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I started when I was eight or nine, taking the old buckets that Daryl brought home whenever he was doing construction projects on the house that he never finished.
I started drumming on them behind the trailer just to let out anger and steam.
I got really proficient at it, using sticks at first, then utensils, anything I could find to beat on the buckets with.
That was one thing that was always present in my house:
Music.
Heavy, soulful, rich rock or metal. There was something about that music that spoke to me. It made me feel as though I wasn’t alone, that there was someone out there who was singing the lyrics to my life and exactly how I felt, even though I was only eight years old.
By the time I was nine up to eleven years old, I had improved spectacularly. I managed to get a cheap kit in the trailer out back, having fully taught myself. And by the time I was eleven years old, I was playing constantly.
Music had become my primary outlet.
When I was on the drums, it felt like I was flying. I could close my eyes and take myself far away from there, to a place where I could enjoy whatever I wanted.
By twelve years old, when I started picking up smoking, it was mostly because I did odd jobs and small hustles, delivering packages, things under the table where I could keep the cash.
By that time I had already started gaining some new friends, other poor boys like me from God knows where, maybe surrounding trailers and the neighborhood, or people that were running to escape their lives too.
One of my original friends came back around.
Malcolm. He was a good guy, two years older than me, and he was basically a big brother to me.
Even as a young boy the guy had charisma like no other person I’ve met, and he was very empathetic in a way that made you feel like you could talk to him about anything.
The other four boys felt the same way even though they had their own issues, and basically followed along.
When it was just us we would start jamming out in there.
I was on the drums. Eddie Patrick Murphy, who got tats on his neck at an early age and piercings, smoked like a fucking sailor.
He was the charming extrovert, always talking about women he had sex with.
A lot of us thought that he was making that shit up, but as we got older we saw real fast that wasn’t the case.
The guy stood on business and women loved him.
Sean was crazy.
He always wore these very light turquoise contacts. No idea where he got them from. He always talked about how he wanted to shave his teeth into fangs, and when we were little he used to wear those vampire fangs.
That was his persona. He was high energy or had that shit they call ADHD or maybe a personality disorder.
I’m not really sure, but it didn’t matter.
When us boys got together in that trailer, outside of us having beers and smoking, we were a team.
Playing my drums filled the space with percussion that spoke to our souls.
Malcolm sang and Eddie backed up his singing.
Sean played the guitar and backup vocals as well. And then James came in afterwards.
He was a fat kid who had eating problems and was very broken.
He wouldn’t tell anybody what happened to him and he never really talked.
He just sat there with snot running down his nose and curly hair that was always matted.
He had lice those early days from when we first met him, so we shaved his hair off, put dirt in his head, and used Raid to make sure none of us had it.
But we didn’t care about any of that shit. And the funniest thing happened…
A group of little boys, just the six of us, became the closest family I’ve ever known outside of Gia, of course. They’re the only people I could talk to about her, about what she did for me, and they never judged me. We never judged each other.
People today talk about safe spaces and shit and I hate that term because it doesn’t mean what it actually does.
Family.
The people who you feel safe with, the people who give you purpose and make you want to be better and give you space to be yourself, that’s what safe spaces are. It’s not a place. It’s people. And that’s what my bandmates were for me.
With them I had so many great memories. They made up most of my life that I came to know.
At fourteen I got my first tattoo, and it was in the back of my trailer on my chest.
I showed it to my friends. They showed me all the ones that they got. A lot of the older kids already had their own. My mom and Uncle Daryl didn’t know about it. By then I was learning to love life, living on my own terms.
At sixteen I got emancipated. Since I was mostly already living in the trailer anyway and I had my own money that I stashed in the trailer, I was able to move out and get a place with the guys.
It was a big double trailer where we could do our gigs or practice.
That’s when, at sixteen, our band officially formed.
By this time we were already steady doing local gigs, not just playing on the street anymore, but as a band playing at different events. We had already gotten our name out there. It makes my heart leap with joy every time I think about it.
