this is my father: notes for later.

catefrances

this is my father. i never knew him, he left when i was six. i used to think i knew him. i'd try and get close to him by listening to his work. by reading his writing out loud. but only when my mother wasn't home.
this is my father. i hold a black and white photo in my hand and wonder what he was thinking. if he was thinking anything at all. it's a photo from the sixties. he looks about twenty i guess. i don't really know. my mother threw this photo out when i was twelve. not so much threw it out as put it in a shoebox and placed it on a shelf in the garage. eight foot off the floor so no one couldnt find it. so i wouldn't find it. i found it. there were a lot of photos in that shoebox. my parents looked happy in the photos. even my mother,and she's never happy these days. at least not when i'm around. i think i remind her of my father. what's worse of course is that i write and sing and play guitar just like he did. she thinks she will lose me. she won't. well she might if she keeps pushing me away.
i have a sister. she's not much younger than me. and by that i mean we were born in the same calender year. how is that possible? well, i was born in january, new years day. while my father was nursing a massive hangover, my mother was giving me life. my sister was born two months early on christmas day. my father was so pissed, i heard from a cousin. and i mean pissed in that he was drunk - again as well as being angry at my mother for the inconvenience of having this child born when he was busy getting drunk. never occurred to him to stop drinking. i get it though, cause there are times when all i do is drink. i guess it's another thing i inherited from my father. so every talent i have, i got from him. god! my mother must've wished i wasn't around. when i was seventeen i obliged her. i left home, got a job doing some mundane activity. when i saved enough money, i bought a plane ticket to seattle. she didn't know until i sent her a postcard. lily my sister, told me she cried for two days straight. climbed into bed, pulled the covers over and sobbed. then she got up, put on a dress andw ent to a bar. the man she came home with that night stayed for seventeen years. when he left, it was in a pine box.
so how long did i stay away? i stayed until they found out i'd overstayed my visa and kicked me out of the country. three years. nowadays they would have probably thrown me in jail. you know me being a potential threat to national security and all.
where am i now? i'm living in a house in a coastal town where my parents used to take me and lily for holidays. weren't much of a holiday though. more like a change of scenery for my father to get drunk in front of.
after me and lily were in bed, we'd hear them arguing. we'd hug each other and pull the chenille bedspread over our heads. when we woke in the morning, he'd be passed out on the sofa on his stomach. one arm hanging down, the hand resting on the ratty carpet. i remember how the smell of stale beer would get into everything. it would hang in the air like a noxious cloud. we spent a lot of time at the beach down the hill. the first guy that ever got close enough to kiss me, was the first guy i ever rejected. he smelt of my father and it was such a turnoff, the guy didn't speak to me for a few months. one of his friends convinced him i wasn't a threat and that when you got to know me i was kinda alright to be around. he did get to know me. and i got to kiss him. he's dead now. thought it was a good move to see just how aerodynamics worked. he dropped like the proverbial stone. it was a closed casket ceremony.
his mother looked at me like i'd pushed him off the cliff. she was the reason he was so screwed up not me. she was reason he'd sneak over to my house in the middle of the night shaking, vowing never to have children. my mother and his mother would have these rousing fights about parental responsibility. she mentioned the amount my father drunk and that the reason was my mother, i'll never forget the smile that came across my mother's face. it was as if she'd just discovered the secrets to the universe. she was way too smart to take that bait. she just turned her back and closed the door. my boy would apologise for his mother, but she never accepted those apologies. she told him they weren't his to give. he was responsible only for what he did. at that instant, i was so proud that she was my mother.

(..... to be continued)

twin1

Is this true? This made me want to cry and angry, very angry that people are so selfish. It makes me feel physically ill when children are abused in any way. This was powerful and if it is based on your life, I feel so awful for you! I was with an abusive mentally disturbed man for 14 years who had a horrible upbringing - didn't have a clue how to love. Got together with him when I was 19 yrs. old. I tried my best to keep a peaceful loving home. We have 2 children but he has never been bad to them. I finally left when I realized it was hurting the oldest child with him treating me bad and now he is getting all the help he should have gotten when we were together. I suffered a long time trying to show him how to love. If he winds up o.k. in the end and the kids can have a dad that loves them it is worth it to me. I hope your story gets happier!

catefrances

no no no
this is from my wild and very active imagination.

twin1

O.k. Good! This type of stuff really happens so you never know. I feel alot better now. Good stuff!

