The best musicians need the Muse to help them create their best music.
In my case, Music is the muse.
It inspires me to move and be moved, to create, to dance, sing, draw, even to love, to pine, forgive… It gives me this light bulb moment, or movie moments when, upon listening to a certain piece, images come to life in my head and in some cases like this one, the scenes are so strong I just had to write them down. It’s like dreaming awake, being taken to some other world to view some distant reality that I can’t help but put down.
And here’s one of those stories. (Note: just in case, the texts in blue are links to the artists, songs and videos part of the inspiration. Just click and load for the full effect).
Mostly and initially inspired by Danish multi-instrumentalist and producer Trentemøller‘s haunting piece, Miss You, this is the imagery I came up with. This tale was supposed to be dark and somber all throughout, but also listening to Icelandic Indie artist Sóley‘s entrancing song I’ll Drown and realizing its dark melancholy could fit certain parts of the story, inspired me to put in some softer moments in flashback intervals.
This setting is supposed to be somewhere in Europe. You can modify, but I really saw it to be in London. Could also be in L.A. but the character has to be British. Or at least half, and with an accent or at least traces of it. Think like dark post-Britpop/punk/acid images or something…
A Tom Sturridge voice and accent is the perfect demonstration. There’s two boys in that clip, Tom’s the dark-haired one who looks almost like the image for The Deflowerer in this story. His character in Like Minds inspired me to create another fiction, but that’s for another post.
So put Miss You and I’ll Drown on shuffle in a playlist (SERIOUSLY, follow the instructions), and read on about the “dream” that these pieces brought to life in my mind. :}
As for “The Deflowerer”, here’s what he’s supposed to look like or at least resemble. He’s got the idea of a pale and brooding, darkly beautiful tough boy, down to the faux hawk, the nose piercing, the cigarette and the tattoos perfectly personified. Now if only I remembered this model’s name…
Hello, Morgan.
Morgan. His name was Peter James Morgan. But we loved to call each other by our last names. Well, he liked calling me Morgan, too sometimes, when he was in an especially peachy mood.
The first year is always the hardest. I do not have the energy to recount that hell I went through alone that time. But today would mark the second year of his disappearance from this world, from my life.
How he disappeared was a shock to me. I thought he hated me, didn’t want to see me anymore. But the truth was, he was the one who didn’t want to be seen.
Morgan. No, Peter now. We could afford to be formal and find it funny when everything was so dangerous and so fun. But it’s not fun anymore. It was fun, though, back then for me and the wild child wonder boy who was named Peter.
I remembered those nights, the nights that we were both still so alive together.
Watching movies, movies all the time. We were inseparable. Wearing hipster clothes and going to hipster gatherings, the music, events, the smoke, the drugs… The moment we knew who each other was, we became inseparable. A soul finding another soul of its rare kind. We were just high all the time.
And happy, yes, I could say we were happy. We had each other and our own half meticulous, half chaos, the world of beautiful dark melancholy sprinkled with splashes of orgasmic light – the orgasm of our blissful carelessness of the real world, except the world we wanted to drown ourselves in.
Sex, there was lots of it. At first I was terribly shy, as quiet as the girl I had once been. But he showed it to me. He did it with other girls, at first. And I watched. But he knew my fear. And he knew when and how to coax it out of me, eventually. He taught me to touch myself. He told me it would soon be about time.
The night I knew I wanted to do it, he came to me alone. He knew I needed it to be done to me alone and only with him. But before it happened fully, he had left me gasping, at the height of an unsatisfied fire.
It was at an afterparty, after the smashing indie lo-fi band that we supported (those days, there were many of them) that I lost it to him. In the middle of it all, as many other girls and lesser men were doing it, wanting to do it to him, and he stared at no one but me. And I came to him.
