16, chapter 3
I closed the door to my bedroom and leant back against it, breathing out a long and staggered breath as the last of my tears poured down my face. I crawled onto my bed and grabbed my pillow, hugging it tightly to me as my tears dried up. I then realized that I was holding my favourite pillow and threw it across the room. Usually my favourite pillow made everything seem better again, but holding tightly onto a Kerplunk pillow with Green Day written on it didn't seem to help. Instead I grabbed another pillow, this one Green Day free and curled up in the corner of my bed, staring blankly into space. I'm not sure how much time passed, but after a while, I heard a soft knock at the door and my Mum's head peeked inside the room. She gave me a sympathetic smile and joined me on the bed. I tried to be angry at her but I melted into her arms as they wrapped around me.
"I'm so sorry honey," she said as she kissed the top of my head.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked, I was no longer crying but it felt good to sit in my mum's embrace, like a vulnerable little child who had fallen over in the playground.
"I'm not sure," she said. "I think it was kind of like, I've said that he's not going to be there and there's no going back on that now."
"But once I started to like Green Day, why didn't you tell me then? Wasn't it weird to see me basically worshipping my father with out even knowing it?"
"I was actually really happy to see you liking Green Day; I wanted to see you have some connection to your father even if it was too hard for me to tell you who he was."
I didn't say anything; I just sat there, thinking about what she had said. "Mike and I were talking and we think," Mum began after we sat in silence for a while. "Maybe you could go and spend a week with Mike at his house; you could meet Estelle and everyone and get to know your father." A week was pushing it a bit.
"Maybe... How about 2 days?" I suggested.
"5 days."
"3."
"4 days," Mum said this firmly and I knew that there was no point bartering with her any longer even though I didn't like the idea of having to spend four days with Mike when over the course of 16 years he hadn't managed to spare me five minutes of his time until now. I didn't say anything and Mum took that as my silent agreement to the idea and she moved to get off the bed. "I'll leave you on your own for a while," she said, kissing me once more on the head before leaving the room.
I sat on the edge of my bed, my hands on my knees, gazing at the carpet. I lifted my head to look around my room and found myself being looked at by my father from all sides of my bedroom. Somehow, Green Day didn't make anything alright anymore. Their music used to be somewhat of a cure all for all of my problems, but now, everything had changed. I got up off my bed and walked over to my CD rack, pulled out my copy of 'Nuthin' For No One' by The Disables, and slipped the disk into my stereo. I turned the volume up to its maximum volume and put 1039, which had been in my CD player, into its case which I left on my desk.
Over the next 15 minutes I took down most of my Green Day posters (I got bored from pulling them down carefully with out peeling off all of the paint on the walls so I decided to come back to the posters later), stripped the Kerplunk pillow case from my pillow; I removed my Green Day CDs from the CD rack and placed them on my desk, ready to take them out into Mum's CD collection in the living room later. I was looking at my framed, signed Kerplunk CD, deciding what to do with it, when there was a knock at my door. "Come in," I said. The door opened and Mike walked in, one hand stuffed in the pocket of his black jeans. He opened his mouth to say something but stopped to look around my room and take in what he was seeing. I saw his eyes gaze over the walls and linger on certain things; like the American Idiot block mount and green and black Green Day banner that was hanging on one wall that I hadn't yet taken down and the posters that were still up. He walked further into the room, tripping on a few things that were lying on my floor as he did so, I saw his eyes widen as he realized that he was tripping on a pair of old and slightly battered Green Day shoes. I watched him curiously as he walked over to my rather large black pin-up board which was covered with various pictures of me and my friends, Green Day concerts that I had been to, our band and clippings from magazines. I reached over to my bed side table for my stereo's remote and turned the music down until it became a quiet background noise. Mike continued to familiarize himself with his surroundings, I think it scared him a little that he had a daughter that was so evidently obsessed with his music, maybe he had never been in a fan's bedroom before, well since the time when they used to sleep on fans bedroom floors during their early tours. I saw him snicker at my mutilated Simple Plan poster that I had spent countless hours drawing on with Alex.
"I didn't realize you were still here," I said, sitting down on my bed.
"I'm going to stay the night on the couch," he said, taking a seat at my desk chair. "It's been a long day so I thought tomorrow we can talk more and organize when your gonna come and stay for a few days." I nodded and watched him out of the corner of my eye as he continued to discover different things I had around my room. "Wow," he breathed getting up to get a closer look at my Kerplunk CD. "I think I remember that day. It was just after Kerplunk came out; we were all sitting around having a few drinks and your mum came in with her brand new copy of it, saying that she wanted autographs now because in a few years, when we were really famous, it would be worth a lot of money," he grinned at the memory and walked back to the desk chair that he had been previously sitting at.