catefrances

.....i’m sitting here staring out into the distance, thinking that maybe there were some choices i made in my life that, if i had to do over, i would do differently. i have these thoughts every now and then. they disappear as quick as they come. i used to believe in regret big time when i was younger. now i just don’t have the time. besides what’s the point anyway. you either do something or you don’t do it. i’m not even sure i’ve screwed my life up. my partner will tell you i haven’t. that i’ve chosen to live the life i have for me and no one else. he’s right of course, but back then i was accused of being selfish. i lost count of the number of people that said to me that they wished they had the balls to not give a rat’s arse about what other people thought. i’d ask them whose life they were living anyway. they’d look at me and then walk away. i knew they’d go home and the first thing they did, was for someone else. the girl friends i did have, would complain that their men didn’t understand them. i’d ask them why they thought they should and why was it so important. they’d say i didn’t understand. this was when i was in my early 20s and i was alone. not lonely mind you, just alone. i could do what i wanted when i wanted. and i did. i went to live in amsterdam for eight months and it was great. i didn’t even have to answer to myself if i didn’t want to. it was also a year after i got booted out of the united states, so i was in my fuck authority stage. actually now that i think about it, i’ve always been in a fuck authority stage. being born into the family i was, guaranteed that. this was of course before my son was born.
as i said, my father left when i was six. i didn’t see him for three years after that. he disappeared from my life and the only time i saw him was..well i never saw him i don’t think. being born on new years day meant that school was out for the holidays and i never had a party. which was fine by me cause i didn’t really have any friends until i was in high school. then i acquired two for the remainder of my school years. i learnt early on that some people only spoke to me because of my father. i’d get these weedy teenage boys coming up to me talking about my father like i somehow knew him better than they did. i often wondered if they knew so much about my father, then they should know how often he wasn’t around.
when i was in my second year of high school, he rocked up one afternoon on this old norton bike. i was mortified. it was as if he did this kind of thing all the time. i called him michael and the kids thought it cool that i got to call my parents by their first names. they didn’t get that he was a stranger to me. he may as well have been one of their parents. i’m sure they would’ve swapped my father for theirs. and then gratefully given him back when they realised what a drunken bastard he was and that no amount of talent could ever make up for that. the one boy that did get close as a friend was the same boy that introduced me to my fly boyfriend. by some perverse coincidence his name was michael too. when he got to know me and my family better he suggested i call him mike. i told him no. my father should never have that much power of my life.
michael was a loner so we got on fine. sometimes he’d sleep over and my mother would want to know what he wanted. i told her he wanted nothing. she thought all michaels were the same. it didn’t take that long to convince her she was wrong.
this is my father. he has a hold on me. probably more so because he was never around. it was like he was forbidden to me. lily once told me she’d make up stories to explain his absences. she'd tell her little friends that he was in africa on safari. and to her he was. i remember the look on my mother’s face the first time lily said that if you think it up in your head then it’s real. she was almost four when she came up with that little pearl of wisdom. at that age she had no idea that parmenides came up with the same concept over 2000 thousand years ago. whether or not he was in complete control of his own mind is open for discussion.

pacifier

I enjoyed that. thanks for sharing

Being Enlightened

I really enjoyed this story, catefrances. You could really feel it. Good job!

catefrances

...those stories lily would tell about our father continued until she was nearly thirty. she started to write them down when she was nine. and for the next twenty years she excised the demon that was our absent father. she never acknowledged what parts were true and what parts existed in her mind. lily lived a lot in her mind. she left home when she was twenty with an envelope full of photos and a notebook of our father's. i don't know where she found it, i had never seen it before. then one day i was visiting her in some dingy apartment she was sharing with a boy. and by boy i mean he was barely eighteen. the notebook was sitting amongst a pile of rolling stones from the seventies. at the time i was so thrilled to see these old magazines that i didn't pay much attention to it. when i saw what it was, i wanted to be the one who had possession of it. then i read one of lily's stories and knew the notebook belonged with her.
i don't know what became of that notebook, she still might have it. it would be unlike her to misplace it. i should ask her. but that barely legal manboy still lives with lily. they live in house they built themselves out of timber and glass and corrugated tin. the floor is stone, and the house sits in a valley that is frequently shrouded in fog. it's as far away from civilisation as they could get and yet still be within commuting distance from the city. lily needed her bookshops. she actually owned one. it was very similar to her house. all wood and persian rugs, low lighting and comfy cushions for the rugrats to lie on.
so, what was in the notebook. half written poems or songs, whatever you want to call them, little drawings. reminder messages to himself. lists of books and names.
some i recognised, some i didn't. there were photocopies of photos my father had pasted in there. there was one of my mother that he'd hand coloured. there were tram tickets, stickers declaring his allegiance to his favourite football team. it was the type of thing you'd want to keep forever. an archive of what looked to be a rare sober time in our father's life. he didn't have too many of those. there was even a wine stain on one of the pages. so maybe he wasn't too sober.
so this is my father. the drunk. the writer. the abuser. a gifted stranger to some. a gifted bastard to those that knew him. to those that loved him. to those he inspired and those that despised him. he's a part of me. the good parts and the bad parts. and when i close my eyes, i can see him in my mind. i'm not my sister aged nearly four and i'm not parmenides nearly sane. but in my mind my father exists. only in my mind my father exists.

catefrances

this is my father. when i showed up in seattle, he was shocked to say the least. ah! you didn't think i chose that city randomly did you. that's why my mother was in bed for days crying. she figured i'd left her just like he had. but i didn't leave her. i went to my father because i thought he'd be thrilled to see me. that when i showed him my work, he'd be proud enough of me to acknowledge me as his daughter. perhaps even as a fellow artists. boy was i wrong. i couldn't have been further from the truth. he didn't even recognise me when he opened the door. which is kinda funny, cause i didn't recognise the man that stood in front of me, barring me entrance into his home. he thought i was a fan. he asked me what i wanted signed. i said excuse me. he repeated the question. i told him he'd already signed my birth certificate. then he smiled. but it wasn't a pleased to see me smile. it was a smile of someone who came to the realisation that they had just met a family member who had come to claim something. annie's girl is all he said. annie's girl. your girl too. i could see he was going to slam the door in my face, so i shook my head and stepped back. i knew that smile well. i'd seen it in interviews, when reporters asked my father questions he didn't want to answer. or questions they just asked to get him riled. i turned and walked down the footpath. it began to drizzle. i'd heard it rained a fair bit in seattle. i didn't know if that were the truth or not. looks like i wouldn't be sticking around long enough to find out. maybe or maybe not, to his credit, he called my name. he called the correct name, which astounded me. i wondered if he even remembered he had another daughter. i didn't stop.

