I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but

Host:
The night was thick with smoke and the slow ache of jazz. The kind of night that hides secrets inside saxophone notes and soft lamplight.
In a dim corner of a forgotten New Orleans club, a record spun — Billie Holiday’s voice, fragile and bruised, curling through the air like cigarette haze. The audience was gone; the last drinkers had left. All that remained was the ghost of melody and the quiet hum of memory.

At a table by the stage, Jack sat, his coat thrown carelessly over the chair, a glass of bourbon untouched in front of him.
Across from him, Jeeny leaned on the table, her eyes following the vinyl’s slow, eternal revolution.

The record crackled, and Billie whispered through the static:
"I never hurt nobody but myself, and that’s nobody’s business but my own."

Jeeny: “Billie Holiday said that once — in an interview. Not as a lyric, but as a confession.”

Jack: “Yeah. Sounds like the anthem of every broken soul who ever tried to live free.”

Jeeny: “Or the excuse of someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

Jack: “Maybe the two are the same thing.”

Host: The record hissed softly, as though the past itself were trying to breathe again.
The lights above flickered low — one bulb humming like a tired note.

Jack: “You know, she wasn’t wrong. The world loves to preach about compassion but can’t mind its own damn business. They called her a sinner for her scars.”

Jeeny: “She hurt herself because the world hurt her first, Jack. Addiction wasn’t freedom. It was a wound singing.”

Jack: “And still, she made beauty from it.”

Jeeny: “That’s what makes it so unbearable. She bled in public, and people called it art. Then punished her for it.”

Host: The rain began outside, tapping the window glass in syncopated rhythm, like an afterthought to the music. The neon sign outside buzzed, its reflection trembling across the wet street — red letters spelling out Blue Room.

Jack: “So what are you saying? That pain isn’t private?”

Jeeny: “No pain ever is. We all ripple into each other. What we do to ourselves touches others, whether we mean it or not.”

Jack: “That’s the myth of community. Everyone wants to claim pieces of you — your success, your collapse — but no one wants your solitude.”

Jeeny: “Solitude’s fine. Destruction isn’t.”

Jack: “She wasn’t trying to destroy herself. She was trying to survive herself. There’s a difference.”

Jeeny: “There’s also a choice.”

Host: The music shifted — “Strange Fruit” came on. The air grew heavier, charged with the unspeakable weight of memory and injustice.

Jack’s voice lowered, roughened by empathy he wouldn’t admit to.

Jack: “You ever think some people aren’t built to be healed? That their only peace is in expression — even if it kills them?”

Jeeny: “You mean artists like Billie?”

Jack: “Like anyone who feels too much and finds no place to put it.”

Jeeny: “Then art becomes their coffin.”

Jack: “No — their confession.”

Host: The rain quickened, the sound of it a mournful percussion against the walls. The record spun on, her voice trembling like a candle flame.

Jeeny: “I loved her voice. Every note cracked but still standing — like she was telling the truth even when it hurt to speak.”

Jack: “That’s why it mattered. She didn’t hide behind pretty lies.”

Jeeny: “But she hid behind pain.”

Jack: “Because pain listens when the world doesn’t.”

Host: The bartender began wiping down the counter, his reflection faint in the bottles — a silent witness to too many late-night philosophies.

Jeeny: “You defend her, Jack, but think about what she’s saying — ‘I never hurt nobody but myself.’ That’s not freedom. That’s isolation dressed as defiance.”

Jack: “It’s ownership. She’s saying her suffering’s hers alone. She refuses pity, control, judgment.”

Jeeny: “But that’s still a kind of cage — pride instead of bars.”

Jack: “Better than letting the world script your tragedy for you.”

Jeeny: “You really think she wanted that kind of solitude? To be legendary and utterly alone?”

Jack: “No. But I think she accepted it as the cost of being true.”

Host: The record skipped once, twice — a small imperfection that felt intentional, as if the universe had hiccuped in grief.

Jeeny: “Do you think it’s bravery or surrender — to claim your wounds and tell the world to stay out?”

Jack: “Both. Maybe bravery’s just surrender with purpose.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “And maybe surrender’s just the last way to control your own story.”

Host: The two of them sat in silence for a long time. Only the rain and Billie’s fading voice filled the space between them.

Jack stared into his glass — the liquid trembling faintly from the rhythm of the music.

Jack: “You know, people like her… they carry the burden of feeling too deeply. Society calls them weak, but they’re the ones who absorb everyone’s pain.”

Jeeny: “Empaths mistaken for addicts.”

Jack: “Addicts mistaken for sinners.”

Jeeny: “And sinners mistaken for truth-tellers.”

Host: A small, bitter laugh escaped him — the kind that hides a bruise.

Jack: “Maybe that’s why she said it — to draw a line. To tell the world: ‘You can take my voice, but not my pain.’”

Jeeny: “And the tragedy is — the world took both.”

Host: The record ended, the needle scraping the center in quiet rhythm — the sound of something finished but refusing to die.

Jeeny stood, walked to the player, and lifted the arm gently, setting the room into silence.
The smoke curled upward in the still air — slow, ghostly, eternal.

Jack: “You think she was wrong?”

Jeeny: “No. I think she was exhausted.”

Jack: “And maybe that’s what honesty sounds like.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s what heartbreak sounds like.”

Host: She turned back to him, her face lit softly by the neon reflection from the rain-soaked street. Her eyes — dark, luminous — carried both grief and grace.

Jeeny: “The world failed her, Jack. It celebrated her voice and ignored her pain. We still do that. We love the art but not the artist’s humanity.”

Jack: “Because humanity’s messy. But music is manageable.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And we forget that sometimes the art is the wound, not the cure.”

Host: The rain slowed, the world outside softening into calm. The air inside the club smelled of whiskey and rain and ghosts.

Jack: “So what was she really saying, Jeeny?”

Jeeny: “She was saying she belonged to herself — even in her breaking. That her self-destruction was still an act of agency in a world that tried to own her.”

Jack: “Freedom through pain.”

Jeeny: “Freedom despite it.”

Host:
They stood in silence, watching the rain ease off the windows — the reflections of old posters and broken dreams shimmering in retreat.
In that silence, Billie’s defiance became something more than rebellion; it became a hymn to self-possession, to the right to suffer privately, to exist imperfectly.

Her voice still lingered in the air, as though refusing to vanish completely.
And between Jack and Jeeny, the echo of her truth hung like a low, final note:

That to hurt oneself is not always destruction, but sometimes declaration,
that the soul’s autonomy is both its glory and its grief,
and that the world may judge your fall, but it will never understand your flight.

Host:
The needle rested.
The rain stopped.
And the night held its breath —
listening, still, for the woman who had turned pain into song and solitude into freedom.