“Yo!!!!” I remember Sean busting down the trailer doors, his black hair wild with tufts of blue waving around.
By this time he had already gotten his canines filed with those caps that made him look like he had perpetually sharp fangs. He was very skinny even though the dude was 6’1”. But honestly that look suited him.
James was on the keyboard practicing. Funny, now you can’t shut the guy up sometimes, but when he’s in the flow with his music he’s as quiet as a mouse.
He had put on some muscle that squared out his fat and made him look like a beefy dude. I was the tallest out of all of them, but James looked like the muscle.
“Look at this shit!!!!” Sean said excitedly, jumping up and down. His chains, all ten of them that he was wearing around his neck, were clinking and rattling.
“Bro, shut the fuck up,” Connor said, lying on the bed on the other side of the trailer.
“Buck, can you believe this?” Sean said.
When he settled down enough for me to even see what he was looking at, I noticed the video on his phone. He held it up. It was one of the popular band members.
“Is that Ultra Frost?” I asked.
Sean leaped up and down, clasping his hands to his mouth, looking absolutely jived. “That’s Dan, man! Fuckin’ Dan!!!!” he said, pointing to the screen.
By then the other boys were interested.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Malcolm asked.
“Fucking Dan!!!! Oh my fucking God!!!” Sean screamed at the top of his lungs to the ceiling of the trailer.
“Wait, Daniel Garten?” James asked, looking up from his keyboard and standing up to come over.
“Yes, bro!!!! Daniel… fuckin… Garten!!!” Sean replied as I started smiling from ear to ear.
“Kelly!!!” I yelled out to Connor, who was still sleeping.
“Fuck off,” he said sleepily, his back still turned to us.
Eddie came over and me and most of the boys were now looking at the phone as one of the biggest names in rock was reacting to us playing on a subway one of our original songs.
Malcolm ran his hand along his short fade and looked at me. His blue eyes looked watery.
“Oh my God. You know what this is going to do for us? Holy shit!!!” Malcolm said, hugging me and slapping my back hard.
“Yeah boy!!!!” Sean yelled out, jumping and punching the air.
“Holy fuck,” James said with a big smile on his face.
Eddie lit a cigarette, and with those ghostly eyes of his he looked at me and nodded to himself. His floral neck tats with a sword through them looked almost complete, as he had planned to get his whole neck tatted up.
The only thing he didn’t want to touch outside the piercings was his face. Dude actually really did look like Elvis, and in that moment I understood the comparison now.
Elvis with pink hair, but still.
“A lot of the girls are talking about you, Murphy,” James said, nudging Eddie.
He just smiled to himself, blushing. The guy acted as though he were shy, but I’ve seen him around women and how he can talk their panties off.
That was a highlight for us. One of the times when we felt as though we were moving up in the world. And oh boy, did we move up fast.
Our band Black Marrow broke out in mid-June, the year I turned eighteen. It was our first club night. We had never played at a club before and I was so fucking nervous. My hair was dyed black, long down to my back. I loved that style. It made me feel powerful.
It was filmed and of course we blew up on social media. Attention spiked immediately, and by late 2025 we were being paid weekly for club residencies and we only skyrocketed from there.
My life as I knew it had become the very life I had wanted that I never imagined I would have as a little boy. Me and my friends, we were so happy.
It didn’t take long.
Not long at all.
We were recognized in public. Women came up to me.
So many women. I didn’t know it was possible, and I thought that when people show it on the TVs and in movies they always make it look overdramatized, but it really is like that.
Women just flocked to us. Some of the comments in the mail that I got actually scared me at first. Women sent me naked pictures and it was so hard.
I already had discovered self-pleasure a very long time ago, but I didn’t know it was possible for me to go as hard as I was going with the endless supply of women who sent their videos to me and told me the things they wanted to do to me.
And then it wasn’t just the videos. It was the women that would come to our traveling RV. We had our own RV, bought and paid for. It was large and we had parties in it. Black Marrow on the sides with a picture of us all on there for our album. We had so many albums.