catefrances

my father was twenty two when i was born. it was one those hot summer days. made humid by the afternoon rain. he was drunk and pissed off. my mother went to the hospital alone. no way would they let a drunk man in the delivery room. i was three days old before he saw me. that's how drunk he was. my mother tells me we came home to an empty house. she cried for days. she never got out of that habit did she? naturally when my father showed up she forgave him. i have no idea why she always took him back. i'd like to think it was love. he sobered up for a while too. at least long enough to impress another pregnancy onto my mother. i was four months old when that happened. it was the seventies. just. and my father had several places to crash if he needed to. he thought he could continue to act like a single man. turns out my mother allowed his behaviour. at least up to a point. he was an artist after all. poor sensitive soul. he'd had two pamphlets of poetry published and he had a regular gig with a friend of his at a bar in the city. the girls loved him. there were more than a couple of guys who did as well. when lily was seven months old, he left to go to new york. rumour has it he had a woman who thought he was worth the money. he was such a charismatic bastard that she probably thought she loved him. we know he could never love anyone. except maybe himself. anyway he went off to new york new york to do whatever it was he felt he had to. he saw patti smith do a reading at st. marks church and he was gone. all his poetry for the next year and a half was dedicated to patti and inspired by her. she didn't know he existed. she was living with robert mapplethorpe in some loft on West 23rd and was on the rise. the new darling of the scene. but he did meet allen ginsberg and leonard cohen amongst others. he never talked of those days. of course when would the opportunity have risen. the shoebox in the garage told me all i knew. and he kept a diary. he would write about the most innocuous things. but then there would be odes of love to my mother. so i guess he could love someone else other than himself. or maybe it was just a device to help him write. being in new york at that time, you couldn't help but be inspired. janis joplin was there. kris kristofferson. william burroughs. jim carroll. both arthur miller and arthur c. clarke lived at the chelsea.
and sam shepard. he had a profound effect on my father. not the least one being that he ended up as patti smith's lover. he was tall and rangy. had intense blue eyes and talent to burn. he was a man's man. which my father wasn't but thought he was. he disrespected women too much. so sam was always the yardstick my father measured himself by. when he found out sam was in a band, my father resolved to get in on that action. while sam was a drummer, my father decided that wasn't enough for him. only guitarist was good enough for him. i guess he worked at it real hard cause he got good. real good. and he hooked up with a couple of other guys. who knows how they did it but they got a gig at max's kansas city. about a month later they were at CBGB's. when the singer, grady threatened to leave, it was because my father had stolen his girl. uncharacteristically, my father apologised and grady stayed. good thing too. the three of them including the drummer ben and ben's sister carla piled into grady's station wagon and drove clear across the country headed for los angeles.
you might be wondering what happened to the woman whose money supported my father in his exploits. well she was still around, but she'd met a woman whom she started an affair with. so he was free. never mind he had a family back in sydney. to him that was a minor irritant.
while my father was swanning around the US, my mother was having a breakdown. it started just after lily was born, but he didn't notice. the thought of a family just seemed too tedious for a man of his talent. he thought she'd get over it. she didn't. i was almost two when she went away. me and lily lived with my mother's aunt. she wasn't gone that long. maybe a year. and just when it was all going fine, my father shows up. back with his new band. aunt caroline was not thrilled to see him. my mother was very docile and trying to hold it all together. lily didn't know who he was and neither did i. but he stayed. for the next four years. who knows how he did it, but he convinced grady and ben to stay as well. despite how lousy a human being he was, my father's talent was undeniable. it was almost as grand as his arrogance and the contempt in which he seemed to hold my mother. when ben's sister arrived, my mother far from being furious, accepted her. carla was nice as far as we could see. she played with me and lily. she was also having an affair with my father. i found out later that the reason my mother was so accepting of carla, was that she was sleeping with ben. i don't know what these adults were thinking. in fact i don't think they were thinking at all. so there you have it. growing up in household that resembled some tennesee williams play. where major drama was the order of the day, complete with unstable heroine, bastard hero amid a backdrop of led zeppelin, neil young and lou reed music and poetry being recited in the living room while upstairs whoever you wanted to sleep with was okay. looking back i realise it wasn't a normal childhood, but then how could i know, i was so young. when carla announced she was pregnant and going home to chicago, the lovefest came to a crashing halt. when she left, my father followed. as did grady and his new girl alison. i was six. lily was five. we weren't just losing father this time. we were losing a whole family. at first ben stayed with my mother. a month later he left. she seemed okay with it. as i was to learn, appearances can be deceiving though. she wasn't okay with it. it wasn't like she didn't try. and she and ben kept in touch. but through all his bullshit she still loved my father. when carla gave birth to a boy, my father stayed for a little while. about four months. then he left her. conveniently the band, who had the ridiculous name of seymour shaw, had a european tour lined up. i don't know what ben thought of what my father was doing to his sister. i can't imagine he was happy with it. but he was still in touch with my mother. and that's how it went on. we watched from afar as my father's star rose. my mother read about his exploits in rags. ben never told her what my father got up to. i guess he didn't want to unnecessarily freak her out. he always had the best intentions. a couple of years later, somewhere in germany, there was a car accident. ben was killed. grady broke an arm. and my father with the luck of the irish on his side came away with barely a scratch. after ben's funeral in illinois, my father came home. the top of his game and he walked away. of course when you lose someone close to you there's got to be some kind of reaction.

