'A Brilliant Career' By Dylan Slater

Email: dylanslater@bigpond.com Phone: 0412 193 463 Word Count: 10,500

 Dylan Slater 2012

'A Brilliant Career' By Dylan Slater

Good and bad I define these terms, Quite clear, no doubt, somehow, But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. - Bob Dylan, My Pack Pages

We have to give them something. People want to know where the fuck you are. We need to maintain your profile.

My manager or publicist or record company rep or babysitter I can't remember who I'm talking to wants me to tell him where I am and what I'm doing. I'm not going to give it to him. Fuck him. I don't care about my profile. Let the public forget who I am. Sometimes I feel like I have. The doctors say my treatment has come as far as it can within the clinic, now I have to continue my recovery in the real world. Wherever that is. Rehab was easy. Abstinence is simple when there is no alternative. They can talk to you all they want about childhoods and depression and anxiety and letting go and moving on and growing up and retaking control, but the truth of it is you stop getting fucked up because you haven't got a choice. It's like hand feeding a lion from birth and then one day just throwing him into the African savannah with a vague pamphlet on how to kill a zebra and five pointers on finding a mate. It doesn't work like that. Just because they told you a hundred different ways to say no, doesn't mean you can do it. 3

And so they send you out into the real world with a phone number for a counsellor and a pat on the back and wishes of good luck and you're on your own. And then you have to decide what the real world is and where the fuck it is and how to get there and then what to do once you are there. And so you go home, back to where you are from, because that's the best you can come up with.

It's warmer here. I'm sure of it. Fuck the weather-man who's never set foot within a hundred miles of this town who will tell you that it is almost below zero. It is definitely warmer. Anything would be warmer than the squeaky clean shine of rehab. I haven't seen this house in ten years but here I am after ten months of white-walled recuperation ready to rediscover myself.

I'd tell you that this house is the same as the one I grew up in, and it probably is, but I don't recognise it, not truthfully. I don't recognise this whole town, and I'm not sure it will recognise me. God, I haven't seen the woman who raised me in longer than I can remember. Though I am sure she could tell you how long it has been to the day. Maybe even to the hour. I've never met her boyfriend, or husband, or whatever the fuck he is. Mum always liked pricks. Dad was a prick, and I'm sure this guy will be a prick too. God, I really don't want to do this. Reaching out to ring the door bell feels wrong, like I am going back on some long kept promise to leave this place and never ever come back. The door swings open before I even get close to ringing the bell and I'm smothered by something middle-aged and floral.

"Hi there, I'm Peter," says a voice that accompanies a limp handshake, "we haven't met but I've heard a lot about you." Who hasn't, moron?

For the next hour I am subjected to endless bad coffee and even worse conversation. Peter asks me about what it is like to be famous and I tell him it's not all it's cracked up to be or something just as clich and obvious. I hate this guy. I probably shouldn't. I probably have no reason to. He probably makes my mum happy. But fuck him. He has no right to be in my life. To sit in front of me and probe me for trivia about the rock and roll lifestyle.

It's really good you've decided to turn yourself around and get healthy, Aaron. Your mother was really worried about you.

I hate the way he shifts in his seat. I want to tell him it's none of his business. I want to tell him to go fuck himself but I can already hear her defeated voice. Her plea. This was meant to be a nice civilised breakfast. Why do you always have to ruin everything? So instead I just nod in agreement and hope that it ends there. It doesn't.

Your mother and I would hate to see you waste your talent like that, he says in what he probably imagines is a fatherly way. I had a father, I don't need another one now.

"I'm so glad you two are getting along," says my mum in a way that makes me think it's a wish more then an actual observation. Something about this whole thing feels so forced. So fake. I feel like I'm on a late night talk show. All that's missing is the band and well trained studio audience.

Well I'd better be off. Have a nice day. And hey, Aaron, if you're free around twelve we should have lunch. You remember the coffee shop on Mainstreet that does the great tuna melt? He puts hand on my shoulder as he says it. He strikes me as the sort of person that calls his 5

friends buddy or pal. Mum says something about how that sounds like a lovely idea and I put all my effort into not laughing.

I'm not sure this is the house that I grew up in. It is definitely the same building, but it isn't the same house. Where is the smell of cigarettes that thickened the air almost as much as my fathers poised rage? Where is my depressed, defeated, downtrodden mother and who is this smiling woman filling my coffee cup for the thousandth time? I haven't come home. Home doesn't exist anymore. All I have managed to do is find my way to where home used to be. This isn't the same kitchen I sat in, my head bowed, praying into my generic-brand cereal as a frightened kid, this is some Hollywood set version, complete with white smiles and manicured nails.

After Peter leaves to be a dentist or an accountant or a school-principal mum takes me up to my old room. Being in this room drags me back into my teens. Back to the time I wrote most of what would be my first album and my ticket out of here. Part of me longs for that time now. I time before the money and the drinking and the sex. Before the drugs. Before celebrity.

"I couldn't bring myself to change anything after you left," I hear my mother utter from a distant present, "I always hoped you'd come home."

This is more like the mother I remember. Fragile and frightened, not the smiling mask she wears for Peter. Her shoulders drop under her dress as if she can no longer hold up the weight of feigned happiness anymore. My mother was always kind and gentle, but often to a fault. She put up with my father for far too long. I can remember him smashing plates, unsatisfied with

meals she had spent hours preparing. She only ever gave him love and devotion. She even cried at his funeral. I hated him for it.

