Can't Think of a Good Title for This Story

[jeslange]

This is a somewhat unhappy story, because the main characters suffer major failures and get into very upleasant situations, which are generally their own faults.

It's also a somewhat happy story, because none of the main characters die or end up living on a park bench or being permanently institutionalized, which is good because these characters are real people except that I've changed their names.

Of course, any scenes regarding drugs or murder or playing gunshot tag with the police or any other type of illegality are purely fictional.

[jeslange]

I'll have to post the story later, 'cause I'm being booted off the computer.

[jeslange]

I'll present the main chars in the order and manner in which I met them myself....

Nancy introduced me to cigarettes and pot and acid and alcohol, and one night when we didn't have any of the last three, she also introduced me to someone we might get them from. We'll call him Charlie, and he had very long black hair and a black goatie and blue eyes. If you imagine Satan and Jesus making a son, then the result is likely close to how Charlie looked.

I was only 14, so he was suspicious that I might tell if he sold us anything, and I was suspicious of him because he was the scariest looking person I'd ever met. This is amusing now, since we trust each other more than we do anyone else in the world, but that's besides the point.

Charlie is the guitarist of the band which will play a significant role in this tale because it's the common ground of our protagonists.

***************

A few months after meeting Charlie, I'd decided that my iguana and I needed to attempt to socialize more, so we went to a party.

The iguana's name was Jack and she was trying to steal the joint that was being passed around at the kitchen table, so I warned the others that she didn't abide by a "Puff, puff, give" policy. Someone gave her the J anyway, because it amused them to be getting high with a three foot long lizard. She was greedy about it as expected and bowed her tail to strike at anyone who tried to make her share. This was solved when we tempted her with a strawberry flavored jello shot and her head cocked and one golden eye fixed upon the treat and she couldn't resist.

The humor was interrupted by a commotion at the front of the house where several guys were fighting. Someone said the cops were being called, so the hostess tried to get everyone to leave. One of the people who'd been at the table, and whom we'll call Freddy, was trying to help her usher everyone away. The guys who had been on one side of the fight didn't like his interference, so his assistance to the girl earned him two black eyes, a bloody nose, and a busted lip.

One of the guys pulled out a knife and I grabbed it from him, worried that he might use it on Freddy, who was on the floor by this point. The guy twisted my wrist and easily retrieved the knife, but instead of hurting me he just pushed me into a chair and told me to be glad I was a girl.

Then they left and I thought I should get my iguana and scram before the police arrived. Jack was still on the table, gorging herself on the contents of the sack Freddy had left there, which made me feelguilty since the guy was already having a less-then-pleasant night. We'll meet Freddy again though, because he is Charlie's older brother and becomes the keyboardist of the band.
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[Chrissy]

You hang out with nicer people now, right?

C.

[nitefyre]

Puff, Puff, the Magic Iguana.

[jeslange]

You hang out with nicer people now, right?

C.

I hang out with the main chars of the story, some of whom I've not introduced yet. You'll have to read the whole story as it's posted and determine for yourself if the situations and transitions they go through make them nicer people. I love them all, and might therefore be a bit biased

[Chrissy]

I'm the same way. I hope they find their way in life. You don't strike me as the type to hang out with jerks. I'll keep reading as it comes.

C.

[jeslange]

When I was 16, I thought I'd found a clever spot at school to smoke without getting caught, but a guy named Roger intruded and was certain that the secret spot was his. We agreed to share it and also to start dating. That same day I met Sean, whom was the basist for the band which played in Roger's basement. Roger and Sean looked and acted sort of like teenaged versions of Jay and Silent Bob, respectively, except that Roger's hair was blue.

Sean's dad had hanged himself when Sean was a baby, so Sean was sort of the man of the house from an early age. He's an extremely quiet person, so I still sometimes feel like I barely know him, which seems funny since he's at our house so much that we call him "The Guy on the Couch." I know he's a good person though, because we'd hang out with him while he would take care of his siblings and he's the best example of a good big brother that I've ever met.

