to look calm and relaxed. Maybe it’s just an act, but I envy him for just being able to look it.

I don’t know what “calm and relaxed” is.

“Not really,” he replies, even though he probably actually has a million and one things to do. I wonder if I should feel guilty, for distracting him. I pretend that I don’t.

“Wanna hang out? Go somewhere, do something, make a little noise?”

“Sure,” he replies, automatically, even though every time we get together, we always find excuses not to go anywhere. I know it, he knows it, but I make the suggestion anyway, as if we need to pretend to be doing something just to get out of the guilt of not doing anything.

“Where should we meet?” I ask, forcing myself not to leer at the phone and say, Your place or mine?

“Just stay there. I’ll be over in about an hour.” He hangs up without saying good-bye.

I guess it’s mine.

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When Yoshiki arrives, he knocks on the door, even though I always leave it unlocked when he’s coming over and he knows it. I answer it, and he hands me a 24-pack of Asahi beer.

I make a face. “You know I prefer imports.”

He rolls his eyes, probably thinking beggars can’t be choosers, but he says “They were all out of Miller, sorry.” I take the beer and set it on the counter, tearing the top of the case off to get at the alcoholic goodness inside. I toss him a can and pop one open for myself.

“What, no glass?” There’s some kind of humor in his tone, though I can’t tell if it’s “fond” humor or just “I find you sadly amusing” humor.

I give him a dirty look. “Do you want a glass?”

“Do you have any clean ones?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t.”

I laugh at this, and he grins and opens his beer.

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This is how we spend the evening and most of the night, just drinking our way through the 24-pack and talking about nothing. I’m surprised when I look at the slightly blurry face of my digital clock and realize it’s nearly one a.m. How did the time go so quickly?

Yoshiki stumbles over to my counter, tossing his empty can into the recycle bin and going for a fresh one. “Do you want another?” he asks me.

“Is there another one to have?”

He pops open the one he’s holding. “No.”

“Then I don’t,” I say, and we both snicker like the retards we are. He ambles back over with the careful precision of a tipsy person, and then plunks himself too heavily on the floor next to me.

“Gimme that,” I say, after he’s taken a long drink. I steal his beer and finish it off for him, ignoring his protests because he’s laughing even as he voices them. I hand him back the empty can.

“Asshole,” he says, grinning, and I guess that is fond humor in his tone. Why else would he put up with me?

“You know you love me,” I say, and even to my ears, my voice sounds slurred.

There’s a long pause, and I glance at him. He’s giving me a weird look, too serious, and I suddenly wish I hadn’t said that. But why?

Finally he nods and says, “I guess I do.”

And just like that, I want to cry, or hug him, or maybe consider putting my fist through the bathroom mirror after all. He cares about me, and I care about him, and I hate the fact that I’m such a burden about it. Friends shouldn’t need so much, should they?

“Yoshiki, I--“ I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. My voice falls silent, and I tell myself, Stop it, stop it, just give the poor guy a break. He’s got better things to do than babysit you.

He shrugs, nonchalantly, and says “We’re friends, right? Don’t worry about it.” As if he’s just read my thoughts. Maybe that metaphysical bullshit has something to it, after all.

I shake my head, not denying what he’s said, just… Denying in general. Maybe he really doesn’t mind dropping everything to run over here and waste hours of his life getting drunk with me.

It occurs to me then, maybe he’s glad to have an excuse to do nothing for a change, and if it helps me, all the better, right? Relaxation and humanitarian effort, all in one.

“You know you can call me whenever you need me,” he says.

And that’s the problem, really.

“I always do,” I say.

Even I’m not sure how I mean it.

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