Sympathy for the Devils, part 3
Disclaimer: False false babble. Part 2 here.
Summary: Backstory for Edwin. Lots of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Special thanks to aka_centimetre2!
Ed was laying in the bed that night, unable to sleep even though he was alone. Marco had been especially drunk and aggressive that evening (“Open your mouth, bitch. It’s just a fucking blowjob.”) so he had gone out, perhaps to get another drink. But, anyways, that was not the fact that had the guitarist’s brain so busy-even though he was sure Marco would try to fuck him again when he came back.
He had received a call from a club that day: the Foreholte. Marco had received it and agreed to it, because it meant more money-however, he didn’t know why that club held a special meaning for Edwin.
The Foreholte had been his first venue-back then, when he was only a skinny, funny boy with an acoustic guitar, working in his brother’s store during the day, playing for him and friends during the night-oh, and his girlfriend, the young grocer across the street. Annemarie. He remembered too well how, after some gigs at the Foreholte, the owner had agreed to record an album for him in a small studio: an acoustic album, mainly variations of other melodies (which later became a cult piece among fans). The Foreholte began gathering what could be considered a big crowd, and Ed had arrived one day to Annemarie with the promise of a wedding ring and a bridal dress as soon as he got more money-he was sure, now, of his path to stardom.
Eventually the Foreholte became small for him, and he was taken to one of the biggest clubs in Amsterdam: The Ajax. The money he earned got him his red Strat-and a record deal in a bigger studio, with an album that sounded not only in Holland, but throughout Europe: Turn on Your Red Light, with a rockier sound, original songs… and his first hit, “Ashes Rising”, inspired by the phoenix, dedicated to the ones who thought he’d never make it. With it, came his first tattoo: the phoenix wings that occupied the major part of his slender back. Annemarie had hated it, and perhaps would have hated even more what came next.
For, in the Ajax, he met his first groupie too: the woman with whom he cheated on Annemarie. Her name was Loes Geurts, the first girl that had walked on to him after a presentation, had told him how much she loved to hear him play, and had given him all kinds of proofs of her devotion (love letters, newspaper cut-outs) until he had finally taken her to bed.
Edwin had remembered her name because he had the idea that she would be the only girl he would ever have sex with, besides Annemarie. He thought Loes would go down in his personal history as the other girl in his life, his fan, the groupie.
Until Strings of Fire, with “Venus on My Fingers” took Europe, and the world, by surprise. Pretty soon, the whole continent wanted to see him, and people overseas were starting to get curious. Ed embarked on a tour of all Europe-and it was in that tour when Annemarie, her dreams of a wedding ruined, and Loes and her love letters got lost among the faces and bodies of other women… and men.
At first, Edwin had been glad he was receiving so much attention from so many girls-but, eventually, he became bored with them. He couldn’t remember their names, their bodies, sometimes not even their faces-because they had become all the same: girls who hung around backstage (he couldn’t even tell if they had been at his show), lightly dressed, who would repeat a spent-up formula of how much they loved him and how handsome he was, just to get into his pants-and once they got the fuck they wanted, they would pick up their clothes, their purses, and leave. Edwin had even started suspecting where they went after that: probably to call up their friends and tell them they had fucked Edwin van der Sar (“He’s famous, you know”) while the other girls were just bewildered and ignorant at the other side of the line; or, even worse, they would go to their friends who were the same as them and tell them they had fucked Edwin van der Sar-and their friends would answer they had fucked Scott Weiland or something, and, remembering Weiland was more famous, they’d grow sour and wish they were the ones that had fucked the Stone Temple Pilots vocalist. Careless, fake beauties, all in a row for him…
Though, of course, every rule has its exceptions-and Ed remembered two girls (only two) who had charmed him in a special way: they had been authentic, nice, they’d had the same kind of devotion Loes had once held for him. God… he remembered them both clearly, their features, the ring of their voices, and still he didn’t remember their names either, names that perhaps would have made him smile at the memory whenever he listened to them.
The first one he had met when Strings of Fire took him to England: the Venus Tour. Ed had seen that girl standing on the first row, yelling her lungs out-short hair, a beautiful smile and sparkling eyes behind glasses, a gorgeous body framed by the Venus (original merchandise) tee she was wearing. He later found out she was an American studying abroad, and he liked her so much more for that: surely she must have scraped the last of her savings in order to get her first row ticket.
