Bourbon, Scotch, and Monologue

A/N: I've been stuck on this story for five years. I have the entire story outlined. I have character development down to every detail I can think of, I KNOW how I want this story.... But after three rewrites and a change from third to first person, I have NO IDEA HOW TO WRITE IT AHHHHHH
I want my idols strung out from the booze, fucked up by the coke, burning the candle at both ends and tripping into the grave, still screaming. None of this commercially packaged shirt churned off the conveyer belt, like safesex for the ears, bleached and sterilized.

Someone give me the wild boys, all the hippies traded their souls in for a two-for-one deal and prepackaged hamburger meat.

I want them playing from their fucking heart, I want the anthems that defined a generation, the men and women that shook the world and made history. I want music for music’s sake.

Words churned and burned in the back of my mind as I cradled the bottle of jack between my thighs. Waking up from doing shots of absinthe in my dreams worked up my thirst for hard liquor. Craning my head up as I took another swig I stared at the posters on my bedroom wall of Morrison, Scott, Bonham, Clark, Pop, and many others. Boys that didn’t survive their wild days and a few that never should have. The power behind the music that snaked its way into my brain and seduced me; it was glamorous and alluring. All it asked for was my soul, but twenty years later I know it wasn’t just the music that sent me down this path.

The digital analog clock glared back at me. July 29th. Today was my 35th birthday. Booze in bed and it was only two in afternoon. It was turning out to be a great day.

-BREAK because I don’t know what else to write here-

I started scribbling memories furiously the day I found out my liver was failing. I remember this birthday pretty well because it was the day before we flew out to Greece for the big family reunion that was held every three years. As I got worse it was harder to keep things straight, and right before and after I got my transplant it was damned near impossible to recall anything. I kept thinking I was going to die, and kept freaking out thinking that no one will remember me. The real me. Not the one night stand, not the fag rock star, not the alcoholic bastard, not the party monster. We had fourteen studio albums and rocked for twenty years. We smashed guitars, cars, and faces and I’m worried about what people will think of me after I’m gone?

Our lives were stained with sex and drugs, and though we were never even close to the men who burned out so early in their lives, we still had a story to tell. How we got to where we are now is something I’m still trying to figure out though.
When we brought forth the idea of writing this biography, we couldn’t work on it fast enough. Shit pour out of our heads, and we were pulling all nighters cause we were just so engrossed, so entrenched in this work we never noticed the sun go down. Or come up. We had the giddiness spark again, that excited youthful anxiety that you get when you’re a new freshface band, your first gig, the first single. Decades worth of shit to work out, of squabbles and fights revisited, of opportunities missed and friends lost. Ashtrays filling with the cigarette butts and stained napkins of our conversation as we put our life to words. And we reconnected.


BREAK WAT


I was born in a little unknown place in Greece, but reared in England. The oldest of what would eventually become known as the Antoniou Five and the only boy my mom was blessed with before the adoption, I was nine years the elder to my youngest sister. Most of my dad’s family was in England and had been there for a few generations now-three, if I remember correctly. Mom had timed my pregnancy so she’d be in Greece visiting her own family; she wanted an real authentic Greek boy.
I had a generally normal upbringing, so how did I end up becoming the only loose screw out of the whole bunch? I can’t chalk it up to have a predominately female presence in my life, as Milliken turned out to be more than okay. The model son, I’d often snort as people grinned when he’d show up in pressed slacks yet grunt at my cut-off jeans and dyed hair. But I wasn’t bitter. I was satisfied with the way I was.
The family still lives in the same house I grew up in—a moderate sized English Victorian that still felt cramped despite how unusually large it was. I can contribute this to the large number of family members living with us, there was no time or place where one could be left alone. I remedied that by retiring to the old woods behind our home, where the underbrush was so thickly woven between the gargantuan oaks it took woodcutters and a shit ton of patience to make a path get anywhere. I was allowed free reign with the only requirement to be home on time for dinner each evening.
Stealing old blankets when I could, and dragging pieces of wood board and any other ‘building materials’ I got my hands on, I made a mish mashed fort. One time I managed to save up enough nickels for some paint and then the place looked like a clown exploded.
With my brown worn sandals slapping against the pavement as I carefully balanced the little tubs of paint, I was exhausted and sticky with sweat by the time I got home after the half mile walk to the ‘Jimmy’s Corner Mart’. The dripping sweat glowed golden against my tan skin in the fading sun. I wanted to go back to my fort before the sun was completely down but my parents stopped me when I reached the back yard, somberness hanging heavy over their shoulders.
They were quiet, uncharacteristically so. Tenderly, they ushered me to the cement stairs where they broached the subject of ‘adoption’, pausing tentatively and often as if to make sure their conversation wasn’t upsetting me. At the mention of getting a new brother but having to forego all that baby stuff, my ten-year-old body quivered with anticipation. Three years older than the eldest daughter, the age gap was still enough to leave me wishing I had someone closer to mine to play with and after three sisters I cherished the thought of a brother. To say he was not what I expected was the least I could say of him.
He was a sniveling little thing when I met him, skinnier than me and a lot shorter. His shaggy blonde hair and pale pink skin was so different from my own Mediterranean ethnicity. It threw me for a loop, not that I wasn’t used to Caucasian families, but in the Seventies interracial mixing on the family level was still something that was not all that common in my life.
He was nine at the time; very quiet and jumpy. He didn’t talk much, and I heard the word abused being thrown around when the adults didn’t think I was listening. Very much of this talk flew right over my head. I was oblivious in my child-like state of mind and did not really understand the crushing power that words like abuse, disownment, and negligence had.