this is my father: notes for later.

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!

catefrances

It wasn’t unusual for matt to disappear for any length of time. it certainly wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. But to do it in the middle of a tour. He’d never done that before. Everyone understood he needed his space. Everyone that is except the record company. What they were used to were artists that did what they wanted them to do when they wanted them to do it. This wasn’t Matt. It wasn’t any of the band for that matter. Except maybe gabriel. though even with him he’d managed to lead the corporate lawyers on a merry chase that ended in joshua tree national park. But since that incident eight months ago, he’d toed the party line. He had a child to look out for now, so unlike the rest of the band he was actually responsible for someone other than himself. I watched as matt’s friends closed ranks around him, even in his absence. Kendall didn’t know where he was. And sometimes I’d think that it was her he was trying to get away from.
Someone knew where matt was. It was sean who picked him up at the airport. Unfortunately sean was with matt. Or so we figured cause no one could find him either. The company leant on holly cause she was sean’s partner. But she remained loyal and said she hadn’t heard from either sean or matt. which as it turns out was the truth. sean would never have put her in the position of having to lie for him.
This went on for about a week and a half before the company threatened to pull the plug on the band’s next album. They were in the middle of recording it. Trying to fit it around a bi-coastal tour that of course had been the company’s idea. They were counting on zuma for big things and wanted to wring as much out of them as they could before the bubble burst. Working to a deadline was no one’s idea of a conducive environment in which to come up with the masterpiece the company wanted. And they all knew it. over the years it never failed to amuse me just how clueless corporate suits could be. Blake told me that he wished that he had gone with Matt. Even though he didn’t know where he was or even in what condition he was in. me being me told him to just do it. So he did. We jumped into his VW bug and headed north to the canadian border. three days later he got cold feet and we returned to seattle to find out that matt was in hospital.
Official line….. exhaustion.

catefrances

charlie was fifteen months old the first time i left him. i walked out the front door and didn't look back. in all honesty i'm surprised it took me that long. someone would look after him. i didn't know whether it would be james or my mother or maybe even lily. it didn't much matter to me. it's not that i didn't care. actually now that i think about it, i didn't care. all i knew was that right at that moment i couldn't look after my own son. i just took for granted that someone would watch over him.
i sat in the airport bar and drank until my flight was called. i wasn't what i considered drunk. i'd describe myself as pleasantly detached from my surroundings. i was sandwiched between a canadian returning home and an old spanish woman who didn't speak much english. i knew enough spanish to get by, but i certainly wasn't going to share that information. i wanted a nice quiet flight that went quickly. i didn't want to be caught up in the mindless chitchat of my fellow passengers. the canadian and the spanish woman may, for all i have known been nice people, but frankly i didn't care. i didn't drink on the flight, though i did try to eat some food. this turned out to be a mistake. i wasn't a good traveller in the best of circumstances. but having a booze buzz and running away, i think it was the guilt that gave me the headache. somewhere over the pacific ocean i vomited what little was in my stomach. the retching made my sides hurt. plus there was the added bonus of a runny nose and an empty stomach that only made me feel sicker. ah yes this was karma coming back to bite me in the arse. i was sure this wasn't the end of the cosmic balancing. but for now i managed to roll my jacket up into a pillow and sleep.
i had to change planes in los angeles and landed in seattle just before midnight. blake would be there to meet me. i'd rang him from LAX and he said he would be there. he wasn't. i fell asleep and was shaken awake by someone i barely recognised. he'd grown a beard and let his hair grow even more. all he needed was a rifle slung over his shoulder and a coonskin hat and the davey crockett picture would have been complete. we drove to a house i didn't recognise and as blake let me in the front door i thought that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. there was no furniture in the living room except a legless couch, a couple of upturned crates being used as coffee tables. there was a drumkit in one corner and in the another a stereo surrounded by records, cassettes and CDs. the only thing decorating the walls were tour posters of zuma and other local bands. blake lived here with sean and his girl vicky.
it was fine for me to stay here blake said cause zuma were leaving on a tour in two days. much to my relief blake didn't ask me any questions beyond what i was doing in seattle, to which i answered that i needed a break. he didn't ask from what and i guess he figured i just needed a break from my life.
on the morning that he left, blake told me that kendall knew how to reach them if there was an emergency. at the mention of her name i smiled. they'd be gone for three weeks.