Edwin took her (she was all shaky, and giggly, and blushy) to a private party at his hotel-a party that later became even more private in his room, where they broke the legs of a chair (Edwin had taken the girl across her legs, and the violent swaying of their bodies toppled the chair, breaking it, and they both fell, a panting heap on the floor); knocked over expensive-looking vases (he was fucking her on a table, and she writhed and moaned, and when she moved an arm in order to caress his tattooed back she sent the vase flying away) and lost the remote controller of the TV among the tangled sheets of the bed (they had rolled on it so much, her on top, her below him, God knows where the damn remote had ended). When the night had finally been over, and the first rays of dawn were sneaking through the window, the girl had decided she was going home, for her roomie must surely have been worried about her, and she had put on her clothes, and left-leaving her glasses on the table, and Edwin couldn’t resist a smile filled with tenderness when he saw the forgotten glasses. He had toyed around with her at the party, trying to get them off, and the girl had said No, no, I won’t be able to see you clearly!; and later, it had turned out she had been so lost in the magic of the night, so enraptured, she hadn’t even remembered she actually needed her glasses. Ed just hoped she had gotten home safe, her vision not too blurry…
The other girl he had met when the Dutch Desire Tour took him to Mexico-he had gone even to such exotic places. First row as well: big eyes and juicy lips underneath a mop of long straight hair, a tag of a magazine hanging by her neck together with his signed guitar pick, which she had turned into a necklace-those guitar picks had come with the Dutch Desire Limited Edition, so Edwin immediately guessed he was in front of a fan, and probably a fellow guitarist. As for the magazine tag… a music critic as well, and, since Ed knew music magazines seldom give out tickets for first row, he liked the fact that the girl must have surely spent an extra for that ticket.
He had talked to her after the show was over, and asked her if she knew any good cantinas near the venue, for he wanted some tequila. She had taken him to one, and after a whole bottle of liquor (for him; the girl, who had been trying to act all professional in front of him, was all tipsy and shy after two shots) he had taken her to his hotel, saying they would have another drink at the hotel’s bar… but they never got to the bar. Instead, they just stayed in the elevator (whoever had been awake at those small hours of the morning would have probably seen, against the elevator’s glass, the naked, writhing body of a moaning girl as she was being fondled and penetrated), and when they had finally gotten to his room and he had managed to open the door (it was hard to look for the room’s key in his wrinkled pockets, while fucking the girl against the door-they both fell inside, him on top of her, once it was open) he had decided it had been enough dirty sex and had had clean and even more wet sex with the girl on all fours in the shower-where he realized she wasn’t naturally straight, when the water turned her hair, magically, into curls. They got out of the shower, and suddenly the girl seemed awfully embarrassed-she told him she didn’t want him to see her hair when it was all frizzy, because she looked horrible. So, Ed had to call room service and order a ribbon and a can of gel-and only like that did the girl stay the night. However, Ed had loved how, even though he had already fucked her brains out, the girl had still worried about her personal appearance-she still cared about what he’d think about her.
Those were the only girls that had been worth it-them and Loes. The only ones who knew what was it like to be a fan.
But the boys… the boys were different. Ever since the Ajax club, they had walked on to him, all admiring and respectful, wanting a chat, wanting an autograph, wanting to learn one or two chords. Edwin had been all friendly towards them-but he had never thought about them in a different way.
Until the Venus tour. He had been at some country in Eastern Europe, when this sexy boy with clear eyes and a hell of a body had walked on to him-Nemanja. That had been his name. At first, the night had started out the same: them talking, about music, about guitars, Nemanja’s eyes wide with the thrill of just being with Edwin. Then they had shared a joint and booze… after that, it had just seemed natural for Nemanja to bend over, and for Ed to bury his dick inside the boy’s tightness-and he had loved it, loved the pressure around his cock, the boy’s moans echoing in his ears.
Now pleasure was double for him: he fucked boys and girls and had lots of fun with them-until he met Giovanni van Bronckhurst, magazine writer with a good deal of years in the business, who had interviewed the best, been received backstage as if he was part of the band, and partied with the best: and he asked Ed, after a booze and drugs party, if he’d ever been the receiving end, and when the guitarist answered no… Well, Gio (he ended up calling the mag writer Gio) took his time to prepare him, getting lube (lotion from the hotel) and relaxing the guitarist…. And Edwin still remembered how pleasurable it had been, to feel himself full, to feel the swarthy man’s cock against his prostate.
Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Now the triad was complete. Edwin bought a house in Amsterdam besides his luxurious flat, a house in England (his favorite) and a house in the United States (which he seldom used, but he had heard it was fashionable to have a house in the Americas). Those, especially the house in England, became the place for his decadent parties (those guys he’d had a threesome with-Michael Owen? Or was Owen the name of Michael’s friend?) and drug sprees.
During the tours, Edwin’s life was all about craziness: a gig, a party, fucking, never sleeping, so he needed lots of coke to keep himself upright at flights or at the next night’s concert-and still, he never missed a note. However, when the tour ended and it was time to go back to normality, he found he couldn’t sleep anymore, and that he was hooked on the white dust-he had to bribe drugstores to get sleeping pills. Then, fortunately for him, he started a relationship with a young Dutch medicine intern named Dirk Kuyt, and, in exchange for some fucks and money, Dirk got him the pills and worked as Edwin’s pillow doctor.
That was when the end began. The guitarist got to the studio sometimes terribly stoned and unable to play; or his lyrics were plain mumbling shit, or he couldn’t even stand upright. The record company gave him a chance-they could live with his album reissues.
But money couldn’t last forever. With no income from tours, Edwin found himself owing money to every dealer in town. He had to start selling his possessions in order to pay his debts. Pretty soon, the house in the United States was sold…and that wasn’t the only thing he lost. He lost Dirk as well, who asked him to please, please, go into rehab.
Edwin didn’t know if he had loved Dirk, but he followed his advice-that kid had been a good friend for him. He had to pay an expensive treatment-his house at Amsterdam was the affected one-but, in spite of how hard it was, Ed managed to overcome his addictions, and, at his now deserted Dutch house, he recorded what was regarded as his most poignant, sincere (and mainly acoustic) album: My Broken Fortune.
The record was critically acclaimed, but poorly received-everybody wanted more rock n’ roll, not confessional acoustics. The money wasn’t enough, the house was sold-and Ed found himself stuck in the mud, thinking that he was about to become a has-been in music. The world just couldn’t wait for him, and his destroyed career. A miraculous rebirth? “Ashes Rising”? Sounded really far-fetched…
In those sorry circumstances had Marco van Basten found him, drinking in a bar-and things changed from worse to ugly.
Summary: Backstory for Edwin. Lots of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Special thanks to aka_centimetre2!
Ed was laying in the bed that night, unable to sleep even though he was alone. Marco had been especially drunk and aggressive that evening (“Open your mouth, bitch. It’s just a fucking blowjob.”) so he had gone out, perhaps to get another drink. But, anyways, that was not the fact that had the guitarist’s brain so busy-even though he was sure Marco would try to fuck him again when he came back.
He had received a call from a club that day: the Foreholte. Marco had received it and agreed to it, because it meant more money-however, he didn’t know why that club held a special meaning for Edwin.
The Foreholte had been his first venue-back then, when he was only a skinny, funny boy with an acoustic guitar, working in his brother’s store during the day, playing for him and friends during the night-oh, and his girlfriend, the young grocer across the street. Annemarie. He remembered too well how, after some gigs at the Foreholte, the owner had agreed to record an album for him in a small studio: an acoustic album, mainly variations of other melodies (which later became a cult piece among fans). The Foreholte began gathering what could be considered a big crowd, and Ed had arrived one day to Annemarie with the promise of a wedding ring and a bridal dress as soon as he got more money-he was sure, now, of his path to stardom.
Eventually the Foreholte became small for him, and he was taken to one of the biggest clubs in Amsterdam: The Ajax. The money he earned got him his red Strat-and a record deal in a bigger studio, with an album that sounded not only in Holland, but throughout Europe: Turn on Your Red Light, with a rockier sound, original songs… and his first hit, “Ashes Rising”, inspired by the phoenix, dedicated to the ones who thought he’d never make it. With it, came his first tattoo: the phoenix wings that occupied the major part of his slender back. Annemarie had hated it, and perhaps would have hated even more what came next.
For, in the Ajax, he met his first groupie too: the woman with whom he cheated on Annemarie. Her name was Loes Geurts, the first girl that had walked on to him after a presentation, had told him how much she loved to hear him play, and had given him all kinds of proofs of her devotion (love letters, newspaper cut-outs) until he had finally taken her to bed.
Edwin had remembered her name because he had the idea that she would be the only girl he would ever have sex with, besides Annemarie. He thought Loes would go down in his personal history as the other girl in his life, his fan, the groupie.
