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February 2017




  

Dazed The Story Of A Grunge Rocker


DAZED The Story of a Grunge Rocker

 

There was no sun in the sky, nothing but deliberate gray above the green that had turned to mush. Grossness clung to everything, just like smack clung internally to my gut.

Change had been inside of me all along, but I never saw it. Halfway back to the lifeless hole, I made Toots pull over by a gully full of rushing rainwater. The gully sat back from the shoulder of the highway, far enough into the green of the algae and damp weeds to make what I was going to do just one more unnoticed event that would drown with all others.

I jumped out of the station wagon, leaving the passenger door open. Toots followed, the engulfing gray darkness closing in on us the farther away from the highway we got. I reached the edge of the gully, thought about Kristelle, thought about Hank and all the negative shit that had made me leave home, all the fucking pain that would surface again once the smack completely drained from my body. I'd sweat. I'd puke. I'd try everything to end the convulsing in my already nervous stomach. I'd want to nod off, just to get away, but then, I would find myself right back where I'd started, in all the crap, in all the pain, settling beneath the semen and sallow, scabbed skin.

The doctors could never find anything physically wrong with me, but I knew it had to be something. No one suffered devastation for the fuck of it, especially not Eric Peterson. Then my hand pulled the works from my leather jacket, and I stared long and hard at what I needed, its pull constant, without pleasure, just bruising pain pounding above my thighs. Nothing other than losing my son hurt like this did.

Toots never said a word. I couldn't say for sure if he was even breathing. I pitched my works, including the loose cannon's big score, into the water and watched me drain away without the need for the give of a vein, for I was already shooting through the gully.

I stuck my hand back into the inner pocket of my leather jacket, pulled out the crucifix, kissed it once, leaving my lips to linger on the body of Christ, then Christ, too, followed the path of my works into the water and rushed downstream.

Yea, though I walk through the gully of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Toots leaned forward.

I'd forgotten he had been standing behind me. He was as quiet as a whisper, and then he spoke.

"Better?"

"A raw and raucous tale of a Grunge Rocker from someone who lived the life." Monte A. Melnick, Ramones tour manager and author of "On The Road with the Ramones."

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