Avail is a great band, and so is Bane, but they are fucking misogynists--give Jamia the Boss or Bon Jovi any day. One of the best things about My Chem is that they are from Jersey. Hometown pride, bitches. Everyone who hates Jersey can fuck off and die. It has the best pizza, the best places to get pedicures (which Frank loves, because Jamia does not rub his feet, thank you very much), and the best bagels. Sure, New York City bagels are great, but Jersey bagels are made with Jersey water.

Jersey also has better fucking venues than New York fucking City. Hell, she's even heard the Philly hardcore kids dissing on Jersey, and she always wants to be like, "Hey, fuckwads, there wouldn't be a Philly scene if there wasn't a Jersey scene--how many of you are really from Cherry Hill? Fuck off and die."

But she never does, because Frank would be totally embarrassed, and she might get her ass kicked. Girls aren't good enough to be in the pit, but they're good enough to get fucking jumped and stabbed after a show. She's not even making that up, although she wishes that she was, because it makes her a little sick. The girls who are allowed at shows are coat racks. They stand in the fucking back of the venue, and they hold their boyfriends' coats, while the idiot boys jump around. The rest of them, the girls like Jamia, they show up to a couple of shows, try the pit or being pressed up against the barriers, if the clubs even has barriers. They get bottles thrown at their heads, hands on their tits, and spit in their face.

They don't usually come back.

God, Jamia loves Frank. He is nothing like that. She's never even seen him be like that, not once. He is not the guy who fucks with the girls in the pit and he is not the asshole with a coat rack in the back and if he was ever like that, it stopped the minute he met her.

Sometimes he's maybe more of a feminist than she is, because she shaves her legs, and he tells her not to. "Don't give in to the patriarchal ideals of beauty," he urges her, totally sincerely. Maybe it's Gee's influence.

If it is, it's cute. If it's not, it's even cuter. She still shaves her legs, though. Frank is practically hairless--he doesn't get what it's like to have leg hair rubbing against denim. Not. Fucking. Comfortable.

Not to encourage binary gender thinking (thanks, Gee), but Frank is the girliest boy she's ever known. Ever. He likes makeup, and he likes to play dress up. Hell, he likes tiaras.

When they met, that night--

No, that's wrong. They knew each other their whole lives. He was just that guy, around the corner. He went to Catholic school; she always saw him in a tie. Every single day, and on Sundays going to church. Short, and cute, but who cared?

Except one night they met. She was at a show, and she was being jostled by some Philly assholes, and he knocked, too hard and obviously intentionally, into one, kept her from falling--this tiny, slight little boy. Tiny, so tiny, that was her first thought, how did he stay in the pit? She's big, always has been, and can hold her fucking own, so her second thought was that he should fuck off and die, but he didn't look like he was protecting her, really, he just smiled at her, and she had to smile back. She couldn't breathe and she had to smile back, and when she did, he smiled even brighter. Then he was borne away through the crowd, and she lost him.

Then she was punched in the head, so she kicked the asshole who did it, and pushed her way to the circle to bump shoulders with guys who were not being assholes, and watch the kids dance their hearts out.

Outside, in the freezing cold, she lit a cigarette, and heard, "Can I get a light?" and there's that smile again, attached to a cigarette, attached to the girliest boy she'd ever seen--in or out of a hardcore show.

And, shit, holy shit, motherfuck, it was Frank, the cute guy with terrible hair from around the corner who was always in a fucking tie, who went to church with his mom--

He knocked his shoulder into hers, he was twitchy, he bounced up and down. Inside the show raged on, the music getting louder and louder as bands traded off.

"I thought you'd still be inside," he said, rocking up and back on his toes.

"I'm saving myself for Converge." She smiled, she couldn't help it, fuck, the smiling thing had to stop but she couldn't, she just couldn't, she had to. And he smiled back, beamed back, and she loved it.

She was fucked.

He was wearing eyeliner. At a Converge show. In Jersey.

She was fucked.

She found out that night that even though he was much smaller than her, he could still push her against a wall. He tasted sour like beer, and dark like cigarette smoke, and salty like sweat, and he stuck his hand down her pants before he even put his tongue in her mouth, and she bit his neck, licked it, sucked on it as she came. It was awkward, and she had to prop a leg against the wall, but he rubbed her clit just the right way with rough fingers, and took her weight when she slouched against him.

His mouth was soft, and he didn't try to push her down to her knees, and she was so fucking afraid¸ because, God, she never got involved with scene dudes, not even ones who live around the corner, and what the fuck was she supposed to do? She'd only kissed one other guy, she never--she didn't--there wasn't.

