Union Jack

Union Jack

He didn’t even roll up his sleeve. He knew where his veins were, which ones were easy to hit, which ones were too used up. The needle found its mark, filling him with its illicit goodness. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll were the three most important things to him, in that order. He was, after all, Bobby Polite, lead guitar of Dirty Needle.

Yet after that first tour, he still wasn’t known well enough. He was often confused for Axel Rose or that guy from Cheap Trick, and that pissed him off. Seriously, who the fuck listened to Cheap Trick! He tried face paint, but then people thought he was with Kiss. He tried donning the Union Jack in every available place, but he got confused with Mick. He tried hats, but got “are you Slash?” Finally he settled on a skin tight shirt, emblazoned with a giant needle, Union Jack Mick Jagger knock off leather pants, and motorcycle boots, oh and a mohawk for good measure. Very unoriginal, but he’d like to see any of those other rockers play a guitar like he did.

He exhaled, feeling the world mellow out. “How long could he do this?” he thought to himself. The guitar that had once been his outlet of frustration now became his adversary. Sure nobody saw it when the lights were on him as he was stealing the show, but here, alone in his private dressing room with a star on the door he let his animosity show.

“Why the fuck am I alone?” he half shouted at his guitar his British accent heightened by the drugs coursing through his system, “Since when is a motherfuckin badass rocker like me alone?”

The jet black double necked Ovation just sat there on its stand like it always did.

“It’s your fuckin fault.”

The Ovation quietly listened to the rant it had heard many times before.

“Fuck you, and your goddamned fame! Piss off I don’t need you, your fuckin money. Y-y-you ruined my fuckin life!”

With that he got up, grabbed the guitar, and hurled it into the big glass dressing mirror. The guitar shattered the mirror and broke in two. Bobby stumbled over to the site where his friend, his only friend, lay broken in two on the floor.

“Serves you f-f-fuckin right,” he screamed down at the remains of the guitar at his feet, tears streaming from his eyes, messing up his stage makeup.He looked back up at the mirror and caught a glimpse of himself in a shard of glass still hanging on the wall.

“Look a’ me,” he mumbled to himself, “look a’ me. I’m a fucking waste. Wha’ a big shot rocka ah am now.”

He grabbed a shard from the floor and touched its edge. It was as sharp as a knife. “Good” he thought. Holding it blade down, he sat down in his chair and slit his throat alone and stoned.