I was searching for the solace in forgetting. What I wanted was to be someone else, to try and take on life from a different angle, from a new perspective, on the opposite side of the country. There’s nothing necessary in it. There’s nothing I can fool myself with

I’m hungover when you wake up, but it’s ok, it’s meshed with the jetlag. It’s floating. The bed is empty but for me. Outside there’s a storm, it bellows with thunder and raps against the windows panes incessantly. I don’t need judgement, not even for myself.

Then we’re lost, slightly aren’t we. Too long we’ve been in this situation.

Terry’s is brightly lit. There’s about four people lined at the bar, only two are in conversation, the others watch the tv joylessly. The sound on the tv is down, some football is playing itself out in agonising allegory. So we put tunes on the juke box, and talk to the barmaid, sitting at the bar for now, waiting for the pool table to become free. I’m coughing and shaking and feeling rather vague. Didn’t sleep well again the night before and yet again woke at some extraordinary hour. I almost got up to watch tv, while the day had yet to break, in order to bore myself to sleep. I listened to some music in stead, got up, drank coffee, went back to bed, dozed, awoke again, sat on the edge of the bed and felt the floorboards tilt, and felt my weight shift as if I was sliding down the bed, toward the wall. The house is built on one of those idiosyncratic San Francisco hills, a practically vertical one, so this may not have been illusion.

I felt liable to take off most of the day, lacking ballast and balance in everything I did. I wandered around downtown, thick with shoppers, slick with rain.. All these people, huddled into themselves, weighed by bags. We stand under the awning of the pizza joint. Too full to go inside. The rain patters above and around us, the people walk by. Could be anywhere.

In Terry’s I’m attempting to feel awake. The booze will help, I’ve decided, because it worked the other night, kinda. Or at least after feeling like I was about to crash and die, I find myself up all night being heinous after a few tequilas. And these aren’t baby pours like we get at home. Seriously sized. They explain to me, we have somesuch tequila, I admit surprise that’s there’s a choice. Just gimme, basically. It’s a different drug over here. So I have a few of them.

Two weeks I’ve been here now, and it’s okay. The sky cleared and the sun cam out and on Sunday Marco dragged me to a yard sale, where he bought up someones vinyl collection, neatly packed in boxes. Some Supertramp, the Beatles, Elvis Costello, typical American Catholicism. They don’t seem so constrained over here, but then again, the diversity seems like either stupidly or conceit. I can’t decide.

My brother precipitated all this. It was an intervention of sorts. He came around to my door, and knocked and I didn’t answer because I’m not in the habit of answering my door. During the previous month I’d had a brief scare where Rhonda had moved back in until I sobered up and literally threw her out. I can still see her lace underware hanging on the breeze as it slowly descended to the wet ground. She looked up at me, with a bovine understanding. I said, that’s fucking it, I’m killing myself, so I took a load of valium and fell unconscious for about 2 days. They were all out of date so I don’t know if the effect was diluted, all I knew is that some cunt was a rat tat tatting upon my chamber door, and I was lying there thinking, am I dead. Before I knew it cold, slatey cold water was slapping me in the face. WTF?

“I broke in” he says.

“you prick.”

“get up and get dressed. You’re coming with me.”

We drove out to the country side, he said to me: “we know about you, we know you were sacked and why, we think that you need help and your inheritance relies on this.” Well, that’s the potted version. He’s convinced my mother to write me out of the will til I cop on. WTF. How long has she got live i blurt out. “What? She’s not dying”

“she better not die while I’m sorting myself out, cos… well…”

“look, we’re concerned.”

“why?”

He’s silent then. We drive on.

To some large hotel, where my sister, and my brother’s (second (pregnant)) wife are waiting, by an arched window hung with drapes that are older than me. Older than him. Older than all of us combined I’d wager.

And I sit there for three hours while they tell me all the stuff that’s wrong with me. All my past, half I just know is made up shit I’ve posted myself on the internet. They care so much they googled me and printed it out. My brothers wife leans her elbows on her knees and leans into me. She can’t be much older than me, though he’s 15 years my elder. “we just really care “ she says and alls I can see are the two massive orbs of her milky milky-white breasts, protruding from her dress. They’re calling out to me. Sucking me in. I have to avert my gaze. I’m being consumed. And the cunts won’t let me have a drink. Cunts.

My sister goes, all the terrible things you’ve done, and I sigh. Like fucking what? Well, she says, all prissy like, that time you went out with Karen. She, I said, dumped me. You told her you had AIDS!!

“uh,” I say. “I dind’t”

“you did”

“I said I had HIV”

“jesus”

“it was joke”
”it’s sick”

“well. I’m… anyway, what she did was worse. She called julie and told her I had aids and Julie freaked out and told Anabel and well, word got out and I had all these ugly scenes with all these exes phoning up crying and saying they’d kill me if they were in fected, in fact one of them was waiting for me outside work and she came up to me and started to punch me and og booo hooo, the doctor says I have HIV it’s all your fault you BASTARD, and I was all, hold on love, get your aids hands off me, I don’t have HIV, some other junkie gave it too you, and anyway. iT was a grim time.”

She starts to cry. Fucksake.

Anyway, here I am. Escaping. More later.