A/N: This is Tommy Sterling thirty years before he meets Delilah in Contemporary Bygone. If you haven't read that story the end isn't going to have any of the intended impact on you. Read the other story before, or after this one.

This started as a little characterization exercise but kind of manifested itself into something long and one-shot-like.

I've always loved myself over everything else. Why shouldn't I? People say that to love another is to discover love in its true form. To feel love in its undiluted wonder. I say bullshit. Loving another person is really just another way of loving yourself, isn't it? Falling in love with someone is indulging in the sins guiltlessly.

Pride, rage, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, and of course lust. Always lust. Is there any greater pride, gluttony, and greed than wanting someone else's life to coexist with your own completely and totally? Is there a greater rage, and envy involved when that certain someone is supposed to belong to you, and yet obstacles obstruct your path? Is there anything lazier than finding someone to be with and then inevitably falling out of any kind of cat and mouse game? Too late. You won, cat. She's yours. No need to chase when the chase is obviously over. The feast can begin.

Which brings me to my last point. Lust. Is there any more potent a love for a body you crave so wholly? A soul you want to reach. A desperate quarrel between devotion and primitive instinct. I am a man of great instinct primitively. I haven't the time for love. I haven't the time for adoration, devotion, or I'll call you promises that actually mean something. Who does anymore? All those free-love fucking hippies don't even believe in that shit. Free love is just another way of getting a little ass and making it sound socially acceptable.

I am not socially acceptable. Never have been. My classmates all know it. They all talk about it. They stay away from me. They stay away from the people I know. My friends. We're the kids no one wants to be caught dead talking to. And yet there's always this undertone of yearning to be acknowledged and accepted by us. People like to feel like they're tough, I guess. I don't understand it myself. When you're skin is thick people just like to test its true virility. The majority of our peers tend to watch us with a fascination masked poorly behind a scowling look of disapproval.

Hippies want to be part of a society. They want to create a global community based on the understanding of a simple idea. Everyone needs to be loved, so we must love all. I'm not sure if this is fact or not, actually. This is just what I've picked up from superficial observation. People like us don't want world involvement in our society. I would much rather create a society of my very own that the rest of the world drowning in social distortion would be completely and totally excluded from. An island in the sky for all the punks, and revolutionaries. We would be a big family of similar interest. A life free of self righteous shits in positions of supposed authority.

And this is what makes me unacceptable in the eyes of society. Apparently I'm an outside the box thinker. Well, fuck, who wants that? Who wants to think when you can just follow the conforming masses blindly and adhere to the status quo? I would rather start wearing a tunic and braid flowers into my hair. Change my name to Daffodil or some other stupid hippie shit.

And so, instead of fretting, I lay in my room in a clouded haze. The walls have changed consistency yet again. I'm watching them in a somewhat astounded silence. I feel like I'm watching the seasons change before my very eyes. They're swaying and pouring like my own personal waterfall. The light above my bed is purple. Funny, I know in the back of my mind that it's actually a pale yellow incandescence but I can't actually make my mind comprehend it at the moment. It's purple, and so it must be purple, right? That's all I can think at the moment. Jackie is lying next to me. I can feel her body against my side. I can feel her lips on my ribs. I can feel her big breasts against my arm.

We're laying naked in my bed, staring at the things only we can see. She doesn't seem to be having the same experience as I am. She seems preoccupied kissing, licking, and biting every single inch of my body. The feeling is confounding. Her mouth feels ice cold, but her tongue feels white hot. It's making me ache. I'm drowning in a sea of unique sensation. Not the regular sexual sensations. It's something else. Something impossible to explain. It's like every nerve in my body is gradually depleting. Abandoning me. I would feel her and then suddenly she was gone, though I could see her right there. Like a shadow created against the lights of a carousel. There one second and then gone the next, only to reappear the next after that.

The walls change consistency yet again. I can hear them. They stop raining and start breathing deeply in and out. The influx of oxygen causes the painted walls of my small room to push out closer to me, and then they seem to expel a long wind and recede again. The bed starts rocking me slowly like a boat on an unsteady ocean. My ceiling is living in Technicolor. It's flashing from a hot color to a cool one, then back to hot, and so on. Red to green. Orange to blue. Yellow to purple. Thus repeating. All complimentary, I absently noted.

