Free Will Work for Drugs by Lydia Lunch

their escape eternally.
    No one cries for the dead. They cry for themselves … those living through death. We, who in our own individual pain, replay the same horrifying scenes in subways and tenements and nightclubs and bars and baths in this blood-soaked necropolis where night fatigue and the hint of catastrophe make sex without secretions seem almost unbearable in this the age of the death of seduction—where the pleasure palaces have been turned into torture chambers in this, the killing zone of false memory.
    [Author’s note: The Beast was Bradley Field, drummer for Teenage Jesus. This piece thieves such an incredible amount of philosophy from Antonin Artaud’s “General Security: The Liquidation of Opium” that I hereby implicate myself in the commission of criminal plagiarism. Deal with it. Now go and read the original text.]

JOHNNY BEHIND THE DEUCE
    Y ou can’t save anyone from themselves. You will lose everything by attempting to play savior. You will never heal the wounded. You cannot repair the damage already done by selfish parents, vicious exlovers, child molesters, tyrants, poverty, depression, or simple chemical imbalance.
    You can’t undo psychic wounds, bandage old scars, kiss away ancient bruises. You can’t make the pain go away. You can’t shout down the voices in people’s heads.
    You can’t make anyone feel special. They will never feel beautiful enough, no matter how beautiful they are to you. They will never feel loved enough, no matter how much you adore them.
    You will never be able to save the battered from battling back at a world they’ve grown to hate. They will always find a way to pick up where the bullies have left off. They will in turn become bullies. They will make you the enemy. They will always find a new method in which to punish themselves. Thereby punishing you. No matter how much you’ve convinced yourself that you have done absolutely everything in your power to prove your undying devotion, unfaltering commitment, and unending encouragement, you will never be able to save a miserable bastard from himself.
    The wounded will always find a way to spread their pain over a vast terrain like an emotional tsunami which devastates the surrounding landscape. An ever-expanding firewall which will singe everything and everyone in its wake. The longer you love a damaged person the more it will hurt you. They will mock your generosity, abuse your kindness, expect your forgiveness, try your patience, sap your energy, and eventually kill your soul. They will not be happy until you are as miserable as they are. Then their incredible self-loathing will be justified by the perpetuation of a cycle from which there is little recourse.
    Once you enter their free fall, it will be virtually impossible to turn your back on them. You will be racked with guilt, frustrated by your own impotence, and made furious for ever buying into their bullshit in the first place. Of course, the more damaged, the more charismatic. The more brilliant. The more sexually intoxicating. The more dangerous to your own mental health.
    I have spent months, possibly years, comatose on park benches, tracking the periphery of playgrounds, skulking through shopping malls, falling asleep in the library, trying to capture and trap a fleeting image. The image of a young boy, at just the right moment in his life, that transient fleeting second when an incandescent light falls on the hollows of his cheeks, a splash of sun dances on his lips, and that blossom of purity etched deep within his innocent smile rebirths something in me that was lost long ago.
    There’s something about how fine their bones are. Under their flesh. The possibility of shattering them under my need. Skin pulled tight around bony joints. The flattering reflection of my own beauty divorced of disease, my multiple sicknesses, a withering-away abated. Transformed into a healing tonic, a sexual salvation, vacation