Something You Can...

“But hey, it was no fucking skin off our noses,” Manson was saying. “We just replaced his ass with Twiggy—you remember Jeordie, right? He was—”

“Not really.”

“Whatever. You’ve met him.”

A year later, I was snorting coke with him. Maybe it wasn’t a whole year. Maybe it was more. But it was just snorting coke—you wouldn’t think anything untoward would come of it.

Maybe a year after that, it was snorting coke and retreating to dark corners to talk about ideas. And what shit the “popular” music scene was. And to crack on everyone who wasn’t sitting in our corner, a corner just big enough for two people and their drugs—him grinning and sniffing after doing a line, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. The coke became secondary; it was chips and dip, a bowl of nuts, something you reached into without breaking conversation.

1995—coke and alcohol. Or maybe it was something else and alcohol—or all three, or four, or five. Something was hilariously funny—unreasonably funny. Falling-all-over-each-other-funny, all elbows and angles and the sound of two deflating tires—Sssssssssssssssssssst.

“You two are a lot of fucking help,” Manson snarled, throwing someone’s left boot at Twiggy before storming out. It was Twiggy's left boot. He shoved his foot into it and clomped crookedly around, breaking up all over again.

1995 still, a week or a month later. Daisy and Pogo and Ginger sitting around the studio throwing what looked like Bayer aspirins at each other.

“Don’t get any of that shit in the equipment.”

“Ginger had a headache,” Pogo said, and flicked another wide white pill into Ginger’s hair.

A shadow filled the doorway—Twiggy leaning in, holding onto the doorway on each side.

So that was four of them there—“Where’s Manson?”

“Ohio.”

“What?”

“Family wedding.”

“Nice of him to mention it.”

Twiggy shrugged.

“Whaddaya wanna do?” Pogo asked, eyes looking upward. The other two were looking, too.

Twiggy shrugged.

“Fuck it. Whatever you want.” What was one or three more days of getting nofuckingwhere with this album of theirs? This train had been rolling nowhere for months. Fuck. Just another aggravation. “When’s he coming back?”

Twiggy shrugged.

That night, the doorbell rang. Twiggy stood on the porch, looking ghastly with his dark circles and the incandescent porch light carving out shadows all over his face. He opened his jacket to reveal a baggie poking out of his pocket. More coke. More alcohol. Maybe it was for courage. I pushed the door closed as he walked by, then turned and leaned against it, watching him. Wanting him to walk back this way. He did. Watching him walk back this way. Watching his hands come up, hearing them press flat against the door.

There were arguments against it, and fears, and rationalizations, and furtive jerking-off sessions that nobody had ever heard about—least of all him.

And then there was just him. Up close and life-size.

There was just him—and then…the roof of his mouth tasted like cocaine….