That stamp she gave me is totally fucking with my mind. The bed is rocking and I clear my bleary eyes long enough to see Jackie sitting atop my lap. Her head is thrown back and she's rubbing her own heavy breasts while I watch with a certain detachment. I can't completely feel what she's doing. My blood wasn't responding normally. In a normal state I would obviously return all favors tenfold. But at the moment I was too lost. Too clouded. My mind was incomprehensible. Just a jumble of confounded revelation. Every thought I was having was just overlapping the others I was trying to have at the same instant. Everything in my brain was melding together in a rather distorted mess.

Maybe geniuses fucked on acid too. Maybe they're just better at sorting their thoughts than I am. I felt like I was having all sorts of stunning realizations. Like the world was opening up to me. That the ceiling had lifted away. My bed had picked up and I was soaring through the sky. Thousands of images were whizzing past me as I soared along the inviting space. Everything I have ever questioned became apparent. Every question I had ever taken one simple second to contemplate seemed so obvious. Everything was in stunning color. Light had been shed on everything. How exquisite. Jackie rolled off of me looking sated and sweaty. I must have came. I was getting soft though I couldn't really recall ever being hard.

It was a long, long while until I was able to make a coherent thought. Hours passed like minutes. Nearly four and a half hours later I was completely back from my trip. We dressed silently. My parents would be home soon. The two of us had decided to ditch the second half of the school day to do this instead. It seemed like time well spent. "So, what did you think?" She asked, winding two belts around her hips. Her big tits distorted her The Clash tank nicely. Jackie was one of those girls who would fuck you just because she knew she could. She didn't even really have to want to. She just did. Her fire-engine red Mohawk was a little dishevelled in the back due to sweat and lying on it for so many hours watching the ceiling. Jackie was one of those girls who almost always out-drank the boys and got wet when she saw or heard a muscle car. She was tough, but easy as all hell.

She was what you could describe as curvy. Not fat. She had a round ass, a tummy that was just a little over her pants line, and breasts that were a bit too big for her thin shoulders; making her look unbalanced. I once asked and she told me with absolutely no shyness that she was a double E while only being a size eight. She looked a little proud, actually. They looked painful, in truth.

"It was pretty cool." I said simply, tugging on a t-shirt I had picked up at the last concert I had attended.

"Better than puking your guts out." She stated with a snort tugging on combat boots. She gave me a long look as I stayed silent. "I don't know why you do that shit. It's fucking disgusting."

"You don't have to do it, then." I said simply, tugging on my bullet belt.

"I won't." She snapped. She sounded mad, though I wasn't sure why. "And I wish you wouldn't either." She said after a short pause. I just laughed.

"Why?" I grinned, tugging a smoke off my bedside table and passing her one as well. She took it but said nothing, fixing me with a dirty look. "It's good for the lungs." I grinned, striking a match.

"You've started to look freaky since you began doing that crap."

"How so?" I wondered, passing her the lit match when I was finished with it. She pushed the tip of her cigarette in the flame and blew it out for me.

"You used to be so nice and full. Now you're all bony." Jackie said in a tone that seemed as if she were hard done by. "Your eyes are getting all weird, too." She mumbled, looking up at me. "They're red all the time."

"I just don't sleep that well, anymore." I said simply, rubbing my itching eye involuntarily.

"Because you're tweaked all the fucking time." She snapped. "Your parents seriously don't know?" I shrugged in response, feeling no need to respond verbally. "Are they lacking all human senses, or are they just stupid?" She demanded. I just shrugged again. She released a low groan of annoyance.

"What's the difference?" I asked, sitting down on the bed, puffing heavily, truly curious. "Some people do acid. Some do chronic. Some choose to do a little something else."

"So, you do a little something else?" She snapped, glaring at me. I nodded but remained silent. "Tommy, seriously, you're too good for that shit. Smoking crack is for like…two dollar hookers."