I looked out the small window and noticed how dark it was. My Harry Potter clock showed that it was getting late. I yawned. "Ok, I'm going to bed now," I said, hinting for Mike to leave.
"Oh, ok," he said. "Good night." He didn't get up.
"You can go now."
"Oh right," he said getting up and almost tripping over my red and black bean bag in his haste to get out of the room. "Sorry," he added, peeling a poster that had gotten stuck to the bottom of his foot off his shoe. The door closed behind him and I sighed, falling back so I was lying on my caseless pillow.
A minute or two before, I had every intention of going to sleep, but once Mike left the room, I was all of a sudden wide awake. I was bored of taking down all my Green Day stuff, so I made sure there were no actual pictures of the band on my walls, not bothering to take down things with just the bands name on them. I walked over to my book case and pulled my photo albums off the shelf. I sat down in my bean bag and opened the first album. I flicked through the pages, looking at all the pictures of me growing up. My mother wasn't in a lot of them, but that was mostly because she had been taking the pictures, not because she hadn't been there. Mike wasn't in any of them. I got up off the bean bag and walked over to my desk where I pulled an empty photo album from the bottom drawer. I then crossed the room again, back to my comfy spot in the bean bag.
***
The next morning, when I awoke, I strained my ears to hear if anyone else was awake. I could hear the dull murmuring of the T.V. and the clinking of a spoon and a china cup so I assumed that both Mum and Mike were awake, watching some T.V. and drinking a cup of coffee. I picked my cell phone up off the bedside table to check the time. The digital display read 9:30 so I decided to send messages to Alex and James, asking them to meet me for coffee in half an hour. I picked out a pair of three-quarter black pants from my drawer and pulled them on. My phone beeped, signaling to me that I had gotten a message. I quickly chucked a black Ramones t-shirt on as I heard my phone beep again. I grabbed my cell and read the messages, both saying that my friends could go for coffee and that they would come over to my place in 20 minutes time. I pulled my battered black and red converse onto my feet and swept my hair back into a ponytail, not bothering to brush it.
I walked out into the living room, knowing that Alex would be at the front door any minute and not in 20 as we had planned. "Good morning," Mike said from his spot on the couch where he was watching what appeared to be MTV.
"Morning," I muttered, walking over to the fridge and taking out the milk. "Where's my mum?" I asked, taking a swig of the milk straight from the carton.
"She's having a shower," he said with a look of disgust on his face which I'm not sure was because of my milk drinking habits or the crap that was on MTV.
"What is this crap?" he asked, gesturing to the T.V. as someone knocked at the front door.
"It's MTV, what do you expect?" I said, walking over to the door and opening it to reveal Alex, her short, naturally black pixie style hair do looking particularly spiky and cool. She was wearing a plain black t-shirt underneath her famous light coloured three-quarter overalls (covered in badges and patches) and her falling apart low-cut black chucks. Her green eyes sparkled wide as she threw her arms around me before holding me at arms length and shaking me saying,
"I need coffee!"
"I'd say you've had enough already," I said. I heard Mike chuckle at our antics as I shut the door behind Alex who had just realized, at the sound of his laughter, that Mike was also in the room. She blushed and opened her mouth to speak, but closed it when she couldn't find the words she was looking for.
I quickly came to her rescue.
"Mike, this is Alex, my best friend. Alex, this is, well, Mike." Mike was obviously used to meeting shocked fans so he got up and shook Alex's hand to try and break the tension.
"You play bass right?" he asked. "I was watching you guys play yesterday. You were all really good."
"Thanks," Alex said. I was expecting her to say something else, but for once in her life she seemed unable to say anything.
"Ok," I said breaking a silence that had quickly set in. "Let's go to my room." I pulled Alex away.
We closed the door to my room, Alex sat down in my bean bag and I flopped onto my bed, which remained unmade from when I had gotten up earlier that morning. "So what happened with Mike?" she asked, looking around at my walls, taking in the sudden lack of Green Day. "You seem to be more calm with him now."
"I'm trying," I said. "We had a big talk yesterday and he kind of explained everything, it was going well until I couldn't control my anger and went sort of mental at him."
"I can imagine that," Alex stated, grinning like a mad man. I glared at her.
I heard a knock at the front door announcing James' arrival, so we went out into the living room where Mike was already talking to James, who was managing not to freeze up when talking to the famous bass player like Alex had. "Hey," said James, who was wearing a pair of baggy red tartan pants with suspenders dangling around his knees, a sex pistols t-shirt and black Dr Martins, his shaggy black hair (not naturally black like Alex's) falling over his face slightly, bright blue streaks visible, some of it shadowing his grey eyes. He hugged us both.
"Let's go," I said.
"I concur," Alex nodded, pushing us towards the door. "I want coffee."
