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For reasons not entirely clear to me, I've suddenly become temporarily obsessed with the final years of Layne Staley's life. I was and am a fan of Alice in Chains, though during their heyday, I was a staunch Metallica fan. I liked Facelift, adored Dirt, and bought their subsequent oeuvre out of a sense of loyalty. I never gave much though to the band members beyond their roles in the band, and I never leched on Layne Staley.
So this sudden obsession confounds me. I was terribly sad when I learned the circumstances of his death. No one deserves to die and go undiscovered in the squalor of their apartment for two weeks. I know it happens regularly, but I don't understand how or why. Even if people have no family or friends, does no one notice the stench wafting from the apartment down the hall? Does no one notice that the pensioner across the hall hasn't come out for the paper in a week? I just don't understand how someone could die and go undiscovered for weeks.
In Layne's case, it's even sadder that his accountant was the first to raise the alarm. His accountant, for Christ's sake. Apparently, when you're spending seven hundred dollars a day on heroin and suddenly stop, the bean counters notice. But Layne had family. He had a mother and a sister and a stepsister. His mother claims that she and he were extremely close. Yet when she doesn't hear from her son, a raging, fragile drug addict, for two weeks, she doesn't worry until the accountant calls? Uh huh. My grandmother calls my mother daily, and if more than a day goes by without an answer, she drives to the house. My family is codependent and crazy, I grant you, but if I were close with my drug addict son and he didn't answer or return calls after two days, I'd be banging on the door with a squadron of cops.
Nor do I believe her melodramatic foofaraw about the way he looked when his body was finally discovered. He'd been dead for two weeks in April in Seattle in a shuttered, filthy apartment. There is no way he "just looked like he was sleeping." What he looked was putrid and nasty. I find it hard to believe she sat beside him on the couch and talked to him while the cops tromped through his apartment. Grief makes you crazy, and maybe she was so grief-stricken about seeing her only son that way that she invented a fantasy kinder than the ugly reality of standing in the living room while the coroner scraped her son out of the couch. I don't blame her; I'd lie to myself, too, rather than accept a horror like that.
I find it interesting that Layne's family, including the skeevy biological father who oozed back into his life when he got famous and undermined his newfound sobriety, is suddenly so invested in honoring his memory and preserving his legacy. Where was the interest when he was losing his teeth, developing abscesses all over his body, and nodding off in dive bars?
I've never lived with an addict. I don't know how hard it is. Maybe they tried everything and were trying until the day he died. Maybe they were burnt out after years of begging and heartache and finally walked away to preserve the family they had left. But if that's the case, and if you're so intent on preserving your son's privacy and dignity, then why would you sell calendars with pictures from his private life, and why in God's name would you announce that you have the final picture of your son, one taken six months before his death at a private family gathering, but you won't be releasing it to the public. Well, duh. Isn't that a fucking given? Why would that thought even enter your head?
I respect the hell out of his sister for never commenting publicly on her brother's death and mourning him out of the public eye.
I have no doubt that Nancy Staley loves her son, but I think she's become a minor figure in her own right and has become addicted to the sympathy and attention. How else to explain hawking pictures from your dead son's childhood and private life and getting onstage to sing at the 2009 memorial concert? She's rubbed me the wrong way ever since she turned up on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew to poke at Mike Starr's wounds in the name of "healing". God, that was gross, and her question of, "Did you see Layne die, Mike?" just reeked of camera-whoring. I don't necessarily believe Starr's denial(at the very least, I think he knew that Layne was dying, and that's why he felt so guilty about leaving), but to pose that question in front of strangers and a leering camera was disgusting.
In case you were wondering, yes, there is fanfiction about Layne Staley before and after his death. Surprisingly, very little of it is fix-it fic. Layne is still an addict, and he still dies alone. Most of it is terrible, though some of it is unexpectedly poignant. None of it begins to touch the true depths of his addiction, and all of it sanitizes the truth to some degree. By the time of his death, it's doubtful that Layne could have sex or was even thinking about it, and even if he could have done, his teeth were gone, his skin was scabrous, his cheeks were sunken, and he was emaciated. It would not have been erotic or sexy. He would have smelled, and he was certainly not capable of blowing your mind between the sheets. He would have done a whole lot more than vomit delicately into the toilet every now and then.
Sidenote: (Bad)ficcers take note: Sex that's crammed into three lines is not titillating. It's terrible. Either go for broke and write the act in some detail, or delicately allude to it and move on. Going from penetration to mutually-mind-blowing orgasm in a paragraph is a joke, even for a dying heroin addict.
I've been dreaming about him nearly every night. None of the dreams have been sexual. They've just been vivid and very sad, and they've left me with a sense of melancholy. He had such talent, and he squandered it on smack, and all the people who were there to lick his ass when he was rich and pretty weren't there when he was sick and ruined, and even his mother seems content to exploit him to pry money from the morbid death club that springs up around dead celebrities.