"Don't worry about it, Jackie." I mumbled. "I have it under control." I didn't bother to move when she stood up. And I certainly didn't bother chasing after her when she told me to go fuck myself, and stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

That seemed so long ago, now.

It really wasn't that long since I was sitting around the docks with my friends, or sneaking a girl in through my window, or getting tweaked in the basement. It just felt like time had escaped me completely. Like I had been reminiscing on those moments for years. Though, truthfully, it was more like weeks than years.

I spent every day here. I spent every night here. Night after mundane night. This was my new home. For now, anyways. I asked my mother often when I was allowed to leave. She never gave me a proper answer. Just start choking and stuttering and crying. She cried a lot around me these days. Never before had a mother been so distraught by the sight of her own son. Her only son. By the very sound of his voice. She couldn't look at me without either tearing up or going stoically silent. She wouldn't even blink. She would just stare at me in a daze. My father was better at speaking, but it was rarely anything encouraging.

I am a failure. I am a loser. I am a bum. I am a 'hop-head'.

I know very well what I am. I know that I'm considered troubled, as they described it. I knew my problem. I just didn't care to fix it. I like myself the way I am. I nurture my thirst with a mothers care. The whoosh infiltrating my entire self the moment I pulled the plunger of the needle back and drove it home. The smell of the tar baking and bubbling in the bottom of an empty jam jar. The cotton soaking the yellow-black. The lighter baking the white rock on the tinfoil as I sucked up all the smoke I could with a straw. My nose burning with the powder I just sucked up the pound note I rolled into a tube. These were the thoughts that were comforting to me. Keeping me sane.

What others would think of as an unpleasant memory was just another thing I missed. Waking up in places unknown. Passing out in a river of my own vomit. A testament to previous endeavours. Proof of my moments of creation and wonder. The only real kicks you get in this fucking town come in a powder.

No one comes to see me anymore. My mum and dad come to see me, but all the friends I have, and had seem to have vanished. I've taken to thinking they don't want to be reminded of the very real possibility that they could be in the exact same situation I am in right now at any moment. They're no different than I am. They do all the same shit. We all did it. The ones that didn't, like Jackie, I lost contact with. Half of them taught me how to do it. Showed me what the veins look like when they're ready. Where to bind your arm with the rubber tubes (or belt if you're in a bind), how to cook it, and what to look for when you're buying it. Consistencies and colors and textures to watch out for. How to tell if it's laced with something that's going to fuck you later.

I just got better at it than they did. They still took small hits. I took as much as I could handle at once, and sometimes more than that. The only one who could even possibly keep up with my thirst was Annie. But she disappeared before I even wound up in this bloody hellhole. Annie was an unusual bird. She would lie there with the needle jutting out of her left arm, her right sprawled out much like her legs. Her distended stomach, heavy with eight months of pregnancy, only seemed to bring out the intensity of her dying eyes. People when they're stoned tend to open themselves completely and tell you mostly everything about themselves and their lives. They expose every wound to attack in complete confidence of your kinship. They do drugs, you do drugs; you're practically brethren.

Annie told me one day, lying in a daze across my lap, rubbing her massive stomach absentmindedly, that she hated children. She just couldn't afford to get an abortion. She had wanted one, but when she heard how much it was she had to just settle and take what she got. She didn't care what happened. Not to her. Not to her unborn. Not to me. Not to anyone. Annie lived for no one, and nothing. She just lived. And she didn't even know why. She started opening every scar to me brazenly. Her mom didn't understand her. Her father hurt her in every conceivable way known to man. When she laughed humorlessly and told me she wasn't even sure if the father of her unborn was a faceless shag, or the bastard infants' grandpa I just stared at her.

What do you say to that?

Fucking nothing. That's what.

She told me about all her boyfriends who threw her around their apartments and broke her bones. She told me about a sugar daddy she had at one point that got her thirst started when she was fifteen. She revealed every little secret she had. From the time she stole a pair of green knickers from a store when she was seven to the time she had a threesome with two other birds while some old bastard watched for twenty pounds worth of junk.

And then one day she just vanished. Maybe she went back to Yorkshire where she came from. Maybe she went to the hospital and gave birth to the child she hated. Maybe she finally killed herself like she really wanted. Maybe she's trapped in an insane asylum.