catefrances

daniel cahill. that was his name. the boy who got close enough to kiss me. the boy i scared away. the beer drinker. he was one of those guys that seemed to have it all together. the girls all wanted him. the boys all wanted to be him.except michael of course. he didn't relate to anyone who could manage to punt a ball between the goalposts or who actually went out into the sunlight. i swear i could see michael literally shrink away when daniel passed anywhere near him. i didn't have many friends at school, so i spent my years floating through, clique free. which was fine by me cause people were not my thing. i didn't have a girl friend until i was nineteen and even then i met holly through a boy. a man i should say. sean was twenty two. but they all seem like boys at that age.
daniel was the same age as me though he was in lily's history class. he had had time off school a couple of years before and hadn't quite caught up. there were rumours about his absence. what i know was, that his mother had some kind of...episode, they call it and he went to live with his grandparents. but now he was back. when he leant in to kiss me i could smell beer. all i thought of was my father.
with his lips on mine and me not responding, who knows what daniel was thinking.
i never got the chance to find out. i was out of there so fast. i heard him call my name but i kept running. all the way home. not that big a deal, i was three blocks from my house. half an hour later michael tapped on my window. i ignored him and buried myself under a pile of blankets..

catefrances

this is my father. what a guy. i won't give him the satisfaction of making me cry. by the time i walked four blocks, the drizzle had plastered my hair to my head. and even if i did cry no one would be able to tell anyway. what the hell had i been expecting. a glowing smile. instant recognition and open arms? yes i did. i admit it. i wanted my father to want me in his life as much as i wanted him in mine. he was the reason so many of my classmates tried to get close to me. why didn't he want me too. well i guess for starters, he already had what they wanted. and what i wanted. him. i was angry at myself for wanting him. for putting myself in a position of rejection like that. and i was angry at him for not wanting me.
the rain got heavier as i walked, so i ducked into a coffeeshop. finding coffee was not a problem in seattle. i didn't drink coffee though. i drank tea. oh yeah i'd fit in fine here. hah! i put my headphones on and listened to nick drake. michael was the one who told me i should listen to pink moon. he taped it for me and now it rarely left my side. what a wonder. a guy and his guitar. and from what i hear and if i believe it, some major baggage. i'm past judging people. i tried listening to tim buckley. the first two albums. his voice was like glass breaking. he sang too high. i couldn't sing along. i never sang with nick though. i just listened. he died from an overdose. who knows if it was suicide. he was prone to depression. can you die from accidental suicide?

catefrances

fourteen months before i left home, daniel spoke to me. when he kissed me i didn't run off. he saw that as hopeful. so did i. you know those conversations you have that go nowhere. the ones where you've just got to get the words out. daniel and i had a lot of those conversations. which was a good thing because michael and i didn't seem to be talking much those days. sometimes he'd see me and change direction trying to avoid me. and everytime i listened to pink moon, i'd think of him and that would out me in a funk. around this time i ran away to melbourne with daniel. you should have heard my mother when we got back. she was so livid i thought she was going to hit me. but that was nothing compared to daniel's mother. she did hit him. she apologised, but he was beyond hearing. it wasn't the first time she'd struck him. he showed up at my door shaking like a leaf. my mother let him spend the night on the living room sofa. i heard him cry out during the night. daniel stayed three days. then my mother sent him home. he was back within the hour. his mum showed up not long after that. i heard her before i saw her. she sounded like some screaming banshee straight out of hell. the calm that daniel displayed during his mother's haranging was a little frightening. he just took it. every word. he told her she needed to calm down and when she did only then would he talk to her. she asked daniel would he come home. he didn't answer, but he left with his mum.
daniel's father died when he was seven. and it had been him and his mum for the past nine years. she never forgave him for leaving her with a son to raise. she was more than a little unstable and daniel told me she drank, which never helped. she certainly helped me understand daniel a bit better.
and just when i thought i had him, he was gone.

EvilToasterElf

this is inspired prose, and it becomes so much easier to run with it when you find your way into the thoughts of your characters rather than creating the thoughts for them

olderman

i like this catefrances

thank you

catefrances

i watched as a storm moved up the coast. it was out to sea and all we got was a little wind. i felt a hand in mine and looked down to see my eight year old daughter squishing a marshmallow into my palm. i wanted to smile but i couldn't. i just raised my hand to my mouth and ate the pink glob of whatever it was they made those things out of. hayley was a miniature me. she had long brown hair and dark eyes. she didn't have my temper though. luckily she was like her father there. she had long legs and was a dancer. i don't know where that came from. there were no dancers in my family and there were none in james' family. though admittedly we have our fair share of performers. lily didn't have any children, so she treated hayley as her own most of the time. they spent a fair amount of time together because among other things, lily kept horses. the fact that hayley was an independent child pleased me. it made things easier when i went away. both james and i always told her the truth, we never sugar coated anything and she responded to that. i couldn't understand why parents weren't straight with their children. it was as if they didn't expect them to understand concepts that grown ups did. i'll admit you shouldn't tell them everything, but children are far more resilient and grasp things a lot better than adults are willing to give them credit for. the why question was always big in our house growing up and my mother for the most part would tell lily and i why we couldn't do something or why something was happening. but there were also those times when we didn't ask why because it was just easier that way. sometimes we didn't want to know. the big question about why our father didn't want to live with us was never asked out loud.
when the storm got so far up the coast i could barely see it, i went for walk. i kicked my shoes off and buried my feet in the sand, waiting for the surf to to run around my ankles. i turned back to look at the house and could see james watching me. twelve years and he was still solid as a rock. i guess one of us had to be.

