NEGATE

(to deny the existence of)

§

 

The vodka might as well be water.  You tip the bottle and chug, swallowing five or more times before giving up and hurling it.  It hits the side of the tour bus and shatters with the kind of crash that should be satisfying but isn’t, broken glass and liquor flying everywhere.

 

“Fuck,” you say to the empty room.  You want to cry, but you’re a bottle and a half of vodka and a lot of anger past the crying point.  Besides, what good would it do?  There’s no one around to hear you.  Even if they were around, they wouldn’t care.  And besides, do you really want them to see you like this?

 

You wonder where they are right now, and decide it doesn’t matter.  What matters is what they’re doing, and that’s something you’re reasonably certain of.  It doesn’t matter who’s doing what to whom, which one of them is being licked or sucked or penetrated.  Or maybe they’ve already finished, but you doubt that.  But that’s hardly the point here.  The point here is that they’re both being pleasured.  The point here is that neither of them is playing the bitch.  There is no bitch.

 

Except for you.

 

It’s not the fact that Bobby turned on you.  He didn’t, entirely, and anyway, you don’t really care about that.  Well, okay, you do, but it’s not the worst of it.  It’s not even the fact that this is the worst punishment that Bret could ever inflict upon you. 

 

You pause on that thought, contemplating for a minute, trying to think of something he could do that would be worse than this.  Your mind comes up blank.  Okay, so Bret doing this wasn’t quite the worst part, but it was really damn close.

 

What really gets you, though, what really grabs something right inside of the parts of you that matter and twists, is the fact that they’re doing something together.  No top, no bottom.  No bad, only good.  No twisted power games, no brutality, none of that.  Just the two of them touching each other, pleasing each other… loving each other?  Your stomach turns at the very idea.

 

Suddenly you wish you hadn’t broken that bottle of vodka, even though you know that if the first bottle and a half didn’t do it, more wouldn’t, either.  Maybe if you mainlined it, that would work, but the Crue already beat you to that bright idea. 

 

You try to ignore it, but you can’t avoid the onslaught of mental imagery that comes with thinking about the two of them.   You suppose that maybe you should have seen this coming, but you just never even considered it.  You never thought that Bobby would betray you, defy you in this way… not when it was so obvious how he felt about you.  And you never thought Bret would give up his favorite toy.  Only he didn’t, exactly, and that makes it even worse, if that’s even possible.

 

Still and all, although it pains you to admit it, the signs were obvious before you got confirmation.  Hindsight really is twenty-twenty.  It was written all over their faces.  It was in the way they looked at each other, the way that Bret would touch his arm when they talked, the way that Bobby got as close as possible to him on stage.  And of course there was the fact that neither one of them was ever anywhere to be found.  You’d just ignored it, denied it.  The idea was completely absurd, after all.

 

But you’d found them tonight.  And once was enough.

 

They didn’t know you’d seen them and you hadn’t been looking for anything.  Bret had cancelled another meet and greet – something he’d been doing an awful lot lately – and disappeared almost immediately after the show.  Bobby and CC were nowhere to be found, either, and you wondered if they were off partying without you.  But you had decided you didn’t care.  A night alone seemed like a good plan, and you’d curled up on the bus with your laptop, but after an hour you’d found yourself bored and restless and decided to walk around outside.

 

A glance at the clock at the front of the bus had told you that it was pushing two in the morning.  The lot where the buses were parked was dark and completely deserted, an unusual occurrence.  Usually, fans stuck around until the buses pulled away in the hopes of meeting a rock star.  Apparently things were different in this town, although you weren’t even sure what town you were in.

 

You had lit a cigarette and wandered away from the bus, a little unsettled by the lack of light and sound.  There were a few streetlights in the parking lot, but they were too far apart to offer much illumination, and several of them were either burned out or flickering.  There wasn’t a single star visible in the sky.  What a perfect setting for a slasher movie.  Yeah.  Friday the 13th Part 80: Jason Kills a Glam Band.

