Sleep With a Gun

He stared into the mirror with a blank expression. The man inside it was one he was trying to reacquaint himself with. The wide, empty brown eyes. The short black hair that he just couldn't quit tugging on. Jeans. A t-shirt. Sneakers. Sure, his hair was still a little shaggy, but he was beginning to look like a normal member of society again.

"Jeordie." He winced at the sound, although he was the one who whispered his own name. Who was Jeordie White? He wasn't quite sure. He hadn't been Jeordie in a long time. But he knew for a fact that Jeordie didn't wear dresses. Jeordie didn't wear makeup. Jeordie didn't do drugs and go crazy. That was Twiggy, and Twiggy was a thing of the past. Twiggy didn't exist anymore.

Jeordie. That was the name he had to tell people when they recognized him, by some miracle, on the streets. When they called for Twiggy and were corrected with a smile. Because Jeordie was polite. Jeordie wasn't a rock star. Jeordie was a human being, just as lowly as everyone else. Jeordie changed his phone number. Jeordie sold his house and moved into a sparse apartment on the other side of town. Jeordie stared in mirrors and fought Twiggy away.

He sighed. His heart had never felt as broken as it did for those prior months. He had told himself that he wanted to leave, that he needed a change. He had even convinced himself of that as he finally told his band that he would be taking his leave. As he busied himself with the move. As he packed away his old memories. As he bought a new wardrobe. As he changed his name. As he cleaned up his act.

But when he finished those things, what was there to do? The most productive months of his life were over. And the realization hit him when he awoke to find a clean, white, empty apartment and had nothing left to do but sit in it and stare at the wall. He had tried to black out any outside influences, but he began to go insane. And when he turned on the television to see what new music had come out in the time he had been gone, he found that his old band was doing just fine without him. They had a new bassist and were recording a new album. As if he hadn't even left.

He sat there in awe while the news segment ran to its end before he could find the strength to turn off the TV. But he simply sat there, staring at a blank screen. Awe struck.

He had experienced his fair share of break ups before. He knew the loss that was felt when someone important to you suddenly wasn't there anymore. But he had always had something to fall back on, be it his friends, his drugs, or his music. Sitting on his couch, unable to move, he came to the conclusion that he hadn't just broken up with his part-time lover, full-time best friend. He had broken up with his life. He had nothing, not even the pleasure of the clothes on his back.

Empty hours slid past him. Days melted into weeks. He had woken up one morning, dressed, and ended up in front of the mirror. He didn't know how long he had been there. But he couldn't stop staring.

The day turned into night. He couldn't take it anymore. The loneliness. The emptiness. The constant hurt that plagued him. Thousands of mental and emotional aches that he could do nothing about. It built up inside of him, one thing on top of another. He began to resent the reflection in the mirror. Resent it with the entirety of his being.

He found himself in his bedroom, reaching for the alcohol on the top shelf of his closet. He was two months sober, but without the alcohol, he didn't know what would happen. His fingers grabbed the nearest bottle of Jack Daniels, and he downed it before he could even consider the consequences of his actions.

A plan was forming inside his mind, and it would take a bit of alcohol to make it a reality. He discarded the empty bottle and used the wall to brace himself as he stumbled into the kitchen. He had been sober for at least a month, and the sudden shock of alcohol was disorienting. He didn't remember ever feeling so uncertain about himself, but then again, he didn't remember much of anything.

He could see the telephone in the kitchen, and he knew what he had to do. Within seconds, he was there, picking up the receiver and dialing the number he knew better than his own. The one he dialed every night he felt alone, every time he needed someone to talk to, every time he simply needed a reminder that there was another human being out there.

His heart thumped wildly as he punched in the last number. What would he say? What would he do? He didn't know and didn't care. All he wanted was to hear Marilyn's voice once more-

"We're sorry; the person you are trying to reach is no longer here."

"Fuck!" In one fell swoop, Jeordie knocked the telephone off the counter. Emotion choked his throat, and he had to brace himself on the counter. That motherfucker had changed his phone number! How fucking dare he?!

But... hadn't he done the same thing? The first thing Jeordie had done was change his number.

He didn't care. He erased the thought from his mind and made his way back to the bedroom seething with rage. With so much hatred that needed to be expelled in one way or another.

Somehow he found himself back in front of the mirror of his bathroom with a box he had never expected to open again. He tore the tape from it and dumped the contents onto the floor.

The routine was so familiar. One bottle, one container, one tube after another was opened. White, black, red... drastic colors, drastic shades. Jeordie watched as the face in the mirror transformed into one that he knew very well. And when he traded his shirt for a dress, his jeans for tights, and his sneakers for boots, he began to feel like he really knew himself, too.

