| writing that puts story first

Landon’s eyes ripped open. The ceiling loomed overhead, the exact texture and color of an eggshell. One quick gasp gave rise to his body and suddenly that egg was gone, replaced by a world of shitty poverty and nameless identity, replaced by a hotel room as far from swank as possible. A chest bare; a shirt opened at the buttons; leather trousers arranged somewhere between knees and ankles; a mess of crotch hair sticky and painful. The heels of palms massaged down on bloodshot eyes.
 
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.”
 
Mutters and a rush of leather against skin and suddenly Landon was standing. He was surrounded by a decrepit wasteland: a bed without sheets; a bedside table chipped and worn; a dresser in which two of the three drawers were present. The carpet at his bare feet was mottled grey, stained, and in some places, missing. A quick check found that his cell phone, small and stylish and “très” expensive, was to his ear.
 
“Hey, it’s me…No, I don’t know where I am…Give me a minute,” Landon found a mirror glued to the wall above a cracked bathroom sink. A line of blood had dried in the little ridge between his nostrils and his lips. “No, I met a chick. That’s all man…No, I swear, there was no coke around, she just took me to some shitty hotel downtown.”
 
Still on the phone, Landon made his way downstairs. A man, possibly, probably Korean, yelled at him in vague and laughable English as he exited the building and into a world of disparaged gray.
 
“Yeah, you’d better come and get me. I’m at the intersection of…”
 
A slick, black limousine pulled into a neighborhood that only saw limos on two occasions: promotion and imminent death. Even then, limos were more frequent than police cruisers. Dressed in leather pants and sunglasses, not to mention white skin, Landon looked utterly out of place, a foreigner almost, but the neighborhood occasionally catered to his types. For them, it was business and he was profit.
 
“You look like hell,” was all Burt could muster as Landon slid into the plush backseat.
 
“You should hope hell looks this good.”
 
“You should be hoping that the plane is still there.”
 
“I’m sorry.”
 
“Yeah, well, I’m just glad it was a chick.”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“We’ve got a show tonight. You’d better come to.”
 
“I’m trying man.”
 
The rock-citizens of Toronto requested an encore in the most polite way they knew how – lighters and cell phones and the refusal to clap until they themselves were satisfied. The encore had itself been a rush, as much as music still was. And a rough towel just offstage was a good way to move the world down a peg, a horrid reminder of reality, of crudeness, of slight and persistent pain. A hand landed on Landon’s shoulder.
 
“Ten minutes?” Smitty: part manager, part roadie, part pimp. He hovered beside Landon and his towel at a full arm’s length.
 
“No. No. I’m ready. Send them in.”
 
They came en masse, a group of nearly twenty. They were the picks of the litter, all of them. Landon selected one. The rest of the band was surely doing the same, but they were sorting through his castoffs. At the back of his eye, Landon could feel the old familiar tug. Soon Landon and his choice were back on the bus, and the performance started all over again. His nose was filled with the scent of flesh and carnal desire.
 
“Doll, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to get up,” Landon murmured as he found a pair of pants.
 
“What?” She asked through a heavy veil of sleep.
 
“Get up, the bus is about to leave.” He could feel the tug at the back of his eyes.
 
She was pushed from the starting bus with her pants still in her hands. The bus moved onwards, finding the highway and the next city for the next show. Lather, rinse, repeat.
 
In the back of the moving bus everyone else was as slept in their racks. Landon rooted through his baggage. He dug out a small baggy filled with carefully wrapped, tiny Ziploc backs. He bumped a hit onto the skin between thumb and forefinger and with a huff he suddenly felt much better. The blood between his eyes suddenly surged. His nosed numbed. His heart warmed. With a sigh he suddenly felt the urge to smoke, despite never having done so before. Post-coital or post-bump, the difference wasn’t really much to begin with.

They were clear across the nation before they knew it, and Landon was paying the price. The urge to imbibe had hit one too many times and rockers often have a hard time saying “no.” Vancouver loomed large and plentiful, squeezed between the sea and the mountains like some kind of miracle land. To Landon, it just seemed like a likely place to score.
 
The streets themselves loomed large, towers of silver steel and mirrored glass reflected neon and traffic lights along wide, twisting thoroughfares. Ethnic groups. Opportunity abound. Landon liked to tell himself that he didn’t need this, that he just wanted it, just a quick fix. But, as he found himself wandering around a strange city, the truth seemed a little more ugly.
 
He was looking for the right person in a sea of strangers, half in and half out of shadows, streetlights, headlight wash and neon glow. He was looking for the right kind of person, the kind of person that had shifty confidence. The kind of person that looks like they’ve got what you need, right there, right in their pocket. No, not need. Want. Desire, but not need.
 
