Kickstart My Heart – Mötley Crüe

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I stood still in a rainstorm. The drops were 20’s, 50’s, & 100’s, and in appreciation of the rare weather – I was at a club that wasn’t filled with strippers – I looked for the source. While everyone around me lost their shit, my eyes landed on the guy still throwing bills. No way he was older than me.

Our faces had the same expression.

I dodged through people sopping up spilled drinks with green paper they then shoved in their pockets, through the ring of employees who wished they could do the same, up the stairs to ennui embodied.

He watched my approach and forced me to announce myself. “You know you’re supposed to hand the bartenders your money right? You don’t even have a drink and now you’ll be lucky if you get one before last call.”

“Price of being me.” He said, then pulled more crumpled green from his pocket and flicked the booger into the crowd. “Alcohol just doesn’t do it.”

“Fuck you doing in a bar then?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What’re you doing here with questions like that?”

I don’t have an answer for him.

“None of that money could help you?” He asks after the pause.

“Not really.”

“Me either.” He looked over my shoulder, “I bet if we leave now we make it to this party before it dies down.”

“What, the guy with a ton of money doesn’t have any friends?”

“You can come or not.”

We speed-walked from the bar to a house that wasn’t too far. I had to ask before we entered, “What are you trying to accomplish tonight that alcohol and a government okayed party couldn’t do?”

“Kickstart my heart.” He said simply.

There were fewer people in the party than had been at the bar but the crowd was more alert, music lower. He turned to me. “You ever sky-dive naked from an airplane?”

Three, four, five seconds passed and I realized he legitimately expected me to answer. “Maybe when I was a baby but not that I remember.”

He nodded, face serious. “That’s how I was born; I knew you understood.”

The stranger I was starting to regret following stepped to the side, revealing a counter not coated but covered, topped by mountains of glittering rainbow dust. “My body is from outer space, everything works except my heart; I’ve been trying to get it going forever.”

He separates out a transcontinental railroad of powder then looks at me; I don’t have a bill to snort it with. He hands me the inside of a pen.

All at once

My face, hot.

Eyes

O

P

E

N

“Open.” Said the stranger. Had he read my mind? What did he have in his mouth?

He blew – the sound, a kazoo,  but along with the unmistakable hum came a hailstorm of mint chunks – frostbitten chin, frozen esophagus – the drip turned to liquid nitrogen that numbed my entirety.

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Continue reading My Mixtape – Steal My Sunshine