The beginning

The beginning
The rain echoed, making my heart beat faster, as water dripped through the hole in the ceiling of the damp clubhouse bathroom. I rolled up another dirty dollar bill and snorted up cocaine from the back of the toilet, “Don’t take it personally” said my girlfriend Charlie as she polished her frosted lips in the mirror. I wanted her lips, but only I knew why. I wanted her to hold me. I wanted the music to stop blaring. I wanted to be alone with her but the demons of my past were hidden in secrets tucked behind the mountains. Violent secrets I ran away from but never forgot. I wanted her, knowing she was as toxic as the chemicals I was inhaling through my nose. I wanted her, and I wasn’t gay. I wasn’t even bi-sexual. I wanted her to be my friend, my lover, my sister, and my mother. She introduced me to the club. She showed me my new family, that I could belong to something. I didn't belong though, not yet, not completely. I'm no one's old lady, but at least I'm in, well almost. I am living my life to be a Skulleater, someone’s old lady in the club. A real part of the Skullheads, the darkest outlaw motorcycle club of them all.

I wanted everything but had less than nothing.

I thought about Shreeve, the pimp that I tried to forget years before. I took a swig of the tequila I had stored in my dancer bag, and swallowed a dirty pill I found on the urine stained floor. Bikers aren't known for being sterile. It's the leather that turns me on. The club. The family. I wondered what kind of pill it was as I waited for something, anything to kick in. My jaw was broken and my front tooth was missing, but I kept it all together with makeup. I had a new tooth on order, and it would fit me perfectly. I had already lived eight lifetimes in one, and my last was swirling downward as quickly as the toilet water I flushed. I wanted to drink the last of the toilet water because I had dropped drugs in it moments earlier. I think Big Bob must have had someone clean the toilet, it didn't look bad. He was not a Skullhead yet, but he will be one day.

I stood up and balanced on stiletto pumps as I took another look in the mirror, hardly recognizing the face that stared back at me. I was blurry, I was scared, I had lines on my face and my lips were as bright red as the lamps from the red-light district on El Paso’s border. I was high, and had been for years. I was trying to escape a part of me I could never hide from. The club is nice to me. They let me forget and they don't ask. I don't tell.

I was running but I couldn’t even walk.

Blood crusted my cocaine snotted nose, and I pounded on my legs and body, scratching it raw to feel, but numbness won, and I liked that too. No one could feel me, and I couldn’t feel myself. Charlie kept doing lines of cocaine, fixing her lipstick as I just stared. She had been an old lady before, but now she just hangs around. She has respect somehow. Maybe her past has secrets that keep her bonded better than the glue you smoke. Her skin was tan from the long rides on metal steel.

Thunder struck outside, pounding the walls like a strange devil as I fell back to the ground “It’s personal Charlie, it’s personal, we need to pray, please lets pray to Heavenly Father” I said, right before snorting one more line from the toilet. "Get it together,” she said. "Don't let them see you like this." I let my heart deaden, and just then, as I deflated on the floor, everything went black. I was home.