Generation x billy idol

Dancing with Myself

PROLOGUE

 
THEY SAY IF YOU HEAR THE BANG, YOU’RE STILL ALIVE
 
By the morning of February 6, , I’d been living on a fine edge for more than a decade, always courting disaster to experience the biggest high.

I’d been living the deranged life. I felt so nihilistic, yet why hadn’t I just tuned in and dropped out? Instead, I followed Jim Morrison’s credo, the credo of Coleridge and, at one point, Wordsworth, the credo of self-discovery through self-destruction I so willfully subscribed to until this moment:

Live every day as if it’s your last, and one day you’re sure to be right.

On this fateful morning, I’m standing wide-awake at dawn in the living room of my house in Hollywood Hills, overlooking the Los Angeles basin that falls and stretches away toward the high-rising pillars of downtown.

I haven’t slept, still buzzing from the night’s booze and illicit substances lingering in my bloodstream, staring at the view of th