It's Always Darkest Before The Dawn

Protection

That one night of sex opens the fucking floodgates. All I can think about is fucking Izzy. Fucking Izzy in hotel beds, in the shower, on the bathroom sink, against the balcony railing, in dark hallways backstage, on a road case behind the bus hoping not to get caught; we fuck constantly like wild animals. My thoughts are on fire with him all the time. It feels like it did in the beginning; like when we first got together except now I'm desperately trying to fill up a painful hole in my heart by making love to Izzy. It's sort of working but if I'm truthful with myself something inside of me is still really broken. Izzy knows it too and he's trying, he's really trying to tease the pain out and make it go away but I'm at a loss as far as telling him how to do it. I don't know what it is I need, I don't even think it's something he can do; it's something I have to do myself.

There's still so much of my relationship with Axl that Izzy doesn't know about, things that still sneak up on me unexpectedly and hit me like a ton of bricks. The stuff Axl did to me comes out in my nightmares; crazy dreams that Izzy wakes me up from that leave me a wreck. Izzy's always there though when I wake up; arms around me, whispering in my ear that it's just a dream, that I'm safe. I hate that I wake him up multiple times a night most nights with my nightmares, it's also just embarrassing that I'm a grown man who wakes up screaming like a little kid because I had a bad dream.

So that's one place my relationship with Axl is still present; in the nightmares that leave me shaking like a leaf. Another place he still shows up is in my reactions to things. If Izzy moves too fast or I catch sight of him in my peripheral vision when I'm not expecting it or if he pulls my hair a little too hard in bed; all of these things trigger something defensive in me. I'll throw my hands up in front of my face, flinch away, or in the case of my hair being pulled outright freeze; the last one not always being good for Izzy's orgasms. Again, he's patient, reassuring, always carefully wrapping his arms around me and reminding me he won't hit me. He won't come out of nowhere and punch me for some imagined slight; he won't pull my hair as hard as he can and fuck my throat not caring if I can breathe or not.

I also can't let Izzy fuck me. I can fuck him all day every day but I can't let him do it to me. We tried once and I freaked out and threw him off of me. I felt terrible about it; it wasn't even like I didn't want him, I did. I just completely freaked out in that last second. I felt his dick push against me and I totally panicked. Again he was so patient, so good to me; eventually all this patience is going to run out. How can he not be sick of me now? I'm sick of me. I hate so many things about myself at the moment. I hate that I wake up screaming and crying once or twice a night and my boyfriend has to hold me and whisper to me until I can at least stop shaking and get my voice back. I hate that I cry at the drop of a hat over things that I shouldn't cry over; like Izzy asking what I'm dreaming about or the way that he sometimes comes up behind me and puts his arms around me and kisses the side of my neck and tells me he loves me. Why does that make me tear up? Crying is for pussies and I fucking do it all the fucking time now; it's disgusting. I hate that I fucking flinch every time Izzy moves too quickly around my head because I'm used to having to throw my arms up to deflect punches. Axl would come out of nowhere raging about things and punch the living daylights out of me. After the first couple of times any movement that was quick and near my body became suspect. I hate that Axl still dances around me onstage at night putting his hands all over me and making my skin crawl. I heard Izzy threaten Axl one night after a show where he was particularly touchy feely with me; he threatened to leave the band and take me with him and Axl's backed off some since then.

In order to make all of this go away I'm drinking almost a gallon of Jack a day sometimes and shooting up way more than I should. I stopped some when Izzy and I started having sex again so that I could actually have sex and remember it but some nights when I come offstage and Axl's been touching me or when I wake up in the middle of the night and I can still feel his breathe on my neck, still feel phantom pains in random places on my body, or still deal with the ever present and very real throb in my ribs which still aren't healed I just want it to go away. Nothing feels so good as that needle in my arm that makes me not give two fucks if Axl shoved his dick up my ass and ripped me all to hell. Nothing tastes as sweet as that burning whiskey that makes me forget all the times he called me a useless piece of shit and backhanded me while he was riding me. Nothing is so wonderful as being too obliterated to remember how he told me day in and day out how Izzy would never want me ever again because I was a no good cheating asshole who didn't deserve him. I believed every word of it too except for the cheating part because I knew the truth but I knew Izzy would never want me again because I saw the disgust in his eyes when he looked at me. I felt his cold disdain and heard his silence loud and clear. In my mind I re-lived the second I saw his heart break that morning in the kitchen over and over and over. Anyway, even if I hadn't been fooling around with Axl that morning I did in the end. In the end I did exactly what he thought I had been doing anyway and I hated myself for it. I deserved whatever I got for doing that; even though we weren't together I regarded every touch from Axl as a betrayal of Izzy but I allowed it happen. Maybe I was a no good cheating piece of shit after all.