You are not a symbolic punk rocker.
You can see yourself in the illuminated black mirror of your changing room. Your hair is peroxide white, each strut shining as bright as the North Star. Each strand is cemented into place. A pneumatic drill wouldn’t be able to dislodge the putty, the wax and the embalming paste. You put on your red leather jacket, a perfect fit over your pumped, muscled, waxed pecs and your iron biceps. Unlike the pale, undernourished, ailing punks of Basildon and Hillingdon, the sons and daughters of gravediggers, lorry drivers and the unemployed, they have trained you, here.
Here, in LA, they have got hold of you, and they have made you work.
Gold’s Gym.
Jim’s Gym.
Muscle Factory.
Outdoors at Venice Beach.
The marketing fuckers turned that gym session into a photo shoot, and after, at night, in your hotel bedroom, you nailed the New York scribe with the Siouxsie hair-explosion and concrete mascara, who said she was into tattoos, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
Over drinks and a rock, you told her Ian Curtis committed suicide after listening to Iggy’s The Idiot.
A year and three months ago.