There used to be photos around the house I assume they are packed away now of them together, my parents. They looked happy. I never knew them that way though. I don't think I can even really remember them talking to each other. Maybe at some point my mum just gave up on him. And gave up on herself. She never complained. Never said a word about being unhappy. Even now she would probably just say that no marriage is perfect if I was to ask her about it. But every now and then I could see it. I could see what he did to her. And I can hear it now in her voice.

Everything in this room is the same as I remember it. The Smiths poster over the bed, the old nylon-string guitar in the corner, the small desk still blanketed in pages from a thousand notepads, almost completely inked black with scribbled couplets. I am filled with a kind of cynical amusement at the thought of how much the contents of this room could fetch in an online auction. My first guitar. First drafts of lyrics. Well loved favourite albums.

"Does Charlotte know you're back?"

Shit. Charlie. Jesus, I had almost forgotten about her.

"She'll want to see you, you know?"

Yeah, I know.

"You owe it to her."

I haven't seen Charlie in almost as long as mum. The last time was my 'network television debut.' She was there in the green-room, holding my hand. I remember being so nervous. It was the only time I ever asked her to come see me in the city. I guess we were already broken up at the time, but I still loved her, and I think she loved me. It feels so long ago. Almost like it didn't really happen to me, but just to someone I knew. "It's for you," I told her just before we were herded out onto the stage to set up and take on the world. At the time I thought all I meant was the song, now I think it was everything. My life. Me. And then she went home and I pretended like I never had one.

"I'll get the phone for you. She still lives in the same house, you know? Looking after Ben all on her own."

The kid's name hits me like a train. I guess somewhere at the back of my mind I already knew. Of course I did. But I hadn't believed it. Or I hadn't wanted to believe it. I'd shut it out, refused to accept it. She was always meant to be mine. The idea of her marrying someone else, her having a child, it doesn't compute. It can't be her. It can't be Charlie. Not my Charlie.

My mum brings me the phone tells me the number for the old hair salon on Mainstreet. Apparently Charlie works there when she can. It is almost funny to think of her as a hair dresser. The idea of her making idle conversation about grandchildren and how that Ellen is okay for a lesbian while trimming the hair of elderly women is so ridiculous I want to laugh. I almost do. Someone I don't know answers the call and tells me that Charlie's not in today in a

voice that is somehow but polite and dismissive at the same time. She says something about her son having a cold as I hang up.

II

It isn't a long walk to Charlie's house, but my mum insists on driving me there. Maybe it makes her feel useful again, like a mother. My uncomfortable shuffling and stubborn silence does nothing to slow my mother's torrent of town gossip as we make our way through the narrow streets. I don't take it in. I can barely hear it. My mind is too busy untying the million knots my stomach has worked itself into.

"Jesus."

That's all she said when she answered the door. We are both just standing there staring at each other as if we are trying to work out whether the other is actually real. She is still beautiful, and in the same messy accidental way I remember her being in high school. Older in places, tired and worn at the edges, like a well loved book, but there is something very young still in her eyes and in her curves. She is still the girl I remember. Unkempt dark hair tucked behind an ear on one side, a t-shirt that probably said Joy Division once upon a time but is now too faded to say so for sure. Only the tracksuit pants where jeans should be say anything of change and her age.

Her pretty mouth curls at the side. "You need a haircut," she says.

God, how long has it been since I was in this house? The last time I was here I remember her mum catching me in her room after I'd pretended to go home. I had climbed back in through her bedroom window. We were going to spend the whole night together, sleep in the same bed. It was meant to be the perfect goodbye before I headed off to the city. In some ways it was, I guess. I smile when I think about it, even now. Her mother trying to be angry with us even though I think she thought it was adorable. It was Charlie's dad that had it in for me. I think her mum kind of liked me. Women seem to. Maybe it's because they can see I need mothering.

Charlie leads me through the hall past her parents room I guess it's probably her room now and into the kitchen. The place stinks of family. The floor is sporadically decorated with colourful plastic shapes that are passed off as safe and educational entertainment for growing minds. The idea of Charlie as a mother is ridiculous. The girl I knew was made to conquer the universe, not change nappies. The idea of her as a struggling single mother is heartbreaking. I want to help her until I see the family portrait sitting audaciously on the kitchen bench. I can see his face in the little smiling reminder that I lost the best thing that ever happened to me. I can't honestly say I'd have been a better father, or a better husband. I am sure I wouldn't have been. But that doesn't mean I don't wish.

"Sit down and let's see what I can do."

Before I am sure what is happening Charlie has wraps a musty damp towel around my shoulders and starts pushing an pulling the mop I use to hide my identity. I can't remember how long it has been since I last had it cut. I have a vague memory of being sat down and

10

shaved when I first went into the clinic - I called it the cuckoo's nest - but in retrospect that doesn't seem right. It was probably just something I imagined in a withdrawal induced haze.

"How about I go get my hairspray and a comb and we give you that Robert Smith look you had back in high school?"

Her mouth curls into a smile as she finishes the sentence. For a brief moment I am back and high school, and so is she. There are no children and addictions and regrets, just the present and potential. Beautiful untested potential. Her hand in my hair leaves and she says something about needing to get something from the bathroom.

Charlie comes in from the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a comb and starts on my hair. I'm not sure what she's doing, and I don't care. A good hair cut is a long way from being on my list of priorities. The silence becomes almost hypnotic after a while. It isn't awkward or dull. It is natural and relaxed. I begin to lose myself in a void of thought and then she says "Why didn't you come?" Fuck. Anything but this.

