6136

Crafted in a decade of excess, I gleamed and swaggered with hand sculpted arrogance, a prize few but the over indulged would ever attain. I was one of the first, my value immeasurable to those who felt the unity only a man in complete synchronization with his guitar could ever know. At seventeen inches wide and with a four-inch deep golden edged body, sparkling chrome, a pearl block fretboard inlays, maple neck and solid spruce archtop, I was perfection and heralded as nothing less than the future.

I was pleasured, sold on from one yellow stained finger to another but never really loved until I saw his strangely knowing stare. He seemed a relative arrival in the adult world, scrawny, average height, that ridiculous undercut hair with a scarlet lick, the usual array of acne and a scowl. Eventually he finally pushed the door and stepped inside, pausing a second or so, his head cocked slightly as if inhaling the unsung music about him.

‘That Falcon, is she an original?’ the voice was little more than an adolescent mumble, its quality nasal and reedy.

‘Yes.’

‘What year?’

‘55’

‘She’s one of the first?’

‘Look, it’s a very expensive piece of kit, don’t waste my time. You can look at it but it’s out of your league.’

‘How much?’ Unfazed by the man’s brusqueness the boy held his ground, his eyes searing my curves.

‘You won’t be able to afford it.’

‘She’s not an it,’ he insisted stoutly. ‘Try me.’

The man sighed impatiently, goggling when the boy smiled, triumphantly peeling off a wad of bills.

‘I’ve got my own plec.’

He was surprisingly strong, fitting me into his bony hip, fingers flying across my neck with the caress of a lover, making me moan with the sheer ecstasy of someone who played from his soul. Take me home, I begged as he stroked his way through an array of chords. I needed this boy, together we’d live and we did. The world became ours.

Always different, beneath the increasing adult distractions, cigarettes, girls, pills, parties, little packets of white powder, the shiny, shiny needles, he remained a child. I was his love, not those giggling drunken girls, a different one each night. The damply dissatisfied exchange done, he’d roll off, grunting dismissively. No matter how many of them shrieked he’d used them, he’d simply throw their clothes towards the door, light up another cigarette and reach for me. No one could ever know what we shared. Lust, obsession, adoration, call it what you like but it was ours.

Boys like mine held the future in their narrow little fingers, gone were the sharp suits, DA haircuts, and greasy quiffs I’d first known. He pranced about in baggy shorts, his face rarely condescending to smile, a cigarette clamped between his lips. As he grew to man he put on some muscle, daubed his upper arm with the obligatory tattoo and rid himself of the undercut. And he loved me. Once an over officious airline employee tried to tell him there was no seat on his flight for me, he was very sorry but there’d been an overbooking and… The official didn’t even get the chance to finish before he’d started screaming into meltdown. I wasn’t cargo, I was a vintage musical instrument, irreplaceable, and they had to find me a seat. Didn’t the asshole understand that?

I suppose they’d seen it, heard it all before, he was just another overindulged young man, and if he didn’t calm down they’d have him arrested. As a global commodity they could survive well enough without his patronage. But whatever he’d swallowed, sniffed or injected was biting into his soul and he ignited. Machine-gunned obscenities rattled, fists and feet smashing whatever he could reach, scratching his beautiful fingers scarlet. It took four men to subdue him in the end, cruelly cuffing those delicate hands and yanking him away still screeching.

He was lucky, they didn’t find anything illegal on him this time, nor thankfully stuffed in my case, but of course it spattered the news. They let him out in a few hours, money buys the best legal advice and he had plenty of it but his pissed off child features still graced the morning editions and breakfast shows. A rare talent in a world of lip-synching, a young man obsessed with weaving notes, practising chords and riffs until his fingers bled. What they carefully concealed was his appetite for the little packets of powder was beginning to replace the music as his mind tumbled towards the inevitable.

When the perennial groupie had choked for the final time, he’d show her the door, a chemical enhanced grin replacing the beatific smile, pick me up, resting his head against my neck until he passed out. He’d boarded the self-destruction roller coaster in adolescence and now he was a lost boy with his foot wedged on the accelerator. The world still adored him but he hated them for it. He refused all interviews, grunted at those who still hung about the stadium doors, even the hot stink of meaningless sex lost its lure. There were still days when his brain cleared and the blistered hands trailed over my frame, the fingers mournfully stroking the neck and fretboard as if he were lamenting what he used to be. Occasionally he’d be sufficiently sober to play and I wept out my soul for him. He rarely bothered to dress anymore and I could feel him pressed hard against my back, the sweat seeping into my body, marking me as his. We soared and we moaned and I screamed the notes he pricked from me until he could no longer control us.

The beginning of his end, when it came was typically abrupt.

‘I’m going home. I don’t want to do this anymore.’

The others were stunned, twenty thousand tickets snarling impatiently for the show to open and he wouldn’t play.  They’d always known he could be difficult, but this stank of closure. None of them spoke to him off stage anymore, he detested their company and they thought he was an egotistical little shit.

‘Get your sorry ass out there. There’s people out there who’ve paid good money to see us, not you, us, you arrogant little bastard.’

‘Tell them,’ he began, not able to look anyone in the face.

‘Tell them what? That you’re fucking mad?’

‘If you like. I don’t care anymore. I want to go home.’

Fists swung, sneakered feet bit until their frantic manager pulled them from the pathetically curled creature they’d once invited to play. So they let him go home and that’s where he stayed, just another burn out, killing himself slowly as the world began to forget.

His days slumped into monotony, he stopped eating properly, preferring the harsh sting of vodka and burnt powder. He’d gaze at me with increasingly glazed eyes, crooning how he still loved me, I never let him down, unlike his friends. Tired of his comatose condition, the stench of addiction heavy on his skin, they left him to rot. No one loved my beautiful manchild anymore, a smackhead, pothead, crackhead junkie who smeared blood along his walls and talked to demons. A shambling rambling ghost, the music in his head still pleading for a freedom he couldn’t grant.

The money smouldered in the flame of freebasing and filthy dealers, rat like men whose eyes settled on the grubby notes he handed them. One by one he pawned or sold his discs, awards, even his furniture, clothes and books. All he had for his twentysome years were a handful of scratched cds, a stained sofa and his guitars, dust smeared and unloved, our hearts cracking for the boy who’d been but was now too lost to care. Naively I overlooked my value, an original 6136 would still fetch more than a handful of fixes, and he knew it.

When I felt his dry fingers begin to stroke me, uncaring if my dirt clung to his weeping skin, I knew this was the end. I didn’t need to see the tears or hear the broken breaths as he fitted me against his hip, the sharp bones biting. But he couldn’t play now; his nails were little more than bloody stumps and the plec wouldn’t steady itself between them. Never before had silence divided us but the temptation of the needle sting was too much. Eventually he cried himself towards a form of sobriety, laid me tenderly in my case, a lover closing a coffin as his grief seared face tried to say goodbye.

Before he handed me to the unseen man, probably another of those who offered him the smallest price for desperation, he paused.

‘She’s an original ’55 6136. She’s made me so happy, but I need the money. I have to have money. Take her.’ The sobs were beginning to break in his throat as the man handed him a pile of stained bills. Stuffing them clumsily into the filthy coat he wrapped about his wasted body, he hunched his shoulders and shuffled away, his footsteps fading.