The Guitar
By Ariana Rathan
My best friend can be described in just four different words. Jude Patrick Barry, short, awkward, guitar boy. Those four simple words speak loud volumes if you know Jude. He is short, 5’4 (he tells everyone he’s 5’5), he is awkward (he can’t have a normal conversation without saying something random), and lastly “guitar boy”, the greatest description of them all. Playing guitar is Jude’s personality trait, it’s his life purpose, it’s the air he breathes.
Jude’s love for music is like no other. It shapes him as a person, it shapes his clothing style, his way of understanding people.
No one will ever understand Jude Barry as much as music understands him.
Jude Barry wears the same thing every day, and as the common saying goes,” Same thing, different fonts”.
Jude wears the same 3 pairs of Dickies that are just cuffed a little too high above his ankle. A navy blue pair passed down from a friend, a brown pair, and a black pair that he bought with his dad. He wears the same three pairs of pants because he is skinny and can rarely find his size anywhere in stores. At church, we all mock him for wearing the same ten shirts every time we see him, which are band tees that have been in his possession almost all of his life. At church, we all mock him for wearing the same ten shirts. They consist of band tees that have been in his possession almost all of his life. He wears the same Vans socks and shoes, which are black slip on.
When Jude smiles, one cheek goes up higher than the other one, a crooked smile. When he stands he puts his hands in his pockets and leans back. He has the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. His eyes are things you can easily get lost in. They’re not a harsh icy blue or too bright of a blue. Their blue is similar to the one of the sky. The kind of blue that welcomes you in to give you a hug, the kind of blue that allows all your pain to disappear.
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His hair is a soft brown like the color of a 300-year-old tree. It’s slightly damaged from how much he used to dye and bleach it from when he was a kid. He grew it out during the summer, it was fluffy and would bounce up and down as he would walk or run. We would always joke around and tease each other, he would step on my shoes and his hair always got in his eyes giving me an advantage. When he would play guitar, his hair would always get in his face, but it suited him. He would aggressively jolt his head back upstage to move his hair out of the way, but for some reason, it just looked like it belonged. I will never forgive him for cutting it.
Jude found his love for music when he first started playing the guitar. Ever since he learned to play, it’s rare to see him without it. He will play his guitar sitting down, standing up, upside down, backward, and he will even play it when he’s lying down. His relationship with his guitar is similar to a lifelong friendship. He knows his guitar, he speaks the language of the guitar. He holds it with such care and ease and softness.
A pretty lady she is, a soft seafoam green that seems brand new and untouched even though Jude plays it every single day. He strums up and down with his pick. Sometimes just all down strums which are usually during the bridges. Sometimes he will strum individual strings, and sometimes he will do whatever his heart desires, or what the guitar tells him to do.
When he plays music, I’ve never seen him look more at home, more at peace. Every time he strums a new chord he looks to his guitar and dips it upstage. He looks at it longingly as if it’s just him and his guitar against the world. His playing always brought me a sense of comfort.
Over the summer I had a bad workday. (During the summer, at work, I was having a terrible day) Customers were being rude to me left and right, my boss yelled at me and my coworkers gave me attitude, all I wanted to do was leave. I asked Jude if he wanted to call on break, just to get someone to talk to in order to distract myself. He accepted my Facetime and was sitting in the dark.
I could barely see the bright blue of his eyes and only a tint of his hair and a hint of his silhouette. I asked him where he was and he told me he was in his garage. “Why are you in the garage?” I exclaimed laughing. “This is the only place that was quiet and had privacy,” he said. I was taken back and asked him why he would go out of his way to sit in the garage just to talk to me. He simply answered something along the lines of,” You needed to talk, so I’m here”.
Jude will never know this for as long as he lives, but at that moment tears started to form in my eyes. When I was trying to stop myself from crying, Jude just started playing his guitar. Simply picking the chords and looking longingly at his guitar as he always does. As Jude got lost in his music, I got lost as well. Every pick and every note made every single worry drift away from my mind one by one.
By the end of my break, I was smiling and had completely forgotten about the horror of a day. Before I hung up, I said thank you to him and of course, he said something snarky but smiled at me. It was that same crooked smile and those same sky blue eyes that looked to mine, speaking words that hadn’t been spoken. I smiled back at him again and hung up.
How I long for the next time I get to listen to him play guitar.
And how I wish he would stop avoiding my calls.
