Bad Inkfluences

Brett Martin, former Lowly Intern

When the subject came up to tell about my influences, I felt as if someone had just poured ice water down my back. I also remember the scene in Austin Powers where Dr. Evil is talking about his childhood. After all, this is what I pay my psychiatrist for. So, I looked back in my long 16-year-old existence, and found the turning point, the ultimate shame, the number one El Grande bad influence, and I would have to say that it was and still is this shit rag of a music magazine. That’s correct. Ink Nineteen fucked up my life, and they did a good job too, those miserable bastards!

Now, I know that some of you are saying that working for a music magazine would be a lot of fun. Well it isn’t – it’s a freaking pain in the ass! Sure, at the beginning, it was all fun sitting around all day making jokes and drinking KoolAid. But after that, I was caught in the downward spiral of the music biz. There are only so many times you can be forced to watch A Clockwork Orange and Repo Man before something gives. It got to the point where I would do any thing for “Koss the Boss” (publisher Ian Koss), as he liked to be called. The chores ranged from getting the mail from the nearest ammo-free post office, which is, needless to say, pretty damn far to walk, to his daily “high” colonic, to the monthly feeding of the “Printers,” the sadomasochistic slaves that live and work in the hellish sewers of the Ink Nineteen maximum security compound, and whose sole job is to make each copy of Ink Nineteen by hand in a respectable fashion so that it is delivered to you, the reader, in a neat and legible manner.

I was so involved in my work that I let other things slip away – I would go days without seeing my family, and had long since forgotten about school. I was a junkie, but didn’t know it. It seems that the KoolAid that they gave me to drink was a very strong narcotic, the effects of which I would soon realize. Now, looking back, I should have known, because they didn’t call it KoolAid, they called it “The Ink,” and later, I found that they would put the square root of 368 of roofies into the “Ink.”

I would have been trapped there forever if it wasn’t for the tireless efforts of my family and a few special agents from the FBI. These are the people that I would like to thank, for they are the ones who saved me from a once rock-n-roll dream/nightmare, and who are, to this day, still protecting me from the out-reaching grips of the music industry. They have given me only soft rock and easy listening in hopes that I won’t have a flashback to the life that once held me slave with drugs and KoolAid.

I still have dreams where I am in a cave with my mop and bucket, and there is always this foul stench which fills the air. I would be there for hours just mopping and cleaning, when all of a sudden I would be thrown out of the cave at great speeds, and I would hear his voice say, “Hey! You ain’t even halfway done. Get back in there and finish!” And that’s the point when I would wake up in a pool of sweat and a stain in my shorts. I understand the sweat, but the stain is a complete mystery to me.

I am now living in a witness relocation town in the middle of the Arizona desert with a whole new family, and will be passing the fifth grade next year. I have written this story so that if there are others, and I know that there are, that they would come forward and seek help like I did… be strong! ◼