Saturday, November 24, 2018

Sinking into a sea of empties

I struggle through the door with a speaker and microphone stand, Dill is already at the bar. I hear him ask for "Two pints of Stella and two double vodka and limes."
"Shit Dill. I can't drink that before going on stage."
"No mate this is for me. What do you want?"
We've driven up country for a gig, I'm on guitar and Dill is playing bass. It's a country pub nothing special but £90 is £90. and I'll sing and play to whoever wants to listen or pay me. I finish setting up and sound checking.
Dill says "I'm going outside for a smoke."
"No Dill NO. Not before we play."
"It's OK I'll make it a light one, just enough to settle myself down. Come one, come and talk with me."
Outside in the beer garden we find a table in the far corner. It's a warm pleasant summer evening and there's still light in the sky. Dill gets out his tin and takes out a paper. He rummages about in his tobacco pulling and stretching it before laying a strip down, then he fetches out a  small grubby zip lock plastic bag and brown stained fingers pull out of it his weed which he liberally sprinkles over the tobacco. I take a breath and grit my teeth I've seen him do this many times and this is not a light one. He knocks back one of his Vodka limes in one and immediately takes a mouthful of the Stella to chase it down, before going back to rolling his joint. Finally after shaping and moulding he's happy with it and sits back and lights up. He takes a long slow deep pull on his joint and holds his breath, he looks at me and says in that voice he uses where he's trying to speak without exhaling, "You want some........  No.... thought so....... I had to ask." He's visibly more relaxed and drinks some more of his Stella.
"we ought to be going in and starting." I say
"yeah yeah in a minute. Relax you've got plenty of time. I've got these drinks to finish."
"Bring them with you."
"Nah too much to carry I'll drink them  now and catch up with you. You go on in I'll be there in a minute."
Back in the Pub Denise, my girl friend, tells me the Landlord has been asking where we were.  I look across at the bar and give the Landlord the thumbs up. Grabbing my guitar I sit down on my high stool and do the final tuning before we start. I lean forward "Denise go and fetch  Dill. Tell we're on."
To kill time I rearrange the microphone stand check my leads.
Denise returns looking worried. "Looks like you're on your own."
"What? Where's Dill?"
"He's wasted. He can barely stand never mind play bass."
"Damn I knew it."
"Can you do this by yourself?"
"I'm going to have to. You go make sure the boy is OK. I 'll look after this end."
This almost the final straw for me. I couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't watch my best friend destroy himself any more.. Many times we have sat in his music room drinking and chatting, playing music until he took to drugs. I watched his sparkle fade, I watched his skin go grey, I watched his fingers turn brown, I begged him to stop. I pleaded with him. His marriage was on a terminal downward spiral, a war of attrition. The raft of empty beer cans  thrown on the floor got deeper. Plagues of fruit flies rose up as you waded through the sea of cans. I tried to tidy up once he pointed a gun at me and said simply "NO!"
I walked out of his house and never went back.
Through the grapevine I heard he lost his job, his drug taking got worse and he stopped going out. He sank into deep depression.
Dill has just recently resurfaced, this time asking for help. It's been 11 months since he last left his house. I invited him to stay with us for the weekend. He replied to my invitation this morning "I'm not fit enough to venture out right now, but as a plus I have managed 24 hours dry."

5 Comments:

Blogger Z said...

Did you ever read "Young Man With A Horn"?

9:25 pm  
Blogger Mike Da Hat said...

Can't say I have is it relevent?

11:03 pm  
Blogger Clipping Solutions said...

I appreciate your effort. Thanks for the tutorial.

clipping path service

Photo Retouching Services
Background Removal Service

7:04 am  
Blogger AllHelplineNumber said...

Norton Customer support number 1-800-382-3046 is our initiative to make the life of our customers hassle free and they can work on their system without any fear from the viruses and malware.
We solve all types of the queries and problems related to our products and we try to provide them step by step guidance so that they can easily cope with those types of situation in the future so that they do not need to waste their time in anyway.

8:48 am  
Blogger All Customer Service Number said...

Epson printers incorporate a flexible line of shading inkjet and ink-eco tank arrangement models for the home, home office, private venture, and business workgroups. The printers incorporate across the board models with print, output, fax, and duplicate capacities, multi-work (MFP) models with print, sweep, and duplicate abilities, and print-just models. Get assistance from Epson printer support, click on the link
Epson Printer Customer Support
Epson Printer Support 24*7

7:34 am  

Post a Comment

Show some love... comment below.

<< Home

|