Page 16 of Broken Lines

I drop my forehead to the window and swallow as the vague memories of the night filter back in.

I stuck the fuck with it last night. The drinking, yes. But also trying—tryingto fucking write. Something that wasn’t complete shit, at least. For myself. For Iggy, on his birthday.

I glance to the left and right for a bottle that still hassomethingin it. But I come up short. Instead, I close my eyes and think of my lost best friend. My writing partner. The man who was crazy enough to start a band with me.

Happy birthday, mate.

Drinking and snorting myself into an absolute stupor while trying to bleed genius out on a page felt like the best way to honor him last night. I turn again to let my gaze slide over the mess of ripped up lyrics and hacked out chords on the scraps of paper on the floor.

Not that it did anything. Not that I wrote anything.

That part of me ended when I came here, apparently. Ironically, to write, without the pressures of the world. Back when I was stupid enough to think if I got “mad”, andstayedmad, the next logical thing that would follow would be “genius”.

Mad, plus genius, equals mad genius.

At least, that was the hopeful reasoning. But, spoiler, when you stay mad, the only thing that comes is more mad. And a tension headache.

Maybe I had that genius once. Or I just got good at fooling myself and the rest of the world. Either way…

I glare at the pile of empties on the piano as the fading memories of last night sink into my psyche.

Fuck.

Either way, I’m out of fucking booze. That much I remember from before I crashed to the couch last night.

I groan and slump my face into my hands.

Shit. This is going to make my usual morning coffee exceedingly less fun.

I grumble and shove papers and old notebooks aside. The dark thing in my brain perks up a little when I finally uncover the silver mirror on the coffee table with the little white lines streaked across it.

Who the fuck needs coffee?

The coke hits my bloodstream fast, invigorating me and dragging me—at least slightly—out of the black hole I woke up in. I manage to stand again on wobbly legs, my pulse thudding faster as the drugs take hold.

Shirtless, jeans slipping off my hips, I cross the huge open living room. I pause for a second, catching my reflection briefly in the glass of a framed photograph of New York City up on the wall.

I’ve lost weight. I should probably eat more. Drink less. Snort less—or better, none at all. There’s a lot of things I should probably do. But first, it’s time to get even more high.

In the kitchen, I find the bag of weed where I remember tossing it last night. As a bonus, there’s a joint I apparently rolled and didn’t smoke next to it. I quickly rectify that with one of the stove-top burners, and pretty soon, I’m feeling even better. A couple of Percocets later, and I’m fuckingflying.

But I also need booze. And probably groceries, I begrudgingly admit. But the mission is alcohol.

AKA, my medicine.

I pull on an old flannel shirt by the front door and slip on some boots without socks. It’s cold outside, but I don’t bother going back for a jacket or anything. I grunt angrily at the sunshine, jabbing a cigarette between my lips and lighting it with the last glowing bit of the joint. I yank a hat down low and pull on some sunglasses.

Fuck you, daylight.

My head floats as the Percocets take hold. Outside across the yard of the rambling old cliffside mansion that once belonged to an eighteen-hundreds shipping tycoon, sits the garden I set up a few years back. Next to it, the greenhouse, and the garage where I tinker with my bikes from time to time.

I almost pause and decide to spend the morning doing exactly that. But there’s a mission to get to, first.

Operation: “procure whiskey before the beast in me destroys itself” takes priority.

So, I amble down the stone steps that delve down through the woods from the peak of the small island where the main house sits. Down below, near the rocky shore, there’s a little boathouse. I hop off the dock that extends past the rocks into the small fourteen-footer moored to it. The engine churns to life as I kick away from the dock, drag on my cigarette, and point the prow across the bay towards Cape Harbor.

Coastal Maine is pretty as fuck, I’ll give it that. Even if my head still wants to murder my body for consuming what it did last night. Most of it, though—the coast of Maine, that is—is full of fucking tourists.

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