"He was your best friend. He was my husband. He would have wanted you there. I wanted you there."

I test a million different excuses but none of them seem right so instead I offer I weak apology.

I'm sorry.

It isn't good enough. Of course it isn't good enough. 11

"Why didn't you come? Give me a reason? One fucking reason, Aaron."

The way she says my name reminds me of the fights we had as teenagers. Stupid fights about stupid things. But this isn't stupid. This has the sickening feel of adulthood.

"You're best friend dies and the best you can manage is fucking flowers?"

Flowers? Well I guess that's one thing good about being famous, you have people to make sure you don't come off as a complete cunt. I wonder what sort they sent?

"Why, Aaron? For fucks sake why?"

Why? Because I'm selfish? Because I was too high to care? Because I didn't feel worthy? Because I was ashamed? Pick one.

"I couldn't," I mumble. It's pathetic. It's not a reason. It's not the explanation she needs. But it is the best I can manage.

"I'm sorry," I say again, a hundred percent sure that I'm not making a difference but unable to think of anything better.

Looking at her, hurt and broken, makes me feel saner than I have in years. In this moment I have a purpose. She is my reason.

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I love you, I say.

I don't know why I said it. I don't know what I expect her to do. Shout 'I love you too' and marry me? I'm a fucking idiot. And then without warning she kisses me. She tastes of tears. Her mouth is warm and wet against mine, her lips frantically pulling kiss after kiss from me. Sucking me down into her lungs like oxygen. The world dissolves into irrelevance. Nothing else could matter more than this. She is everything I need.

"Mum."

And suddenly the fantasy collapses.

"Shit. Get the fuck out! Just get out!"

For a moment I think she is talking to the boy, but I realise that it is me who she wants gone, not him. It isn't the kid, but me who is the intruder in her life now.

III

I have nowhere to go. No one I want to see. So I find myself sipping black coffee I didn't order in a caf listening to some kid with a guitar butcher half my back catalogue. Right now he's failing to remember the chords to Homeless Where the Heart Is. I thought that the wordplay was so clever when I wrote it, lonely in the city and missing the home I never had. Missing Charlie. The irony of hearing it played in the town I grew up in my hometown, I guess doesn't escape me. I almost smile. Almost. 13

The kid finishes the song with a flat note and tells the three people besides me that are here to listen that he'll be back in fifteen. Usually I'd keep my head down, avoid getting noticed, but today is different, today I've had enough of feeling like a normal person. He sits himself in front of the almost cute waitress and asks for a cup of coffee I'm starting to think they only have one type of here and I make my way over to him.

That's a pretty good song, that last one, I say as I walk up and take a seat next to him at the counter.

Yeah man, I love his stuff. He grew up here you know?

I blame it on the haircut Charlie gave me. I blame it on the time spent out of the public eye. But it is more than that. It is this town. No one would expect to see me back here because no one in their right mind would come back after scoring their ticket out.

Do you play? he asks me.

A bit, I tell him and smile at my own joke.

Walking down the street feels like a trip backwards in time. Mainstreet hasn't changed a bit. The same shop fronts you'd find in just about any town in any state. It's nothing special. People talk about how every city's the same, but if you ask me everywhere is the same as anywhere. Except the pawn shop. It's windows completely covered in posters for different bands and movies that never made it to this nowhere town. It used to be my favourite place 14

when I was still at school, this shop. I got my first electric guitar there. An old Fender Jazzmaster. The guy from Sonic Youth played one and I thought it was pretty much the best fucking thing I'd ever get my hands on. With the possible exception of Charlotte. I got it for about four-hundred in the end, though it took me the best part of a year to save up the money. The man that ran the place used to let me come in and play it until I could finally afford to take it home with me. I used to visit everyday after school without fail. The only thing better than playing this guitar was sex, and even that was a close call. The owner would always set aside things to show me. Old records, instruments, books, leather jackets. Just about anything he thought I might like. He never tried to get me to buy anything, though. Never even told me the price of half the things he'd share with me. Maybe he just liked the company of an afternoon. I know I did.

A familiar face sits behind the counter when I push through the door into the chaos that is my favourite shop. I want him to remember me. I want him to go out back and come out with something to show me. A Leonard Cohen LP. An antique harmonica. Horn-rimmed glasses that would make me look just like Buddy Holly. But he doesn't even look up from the book that lies tokenistically open in front of him. The place doesn't look like its been cleaned since I was last here. Almost everything is covered in the grainy layers of years gone by. The rings of divorcees decorate the glass cabinet that separates the old man from me.

"How's business?" I ask him.

"People always want to sell stuff, and others always want to buy it. Need a guitar? I've always got guitars."

15

He gestures to the back of the cramped, overflowing store where three guitars are hung up on the wall. I don't need one. I have more than I will ever need. But I am drawn to them anyway. Each probably has a story. Bought for some kids birthday and sold a few years later. Played in bars for fifteen years until it was given up and replaced with three kids and a plain wife. Found in the attic of a dead relative and sold along with all the other unwanted reminders of life. I wonder if that Fender I bought a decade ago will end up in a shop like this.

I notice some kids hanging around outside the bottle shop across the road when I leave, not one of them is old enough. There is three of them. Two guys and a girl.

"Hey man, can you buy us something? You can keep the change, man."

