Digging the Vein by Tony O'Neill

and the beginnings of a painful hangover in the back of my skull. The urge to weep which had been torturing me since the birthday party, all those days ago, was getting stronger now. Light streamed in through the window and I felt like an absolute zero, having finally regressed to a point where I didn't care what happened next.
    You see, it's sad, but the whole affair with Joan and its repercussions made perfect sense within the context of my life; it was just another way for me to sabotage myself. I remember when I was 17 standing up on a table in a bar called The Three Bells—the table my podium and the regulars my unwilling audience—and announcing that if I wasn't famous by the time I had reached twenty-five I would return to kill myself in that very bar. I was drunk and suddenly seized by the utter meaningless of my life in the north of England. I received sneers. Laughs. Someone, enraged by my cockiness, tried to throw an empty pint glass at me, but was stopped by their girlfriend. Looking back, I must have looked like an incredibly punchable young asshole.
    “ Do it now, son,” someone yelled. “Give us a fuckin' laugh and save yourself some heartache.”
    I smiled, recalling the moment. I'd never have the balls to do it, I think, to go through with my promise when the time comes. Worse than that, I wouldn't have enough honor to do it. How could I go through my whole life like I have, pissing opportunities up against walls, falling in love with the wrong people, failing to reach my goals, setting clumsy landmines for my marriage instead of having the sense to just get up and walk away, and yet then have the nerve to pull off a finale as beautiful and majestic and full of truth as that? No, it would be beyond me: better my life ends in the same way it proceeded ... slowly, painfully and with no real significance.
    Finally, I was finished with it. I was finished with the party, I was finished with everything. I didn’t need to say goodbye to anyone. I got up, and I got the fuck out.
    On a whim, I called Chris. I had not seen him since he left the band. The last I had heard he was trying to get his burgeoning heroin habit under control. She sounded surprised to hear from me, even more so when told him I was coming over to see him.
    When he opened the door he hardly seemed overwhelmed to see me. Hostility poured out of his large brown eyes in waves. He hadn’t left the band on the best of terms, and I had been wary to speak to him during his own drug hell, which seemed to be spiraling even faster than mine.
    “ You look like shit,” he told me.
    “ Thanks” I said, as he led me into the house. “I’ve not slept.”
    We sat around for awhile, making small talk. He talked with enthusiasm about some new band he was playing with and told me he had a new girlfriend. I was feeling ill and gripped by anxiety from the drugs in my system. I asked him if he had a beer. He told me that no, he was off of booze for the time being. This surprised me a little, as I knew that Chris liked to drink as much as I did. I remembered the nights we had spent in the old days driving around LA trying to find parties to crash, open bars to drain. We were pretty close, once. Chris had always struck me as something of a little boy adrift in the world of adults. He was pretty and girls tended to flock to him. It seemed every time we played a gig with Southpaw he would end up screwing the only pretty girl in the half empty club. At first I thought it was the fact that he looked a little like Keith Richards when he was at his handsomest, but later I came to think that maybe girls were attracted to the child in him. Despite his considerable prowess on the guitar and a string of model girlfriends, there was an insecurity to Chris that kept made him seek approval from the most mediocre of people. He would tell outrageous lies to impress even his best friends. At the time I suppose it irritated me, but in light of what happened to him there is