I’m home.
Only it doesn’t feel like home. No place feels like home anymore. But this is the last home I knew. Even the house I shared with Amanda wasn’t really home. And if I think about it for too long, I kinda know that I’ve never really had a home since I lived with my grandmother.
This morning I’m thinkin’ about just that.
I miss my grandmother. She died a few years ago, while I was in the middle of a tour. She’d been sick for a long time and was gettin’ worse. It was probably around then that I started usin’ coke a lot more. Not just goofin’ with it, but usin’ it straight up so I wouldn’t think about my grandma. I hated seein’ her sick. I hated knowing that she was in pain; that she was dying and there wasn’t fuck I could do about it. So I stayed drunk and high as much as possible, ‘cause when I wasn’t drunk or high I would start to think about what I was doin’ with my life. How none of it meant a whole helluva lot. I mean, there I was with all this fame and money and shit and none of it was gonna keep my grandma alive.
My grandpa was about losin’ his mind. My mother did lose hers; it was probably around then that we started driftin’ apart. She had no time for me. Grandma and grandpa were livin’ here with her then, up until grandma died. There were nurses and doctors and all sorts of people coming and going and I stayed away from all of it as much as possible. I couldn’t cope.
I couldn’t cope with anything.
That’s when I think I lost everything. That’s when I really hit bottom.
Amanda walked out of my life. I’d been talkin’ marriage, thinkin’ marriage, desperate to have someone of my own. She laughed that off. Wouldn’t let me get that far except for a lot of lip service about it. But she couldn’t laugh off my addictions. Wouldn’t. She tried. She tried to help me, to get me help, to hold my hand and be with me through it all, and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop anything.
So she was leavin’ me. My grandma was leaving me. My mom couldn’t deal with me, she was dealin’ with grandma, so she kinda ‘left’ in her own way. I met up with this woman, Karen, who’s kind of a groupie, shit, she’s a hooker, and I was draggin’ her around with me. AND I met Sarah around then. All these people were coming and going in my life and I still, to this day, couldn’t tell you where I was half the time, or who I was with.
And that’s when the career started to slip, too, so there was that happening. Everything was happening.
The guys, they tried to work things out with me. It was pretty obvious that I had problems. I couldn’t deal with workin’; I couldn’t deal with anything. Not so much with the performing part, that was still okay, even though my voice was goin’. But I couldn’t deal with all the other shit that goes along with it. Interviews, meet and greets, all of that shit got beyond me. But I did what I could, what I had to. The guys, they worked around me. They made excuses. They did whatever they could to make it all look normal to the outside world.
Inside, though, inside they were pissed with me.
Just thinkin’ about it now makes me sweat.
They tried, though. They got me help, got me some counselor for on the road. They did an intervention. They rearranged a whole fuckin’ tour to make sure that I wouldn’t be outta the country when my grandma died. They even offered to postpone part of the tour so I could get some help. They tried until it was impossible to try anymore.
Shit.
I pull myself up outta bed. I can’t do this. If I go back there, to that time, if I let my mind stay back there, I’m fucked. I’ll be in a bar before sundown. I know every place in this fuckin’ town to score a hit, a drink, or a woman. Usually all three at once. And if I get myself into that frame of mind, that’s exactly where I’ll be.
I can’t live here anymore. I don’t know how I’m gonna manage a month here. I know I don’t HAVE to. I can leave any time I like. But I know that it’s time to try. I have to try to stay here; to live straight here. I don’t know why I need to do this, I just do. It’s different now than when I first got outta rehab and came back here. Then I was so clean nothin’ mattered. My mom, she was relieved. My whole family was relieved and real hopeful about things and it was easy, so easy, to sleep in this bed, in this room, to be in this house and feel safe.
Well, it’s not like that anymore ‘cause I put a big fat fuckin’ wedge between me and my family and her name was Sarah and I’ll be tryin’ to smooth all that over for the rest of my life. At least that’s what it feels like.
It’s not safe here anymore, and I think I miss that the most of all, that feelin’ of bein’ secure in a place.
I get up and pull back the curtains. It’s sunny out; a real clear day. The sky is different here. Bigger. A different color. Bluer. The clouds are whiter. It’s beautiful.
I wonder what Shi’s doing?
She’s probably up and long gone. She doesn’t have to hang around the house, she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to now that I’m gone. It’s Monday; Tish is in school. It’s all quiet there and she’s probably out, doin’ whatever.
I find my cigarettes and light one.
I miss Shi. I knew I would. It was hard to leave last Saturday. I didn’t want to go, right up ‘til the time I got into the limo for the airport. Especially then, ‘cause I could still feel her arms around me.
That was sweet. Even if I had to be the one to do it, to grab for her instead of havin’ her come to me. I guess it shouldn’t matter, and I didn’t care, ‘cause she didn’t pull back. Not once; not for a second. She let me do that; let me hold onto her for a good, long minute. Until I really couldn’t any more without her thinkin’, thinkin’, well... thinkin’ what I was thinkin’. Thinkin’ that I wanted to be in her arms for as long as she’d let me be there.
