Head Trauma
one.
Did we all fall down?
From the lights to the pavement
From the van to the floor
From backstage to the doctor
From the Earth to the morgue
Well tonight
Will it ever come?
Spend the rest of your days rocking out
Just for the dead
Zombies.
Today I’m a messy mannequin, blood thinning into some fucking anemic coma, lying like a motorized corpse under a pile of battered duffel bags and watching road kill flash by alongside the endless yellow line, gnawing on my fingernails like another nervous animal, torturing myself with suffocating images of small, furry lives violently extinguished against the pavement in a flash of blind terror, rubber tread, and blood and wondering why it bothers me so goddamn much; closing my glazed hung-over-Frankie eyes and trying to focus on anything but animal guts splayed out on asphalt, the rush of filthy highway expanse passing by outside in a seamless blur starting to make me nauseous.
First tour with The Used, day infinity.
They’ve been around for longer than we have, so this should be our ticket for finally making it big, but it doesn’t matter what the fucking optimists tell me, I just feel dead. Sure, I can get fucked up on beer and caffeine like anyone else; switch the signs on the doors so that some band ends up using the bathroom as bunks; tattoo lurid Technicolor pieces of my life on my arms, back, stomach, calves, anywhere; get plastered and lie on someone’s puke-stained carpet laughing until my bloody lungs are lodged in my throat, but this doesn’t feel anything like I thought I would. I thought I was going to be a hero, and instead I feel like shit. A regular job would have killed me, but I make a hopeless rockstar. I’ve signed fifty autographs on t-shirts today, but not a single kid I saw noticed what I’m starting to realize; that the five of us are fucking our lives up just like we would be back in Jersey… the only difference is; now they’re calling it glamour.
Maybe Gerard looks good with one hand at his crotch and the other on the microphone stand, screaming bullets and Ferris wheels and vampires at the rabid crowd with vodka on his lips, but I know I’m anything but fucking glamorous.
Days exhausting and twisted like acid with highway lines, burning bright concert lights, microphone feedback, screaming kids too hopeless to know a bad influence from a good one, wandering hands and mouths onstage as my body runs on autopilot, letting Gerard’s lips and fingers do the talking, teasing, crowd-pleasing; hard masking-tape-and-plastic stage floor bruising my back, fingers slick on the sharp guitar strings, tripping over cords on the way offstage, the acrid scent of cigarette smoke and Sharpie markers clinging constantly to my clothing and the violent buzz of the amplifiers screaming ceaselessly in my head… Nights even harder to define; always a blur of touch taste sound smell sensations, either intensified or dulled with pills and alcohol, sticky with sin, sweat and sex; Mikey’s sharp corners, angular hips ribs shoulderblades pressing me into the mattress as though he needed it more than I did, drunken cocaine laughter and smashed black mirrors behind Gerard’s Xanax eyes burning holes in my skin like his cigarettes, carcinogen Quinn manic and stupid with beer, Jepha piercings bones and tattoos, smirking needle-tracks Bert McCracken with wild hazel irises and a fucking heroin haze.
And then pull on some crumpled jeans and force yourself to look them in the eyes the next morning.
To do it all over again.
From the lights to the pavement
From the van to the floor
From backstage to the doctor
From the Earth to the morgue
Well tonight
Will it ever come?
Spend the rest of your days rocking out
Just for the dead
Zombies.
Today I’m a messy mannequin, blood thinning into some fucking anemic coma, lying like a motorized corpse under a pile of battered duffel bags and watching road kill flash by alongside the endless yellow line, gnawing on my fingernails like another nervous animal, torturing myself with suffocating images of small, furry lives violently extinguished against the pavement in a flash of blind terror, rubber tread, and blood and wondering why it bothers me so goddamn much; closing my glazed hung-over-Frankie eyes and trying to focus on anything but animal guts splayed out on asphalt, the rush of filthy highway expanse passing by outside in a seamless blur starting to make me nauseous.
First tour with The Used, day infinity.
They’ve been around for longer than we have, so this should be our ticket for finally making it big, but it doesn’t matter what the fucking optimists tell me, I just feel dead. Sure, I can get fucked up on beer and caffeine like anyone else; switch the signs on the doors so that some band ends up using the bathroom as bunks; tattoo lurid Technicolor pieces of my life on my arms, back, stomach, calves, anywhere; get plastered and lie on someone’s puke-stained carpet laughing until my bloody lungs are lodged in my throat, but this doesn’t feel anything like I thought I would. I thought I was going to be a hero, and instead I feel like shit. A regular job would have killed me, but I make a hopeless rockstar. I’ve signed fifty autographs on t-shirts today, but not a single kid I saw noticed what I’m starting to realize; that the five of us are fucking our lives up just like we would be back in Jersey… the only difference is; now they’re calling it glamour.
Maybe Gerard looks good with one hand at his crotch and the other on the microphone stand, screaming bullets and Ferris wheels and vampires at the rabid crowd with vodka on his lips, but I know I’m anything but fucking glamorous.
Days exhausting and twisted like acid with highway lines, burning bright concert lights, microphone feedback, screaming kids too hopeless to know a bad influence from a good one, wandering hands and mouths onstage as my body runs on autopilot, letting Gerard’s lips and fingers do the talking, teasing, crowd-pleasing; hard masking-tape-and-plastic stage floor bruising my back, fingers slick on the sharp guitar strings, tripping over cords on the way offstage, the acrid scent of cigarette smoke and Sharpie markers clinging constantly to my clothing and the violent buzz of the amplifiers screaming ceaselessly in my head… Nights even harder to define; always a blur of touch taste sound smell sensations, either intensified or dulled with pills and alcohol, sticky with sin, sweat and sex; Mikey’s sharp corners, angular hips ribs shoulderblades pressing me into the mattress as though he needed it more than I did, drunken cocaine laughter and smashed black mirrors behind Gerard’s Xanax eyes burning holes in my skin like his cigarettes, carcinogen Quinn manic and stupid with beer, Jepha piercings bones and tattoos, smirking needle-tracks Bert McCracken with wild hazel irises and a fucking heroin haze.
And then pull on some crumpled jeans and force yourself to look them in the eyes the next morning.
To do it all over again.