3
Being emancipated at sixteen meant that I had to grow up fast, and grow up I did.
I must have done every kind of drug on the market, and under it.
Anything anyone gave me, anything I could get my hands on, I'd knock them back, always chasing that feeling because it was good.
Imagine: people tell you your whole life that there's a heaven where you'll have endless happiness and fun, where the love you feel you never got is in full supply, and everyone around you experiences the same thing.
Of course you'd want that. I lived that. But the thing about being high up… is that there's always a down. See, I never understood how bad my down was until it was so heavily contrasted by my high.
Connor was chasing it, too, and for a while, he and I got close because he was always introducing me to shit.
Like the time Malcolm told us to stay away from that underground spot in New York, but we went anyway.
Connor hooked me up with this new synthetic called Aether-VR, a more beefed up version of the Neon Sight.
They were prostitutes, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. It was insane. I was fucking one girl’s throat while Connor was fucking the ass of that same girl.
Connor called it a "marathon."
Then it was like a conveyor belt.
I’d fuck one girl doggy-style, and then the girls were all lined up. I’d go to the left to another one on my knees, then another, and another, until I finished in the last one, seeing who I would finish in.
It was like a game of Russian Roulette, except it was actually "bitches".
I had no idea if they were Russian or not. So, we called the game Russian Soufflé.
Fucking those girls while high on that drug was a trip. The room would warp; it really was like VR, but you didn't need the mechanical machines. You just thought of where you wanted to go, and the drug took you there.
You want to be on Mars?
You’re on Mars.
You want to be on Titan, or in the middle of a black hole, or on the accretion disc of one, fucking these girls?
You’re fucking there. The girls could look like aliens or whatever you imagined, but you were actually there. It felt amazing. It felt fucking amazing.
Then came the coming. Coming in that state was indescribable.
It’s like you’re getting wrecked all at the same time.
Your dick is as hard as it can be, harder than humanly possible, and your whole body tenses up as the cum shoots out of you.
It feels like it’s being pulled out on a very long, tight rope that’s taking your insides with it, making the orgasm last so much longer.
I would do anything to have that again.
I wanted that.
Needed that.
For a long time, I thought I didn't need it, but I was always chasing it. It was expensive, and Connor knew where to get it.
Malcolm pulled me aside one time. "Hey dude, that shit that you’re on? You gotta stop," he said.
"I play fine, so why are you riding my ass?" I argued.
"That shit is bad news," Malcolm countered. "You do it once and you drop it. You can't keep doing it. People have died on that shit."
I didn't listen. Malcolm tried to talk to me, but I shrugged him off and punched him. "Don't fucking touch me!"
I didn't like people touching me. Men grabbing me.
It put me in a rage.
Some of my mother’s man-friends always did that. When I tried to run away from them, they would try to grab at me, and I’d have to lock myself in my trailer.
Or when Uncle Daryl came home drunk and mad, he would blame me for shit I didn't even do. He’d grab me by my neck or my arm and throw me into the wall, asking why I touched his shit and where his beer was.
Yes, half the time it was me, but most of the time it was my mom or her fucking friends she always had over, locked in her room.
The only thing that gave me joy is that right after her friends would leave, Uncle Daryl would happen to come home and fuck her.
He was too drunk to notice how cream-pied my mother was. Or maybe he was into it; who the fuck knows? Even when I was small, they wouldn't even wait to go to the bedroom. Daryl would grab my arm and throw me aside off the couch, bend over my mother, and start fucking her right there in front of me.
Of course, I made myself scarce. One of the times I watched because... I don't know. I was curious.
It looked like fun, a "grown-up" thing. Until I was introduced to it, it seemed out of touch, but now I get what it was all about.
I get why they couldn't wait.
I get why people threw their lives away for it.
But it wasn't all bad like people made it out to be. I think that's just poor people who couldn't handle not having access to those experiences. Here I was, and Malcolm was trying to ruin it for me. It’s not my fault women weren’t checking for him the way they were for me. It’s not my fault he wasn’t as fun as we were.
At some point, he started acting like our mother, telling me I was blowing too much money.
That’s what the fuck it was for!
Why work so hard if we aren't having fun with the money?
All he talked about was opening businesses.
That’s when I realized Malcolm never wanted to stay here.
His idea was to use the band to get into real estate and become a fucking businessman; the same people we said we hated when we were growing up.
I resented him for that.
When I went to Eddie and Sean about Malcolm, they said, "Yeah, he met some girl and he’s been acting different."
That was understandable. So, we stopped inviting him places when we went out.
It was crazy to me that with my little VR drug, after Sean tried it once, he told me, "Nah, I’m done with that shit."
And he was one of the craziest out of all of us, next to Connor. Sean claimed it was "too heavy," only for him to fucking fall out of the penthouse he was renting that one weekend and kill himself.
At that point, he might as well have been on the drug.
…
That fucked me up, man.
I was high as shit when I looked at the news and saw: Sean Mitchell O’Reilly found dead after plummeting from the 42nd floor.
It… didn't register at first because… it couldn't be real.
And then it hit us, but barely. Connor didn't take it so well, so we just did more to escape.
The crazy thing is, when we were on our high, Sean was there.
We were all playing!
When we were on tour again and I was playing, Sean was there, right fucking there with us, hyping up the crew with his quick wit and endless jokes.
Before the show, he was himself again; it was like he never left.
He was real!
Alive.
Then we went up on stage, and he was right there on lead guitar with the backup vocals, hyping up the crowd with that high energy, dancing around and flashing his vampire fangs. With that drug, we were all still a team.
It didn't feel like a drug to me; it felt like paradise.
A place where we never had to say goodbye, and all of us were still together and happy.
Too much of a good thing can be bad, I guess.
Connor od’ed and was in a coma for a few months.
It fucked up the band, but we kept going: me, Flanagan, Murphy, and Malcolm.
All of us had our issues.
The next name on the news was James Benjamin Flanagan: assault charges, domestic abuse.
Eddie Patrick Murphy had sexual assault charges, even though he claimed those women were lying just because he dumped them the next day.
I know what that’s like.
You take a bitch who wants to get fucked, you have a good time, you tell her, "Here’s one for the road," and she somehow takes it personally because you won’t call her back.
Knowing the lifestyle you live, they still expect you to somehow wife them up.
When they don't take that well... well, hell knows no fury like a woman scorned.
Thank goodness we had enough money to hire good lawyers.
When Connor came out of the coma, he wasn't the same.
He played bass but only as a backup. I had long since been the main drummer, so it wasn't an issue.
Life was too short, especially with what happened after Sean. It was very jarring for me after I came down from my high, realizing Sean… well… wasn't here anymore.
Sean had so much crazy energy that it just felt empty without him around.
We grew up together; he was one of our brothers. Malcolm was much more quiet after.
The only thing he would do is ask me if I’m "good." I resented him because he always acted like everything was fine.
I wanted to keep it going… keep Sean's spirit alive. Live for him since he couldn't.
And so I did.
Everything crazy I could do… I did.
…
And eight years ago, that changed for me.
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