"I'll be back in a minute," I said, quickly jogging back to my room. I grabbed my bag and the photo album that I had been working on the night before. When I got back to the lounge room, Alex and James said bye to Mike and walked out the door. I walked over to Mike and handed him the photo album.
"Here," I said nervously, "I just thought you might want some photos of me growing up and stuff." Without saying anything more I left him standing there holding the album and made my way down to James' beat up old Combi.
"I'm so sorry honey," she said as she kissed the top of my head.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked, I was no longer crying but it felt good to sit in my mum's embrace, like a vulnerable little child who had fallen over in the playground.
"I'm not sure," she said. "I think it was kind of like, I've said that he's not going to be there and there's no going back on that now."
"But once I started to like Green Day, why didn't you tell me then? Wasn't it weird to see me basically worshipping my father with out even knowing it?"
"I was actually really happy to see you liking Green Day; I wanted to see you have some connection to your father even if it was too hard for me to tell you who he was."
I didn't say anything; I just sat there, thinking about what she had said. "Mike and I were talking and we think," Mum began after we sat in silence for a while. "Maybe you could go and spend a week with Mike at his house; you could meet Estelle and everyone and get to know your father." A week was pushing it a bit.
"Maybe... How about 2 days?" I suggested.
"5 days."
"3."
"4 days," Mum said this firmly and I knew that there was no point bartering with her any longer even though I didn't like the idea of having to spend four days with Mike when over the course of 16 years he hadn't managed to spare me five minutes of his time until now. I didn't say anything and Mum took that as my silent agreement to the idea and she moved to get off the bed. "I'll leave you on your own for a while," she said, kissing me once more on the head before leaving the room.
I sat on the edge of my bed, my hands on my knees, gazing at the carpet. I lifted my head to look around my room and found myself being looked at by my father from all sides of my bedroom. Somehow, Green Day didn't make anything alright anymore. Their music used to be somewhat of a cure all for all of my problems, but now, everything had changed. I got up off my bed and walked over to my CD rack, pulled out my copy of 'Nuthin' For No One' by The Disables, and slipped the disk into my stereo. I turned the volume up to its maximum volume and put 1039, which had been in my CD player, into its case which I left on my desk.
Over the next 15 minutes I took down most of my Green Day posters (I got bored from pulling them down carefully with out peeling off all of the paint on the walls so I decided to come back to the posters later), stripped the Kerplunk pillow case from my pillow; I removed my Green Day CDs from the CD rack and placed them on my desk, ready to take them out into Mum's CD collection in the living room later. I was looking at my framed, signed Kerplunk CD, deciding what to do with it, when there was a knock at my door. "Come in," I said. The door opened and Mike walked in, one hand stuffed in the pocket of his black jeans. He opened his mouth to say something but stopped to look around my room and take in what he was seeing. I saw his eyes gaze over the walls and linger on certain things; like the American Idiot block mount and green and black Green Day banner that was hanging on one wall that I hadn't yet taken down and the posters that were still up. He walked further into the room, tripping on a few things that were lying on my floor as he did so, I saw his eyes widen as he realized that he was tripping on a pair of old and slightly battered Green Day shoes. I watched him curiously as he walked over to my rather large black pin-up board which was covered with various pictures of me and my friends, Green Day concerts that I had been to, our band and clippings from magazines. I reached over to my bed side table for my stereo's remote and turned the music down until it became a quiet background noise. Mike continued to familiarize himself with his surroundings, I think it scared him a little that he had a daughter that was so evidently obsessed with his music, maybe he had never been in a fan's bedroom before, well since the time when they used to sleep on fans bedroom floors during their early tours. I saw him snicker at my mutilated Simple Plan poster that I had spent countless hours drawing on with Alex.
"I didn't realize you were still here," I said, sitting down on my bed.
"I'm going to stay the night on the couch," he said, taking a seat at my desk chair. "It's been a long day so I thought tomorrow we can talk more and organize when your gonna come and stay for a few days." I nodded and watched him out of the corner of my eye as he continued to discover different things I had around my room. "Wow," he breathed getting up to get a closer look at my Kerplunk CD. "I think I remember that day. It was just after Kerplunk came out; we were all sitting around having a few drinks and your mum came in with her brand new copy of it, saying that she wanted autographs now because in a few years, when we were really famous, it would be worth a lot of money," he grinned at the memory and walked back to the desk chair that he had been previously sitting at.
I looked out the small window and noticed how dark it was. My Harry Potter clock showed that it was getting late. I yawned. "Ok, I'm going to bed now," I said, hinting for Mike to leave.
"Oh, ok," he said. "Good night." He didn't get up.
"You can go now."
"Oh right," he said getting up and almost tripping over my red and black bean bag in his haste to get out of the room. "Sorry," he added, peeling a poster that had gotten stuck to the bottom of his foot off his shoe. The door closed behind him and I sighed, falling back so I was lying on my caseless pillow.