The girl hangs back, shy, her stare aimed at her nervous feet. I remember trying to get messed up in this town. I know I should tell them no. I know I should be thinking of rehab and all I was taught. But I don't give a shit. If these kids want to fuck themselves up, then they can go for their lives.

"Sure kid. Whatever."

I buy them their booze and ask them "do you know where I can get something stronger?"

IV

What the fuck am I doing? That is probably what I should be asking myself. I was supposed to be past this. But I can't, I can't do this anymore. My mind is too full. I can't focus. I need it. I 16

need to feel that way again. Addiction is simplicity. It takes all your wants and desires and puts them second. Addiction becomes your God. As long as you live in accordance with you addiction all else is irrelevant. Everything else can wait as long as your intent on finding your next fix. I can't really say when it started for me. I used to get out of it for fun. As an escape maybe. Not anymore. The escape has become a trap. But what a comfortable trap. So easy. I can feel myself falling back into it like a hotel bed after a long night. Maybe it isn't ideal, maybe I could do better, but it will do for tonight.

The directions the kids gave me lead me to a run down house on the edge of town. It's once white weatherboard walls are stained yellow with rusty water from the corroded guttering. Its yard features an exotic collection of weeds and twisted husks of what might be cars or might be washing machines. This has got to be the place. It fits the clich so well. I haven't really bought drugs since high school. And even then it was just of some other kid at a party. People like to give things to you when you're rich and famous. The first time I ever shot up was in some artists loft in some bohemian corner of the city. We were lying around the one room apartment smoking pot and drinking wine and acting like we were great fucking philosophers when he pulled out the shit. I remember looking at it, not with awe, not with fear, or even excitement. It was just another thing to put in my body to get out of my head. Maybe it was just utter nihilism that made me do it. What did it matter if I overdosed and died right there and then? What difference would it make?

There is no answer when I knock on the door. I half notice a movement behind the torn curtains that are pulled across the front window, but no one comes to the door.

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Alright, I'm fucking coming, shouts a voice when I knock the second time. The man who half opens the door and peers out is thin and pale. He looks like he's never slept a night in his life. His eyes are small and tired and his hair stands up, styled by sweat and a lifetime of never being washed. He looks me up and down, and smiles.

I know you. You're that fucking rockstar singer than grew up here, he drawls. Come in man.

The hallway is filled with books. None of them look new, and all of them look read. Heller, Hemingway, DeLillo, Fitzgerald. It's a fucking library of modernist and post-modernist literature.

You read a lot? I ask him, making conversation only because I don't know what else to do.

Yeah man, you gotta keep your mind active, you know? You can't fucking stagnate. That's the problem with people man, they don't fucking think. They go to their jobs and they were their suits and shiny fucking shoes, man, but they come home and what do that do? They fucking turn on reality television. What the fuck is that? They just fucking spent a whole day in reality. You gotta imagine, man. You gotta dream. That's what separates us and the apes, man.

Looking around the house I can see why this guy wants to escape reality. There isn't an undamaged thing in site. The walls are mostly holes, and every piece of furniture looks like it was picked up off the side of the road, thrown away after years of mistreatment. So that is what this guy escapes. A shitty life in a shitty house in a shitty town. What am I escaping?

You don't remember me, do you? he says, bringing me back into the moment. I don't. 18

I was in school with you man. A few years bellow. You were the fucking coolest, man. With your guitar. And that girl. What was her name?

Charlotte, I tell him.

Yeah Charlie, that was here. Fuck man. Shame about her boyfriend, yeah? You knew him, right?

Her husband. Yeah, I knew him. I don't feel like talking. I don't know this guy. He is just another person who thinks they know me. Living in a small town and being famous aren't so different. Everyone knows you and they all want to know what's going on in your life.

Do you remember my brother? Carl? He was in your year, I think. He looked like me, you know, only older. Or younger than me now, haha.

Do I remember his brother? I don't know. Maybe. Who the fuck cares? I lie. I tell him I remember. I think he wants me to remember.

Yeah man, I remember Carl. How is he?

He's dead, man. They fucking killed him. They locked him up man. Drug possession, man. My brother never dealt the shit. That was me. They wouldn't let him write. Said he might use the pen as a fucking knife. That's all he ever wanted to do man. Be a writer. Get out of this town like you did. They wouldn't even give him a fucking notepad and pen. 19

I don't know what I am supposed to feel. I don't remember his brother. I don't miss him. But something about his death moves me. Maybe it's because this guy could have been me. I could have been him. The unfairness of it fucks with my head. This guy was locked up for drugs and I was sent into resort-style luxury. Why? Because I was famous? Because I had more money? Because when a lower-class nobody has drugs he's a criminal but when a celebrity does it just means they have a disease? The excuses they made for me were fucking ridiculous. The pressures of fame. What a fucking joke. Except then why do I feel so justified in getting high? Why do I feel so justified when I lock myself in hotel bathrooms and threaten managers with suicide?

That fucking sucks, man, I tell him. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I avoid death. I avoid funerals. The only funeral I've ever been to was my dad's. And that was only because my mum dragged me along. My dad's funeral wasn't much. A few drunks from the bar and the relatives who felt obliged to make an appearance. No one really cared he was gone. I didn't.

Locking a person up, that's one thing, man. But when you chain their minds you lock up their souls. That's fucking it. There is no escape after that. Carl had nothing if he couldn't write, you know?

Do I know? Would I kill myself if I thought I'd never pick up a guitar again? Probably not. I haven't played in ages anyway. Not really. Not for myself, at least. Has music stopped meaning that much to me? It was my escape. It was everything to me when I was younger. It was a way distract myself from my drunk father and this nowhere town. Maybe it stopped being an escape when the thing I was running from became me. 20

So what can I do for you, man?