 

You had been about to go back to your laptop when you’d heard something over by Bobby and CC’s bus.  At first it sounded like some sort of wounded animal, a sound that always got your attention.  When the sound repeated itself – a sort of low moan – you’d realized it was not animal, but human.  You’d also realized it was coming from the far side of the other tour bus.

 

You’d flicked the cigarette to the ground and muttered something to yourself.  This wouldn’t be the first time on the tour that you’d found CC face down in a parking lot, too fucked up on some cocktail of substances to stumble the few feet onto the bus.  But that didn’t mean you wanted to deal with it.  You were sick of picking him up when he fell, and at this point he wasn’t falling so much as diving.  And so you made your way very quietly to the side of the bus, only wanting to make sure that the self-destructive guitarist wasn’t at any immediate risk of death. 

 

At first you weren’t even sure what it was you were looking at.  You just knew that it wasn’t CC kissing the asphalt.  But as your eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness in the parking lot, things began to come into focus, and you realized that it was Bobby standing against the side of the bus, his mouth hanging open, looking down at someone.  Your eyes followed his gaze to a mane of wild blond hair.

 

And that’s about when you suddenly felt like your chest was going to collapse.

 

Part of you had wanted to say something, or scream, or make a noise.  Anything to stop it from continuing.  But instead you stayed glued to where you were standing, silent and safely hidden in the darkness.  Making your presence known wouldn’t have changed anything, anyway. 

 

As the first initial shock wore off, a succession of realizations hit you.  The first was that Bret wasn’t on the receiving end, a position you hadn’t seem him in with anybody for as long as you could remember.  As you continued to watch the slow and gentle way that he was pleasuring Bobby, you realized that there were no domination games here.  They were truly enjoying one another.  The concept of having a real lover, of having equality on a sexual level, was a concept you’d given up for lost a long time ago.  You had none of that, not with Bret or Bobby or any of your girlfriends, and certainly not with groupies.  And suddenly you’d found yourself witnessing it from an outside perspective, like an orphaned child watching through the window as a family opened presents on Christmas morning, and that wasn’t even the worst part.  The worst part wasn’t the play you were watching – it was who starred in the lead roles.  Your favorite mirror standing against the dirty tour bus, consumed by pleasure, while your favorite punishment took care of the details.

 

But maybe not, you think now in your drunken pool of despair and self-loathing.  Maybe the worst part is that if you weren’t such a fucking idiot, this wouldn’t be happening.  Or maybe there was no worst part, maybe it was just an entire army of worst parts marching slowly and steadily directly into the center of your world and taking it over.

 

You had just never even entertained the notion that things could ever go in this direction.  Bobby was yours, after all.  He was in love with you.  He’d never actually come out and said it, but he didn’t have to.  It was in his eyes when he was on his knees before you.  It was in the way he moved his hips when you were inside of him.  It was in the way he seemed eternally grateful, even when the only gift you gave him was pain.

 

And you loved him, too, in your own way.  Sometimes you expressed that in the way that you touched him.  Besides, love and hate are interchangeable, as far as you’re concerned.  You can’t have one without the other.  Didn’t Bobby understand that?  You wouldn’t have been able to keep up with his expectations of you if you didn’t love him.  It was tiresome being what he’d built you up to be, and if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t bother.  It was love that gave you the ability to hurt him until he came from it.

 

And what about Bret?  When did your limitless submission to him stop being enough?  It was forcing you to question whether it had ever been enough, or if it really was just a game to him.  A game where you had only been the most accessible pawn.  Surely he had to know how in love with him you are. 

 

And yet somehow it’s come to this.  When you weren’t looking, the invisible bonds that you’d believed to be impenetrable had broken.  Bobby had betrayed you, and Bret had gotten bored with you, and as if that weren’t enough, now they had found each other.  You wonder how many times it’s happened, how many nights they’d gone to each other after they were finished with you. You fight back the urge to vomit.  You know exactly when this all started, and it’s no one’s fault but your own.

 

Suddenly you hear movement from the front of the bus and you’re sure it’s him.  You want to get up and lock the door to the back lounge, but alcohol and misery keep you rooted to your seat. 

