San Francisco was cool for those few weeks.  I hung out in some of the more colourful parts of town, lost myself to copious amounts of drugs and booze in some of the dodgier parts as well on some nights…  My time away from LA was a mix of getting away from LA and losing myself to my own darkness.  Wallowing in self-destruction and self-defeat.  Part of me knew I was wrong, cowardly even, for leaving LA like I did… without saying anything, without facing anyone.  And as I lost myself in a drugged-induced haze, or even just to my own darkness without the drugs and booze, the memories came flooding back.  My mom, foster homes, children’s homes, shelters, the streets… everything I had always run from, was still running from, all of it stuck in my head no matter where I ran to…  And then I woke up one morning and realised it was time to leave, time to pull myself out of this stupid stupor I put myself in… and then I pointed my little pick-up towards Lake Tahoe.  I had never been to mountains before.  In fact, the only places I had ever been was around Austin and around LA.  I had in the last three weeks been farther away from anywhere that had been home.  And someone had been talking about Lake Tahoe when I was in a café, and it was intriguing, so off I headed. 

And then I found myself sitting in mountains, and that whole pine tree smelling thing you heard about turned out to be true…  and it was also true that you could score good pot and shrooms in Tahoe.  Unfortunately, all that tip money I had been stashing away in the glove compartment over time was starting to run thin.  So Tahoe also meant back to sleeping in my truck.  Not that that was hard to do.  I fell in with some pot heads and joined them, partying for another week or so in amongst the trees and the cooling weather.  At the end of that week or so, the drugs and most of the money ran out.  It was decision making time.  Stay up this way and start again, or head back to LA, back to the life I had created there.  I was on my third free refill of coffee at a diner, contemplating my options when I turned the phone back on for the first time since that day on the ferry.  A message from each of the girls, saying they were glad I contacted Bette and hoped I’d be back soon.  The last message was from Bette.  Instead of saying anything about my welfare or absence, it was a normal message, saying family night was tomorrow night at Alice’s and she hoped to see me there.  That was it.  Pulling the family card on me, plain and simple.  And it was all it took.  The decision was made before I ever had to think about it.