Play Me Backwards Read Online Free

Oslo Philharmonic plays violin better than this guy plays guitar?”
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” I said.
    â€œI would,” said Stan. “Guys in black metal bands start playing scales six hours a day at the age of seven. They can play circles around some orchestra putz. How is listening to a bunch of virtuoso psychopaths singing about worshipping me in Norwegian any different from listening to sad clowns singing about stabbing people in Italian?”
    I thought about this. “I guess it’s not much less intellectual in, like, a pure sense,” I said.
    â€œNope,” said Stan. “People used to think operas were evil too, back in the day. Half of them are about weirdos who sell their soulsto me and burn people alive out of spite. And the guys in bands don’t get laid any more than the composers did.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. “But I’ll bet the composers got a higher class of groupies.”
    â€œWhat, you think they got, like, courtesans because the King of Prussia signed their paychecks?”
    I shrugged. “The King of Prussia never commissioned a black metal album.”
    â€œWell, of course not,” Stan said. “There hasn’t been a fucking King of Prussia since World War I, and that ended a good fifty years before the first Black Sabbath album came out. But you’re missing the point. You’re not as far from being a snotty wenis as you think you are just because you’re a total bum with no direction in life.”
    The bell on the front door rang again.
    â€œYour turn,” I said.
    Stan stepped out to deal with the customers in the “front of the house” while I sat in the back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what in the hell I should do.
    I remembered the day I went over to Anna’s house to watch Un Chien Andalou , the movie Salvadore Dalí made. It’s got a scene with an eyeball getting cut open. Stan was right. The fact that that was in a movie by a famous artist didn’t make it more intellectual than a vintage Megadeth video or whatever.
    But, shit. She was probably off getting ready to study at some prestigious university and thinking of going into Parliament. Or making six figures as a photographer already or something. There was no way to sugarcoat the fact that I was about two steps away from having a beer belly, a receding hairline, and a car propped upon cinder blocks in the vacant lot down the road from some rickety apartment complex.
    Anna and I had never officially broken up, exactly—I guess you don’t have to when you’re in ninth grade and one of you moves overseas. It’s just, like, implied. Outside of a few long e-mails the first couple of months, we’d barely spoken since she moved. For the first year or so she was pretty steadily posting GIFs from movies and stuff on various social media sites, and now and then one of them would be romantic and I’d freak out wondering if she was thinking of me or had found someone else or what. But then she pretty much stopped posting things, or showing up online much at all, and for the last year she’d just been like a ghost. There was no trace of her, nothing to tell me what she was up to.
    It wasn’t like I had taken a vow of celibacy or expected her to wait for me or anything. I made out and fooled around with plenty of girls at Stan’s parties and in the back at the Ice Cave. I even slept with two them. But every time I made out with a girl, I couldn’t help but imagine I was making out with Anna. I always felt like I was cheating on her. I was only over her if I didn’t have to see her or think about her.
    I sniffed at the glass, trying to guess what Stan could possibly have put in that concoction. I thought I detected a hint of parsley.
    The walk-in freezer hummed.
    It went hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm .
    When Stan returned to the back room a minute later, he picked his cigarette up and relit