He deserved better, and I hope he finds some peace.
So this sudden obsession confounds me. I was terribly sad when I learned the circumstances of his death. No one deserves to die and go undiscovered in the squalor of their apartment for two weeks. I know it happens regularly, but I don't understand how or why. Even if people have no family or friends, does no one notice the stench wafting from the apartment down the hall? Does no one notice that the pensioner across the hall hasn't come out for the paper in a week? I just don't understand how someone could die and go undiscovered for weeks.
In Layne's case, it's even sadder that his accountant was the first to raise the alarm. His accountant, for Christ's sake. Apparently, when you're spending seven hundred dollars a day on heroin and suddenly stop, the bean counters notice. But Layne had family. He had a mother and a sister and a stepsister. His mother claims that she and he were extremely close. Yet when she doesn't hear from her son, a raging, fragile drug addict, for two weeks, she doesn't worry until the accountant calls? Uh huh. My grandmother calls my mother daily, and if more than a day goes by without an answer, she drives to the house. My family is codependent and crazy, I grant you, but if I were close with my drug addict son and he didn't answer or return calls after two days, I'd be banging on the door with a squadron of cops.
Nor do I believe her melodramatic foofaraw about the way he looked when his body was finally discovered. He'd been dead for two weeks in April in Seattle in a shuttered, filthy apartment. There is no way he "just looked like he was sleeping." What he looked was putrid and nasty. I find it hard to believe she sat beside him on the couch and talked to him while the cops tromped through his apartment. Grief makes you crazy, and maybe she was so grief-stricken about seeing her only son that way that she invented a fantasy kinder than the ugly reality of standing in the living room while the coroner scraped her son out of the couch. I don't blame her; I'd lie to myself, too, rather than accept a horror like that.
I find it interesting that Layne's family, including the skeevy biological father who oozed back into his life when he got famous and undermined his newfound sobriety, is suddenly so invested in honoring his memory and preserving his legacy. Where was the interest when he was losing his teeth, developing abscesses all over his body, and nodding off in dive bars?
I've never lived with an addict. I don't know how hard it is. Maybe they tried everything and were trying until the day he died. Maybe they were burnt out after years of begging and heartache and finally walked away to preserve the family they had left. But if that's the case, and if you're so intent on preserving your son's privacy and dignity, then why would you sell calendars with pictures from his private life, and why in God's name would you announce that you have the final picture of your son, one taken six months before his death at a private family gathering, but you won't be releasing it to the public. Well, duh. Isn't that a fucking given? Why would that thought even enter your head?
I respect the hell out of his sister for never commenting publicly on her brother's death and mourning him out of the public eye.
I have no doubt that Nancy Staley loves her son, but I think she's become a minor figure in her own right and has become addicted to the sympathy and attention. How else to explain hawking pictures from your dead son's childhood and private life and getting onstage to sing at the 2009 memorial concert? She's rubbed me the wrong way ever since she turned up on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew to poke at Mike Starr's wounds in the name of "healing". God, that was gross, and her question of, "Did you see Layne die, Mike?" just reeked of camera-whoring. I don't necessarily believe Starr's denial(at the very least, I think he knew that Layne was dying, and that's why he felt so guilty about leaving), but to pose that question in front of strangers and a leering camera was disgusting.
In case you were wondering, yes, there is fanfiction about Layne Staley before and after his death. Surprisingly, very little of it is fix-it fic. Layne is still an addict, and he still dies alone. Most of it is terrible, though some of it is unexpectedly poignant. None of it begins to touch the true depths of his addiction, and all of it sanitizes the truth to some degree. By the time of his death, it's doubtful that Layne could have sex or was even thinking about it, and even if he could have done, his teeth were gone, his skin was scabrous, his cheeks were sunken, and he was emaciated. It would not have been erotic or sexy. He would have smelled, and he was certainly not capable of blowing your mind between the sheets. He would have done a whole lot more than vomit delicately into the toilet every now and then.
Sidenote: (Bad)ficcers take note: Sex that's crammed into three lines is not titillating. It's terrible. Either go for broke and write the act in some detail, or delicately allude to it and move on. Going from penetration to mutually-mind-blowing orgasm in a paragraph is a joke, even for a dying heroin addict.
I've been dreaming about him nearly every night. None of the dreams have been sexual. They've just been vivid and very sad, and they've left me with a sense of melancholy. He had such talent, and he squandered it on smack, and all the people who were there to lick his ass when he was rich and pretty weren't there when he was sick and ruined, and even his mother seems content to exploit him to pry money from the morbid death club that springs up around dead celebrities.
He deserved better, and I hope he finds some peace.
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