 

A moment later, the door crashes open and he flies in, ever the cocksure front man making his grand entrance.  You can do nothing but stare.  His hair is a tangled mane framing his face, and he’s not wearing a shirt.  He was two hours ago when you saw him with Bobby.  The thought makes you ball your hands into fists, your fingernails digging into your palms.

 

Barely noticing you, he sits down heavily on the couch so that he’s sitting perpendicular to you.  His chest is covered in a light sheen of sweat, and you hate yourself for wanting to feel it underneath your fingertips even now.  You know that you will be his slave forever whether he’s doing his part or not.

 

He grabs a CD case from the floor and tosses it onto the table, then fishes a bag out of his pocket.  You frown since he can’t see you.  You didn’t know he’d been doing coke again.  As the Rikki that is his best friend, you suppose you should express concern, but you stay quiet.  Let him play with his pile of white powder.  It’s obvious he doesn’t want to play with you.  And besides, lately he hasn’t been very much of a best friend.  Not that you blame him, entirely.

 

He produces a razor blade and straw seemingly from nowhere, and deftly cuts out three lines.  You watch as he expertly inhales them.  The action is strangely sexual, but then, everything the man does is sexual.  You know the only thing keeping you from getting hard is too much vodka consumed in too little time. 

 

He tosses the blade and the straw onto the table carelessly and leans back against the couch, finally looking at you.  You search his face for any sort of emotion, but find nothing but the same smug smirk he seems to always be wearing.

 

Your mind is reeling from alcohol and his presence.  Maybe you can do something to reverse this process.  Maybe you can remind him why it’s always you he comes to when he needs release.  You take a breath.  “Do you want to fuck me?”

 

He raises an eyebrow.  “You look like shit,” he says, and you think you see the smirk widen a bit.

 

The words hurt and you’re sure that was his intent.  For a long moment, you just look back at him, carefully weighing your words before speaking.  You look down at the floor.  “I saw you with Bobby,” you say finally.  You swallow.  “I can tell that wasn’t the first time.”  You steal a glance at him.

 

For just a second, you think you see something flash across his face, but it’s gone so fast that you may have only imagined it.  Now the smirk is definitely wider, almost a smile, but definitely not a warm one.  “Your point?”

 

You know you should have expected a response like that, but you still find yourself totally unprepared for his flippancy.  You look down at the floor again.  “I didn’t like it,” you say quietly.  You want to say a lot more, to at least attempt to explain to him just how much you didn’t like it, how much it makes you just want to curl up and die, but no other words come.

 

You hope that he’ll be gentle with you, maybe even sorry, but he only laughs, a short, unpleasant sound, and you close your eyes tightly against it.  “Oh, you didn’t,” he says, as though it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

 

It occurs to you that talking this way to Bret after he’s just railed three lines of cocaine might not have been the best idea, but it’s too late now, and it doesn’t much matter.  You wonder if he expects you to respond.

 

He rises to his feet.  The coke is clearly kicking in, and he’s animated and agitated now.  “Look at me when I’m fucking talking to you,” he demands. 

 

You opt to not point out the fact that he wasn’t talking to you in the first place, and slowly look up at him.  Is he even capable of seeing the tidal wave of emotions in your eyes? 

 

“Why didn’t you like it, little Rikki?” he asks sarcastically.  His piercing blue eyes are cold and accusatory.

 

You bite your lip and close your eyes.  Fuck it.  What have you got to lose at this point?  You’ve lost it all already.  You begin to speak, your voice barely above a whisper.  “It’s because--“

 

“Speak up,” Bret commands.  “And I told you to fucking look at me.”

 

Using all of your strength, you pull your eyes open again and force yourself to meet his gaze.  You swallow.  “It’s because I love you.”

 

For a moment, he just looks down at you and his expression changes.  First surprise, then something bordering on concern, but then it’s back to his usual dominant self again.  “Is that what you’ve been doing with Bobby all this time?  Loving me?”  Sarcasm and icy hatred drip from his words.

 

Your stomach clenches into a tight knot.  He always knows what to say to you, and never in a good way.  You blink back tears.  “Bobby’s got nothing to do with the way that I feel about you.”