Landon asked the wrong person. One moment he was outside of a nightclub somewhere downtown and then suddenly he was in the back of a car. Just as suddenly he was in a cell. Before a judge. Instant justice. Instant rehab. Jarring and quick and utterly lifeless.

The walls were white, just like eggshells or cheap, slum hotels. The shakes had ended, three long days and sweaty sleepless nights. They said he was almost cured now. His body no longer needed cocaine, now all he had to fix was his mind.
 
Inside, he picked up smoking very quickly. Once smoking was something he frowned upon. His voice, and the perceived brilliance behind it, had led him to a world of art. Now his art was no more and well, cigarettes were something of a comfort.
 
You know why you’re here, Landon?
 
“I was trying to buy some cocaine.”
 
Do you know why?
 
“Because I like it, Doc. It makes me feel good.”
 
Do you know what the effects of cocaine are on the brain, Landon?
 
“No.”

Tightening of the blood vessels. The release of dopamine. Euphoria. Pleasure. Increased alertness.
 
“A pull on my eyes, a tickle in my nose, orgasmic bliss.”
 
An interesting word choice, orgasm. Did you know that a small group of scientists think love and cocaine have the same biochemical effects.
 
“Sounds like hippie-talk.”
 
The human mind is very complex. Chemicals. Neural transmitters. Addiction. Pleasure. In some ways, they’re all tied together, and the easiest way to deal with this, to help you, Landon, is to figure out why you’ve turned to cocaine. We need to try and fix the problem at the source. Ask yourself this Landon, why do you use cocaine?
 
Landon’s head rested against the glass of the cab’s rear passenger-side window. Outside the streets of downtown Vancouver passed by, but flooded by daylight they looked so different: vacant and vibrance-free.
 
His cell phone still showed no signal, but he’d made the one call he needed to make before he left Orchard. Smitty had taken care of everything, the bill, the cab, and the plane ticket. At this point, that and a cigarette was all he was willing to allow himself. Landon tossed the nearly dead cigarette onto the ground. With hands in his pockets, he entered the airport.
 
The plane touched down. America. East coast. Customs and the quest for air. The small, stylish cell phone lit up after the press of a power button. Landon’s thumb toggled down his phone list. Burt. He’d call Burt.
 
“Hey, I’m back.”
 
“In New York?”
 
“Yeah. Cleaned up and ready to go.”
 
The car door slammed with the most minimal of force as Landon slid into Burt’s car.
 
“Feel better after escaping hell?”
 
“Does anyone ever?”
 
“No,” Burt put the car in gear and for seconds, they drove on in silence. “We missed you man, the time apart. Fuck, I’d like to say I was going through it too, but I don’t think it could compare. Smitty kept us all up on what was going down. I know this probably sounds like complete bull shit, but we were all pulling for you man. I mean, we’re all with you on this. Smitty, man, he kept all us all together.”
 
“Man, fuck that guy.”
 
“What?”
 
“Nothing,” One word was all Landon could say. Complicit. Guilty by association or whatever.
 
“We were talking about having a little party tonight, not really a welcome home party or anything like that, just a get together.”
 
“I can’t go.”
 
“What, you’ve got plans?” Burt slammed on the breaks and caught more than a midtown finger in response. Traffic started to stream by, but Burt kept the car stopped. “You’d better not be crawling back.”
 
“No, it’s not that. Not that at all.”
 
“Than what? You’re just not ready?”
 
“I don’t know man. I guess I’m just scared of the horse. I’m still trying to make sense of this all.”

“There won’t be any coke around, if that’s what you’re worried about. No temptation other than a few carnal ones.”

“Man, I’m just having trouble separating it all. I mean, do I have an addictive personality or it just me? Do I love cocaine? Is a good line of coke like a little bit of love? Did I build this entire relationship in my mind? If I even start to think about it, I feel the pull.”
 
Landon bit into the knuckle on his finger. It was a habit he’d picked up in rehab. The brief burst of pain was a surefire reminder that he really was alive and he could still hurt himself. Either or, it gave him a sense of clarity. He lit a cigarette and rolled down a window.
 
“Smoking? Jeez, did they get you to swap one addiction for another?”
 
“Mom, is that you? ‘Cause you look exactly like my guitarist…Just drop me off at my apartment.”
 
“The party’s at 10. The old hangout,” Burt called through the closing car door. Landon just started walking away. His cell phone rang. It was Burt.
 
“You going to be there?” Landon looked down at the phone in disbelief and slid it back into his pocket without even bothering to hang up.
 
