27 Strings

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll?

Hmmm... Sex would be the perfect choice. The rush of dopamine; the taste of her black cherry lipstick on my lips; the tingle of her warm breath on my neck; her tender hands pressing my shoulders down while she rides me; to a faraway place; a place of no return. The ecstatic gasps for air turn into irresistible moans as she climbs higher and higher; towards the apex; towards her climax; and as she reaches the top; she lets go of her worries; setting the caged animal free; releasing herself; the sigh of an orgasm; the sound of satisfaction. I thought about the waitress at the pub. Her sapphire-blue eyes and raven-black hair, perfumed with edgy femininity. Her supple body and perky breasts liberated from her stringent uniform. Two untamed souls finally unleashed from the chains of society into our au naturel environment. But I couldn't drag her along with me, not to where I was going, no to the soulless hell that I was about to enter, with abundant alcohol and drugs to comatose your conscience or any lingering regrets. To abandon her hopes, her ambitions, her identity. The world would dispose her name and re-title her as my girlfriend. The world would forget that she is a breathing soul too, interrogating her with questions concerning me, they won't even consider about asking how she is feeling or what her plans are for the future. She would just become a reference to me. I couldn't allow that to happen, so I scratched Sex off the list.

I wasn't too keen on Drugs so I skipped to Rock 'n Roll. I glared towards my Gibson Les Paul and had a premonition. Crowds were chanting my name, banging on fences in anticipation for the show to start. Blinded by an array of coloured lights, sweating under the spotlight, and feeling the heat of the pyrotechnics, increasing the temperature to a level where one would faint and wake up with a dry mouth. Spending eternity being a bitch to the music, being a bitch to the public, being a bitch to my own devices. Being compressed by immense pressure to attend signings, be interrogated by interviewers, assaulted by the paparazzi (which I would naturally fuck up as self-defence like all rockstars do), be pushed onto charted private jets to do tours (even when it's your parent's anniversary or child's 1st birthday), all while trying to acquire a maximum of 3 hours sleep on a cramped bunk bed inside a sponsored tour bus. Ahhh... the life of a fucking rockstar, a dream come true to those on the outside but a never-ending, torturous nightmare to the victim on the inside. But it is not by choice, I don't want it, I need it, I need to prove my critics wrong. I'm also broke, I spent the last change in my back pocket, rent is due and the landlord is knocking at my door, eviction is the next form of action. I am fucked.

I look away from the Gibson Les Paul with a shudder. There is only one option left – Drugs. But how would I even ask for it? I have never done it before, I don't even know the lingo. If I try too hard then I will look like an officer from the narcotics bureau, and worst-case-scenario, what happens if I unknowingly ask one? Bam! Handcuffs and a jail cell, thank you very much. I bet the gruel won't taste as bad as that warm orange did. Suddenly, a spark ignited my neurons. I recollected seeing a syringe with heroin in it, somewhere. I mentally retraced my steps: I remembered seeing the teenagers at the pub using them; but the image in my head appeared much closer than that, as if I was nearly touching it; I imagined myself walking down Linda Jones Alley, I re-witnessed the body fall which ended up to be a duffel bag. Aha! That's it! I remember seeing the syringe on an item that I found in the duffel bag. I ran and slid onto my knees towards the bag. I unzipped it and examined each object again. It was taped on the wooden frame of the canvas painting. I gently removed the tape and steadily held the syringe. I had paid involuntary attention to how the teenagers in the pub did it. I walked and took a steak knife out of the kitchen cutlery drawer. I sliced a length of string from my drawstring bag, walked into the lounge area and placed the steak knife on top of the coffee table. I tied the string tightly around my left bicep, found the recipient vein, and held the syringe of diacetylmorphine like a doctor that was about to administer an anaesthetic.

I leant against the back of the sofa and quoted the lyrics of De Facto. "My how these tricks turn themselves, in the wake of the inquisition limbless answers inoculated, I've caught mono bobbing for barbed wire, these nasty sores of ataxia will feel the sting of the opiate copulation." The hypodermic needle pierced my skin and then my vein in an undisturbed motion. My thumb gradually pushed the plunger down past three marked lines. I felt untouched by the narcotic, and continued past another three marked lines. My cheeks felt warm as if I were blushing but nothing what I expected from something that you would have to serve jail time, and preventing yourself from becoming someone's bitch, if you were ever caught with it in your possession. I pushed the plunger past another three marked lines. A rush of blood and chemicals went to my head. A sharp dreamlike response of euphoria coated my mind, everything felt fuzzy and good for that moment, while the diacetylmorphine metabolised into 6-Monoacetylmorphine and morphine inside my cerebral cortex. I pushed the plunger to allow the rest of the heroin to run its course through my veins.

A peculiar taste of penicillin took hostage of my taste-buds, could it may have been an aftertaste from the decaying juices of the orange that I ate? Lyrics then occupied the air space like an American Head Charge. "Shut my eyes only once, brought me back up for nothing, yet it always seems like, I'm drawn into it, I can't belong, such a perfect fit, I won't be wrong, holding on in vain, telling me you're scared, of me when I'm god, of me when I'm dead." My eyelids slammed shut like aluminium roller-shutters of flea market stalls when it's closing time. I heard a faint bump as the empty syringe ricocheted off the loveseat and onto the physical abused carpet. My head crash-landed onto the arm of the sofa. There was silence. It had all faded to black. My mind had been settled. There were no psychedelic dreams like I would imagine after viewing various cinematographers' perceptions of a stoner's dream or discovering a green fairy from an Absinthe hallucination. It was peaceful, maybe too peaceful. I needed a moment of silence before the noise of: the beating drums, squeaking beds, strumming guitars, plucking basses, echoing microphones and pounding hearts. A moment where I owned myself before I became property of the stalkers and groupies.