A minute or two before, I had every intention of going to sleep, but once Mike left the room, I was all of a sudden wide awake. I was bored of taking down all my Green Day stuff, so I made sure there were no actual pictures of the band on my walls, not bothering to take down things with just the bands name on them. I walked over to my book case and pulled my photo albums off the shelf. I sat down in my bean bag and opened the first album. I flicked through the pages, looking at all the pictures of me growing up. My mother wasn't in a lot of them, but that was mostly because she had been taking the pictures, not because she hadn't been there. Mike wasn't in any of them. I got up off the bean bag and walked over to my desk where I pulled an empty photo album from the bottom drawer. I then crossed the room again, back to my comfy spot in the bean bag.
***
The next morning, when I awoke, I strained my ears to hear if anyone else was awake. I could hear the dull murmuring of the T.V. and the clinking of a spoon and a china cup so I assumed that both Mum and Mike were awake, watching some T.V. and drinking a cup of coffee. I picked my cell phone up off the bedside table to check the time. The digital display read 9:30 so I decided to send messages to Alex and James, asking them to meet me for coffee in half an hour. I picked out a pair of three-quarter black pants from my drawer and pulled them on. My phone beeped, signaling to me that I had gotten a message. I quickly chucked a black Ramones t-shirt on as I heard my phone beep again. I grabbed my cell and read the messages, both saying that my friends could go for coffee and that they would come over to my place in 20 minutes time. I pulled my battered black and red converse onto my feet and swept my hair back into a ponytail, not bothering to brush it.
I walked out into the living room, knowing that Alex would be at the front door any minute and not in 20 as we had planned. "Good morning," Mike said from his spot on the couch where he was watching what appeared to be MTV.
"Morning," I muttered, walking over to the fridge and taking out the milk. "Where's my mum?" I asked, taking a swig of the milk straight from the carton.
"She's having a shower," he said with a look of disgust on his face which I'm not sure was because of my milk drinking habits or the crap that was on MTV.
"What is this crap?" he asked, gesturing to the T.V. as someone knocked at the front door.
"It's MTV, what do you expect?" I said, walking over to the door and opening it to reveal Alex, her short, naturally black pixie style hair do looking particularly spiky and cool. She was wearing a plain black t-shirt underneath her famous light coloured three-quarter overalls (covered in badges and patches) and her falling apart low-cut black chucks. Her green eyes sparkled wide as she threw her arms around me before holding me at arms length and shaking me saying,
"I need coffee!"
"I'd say you've had enough already," I said. I heard Mike chuckle at our antics as I shut the door behind Alex who had just realized, at the sound of his laughter, that Mike was also in the room. She blushed and opened her mouth to speak, but closed it when she couldn't find the words she was looking for.
I quickly came to her rescue.
"Mike, this is Alex, my best friend. Alex, this is, well, Mike." Mike was obviously used to meeting shocked fans so he got up and shook Alex's hand to try and break the tension.
"You play bass right?" he asked. "I was watching you guys play yesterday. You were all really good."
"Thanks," Alex said. I was expecting her to say something else, but for once in her life she seemed unable to say anything.
"Ok," I said breaking a silence that had quickly set in. "Let's go to my room." I pulled Alex away.
We closed the door to my room, Alex sat down in my bean bag and I flopped onto my bed, which remained unmade from when I had gotten up earlier that morning. "So what happened with Mike?" she asked, looking around at my walls, taking in the sudden lack of Green Day. "You seem to be more calm with him now."
"I'm trying," I said. "We had a big talk yesterday and he kind of explained everything, it was going well until I couldn't control my anger and went sort of mental at him."
"I can imagine that," Alex stated, grinning like a mad man. I glared at her.
I heard a knock at the front door announcing James' arrival, so we went out into the living room where Mike was already talking to James, who was managing not to freeze up when talking to the famous bass player like Alex had. "Hey," said James, who was wearing a pair of baggy red tartan pants with suspenders dangling around his knees, a sex pistols t-shirt and black Dr Martins, his shaggy black hair (not naturally black like Alex's) falling over his face slightly, bright blue streaks visible, some of it shadowing his grey eyes. He hugged us both.
"Let's go," I said.
"I concur," Alex nodded, pushing us towards the door. "I want coffee."
"I'll be back in a minute," I said, quickly jogging back to my room. I grabbed my bag and the photo album that I had been working on the night before. When I got back to the lounge room, Alex and James said bye to Mike and walked out the door. I walked over to Mike and handed him the photo album.
"Here," I said nervously, "I just thought you might want some photos of me growing up and stuff." Without saying anything more I left him standing there holding the album and made my way down to James' beat up old Combi.
