A holiday in Aura Rosessonās rock star paradise typically began between noon and two, if, of course, he had even gone to bed the previous night. Rather unfortunately, since heād put his lovely girlfriend through the ringer on Christmas day not forty-eight hours ago, today was not going to be typical, and he definitely wouldnāt think to call it paradise.
He woke up on the couch.
More accurately, he woke up beside the couch, all sore joints and shitty attitude. Grumbling, he wiped last nightās binge-drinking episode out of his eyes and dragged himself back onto the sofa in a hungover heap. Didnāt feel too dope-sick this morning, no, not since heād helped himself to a little after Lestari turned in last night. There was nothing quite like watching oneās entire Reason for the Season coagulate in a spoon, but at least itād been relatively smooth sailing after that.
He didnāt hear any Godzilla feet thundering across his hardwood floors, so it might have been safe to surmise that she was still in bed. On a good day he might have made some attempt at breakfast that she would inevitably berate him for, but today wasnāt shaping up to be anything but another dull pot of shit, so he just scrubbed a hand down his unshaven face and turned on the TV. A dolled-up black reporter stood in the foreground of Times Square, fat flakes of snow coming down in a gentle dance. So, thatās what was going on in the real world, eh? Snow? Here comes the New Year? Bull fucking shit. Same as the Old Year.
Auraās āOld year,ā had just about as many signs that he was headed down a bad road as you could fit in just three hundred sixty-five days. Somebody would have to be completely self-obsessed to miss them, but if there was anything Aura could be consistently counted upon to be, it was really fucking self-obsessed. Jack Darling went to prison for a month and he didnāt visit or call the son of a bitch ācause that might have been a waste of valuable drug time. During the following months when sitting for hours on end in the cramped studio drove him stir crazy, Aura went and wrapped his car around a light pole. Heād broken his clavicle and dislocated his arm, and smoked a little heroin to numb the pain. The red flag was that he didnāt stop smoking heroin ā and eventually started injecting it ā long after the pain had been gone.
By the end of Sorry About Thatās 2012-13 tour, he was well on his way to being a junkie. Hell, heād even managed to keep from Lestari the fact that heād overdosed after a show in Berlin on that tour, and ended up left behind some dive bar to die. At the end of every show heād come off the stage from that killer adrenaline rush and careen towards a daredevil narcotics campaign in a desperate bid to get even higher. Once SAT started making it big, they raked in more money than Aura knew what to do with, and he took it to the only logical place he could think of: drugs.
He picked up one of his boots, lying by the far leg of the coffee table, and pulled what was left of his blow out of a cleverly placed compartment in the heel. Since Lestari had developed the propensity to drive Aura out of his mind by stealing all of his shit, heād been forced to get creative. But all he needed now was a little bump to get him up and at āem, and heād be golden. Most people wouldāve started a pot of coffee but, shit, everybody had their own little rituals.
With that helpful energy boost, Aura was able to get his ass up off the couch and actually put on some of that coffee. Though he wasnāt terribly knowledgeable in the kitchen, he did get a skillet of bacon going, at which point he pulled a saucepan from the cupboard, snatched up their metal ladle, and made a beeline for the master bedroom. Banging mercilessly on the bottom of the pot, Aura hollered into the bedroom.
āRise ān shine, Jolly Green!"