There just wasn't.

"Hey, asshole!" yelled some guy, standing there in a Converge shirt. Tacky. Fucking tacky. "It's time."

At first Jamia totally thought that he was talking to Frank, or her--but no, there was Jake Bannon, pulling himself out of the shadows, off the wall next to them, tall and lanky, and Jamia's number one crush until right now. She couldn't even be embarrassed that Jake was watching her get off, because there was Frank, standing right in front of her, not wearing a tie.

Frank smiled at her again, grinned, his eyes bright, and said, "Come on," breathlessly, and didn't mean, come on, fuck me out here in this dirty alley, or come on, blow me, bitch, he meant that he was going to take her hand and lead her into the show.

And she never fucking looked back. Not when they were poor, not when they were miserable. It's like one of her mom's romance novels, but she can't help it. It wasn't ever what she thought she'd have--but it wasn't like it was perfect or something. It's still not perfect, it's still not what she thought she'd have. She doesn't even know anymore what she thought she'd have, but she couldn't have dreamed up Frank in a hundred years of dreaming.

He likes to be on the bottom. He likes her breasts, her belly, her hips, her thighs. He likes everything she hates about herself. He loves her smile. He smiles at her to get her to smile at him, and she has to smile at him, because he's infectious.

One night, he went down on her for two hours, just slowly and methodically licking her until she was crying from it, and then rough fingers while he kissed her through another orgasm, licked tears off her face, kissed her all over. She remembers that specifically, because the next night she fucked him with a strap-on for the first time, and it was fucking amazing. She got off just watching him writhe around underneath her, just take it, and take it, and take it.

"Are you gay?" she asked afterwards.

He looked at her like she was an idiot. "You're not a boy," he said. "You don't have a penis."

She caressed the strap-on and made the lewdest face she could, and he laughed at her. He laughed, and said, "Whatever, I love you," but that didn't answer her question.

Frank kisses Gerard a lot, and half the time it's to turn Jamia on. She's always watching by the side of the stage, at every single show, and she knows when he's putting it on for her, prancing, jumping, thinking about her every time he breathes Gee's air. But then there are the times when she's not in his mind at all, she knows it, she knows that skinny fuck with the basement-pale skin is all that Frank can think about it.

Those are the nights she fucks him hard. The night he and Gee stood there in the middle of a song, doing nothing but breathing each other's air, the way she and Frank breathe each other's air--that night she said, "Say his name, Frank, fucking say it, say his name," and Frank wouldn't, he just kept chanting, "Jamia, Jamia, Jamia," so…

What's she supposed to say? What's she supposed to do? Fuck whatever he feels for Gerard. He loves her most.

He loves her so much that he never makes fun of the way she says "Joisey" and he always makes sure she has vegetarian gummi bears and he bought a pink prom dress and wore it to her prom with a pink bow in his hair, while she wore the tux. He loves her so much that he won't say Gee's name during sex even when she tries to make him. He loves her so much that when she has cramps, he'll rub her back, and where her neck cramps too, and calls her shoulder blades her wings, and he never ever laughs at how much she loves Jersey, no matter how much he laughs at everything else.

For her eighteenth birthday, he took her into his favorite tattoo shop and told her she could have anything she wanted. Jamia knew he was figuring on dropping all the cash he had and everything he could borrow on giving her a complicated Jake Bannon design, maybe all over her back, black and white, and she was fucking tempted, because all she'd wanted for so long was a Jake Bannon design on her back, or her arm, or her leg, or anywhere.

Instead, she had Frank's name tattooed on the inside of her lower lip, and again between her first finger and middle finger. The lip tattoo made it hard to kiss for a while, then faded away, but his name is still blurry on her hand, the hand he always holds.

She hates it when groupies and scene queens hit on her man in front of her, because they don't think she's good enough for him. They think she's fat and ugly, and hate her. She's not a fucking moron. She could fuck them up, jump them after a show, stab their skinny asses in their short skirts and fishnets and Revlon eyeliner. But she doesn't, because violence never solved anything, and anyway she's actually got Frank. She's got him, they don't, and that makes their lives empty, and her life full.

Jamia also hates it when vegetarians wear leather, and eat marshmallows. But she doesn't actually care, because it's their lives, and their social statements, so instead of saying anything, she just takes her gorgeous other half and digs her fingernails into his baby skin and licks his neck just like the first time.