 

His eyes are pure fire.  “I don’t care what the fuck Bobby does or does not have to do with it,” he says evenly.  His voice is eerily calm, and that scares you much more than having him scream at you.  “And don’t you dare tell me that you feel anything for me, you disrespectful piece of shit.  Obviously, the only thing you care about is your dick.”

 

You can’t help it.  You feel a tear roll down your cheek.  Wonderful.  That’s all he needs to see, you crying like a little bitch.  “Bret…” you say, but you have nothing to follow it with.

 

“Shut the fuck up,” he barks, his voice no longer even and calm.  “You don’t fucking deserve to even say my name.  You don’t deserve everything I’ve given you.  I don’t know why I kept doing it after I found out about you two.”

 

“I don’t deserve you,” you repeat mechanically, hoping to somehow please him with your obedience.  Since he found out he’s only been increasingly more violent, sometimes so violent that the pleasure couldn’t find its way through the pain to get to you.  But it doesn’t matter.  You still love any attention from him, even attention that leaves you in enough pain that you have to make fumbling excuses for cancelled after-shows.  Even attention that requires three painkillers just to lie down and sleep.  Even now that all is irreparably damaged, you only want to make him happy.

 

“At least Bobby’s a fucking man,” he spits out.  “All you are is a pathetic little whore who likes it up the ass.”  His eyes light upon your laptop sitting on the table.  “And that,” he says, motioning to it, “is the only fucking friend you’ve got in the world.”  He laughs and you think he sounds downright maniacal.

 

You know he’s right.  What else have you got?  Bret and Bobby were all you had.  “Bret, you have to understand—“

 

“There isn’t shit to understand,” he interjects.  “I understand all that I fucking need to understand.”  Thus saying, he reaches down and snatches your laptop from the table, ripping cords out of it.

 

“Don’t,” you say feebly, but you make no move in an attempt to stop him from what you know he’s going to do.

 

His face is red with anger.  “I know you didn’t just tell me what to do,” he says, and then he does it.  He hurls the computer back down to the table with all of his strength, which given the cocaine he’s on is considerable.  You wince as the machine hits the Formica with a crash, snapping apart.  A few keys fly off and land on the floor. 

 

You look up at him.  “Did that make you feel better?”

 

His squints at you, furious, and his voice is back to that same unsettling calm.  “No,” he replies.  “Nothing about you could make me feel good.”  He pauses.  “Except perhaps for your friend Bobby.”

 

The words hit you like a punch in the stomach.  You break his gaze, deflated and miserable.  “All I’ve ever wanted is to please you,” you say softly.  The barrier between your brain and your mouth has been completely shattered.

 

He snorts.  “Yeah.  Well, you’re nowhere near good enough to do that.”

 

You force yourself to look up at him again.  “I love you.”

 

He looks at you for a long moment, and then waves the idea off.  “You disgust me,” he says simply, and before you have a chance to even really hear him, he’s gone, the door slamming behind him.  A moment later, you hear the bus door slam, and you know where he’s going.

 

It’s been years since you’ve really cried, but now the tears won’t stop.  You can’t remember ever feeling so helpless.  So utterly hopeless.  You have nothing left in the world now that he’s gone.  Without him, you can’t even imagine trying to carry on with Bobby, although you know he’d never defy you to your face.  Everything is lost.

 

Through your tears you can see the ruined remains of your laptop on the table, and among them lays the razor blade that he was using to cut his cocaine.  You stare at it for a few long moments before picking it up and turning it over and over in your fingers, watching the way the track lighting glints off of it. 

 

You had only felt suicidal one other time in your life, when you were sixteen and your first real girlfriend had left you for the captain of the football team.  Of course, looking back, it was silly and trivial, and you can remember your father’s words.  “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”  But this problem wasn’t temporary, and you aren’t sixteen anymore.  You’re well past adulthood, and the most important relationship of your entire life was just shattered into pieces and thrown in your face, and everything that mattered went with it.  You wouldn’t even be able to enjoy your work anymore. 

 

It would be a permanent solution.  A permanent solution to a permanent problem.

