Untrue
Burial; "Ghost Hardware"; from Goodwill
Many critics have written about the ice-cold, haunted urban landscape evoked by this record: skittering, clacking beats; stretched-out pirate radio a capellas; and the crackle and hiss of dubplates. What dubstep was before the comic bass drops. I encountered Untrue with all of this in mind and fell asleep to it for nights on end in college. I loved—and still love—this record because it’s one of the truly original musical projects of my lifetime, distinct and innovative rather than an echo of another era. But instead of writing about Untrue’s ghosts, I want to write about my own, about how it got me through a particularly confusing and frightening night.
U was my friend from an earlier story—names further changed to prevent identification. We were similar: tow-headed, mischievous, fun-loving kids with radically different family lives. In retrospect, U’s story was a classic tale of the modern American dream, a fall from postwar prosperity—divorce, financial precarity, lack of supervision, and questionable choices. But I didn’t know that then.
In our teenage years, in the hot summer nights, I used to smoke weed with U on the farm where our community corn maze was planted, just right by or inside the greenhouse depending on whether someone left it unlocked. Around midnight we would lay on the ground and look at the stars refracted through the skylight, down the street from the first girl who kissed me unprovoked. The world felt wide open then, full of possibilities, thick with night heat and potential.
We drifted apart for a couple years, but reconnected on the Fourth of July when I was nineteen. U finished his shift at the neighborhood grocery store and came to our annual neighborhood lake party. I spotted him getting a hotdog at the grill and walked over—he had a strange, jittery energy. Later, he told me he was coming down from coke. It helped him stack and unpack boxes, he said, and it was cheaper than the pills he usually used.
As dusk set in and fireworks began, he dosed himself with LSD via a fruit roll-up square, taking in the colors while he sat on a swing. He invited me to his house to smoke weed—his mom was out of town, and he said we could party. A few margaritas deep, I thought it was a good chance to reconnect with a friend I hadn’t spent time with in a while. I dropped some stuff off at my parents' house, then walked over.
Enter E, who arrived at the door at the same time as me. E who graduated with us. E who also looked like U and I, but suddenly gaunt in the post-high school years, sunken eyes hidden behind wraparound shades. E with a brand of a car manufacturer on his hip, sigil heated over a bonfire and misapplied so it looked like a heart, the necrotic mark of his nihilism. E with the connection for brown on the south side. E with track marks hidden under a flannel shirt out-of-character for the heat of the day. E whose mother worked in healthcare and had access to supplies. E the expert.
We chatted idly, got a snack, took a couple of bong rips, then headed to U’s bedroom in the mostly-unfinished basement. U didn’t say what he was doing, but he was fishing something out of an air duct while talking to us. I couldn’t fully understand what was happening, even when he pulled out two plastic bags and a case. E took off his belt.
I recognized the dental syringe since bad teeth ran in my family—I had been shot up with Novocain so many times through the roof of my mouth it might as well be a pincushion. The syringe had a small loop through which you were supposed to place your index finger, and press the heel of your hand against the plunger to inject the person receiving the medicine. I had a feeling E had stolen it from his mother’s work, but never asked.
The ritual had begun. U took out a bent charred spoon and proceeded to cook the tan powder in a way that I had only seen in the movies, flame flicking the underside, water from a crushed Dasani bottle. E made a loose tourniquet with his belt, filled the syringe for U, and gingerly found a vein. There was a kind of beauty in the care he was showing for U. I was horrified, transfixed, curious.
But I was also too stoned. U offered to shoot me up and I declined, citing nausea from opioids (which was true, from when I got my wisdom teeth out). U cut two lines on the desk and offered them to me to snort and I declined, because I had a cold (also true; I could’ve sneezed at any moment and blown all of the heroin away). But I was also afraid—of hepatitis like Lou Reed, of AIDS like Miles Davis, of addiction and lost years like both of them.
I asked the guys to describe how they felt, and except for the occasional dry heaves they said it was the best feeling they experienced in days. U wasn’t using every day, just on “special occasions”. E did it more substantially, more regularly, and would later enlist in the army to kick. U said it was like getting licked by thousands of loving kittens every second, all over his body. As intense as he had become, he was still the sensitive boy I knew underneath.
Then U’s brother K came home and saw what the guys were doing. K who had always tagged along with his brother when we played games in the field or took golf lessons from a neighborhood dad. K who was seventeen. K who asked if he could try it.
For a moment, I felt a surge of protective instinct, of bravery. I almost rescinded my rejection, thinking I’d snort the lines myself to keep him safe. But it was a feeling I was too stoned to act on—K snorted the powder first.
I was morally compromised. I excused myself, claiming a migraine, and retreated to the couch in the sunroom, where U had hosted slumber parties, where his father served us pancakes, where we played video games, where we’d once been innocent. I was haunted by our former selves in this room, stuck in a loop of the dark choices that had brought us to this point.
The lyric to the Janice Ian song cycled through my addled mind: “I learned the truth at seventeen/that love was meant for beauty queens”. I put on “Untrue” to drown it out and pretended to sleep. I was in over my head, but when the resampled R&B singing in “Archangel” came on with the cut-and-paste drum beat and Metal Gear Solid empty shell drops, I felt at peace for a brief while, a couple of hours.
U and E got hungry and drove to the grocery to get something to eat. I stayed at the house with K and watched him vomit some more. I shook him as he nodded off, keeping him awake, making sure he didn’t die. This is before commonly-available naloxone—I would have had no idea what to do if he overdosed. Paranoia had taken me, but is it paranoia if the danger is real? The “I can’t take my eyes off you” sample from “Ghost Hardware” resonated in that moment.
When U and E got back, I had a slice of partially-cooked frozen pizza, and said I had to work in the morning and left. It was maybe 2am. I didn’t have to work; I had to escape. I never told anyone.
Burial taught me there’s beauty in the darkness, that love and care can get you through. It was in that moment that I learned music could be a shield, something that protects but also reminds us how easily, quickly life can change.
Verdict: Keep
Tell me about a moment where things could have gone very differently for you—it doesn’t have to be as dark as this one!