Like me.

That's where they put you if you overdose on a big hit of heroin in this stupid fucking nation. First they take you to the hospital and pump you full of tubes and needles and bullshit. Then they transfer you to the psych ward. Apparently all addicts are insane. So here I am. Trapped in a white hospital gown with straps on my bed just in case. I can think of better things to do with restraints on my bed, but fucking in this stupid place is seriously frowned upon. Most likely because I went to group therapy and sat silently listening to a bunch of psycho losers go on about their problems.

One girl, Cindy, or Shelly, or something just stared at me the whole time. When it came her turn she said very bluntly, without once pulling her gaze away from my face, "I'm a sex addict." The room chorused together in a droll, "Thank you Cindy/Shelly". I quirked my brow at her and she stared dumbly back at me. When we were leaving the therapy room she told me that if you're caught shagging in your rooms you're put in confinement, no questions asked. So she dragged me into a storage closet.

She was sickly and far too skinny from swallowing countless prescriptions and having constant temper tantrums to keep her active. The strange thing I learned about sex addicts is that they don't really even belong in psych wards. She was there because she tried to commit suicide. Her little problem was just the icing on the cake. She also told me that she hated having sex. She despised the whole act. She felt vile, and desecrated. When I asked her why she did it then, she just fixed me with a dirty look and asked why I did what I did, as if that answered my question.

It didn't at all. I do what I do because I want to. Not because I have to. I love doing this because it makes me feel alive. I want to feel alive. I want to feel beautiful and ugly at the same time. I want to feel like I'm teetering between life and death. I love the feeling of discovery. Every time is a new adventure, and yet so familiar to all the others. I like the familiarity to it. It's like coming home, and everybody is happy to see you. Like walking into the party and being the main focus. I was too recluse to be that guy in real life. I had to find some way to do it somehow.

And I found it.

And now everyone is trying to take it away from me. They're trying to steal away the one thing in my life that gives me any semblance of joy. Now, I ask, in what possible way is that fair?

Well, I decided when I came to this stupid place that I would fake my way through and then when I got out I could go back to life as per usual. Not as easy as I thought… The first nights I was here were hellish. I was so cold, and then hot, and then cold again, and thus repeating. I couldn't stop puking. Every muscle, joint and cell in my body was in agony. It hurt to the point of causing momentary insanity. My arms screamed. My nose poured, and stained the sheets forever with the rusty brown baptism of my blood. Good.

Fuckers.

I was in yet another group session. Sharing time. I was nineteen years old and I was taking part in show and tell. Just bloody brilliant…

"Thomas," The group leader, Dan, called out, tapping the ashes off of his cigarette. I looked up at him. I was suddenly unaware of how to take part. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to say. I looked over at him because I needed him to guide me through with this one. "Introduce yourself to everyone." He said gently, as if speaking to a child or an invalid. I suppose he guessed I was the latter.

"…I'm Thomas Sterling," I said slowly, with a nod.

"Hello, Thomas," The room said in slow, half-hearted unison. I didn't blame them for a second for their lack of interest.

"Would you like you tell us why you're here Thomas?" Dan asked in that same tone.

"The court said so." A few short snorts of amusement escaped the circle of white clad figures ranging widely in age and appearance. I was, of course, the only one with interesting hair, piercings, and tattoos. Reminded me of home…How quaint.

"There's a time to be serious, and there's a time to make jokes, Thomas." Dan reminded me with patience. I heaved a sigh.

"I do drugs and stuff." I said with a shrug. What else was I supposed to say? That's why I was here, right?

"Thank you for sharing, Thomas," Dan said, then sent a look around the circle, and everyone repeated him slowly. Cindy, or Shelly was sitting near Dan staring at the ceiling. He moved on to the next person. The man beside me who couldn't stop petting the head of a ratty old teddy bear and stuttering on tears he was trying to fight off. I just stretched out lazily. This was dismal. A waste of time in its truest form.

