Swinging Tire

6

Small  cash for even smaller pleasures.

So when we are not practicing, Slash and I go bike riding and rollercoasting. We also talk a lot. Well, I talk, but he is a serious and interested listener.

And  the fucking. Good God, the fucking. 

There's many ways one can explore sex if one is willing.

Slash is always willing.

****

( There's many shades to Izzy. There's the too cool to care he puts in public. It's a gray shade of smoke that shrouds him from the outside, a screen were he's seeing everything, but nothing in his persona could  give away a fuck.

There's this sky blue shade, when he is concentrated, fingering his guitar and writing music on a piece of paper, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed.

There's amber and green, when he is with friends, when he's relaxed, but his guard is not down.

And there is crimson and maroon, the private Izzy. The one few people see. It's vulnerable Izzy, the inner Izzy, the real Izzy. The Izzy that makes a funny face when the crowd calls for him on a gig. It's the Izzy that had turned up a block away from my house once, his nose broken and bleeding, and we ran to river, where he sobbed and cursed himself hoarse on my lap. His mom had hit him with a pan on his face, the first and the last because Izzy never again mentioned her name.

It's the Izzy I remember in the cornfields, bright eyes and rosy cheeks, chasing me naked on the maze, laughing and shivering with cold. The Izzy that covered me with his favourite Navajo blanket and fell asleep on my arms, the sky so starry above us.

It's the Izzy waiting me outside my work today.

He was just like...there.

I stepped out with a cigarette and a zippo, looked to my right and there he was. Arms crossed, cigarette between his fingers, leg propped on the red brick behind him.

"What do you want, Izzy? "

I asked as I passed him by. I would walk for a while and then he would set into a spring and catch me the next block, walking by my side like that, taking me with him, without even knowing what was I doing.

He drove to a place called La Florida,  just under Laurel Canyon, walking distance from Slashs mom's house.

He's renting a small one bed apartment in a fairly decent block and I am charmed at first, then alarmed.

"This place must cost you more than you  earn throwing newspapers on front lawns, Izzy. " I said, touching the palm trees in the living room.

The views were stunning on the balcony, and it was like a pirates den inside. Rugs, paintings.

"I've got a side business. " He said, opening a bottle of gin.

"A side business? "

"I'm selling heroin. Nothing too big, mostly a few good clients."

I accepted the cold glass from his hands. That brief time our fingers touched I felt again his best friend, his only real friend, the one that Izzy could be really him.

"We need a side plan, Billy. You know what I mean?" He asked sitting on an armchair.

"I don't follow you, no." I sat on the sofa.

"We need a plan if this music thing doesn't work." He said.

"You maybe. For me there's no iffs."