Might as Well Face it, You're Addicted to Love (Joe Perry/Nikki Sixx)

Prologue: One Last Shot-Permanent Vacation

Addictions take many forms: Drugs, alcohol, and the like. They can consume you, get ahold of you before you know it. They are dangerous and seductive.... the greatest addiction or addictions of all though as I have learned over the past 30 odd years: Love & never being able to quit loving once I started or embraced my feelings instead of running from them and sadly, I didn't see that for so fucking long and in 1986? Things CHANGED and all because of the man that has been at my side these past 35 years: Nikki Sixx, or to be exact Nikki-Perry Sixx, yes you read that right and how RUDE of me not to introduce myself, officially that is...

My Name is Anthony Joseph Perry, otherwise known as Joe Perry...founder of Aerosmith & guitarist and I have one hell of a story to tell and believe me I'll get back to 1986 & Nikki but first.... some things you need to know that otherwise you may not have known so you will understand.

Nikki and I both have dark and extremely painful pasts.... mine, was a past...a painful haze of drug abuse, abusive partners (I.E ex's, particularly Ex Wives) and so many years before I met him: Hiding, hiding my emotions, my heart and that shit fucking hurt, believe me....

I suppose it really all began for me in the early 70s, a teenager...and meeting Steven Tyler my former lover or more accurately: Fuck buddy and the half of the infamous duo known as the 'Toxic Twins'...I met him when I was a waiter and back then when we hooked up and kept doing so, it was at first survival...then it got to be a habit....a bad one, because as you will come to see...we were toxic for more than just doing drugs, every drug under the sun....we were toxic for EACH other....in any case, we had music in common...some similar tastes and we founded Aerosmith, alongside...Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer. We were the musketeers of rock.... then life: DRUGS.... got in the way as the years passed. Things fell apart.... I met my ex-wives: particularly Elyssa....and ex boyfriends.... i was abused physically and I 'thought' drugs numbed all that and oh how wrong I was...so damn wrong.

Thru all of that, began our band's legend.... our music DID do the talking...and so did Steven and I as the toxic Twins Duo and eventually it all got to be too much and for a few years starting around 1980, I left the band and eventually Brad too would follow. I was lost...I was hurting, and I didn't want to admit that I was lonely, I suppressed my emotions...tried like hell to pretend they didn't exist. And after a few years that once again changed, or my life taking yet ANOTHER turn in 1984.... Steven calling out of the blue and eventually the band getting back together and that led to 'Done with Mirrors' in 1985...which critics especially largely consider to be a flop, and the same old problems and drug uses in the studios and Steven and I at each other's throats....

And that brings me back around to 1986 and Nikki: Sure, I'd heard his name tossed around, his wild reputation preceding him wherever he went. Anarchy in human form...sure I'd heard of Mӧtley Crϋe.... I mean who the hell didn't then and the same goes for today. 1986, started out for me much the same as the previous two years, Steven and I arguing....ya know typical shit like that and it is during this year, that Aerosmith's now legendary comeback began...starting with a re-make of "Walk this Way' with Run DMC....it became a huge hit and received heavy air play, the catalyst had been lit and that also led that year, more specifically late September of 86' a new album which would be or become 'Permanent Vacation', suppose you could say Aerosmith had a hell of a lot riding on it and at that point Steven and I managed to be civil with one another and this really is where Nikki comes in, Nikki and his band...for we as in Aerosmith, our management team decided to send us to California...specifically Mӧtley's record label, which we ended up signing with to record 'Permanent Vacation'.

At that point in time, I'd heard tales...rumors of Nikki's drug addiction, I had no IDEA it was already bad and I would make it even worse....I met Nikki accidentally in a bar, funnily enough...him high, wild-eyed and it was THOSE eyes, those Jade eyes that stuck out...that untamable raven mane, those sharp gorgeous angular features....i didn't fucking see it, didn't want to then. Yet I kept coming back for more, I couldn't quit him.... the more I had of him, saw him...I wanted more. However, that is what would come to REALLY bite me back and hard and could have cost me Nikki forever. I wasn't honest, I didn't open to him...I neglected to tell him that Steven and I had a history together....so many things I wish to fuck I had of said.

One night....in January of 1987, days into the New Year things came to a head and Nikki and I had a huge fight, at the point I will go ahead and tell you we'd slept together by then...but that night, January 5...of 87'...Nikki found out one of the biggest things I had been hiding from him: Steven straight from the man himself, who also told Nikki that our career was more important and I realized that I was in LOVE with Nikki, but it was to late at that time...too late to see that he'd gotten a hold of my heart and I didn't see it and so Nikki spiraled even further into his Heroin addiction and he was DYING....and I had NEVER been so scared, so regretful for how I had treated him....Course when I'd encountered him in September of 86, the addiction was already BAD but I made it even worse.

It killed me...it killed me, to have lost what I desperately wanted, needed....and Aerosmith NATURALLY had a tour for permanent Vacation, Mӧtley had their tour for Girls, Girls, Girls.... Nikki in no shape to go on a tour, I blamed myself. I had the number to his house, I left 100s of messages and I tried so damn hard to contact his management but I wouldn't lay eyes on him until December 23, 1987...the night of Nikki's 'death', because I am the one that found him in his closet that night, gun at his side, needle still in his arm and on that night in particular...well THAT was the real turning point in our relationship as you will see.

Some more things I gotta tell you before we officially get into what became not only my story, but mine and Nikki's love story. It killed me to watch from afar Nikki dying, he didn't look or sound like himself....and I wrote the song 'Angel' for him, which was added very last minute to 'Permanent Vacation' in the hopes that somehow it would get thru to Nikki, in the end it did.

He and I have come a hell of a long way since we met, married for a little over 3 decades, children.... grandchildren, life really coming full circle. I love him, I always have, even when I didn't see.... getting there and realizing that wasn't easy to say the least. I had to face it, that I was ADDICTED to love.... that I was addicted to Nikki and that my heart still beat in my chest, but that it beat for HIM.

A/N: This is the beginning.... but a taste, so much more to come my friends!!