When Axel Riley was five years old, his mother took him on his first bus ride, or at least the first that he would remember. He was thrilled to be so high above the cars. The view, even in the light rain, was better than riding on his father’s shoulders, and the driver didn’t ask him to stop drumming the back of the chair or the window like his father did when Axel would play bongos on his head. His mother seemed to be in her own world, crying a little and every once in a while, smiling down at Axel, stroking his hair, which annoyed Axel, who only wanted to run up and down and see all the different views from all the different windows. His mother wouldn’t let him, pulling him back to their seat whenever he started to dart away. Then someone in the back turned up their boombox. Axel hadn’t really noticed the music before. He was used to music while moving—the light jazz his father listened to in the car and the grunge music his mother preferred. He could mimic the opening chords of “Take Five” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” equally well. But when other passengers began to hum along, Axel took notice. He stopped fidgeting and watched as his mother started laughing and singing softly, “I think I can make it now.” By the time they got to her lawyer’s office, Axel had forgotten this small miracle, recalling only the joy of drawing in the condensation caused by pressing his nose against the window.

In third grade, his father invited Axel’s friend from school Beth and her mother over for dinner. His father and Beth’s mother were cleaning up while listening to En Vogue, moving in a way that could be interpreted as dancing, and enjoying coffees flavored to the point of dessert wines. Meanwhile, Beth and Axel had retreated to Axel’s room and played House and then Doctor. Neither of them understood the rules and thus, both bored quickly. For House, they read papers, underpaid house cleaners, and complained about bills, ignoring their pretend children. For Doctor, Beth listened to Axel’s chest, looked at his throat, wrote his several prescriptions and then a bill that Axel pretended to take home and complain about. They moved on to Connect-Four and Battleship until Beth asked if she could see his penis. He showed her, she laughed, then he laughed (though he wasn’t sure why). After an awkward moment when he wasn’t sure if the polite thing was to keep his penis out or ask her to show her vulva, Axel pulled up his pants and suggested Settlers of Catan, which they both agreed was far more fun. 

In April of his sophomore year of high school, Axel and his entire school waited outside for firefighters to deem the buildings safe to reenter. It was a beautiful day, when arms begged to be shown only to retreat into the warmth of oversized sweaters. Axel wore his grandfather’s button-up work shirt and a skinny tie, only somewhat ironically. He waited on the grass with his geometry class, blissfully not learning theorems. He and Brit McKenzie talked about The Strokes, the heyday of CBGB’s, and gay marriage in the Netherlands. Axel was admiring Brit’s beautiful braids hanging, neatly pointing to her perfectly soft, rounding belly and low-cut jeans, when Brit said, “I guess I need a passport now.” Axel coughed a few times, relying on his intermittent hay fever to appear as cool as any 16-year-old boy can be, having just learned he would always be just her friend—supportive and loyal and always a little in awe. He had not yet dared to explore his Orlando-like dreams of floating between lovers and genders. 

At college, his third-year composition professor once said, in his thick Plains accents, that Axel was “so full of unrealized potential,” and Axel believed him, in the way we believe those who are more experienced or older or who we hope might save us from ourselves. But Axel was doing the best he could, even if he didn’t know that yet. However, his fingers knew it and his brain knew it, as it slowly took away instruments and turned symphonies into almost compelling duets for Russian bassoons and timpanis—the darkness and profundity dripping from each tiresome note. After the student showcase, Axel felt deflated and fully himself. As he drank the zinfandel that would be remembered by two influential donors for its notes of cranberry, licorice, and steel, Axel, feeling for the first time entirely in his own skin, walked over to the second-year violist and let his right pinkie brush lightly against the violist’s left pinkie. They locked eyes briefly before Axel looked away, said a polite goodbye, and walked out toward the bus stop, hoping the violist would follow, run his calloused left hand up Axel’s chest, and wake tomorrow tangled in Axel’s worn cotton-poly sheets both hungry and reluctant to leave. 

It was raining heavily when Axel landed in Amsterdam. Somehow, the weather conditions were just right, like a thin blanket of slight discomfort that fit perfectly around his shoulders, allowing him to feel simultaneously disgruntled and at home. He boarded the train from Schiphol Airport to the city center, wondering if Brit would have dinner for them or if he should have gotten something before taking his seat. Jet lag ran thick through his head. He tried to stay awake by writing in his journal, by trying to capture the sounds of the terminals, the passengers, and the train pulling into and out of the station. He wondered whether he could recreate the exhalation of train doors with a French horn. His mind wandered back to “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys, its subtle intro with the French horn and Brian Wilson’s high notes lulling him by pure recollection into a drool-induced slumber. By the time he woke, he was three stations past Brit’s. He wiped his mouth, tried stumbling through basic Dutch before realizing the conductor and other passengers all spoke fluent English, and eventually was able to send Brit an SMS message by borrowing a stranger’s phone. As he recounted the story with self-deprecating humor, Axel would forget to mention the horn or Wilson or even his budding composition. Brit’s partner Lieke would laugh with him, and he would welcome a second bowl of white bean soup, smiling, still half asleep.  

