If Tears Were Liquor I'd Have Drunk Myself Sick

The night was dark and quiet, but Nadine felt her heart was shining aloud. She told me so. I felt the opposite 'cause I didn't love her and I didn't want to stay anymore with her. She used to control me and she had threatened me many times. All the time, she was about to break up with me and to get involved with her favourite ex, again. He was an idiot, a sad stalker. Once, he'd tried to kidnap me and beat me up, just to make me suffer as he suffered because Nadine was in a relationship with me. I didn't understand why Nadine told me so, but I felt sorry for him, and I also hated him. He was pathetic. 

One of Nadine's dogs', a Great Pyrenees called Layne, in honor to Alice In Chains' singer, had died on the last week, so I couldn't be rough. We crossed the parking lot and got to the Taurus. A few minutes ago, we were watching Pulp Fiction, and I'd just hated when she mentioned that Tarantino asked Cobain if he wanted to appear on the movie as a drug dealer. Of course I'd heard of it. That anecdote was so popular, and I was sick of it. You just had to read the booklet of In Utero to have an idea. Nevertheless, I smiled and hold her hand.  

Under the moonlight, Nadine looked like a movie star, blonde and fragile as Marilyn Monroe, but somehow stupid and selfish as Cindy Crawford. I was profoundly confused and tired. My thoughts were focused on just one thing: I wanted to end up that relationship. 

Suddenly, Nadine stared at me. Dim lights made it impossible to not look at her pale blue eyes. They were absolutely beautiful. Then, she asked me if I was sick, and I just told her that I was tired. Ironically, I started to feel sick. I just wanted to sleep. Abruptly, she started to cry. I tried to feel empathy, but I couldn't. "If you need someone to support you, you should call Andreas... He's always available for you", I told her, and she screamed and freaked out. 

We got into the Taurus and I turned on the radio, and the radio was playing a Mark Lanegan's song. Nadine drove the car as I enjoyed and felt connected to the music. She was silent and angst, and, in the middle of nowhere, she told me that she definitely was breaking up with me and that Andreas was a better guy for her than me. She stopped the car, and asked me to leave her alone. I was scared, but I felt drunk and happy.    

What else should I do?

via GIPHY

Stronger Than All

I was 13 years old. My younger brother heard Pantera on a daily basis. A friend of him, introduced him to the band. It was the summer of 1994. The band sounded violent and faster than any other band I heard before. I used to saw I'm broken on TV, almost every other day. Even though I liked them, never thought someday I would attend to a Pantera show. 

It was a rainy evening, on July 1997 at El Palacio De Los Deportes, when Pantera came to Mexico City, for a second time. A few months before, they had been the opening act for Kiss in the same venue. 

Obviously, my brother was a big fan of the band -I wasn't, at all-, but he was not interested in school and he had bad notes, so our parents didn't allow him to go to the show. 

I was there, with a friend of mine. He said he liked Pantera, but he also liked Sepultura, Ugly Kid Joe, Metallica, Skid Row, Kiss, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Guns N' Roses, basketball and beer. My friend was sort of a poser, but it was funny to hang out with him. He really looked like a heavy metal fan. He had long hair in a punk style, he always dressed shorts and the infamous I Hate Myself And I Want To Die t-shirt which everybody wore short after Cobain's death. 

That evening, Anthrax and Makina played, too. It was a really violent and intense show. At some point, it started to rain and the water began to seep through the roof. It was funny and refreshing. 

Also, when Pantera came out to the stage, people drove wild and began to smash chairs and stuff like that. I don't know who thought it was a great idea to put chairs for the audience in a show like that. It was silly. People started to steal merchandise, too. T-shirts, beers, food... anything you can imagine. 

I kinda felt out of place, but the disaster was so contagious. 

Never thought Dimebag Darrell would die in such an awful way, some years later. 

Starla Dear, I'm All Alone

They were already drunk. Their eyes looked like rat eyes: red, scary and dangerous. Their bodies looked like if they were vaporizing like nightmare fog. 

So I tried to convince my brother that I really was there for taking care of him, but I just wanted to see Starla, a beautiful friend of him. She was almost eight years younger than me, but she looked older. 

People talked about drugs and music. I found out Starla and walked to get close to her. Immediately, I started to hear my heart beating like a wild animal. I had met her at another party where we ended up kissing, and I guess I wanted to kiss her again.  

She was in the middle of a conversation and ignored me. I felt dumb and I tried to get involved in the conversation. Among those silly pretentious teenagers, she finally spoke to me and told me to take her out. I told her that I had just arrived to the party and she said "At least, take me to a more private place".

Then, we started to talk and continued drinking. 

I fall asleep and drunk somewhere in time and woke up feeling stupid in someone's bedroom. The bedroom seemed to belong to a woman 'cause it was painted in pink and the walls were full of photographs of Brad Pitt, Lorenzo Lamas and Jason Priestley. 

The bedroom also smelled like bubblegum, and I was starved and exhausted. Vaguely, I remembered someone was taking care of me as I wanted to threw up. I kinda wanted to think that my brother or my friend, had taken care of me. It would have been so embarrassing, if Starla had been the one who took care of me. 

Stopped thinking of it.

Starla walked in and sat in the bed. She looked at me, and she told me that we were about to have sex when I fall asleep. I remembered she was a little bit liar. She smiled and got closer to me and kissed my cheeks. Her scent reminded me of some things. While I was about to fell asleep, she started to touch my hair, my face and my hands. I fought to keep myself awake, as I thought of her eyes as made of honey dripping into my skin and as I thought of her hair dangling like a heavy medal trying to hypnotize me. 

Then she told me "It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me..."

I didn't understand why, but I realized everything when my brother told me later that he had a crush on Starla.

Starla