The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

on.”
    â€œBut what about us? I mean, will we still…”
    â€œNo. That’s over too. Whatever we had, it was a mistake and I want to end it right now. Teresa is and will remain my girlfriend. I’m sorry if I sound like an asshole, I’m just trying to be final about this.”
    That’s when she flipped out, worse than when she was tripping the night before. She screamed and cried herself hoarse, threatening me with everything she had. The conversation ended with me trying to convince her not to tell Teresa or Carl about us. She agreed. But hours later, Teresa called.
    â€œListen to this,” she said, putting the receiver next to her answering machine. There was a message from Nancy, but she was yelling so frantically into the receiver that it was difficult to make it all out. It went something like: “You bitch … what the fuck did you… I told you … never … fucking kill you … if I see you … limb … spread your ugly … fucking … blood all over the walls (click).”
    From there, all hell broke loose. Nancy called clubs and canceled Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids shows; she showed up at our concerts, threatened people in the audience, and even climbed onstage and attacked the girl who replaced her, Missi. She called every person I knew and told them what an asshole I was, and she started leaving obscene messages and packages for me. One morning I found a necklace she had borrowed from me lying on my doorstep. But it had been smashed to bits, covered with something resembling blood and sealed ritualistically in a Mason jar with some kind of hair. It was like a curse that John Crowell’s brother would have attempted.
    Never in my life had anyone ever made me so violently angry before. She was ruining my life when we were sleeping together, and now that we weren’t, she was destroying it even more thoroughly. Every night when I came home there was a new death threat waiting for me. I already had so many strong feelings about Nancy: repugnance, fear, lust, annoyance, exasperation and the knowledge that any girl who likes me must be crazy. But now they were all superseded by deep, dark, vitriolic hate, which throbbed scaldingly through my veins every time her name came up. I finally called her and laid it on the line: “Not only are you not going to be in the band anymore, but if you don’t leave town I’m going to have you killed.” I wasn’t exaggerating. I was infuriated, I had nothing to lose and I was so emotionally wrapped up in the situation that I had no perspective. It wasn’t just Nancy who was like John Crowell, it was me, because I was losing my own identity in my hatred for the people I thought were trying to destroy it.
    My respect for human life had long since dulled. I had realized this just weeks before when I was leaving the Reunion Room and witnessed a head-on collision as I was crossing the street. A middle-aged man stumbled out of one car, a blue Chevrolet Celebrity, with his hand on his forehead screaming for help. He staggered around the street, disoriented and in shock, and then let go of his forehead. The flap of skin covering the top of his head fell over his face, and he collapsed in a growing pool of his own blood, trembling and convulsing as death seized and finally stilled him. When I walked to the other side of the street, where the other car had crashed, there was a woman whose skull had been split open. She was clearly in pain, but she was calm and lucid, as if she had accepted the fact that her world was about to end. As I walked by, she slowly turned her head toward me and begged for me to hold her. “Please, somebody hold me,” she pleaded, shivering. “Where am I? Don’t tell my sister.... Somebody, please. Hold me.” I could see the humanity and desperation well up in her brown eyes. She just wanted some kind of physical, nurturing contact as she died. But I kept walking. I wasn’t part of it and didn’t want to be part of it. I felt disconnected, as if I were watching a movie. I knew I was being an asshole, but I wondered, would she—or anybody—have stopped for me? Or would they have been too concerned with themselves—worried that I’d bleed on their clothes, make them late to a meeting or infect them with HIV, hepatitis or something worse.
    With Nancy, while I didn’t think it was right to take a human life, I