Until Strings of Fire, with “Venus on My Fingers” took Europe, and the world, by surprise. Pretty soon, the whole continent wanted to see him, and people overseas were starting to get curious. Ed embarked on a tour of all Europe-and it was in that tour when Annemarie, her dreams of a wedding ruined, and Loes and her love letters got lost among the faces and bodies of other women… and men.
At first, Edwin had been glad he was receiving so much attention from so many girls-but, eventually, he became bored with them. He couldn’t remember their names, their bodies, sometimes not even their faces-because they had become all the same: girls who hung around backstage (he couldn’t even tell if they had been at his show), lightly dressed, who would repeat a spent-up formula of how much they loved him and how handsome he was, just to get into his pants-and once they got the fuck they wanted, they would pick up their clothes, their purses, and leave. Edwin had even started suspecting where they went after that: probably to call up their friends and tell them they had fucked Edwin van der Sar (“He’s famous, you know”) while the other girls were just bewildered and ignorant at the other side of the line; or, even worse, they would go to their friends who were the same as them and tell them they had fucked Edwin van der Sar-and their friends would answer they had fucked Scott Weiland or something, and, remembering Weiland was more famous, they’d grow sour and wish they were the ones that had fucked the Stone Temple Pilots vocalist. Careless, fake beauties, all in a row for him…
Though, of course, every rule has its exceptions-and Ed remembered two girls (only two) who had charmed him in a special way: they had been authentic, nice, they’d had the same kind of devotion Loes had once held for him. God… he remembered them both clearly, their features, the ring of their voices, and still he didn’t remember their names either, names that perhaps would have made him smile at the memory whenever he listened to them.
The first one he had met when Strings of Fire took him to England: the Venus Tour. Ed had seen that girl standing on the first row, yelling her lungs out-short hair, a beautiful smile and sparkling eyes behind glasses, a gorgeous body framed by the Venus (original merchandise) tee she was wearing. He later found out she was an American studying abroad, and he liked her so much more for that: surely she must have scraped the last of her savings in order to get her first row ticket.
Edwin took her (she was all shaky, and giggly, and blushy) to a private party at his hotel-a party that later became even more private in his room, where they broke the legs of a chair (Edwin had taken the girl across her legs, and the violent swaying of their bodies toppled the chair, breaking it, and they both fell, a panting heap on the floor); knocked over expensive-looking vases (he was fucking her on a table, and she writhed and moaned, and when she moved an arm in order to caress his tattooed back she sent the vase flying away) and lost the remote controller of the TV among the tangled sheets of the bed (they had rolled on it so much, her on top, her below him, God knows where the damn remote had ended). When the night had finally been over, and the first rays of dawn were sneaking through the window, the girl had decided she was going home, for her roomie must surely have been worried about her, and she had put on her clothes, and left-leaving her glasses on the table, and Edwin couldn’t resist a smile filled with tenderness when he saw the forgotten glasses. He had toyed around with her at the party, trying to get them off, and the girl had said No, no, I won’t be able to see you clearly!; and later, it had turned out she had been so lost in the magic of the night, so enraptured, she hadn’t even remembered she actually needed her glasses. Ed just hoped she had gotten home safe, her vision not too blurry…
The other girl he had met when the Dutch Desire Tour took him to Mexico-he had gone even to such exotic places. First row as well: big eyes and juicy lips underneath a mop of long straight hair, a tag of a magazine hanging by her neck together with his signed guitar pick, which she had turned into a necklace-those guitar picks had come with the Dutch Desire Limited Edition, so Edwin immediately guessed he was in front of a fan, and probably a fellow guitarist. As for the magazine tag… a music critic as well, and, since Ed knew music magazines seldom give out tickets for first row, he liked the fact that the girl must have surely spent an extra for that ticket.
