I write this blog in bitterness, in absolute certainty that the so called former friend will never read it.
I will name names, I don't give a crap. I am just that mad.
I never had many friends, never really cared for having them. I am a solitary wolf, I am a loner, I like being in my own company, and I generally prefer to be alone rather than with fickle friends or two faced people. Martin was a great friend. We met in primary school, and we used to be outsiders. We spent our breaks talking about music while the other boys and girls were busy being stupid, as you usually are at that age.
We went to the same secondary school and went to art class, where our music and film conversations continues. Then I moved and we lost sight of each other.
We met again two years later when I had just started a band along with another friend of mine. We were looking for a guitarist to replace our two guitarists who didn't have a clue. Martin had a clue. He knew music, he knew theory. God, he wasn't the most exciting drummer, he strummed as blankly as a whiteboard and avoided solos because, I always guessed, he never had the balls for them. But, bottom line is, I did admire his compulsive way of playing the guitar. There was no feeling in his guitar playing, he had no stage presence and more often then not, he put us all in a bad mood during band practice. But he would come up with some complex riffs which would make the song sound different.
We spent a while creating a certain sound with the band. Later on, when we became Lexington 125 and got a second guitarist, we established a kind of punky sound that was very new wave. Funky basslines, impulsive/compulsive guitar playing, my slutty vocals and davy's metronomic drumming. Things seemed to go fine.
Martin and I used to spend a lot of time together. We went to gigs together, Jonathan Richman, the Human League. We spent days together. We planned things for the band together. Then, from one day to the next, he became alienated.
He had always been chasing this moustached girl with a Yoko Ono type of personality. He bought a bass and started playing with the two ugliest people to ever start a rock band. He busked and played in small venues in town, disastrously. Friends of ours complained about the way they murdered some of the songs that we, as Lexington 125 would have been playing at the same time.
They went up to play a protest festival, and it was pretty awkward that, during the recording of our EP, the guy who did the recording who had been at the festival, had heard of this three piece band that had gone on stage with the worst sound and had had everyone talking. That was his band they were talking about, though he never knew.
So, after about 700 euro was spent on the recording, most of them out of my pocket, a 200 euro photoshoot with his ugly depressing long face was completed and after all the two years together in the same band and all the work that was put into the planning for the lauch of our EP and the start of our gigs to coincide with the start of the college year, my good friend Martin decides that he wants to quit the band.
Last weekend would have signalled the start of weekly band practices to prepare for what was shaping up to be a good month gig-wise. In the space of two days we had had two good offers to play, both of which were of course declined after this weekend. You see, on the day of practice, we couldn't get to him. We went to his house, called every phone number we possibly could, and he never answered. We did practice without him. The bassist Cian was so annoyed he actually said 'man, why don't we just get rid of him. He's shit anyways. He plays shitty riffs and makes them look difficult'. Davy had always wanted him out. James just shook his head in disappointment. He did agree with me, though, that Martin was, as far as we were concerned, irreplaceable.
Saturday night we went out and met a guy we knew and who knows Martin as well. We find out he has been badmouthing all of us, and telling everyone how bad we were, and that's why he quit the band 'months ago'. I got mad instantly. After all these years as friends, I was ready to put it all behind and kill him. It's one thing him telling us to our faces - another to hear it from someone else.
I could hardly believe it also because the guy practically started the band, and now with this move right when I had said things were going to happen and after we spent something like 1000 euro on getting it ready (most of that money was mine too), he just walks away and leaves us hanging. On our Facebook conversations, he even seems to want to come across as the victim.
From one day to the other, Martin has gone from being one of my very few best friends to being the person I despise most in the world. He is nothing but scum. He is the guy that might prevent me from achieving my dreams, after I thought he would have wanted to achieve them just as bad as me. He is nothing but a backstabber. Right now, I hate him so much, that I realised what Jim Cornette meant when they asked him about what he thought of Vince Russo and he replied 'If I could figure out a way to kill him and not be done for it, I would. But it's not possible, so we're in the clear'.
Now I wonder, is it really ever worth sharing anything with another human being? Is it really worth it having a friend, when no matter what a great friend they are, they're always going to end up letting you down and stabbing you in the back? Is it ever worth dreaming when someone is always going to end your dreams, even the person you thought would have killed to have that same dream come true?
I realise not that it's really not worth it. If Martin let me down, after all we went through and after everything we did together, our adventures and misadventures, everyone will let me down. I am forever embittered and hateful. I'm a natural born actor, I can get away with never letting it show. But fact of the matter is, I would much rather be left alone now.
