HUMILIATION of a SAMURAI

seven VINCENT

THAT WAS THE NIGHT A FREELANCE REPRESENTATIVE OF ISIS CAME CALLING to square accounts after those joyless fucks declared one of Dayglo Dave's balloon animals was an extreme act of blasphemy.

I was in town fetching tires for Aliz's food truck when she texted to tell me Kev was leaving France, going home tits-up on his rock-and-roll shield.  The dread of imminent unemployment multiplied as I juggled four secondhand retreads onto a bus bound for the festival grounds and sat down to check Five Ways' social media.

The surviving band members posted throwback photos and emotional tributes.

Brady strung solemn emojis under a shot of Kev crowd-surfing at Wembley and tagged it #irreplaceable.  Patrick was #gutted.  Tony offered #prayers.  The last time they shared a stage Maxim was hoofing it young and funk like Savion Glover, kicking the living skittles out of Kev but now Max wanted the world to know his dear brother Kev was a #legend. 

I wasn't eager to spend the rest of the summer festival season chasing shows across Europe stir-frying noodles alongside Aliz in her tiny truck.  She was brilliant, pretty enough to take a bullet for but we lacked the critical chemistry it takes to make something last long-term in a small space.  Aliz was also painfully high-maintenance, even by former Soviet Bloc standards.  Losing my status and income as a supporting act for Five Ways would start our final countdown ticking quick.

Margaret and I were slow-roasting on the same spit after her liaison with Brady decimated Citizen Samurai's online following. The YouTube ad revenue from our "Owen" video was dwindling, likely to dry up completely along with our per-diem payments if Five Ways broke up and cancelled the reunion tour. I'd be cashed out for shows played to date and there wouldn't be much left to live on after paying for travel home to the States. What was I going to do then? Knock on Carl's door and beg to move back into his basement?

Worry and doubt stacked up like cold stone cairns ready to collapse and crash through the weakest points of my positive frame of mind.  An unknown Next threatened my comfortable predictable Now and I felt suddenly nostalgic for the familiar formula of failure, the simple ingredients of self-defeat.

I wanted a big fat drink.  A sloppy specimen broad enough to balk a steeplechase mount, deep enough to hand-wash a king-size set of bedsheets.  I burned the last of my phone's battery reaching out to Kristof Flex, my brother in recovery.

Flex helped me get my shit wired right back in Warsaw after I reacted poorly to credible rumors that Margaret and Brady were playing house.  I ran moonshine-wild with some Turkish roadies and woke before dawn between the tires of the tour drivers' sleeper coach, head-first in the dirt like a shoeless wicked witch attempting suicide by mobile home.  

I crawled from the darkness and vomited my insides raw under a fading fingernail moon.  That's when I saw Kristof Flex for the first time, facing East in his green lawn chair brewing coffee in a dented kettle on a camp stove.

Flex unfolded a spare chair and waved for me to post up beside him.  He put a cup of coffee in my shaky hands and we sat in silence as the horizon bloomed pink, then burned red.

My hands were steady by the time Flex refilled my cup and asked me why I drank.

That kind of question would normally be my cue to crack dumb jokes, make desperate attempts to tailor the shame I deserved to wear after a complete stranger watched me emerge from beneath a bus and barf on all fours in the mashed brown grass.

But I didn't read any judgment coming from Flex so I gave him an honest answer.

I told him I adored being drunk.  I loved every mile of that ride, the excitement of warming my mad mechanisms for action.  I woke each morning looking forward to the whole fucking process, the feeling of rolling away from a dead stop and starting a wildfire with a single spark.  Getting up to speed and watching the light bend behind my rapid path of travel.