No Expectations [Keith Richards & Brian Jones]

IV. Like A Rolling Stone

Lana believed that I was going to be the one who took her life. According to her Death was a woman, who looked just like me- blond hair with gentle traits- , so how could she be sure it wasn't me all along, who would kill her? 

Since I met her, Lana had a strange fascination with Death- the state rather than any mythological theory. She wanted to know what it felt like and tried out her limits many times. Bo and I did too to a degree, but not like her. Lana was balancing on a tightrope over the river Styx, while we only sat in a very unsteady boat.  On some days I nearly thought she wanted to fall in and embrace whatever lurked underneath the surface, yet Lana wasn't suicidal in any way. It all was about a rush for her- a kick -a high. After all living seemed so much sweeter after narrowly escaping death. 

It wasn't only the drugs, though Cocaine was what got her in the end- somebody once said to me years later that Lana's nose probably held more holes than a golf course and he probably hadn't been so wrong.  At first it were the pills that kept you awake the whole night, but soon after we met Bo Lana saw her chance at new things, and she discovered cocaine, which only strengthened her need for the next big rush, made her forget any dangers and the excitement so much bigger.

Drugs weren't for her a mean to numb herself, because Lana had nothing to numb. She really only wanted excitement and to see how far she could go with making it out alive.

This quest took the strangest forms sometimes... one thing I had witnessed that had surprised me as much as it had scared me was, when she told a bloke to strangle her while they were having sex. She was edging him on and on until he nearly suffocated her. There were marks on her neck the next day, but Lana didn't care, she referred to it as "totally worth it". There's a short line between dying and living, where you're still alive enough to catch a glimpse of death and she toyed with it many times. 

It scared me, because I didn't want to lose her, but at the same time I never expected to get very old either. We weren't the people who one day would sit together in a garden behind a detached house, chat and drink tea while we watched our grandchildren play.

Our candle was lid on both ends and would long burn out before we could even think of grandchildren. The worst was Lana was the one who had lid hers. Mine's and Bo's were only a consequence of how we had grown up.

Lana had a family -  a good one, a loving one. Though her father had died in a working accident, when she had been about twelve maybe, her mother had tried everything to keep her and her brother happy. I've met her only a couple of times, even though I had lived with them for quite a while. Lana's mother worked the late shift at a cafe or something to earn some more money, so that she could offer both her children a better future. She was a very dedicated woman and couldn't be held responsible for anything. She really had tried her best, but Lana couldn't be tied up.