catefrances

that morning when i woke up the sun shone through my window and hit me square in the face. the house was quiet, so lily was either still asleep or already gone to school. i was opting for still asleep because not one of us was a morning person and lily quite often had to be dragged out of bed. if that had happened you bet i would've heard. i was wrong. lily and my mother were sitting at the kitchen table. something was wrong. i felt it as soon as i walked through the door. i got a feeling in my body and my limbs went all heavy. i thought they were going to drop off. the doorbell rang and i made a move to answer it. my mother stopped me. the look on her face made the ache in my chest worse. just tell me i told her. is it dad. before she could say anything lily blurted it out. daniel was dead. he'd tried to fly but he couldn't. now he's dead. i laughed because trying to fly sounded so stupid. but i knew it wasn't stupid for daniel to try to fly. i felt numb. i could feel the tears welling in my eyes. i wanted to be anywhere but where i was. when my mother touched my arm to comfort me i shied away. i ran out of the room and opened the front door. i ran straight into michael. i tried to get away but he held me and wouldn't let go. he held me while i struggled and held me still when i cried. he cried with me.
at the funeral i read a t.s eliot poem. daniel had this thin blue book of eliot's poetry. he kept it with him. we'd read the love song of j. alfred prufrock and the wasteland when daniel felt the need. we'd read the whole book but those were his favourites. the poem i read at his graveside was preludes.
i took that book from his room and never put it back. it's been around the world a few times. i keep it on my bedside.

casper leblanc

This reminds me somewhat of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, a beautiful book I'm reading at the moment.

I love this sort of writing, wish I had it in me.

catefrances

i must've been in that coffee shop for hours. i was dry and it had stopped raining. i sat there reading and writing and listening to nick drake on my headphones. of course listening to pink moon got me thinking about michael. i really needed to talk to him about now but he was an ocean away. we would have sat there and talked in low tones about the guy behind the counter who everytime i looked up, was watching me. he was probably wondering how long i planned on staying. because it was overcast it was difficult to tell what the time was. i pulled my beanie down onto my head and picking up my notebook and copy of selby's last exit to brooklyn made my way to the counter. i was more than willing to just pay my bill and go, but the guy felt the need to ask a question. one that required an answer. and considering how long i'd sat in the booth plus the fact that i knew he'd been watching me, a stupid one at that. he asked if i was a writer. a couple of hours ago i would have given him a smartarse answer but i'd calmed down and bit and could at least talk civilly. yes i'm a writer. no i'm not a poet. i pocketed my change and walked away before he asked me for my life story.

catefrances

after daniel died the last place i wanted to be was where i was. my mother started to smother me. and people, most i didn't even know, would look at me different. at school, i would walk through the halls and kids would talk behind their hands. the look of pity on their faces drove me to imaginary homicide. i felt like strangling someone. and no one would talk about daniel. all the conversations i had, not that there were that many anyway, would skirt right around him. people watched what they said around me and i grew tired of it. i left. lily copped some of it as well. the grown ups wanted us to talk about how we felt. i guess hoping that by talking, any thoughts we had of following daniel over that cliff would just magically evaporate. those thoughts we had back then about adults not understanding, stayed with us until we grew up and we realised that, holy shit we understand so they did back then too. it's a strange feeling when you came to the realisation that you've turned into your parents. or at least someone's parent.
i got a job and left home. one of those good solid dependable public service jobs.i couldn't believe how easy it was. getting the job that is. it took me six months to leave home though. mum would cry, beg me to stay. say i was abandoning her. part of me wanted to stay. but it was because of that part, i had to leave. i moved into a share house with six other people. some were students, some worked. the house was close enough to the city, that i could walk to work if the mood struck me. and it struck me often.
over the next two years i became a grown up. well i paid taxes anyway. i was responsible for myself. and there were nights when i didn't sleep alone. so to me i was a grown up. plus i learnt to play the mandolin. a guy taught me. over the years, guys taught me a lot. but mostly they helped me learn a lot about myself. i've never been one of those women who thought she could do it all without a guy. i love men. but not because they complete me or some shit like that. i'm not a saint. you could find more than a few people to attest to that fact. i've used men over the years just like i know i've been used. i only word it that way cause i can't think of any other to say it. when i needed something i took it. and it worked the other way around too. but i was aware of it when it was happening and it was hardly a slap in the face to my feminist ideals. probably cause i wasn't a feminist. the big moment though came when that plane lifted it's wheels off the tarmac. i was bound for seattle. bound for my father. and though i didn't know it at the time, one of the most crushing blows of my young life.

catefrances

so what does one do in seattle for nearly three years. i must admit i didn't spend the entire time there. but what i did do in seattle was write. and after three solid weeks of drinking tea, i managed to form a friendship with the guy in the cafe. his name was blake and surprise surprise, he was a musician. there seemed to be more than a few of those around these parts. we spent a lot of time talking too. he introduced me to some people. one of them sean, introduced me to the first real girl friend i ever had. holly was his cousin. she'd run away from the family farm in bumfuck, montana or so the story went. they lived in an abandoned warehouse with a few others. i moved in. we spent many nights sitting around talking about books and music. we'd drink cheap italian red wine and make up songs. we all loved led zeppelin and would embarass ourselves by trying to sing whole lotta love. and then blake and i would horrify sean by saying how much we thought jim morrison was a drunken baffoon. he loved morrison and would spend countless hours singing doors songs. mainly peace frog and cars hiss by my window. to tell you the truth, i didn't mind peace frog. on his best nights, sean would sing cars hiss by my window accompanied by toby, one of the other guys. he was a student, and fortunately for all concerned his parents were rich and actually paid him to stay away from the house. i later heard that he drowned trying to swim across to bainbridge island. considering the distance involved,certainly not something you'd do in your right mind.
blake on the other hand, was a massive crazy horse fan. which was okay by me, cause when i was in the mood there was no one who could come close to neil young. when it was slow in the coffee shop we'd sit in one of the booths and sing neil young and write our own songs. on tuesdays, blake got behind the microphone and entertained the masses. he sang his own stuff as well. i spent a lot of time with blake. but when i wasn't with him, he was with someone else. it bugged me more than i was willing to admit. but what could i do, i didn't own him. then i met andrew moffat.

