Short Story: The Afterparty

It’s always the hardest part of the day when we come off stage.
The crowd still cheering, the cameras still flashing.
It should fill you with happiness, pride, that feeling that you’ve made it.
And though I won’t say it doesn’t, I can’t deny the reality that it’s sometimes not worth it.

They see us as rockstars.
Drugs, sex, rock n’ roll.
But it’s not like that.

Our lives aren’t full of parties and booze for a pleasurable sensation.
It’s a story we’re forced to tell.

When we down another bottle, or pop another pill.
It only fuels the addiction that kills so many of us.
We know it kills and yet we swallow it anyway.
We inject ourselves with the only thing that can hold us together, because without it, the ride would already be over.

If we aren’t thrown in a bus headed to another venue, we’ll be on our way to an afterparty.
Regardless if we want to or not.
We have to fill out the moulds they gave us, stretch and squeeze ourselves into the shape they want us in.
They feed us the fear that without the recklessness, the fans wouldn’t be here.

They don’t want people, they want an image.
They don’t want problems, they want a figure.
Yet one step out of the box, one drink too many, and the headlines will hang us.

We’re unfit to be role models for children, but we’re perfect enough to be hated by parents.
We’re not skinny enough for the look of television, yet we’re perfect enough to be ridiculed on it.
We’re not drunk enough to be seen as true rockers, yet we’re wasted enough to be seen as junkies.
There is no inbetween, there is no perfect.
It’s a world we hadn’t expected, all we wanted was to make music with our friends.
Yet it took one song hitting the charts to destroy us. All of us.

There’s not one person in the band who isn’t an addict, not one person who doesn’t have their problems.
And sure we could use that for our songs, fans like to hear relatable lyrics.
But they don’t want to see it.
They don’t want to see us for who we really are, unless it’s in a documentary when they’re old enough to call us their childhood.

Right now we’re on our way to one of the after parties, huddled together in the back of a black van, the tinted windows kept the world from seeing us for the illusion of momentary safety.
Not one of us wanted to go, we only wanted to be back at home sleeping under the covers.
But freedom isn’t allowed here.

So we swallow the fears that keep us up at night.
Hold back the tears that keep us from breathing.
One wrong slip and we could end our career.
Because the world won’t accept a person who can’t stand on their own.
Even if we stride shoulder to shoulder.

So we do the only thing we can do, take another step.

Another step into substance abuse.
Another step into a world that will kill us.
We could all hold hands but it would still tear us apart.
All we could do was hang onto one another, until we start getting picked off.
One by one.