Really, actually, nothing. I'm starting to think I'm a lost cause. Just another rock n' roll clich. Just another fuck up who wrote a few good songs. I'm not worth anything more than anyone else. Go on YouTube, there are a thousand more like me. Some of them better. What distinguishes me? I'm just a junkie with too much money.

I want to get fucked up, I tell him.

Here lies Graham Henry Wilson. Loving father, friend and husband.

Somewhere around here there is a chunk of rock that says the same thing about my father. But he wasn't half the man that Graham was. Gray and I knew each other before we could even talk. All kids got to know each other pretty early on here, but Gray and I just clicked. We discovered music, girls, and drugs together. Sex, drugs and rock n' roll, right? Until I met Charlie there was no one that knew me better. I told him I loved her before I even told her I liked her. He was always there for me. I can remember spending almost every night at his house, avoiding mine. We used to listen to CDs and cassettes together and read outdated issues of Rolling Stone and NME. I learned to play on his guitar. My parents couldn't afford to buy me one, and he never really learned to play, so one day he just gave it to me. I was always eye-balling it when I was over and one day he just said take it. Just like that he gave it to me. I don't even think his parents knew he gave it to me. 21

I only spoke to him twice after he started dating Charlie. The first time was a few years after I'd left and she and I had ended it. He called to tell me he was going to ask her to marry him and he wanted my blessing. I didn't give it to him. I didn't give him anything. I just through the phone into the receiver. I got the invitation in the mail anyway. I can remember holding it like it was a bomb, rigged to end my life as soon as I opened it.

The second time he called me was on the night his son was born. He asked me to be Ben's Godfather. Even after all the bullshit, after all the pettiness, he asked me. He asked me because he still cared. And I told him to get fucked. The last thing I ever said to him. Get fucked. I wish I could change it and take it all back. Even now, even if it would make no difference, I wish I could go back and change it.

I don't know why I came here. I don't know what I expected. Maybe I thought I would find forgiveness here. Like coming here would somehow make up for everything I did. I need to get high. This isn't the place for it but I don't fucking care. Pete Doherty once said it wasn't selfdestruction, it was self-defence. Defence from reality. That's what I need. I need to hide behind my high and wait for the world to pass over.

The shiver of release is like a gentle orgasm. Clarity. I let the drugs take me. My thoughts blur at their edges, bleeding into one another. Graham would hate this. Not that he never got high. But that was always for fun. Graham never ran away from anything. Not like me. I retreat, I surrender, I give in to the world. I let it win. I remember a conversation we had one night. I told him I had to get out. I had to get out of this town before it killed me. He said you can run away from this town, but you can't run away from yourself. At the time it sounded like clich 22

bullshit. But he was right. I wasn't trying to escape this place, I was trying to escape my own head. And here I am still trying. I'm a coward. Gray would tell me to get the fuck up and do something with myself if he saw me right now, slumped in front of his headstone. I loved him. I loved him as much as I loved Charlotte and now it's all fucked up. Because of me. I could have forgiven them both. I left them behind.

He never blamed you.

Charlie. Charlie is here. I try to lift myself up and fail. Her eyes are strained with withheld tears. I feel worthless in front of her, a pathetic heap of self-loathing and infantile sorrow on the ground.

I hated you, Aaron. I hated you for everything. But he didn't. He would have defended you for not being there. You know he would have.

I'm sorry, I mumble, as much to myself as to her.

I don't want her forgiveness. I want her to be angry. I want to feel like I am being punished. Maybe then I can forgive myself. Graham would have already forgiven me. He always understood. He always got it. He got me. Maybe even more than Charlie did.

Sex, Drugs and Indie Rock N' Roll By ROBERT ALLEN

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It seems that we can now count Aaron Curtis alongside Kurt Cobain and Pete Doherty in the long list of self-destructive geniuses turned hopeless junkies. Curtis was arrested last night in a Manhattan hotel for drug possession.

This latest indiscretion bookends what has been a long rough patch for the singer-songwriter. Curtis, who released the three highly acclaimed and commercially successful albums Polaroid Smile, Desert Island and Autumn, has been largely inactive and reclusive for the best part of the last two and a half years.

The 29 year old and his band have not performed live since 2009's unpredictable run of festival appearances in Europe and the US that ranged from utterly spellbinding to bitterly disappointing. It seems clear in retrospect that Curtis was most likely already in the depths of addiction and substance abuse at the time.

Upon the release of his first album Curtis was immediately lorded as a genius songwriter. Rolling Stone Magazine dubbed him the messianic voice of disillusioned youths everywhere.

Outside of music, Curtis is best known for his on again off again relationship with actress and television personality Courtney Gallagher. Gallagher is yet to comment on Curtis' most recent indiscretion but she is sure to have her say soon enough. The two were last seen together over two months before the arrest.

A close friend of Curtis says that he has been struggling with addiction for a long time and that they hope that the seriousness of this arrest may be just what it takes for him to finally get well.

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VI

Hey man, you okay?

I don't recognise the face that looms over me.

What're you doing here?

My thoughts won't collect, they bounce off each other like repelling magnets.

Hey, you're the guy from before. Looks like you got what you were looking for, huh?

As the kid helps me to a standing position my mind clears a little. It's the kids I bought the booze for. The two guys are standing in front of me with teenaged grins spread across their round faces.

