14 years - Axl Rose x OC

43

"Baby I know you understand

Oh yeah, you're gonna watch me

Watch me while I go down

Ooh, you're gonna watch me

Watch me while I drown."

Drown Soda - Hole

---August 2nd, 1991

When they'd finally made it back to Los Angeles County for the shows in Inglewood, playing at the Great Western Forum, Lita decided to leave the tour briefly and escape to Malibu. Less than two weeks had gone by since her entire life had turned upside down–worse than when she'd left Indiana or Olympia, headed for a new, unknown, place.

Then, those problems, well, they were extenuating circumstances in her opinion. One just doesn't decide that, having already settled in a new state, where their only daughter has friends and, finally, a real life, that they should pack up and head to the coast. It was all bullshit, that excuse about her father getting a new job—that they just had! to move. He was let go before Christmas of '77 and remained jobless until early '79. By late August of that year Lita had fled for California.

Another extenuating circumstance: one just doesn't snort a few lines of cocaine and head down the highway, speeding, for a new life. Well, Lita didn't. She'd been planning it for years, and it would always be out of her control. These were things in her life, planned or not, that she just had to push through–nobody was going to be there for her when she fucked up and couldn't pick up the pieces anymore.

That wasn't how Lita Monroe saw this current situation. Instead of pushing through some conflict brought on without her knowledge (like moving or how taking drugs at such a young age would become a catalyst to all the other bad decisions in her life, for which there were many), this problem she'd put herself into presented in existential circumstances (which was weird, since the album had just gone platinum, even after they all broke up).

And she just needed to get away.

So Lita, once the tour bus had touched down in Los Angeles, had bound west, up the highway, toward Malibu, to escape. It felt like a breath of fresh air: being in the Malibu hills, with the salty air whipping in her face and the seagulls flying down the hill around the coastline, the sun on a cloudy day peeking through the sky to hit her with its light.

It was the perfect exchange for the sweat-infused tour bus seats, humid fanned air circulating around them all, the unopenable windows, and the mixed emotions that radiated off of each person, creating a thermal boiling pot that threatened to explode like Mount Saint Helena, up in the Bay Area, used to, but had long since stopped.

Opening the door to the home she hadn't seen in four months reminded Lita of the hardships she always faced when touring: things like being away for extended periods of time always barred her from having normal things, i.e. normal human relationships or pets. Seeing the empty rooms...oh, it would've been so much easier if her and Axl could've been normal people, with normal families. Of course their music was the reason they could afford such a nice house, but Lita still loved to dream.

Lita just wanted to stay there...to not go back on tour. She wasn't sure how much longer it would go on for, with the album coming out in a matter of months, they'd probably stay on for a few more months. But like she'd said, Lita was done. She didn't want to go on for six months to a year at a time, away from home, missing everything, changing cities every night while she sulked, knowing that her own band was done for. She loved every ounce of success Axl had been given, but it became a heavy burden on her recently.