He had talked to her after the show was over, and asked her if she knew any good cantinas near the venue, for he wanted some tequila. She had taken him to one, and after a whole bottle of liquor (for him; the girl, who had been trying to act all professional in front of him, was all tipsy and shy after two shots) he had taken her to his hotel, saying they would have another drink at the hotel’s bar… but they never got to the bar. Instead, they just stayed in the elevator (whoever had been awake at those small hours of the morning would have probably seen, against the elevator’s glass, the naked, writhing body of a moaning girl as she was being fondled and penetrated), and when they had finally gotten to his room and he had managed to open the door (it was hard to look for the room’s key in his wrinkled pockets, while fucking the girl against the door-they both fell inside, him on top of her, once it was open) he had decided it had been enough dirty sex and had had clean and even more wet sex with the girl on all fours in the shower-where he realized she wasn’t naturally straight, when the water turned her hair, magically, into curls. They got out of the shower, and suddenly the girl seemed awfully embarrassed-she told him she didn’t want him to see her hair when it was all frizzy, because she looked horrible. So, Ed had to call room service and order a ribbon and a can of gel-and only like that did the girl stay the night. However, Ed had loved how, even though he had already fucked her brains out, the girl had still worried about her personal appearance-she still cared about what he’d think about her.
Those were the only girls that had been worth it-them and Loes. The only ones who knew what was it like to be a fan.
But the boys… the boys were different. Ever since the Ajax club, they had walked on to him, all admiring and respectful, wanting a chat, wanting an autograph, wanting to learn one or two chords. Edwin had been all friendly towards them-but he had never thought about them in a different way.
Until the Venus tour. He had been at some country in Eastern Europe, when this sexy boy with clear eyes and a hell of a body had walked on to him-Nemanja. That had been his name. At first, the night had started out the same: them talking, about music, about guitars, Nemanja’s eyes wide with the thrill of just being with Edwin. Then they had shared a joint and booze… after that, it had just seemed natural for Nemanja to bend over, and for Ed to bury his dick inside the boy’s tightness-and he had loved it, loved the pressure around his cock, the boy’s moans echoing in his ears.
Now pleasure was double for him: he fucked boys and girls and had lots of fun with them-until he met Giovanni van Bronckhurst, magazine writer with a good deal of years in the business, who had interviewed the best, been received backstage as if he was part of the band, and partied with the best: and he asked Ed, after a booze and drugs party, if he’d ever been the receiving end, and when the guitarist answered no… Well, Gio (he ended up calling the mag writer Gio) took his time to prepare him, getting lube (lotion from the hotel) and relaxing the guitarist…. And Edwin still remembered how pleasurable it had been, to feel himself full, to feel the swarthy man’s cock against his prostate.
Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Now the triad was complete. Edwin bought a house in Amsterdam besides his luxurious flat, a house in England (his favorite) and a house in the United States (which he seldom used, but he had heard it was fashionable to have a house in the Americas). Those, especially the house in England, became the place for his decadent parties (those guys he’d had a threesome with-Michael Owen? Or was Owen the name of Michael’s friend?) and drug sprees.
During the tours, Edwin’s life was all about craziness: a gig, a party, fucking, never sleeping, so he needed lots of coke to keep himself upright at flights or at the next night’s concert-and still, he never missed a note. However, when the tour ended and it was time to go back to normality, he found he couldn’t sleep anymore, and that he was hooked on the white dust-he had to bribe drugstores to get sleeping pills. Then, fortunately for him, he started a relationship with a young Dutch medicine intern named Dirk Kuyt, and, in exchange for some fucks and money, Dirk got him the pills and worked as Edwin’s pillow doctor.
That was when the end began. The guitarist got to the studio sometimes terribly stoned and unable to play; or his lyrics were plain mumbling shit, or he couldn’t even stand upright. The record company gave him a chance-they could live with his album reissues.
But money couldn’t last forever. With no income from tours, Edwin found himself owing money to every dealer in town. He had to start selling his possessions in order to pay his debts. Pretty soon, the house in the United States was sold…and that wasn’t the only thing he lost. He lost Dirk as well, who asked him to please, please, go into rehab.
Edwin didn’t know if he had loved Dirk, but he followed his advice-that kid had been a good friend for him. He had to pay an expensive treatment-his house at Amsterdam was the affected one-but, in spite of how hard it was, Ed managed to overcome his addictions, and, at his now deserted Dutch house, he recorded what was regarded as his most poignant, sincere (and mainly acoustic) album: My Broken Fortune.
The record was critically acclaimed, but poorly received-everybody wanted more rock n’ roll, not confessional acoustics. The money wasn’t enough, the house was sold-and Ed found himself stuck in the mud, thinking that he was about to become a has-been in music. The world just couldn’t wait for him, and his destroyed career. A miraculous rebirth? “Ashes Rising”? Sounded really far-fetched…
In those sorry circumstances had Marco van Basten found him, drinking in a bar-and things changed from worse to ugly.