We're heading to a party, you wanna tag along?

I'd rather spend time with one person than fifty. Crowds make me uncomfortable. Not being in front of them. Being a part of them. I feel insignificant. Just another. I want to be apart. I want to distance myself from humankind. I won't be held accountable for their mistakes. Alone I am myself. In a crowd I am the crowd.

Come. It'll be fun.

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They are the first words I hear her say. I didn't even see her at first, standing in the corner behind the other two. I don't know what it is but I would do almost anything for a pretty girl. Every resolution I ever had dissolves in the face of beauty. Or in the face of desire. I would do anything for the things I want. I would abandon my friends and family for fame. I would abandon everything to get high. I would go to a stupid fucking party for a girl. A kid.

How can I feel this about a girl nearly half my age? I don't even know her. I've barely even heard her speak. Is it her youth? Maybe it is our lack of a shared history. She hasn't learned to hate me like Charlie has. We didn't grow up together. We didn't share our problems. She has her own past that doesn't interfere with mine. We are separate. She is new. She was a child when I left town. Fuck, she still is a child.

I want to talk to her. I want to know everything there is to know about her.

"I'm Noah," she says. "I already know who you are," she chirps before I can reply.

For the first time since I got here I feel famous again. I feel like I mean something, even if that is just to a jailbait girl in a town you probably never heard of and probably never will. Something about being recognised restores some of what little rock n' roll charm I had.

"For those of you who don't know me, I'm Aaron," I tell the rest of them. I feel in control for once, like I am back on stage. In this moment I am the centre of the universe.

She's the most beautiful girl I have seen in a very long time. Wide-eyed and cute. Her mouth curves sweetly at its edges, hinting a smile I would kill to see. A smile I would kill to inspire. 26

Her dark dirty hair is cut short and messy. She probably did it herself. She is thin and her curves are perfectly subtle. Her black skinny-jeans finish in disintegrating unlaced tennis shoes. She fascinates me. She's too young.

Walking away from the cemetery with the kids feels good, like I am leaving something back there, laid to rest at last. It isn't quite forgiveness. Maybe acceptance. Acceptance that what has happened cannot be changed, only bettered by the future.

When I move out I'm gonna get a tattoo of your lyrics here, Noah says, lifting up her t-shirt and pulling down the waist of her jeans just a little. Fuck you God. Fuck you.

VII

As I walk into the party I already start to regret it. Drunk horny teenagers aren't my idea of good company. They never were. I remember sitting outside on the lawn drinking quietly when I was young. Or I should say when I was younger. I never felt young. I have always felt tired. Aged by the world. I wasn't the only one. I think for some people part of being a teenager is feeling middle-aged. At least that's how it was for me. Time always felt like it was running out. I used to count off years. Robert Smith sung Boys Don't Cry before his twentieth birthday. Where was I at nineteen? Skipping classes and getting drunk.

The kids at this party live like there is no time left. And maybe there isn't. The world feels like it is ending. What do these kids have to look forward to? A dying planet and failing civilisation. Why not get pissed and fuck the first thing that says yes? There are no consequences when there is no tomorrow. Except there is always a tomorrow. It is our ultimate failing. An 27

obsession with what has happened and what is happening. The future scares us. The unknown. The undecided. So we pretend like it isn't there. Like it won't happen. We refuse to admit it exists. But it does. If I have learnt anything it is that tomorrow does come, and with it comes regret and longing for a do-over.

Somehow Noah is on the other side of the room, looking over at me. Maybe that is what I see in her. The past. She is my youth. She hasn't lived long enough to see tomorrow. She holds up a bottle of something that kids drink and smiles an offering at me. I am drawn to her. She is the only thing in focus. The world around me blurs to oblivion until I stand in empty space across from her. I watch her move. She isn't dancing. I force the music to fit her in my head. The beat dances to her. Her voice wakes me.

Come with me.

She lightly takes my hand, barely even really holding it, and leads me through the swell of intoxication towards the stairway.

Where are you taking me?

I try to sound playful, but I probably just come off as seedy. Fuck it. I tried. And she is too drunk and young to know the difference anyway. She takes me upstairs and into a study. An old computer desk lines the wall. Twenty years ago people would have laughed at the idea of an old computer desk. No matter how new something seems, it will get old. Across from the desk is an upright piano, although you would hardly know it was anything more than a shelf judging by the layers of loose paper and books that sat on it. 28

Play me something, Noah demands in an adorably girlish way as she throws the pile of printouts and self-help guides onto the floor.

It has been a long time since I have played anything. They had a piano in rehab, it sat in one of the many recreational areas. But the idea of an audience scared me away at the time. That and it was usually occupied by some elderly patient's visiting granddaughter showing off what they had learned for their next recital.

A thousand songs sound through my head, begging to be played. I don't want to play one of mine, and even if I did I doubt I could get through it without screwing up the words or forgetting the chords to the middle-eight. I've always found it harder to remember my own songs. They don't sit within my world the same way. It's like if you asked someone to tell you the plot to their favourite movie they could probably do it, probably even quoting their favourite lines word for word. But ask them to tell you their life story and it would come at you out of order and sixty percent lies.

I don't know why, but Into My Arms by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds comes into my head. Maybe because it was the song that I imagined Charlie and I would have our first dance to as a married couple. Or maybe because it seems like a good song to get me laid.

