I Always Will

Down To Business

Riley

I've come to consider myself a bit of an expert on pain.

This isn't the first time I've broken a bone. I was a rather reckless kid growing up in a rough neighborhood, with a single mother who worked all the time. I've had a broken arm, a broken nose, a cracked shin.  I've broken fingers fighting more than once.

It's not that I'm accident prone. All those injuries came from fighting. I'm only 180cm as an adult. As a kid I was much lessing promising than that. Being a bit of a scrapper was how I compensated for the bullying.

The tough guy thing eventually led to the punk music thing. I was in my first band at fourteen. By the time I was seventeen, I was out of my mother's house, living in a dirty flat with my bandmates. We had actually learned how to play well, write songs, and even landed regular gigs. All own our own. No musical training. No mentorship. All hustle. All my hustle, really. I was the Trace of my band. The driver. The guitarist. Except I had no Leed. I had a Mac. My girl Priscilla was the front, with me matching her on most songs for vocals.

We weren't bad, but we didn't make the big time, of course. Went the other way. Into an endless cycle of hand to mouth. Spending the money we'd earn at gigs the minute we got it. Not on the rent, either.

On booze. On drugs.

On pain.

Yeah, we were Trainspotting with amps and electric guitars.

Except, there wasn't only pain. There was, between Priscilla and I, something much like love. I was only seventeen, and I was high as the London Tower most of the time, but I did love her. I wanted to get us out of that flat, that cycle, that pain. I wanted to make us rich and famous and pain free. Hell, I even wanted to marry her. Wasn't long before I gave her a fucking ring. Eighteen. I gave her a ring.

She said yes.

Then she cheated. With our bass player Avery Thompson.

Thompson is dead now, from a bullet in his brain.

By no means did I put the bullet there. He earned that himself, years and years later, the miserable fucking fuck.

But Priscilla is dead too, from a needle in her arm.

That happened just days after she cheated on me.

My fault. My rage. My drugs.

It's a miracle I didn't follow right after. God knows I tried.

My mum saved my life then. She's not ever done much for me otherwise, but she did save my life, then.

She had me arrested for stealing some shite around her place, but delinquency in the UK is not treated in quite the same as it is here in the US. There was a bit more rehabilitation and little less punishment in the mix of my consequences. I was such a fucking mess I got sent to hospital. Detox, then suicide watch, then a rehabilitation program .I got proper medical treatment and counseling for my drug problem, and there were educational opportunities, too. That's how I reoriented, from the stage to the business end of the music business.

But I never forgot the pain of my youth.

Not until Rowan del Marco.

I was able to put away the pain for a little while.

Then the troubles started again.

What do they say?

Marry in haste, repent at leisure?

We definitely married in haste.

Row was the victim of a kidnapping. She was terrorized by criminals, and stabbed in the hand by another murderous bastard who deserved the bullet that ended his life, too. That stabbing caused nerve damage in her hand and ended her promising career as the lead guitarist and front of her all-girl band, Strut, whom I managed as I do her brother's band.  She was brave, very brave, about the entire thing, but she didn't want to front Strut if she couldn't also play the guitar.