“Yeah, we’re running alright. Running with scissors.”

-Augusten Burroughs

Words come and go. I had a story and it’s been told, perhaps to someone with nothing better to do than listen. I could tell you what happened after I died, but you’d accuse me of being a believer, a skeptic, a dreamer, an atheist. Would you honestly want to know the truth, or would you just feel better about knowing? It’s much better to find out the answers on your own, through trial and error. I sure did, and let me tell you, my errors were large and my trial, one unfairly conducted. Death is feared, that’s why we have religion, but who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong? I lived the life of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, and I paid for it, but does that make me a bad person? You heard my story. You’re the only one with the right to judge.

So my life has come to an end. Dying at twenty-nine was not a pleasant experience in the least, but I had no other choices. If I hadn’t died, where would I have gone and what would I have done? Mark loved me, but he wanted a future that he wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell his parents about. I never went to college and my days as a badass frontman were certainly coming to an end. Perhaps I should be glad for my fate, but I’m not, at least, not yet. Thirty is looming closer and already dandelions and goldenrod are blooming around my tombstone. I loved my life, but would I do it all over again?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

ANYWHERE, OR THE LAST VIGNETTE

The memory that floats to my mind most poignantly is of a dream I had back when I was nineteen and Collins had just moved into the loft with Mark and I. I’m standing in the middle of the road, city buildings blurred by my mind. Where in Manhattan am I? Anywhere.

Mark is about a hundred feet ahead of me. He’s walking slowly, his feet wobbling with the dreamlike quality. It’s late afternoon and the blue-gold light filters down from the sky, illuminating his profile as he turns back to look at me.

“You coming?” he shouts

“Nah,” I answer, smiling back at him. My feet won’t move, not because they are stuck, but because I chose not to move them.

Mark looks at me for a long, hard moment and then turns and walks on for a while. When he’s just a speck on the horizon, he turns back once again.

“Hey Rog?” Mark’s far away, but his voice is strangely clear and loud.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t Do Drugs,” he says cryptically. The Salvador Dali quote hangs in the air for a moment and then fades off.

Mark turns back forward and strides off into nothingness, leaving me and my dream behind him.

He’ll get older and I won’t. I’ll live forever as a grungy, rocking twentysomething.

Die young, stay beautiful.

The End.