catefrances

so blake would go off with whoever it was he picked up or got picked up by. if a girl could sustain a conversation with him that was somewhat remotely intelligent, and by this i mean that she read 'real' books and knew who crazy horse were, then she was in. was i okay that blake went off with other girls. no not really. but what could i do. i had no claim to him. just wanting someone to be with you wasn't enough. besides it's not like i was sitting at home like some dutiful wife or whatever. and that's where andrew moffat come in.
i came into the coffee shop one day and there he was nursing a mug of coffee. a cigarette dangling between his fingers. i watched as the ash dropped onto the table. it sat there until andrew noticed it and swept it onto the floor. his head hung low, his face hidden by jet black hair. sometimes he'd sigh and rest his head back against the wall. i acknowledged blake with a nod and slid into a booth. a short time later, he placed a cup of tea on the table in front of me. he followed my line of vision and a small smile appeared on his face. when he asked me if i knew who i was looking at, i said no. blake said i should find out. the way he said it, sounded to me as if perhaps andrew wasn't someone you should get to know. so naturally i made it my mission.
you know those moments in your life when you know you're doing something not in your best interests, but you do it anyway. well, andrew was one of those things. blake knew of course but thought it more fun to watch me screw up instead. he was a bastard sometimes.
andrew was twenty-six, a writer, guitarist, reformed junkie and world class drinker. and as i was to find out, the owner of a mean left hook. it was a moment that lasted eight months and suprisingly didn't end with anyone dead. well not one of us anyway.
andrew was the worst possible thing for me, not only at that moment but at any moment. i couldn't walk away from a challenge like him. i spent the next hour watching him. he chained smoked his way through that sixty minutes and had his cup refilled three times. he seemed to be lost in a trance, but every now and again he'd write in a notebook. there were two girls sitting by the door whose attention was firmly fixed on blake. they were only half succeeding at being covert. i was to find out that andrew often got lost in his own thoughts. every day for two weeks he came into the coffee shop, before i got the nerve to talk to him. after that things happened quickly. for andrew i'd come along at the right time. he felt the need to drink himself into oblivion and i felt the need to join him. the more time i spent with him, the more time i wanted to spend with him. and the more i drank. after a while i couldn't slow down to save my life. but that wasn't really the point. andrew was all about getting loaded, forgetting everything and everyone around me, writing and on the occasions both of us could manage it, fucking. and not necessarily in that order.
it took eight months to realise i needed to get away. that andrew wasn't what i needed and that he was no longer something i wanted. i called my mother to tell her that i was coming home. that's how i found out about michael.

olderman

keep rolling this out catefrances. it's getting addictive, in a good way

catefrances

flying into sydney always filled me with mixed emotions. Coming in low over red terracotta roofs and looking out the window to see purple jacarandas in bloom, I was relieved to be home. It made me feel safe. Knowing this was somewhere I could operate on instinct alone and not have to worry about what was around the next corner or hiding in the shadows. I sometimes used to think this was false bravado. I know that it can make life difficult if you’re constantly worrying about such things. I’m not a good traveller. I never have been. I’m too impatient. Once that plane is in the air, it’s a countdown until I feel the nose slightly tilt downwards, knowing that hopefully it won’t be long until we’re on the ground again and I have control of my life. Don’t get me wrong I’m not afraid of travelling, I just have no patience for it. Most of the time I have no patience for anything. but there were also those times when having left for other parts, coming home meant the end of something. once i was away from home, i never wanted to come home. it seemed i spent a great majority of my life running away from home and then running back there to reclaim some semblence of sanity.
So here I was returning home after nearly three years. It was death that pushed me out of my mother’s nest and it was death that bought me back, or at least the fear of it anyway. I was coming home to avoid my own, but in the end it was michael’s funeral I was here for now.
He’d been hit by a car whilst crossing the road. Just up from the railway station on king street. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve crossed that road. Day, night, in the rain, with the sun shining, drunk, sober, stoned. more than once during an horrific thunderstorm when the thrill was being caught outdoors, while lightning lit up the sky. Hell, we’d even piggy backed each other across, sometimes during pub crawls, other times just for fun. It amazed me how some people looked at you condescendingly when you were acting the goat a little and laughing because of it. One time we’d bet each other to see how far one of us would walk down the centre line that divided the coming and going. I only got about 50 metres up the street before a truck came round the bend in the road and scared the shit out of me enough for me to swear I would never attempt such idiocy again. Michael managed to walk all the way to the uni, which was about two kilometres down the street. Later that night he admitted to me that it scared him as well, but he was determined to beat me. If the police hadn’t chanced along and told him off, he said he would have walked all the way to broadway i didn't doubt it.Now doing something as normal as crossing the street got michael killed. Life really was a bitch sometimes.
Michael was one of the good ones you know. He was always there when I needed him. Even those times when I tried to push him away. He was there to hear me bitch about my mother, about my father. He was there to make sure I didn’t blow things with daniel. And he was there for me when daniel decided to see if he could fly. Now here I was throwing my best friend’s ashes into a stiff southerly. I did that and then got royally drunk with his brother james (yes that james if you’re wondering). They worked together writing and illustrating graphic novels. Michael did the words, james did the drawings. Over the next couple of weeks I read everything the two of them had done. It made me sadder to know that what michael was doing with his life was something that he loved. It was something that I knew he wouldn’t ever compromise on, simple because he never compromised on anything in his life. If he couldn’t do something in his life his way, then he wouldn’t do it.
When blake phoned it took all my energy not to get on the next flight back to seattle. But I was tired and knew going back there wasn’t the best thing for me then.He continued to call and my mother asked if I was staying. I told her I was. I got a job in a bookshop in the city and moved in with james. I don’t think that’s what she meant when she asked, but at least I was in the same city. It took us six months to realise that it was grief that kept us together. I moved back into my mother’s house. I started writing again and sent some stuff to blake. He’d send my words back as completed songs. It wasn’t the clearest sound his band was making, but there was something about it I liked. Probably that the music sounded like anyone could play it. That wasn’t true but that’s what it sounded like to me until I tried to duplicate it. I gave up cause there was something I wasn’t getting.
I was home just over a year before I took off again. This time to amsterdam.

