God, sorry about that. I was doing so well, but i had some kind of "overdose" say the doctors. Self medicating i was. Awash with pharmaceuticals and booze particles and with no particular regard to my being i was. it was a limbo, neither heaven nor hell. I've had worse times to be honest.

I answered my phone one day and it was Cathy, calling form a number that neither i, nor the nokia, recognised. "private number calling" the phon la-de-dahed to me. I answered it anyway, cos drug dealers usually avail of that service. There was Cathy.
"i'm not angry at you" she hums into the phone. Her voice has a particular grate that i had hitherto failed to note, or rather, it was one of those things i hated noted i didn't like about her that was going to facilitate my hate-sex and wilful dismissal of her feelings until her non-reciprocation caused certain brain-spunks to backfire and rewrite it all as a kind of adolescent fixation.
"that's great" i sighed.
"but hector, i've missed 342 calls from you in the last month"
"missed?"
"Hec, i couldn't answer.. i was. Busy"
""for a month?"
"I'm not accountable to you."
"What were you doing?"
"Hector please, i'm asking you. Leave me alone"
342 eh? most in the funky haze of a benders apex, as it sloughs off to fuggy morn. "i only remember calling, uh. Eight. Eight times."
"342"
"must be a broken phone"
"what did you want?"
"i thought maybe you saw my fountain pen?"
"Hector, i've gotten a new phone, but now you must leave me alone. I'm trying to be happy"
Oh how damning is that. Trying to be happy, as if one's default is unhappy. And as if i would be some kind of contra conductor to happiness: which makes utter sense. and i couldn't deny her her attempt at her insipid inscience. Not me. Anyway, when Brendon finally starts talking to me again, i'll get that dvd off him and we're laughing. i won't need the real thing any more. And that makes me happy all of a sudden and i say "lets go get some gelati, it's summer! i'll pay."
"i'm worried about you"
"me? ha ha ha ha ha."
I hang up. It's raining out and it has been for two months, it's drilled a wet hole into my head and rusted up some cogs and when i move my joints creak like rusty gates and things in the middle distance swim in and out of focus. there's this line of dancing lights that plays around the edge of my periphery and last week i spent 15 hours a day asleep. This perma winter is making me nest, when i should be out. I sit at home drinking fine whiskeys and smoking, and watching dvds, until gert pulls me out of the fug for the party of Laurence Clid who i briefly toured with back in 92 when we played with Laura Nih before she turned up the dial on her heroin problem and ended up in rehab and writing poetry as a way of dealing with her, like, pain, man, and the poetry was shit, but back in the day she had a voracious appetite for, well, self destruction, in the greatest traditions of rock and roll, and me and Clid and Theo Rend were all hand picked to play with her cos of our haircuts and likeminded approach to self harm and liquor intake and the tour was hard work, cos it ain't easy being cool and hatefull and drunk and trying to remember the nuances of 27 different tunes that all sounded the same but we rehearsed for all of five minutes, and inevitably it fell to pieces, gigs ending early, Laura riding the crowd on the stage, theo shooting up on the bus, all the rest of it, and i found out, years later as the tour manager and agent were going through rehab of their own and fessing up as part of the program that what they really wanted was someone to die on the tour and make a legend of the whole thing, and frankly they didn't care which one of us, even Laura!, that it was, but they just
reckoned one of us would, but they reckoned not with the indestructibility of the young body and the legendary amounts of drug goulash we were already renowned for and the fact that it was Laura herself who wigged out and went missing and i just went home to sleep for about a month, so with all this in mind i got me a nice big bag of oh-oh is it legal, it isn't and off to the part for me, and if Clid doens't know live in a big house with his two kids and he works for a software company and he's doing "really great" and it was "really great" to see me, but when i tried to press him to reminisce, you know remember the one eyed no legged prostitute in amsterdam that he vomited over his face goes blank, and his chablis-hand wobbles, so i go to his nicely appointed jacks and hoover up a bit and say, do you remember when the drug dealer stuck his pen knife in your ear til it bled cos you'd sneezed all his junk across the room, or even that time that Theo had cut some nice big lines on the back of a Q magazine on the bus and you came in and went, is that the one with Bowie on the cover and lifted it up and the room was suddenly thick with nose dust float in the air and Theo was crying and trying to snort the floor and off to the jacks with me again, with the clean surfaces, although evidence that i'm not the only columbian lover at the party, and Clid pulls me aside when i go back, nad spills Chablis on my sleeve, "fucking Paul Fucking Smith, pal" and he's all, give it fucking over. Those days are over, and, like jesus man, it was only 15 years ago, man, "so, mister loves the fucking past, "he hisses at me, and his teeth has all been fixed, "where were you at Theo's funeral?" "theo's dead?" i say, "downer, " and he's looking at me and holding my lapel and i shoo his hand away "Paul fucking Smith, friend" and he says "i want you to leave" and i wave my baggie, my knapsack, of coke at him and he shakes his head, so i say, i'll go, fuck you, i'll go, and he's looking at me, and at the bag, and at me, and at the bag "i have three kids now" he says, "so does my drug dealer" i say and five minutes later the pair of us are locked into the jacks snorting like there no tomorrow til his wife starts hammering on the door and he opens it up and say "maeve, i fucking hate you" and he clocks her right on the nose, she falls backwards, onto a painting on the opposite wall, and God help me i start to laugh raucously till blood spills from my nose "Paul FUCKING Smith" i shout at my self, scooping a little heap of coke into my pocket and i start to run from the party, vaguely away of this space trail in my wake, anointing all i pass with a film of white, tripping over Maeve, prone and Crying, blood on her hand and Clid is all Rage above her "and i'm fucking sick of your sisters kids, and i've been fucking Louise behind your back, and can't you do something about that mole on your..." "great fucking party, dude," i say "but i gotta slip out" my vision swims, and there's blood all over my Paul FUCKING Smith and i fall out onto the pavement and my head is throbbing and the bleeding won't stop and doens't, for days and days and days and the taxi driver is horrified, not in my fucking cab, he says "i was mugged!" so instead i walk, no trot into town, hit Dorans for a late one, they don't mind if you're covered in blood there, it's almost a pre-requiste "myself and Shane McGowan," i start to some gilr sitting beside me "once drank for 72 hours straight in this place" the bouncers have to throw me out "PAUL FUCKING SMITH" i shout, i hear threads ripping, bastards

the streets are wet, and it seeps into me