Chapter 2 ~ Descent
March 11, 2010
Kurt Cobain.
He shot himself.
I know why.
At least I think I do.
Empty. Running on empty.
Everything he had to give and he couldn’t make any of it make sense. The adoration, his art, that tortured soul, Courtney Love, none of it satisfied him. Meaningless.
People wanted to blame the drugs, obviously. Heroin does that, you see; there’s nothing except the addiction. Nothing.
Even his daughter… Even she couldn’t provide a reason to believe that anything was actually worth something. Or so it seems.
I only realised all this afterwards; when I woke up.
* * *
It lasted for about two years.
Lost days and weeks of chasing and chasing. Never quite present but never fully lost.
Twenty years old and I was already bored with my habit.
It hadn’t really worked.
I was still empty.
I found myself in mirrors.
And couldn’t ignore the guy who stared back at me.
Me.
This life I’d created.
Bored of it.
Tired of it.
Keen to do something else.
* * *
You know about the money, of course. How could you not?
My family was rich.
Which would have been great if it hadn’t been for the fact that my wealth didn’t actually belong to me. On paper, I was pretty close to making the creeps who win Who Wants to be a Millionaire? look like street cleaners. But at that time, in reality, I couldn’t even have bought them a cup of coffee.
If only I’d spoken to my parents since I turned fifteen, I might have had some chance of laying claim to the bullion and rocks that had been salted away on my behalf. I mean really talked to them, of course.
And being real wasn’t something I…
I walked out of the apartment when I was nineteen, fully intending never to come back again.
Another step into oblivion.
Nineteen. On the streets of New York city. Parents comfy and warm on the Upper East side, me dodging from flea-pit to doorway to shelter and hoping to score.
I don’t know if they even noticed I’d gone.
I doubt it.
I got threatened at knife-point one night, one guy holding my arms from behind while the other pulled a switchblade back and forth across my adam’s apple. Just the tip of the blade, just enough to leave a red mark there that felt a little like shaving rash the next morning.
Someone walked past the alleyway while this was happening and yelled. Knife-boy and his pal ran for it, leaving me wondering just what it was they’d actually wanted to steal from me – they hadn’t had chance to say. Not that I had much, about three bucks and a handful of loose change.
The guy who shouted didn’t hang around, just grabbed his girlfriend and disappeared down the street.
The attack was enough to bring me home; hoping that there would be a welcome scene waiting for me there. Good or bad, it didn’t matter, just that there be a welcome scene. I’d been gone for a month; surely they’d have missed me?
But there wasn’t.
They were out for the evening. At separate parties.
So I sat on my own and ate ice cream at the kitchen table.
Once or twice I thought about heading to my room to get high but, to be honest, the reunion was going to be difficult enough.
Besides, I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.
* * *
By the time I was ready to sleep, they still hadn’t come home. Probably getting screwed senseless wherever they were. Almost definitely not with each other; I would have staked my three bucks on it.
So I went to bed. Left the door to my room wide open. Left the bedside light on.
They both came home that night.
Slept at home.
In the same bed as each other.
Snoring when I got up to go to the bathroom.
Gone from the apartment by the time I got out of bed the next day.
Not a word.
My bedside light was still on.
No note.
The bedroom door still open.
No reunion.
I wasn’t too surprised, why should they have changed the habits of a lifetime in a month.
I ate some ice cream, went back to my room and got high.
After I’d closed the door.