Singing it feels like an exorcism. Its uncomplicated romance settles my mind. There is something so perfect in its simplicity. Something so true. She comes and sits down beside me on the piano stool as I let the final C chord ring out to its end.

29

That was beautiful. Did you write that? I don't think I know it.

She seems sad that she might have forgotten one of my songs.

No, it's a song by Nick Cave. You should check him out, I tell her. Introducing her to a new musician makes me feel young again. It takes me back to friend's bedrooms, taking turns at playing newly discovered albums on our shitty discmans.

Oh, yeah. I think my mum might have one of his albums. I want to laugh at the absurdity of it. I wonder when my albums will make their way into the record collections of mothers. Maybe they already have.

I used to have the biggest crush on you, you know? As she says it her entire body seems to shift closer to mine, her thigh presses against mine and she rests her head on my shoulder. I have your picture on my wall.

She sounds like a groupie. But I don't mind. Not with her here now. Her breath sweetened with some premixed drink designed to get under-age girls drunk. Her warm body next to mine. Who cares if she doesn't know the real me? I don't know the real me. Charlie learned to hate me. Noah hasn't had that chance.

Even in the dim artificial light of some soon-to-be disappointed parent's study Noah is gorgeous. Her milky skin seems impossibly smooth. Her thin, feminine neck perfectly revealed by her short punky hair.

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Let's go to bed, she exhales.

Flashback

Aaron and Charlie always had a thing for each other. Ever since period one English when all the other kids were reading Harry Potter, they shared a love for Orwellian dystopia and Thompson's psychedelia. Perhaps it was their common subcultural elitism, or their status as kids too good-looking to be unpopular and too smart to be cool that brought the two together. Or maybe it was just because they like the same music and lived close enough to each other that making out as much as possible was convenient and manageable. Whichever or whatever it was, Chaaron (or Archarlie) was a match made in Heaven. Or high school. One of the two.

Aaron would write Charlie songs and she would tell him they were better than they were. Charlie would read Aaron prose and he would fake interest like any good boyfriend would. They made each other less intellectually melancholy. And that, for them, was love. The first time they said the 'L' word (not labia, libido or lesbian the other one) to each other, or rather the first time Charlie said it to Aaron and he awkwardly mumbled I love you too, was at Jessica Petty's party during the summer. They were both a little drunk, although they would have told you they didn't feel anything, and they were both very nave, although they would say they were world-weary and wise.

They had been kissing in Jessica's mum's room. Although it might have actually been her grandmother's, and her older sister might have actually been her mum, but that is another story altogether and completely irrelevant to the kissing that was currently going on in the bedroom. Aaron and Charlie had retreated to the master bedroom under the pretence of 31

escaping the boring sheep downstairs who had three sips of a light beer and acted wasted, but actually they were probably just horny teens who saw an opportunity to get some serious kissing done without the risk of surprising a parent who thought they were studying.

Pulling away from him, Charlie stared into his eyes and said I love you. They had been touching each other with reasonable regularity for the last month, so it was about time one of them said something. Aaron replied with a mumble and went straight back to kissing, he imagined with an appropriately higher level of passion and intimacy but in reality with just more tongue and too much saliva. Although it doesn't necessarily seem like it, Aaron meant it. From that first time at a party until Aaron moved away, those three little words ended every phone call and interrupted every make-out session the two ever had together. And that was a lot.

Whispered in between kisses and mumbled along with goodbyes before hanging up the phone, by the time it came to graduation they were both pretty sure they would love each other forever and ever until the end of the world. Aaron had decided he needed to live in a city. A real city. With real people. Somewhere more conducive to creativity. Charlie would have followed if it wasn't for her sick mother and younger sister. So Aaron was going to leave for some university he never intended on graduating from, and Charlie was going to be left behind to care for her family. The conversation went something like this:

I have to go, babe. I can't stand this place any longer. I've gotta get out of here.

I know. I wish I could come with you. I love you so much. I'm gonna miss you.

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You can come with me. Your mum can look after herself. And Jaime is old enough to help around the house now anyway. I need you. You're my muse, baby.

I can't. You know I can't. I can't leave her. She needs me. More than you. I just can't. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry too. I love you.

After this things got overly sentimental and then a little to risqu to be repeated. But you get the idea. Love, tears, goodbye and then, well you know, other stuff.

Funnily enough, if you asked them today whether they remember the first time they said the 'love' word, it would probably be Aaron that could recall it rather than Charlie. While she grew up and moved on, he moved away and never grew up. And so wrote songs and became moderately famous and rich enough, and Charlie married and had a baby and got on with life they way most people do, without the sex and drugs and stupidity until her husband died in a car crash and she had to take more hours at the salon and spend less time raising her little boy.

VIII

I must still be feeling the effects of the drugs because the confident knocks at the door and the sudden silence that settles through the crowd downstairs takes a while to register with me. Lying here next to Noah, nothing else really matters. Her back is turned to me and I spend a while just looking at her, following the line of her spine up to the delicate curve of her shoulders. She seems almost fragile lying here. I feel as though if I reached out and ran my 33

hand across her skin I would somehow harm her. Like a butterfly's wings, if I was to touch her she would no longer be able to fly. I want to feel her skin, but I am scared suddenly. Scared that I will ruin her. That I will wreck what is beautiful about her. She does not deserve me. She deserves something safe. Something as good as her.