 

You use your right hand to drag the edge of the blade along the flesh of your left forearm lightly.  A tiny line of blood appears in its path.  The blade is new, and given that fact compounded by vodka and a complete emotional landslide, you can’t imagine that it would hurt very much, if it hurt at all.  And what if it did hurt?  It would be like a mosquito bite in the midst of being attacked by killer bees.

 

You turn your left arm over and stare down at the flesh of your wrist.  Dimly you recall that the way to do this is vertically, not horizontally, and for some reason the idea makes you chuckle.  You wonder if this is what it feels like to go insane.

 

As your eyes dance back and forth between your wrist and the razor blade, you wonder if you should leave a note.  That seems like the thing that people do when they kill themselves.  But what would you say?  All you could think about, all you could feel, was your love for him.  If you couldn’t express it enough in life to make him believe it, a few words scribbled on a piece of paper in death wouldn’t do it, either.  Besides, it’s not like you’d be around to see him read it.

 

You look around the room, uncertain as to what it is you’re seeking.  You notice what CD Bret had been cutting lines on, and the bitter irony of it appeals to you in some sick way.  You pick it up, letting the remaining white powder slide off of it and onto the floor.  You won’t be needing drugs where you’re going.  You remove the CD and slide it into the small Bose stereo that rests above the couch, then skip to the fifth track and put it on repeat.

 

You sink back against the couch, your eyes again focusing on the blade as the music begins to play.

 

I can’t tell you, baby, what went wrong

I can’t make you feel what you felt so long ago

I’ll let it show

 

You clench and unclench your left fist, watching the veins in your forearm bulge.

 

I can’t give you back what’s been hurt

Heartaches come and go, and all that’s left are the words

I can’t let go

 

You can do this.  You must do this, for what else can you do?

 

If we take some time, think it over, baby

Take some time, let me know

If you really wanna go

 

You realize that you’ve stopped crying.  In fact, you feel rather peaceful.  Vaguely you recall once reading something about how suicidal people often feel serene, even happy, when they’ve decided that they’re going to really do it. 

 

Don’t know what you got til it’s gone

Don’t know what it is I did so wrong

Now I know what I’ve got, it’s just this song

And it ain’t easy to get back, takes so long

 

You take a breath and dig the blade into the bulging vein in your wrist.  It pushes through the flesh easily, and you were right.  It doesn’t hurt very much at all.  You close your eyes, unable to watch as you pull the blade a few inches along your arm.  It hurts a bit more now.

 

I can’t feel the things that cause you pain

I can’t clear my heart of your love, it falls like rain

Ain’t the same

 

You open your eyes and watch, strangely fascinated, as bright red blood quickly wells up and spills out of the fresh wound.  You’re surprised at the speed with which it flows, spilling over your arm and onto the couch, and you realize you’ll have to hurry if you want to do the other wrist, too.

 

I hear you calling far away

 

It’s difficult to hold the blade in your left hand, but you manage to do it.  The cut you make on your right wrist is less straight and not quite as deep.

 

Tearing through my soul, I just can’t take another day

Who’s to blame

 

The blade drops to the couch with a dull thud and you stare down at your bleeding wrists.  The crimson liquid seeps out of them at an alarming rate, or what you imagine would be an alarming rate to someone who didn’t want to see it.  It’s only a matter of seconds before you feel yourself getting woozy, and you remember something about alcohol thinning the blood.  That’s why they won’t do tattoos when you’re drunk.  You almost laugh at this last random thought, but you lack the emotional or physical strength.

 

Don’t know what you got til it’s gone

Don’t know what it is I did so wrong

Now I know what I got, it’s just this song

And it ain’t easy to get back, takes so long

 

Your vision is blurring now, and you let your head fall back against the couch.  You feel sick to your stomach.  This is really happening. 

 

Do you wanna see me begging, baby?

Can you give me just one more day?

 

You’re beginning to lose consciousness now.  You didn’t know it would happen so fast.

 

Can’t you see my heart’s been dragging lately?

 

This is all you’ve got to give him.  You hope it’s enough…