I'm absolutely fucking petrified to turn 27. You know the drill. Winehouse. Cobain. Morrison. Hendrix. Joplin. Alexander. Jones. The list goes on. So what that I'm not a rock legend? I've spent years idolizing and even imitating their lifestyle: drinking whiskey as if it’s OJ, snorting copious amounts of drugs, treating sex like some foolish joy ride. I can't shake the feeling that it's all going to kill me. It probably will.
I used to find a small amount of solace in the fact that all of these deaths could have been avoided. Kurt Cobain used his own shotgun. Amy Winehouse died from accidental alcohol poisoning after trying to go sober. Janis Joplin OD'd on heroin. It's not like these musicians died at the hands of God or someone else pulling a trigger. No, they effectively killed themselves. Everyone in the "27 Club" tip-toed the precarious line of living dangerously and landed on the wrong side of death. Living like they did usually ends like that. Shit, that's why people do it in the first place—the idea that "Damn, I could really die from this right now" is part of the appeal. Any glimmer of comfort I previously held typically dissipates when I realize I've spent the majority of my life using that tenuous line as some sort of hopscotch board. And, to be frank, at the age of 25, I'm beginning to sweat.
When I started worshiping these classic legends, 27 felt like centuries away. I was 13 and figured if I made it to 27 I'd have lived a full life. I romanticized dying and becoming some type of mythical figure. Who doesn't want to be remembered as a god? I copped every Kurt Cobain biography and read them front to back furiously, trying to mirror my life after his. A black kid from Boston emulating a white guy who killed himself? Naturally, my parents were fucking livid, which made me want to be like Cobain even more.
The want for such a comparison isn't abnormal or specific to me. Lana Del Rey said, "I wish I was dead already" when talking about Cobain and Winehouse during an interview with The Guardian. Being a member of such an exclusive club is this bizarre honor—almost like some sort of achievement—that I'm positive certain rock stars secretly want. As a kid, I felt the same way that Lana does. But as you grow up 27 suddenly becomes tangible. The appeal of becoming an urban legend is outweighed by the desire to simply continue staying alive.
At 22, I could clearly see 27, and I was trying to be there for it. Still, my lifestyle was all to similar to my heroes: more drinking, more drugs, more parties, more sex—all of the vices that 20-somethings in New York City have, I did my damnedest to acquire tenfold. You're supposed to be reckless to a certain extent, I mean, that's a huge part of growing up, but any sort of standard that guided most people through life I didn't give a fuck about. There were instances when I would party for days in a row without any sleep and never even think twice about any of it. But all the white I knew there was this omnipresent prospect of death that lingered every single night I went out. That feeling—that rush—can quickly become reality, though. And for me it almost did.
I was 22, five years away from my magic number and had already come this fucking close.
I ended up in the hospital for an entire week because I fell off a three-story scaffolding. I still have a massive scar from where the doctor put 30 staples into my head to stop the hemorrhaging. To this day, I still don't know how I fell, I just remember walking up on 2nd Avenue dripping blood like someone had sliced my dome open with a machete. People were wilding when they saw me, but I was on my Charlie Sheen shit and didn't pay them any mind.
When I finally reached the hospital, every nurse shrieked, they snatched me up and rushed me into the emergency room. The doctor told me the impact from the fall should have killed me on the spot, and everyone was straight up flabbergasted that I somehow managed to walk in on my own. To keep it one hundred, I probably wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for all the drugs I had done. It's weird how shit plays out like that.
I tell this story not to flex my invincibility or some equally vapid shit. In fact, the experience has had the exact opposite effect on me. Death finally became all too conceivable. I was 22, five years away from my magic number and had already come this fucking close. Even more insane is that the accident itself was directly related to my infatuation with the "27 Club." I remember vividly blasting Amy Winehouse's Back To Black earlier that night. In life eerily imitating art almost exactly, my own would-be death was foreshadowed as I downed an entire bottle of Jack Daniels in what would be the corniest scene in any movie.
Now, at 25, that omnipresent fear remains. I'm not out here in these streets, turning the fuck up with a complete and utter disregard for human life like I was at 22. Shit, my body won't even allow that type of mayhem. But, despite everything, I haven't been living my life on complete chill either. Alcohol and drugs are everywhere, and that childish admiration for everyone who went out too soon is never going to completely leave. I worship rock stars. Who doesn't?
Honestly, the fear probably won't dissipate until my 28th birthday. Then, I can finally put all this bullshit behind me along with the other senseless worries of growing up, like losing your virginity and stunting at prom. But for now, I think I'm sip some Jack and blast some Amy Winehouse to help pass the the time.
Brian Padilla is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can follow him on Twitter here.