It was like dancing. I remembered what those breakdancers call a cypher, and how the first dancer comes in and dances, to entice another to join the battle. That was what my first time with him was like. The other people in the mass sex party knew I was never touched, was scared to be touched. It was like an ongoing bet when I was going to allow myself to be touched, to be broken in half.
It was him, of course. It had to be. The darling of the crowd. And I remembered the ecstasy of that night when he took me in the middle of that circle, in front of all those people, who for moments paused and watched as he deflowered me, egging us on, cheering like it was some cockfight in the middle of that cypher of sex and bliss and drugged decadence. To breaking lights, cigarette smoke mingling of perfumes and sweat and come. My come, and his.
There were so many things he taught me then. So many places we went to. The last sensitive gate was breached and I was ready to accept all of him. And he shared with gusto.
Not all of the nights were blissful. There were nights we would watch depressing movies on end, feeling the melancholy, the coldness, the dark mesmerizing beauty of it all. We had that strangeness in common. That comfort, that helpless addiction to nostalgia. In those moments we would be quiet. He would put on the music and we would drown in smoke and hash and when the gloom got too much he would get out the needle and we would do more. He was so beautiful in his darkness. If we weren’t so sick we could have made so many babies on the nights we did so many things together.
And then the experiments. They were so fascinating at first. He brought me along to each one. I wholeheartedly trusted him. He knew I did. He cared for that trust with a savage protectiveness that I knew from then I would never know from any other ordinary man.
Everything would be all right. Anywhere, together, we were fearless. We wanted to live fast, but never grow old.
Live fast, but never grow old. That was our motto.
It was on one of these experiments that the taking of him from me began. We never believed in gender stratification. He taught me how to do it with girls. And I would watch him do it with men. Through the course of our many adventures we found out our particular quirks in taste. He liked his fantasy men and women older. I liked my fantasies much younger.
That night. I knew it was that one night that it began. He had never had it done to him before. He was always the doer, the deflowerer. That was another one of my private nicknames for him, The Deflowerer. He loved it.
It was that night. There were many of them. Another orgy. Except all were men, and I was the only female. He was the only one allowed to touch me. It was my birthday, and it was some sort of game.
He was playing the hunted, and the other men were hunters. My hunters. I was the Queen, waiting for an offering.
He was supposed to be the sacrifice. So I watched them do him. All 5 of them, penetrated him, one by one. Skin to exposed skin. We believed in experiencing life to the fullest minutiae of the senses.
And then they brought him to me. It was his idea. But he looked so pained as he crawled towards me. I was supposed to be the cold dominatrix, unyielding. I saw his face straining to smirk at me, those steely eyes squinting beautifully as he reached up to wipe the look of worry he could see through my mask.
It was while grinding on top of him that I became sure something was wrong. There was blood. Blood was flowing down from under him.
I wasn’t stupid. I was furious. I threw all the 5 hunters out, birthday party over. I was furious. And so was he. That was our first fight.
We didn’t see each other for months. I knew he was going all over town fucking men and women more fiercely than ever, wanting to prove something. Wanting to prove that he was indestructible, that nothing can frighten him, that nothing serious should ever be put upon him.
I heard it all. Saw it all, even. The vine would always share me with his Facebook photos and videos, all graphically alive and as livid as the night we had first disagreed.
Night and nights without him, I would hug myself to sleep. I knew for every night after that, he was on his fucking spree. Proving and proving to me in his arrogant way that he wanted to live fast, and never grow old.
And then the calls came.
The first call all I heard was his heavy breathing, I had a feeling he was drunk.
The next calls came and finally I heard him, hoarser. His breathing labored. By then I knew he was drunk. And I knew he was hurt.
Hi, Flower…
It was his private nickname for me. Ever since he told me I was the most difficult girl he ever had to corrupt.
I just want you to be okay… Forever.
I listened, just listened to his voice. Grasping the phone so tight like it was him, like how I wanted to have him back with me and keep him and keep him and just keep him safe. I didn’t want to live fast anymore. I wanted to live slow, as slow as possible, as long as possible, with him. Forever like that. I wanted to say, to tell, but I knew he wouldn’t listen. Never. So I just listened.
