Punctured, Bruised, and Barely Tattooed(44)

“Anyway, I’d just finished out my freshman year in high school. I grew up here in Winchester—I don’t know if you knew that. There were these guys with a band called Spawn of Satan—later known only as Spawn. Those guys all graduated that year, and their drummer Mike got accepted to some big wig Ivy League college—Yale, I think—and so he quit the band. But Mike knew me from band and recommended me, telling them I was a tight drummer. Well, maybe I was, but I had a lot to learn, especially when it came to playing double bass and shit like that. I was a fast learner, though, and it was summer, so I practiced nonstop. My dad would be at work all day, so I’d play out in the garage from ten till five every damn day.

“No, my dad didn’t buy me the drums. Mike loaned his to me, saying he wouldn’t need them while he was in school. The asshole was coming down on me harder and harder. My grandparents were both gone, and I don’t know if they were the reason my dad had held back before or if being a rat bastard was his way of dealing with their deaths. I didn’t give a shit, though. I was getting to an age where I wasn’t willing to take it anymore…but I hadn’t stood up for myself yet.

“I’d only been playing for Spawn for a couple of weeks, had only played one show, when they said they were taking it to the road. I didn’t know what the hell they meant, but I knew I wanted in. I decided to leave Winchester with them. I told my dad one morning that I wouldn’t be home when he got back, and I don’t think he believed me.

“I called him about six months later, and he said I was dead to him. I had wanted to maybe try an adult relationship. Yeah, I realize I was a kid, but six months on the road, trying to make ends meet when you’re fifteen helps you grow up fast.” Stone shook his head. “But he was still an asshole, probably even worse than before. I knew then that if I tried to come home, I’d get the beating of my life.

“No way. I’d find a way to make it on my own.

“You know most of the story. Spawn made it big. Fucking crazy big. Before I knew it, we were touring the U.S. and Europe and making more money than we knew what to do with. I’d never had a girlfriend, and suddenly I had women throwing themselves at me.” He shrugged and grinned. “Yeah, I enjoyed it. What kid wouldn’t? It was amazing and fast and crazy. It was cool.”

He got quiet. “And overwhelming. I dealt with it okay for a while…but I don’t know if it was my age making it hard to handle or the fact that I’d never been on my own before and had no experience. It got rough after a while. Then, after a few years, there was constant arguing about the artistic direction of the band, but what was worse was all the…decadence. Most of the guys were strung out—bad. It’s pretty sad when the youngest guy in the group is the sanest, but I was.

“Our fourth album—in my opinion—was shit. It was fueled by drugs and fighting, and I could just feel the animosity among everybody, but especially between J.C. and Riley. They couldn’t even agree on what kind of toilet paper to put on the bus.” Kory giggled. “I’m not even kidding. They had a fucking argument about it.

“That wasn’t all of it, though. I was also tired of being on the road. It felt like that’s all we did—we’d write music on the road, so as soon as we’d get home, which was in California at the time, we’d start recording, and before I knew it, we were touring again. Seriously. That’s all we did. And I couldn’t take it anymore. I hated not having a real home, and I was starting to hate all those guys. Seriously hate them. And that sucks, because I’d once considered them my brothers. So I sat them down one night, when everyone was relatively sober, and I told them I was leaving when we were done with that tour. I think they thought I was joking at first, but I was dead serious.

“In the midst of all that, I got a call from Russ. He was the guy I’d considered my best friend. He was the only person I’d regretted leaving behind. Anyway, he’d graduated high school a couple years before that and opened up a tattoo shop. Yeah, The Iron Maiden. I hadn’t told him I was leaving the band. I wanted to see how things would play out. But I could tell something was bothering him, and after a little bit, I got out of him that he was going to have to file bankruptcy. That killed me, because I knew what that business meant to him. Hell, I’d come home at least ten times to have him ink me. Sure, I got ink elsewhere, but Russ was my man, and he was a hell of an artist. I asked him how much he needed to get by and offered to loan him the money. I gave him enough to pay the bills for the month. But I started thinking about it on the road more and more, wondering what if. My thought was that I didn’t give a shit if it turned a real profit after expenses or not. I knew Russ had picked a prime location but the cost of operation was killing him. He didn’t own the building, and I didn’t know if he owned any of the equipment or merchandise inside. I had no idea about any of that, but I did know one thing. I had already in the past sketched most of the designs that had become tattoos on my own body—why couldn’t I learn to use the gun and do tattoos myself? And maybe I could help Russ get on his feet. He was a great artist, and he deserved to stay in business.