catefrances

It turns out you can die from an accidental suicide. I was reading an article on John Bonham and that’s how he died it said. They call it death by misadventure. So there you go.
So after spending nearly eight months in Amsterdam, I ended back to Seattle. I couldn’t get Blake out of my system, and truth be told I didn’t really want to. I’d been gone two years and he looked real good. He’d let his hair grow and it skimmed his shoulders. Meeting me at the airport though he wasn’t alone. The guy he was with looked like he’d seen better days. As I was to find out this was about as good as it got with this one. He kept his hands jammed in his pockets the whole time. His name was Matt. He played guitar. Not a surprise. I can’t remember the last time I met a guy outside work that didn’t play some kind of musical instrument.
Blake had got a band together. This was one that actually played outside the garage. He said it was serious this time. When he told me Matt was in the band I had to wonder how serious. Then I heard them play. Matt had dyed his hair some shade of green that defied description. But boy could he play. The fact that these two were in the same band kind of surprised me cause their taste in music at this stage had no common ground. Blake was in his life long obsession with Crazy Horse and all things Neil Young and Matt listened to The Melvins and Black Sabbath, who it must be said are the originators of one of my favourite songs – Paranoid. But somehow it worked.
It was Matt who first played me a song they’d built around my words. Not the first time I'd heard this done, but the first time when I was actually in the same room. They’d named it Misery and never was a song title truer to its content. I’d heard the words put to a different arrangement. I liked this version better.
Matt was, for want of a better word,an interesting character. When he wasn’t playing he was as quiet as a mouse. You could never tell what mood he was in and it was best to let him approach you. He had this notebook he carried everywhere. He filled it with words and drawings. He'd rip pictures out of magazines ( i'd once been with him when he did this in a shop) and stick them in the book.
One night they were playing at some hotel and I was talking with Matt when this girl came out of nowhere and got in my face. In a voice as low as I’d ever heard and yet still be audible, Matt told her to back off. This was my introduction to Kendall Ryan. She was Matt’s on again off again girl and right now they were taking a break. It didn’t stop her from exercising her property rights though. Her sister Holly was the band’s bass player. The drummer was Matt’s cousin. His hair was longer than mine. It hung straight down his back ending at his waist. Gabriel was the nicest guy. Played drums like a demon. He hit them hard and precise and the girls loved him. Turns out Matt needed to surround himself with those he thought closest to him. That first night I watched as Kendall kept her eye on her man. She was very possessive and I was told on more than one occasion she and Matt got into it in a big way. He sang to her but he clearly had his hands full. As I was to find out, so did she. They were two sides of the same coin. It took her about two weeks to realise I wasn’t after Matt and had no interest in him outside his playing. After that we got along fine and she became one of my closest friends.
When Blake asked me how long I was staying, I told him I’d play it by ear. When I left eighteen months later, it was to raise a child of my own who would grow up never knowing his father. Who says history never repeats?

olderman

keep on rolling cate

catefrances

i started drinking when i was fourteen, if for no other reason than i wanted to. my aversion to alcohol didn't extend much past beer. older brothers were more than willing to buy it for us. we'd sit in the park on the swings or we would sit on the roundabout and someone who could be bothered would spin us around while we got steadily drunker. spinning in a circle and drinking while staring up into the sky is not a good idea i found out. sometimes michael would join in, but most of the time he wasn't interested.
i wasn't what you'd call a cheap drunk. it took me a lot to get loaded. and i drank scotch. i remember on a couple of occasions when i was seriously drunk, i did drink beer. but i was drunk already and that's my excuse. i wasn't a rowdy drunk or violent but i did talk more than i normally did. and considering how much i talked when sober, that was quite an accomplishment. i wasn't someone who hit on guys either, though this was sober behaviour too. i didn't like to be touched, the people i hang out with during this period knew that. once after one right hook to the eye of a guy called jacob, no one came near me again. and jacob became a regular drinking buddy. his father didn't live in his house either so we connected on that. jacob ahd this abandoned warehouse that he's bunk down in. it wasn't his obviously, but he hung there a lot. it was beside the railway tracks on the other side from where we lived and surprisingly no one bothered to look for us there.
when michael could no longer stand my behaviour, he confronted me. he told me exactly what he thought of me and what i was doing. he told me he loved me and couldn't stand watching me hurt myself. i told him i wasn't doing anything that i didn't want to do and i turned my back on him. he said that was the problem. if i wanted help there was some leeway at least. but me like this, it was up to me.
when my mother decided to pay enough attention to what was going on, she told me i was just like my father. i couldn't have been more insulted at the time. i told her i was nothing like him. i knew that wasn't true but i said it anyway. she yelled at me some more. with the sound of her voice and the fact that i had a sizeable hangover i wanted to get out of the house. i threw some things into a bag, including my pink moon tape that michael had just given me and just like my father i left.