Axel’s first commission came from an unexpected source, his ex-boyfriend’s new partner, a filmmaker who wanted a “turgid” score. Axel’s ex had wanted children and a mortgage and the kind of stability that Axel was running away from, and it seemed the filmmaker also wanted these things and frequent sex. The fact that the filmmaker did not feel threatened by Axel angered Axel, who felt very threatened by this toned but exceedingly hairy, confident man who seemed unaware that he was not classically beautiful, which, Axel begrudgingly admitted to himself, only made the filmmaker even sexier. Axel wanted to sabotage the film with discordant themes, but then he watched the movie without the sound and let the striking images wash over him. It was, he again had to admit, stunningly, heartbreakingly beautiful. Axel felt replenished, unworthy, and entirely unready but aching for the challenge. 

When his cousin’s agency called and asked for a jingle for an anti-nausea medication, Axel groaned. Alka-Seltzer had set the bar in the 1970s. The plop, the fizz, the peppiness that somehow did not grate. All else would pale pink in comparison. His cousin pointed out that independent film scores and the occasional performance art piece did not pay the bills, the rent, or even the overwrought café orders Axel preferred. However much he hated trying to compete with a classic, Axel agreed to do it. There were only two minor chords—a show of considerable restraint on his part—and no obscure instruments, save for the children’s xylophone that rounded out the final notes perfectly. Bing, bang, bing! The agency was thrilled. The medicine sold millions. The music was forgotten except for the xylophone. Children now would decades later recreate the bing, bang, bing and laugh with nostalgia. Axel thought back to his professor and wondered if this was the potential he had referred to. 

Axel was asleep when his sister-in-law called squealing. “Your song, you know the one that you recorded with that red-haired girl? No, not that one. The one who went to Brazil or Bermuda or was it Burma? Yes, yes, her! Oh, she is in real estate now. Oh, dear. Well, she is not important.” (“Her family and friends might disagree,” Axel interjected.) “Oh, God, Axel, stop teasing me. I wasn’t…that song was used as the backdrop to our marketing manager’s PowerPoint today! PowerPoint?! I mean, I felt so proud!” Axel, on the other hand, felt only confusion. Would he get royalties? Had he unwittingly given permission? Was permission his to give? Why did Kayla go to Benin anyway? Or was it Belgium? No, she got a grant to study trees—that much he could remember. It was trees, right? 

When Sara left his apartment he was sad and relieved. He carefully laid the needle down on a Milton Babbitt record Sara refused to appreciate and sighed. He had forgotten how it was to share a life with another person. How much joy there was and energy it took. He thought, perhaps, too much of both. Like a muscle, he would work up to a time when he would instinctively nuzzle her neck that was newly bared by a fresh haircut or welcome the burrowing of her cold feet under his legs as they read or pretended to read The New Yorkers piled purposefully haphazard on her coffee table, all the while wanting and waiting for her feet to move slowly, cleverly, almost dancelike to his willing crotch.  

Axel had come to San Francisco with his husband who was at a conference. He hopped the tourist bus on a whim, climbed the stairs to the open-air top, and put his headphones in. The pre-recorded tour guide was slightly ahead of the bus driver who was not wearing headphones, Axel noted thankfully. He enjoyed knowing where they were going before they came to it. He was reveling in a near-forgotten history from the Barbary Coast days, when he recognized the deconstructed children’s TV show theme song with its piano, gamelan, and bass. It suited the mood of tourists; it was perfectly pessimistically cheery. He did not understand the feeling that was washing over him. It might have been pride, if he had composed it for this moment, but he’d wanted this piece, originally titled “Solvang” and four hours long, to be his Nixon in China, his Koyaanisqatsi. His failed opera lingered in the back rooms of college music libraries, a small notation on the Wikipedia page Brit and Lieke maintained while denying any involvement. These 20-second phrases on this bus, however, were being heard by thousands of visitors. Each intermission, he would try to discern the other riders’ reactions. Were they smiling? Were they annoyed? Were they intrigued? Were they satisfied? Was he?