The apartment loomed like a graveyard. The ghost of a dead man hadn’t done very well in its attempts to evacuate. Landon hovered at the door for a bit. His bags from the tour were assembled just inside, a note attached said that they’d been inspected by official US Customs agents.

Landon rushed about, attempting to beat the ghost. From the depths of his brain he dug up his hiding places. He ripped through his closet, a man possessed; clothes were tossed onto the floor behind him. He left only after he’d found a plastic baggy, roughly the size of a fist. The white powder mixed murkily into the toilet, spreading out in white fingers like a hand stretching out along the entire confines of eternity. With a soft sigh, he said goodbye to his love and gave the john a flush.
 
Yes, Landon was back. No, he didn’t seem to be alright. Burt shook his head as he told the story and no one expected Landon to show up.
  
Landon walked in as Burt was talking to the group, holding his long-necked beer to his lips almost like a microphone or lover’s hand.
 
“Come on now. Save those words for after I’m gone,” Landon announced with a smile and a laugh.
 
Everyone looked, Burt with a turn. They all sucked in their breath, each one asking the same question though none of them brave enough to do so out loud.
 
“No. I’m not,” Just a few words and everyone was at ease.
 
People forced themselves to unwind. Music played. Alcohol spilt. People divided into tiny groups. Landon had shaken hands and exchanged hugs and kind words. By the end of the night, he was sitting with Burt in the corner when an attractive brunette with a smart hairdo showed up.
 
“Landon, it’s good to see you back.”
 
He looked up, and he looked back, but he couldn’t think of her name.
 
“I’m Brandy, we’ve never met. I work for a-,”
 
“Hey bro, I’ve got to be going,” Burt announced as he found his feet and extended a hand. “Call me tomorrow.”
 
“You sure?”
 
“Yeah, I got some… things.”
 
“No fuckin’ way. You?”
 
“Yeah, happens to the best of us.”
 
Brandy took Burt’s place, subtracting a few inches in the distance to Landon. She crept in by nanometers, and suddenly Landon could smell her hair. There was a rush of blood at the back of his eyes that he tried to deny as they spoke hollow words and she offered up what seemed a genuine smile.
 
“Back when I was in college, oh god this is going to sound bad, a guy I was dating, a real musical prick, left a copy of one of your EPs at my apartment. We broke up but I kept the disc.”
 
Landon didn’t hear her words. All he could think of was the carefully caring eyes of the doctor back at Orchard.
 
“I’m sorry.”
 
“What?” she asked as she stopped from the kiss she’d been leaning in for, nudging ever closer during the past ten minutes of throwing-herself conversation.
 
“I can’t,” Landon muttered as he found his feet. Clammy hands left small stains on his jeans. His head hurt. No blood. Cramped mind.
 
“Can’t what?”
 
He never answered. He left the club that had closed for him that night. He left the woman that had opened for him. He joined the night sky and a taxi and his apartment.
 
Landon lay in bed, naked and shaking. He interrogated the ghost of the former occupant. He slapped and yelled, demanded to know where the other stash was. The back of the toilet? The dresser? The ghost grit its teeth. The ghost waited to yell, but Landon didn’t want to hear.
 
“It’s all in my mind. It’s all in my mind. It’s all in my mind.”
 
His door rattled on its hinges from a series of severe knocks. “Landon!” The voice yelled from the other side. “Landon, open the door.”
 
A ghost opened the door, wrapped in the remnants of a blanket that had been shredded and stained from lack of love.
 
“Jesus, what the fuck happened?”
 
“Where should I start?”
 
“How about the last two weeks?”
 
“Well, then let’s start with the party.” Landon waited for Burt to say something, but he never offered anything up. “That girl, Brandy. I got the tug. I needed blow. I needed a fix. I stood there, at the edge, and I looked over and I saw a sea below me.”
 
“You get stoned?”
 
“I realized I had three paths that could only lead to two places. I could fuck her, and dive back in. I could make a call, and dive back into dope…”
 
“Or?”
 
“Or… Or, I could back here and fight with the ghosts. And you know, I’ve never been much of a fighter.”
 
Burt couldn’t find the joke. Landon brushed about on his crowded counter, cluttered with pizza boxes and empty bottles. He fished out a small compact disc case. He shuffled over to the stereo in the corner and pushed eject.
 
“What’s that?”
 
Painful sounds started to hiss from the speakers, replaced by basic drums and earnest acoustic guitar work. Landon’s own voice quickly accompanied the guitar.
 
“This is what I saw when I stood at that edge, this is what I saw in the sea.”
 
The pair sat in silence, listening until the end of the first track.

“Well, you never were much of a drummer. But…I think we can work with this.”
 
Landon smiled and Burt smiled back.
 
“Fuck the horse, let’s make another record.”