catefrances

besides holly, kendall ryan was the only girl i had anything to do with that went beyond a brief conversation. i wasn't good with people and girls just wore me out. back then i really got nothing from them except grief. true, i got grief from guys, but it was a different kind of grief. right now today, kendall is the only woman friend i have who knows me from back then. in fact for the duration of my life, i can count my female friends on less than one hand. i don't especially get on with women. the ones i've come into contact with up to this point appear consumed with trivialities i don't care for. They need to know why things happen. why the guy they are attracted to pays them no mind. or when he does, why he doesn't return their phone call when they expect him to. women put more stock into physical contact than men do. as if sex has some hidden meaning every time when it clearly doesn't. and i find it tiresome. i was not, and still am not a people person and am not bound by some secret allegiance to women. if i was around someone, it was usually because they had something to teach me. and every person in my life had taught me something. even my wayward absent father.
but kendall, she was different than any person i had ever met. she did not give a damn what anyone thought and that included Matt. If she thought it, then she said it. if she didn't like you, she didn't bother with niceties. she just excluded you. that first night when she got in my face about my possible non-existent interest in Matt was the litmus test i measured all my encounters with her on. and for that matter, hers with everybody else. it got to the stage where i could meet someone and judge them by kendall's standards. this did not endure me to a lot of people. however more than once this system saved me from unneccessary aggravation as i watched a person i'd dismissed mess with someone else's head. despite what people would call her many faults, kendall was a very loyal friend. and by the same token, a fierce enemy. she was outrageous in both her behaviour and talk. but unlike a lot of other people, it was not to be turned off when the press were not around. it was not an act. it was kendall. she was intelligent, not some gormless groupie who had decided to attach herself to someone she thought would go all the way. in my opinion, she and Matt were as close to a perfect couple as two people could be. They pushed each other to the extreme, but pulled short of going over the edge. it was a shame it didn't stay that way. it also helped that she was a musician herself. though later where Matt was concerned others saw it as opportunistic on her part. they thought he was the one with all the talent. they were wrong. this is where we connected.she walked in one day, Matt shuffling a few paces behind her, lost in his own world. she got in my face and said she'd heard i played. i'm sure she already knew this but felt until now the time hadn't been right. i told her i'd seen her play and volunteered that i thought the sound was raw but nothing that couldn't be worked on. i said i wrote as well. kendall smiled. within a week we were all but ignoring the boys as we began our own assault on what we would find out to be a misogynistic local scene. the musicians were fine but the audiences, sometimes you felt like just kicking them in the head they were so stupid.

catefrances

in between me doing my thing with Kendall and Blake doing his with the band now known as zuma, we still got together and did our acoustic thing. one night in the middle of me singing some Big Star song, my father walked in. i tried to ignore him, but it wasn't easy. i kept singing but closed my eyes. which of course made it worse cause he was all i saw. blake got my attention and told me to sing to him. that worked only as long as the song went for. when it was finished, i was out of there. being the persistent bastard that he could be, my father followed me out. i don't know whether he heard me sing "out of my mind", which he'd written before i was born. nor did i care. i just did not want to be around him. he called my name and i stopped. i turned and looked at him, waiting for him to start a conversation only one of us wanted to be apart of. he apologised. i asked him for what. he said everything. wow. that was a massive all encompassing admission. and it meant nothing to me. then he just walked away. i yelled after him and it was his turn to stop. i told him he didn't get to say that. he had no right to think a handful of words would make it alright. i'm not even sure that was his intent. then i told him that i didn't ever want to hear from him again. and you what? i never did.
















































it

catefrances

it wasn't a coincidence my father showing up. my confusion at the look Blake gave me as i left my father standing was cleared up a few days later, when he told me he was the reason for my father's appearance. for whatever reason he felt the need to interfere. i didn't give him the chance to explain. and i didn't want to know anyway. how dare he go behind my back. i was so stubborn i didn't talk to him for weeks. i moved in with Matt and Kendall. they were a hard couple to live with. they lived loud, fought loud and loved loud. it was not an ideal situation for either them or me. it was Matt that made the offer. i know kendall wasn't thrilled to have me stay. despite my declaration that i wasn't interested in matt, she was still wary of my presence. and i'd never given her any cause for concern. but she was what you'd call highly strung so i just chose to ignore her misgivings.
while i was at their house, i heard them work on some music that fit neither what zuma were doing or what i was working on with kendall. it was what i'd call quiet music. there was a sadness to it as well and i knew this came from matt. during my second week of crashing at their house, i came home to find kendall furiously trying to resuscitate matt. she was yelling at him and crying. i had never heard her cry before and it was unnerving. i tried to get out of kendall what ws wrong but she was incoherent. the only words i did work out were 'again' and 'ambulance'. i heard the siren and when they wheeled matt out, i didn't see him again for nearly a month. later when i asked kendall she told me it was an accident. that matt had overdosed on prescription medication. it wasn't for me to decide whether it was an accident. but if it was deliberate i wouldn't have been surprised.
in the end it was gabriel that brokered the peace deal. he dragged me to the cafe to blake play. i made him go in first to make sure there'd be no surprises.
i sat as far away from blake as i could. as you can imagine that wasn't too far, not in a room that measured 40 feet by 15. it was close to midnight and he'd already sang one set. i was ambushed. blake sat there and played neil young's peace of mind straight to me. and that's how the feud ended. as easy as a song. but i stayed with kendall until matt returned from rehab.

romybian

I just printed the whole thing, thanks for sharing, it's just great!