Sick like Sid and Nancy?

I'm aware how fucked up it is that I'd love a relationship like Sid and Nancy's. I mean, it's crazy- their tumultuous 21-month relationship, littered with heroin and squalid hotel rooms, is hardly the stuff love stories are made of. Except that it is, in a way. Think about it: almost every movie you see has some attractive young couple fighting adversity and winning, only to live happily ever after. Sid and Nancy were fighting adversity, alright; it's just that they lost in the end. Whatever you want to say about them- and I guess there's a shit load of bad stuff that you could easily throw at them- they were deeply in love.


Their entire relationship fascinates me. I suppose I have a complex for beautiful, fucked up people in love (hence my Kurt and Courtney obsession- the Sid and Nancy of the 90's, much?) and they don't come more beautiful or fucked up than Vicious and Spungen.

The thing that triggered my interest was, I admit, the movie Sid and Nancy. I know that Johnny Rotten has been very vocal about his hatred of the movie, but I love it. And although not the most factual account of what happened- there's a list of small errors on Wikipedia longer than my arm- I think it captured the basic essence of the two of them. It certainly showed the basic dynamics between them- the screaming, shouting fights, Nancy's incessant whining and the drug fuelled nights were naturally the dominant state, but there were odd moments of tenderness between the two that showed everyone that actually, underneath all the shit (of which there was a lot, admittedly) they were crazy about eachother.


And this admission will probably render me mentally ill, but I was so in love with the notion Nancy was obsessed with- live fast, die young. Go out in a blaze of glory. See, I have an irrational phobia of old age- so to die young and beautiful with someone you love as much as they loved eachother is not as disgusting to me as it is to most people. In fact, I think it's romantic. And I guess in the end they got what they wanted. Sid died on 2 February 1979, less than four months after Nancy was found murdered in the bathroom of their squalid bedsit in the infamous Chelsea Hotel. And I know everybody hates on Nancy all the time, cause she was a total pain in the ass but I actually felt pretty sorry for her. She was mentally ill- you look it up, you'll see she had a huge of psychological problems. When I hear people ragging on her non stop, I can't help but pity the silly bitch.

Now comes the part where we talk about whether Sid killed Nancy. And my answer? I don't think he did. I know they argued furiously almost al the time, but I honestly and truthfully believe he loved her too much to stab her the way she was stabbed. I was always a fan of the Rockets Redglare theory; that shifty bastard was there that night, and something wasn't right about it. But they're both gone now- they've been gone for 30 years. It doesn't matter anymore how they died. The point is that they died. They got their blaze of glory, I guess. It's just a shame that the blackness of drug addiction and dingy bedsit rooms had to pervade over their last months on earth. I'll end this rant with a poem Sid wrote about Nancy some months after her death. When I read it, it made me cry.

You were my little baby girl,
And I shared all your fears.
Such joy to hold you in my arms
and kiss away your tears.
But now you're gone, there's only pain
and nothing I can do.
And I don't want to live this life,
If I can't live for you.
To my beautiful baby girl.
Our love will never die...