catefrances

so while matt worked at getting better, the rest of the band were left to their own devices. they wouldn't touch the album without matt and so it sat there accumulating dust. i tried to keep kendall amused, but it was a thankless task. all she could think about was matt and she spent most of her time wondering how he'd be when he got out. she went through this everytime. i think she was sick of it but couldn't see her life without matt. boy was she in trouble. i tried to get her to work on some music but it always came back to matt and i gave up. i told blake that i couldn't handle kendall anymore. he asked me why i thought i had to. i was her friend. blake dismissed that and said sometimes you just had to step away. i thought that was a cold attitude and walked way from him. what i didn't know at the time was that blake had slept with kendall and was trying to deal with the guilt. when i found out, it wasn't much of a stretch for me to realise that perhaps matt knew as well. it would certainly have explained a lot. and that's when andrew moffat showed up again. there were rumours floating around that he'd got his act together and was due to release a more subdued album than he previously had. truth be told, i thought he was dead. or maybe i just wished it. fact of the matter was, i was interested in what he had to share. so i sought him out. he was living in the same house he had been before. i'm not sure what i was expecting, but the smile i got put me a little on guard. he was surprised to see me but admitted he had half expected it. to me that sounded like the man's ego talking. we spoke about what we'd been doing and he played me the album. i thought it was too quite compared to what i'd been hearing around town recently. but it was what he wanted to do so who was i to rain on his parade. it was enough that he was still alive. when he told me he had worked with kendall, i was a little less surprised than i should have been. against my better judgement i told him he should leave her alone. then we got into a fight about what business was it of mine and i responded by saying obviously none and walked out.
a couple of days later i ran into andrew at the off ramp. blake and i were there seeing some band of no account called pussbutt. i was outside getting some air cause there was none inside and i hear a voice in my ear. i nearly fell over trying to get some distance between us. he admitted to me that he knew matt and would never have made a move on kendall. to which i replied, as if she'd let him. then we got into the why did i have to be a bitch all the time routine. words were spoken. threats were issued. and we ended spending the night together. the following day i snuck back to matt's with my tail between my legs like some guilty child. he told me to leave cause he wasn't going to go through another situation that involved andrew beating me and him having to pick up the pieces. i told blake that i wasn't going to go anywhere. it was a one off thing and it was over. he believed me. and so did i... for the next three days.

karma defect

Micheal Farantti

When I heard that song live, tears in my eyes.

catefrances

it took me two days to ring james and when i did no one answered. i didn't bother again. i rang kendall instead. she said she was going down to portland. i could come if i wanted. i said no. i'd never been down there and right now i wanted to be somewhere familiar. i stayed close to blake's. vicky was a student and with it being mid semester she had no choice but to stay in seattle. she wanted to be a teacher. it was such a change to meet someone in this town who had a goal that wasn't dependent on music. i went to lecture with her just for something to do. it was fun. it made me think of an alternate road i might have taken. though i couldn't see myself adhering to deadlines that required me to hand in assignments. way too much structure for a slacker like me. and let's be honest, how the hell could i possibly deal with thinking whilst hungover. vicky did introduce me to cillian though. he was an irishman and a charming as all get out. we hund out for a week before i moved into his room. he lived above a bookstore not far from campus. he tried to get me to read joyce's 'ulysses'. talk about mindnumbing. four pages in i gave up. the next day cillian brought home roald dahl's 'the magic finger'. smartarse. i read though. then i read 'wuthering heights'. i'd put this book off because i was under the impression that it was a romance. much to my pleasant surprise i found out it wasn't. well i didn't think it was. i found heathcliff to be extremely manipulative and a little vampiric in his behaviour. he just seemed to suck the life out of anyone that was around him. i thought he was a bastard. i saw no romance.

