Our Tuesday night excursion gave me the balls to actually sit next to Ashley in class, rather than just stare at her from afar, like some creepy stalker.  We were quickly becoming friends, Ashley and I.  We actually began hanging out fairly regularly (even outside of our stupid calc project) and found out we actually had a lot in common.

We both came from pretty shitty home lives, for starters.  She is the daughter of washed-up rock star Raife Davies, who was in an out of rehab for years before dying 3 years ago from a cocaine overdose.  Despite the lack of contact, Ashley was still surprisingly close with her father until he died.  When he died, he left Ashley more money than god and she’s now using it to her full advantage, though why she still lives on campus when she could have an amazing loft somewhere, I’ll never know.  Ashley’s mother, Christine, is a workaholic who never wanted Ashley to begin with, especially after Raife left Christine for a 24 year old Ukrainian girl named Yulia.  As a result, Christine’s response to every parenting problem was to just throw money at it and hope it goes away.  This is why Ashley is, essentially, a spoiled brat (sometimes).

As for me, my life began picture perfect, two older brothers (one adopted) and two loving parents.  I was born and raised in Ohio.  However, just before my sophomore year of high school my mother, who is a doctor, had an affair.  It wasn’t just an affair though, this woman had the nerve to have a long distance affair and then eventually leave us in Ohio to move to LA to live with Dr. Ben, the object of her affections.  She tells us she loves us and still calls us on birthdays and holidays and such, but she has a new life, more children, etc.  She apparently still has some moral obligation to us because she’s putting me through school.  I don’t understand it and I probably never will, but here I am nonetheless.   When my mother left, my father began drinking.  Now let me just say that Arthur Carlin is one of the sweetest men alive, but I guess he had a drinking problem when he was younger.  He was a teen counselor for a very long time, but I guess my mother leaving him was a breaking point.  He began drinking very heavily and goes in and out of depression.  Keeping a job has been hard for him, though the last few months he’s been able to hold on to a pretty good job and basically just keep his head above water.