Live fast, remember? But never grow old…
I cried but I didn’t make a sound. He knew, nevertheless.
He dropped the phone on me while managing a chuckle through a fit of coughing. I knew he was on the verge of weeping himself. The proud devil.
Several more months later and I was called to identify and claim his body.
I was the only next of kin he listed. The only one.
I vaguely remember that day. It was winter, but too sunny, too bright and happy, all that sparkling wintery white mocking us both. We hated those kind of days. We liked our days a bit blustery, cloudy. Not rainy, just those chilly autumn-like kind of days. We loved winter, too. But not those bright dazzling kinds.
The most normal nights I would remember of us together would be those long winters, just inside, drowned in a big fur carpet we had nicked from some thrift store, huddled in front of the fireplace, our most fond luxury, with cups of cocoa and marshmallows. We loved to listen to the howl of the snow outside, waiting for Christmas. We would make out, just like in the movies, pretending we were wolves. Just the two of us, lone wolves who’ve found each other. Me, playing with his faux hawk. Him nibbling the mark he’d printed on my neck, flames swirling all the way down to my upper breast. A name. “Flower”.
Don’t you ever let yourself grow old, Flower..
And then there he was. I couldn’t muster any expression as I looked at his lifeless form and confirmed that it was him after all, finally dead to the world and to all the worlds he created.
He was found dying at some pavement, on his own. The doctors explained to my stoic face how the hypothermia eventually killed him first, but that he had been suffering from a chronic disease at the time. A disease I would from then on know too well. The drugs, the sex. My beautiful wild Deflowerer dead.
I remember almost managing a sardonic smile as I touched his skin, seeing the bruised needle marks, remembering how pale and smooth and clear as porcelain his skin was. He was effortless beauty in all his darkness.
That day I rented a van and broke into his sister’s apartment and stole all her uncrushed ballet shoes, her jewelry, unopened clothes, tutus, expensive silks, gadgets, all the things about her that he told me he hated. All the things that others could maybe want.
I resold them all on eBay and that paid for his funeral and burial services. Poetic justice. He would have loved that.
And as I look down at his grave now, 2 years later, I wonder if he really loved what has happened with his life. How spectacular it had began, and how pathetic it had ended.
He could have been so much more. He could have been anything he wanted. But he chose to live fast, and never grow old.
Maybe he knew something about growing old, about the world of adults, that deeply frightened him. He’s seen so much, experienced much more than I do.
And as I stand there, laying down the smashed bottles of Jagger and Vodka I had saved weeks for, just to lay down on his grave at his death anniversary, I wondered.
What is it about growing old that you were so scared of, Peter?
He created his idea of a Neverland with me. And with many others, it seemed. As for some odd reason, many broken hearts came to attend his funeral, found out about it, despite my lack of initiative at sending all-out invitations. You were so loved. The charm of gold. Your darkly sublime pictures in random posters and magazines. A few more years and they would have known your name. And yet you threw it away for the sake of living fast.
And never, never growing old. And now you died for it.
I may never know whatever it is that scared you away. Whatever ugliness you saw in the idea of growing old that you had to plan such an ingenous escape without literally committing yet another dramatic suicide. You loved the dark and the melancholic, but you were a golden child. You couldn’t live the way those darker more twisted ones did. You didn’t choose the most pathetic way out. You chose to go out like a fireworks display. Greedily taking everything out of life until it had nothing left to offer. And you withered away. Away from the world, your world, away from me.
Live fast, but never grow old.
Don’t worry Peter, neither of us will grow old now.
I’ll be following you soon. And then you can tell me what is so ugly about the adult world so I’d understand what I’d be giving up my life for.
We’ll be young together again. Forever this time.
See you in our Neverland.