catefrances

when andrew opened his door, i could have smacked the smirk right off his face. he said he was surprise my keeper let me out again. i told him to fuck off. promises promises. it was my turn to smirk. i don't make promises. if i said i didn't know what it was about andrew that kept me coming back, i'd be lying. i knew exactly why. he hurts me. it's that simple. emotionally and physically. and he lets me give it back. until it bores him that is. for three weeks everything was fine between us. well it appeared to be anyway. i was willing to hang on until andrew snapped. or i did. i knew one of us would, it was just a matter of who went first.if it was andrew then i would have the excuse i needed to leave. otherwise i wasn't going anywhere. i knew that blake would take me in. maybe arrogance was my problem. if i didn't have my safety nets then all i'd have would be myself. i didn't much like that idea. anyway andrew would work or try to and i'd keep out of his way. he wanted to do something with this album. i think he thought it was his last chance. when he wasn't working we'd go for walks. he was one of those rare people i met who actually enjoyed walking. sometimes we'd get something to eat. then we'd go home get stoned, listen to king crimson or led zeppelin. get stoned some more and fuck. if this is how i could spend the rest of my life, i would. one day when we were talking about pussbutt, he said they reminded him of green river. yeah well for whatever good that did seeings how green river had broken up. personally i didn't particularly like green river.
then i got a brainwave. let's take andrew's mustang on a roadtrip. he said no. he didn't give me a reason. he didn't really need to but i expected one nonetheless. later the same day he said he was flying down to los angeles. he didn't ask me to go along. i ignored him for the rest of the day. the next morning he told me he didn't want me to be here when he got back. when i asked how long he'd be gone, he just shrugged his shoulders and asked what that had to do with anything. yeah great punch me in the stomach why don't you. whatever. i packed my bag and left five minutes later.

*given*to*fly*

wow this is really good
i havnt finished reading it yet because my eyeballs are going to fall out from staing at this computer but so far its awesome
ill have to come back it later when i can see again

catefrances

it was kendall in her usual up front way about amelia, the girl blake was seeing. thogh she wasn't living with him. otherwise i surely would have found out as soon as i'd walked through the door. kendall thought it only fair i should know. i think i was drunk for the next week. cillian helped me there. he was amused that i would get so cut up over someone i wasn't involved with. he pointed out that i had no claim to blake. no shit sherlock. it wasn't that blake had a girl, it was that he didn't tell me. what did he think i was going to do. intimidate the girl. of course not. i did what i always did when i tried to escape. i drank. what cillian was on about more, was the fact that if i was so concerned with blake, then what the hell was i doing with him. i told him too glibly as it turns out, that it's what i do. fuck with people with self delusional impunity. he told me i was a hypocrite. i didn't think that was true. all i ask is to be told what's going on. holy shit i am a hypocrite. i never tell anyone what i'm doing. i don't hide it but i don't usually come out and say anything, except casually in passing.
then i told cillian about james and charlie. when he questioned how a man could give so much lattitude to the mother of his child when he was still involved with her. i didn't correct him. i doubted right now was the time to share the fact that blake was charlie's father. he would have walked away i know it.
when zuma got back into town, i confronted blake. he said he didn't owe me an explanation. and i guess he was right. but him not telling me still hurt. but in another way it was freeing. i no longer had blake to fall back on other than as a friend. and in my warped world it allowed me to make quite possibly my biggest error in judgement ever. well besides not telling blake about charlie.

catefrances

though he told me i couldn't keep coming and going like i did, blake let me stay at his place. he told me it wasn't all about me. i assured him it was. he said i had no respect for anyone. he wondered how i managed to keep james as a friend. i said he loved me. to which blake replied how could anyone when i spent so much time and energy screwing up my life and anyone else's i came into contact with. great another fight. i hung with blake because he was exactly like james. he gave me more than enough rope to hang myself with and was always there to pick up the pieces. andrew on the other hand,treated me like i treated people. basically like shit. he pushed me hard and didn't particularly give a damn what i really felt or thought, just so long as i went along for the ride. and i always went along for the ride with andrew. i just didn't like who i became. but tht didn't matter anymore cause he had turfed me out. i could live without him. i'd done it before. and until i'd hooked up with andrew, i'd never been in an abusive relationship. i'd never even had anyone slap my face, in anger or in jest. but that's what i got from andrew. i'd walked before when it got too much. but this time the decision wasn't mine. i don't know how sane that made me, but i didn't think i made me crazy. a drunk and a manipulative bitch yes, but crazy? not me.

olderman

and as before, this remains very intriguing. thanks cate!