He was no longer Jeordie. He had shed Jeordie like a snake sheds its skin. Twiggy had emerged once again. The only difference was his lack of dreads, but he could get past that. He was Twiggy again. Twiggy fucking Ramirez.

His mind was a fog of hate and love and alcohol, and he relished the feeling. Somehow, those three things combined into a toxic adrenaline rush that clouded his mind with bad ideas. And because it was so clouded, he felt his only option was to act on one of them.

He had wound up behind the wheel of his car because of this swirling mass of indecipherable thoughts. The undercurrents of suggestion took hold of him, and his body began to act without first conferring with his mind.

He turned the key in the ignition and started the car. His common sense told him that he should be doing this. He had just learned to drive - it was one of the things he had needed to do upon leaving the band - and he wouldn't exactly consider himself as much as a relatively decent driver. Getting behind the wheel intoxicated wasn't going to end well. But the alcohol told him to ignore that little voice in the back of his head, and he was more than happy to do so.

There was no way this could end well. And yet he backed the car out of the parking garage anyway.

Jeordie lost his way for a while, but soon he found himself on the path he had traveled many times before. From there it became an automatic action. Like a path one drives every morning to work, it had become ingrained in his memory.

It wasn't until he parked his car that he really realized where he had gone. The house he knew like the back of his hand. The house that he spent more time at than he had at his own.

The light was on in the back, just a faint glow oozing from the thin slit of the closed curtains. Jeordie knew he was inside, in his studio. He always wound up there late at night. Painting or writing or just sitting in silence, thinking.

Jeordie stared, turning his car off. It had seemed like such a great plan when he got in his car, but now that he had made his way to his destination, he realized that his entire journey had been without a purpose. What was he supposed to do? Go knock on the door? Sit outside and wait to be noticed? Go home in defeat?

His mind swirled in confusion, and no thought was tangible enough to grab onto. He simply sat there, staring at the light coming from the window. And then his heart sank. Tears burned in his eyes, and he allowed them to fall freely.

Had it really come to this? Crying in front of the house of the man he had loved, dressed in drag, drunk off his ass? This is what rock bottom feels like, he thought. It feels like despair, like makeup running down wet cheeks. Like knowing that the one thing you want is within 100 feet, knowing that you're breathing the same air, and knowing that you can't fucking have it. You can't get out of the car and run to his front steps. You can't fall there in tears, begging at his feet, because he'll kick you aside like the distasteful piece of trash you are. Like knowing the only thing you can do is cry. And hating every goddamn moment of it.

He balled his fists and pressed them against his eyes, trying desperately to stop the waterworks. But nothing would help. He sobbed himself into breathlessness and then kept going, his chest heaving and no sound escaping his lips. There was an ache in his chest that was growing in intensity, and it was fucking killing him.

Jeordie missed Marilyn. He missed the kisses, the romance, the fighting... everything. He had been so selfish to leave the band because he thought he was above all that. In the end, he was just a human being with needs, too. And they were needs that he had been abandoning since leaving the band.

He removed his hands; they weren't doing much to help him, anyway. Through the watery blur that was caused by his tears, he could see that the light in the studio had gone off. Immediately, Jeordie sobered. His cries had been loud enough that he was sure someone outside the car could have heard them. But had Marilyn?

He started up his car again. Maybe the man would mistake him for a lost tourist, maybe a crazy fan. Jeordie drove a few blocks before parking again. His inebriated state combined with his constant stream of tears made it impossible for him to drive.

Driving to Manson's was a mistake. He didn't know what he was looking for. Perhaps some kind of closure. But he knew that wouldn't happen. He had fucked up.

He felt pathetic. It had almost been a full year, and he still hadn't made any progress. He was still hopelessly in love with a man who no longer needed or wanted him. Who had replaced him in all walks of life. Who was getting married.

There were a few ways he could go about solving this issue.

First, he could kill himself.

He could do it. It wouldn't be that hard. Everyone's memories of him would be tarnished in a bit of shame, that he had killed himself over an unreturned love. But yet, Jeordie wasn't a coward. He didn't take the easy way out.

Second, he could drive back to Manson's house and beg in hopes of being let back into his life.

The success rate was slim, and he wasn't sure that Manson would look too kindly upon the man, dressed like his former stage persona, kissing his feet. He'd be seen as a coward, a loser. Manson would surely call up his band mates and tell them about how low Jeordie had finally sunk.

Finally, he could start up the car and live his life without Manson.

It was the hardest of the three choices. It would take the most strength. Could he do it? Could he really move forward and forget about the things that kept him crawling back to Marilyn? Could he start up that car, wash off his makeup, and find some other means of occupying his mind?

Jeordie wasn't sure that he could.

But it was worth a shot.