And more.
More.
If I kinda close my eyes, I can see her. Sometimes I can smell her. Now I can almost feel her, feel those arms of hers holdin’ me back. Tight. They squeezed. They hugged. It felt so good.
Stupid to stand here and make myself horny and miserable about this. Stupid. And all these thoughts in my head, they’re not gonna happen. Not today, not tomorrow; probably not ever. From a distance, from a coupla thousand miles away, Shi looks as far from me as she can. And there are some days when she looks far away and she’s standin’ right next to me. It’s just a dream, a fantasy. And the days of all my fantasies comin’ true are long gone. It used to happen. Used to be I’d just think of shit and it would happen, or I could make it happen. I know why. ‘Cause I was hot. I was up, on top; I was a winner, a part of a winning team and when you’re on top, everyone wants you, they want to please you, they want to be your friend, your lover... they want to make your fantasies come true. Maybe they get paid for it, maybe they do it for favors, for tickets, for kisses, for dick; doesn’t matter, they do it, they help to make all your desires real, no matter what they are.
That ain’t gonna happen now. I’m far away from all that, too. I’m the most fucked up member of a group that no longer exists and things are never gonna come easy to me again. At least not THAT easy.
Shit.
I want to call Shi. I’ve called her more than once a day already. She’s probably gettin’ these stupid messages on the machine and thinkin’ about how lame and idiotic I am. Shit, I’m only leavin’ messages so she can hear me. I don’t have anything to tell her, I don’t have a damn thing I need for her to do for me. If I got her on the phone I probably wouldn’t know what to say.
But I want to call her.
The phone is right there, too, my tiny little cell is just sittin’ next to the bed and it’s beggin’ for me to phone Siobhan.
Two rings and the machine picks up.
“Uh, hi it’s me and I’m callin’ just to make sure that everything’s all right and that if you need anything you know where to get me it’s early here but not so early there and you must be out and doin’ stuff don’t do too much this is like a vacation and shit you know so if you need to get me call the cell and I hope that everything is fine bye.”
“Alex?”
“Hello?” Shit.
“It’s Siobhan,” she says.
Oh shit.
“Are you still there?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah, hi. I thought you were out.”
“I was. Just got back. What’s going on? Having a good time?”
“I, uh, y... y... yeah, it’s fine.”
“What can I do for you?” she asks.
And my mind does that thing again, that, that twitch. I can see exactly what I’d like her to do for me. I close my eyes and I can see her under me, over me, next to me, everywhere. I can feel her lips and taste her mouth. I can feel her arms around me again, her breath on my neck; I pretend that she was the one who kissed, not me, and that she put her lips on a spot on my neck that drives me insane.
‘What can I do for you?’
You can make love to me, fucking make love to me like you mean it, goddamnit. Not like some groupie, not like some hooker, or stripper, or some skank assed fan who THINKS I’m what they want. Do it like you mean it. Love me. That’s what you can do for me, Shi. No problem. Just get on a plane, get out here, and crawl into this bed with me and MEAN it. Care. Fucking care.
“Nothin’,” I tell her. “I was just makin’ sure you were okay and everything’s all right.”
“I’m okay and everything is fine. I’ve got just about everything boxed up and ready to ship to various and sundry places, I just have to call the moving people. The gardener’s coming tomorrow and I’ll discuss kennel options. After that, I think I’ll hit the stores again and see what I can do with your bedroom.”
You wanna decorate the bedroom? Be in the bed when I get home.
“I thought you did that already.”
“I know, but I saw something over the weekend. It would be a departure. A little more Mexican, if you could handle it.”
“Do what you want,” I tell her. I don’t care about the goddamn house. It’s a house. She CAN do what she wants with it. I’ll love it. I’ll love it because she did it, and that is SO wrong. “Just...”
“Yes?”
“Nothin’ too fancy, you know?”
“Plain, simple lines. No clutter. Clean. Right?”
“Yup.”
“I can do that.”
“Is there anything you can’t do?” I ask her and want to bite my tongue afterwards, but she just laughs.
“That list would be the LONG list, Alex.”
“I don’t think so. So, like, everything is fine there. And it’s cool here, too. Just checkin’.”
“Any time.”
“Call if you need me.” Need me, Shi. Need me. Just a little.
“I will, Alex.”
“Have a good day.”
“You, too, honey. Bye.”
“Bye, Shi.”
I turn off the phone and there’s a knock on my door before someone opens it.
“I heard you talking.” It’s my mother. She heard me talkin’ to Shi and probably thought I was talkin’ to myself, I can tell just from the look on her face.
“Had to call the housekeeper.”
“Oh. Okay. Would you like some breakfast?”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there, ma.” She closes the door again as she leaves. I stare at the phone in my hand.
Breakfast. Anything but French toast.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
