With the necessity to move comes the opportunity to see new places & things, especially via well-established companies. I began working for an ISP after just turning 18. I never thought I’d be en route to Tennessee a little more than a year later. Yet, lo and behold, that’s only where my adventures began. Be it because of profession or health, whether fortunately or sadly… I’ve seen more corners of the country, and WORLD, than most ever will. There have come moments when “movement” was necessary. In more comfortable instances, opportunity knocked. At times, love beckoned. Though, in each & every case, nothing worked out… somehow defying promises, guarantees and sometimes even logic, at times seeing others abandon long-standing allegiances (even involving family).

Trust me……they say that ‘”they” all want to “see you win.”‘ Who in the hell even actually knows what that MEANS anymore, you know?

Better yet…… who even knows who “they” are these days?

One thing I didn’t appreciate…… the “slut bag” that my early-on girlfriend had become, and on my watch, no less. In my absence, she promiscuously went “c0ck-hunting,” which saw her evicted from my own premises quickly. The filthy, no-good two-facer ended up pregnant with a kid that wasn’t mine in the days of our relationship’s finality. The truth about the child was only legally revealed to me once she’d actually turned 18, and came asking me to participate in a DNA test for her.

Hojak tolerates no dishonesty, and absolutely rejects disloyalty. Though the child’s mother tried to stay involved, I denied every advancement. She didn’t even get close.

Moves throughout the country followed over the next several years. On tour, one romantic relationship lasted three & a half years, then went nowhere. Another after that lasted for only less than a year. In some cases, I even made special out-of-the-way trips… only to eventually be met with rejection & cynicism, once my neurological “malfunction” revealed itself. By the time I found a relationship that I was ready to “emotionally contribute” to… she wasn’t as ready as I was.

Though that relationship spanned nearly half a decade, bypassing each other in life was a sad inevitability. She’s helped me tremendously, since such a consequential division, and she’s now married (as am I)… though, if it weren’t for her & her husband, whether he knows it or not… I wouldn’t even be alive, let alone “hitched” today.

Once that last relationship broke down, I left California. David Hojak left for Michigan. And it took strength.

Though I found a job within a reasonable timespan of actually looking for one, commuting in those conditions was inhumane. Simply put, once I experienced a “Feels Like” temperature of close to -40º Fahrenheit for the first time, I knew… I NEEDED to leave Lion Country, and with haste.

I just wasn’t genetically engineered to withstand those types of conditions…. psychologically, OR physically. And even then, their football team sucked & regularly got their asses kicked by my favorites, their roads were more dangerous than California’s, and most of their people talked/looked funny, or did NOTHING and called it making a living.

Plus, all their “modern” music sucked. Add-in that 90% of their women were “morbid,” and 85% their men were former lumberjacks/auto mechanics enduring arctic winds. It definitely wasn’t my “culture.”

Meanwhile, my “wife-back-then” sat in front of her Xbox at home, all day, smoking the entirety of my “stash.” She’d “emotionally” “contribute” ever so occasionally…… monetarily, once every few months or so, when she felt like it. The reminder she persistently, consistently presented to me of how useless she was eventually demanded too much… both emotionally and financially.

At first, she offered me synchronicity. In the end, it was nothing but outright indifference. She definitely tells stories to this day about her horror story of a “Vegas Adventure.” She’d never honestly include details about her own ignorance of, or lack of attention to, my own medical conditions… or, her prioritization of a cat above a sickened husband. In all likelihood, things like this will sum up to why she dies alone…… as will her imaginary depression.

By the time she up & disappeared, part of me was relieved. Still, it took just more than 5 YEARS for our split to legally see finality, from start to finish. Talk about a wide-awake nightmare. It followed me from state-to-state-to-state-to-state for just more than half a decade. Only upon “western relocation homeward” was I sent a confirmation of its finality.

I knew that this woman would, in time, actually SEE me “malfunction”… and I walked into this arrangement outright wondering how she’d handle it. I had no idea how it’d go, and I waited for the answer to that question, for around 5 months…… to end 2018, then thru the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2019.

In the course of my time there , not only were all my gathered belongings from leaving Vegas “stolen”… but she preemptively filed a restraining order, then kicked me out. All I’d done was experience a neurological emergency in her apartment/town home/condo. Suddenly, police were arriving after days of her having disappeared, and they were telling me I had to leave immediately.

Irreplaceable hand-me-downs, family heirlooms, souvenirs of bloodline achievements… several generations’ worth of over-time family belongings… all gone, because I ever-so-momentarily trusted the wrong promiscuous, dishonest deviant.

In time, fate will surely handle her type’s deservings. On this, I have no doubts whatsoever.

Though it all went great socially at first, I spent my time there “waiting for the bomb to drop.” Finally, *that* night came, where I (apparently) got out of bed, mid-“episode”. Then, I walked out of my room, I unconsciously/deliriously fell down their staircase… and landed with a broken left arm in two places, four stairs from the bottom. Aunt & uncle panicked, instantly called 911 & had me hauled to the hospital.

Within days of ER/hospital admission, Uncle Fester & Aunt Ursula packed my things & delivered them to my room. I was informed that I was no longer welcome to stay with them… via a brief, handwritten note I wish I’d kept. Despite two attempts to call them, no answer… absolute silence. To this day, years later, we still haven’t talked. Before all this… I’d been “informed” that they had intentionally disconnected MY internet access, aiming to “usher me out” of their home. In the end, my “almost dying” in their home may have done my relatives a Satanic favor of sorts.

Yes…… that’s the family I call “mine,” un-fФϴking-fortunately.

Continued in Part 2......


“Breathing hard, and making hay…… yeah, this is living.”

~Eddie Vedder