Extracts
Break On Through - Americanized Version 1998

Written by LA VADE aka Rapsodomy © 1998
Chapter 23 - Stinky Grooves

As we were all competing we wanted to stay ripped and as we were all getting to the stage where we needed to let rip some, it was obvious we’d find a solution to our problem, we started using marijuana. Cheap, no calories and no training session interruptions caused by hangovers. We would pool our funds and buy loads of the stuff. Before going clubbing on Saturday nights we’d meet up in the parking lot and get a little high.
We’d go clubbing and have a ball and then, after the club had closed, we’d get back in our cars and drive some place quiet, usually the coast. Then we’d really get stoned.
Often Manny and I would be left alone together as we both lived in the same area, we’d often arrange to have one last joint near our houses before calling it a night. Manny fascinated me. He was gorgeous to look at, not that much taller than me, with long brown hair. I’ve always been a sucker for a long hair. There was something unique about him, something different, which I couldn’t pin down. Saying that, he was by no means perfect. He had a strange neuroses, a quest for physical perfection, driven by his insecurities and ideal of what was beautiful. I guess that should’ve been enough to warn me off but I wasn’t.
We began to hang out together. We were always doing physical stuff. When we weren’t bodybuilding or strutting-our-stuff in the nightclub, he’d take me kick boxing at a local boxing club.
We’d often go back to his place where we’d listen to his music, most of which was weird porno rap, Stinky Grooves and the like, with songs like Butt funkin and Cantaloupe. He also liked Faith No More, my all time favourite band and have to confess that my initial attraction to Manny was that he was almost a dead ringer for the long haired Mike Patton, Faith No More’s lead singer.
We were just friends but all the while, something was growing inside me and I began to secretly wish we were more than that. As a result of this wish I lost his friendship, Billy’s friendship and the Chaingang disbanded and disintegrated.
By the time it was too late for me, we had moved on from pot to acid. Again, cheap, no calories and no hangover.
We used to score a couple of tabs in the club and drop them really late on and then drive to my place. By the time we’d parked up the acid would just be kicking in.
Manny used to really love acid, he would push himself to the limits of his imagination, the more fucked up he was the better. I used to put on old Prince concert films and watch for the whole two hours, or whatever, rocking back and forth on my knees and crying my eyes out at the Purple Rain finale song. When I’d finished I would go and find Manny. He’d be this gibbering wreck in the corner, swearing blind that my mother’s aspidistra was a trifid monster come to eat him whole. He’d fall into my arms and he’d hug me for hours. He would call me Cooper because all the crying I’d do would make my mascara run black lines down my face and smudge around my eyes. To him in his acid haze I was Alice Cooper.
He’d let me mother him. I’d soothe away his acid frenzy and when the drug loosened its grip on him I’d put him in his car and send him home to bed.
I never ever broached the subject of my feelings for him. He found out when I tactlessly lunged for him, kissing him full on the lips. This was completely out of the blue one night, when I was in less than a normal state of mind. Looking back, it must’ve been so obvious how I felt, we were never apart and I did anything he asked. He more than likely knew, but to this day I don’t think I ever vocalised my feelings for him. After that night, we fell into a very weird quasi relationship. I didn’t care; I was so under his spell that I was grateful for anything at all.
What heightened our affair was the secrecy with which it was conducted. He insisted that we keep it all a secret, especially from Billy. I collaborated with his traitorous wishes not knowing that the relationship Manny had with me was very similar to the relationship he had with Billy.
He was playing with us, taunting and teasing. He was like a sick schoolboy who squashes bugs just to see their insides squelch out. We were his puppets. I was the lucky one; the relationship I had with Manny wasn’t sexual.
I bumped into Billy years later. He told me he still felt hurt. It was such a traumatic episode in his life. He said that coming out had been the hardest thing he’d ever done before or since and that I’d compounded it all by not being a real friend and being honest. I’d been so stupid, so blind; I didn’t blame Billy for blaming me. If I’d just told him I was in a relationship, however strange, with Manny, the whole nightmare could’ve been averted.
As it was, I inadvertently put Billy through months of anguish and heartache. For example, once, Manny asked me to scratch my nails down his back as hard as I could. He’d told me he’d wanted to test his pain thresh hold. I’d no idea that his real intention was to show the welts off at the gym the next day, so the guys would all think that he was stud. I mean, whatever. What an asshole. I just can’t stand guys who “kiss and tell”, it’s so damn childish. Private stuff which happens between two people should be kept just that, private.
I went berserk when he told me what he’d done. There were a few things like this, seemingly innocent things that, unbeknownst to me, had superbly disastrous repercussions. Another time, I was going abroad on tour with the female bodybuilders for a couple of weeks of promo photo shooting and Manny asked me to send a postcard back to the club and address it to Manny and the Chaingang. Naturally I did, I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t and when it arrived it was put up on the notice board for all to see. I was still completely unaware that poor Billy was becoming increasingly confused and more and more paranoid.

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Written by LA VADE aka Rapsodomy © 1998