Live Through This/ Liam Gallagher

CHAPTER TWENTY

Do you ever feel like running away? Like the whole world is after you in one way or another? That's how it felt for me, Avery Pince in 1995. A year I didn't want, or like, a year that had started out with almost everyone I knew in a slump. I'd cancelled the three tour legs that had been planned and gone to fuck off in Seattle, for one reason only. Courtney Love.

It was the start of 1995, WaitTime was set to be on their biggest tour yet, however, it had all been cancelled. People were angry and I gave the same answer every time, "if Pearl Jam can cancel their tour for a man they barely knew, why can't I do the same?" Except I actually knew the parties involved. Courtney Love and I had been attached at the hip since 1992, meeting at the VMAS that year as her husband, my friend had introduced us.

I liked her "fuck you!" type attitude and liked our mutuals, I liked the drugs, the music, everything. Plenty of people could tell you that I spent my time with the Cobain's. Hell, my phone bills and photo albums were filled with them. And losing a friend because you didn't do enough and were on a fucking tour, all the way in France is the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Despite having been famous for nearly 5 years now, I still believed I had privacy, a thin shroud of respect between me and the media. But now there was none. People were always in my face, asking me things I shouldn't have even heard. So I'd moved in with Courtney. Figured we could deal with it together, help the other cope. But sure, one person deep into junk and the other nearing addiction don't mix. Especially with a baby around. I tried to comfort her, but eventually, playing babysitter while the media calls your friend a murderer and she's off getting high, didn't work for me.

Finally, I fucked off to a therapist and decided I needed to sort some of my shit straight. Only, this is when my life seems to fall apart more. See? I had isolated myself from everyone, not really muttering a word to anyone who wasn't a doctor or my manager. And some people had decided this was selfishness.

Karlie. Always a vicious little thing, never understood the world never had a vendetta against her, or that her attitude led to her own diminishing reputation. It had nothing to do with me, or anyone else but her.

When I cancelled tour, flew to the States in a hurry to meet and try and preserve my best friend in late 1994, she thought it was because I was bored of performing with her.

Of course, it couldn't have been the passing of a friend, the widowed addict with a baby or anything like that.

My heart had been too swollen to deal with her, or to put up with whatever venom she would've chosen to spew.

It was December 1995. Things seemed to be looking up, it was the Holiday season and I was in LA, had just finished recording the new album, I was seeing someone and picking up myself, trying to not remind myself of what had happened over a year ago.

Then the new issue of Rolling Stone dropped. And smack dab across the cover was a photo Karlie, ripping a photo of me in half. Then I got to read all about how the tour was cancelled out of "pure anger" about her Rolling Stone cover. It was a magazine cover, anyone who knew me would've known I didn't give two shits about that.

What I did care about were the photos.

Over the course of two weeks, someone began leaking my personal photos, of me at my worst, whether it be in a hotel room, my apartment, doing whatever, whoever. I didn't know it had existed. Until they were given to nearly every single tabloid I could think of.

Karlie had stolen and sold my images, personal thoughts and memorabilia to the public. My most private moments of uncomfort, grief and numbness were out there, not counting the sexual ones.

I spent my holidays in hiding, as anytime I went out, somebody found the time to call me a name, tell me how I wasn't a good person, or ask who I had even been photographed with. It was a panic attack based environment and I couldn't stand it.

The anxiety was killing me. So I decided to disappear, a month before WaitTime's album would drop. On New Years Day. All it took was a simple phone call, and it had all been arranged.

Nobody in Britain gave two fucks about grunge, or that was what Damon Albarn had told me. I'd be in a safe haven, away from everything I had started to hate at the moment, and without hesitation I left.

Almost everyone and everything without saying goodbye. They weren't worth it to begin with, right? For in my moments of pain, or someone else's, they had looked away.

In my mind, I had nothing left to lose.

In my mind I had no one.

In my mind, I wouldn't be found in London.

That was, until I found out that Britpop existed. And that I was living with the frontman of the biggest Britpop band.

I was tired of media harassment and asshole reporters, shitty people and American culture, so I left. All of this ran through my mind as I sat under the covers in Liam's bed the next day. I sighed, turning over to plant a kiss on his shoulder, the silky sheets rubbing against our bare skin. "Morning partner.." I say sitting up, not bothering to let the comforter cover anything.

He groans, turning over and says "Stop waking up so damn early. It's not good for us, now come back under. It's warm in here." He says, reaching for my hand and pulling me back down under, keeping me warm again. These moments made me feel good, as if he was perhaps committed to the idea of us.  But I couldn't stop the nagging feeling that was telling me I was wrong.