Is a Dream Just a Dream?

Living With It

June 1985 Los Angeles California

"Stevie, will you hurry the fuck up!?" the door of her dressing room is shut tight and we're due on stage in less than twenty minutes. We're going to start late again, and once again she'll breeze through her performance as if she's phoning it in. Desperate to get backstage so she can have another bump of coke and another and another. What the hell is she doing in there? "Stevie! I'm not kidding lets go!" even though we're not on good terms, that's putting it mildly, who does the band turn to when we need her for an album? Me. Who has to go to her house in Beverly Hills and drag her kicking and screaming out of bed to record? Me. Who's the only one she listens to during those recording sessions? Me.

I've arranged, and edited and reordered and re-mixed and re-mastered her songs for over a God damn decade and what the fuck do I have to show for it? The love of my life hates my guts, Tusk was a disappointment and it was ALL my fault, I'm selfish for having a solo-career never mind the fact that Stevie has one too which takes up far more time than mine. And now we have a rare live show in our hometown and I can't get her to crawl her high ass out of her dressing room "Stevie!" I'm officially at my wits end with her.

The knob turns under my hand and I'm ready for a fight the second I lay eyes on her. Her chair is turned toward her vanity and she's asleep. Head laid over her folded arms as if she passed out doing her hair and makeup. Next to her elbow is a familiar green bottle, which probably has a gram of coke in it. I lift it up, nope all gone. Impatient I shake her arm "Wake up will you?" she's like rubber completely out of it from her binge.

"I'm not going to say it again, get your ass in gear your majesty" this time I shake her a bit rougher her head bangs against the table as it slips from her arms. Jesus, how much of this shit did she take? Then it hits me...how much of this shit did she take? "Stevie-Steph" I lift her head off the table and I go white in terror, her face is pale as a sheet her skin dull and lifeless and her nose. Dripping from both nostrils is blood and foam she's not breathing.

"Stephanie!" bottles, hair brushes, and other accessories hit the floor as I pull her from the vanity and to the stretch of linoleum by the couch the door of the room opens and in walks Mick spinning a drum stick impatiently "Is she ready yet?" my eyes meet his and he looks down turning the same color as me "Jesus Christ!" his massive frame crouches down and he starts shaking her. He looks like a giant shaking a rag doll "Stevie! Sweetheart it's Mick can you hear me? Fuck, Lindsey she's not breathing oh God." My thoughts exactly. There's a phone in the hall "Mick call an ambulance" he's frozen in place hands covering his mouth in shock.

I hit his arm "Mick, call a fucking ambulance!" the blow knocks him back to reality and he dashes away toward the lifeline of 911. Laying her flat on the hard floor I start CPR, in swimming we all had to learn first aid every year so I know how to go about performing rescue breathing. The only problem is that by the time CPR is necessary brain death and then the real thing aren't so far off. Losing oxygen for any amount of time is a gamble and I have no way of knowing how long she's been like this.

"Stevie, baby you have to wake up! Please, please wake up! I can't do this without you I don't want to do this without you!" Fleetwood Mac, my solo career, movie soundtracks, all of it can go straight to hell. This isn't how our lives were supposed to turn out we were supposed to support each other, love each other and make music until the day we died of old age. Why the fuck did things go so badly? I could have-no I did love her. I still do. And yet every second we're together but not together is like a fucking gaping wound in my chest. We fight, and we fuck, and we fight, and we fuck...I can't. I...just can't take it anymore.

I'm about to lose my mind and if she dies I know I'll follow behind her, not of my own hand. I'm not suicidal. But I can't imagine a scenario where I'm alive on earth and she's gone, I'd rather fight with her until I die of old age then not have her with me. "Stephanie please, I love you. God I love you! You can't die." Mick's been gone a while and I'm so fucking afraid right now I must look like a child. The chest compressions aren't working, she's still limp. I feel a faint pulse so her heart is still beating but for how fucking long? She's not breathing, she's not breathing...