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chapter song the middle east: blood "older brother, restless soul, lie down / lie for a while with your ear against the earth"
2019
El's entry
1984 was the worst year to ever happen to me. My entire life had fallen apart and I was well on my way to getting sucked into a hole I couldn't pull myself out of. I have this memory of Nikki and I spending one last night together and I remember I told him to be careful, to know his limits. I remember that clear as day. Little did I know that I'd need to take my own advice.
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Nikki's entry
El was one of the most stubborn, strong-willed, loud-mouthed people that I knew. That tour, though... it just destroyed everything about El that I had loved. Motley was opening for Ozzy and The Sycophants were on their own headlining tour. We hadn't been on the road for long. Del called me and told me El had relapsed the night before after Ezra had completely shit on their gig. It was so weird to me. El was all the way down in South America while I was all the way in Europe and she was doing coke while I was trying heroin for the first time. Even at the worst of times, El and I have always been intertwined, connected. It's like our souls are pulling at each other all the time and I don't give a fuck who laughs at me for that because it's the truth.
I was making a conscious choice to use drugs. El was not. Joseph fucking Cato was dangling her past right in front of her and he knicked her in her weakest spot.
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El's entry
I met Joseph Cato right before I turned 18 when the band was playing at some shithole club in East LA. He was charming, he was sweet on me, but he'd also turn out to be my worst fucking nightmare. Cato was one of those people who got what he wanted no matter what and that never benefited me in the slightest. This really became apparent to me when I decided I wanted to end our little fling. He was on tour with us and I just couldn't wait until we got home to break up with him. Cato was pissed. So what does he do? He laces my coke in an attempt to kill me instead of, oh I don't know, acting like a normal fucking adult? Oh well, I guess I should be thankful in a way. That's how my ass got shipped off to rehab.
When Cato came back into my life, it was just really bizarre. What was he doing all the way down in South America? Ezra hated him, so why was he settling for him to be his dealer? I really wasn't expecting to ever see him again at all and when I look back on it, it all just feels like some kind of sick joke. Like the universe just wanted to back me into a corner I couldn't get out of. Or maybe God was testing my strength. Turns out I wasn't as strong as I thought I was.
You know, I chose to take the coke from Cato. That's something I've never denied. But, I don't think I would've done it had he not been around daunting me with it. It was a whole fucking mess. A whole lot of mess that's hard for me to revisit in detail when I have to sit down and put myself back in that place. I felt like a fool. I flushed five years of sobriety down the drain, and for what? Because I was feeling a little down? Pissed off? Ugh. Give me a fucking break.
All of a sudden, I had Nikki coming to my rescue every free chance he got. It was so adolescent of me and it made me feel like such a clingy girlfriend who couldn't handle her own problems. I can say, however, that it was so good to see him. And it turned me on a little bit to see him go for Cato's throat like that, even if I was being a crybaby from the coke.
What I wasn't expecting was for Nikki to confess to me that he was shooting heroin. That hit me like a fucking train and I had no idea what to do with that information. How did we go from being a couple where one is completely straight and the other uses cocaine from time to time and drinks with his buddies, to one being hopped up on blow and the other being a smack freak? What the fuck did that tour do to us?
Nikki took me away that night to the Motley show to get me out of my head a little bit. He wanted me to see the guys because he knew how much I missed them and how they missed me. He just wanted me to have a good time and relax. Of course, my time had to be cut short. I wish I would've known what was coming for me.
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Nikki's entry
When I came off stage, El was gone. I was confused, and kind of hurt if I'm being honest. I looked all around for her, but Luzzi told me that Doc came and got her. He said it looked important. Doc found us before we found him. He told us to get changed and get in the car ASAP and, well, I wasn't going to question it. All of us took off with Doc and the ride was dead silent. We could feel it in the air. It was like we knew that something was wrong. We just had no idea how true that would be.
When we pulled up to El's tour bus and there were so many people crying and so many cops and shit, I demanded Doc to tell us what was wrong. He told us Ezra had overdosed and they made El come back and identify his body. That was my first wake up call. Drugs are all fun and games until somebody dies and I knew the boys and I didn't really feel like our lifestyle was fun in that moment. Our main concern was El.
We practically tumbled out of the car and took off to find her, but there she was, sat in front of the back door smoking a cigarette. I remember feeling freaked out because she wasn't freaking out. She just sat there with a blank expression. I tried to tell her I was sorry, and she said "it is what it is". It was like a punch to the gut when she said that. She had been through so much already and then she's gotta be dragged through the ringer some more. She didn't deserve that and I was upset and pissed off at Ezra for putting her through that.
The Sam's Town tour was obviously canceled and El told me she was going home. Then, she told me that when I came off the road, we were both going to rehab. I thought rehab was a sham, but I loved her and I didn't ever want her to feel like this again. There was no way I was going to be the cause of it. El went back home to California and the boys and I went to continue our tour, but there was something we needed to do first.
Ozzy somehow managed to find a replacement band for us for a few days while we went back home to be there for El. We got to the funeral home just as El began her eulogy and we sat in the back of the room. El never really spoke about her life before California, but it was so sweet to listen to her talk about the life she and Ezra shared in Louisiana when they were kids. There was so much to her that I didn't know about and when I finally got a piece to the puzzle, I hung onto it for dear life.
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El's entry
I don't think Nikki (or Tommy, Vince, and Mick for that matter) will ever know how thankful I was that they showed up. Not a lot of people know how close I was with the other Motley boys, but I thought of them all as family. When they realized that I wasn't just some fling, they started to invest more time into building a real relationship with me.
When Nikki finally walked up to me in the funeral home, he hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe, but it was okay because he was there and that's all that mattered to me. Tommy was next and then Vince. When it was Mick's turn, he looked at me for a moment and nodded his head a little. Then, he took me in his arms and squeezed me hard. I didn't even know he was capable of that! He pressed a kiss to the side of my head and as he pulled away, he looked me in the eyes and nodded again. I obviously felt love from all the other boys, but to feel love from Mick fucking Mars was and is unreal. I had only felt that from him maybe a couple times before.
I remember standing there in the midst of all those people and feeling a wave of serenity wash over me. That emptiness inside me was slowly disappearing as I realized what a strong support system I had. My mother and boyfriend stood beside me holding my hands, my band was there with me through it all, and the Motley boys wanted me to know they had my back. I felt extremely blessed and lucky to have them in my life and that was the first time in a longtime that I felt like everything was going to be okay.
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a/n: yeehaw now we can finally move on to happiness. sorry i haven't posted as much, i've been so fucking busy it's unreal. love y'all
