Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Rachel Cohn

I know it, and that’s when I look to my right and see Tris and her new guy approaching the beer-spilled bar to order another round of whatever I’m not having. It’s definitely her, and I’m definitely fucked, because the between-band rush is pressing toward me now and if I try to leave, I’ll have to push my way out, and if I have to push my way out, she’ll see me making an escape and she’ll know for sure that I can’t take it, and even if that’s the goddamn truth I don’t want her to have actual proof. She is looking so hot and I am feeling so cold and the guy she’s with has his hand on her arm in a way that a gay friend would never, ever think of, and I guess that’s my own proof. I am the old model and this is the new model and I could crash out a year’s worth of time on my bass and nothing, absolutely nothing, would change.

      She sees me. She can’t fake surprise at seeing me here, because of course she fucking knew I’d be here. So she does a little smile thing and whispers something to the new model and I can tell just from her expression that after they get their now-being-poured drinks they are going to come over and say hello and good show and – could she be so stupid and cruel? – how are you doing? And I can’t stand the thought of it. I see it all unfolding and I know I have to do something – anything – to stop it.

      So I, this random bassist in an average queercore band, turn to this girl in flannel who I don’t even know and say:

      “I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?”

      Randy from Are You Randy? insists the bassist from the queercore band is a ’mo, but I told him No, the guy is straight. Whether or not he’s responsible for his band’s shit lyrics (Fuck the Man / Fuck the Man – what’s that trite crap?), I have no idea, but he’s no ’mo. Trust me. There are certain things a girl just knows, like that a fourth minute on a punk song is a bad, bad idea, or that no way does a Jersey-boy bassist with Astor Place hair who wears torn-up, bleach-stained black jeans and a faded black T-shirt with orange lettering that says When I say Jesus, you say Christ, swing down boy-boy alley; he’s working the ironic punk boy–Johnny Cash angle too hard to be a ’mo. Maybe he’s a little emo, I told Randy, but just because he doesn’t look like a Whitesnake-relic-reject like all of your band, does not automatically mean the guy’s gay.

      The incidental fact of his straightness doesn’t mean I want to be NoMo’s five-minute girlfriend, like I’m some 7-Eleven quick stop on his slut train. Only because I am the one loser here who hasn’t lost all her senses to beer, dope, or hormones do I have the sense to hold back my original instinct – to yell back “FUCK, NO!” in response to NoMo’s question.

      I have to think about Caroline. I always have to think about Caroline.

      I noticed NoMo loading equipment after his band’s set while his bandmates abandoned him to score some action. I understand that scene. I am that scene, cleaning up everyone else’s mess.

      NoMo dresses so bad – he has to be from Jersey. And if Jersey Boy is equipment bitch, he has a van. The van’s probably a piece of scrap metal with a leaking carburetor that as likely as not will pop a tire or run out of gas in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel, but it’s a risk I have to take. Somebody’s got to get Caroline home. She’s too drunk to risk taking her on the bus. She’s also so drunk she’ll go home with Randy if I’m not there to take her back to my house where she can sleep it off. Groupie bitch. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d kill her.

      She’s lucky my parents love her just as much; her dad and stepmonster are away for the weekend, they don’t give a fuck what she does, so long as she doesn’t get pregnant or date any boy from a non-six-figure-plus-income household. Jerk-offs. My parents, they adore Caroline, beautiful Caroline with the long caramel hair, the big cherry Tootsie Pop lips, the juvenile delinquent arrest record. They won’t care if she stumbles from my room into the kitchen tomorrow afternoon all disheveled and hung over. She’s the one, not me, who meets their expectation of what the daughter of an Englewood Cliffs-livin’, fat-cat record company CEO should be: wild.

      Caroline’s not a Big Disappointment like their Plain Jane, comfy-flannel-shirt-wearing, tousled bowl-head-haircut-courtesy-of-a-$300-salon-visit-with-Mom-(Bergdorf ’s)-and-a-$5-can-of-blue-spray-paint (Ricky’s), straight-edge, responsible valedictorian bitch daughter. I’ve chosen a gap year on a kibbutz in South Africa over Brown. WHY, Norah, WHY? I wrote my Brown admissions essay about all the music Dad appropriated from The Street then goddamned ruined to make profit for The Man. I am not a fuckin’ corporate hippie, Dad said, laughing, after he read the essay. Dad won’t deny that he’s responsible for giving Top 40 radio a disproportionate percentage of its suckiest hits, yet he’s proud he indoctrinated me from childhood in the sounds of every other kind of music out there so that now, at age eighteen, I can be a badass DJ when I want, but I am also an insufferable music snob. My parents have also done me the misfortune of being happily married for a quarter century, which no doubt dooms my own prospects of ever experiencing true love. Gold is not struck twice.

      My parents would disown me if they knew I was in this club tonight. Hell, I could be scoring weed in Tompkins Square Park right now, on my way to a bondage bar on Avenue D, and my parents would only applaud. But this club, this is the one joint in all of Manhattan I’m supposedly forbidden from going to, owing to a long-simmering feud over a bad music deal between Dad and the club owner, Crazy Lou (who used to be my godfather, Uncle Lou, until all that business leading Lou to be rechristened Crazy). Lou’s such an old punk he was around when The Ramones were junkie hustlers first and musicians second, when punk meant something other than a mass-marketing concept designed to help the bridge-and-tunnel crowd feel cool.

      But Mom and Dad would move past disowning me and outright kill me if they thought I wasn’t looking after their beloved Caroline. She inspires that kind of devotion in people. It’s nauseating, except I am totally under Caroline’s spell, too, her lead minion, have been since nursery school.

      I look around the club as the between-set mass of people swarm past/through/into me like I’m a ghost with the inconvenience of malleable flesh getting in their way on the way to the beer. Damn, I’ve lost Caroline again. She is big on Randy tonight, which is cool – Are You Randy? don’t completely suck – but Randy himself is big on E tonight, and I gotta make sure he doesn’t get her alone in a corner. But I’m only 5-foot-4 on tippy toes, and 6-foot NoMo is standing in front of me, blocking my view, waiting to find out if I want to be his five-minute girlfriend and looking like that lost animal who goes around asking “Are you my mother?” in that kid book.

      From behind him I don’t see Caroline but I do see that stupid bitch, Tris, rhymes with bris, cuz that’s what she’ll do to a guy, rip apart his piece. She’s doing her Tris strut with her big boobs sticking out in front of her, wiggling her ass in that way that gets the instant attention of every dumb schmo in her wake, even the gay boys, who seem to be highly represented here tonight, NoMo notwithstanding. She’s coming right toward me. No No NOOOOOOOOOOO. How did she find out Caroline and I would be here tonight? Does she have lookouts with text pagers set up every place Caroline and I go on a Saturday night, or what?

      Boyfriend to the rescue! I answer NoMo’s question by putting my hand around his neck and pulling his face down to mine. God, I would do anything to avoid Tris recognizing me and trying to talk to me.

      FUCK! I didn’t expect NoMo to be such a good kisser. Asshole. See this, Randy? NO. MO. Confirmed. But I am not looking for chemistry here, just a ride home for my girl. I am also not looking for tongue, but NoMo’s wastes no time sliding its way into my mouth. My mouth revolts against my mind: Umm, feels good down here, steady girl, steaaaady!

      No matter how good he tastes, this five-minute girlfriend still needs a few seconds to come up for air. I separate my mouth from his, hoping to catch my breath and hoping to catch Tris walking away from us without having noticed