Through a drunken Chinese whispers the arrival of the police makes its way upstairs and to Noah and me. Jesus Christ. I am in bed with a teenaged girl after just completing a court mandated stint in rehab. The tabloids will fucking love this. Another trial, another charge, another conviction. Another excuse for journalists what a fucking joke to go through my bins and shadow me everywhere I go. I feel like closing my eyes and wishing them away. Maybe they won't come up here. Why would they? They probably just want the music turned town.

Noah looks sleepily over at me and smiles like a guilty child. Time to go, she sighs happily. She's still drunk. She kicks the blanket all the way off revealing her attractive slender figure once more. I don't move. Instead I lie there looking at here. Her pale skin glows softly in the near darkness as she moves around the room.

Can you see my underwear? She asks, lifting up her jeans and shaking them out. Oh well, never mind, she giggles drunkenly and pulls her jeans over her cute naked arse. She is effortlessly sexy.

C'mon, let's go, she beckons playfully. This is all a game for her. It's all a joke. And if it wasn't so fucking serious, I'd probably laugh as well.

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Just give me a sec, I tell her as I make the same scrambled search for my clothes. I doubt that I look remotely as appealing as she did when I pull my jeans up over my nakedness and fight my shirt on over my head. When I am finally dressed I catch her looking at me. There is a look in her face that scares me. A look of adoration. This girl doesn't know me. She knows my songs. She knows me from my words, from my photographs. But she hasn't been there after a show when I walk into the dressing room and smash the mirrors with my fists cutting myself so badly that we have to postpone the next show. She doesn't know me. And I don't want her to. She shouldn't have to see that. The way she looks at me makes me feel like a fraud.

Noah takes my hand and leads me out into the corridor. The party has almost completely cleared out. There are a few half-conscious drunks lining the walls, but anyone that was still able to stand has made their way out onto the street and away from the house. Noah takes me through the back door and into the yard. The place looks like a field the day after a music festival. The grass is trampled and covered with plastic cups and bottles.

Hurry up, she teases and climbs over the back fence into the empty lot that neighbours the house. We keep running for what seems like forever but was probably just a few minutes. She doesn't stop until we reach what looks like an out-of-use train stop. A wooden platform, or what is left of one, barely stands on one side of the tracks, overgrown with grass and weeds. The grass has been pushed away from the tracks, so I guess the trains still run past here, they just don't stop.

I used to come here all the time when I was a kid, Noah says as she climbs up on to the platform, swaying carelessly with the breeze.

35

Me and my friends used to play here all day, waiting for the train. You know?

Watching her up on the platform is fun, like she's on a stage performing for me. Like she exists only for me, up there for my entertainment. She exists only as long as I want her to. She leans over to me and whispers I had my first kiss here. She smiles, feigning shyness. Even quieter she says the first time I ever let a boy touch me was over there, pointing to the back of the old train stop at a half collapsed bench.

This place has to be older than me, but I never knew about it as a kid. I never came here after school to smoke cigarettes or try and touch girls. I feel a sudden sense of loss for something I never knew I wanted and would never have missed if it weren't for being here right now and hearing her talk about it.

This is where I'd come when my dad was angry. Mum would give me a look and I'd know that she wanted me to leave. To run away. Noah looks older when she says it. Her voice suddenly changes from a youthful chirp to something tired. Too grown up for something so young and pretty. I want to reach back into her past and erase those things that hurt her.

I don't think she knew where I went. She didn't care. As long as it was away from him. So I would come her. I think I was the first to discover it. I showed all my friends. We'd all come here when the real world was too much. Here feels safe. It was our place. It didn't belong to the world. My dad couldn't come here. I owned this place. This is where I lived. They lived in the house, and I had to stay there. I had to sleep there and do my homework there. But this place, this is where I lived.

36

I hate the thought that she already has so much to run from. So much to escape. She is young and pretty and she has so much potential. I feel wrong thinking it. I sound like one of the doctors from rehab. It is the sort of thing they would have said to me as I professed my sorrow.

I was glad when he left. Everyone tried to comfort me like it was some terrible loss. But I was happy he was gone.

She is whispering now. Maybe she is ashamed for feeling that way. She thinks she is meant to miss him. Girls are supposed to want their daddy. I know the feeling. I didn't feel sad. I felt sorry for my mum. But I didn't wish him back. I was glad he was gone.

Noah's playing on the tracks, all traces of her recent seriousness gone. She looks like a painting. Some kind of perfect portrait of unburdened youth. Almost a clich. But right now in this hiding place she is my clich.

I can hear the train churning in the distance. Come on, get away from there, I tell her casually as I can manage, hiding the panic that flutters in my chest. It isn't close. Maybe it isn't even coming this way. But I need her to be safe. I need her to be okay.

Her precocious tongue flicks out at me.

Is little Aaron Curtis, rockstar phenomenon and sex god scared? she teases, laughing at me. I don't care if she thinks I'm lame. That I'm a loser. She can hate me. I just want her away from harm.

37

C'mon. Stop messing around, I say. I want to plead. I want to beg her to come to me and let me hold her and shelter her. The train is closer now. The glow of its lights pushing between the branches.

Please Noah? It's the first time I use her name. It feels like a guilty admission as it falls from my mouth.

Fine, she relents.

Thank God. The relief is overwhelming. Like cool water on a burn. And then she trips. Drunkenly she falls over the railroad sleepers and across the tracks. I don't have time to think as she looks up to me, no longer the sexy tease, but just a frightened child. She needs me. The train is almost there. I don't wait. I'm there. I am there for her. Time doesn't exist. I run into her hard. She is safe. She is safe. She is safe. The train. Fuck.

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