Days began to drift off of the calendar. I was sitting in the main room with the rest of the scattered freaks and looked over the heavy nurses shoulder at a little calendar with ducklings as the photo of choice for August. Today was the twenty-second of nineteen seventy-seven. And I was still stuck in here…

I would be until approximately the end of September when mum said we would be taking off and getting me out of this toxic environment (I'm guessing that meant my friends over the place itself). Apparently America wasn't having the same problems as England in their youth. So here I wait to get uprooted from my entire life and moved off somewhere I'm completely and totally unfamiliar with. They said I needed the detox and the emotional guidance for this troubled time in my life. Of course my parents had agreed immediately. As I was no longer in control of myself, they were the ones that made the decision. Not me. Though the fact that I'm a legal adult remained untouched.

Therapy continued. I didn't participate much. I spoke when I was asked a direct question, but aside from that I remained stubbornly silent. I held myself above this drivel. It was a moot point. When Dan realized that I would only answer if he asked me something, his questions grew bolder and more pressing. I always had the right to pass, but rarely took the opportunity. I was ashamed of nothing. I didn't care what these psychos and freaks thought about me. Why would I?

"Thomas," Dan began one day in a group session. I fixed him with a blank stare. His shape divided in my unfocused eyes. Solid Dan and blurry ghost Dan directly next to him, sinking into the solid version. "Would you like to share with us why you feel the drive to take part in these self-destructive activities?"

"Which are you referring to, Dan?" I asked rudely. I wasn't feeling patient today. I wanted to get under his skin a little. "The drinking, or the smoking, or the fucking, or the drugs, or the fights, or something else I just plum forgot to mention?"

"How about all of it?" He asked patiently in that voice of his I hated.

"I drink because it makes me feel alive. I smoke because I always have. I fuck because it makes me feel fantastic. Don't worry, Dan, one day you'll know what I'm talking about," I threw in as a cutting jibe. "I do drugs because, again, it makes me feel alive, and I get in fights because it amplifies that feeling."

"Do you realize that everything you just said focuses on one key component, Thomas?" He asked in his fucking nursery rhyme voice. I wanted to deck him. "Everything you just explained revolves around the fact that you need to feel something." He said this in such a way that I was almost a little surprised he didn't shout eureka when it all came together. "You have these habits because you have a desire to create emotion within yourself. Whether it be exhilaration, familiarity, ecstasy, or simply pain, you wish to be in control of creating that stir within yourself. Is this true, Thomas?"

I stayed silent, just watching him. His eyes were alight with discovery and I hated him for it. Stupid fucking cad. Was he saying that I was a control freak? Or that I simply possessed no control, so I had to create it? Or did he just call me a masochist? I was lost.

When group session was over, Dan kept me behind to speak to me one on one, as he did with some of us, sometimes. He immediately began asking me questions. "Is there some situation at home you feel out of control of?", "Do you have a girlfriend or boyfriend in one?", "Have you ever felt like you've been forced into the life you have?", and so on. It was abysmal. I took to giving him one word answers. No. No. No.

Aren't we all forced into the lives we have? I didn't really choose with any form of cognizance that I would be the ovum that took. Chance. Purely chance.

And after a gruelling forty minutes he let me go to carry on with my own devices. I was agitated. Annoyed with Dan for being an invasive sod. Annoyed by the patients in this goddamn hole. Irritated with the staff. Annoyed with my mum and dad for leaving me in here.

Mostly though, I was annoyed with myself. Not just over the whole Dan situation, what with letting him get under my skin and all, but because I knew in a way he was right. I didn't desire control. I just needed to feel. Something. Anything. Even if it hurt me, I needed it. I needed that reassurance. That silent promise that I wasn't dead on the inside. That I could still experience something within myself.

I've always loved myself over everything else. I just didn't realize that the only reason I did was because I actually utterly loathed myself. I gave every ounce of everything I had into myself because I couldn't focus it on anything else when I felt like I didn't fit into my own goddamn skin. I lived my life in excess because I didn't have a fucking thing except for that excess.

And I abruptly had the burning desire to be more and more excessive every second. If I can't like myself, I might as well love what I can do to myself.

And it'll be a fucking lulu.

I'll make sure of that…

A/N: Review?