He Said He Would Take Care of Me

He said he would take care of me. I am his younger third cousin, so I believed him. He was an Elvis wanta-be. I was fourteen, so I thought he was an always-was. He did not look after me like he said. It was the late sixties. I followed him to Europe, because my mother did not care. Try this, he would say. Try that. I tried everything. Thought I was invincible. Pills and booze at first. They did not do it after a while. I got hooked on some really hard stuff. Then I was out of money, but the only thing that mattered was being high. I spent years not caring where I woke up, In and out of lah lah land. I doubt it I would recognize the people I was with. I doubt they would recognize me. Life was a fog for about eight years. Some do-gooder took me under their wing a couple of times. This was endearing for the first few hours. Then it was annoying. I gladly died of a drug overdose when I was twenty-two. It was an easy death. I slipped into it as easily as I slipped into everything else.