************

[jeslange]

Until I was 8, government and politics were ugly old men talking about boring things using words that didn't make sense. But one day, a little boy was on TV running towards an old woman, and while they hugged the old woman cried. There was also a young man standing near them with a hammer. I asked why the old woman was crying, and it was because she was happy to see her grandson. Then I asked what the man was building, and he wasn't building. He was taking apart the wall. Then I asked where these people were and what they kept saying, and they were in Germany and they were saying, "We are the people." Then I asked why they were saying that and it was because I should be quiet while Daddy was trying to watch the news.

[jeslange]

But he had said "Germany," and I knew Germany because that was where the Disney World castle was and I had something from that place. I ran and got it and held it while I watched the news. I thought that little object bonded me to the Germans, but didn't realise that something taken from one of their historical sites might not be the best symbol of my interest.

[jeslange]

Anyway, the Reunification introduced me to politics, and my questions about it led to questions about international politics and I became very well informed about how America played with other countries. It went something like this:

"We are the good guys, and the other countries are either also good guys, are good guys that are being bad for a little while because they're having troubles, or are bad guys that are being bad because they're bad. We help the good guys by making sure they have enough food and enough toys at Christmas, and we make the bad guys stop being bad by beating them up."

This was a nice start, but the adults soon couldn't satisfy my curiosity, so I started reading about politics and history, and this was when I realized I was being lied to.

[jeslange]

Even though my teachers weren't being honest and my parents weren't being honest, I sometimes had questions that the books didn't answer, like, "Are the Boy Scouts the same thing as the Nazi Youth?"

Some of my queries weren't recieved well, and this made me a Nazi and a Communist and a Socialist and a rebel and a I can't remember what else, but these all meant that I was a very dangerous 10 year old and my classmates mimicked the teachers' reactions and I didn't have any friends.

But when I was 16 and started dating Roger, I was reintroduced to Charlie and Freddy and some other older guys, and we would spend hours talking politics and I could ask whatever struck my curiousity and say what I thought about how the government did things and this was all okay.

[Camino]

It's always the Nazi label, swiftly followed by Communist, Socialist and renegade/rebel/yob. I so had that in highschool, lousy patronising teachers.

[jeslange]

There's one more char from this time period to introduce. Before I met the band's singer, Mark, he had travelled around the western US on his motorcycle. I imagine it to have been very romantic, and picture him watching the sun set behind orange canyons until everything appeared red and purple and pink, and wonder if it felt like being on Mars. I'm not sure if his travels were really very romatnic though, because he was addicted to heroin. Sometimes he wouldn't waste time getting dressed before going out to buy some. By the time I met him though, he'd cleaned himself up, and although he was thin, he also looked fit and healthy. Mark pushed everyone really hard to always be to practice on time and to do the songs over and over until they were perfect, and for awhile this was a positive thing, because they wouldn't have left that basement if he hadn't.

At first nobody knew about the band. They just played in Roger's basement and it took awhile for them to really mesh with each other and develop their style. Then something happened that I saw but can't really understand: The members began to know what was going on in each other's heads. Charlie and Sean (guitar and base) would look into each other's eyes and go into a sort of trance, and then some sort of energy would spread to each member in turn, and they would all "feel" each other like some sort of musician ESP.

At every practice, more and more people began showing up to listen to them play, and soon they were being invited to play at local festivals and house parties. The older members of the band thought Roger and Sean were getting too wrapped up in the popularity and the girls and the drugs, and thought practice should be a time to focus and be serious. The younger members thought the crowds would spread their name, and covinced the others to let people keep coming.

[jeslange]

Hi, guys

Over the last few weeks, I've been trying to figure out how to edit and candy coat this story enough to make it acceptable in this forum. I can't sanitize it enough, nor am I willing to. So, if anyone's interested in hearing it, I'll have to send it to you through PMs or e-mails.

Please be aware that the story contains graphic themes of adult domestic violence, child abuse, child neglect, alcoholism, drug addiction, life threatening situations, murder, attempted murder, violence against a pregnant woman, racism and racial violence.
Non-graphic themes include child molestation, male/male sex, and adult themes in general.