BILLYCORGAN.COMの「the Confessions of Billy Corgan（ビリー・コーガンの告白）」が更新されています。MySpaceにアップされているものと同じです。
I am now a married man, and see my wife within the context of my blood family, she is me and I am her…in the 6 years of our being together before this, through the many ups and down of breaking up and making up; infidelities (from both sides), betrayals, and crushing moments of love in the best sense of the word, the path has all led to this day where we are now nestled together in this beautiful old home on a tree lined street…my biggest issue with Chris has always been her disappearing, and my motivation to be married has had everything to do with her insinuations that she cannot fully be herself or be present if she does not see the commitment from me towards the relationship…that is all in the past now, so I walk into this first day of marriage full in the belief that my wife will finally show up and be here with me, every cell of her body alive with faith and security…she can no longer complain of feeling unsafe, because I have given up all others and chosen to be with her…
The same living room that held the ceremony is now strewn with these hundred of gifts, and the entire piano and dining room table are covered with bouquets and vases filled with sumptuous flowers that fill the air with sweetness…somewhere in the midst of yesterday’s mayhem, a friend had tipped me off to look for a certain ‘delivery’…with Chris out of the room, I go looking for it, heading straight for the most elaborate and expensive looking flower arrangement, guessing right on the first try…it is from Courtney, and the card simply congratulates me on my marriage, but it is what it doesn’t say that speaks a thousand words, so I put the card in my pocket…we spend hours going through the gifts and cards, writing down each one so ‘thank you’s’ can be given specifically to the things given…I hold my breath when we get to Courtney’s bouquet, and lie to Chris by telling her there is no card, acting as if it is a curious occurrence for such a beautiful gift…
Before we leave on our trip together, Chris and I scramble to put together the artwork for the album…since we are set to leave the day after the day after the wedding, we only have this single afternoon to finish everything, or the album will be pushed back…any attempt to this point of working with the label to get what I want artwork-wise have proven to be frustrating and disappointing…so it falls on my shoulders at the last second to get it done, and Chris is recruited in because of her art school background…taking copies of a bunch of old photos, some of strangers and some of my family, we draw and write the lyrics on them in such a way to evoke a lost photo album (like one would find in somebody’s attic)…in some corners, the words are barely legible, in others they ring loud and clear…we work diligently for around 8 hours straight to finish, with us drawing on our hands and knees on the hardwood floor of the house… although I am not satisfied with the results, they will have to do…I choose to leave the back photo of the booklet untouched, a picture of my mom as a child, sitting on the moon at Riverview…
Our honeymoon, which we leave for the day after the day after the wedding, is to be in Cozumel, Mexico…it is my first visit internationally that isn’t with the band so I am a bit nervous because there is no one with us to handle all the arrangements necessary, but all goes well and we arrive at the hotel without incident…no one has informed us before we arrived that it is rainy season here, so we spend most of our time in the room watching the tropical downpours from the concrete slab they call a terrace…Cozumel itself is just a boring tourist town, so there is little to see or do of note, and we spend our evenings in some bar watching the NBA playoffs (they have a satellite dish)…even on my honeymoon, I am besieged by managers and record label people pushing for answers about the band and the small details surrounding the album’s artwork…the precedent set and the overriding constant is that nothing is sacred in my life, not my marriage, not my honeymoon, not my peace…
The highlight of our trip is to be a visit to the hallowed ground of Chichen Itza, the uncovered ruins of an ancient Mayan city…Chris books the trip, which includes a plane flight to get there, and casually mentions in passing that if I want to cancel, they need 24 hour notification…the trip itself is thrown in jeopardy when, less than a day before we are supposed to go, I come down with a most horrible stomach flu that has me throwing up almost hourly…it is now too late to cancel, and Chris begs me to just forget about the trip because she is so worried for me and my health…because of my stern Irish genetics (or is it Irish cheapness?), I insist that we go anyway…
The plane flight is a horrible affair, as we take the one hour ride on some apparent civil war leftover that has no air conditioning…I sweat profusely and feel like I am going to die any second, but I just keep telling myself over and over that this is my one chance to see this ancient city because I know I will never come back to Cozumel ever again as long as I live…we land in the middle of the jungle on what seems like a runway but would barely pass for a road…once at the gates of the city, we are herded into a English speaking group and assigned a tour guide, a squat native who cracks lame ‘American tourist type’ jokes that you know he has told a thousand times before…he tells us we must stay with the group in such a patronizing and condescending manner that I have begun to dislike him already…there is little shade as we head out to tour the grounds, and the temperature exceeds 100 degrees in the blazing sun…I feel awful, but the once hidden city is incredible to behold, and I am grateful that I have persevered in coming…I love history, and being in this spot helps me soak up some of this once amazing culture…Chris and I start to lag behind, attempting to avoid our guides quasi-political soliloquies about how the Americans keep taking advantage of the Mexicans (which I feel is self-serving and an unfair intrusion standing in the midst of a defunct culture)…somehow, he is trying to draw parallels between the invaders that destroyed this inspired society and the onset of American culture in Mexico, which in my heart is quite the stretch…
He sets the group up by giving them some information and pointing them on to the next spot, and then goes out of his way to come up to me at the rear of the group to say something…at first, he does his cute ‘come along little American tourist’ routine, which I a’int buying in my beleaguered state…when I don’t respond immediately to his nudge, he shifts his demeanor and tone to the angry man that he is, and gives me some shit about the rules…I tell him to fuck off, that I am ill, that I don’t need his vision of this place, I am doing quite well on my own, and if he presses me I will make sure that I vomit in his particular direction, to which he backs off and leaves us alone for the rest of the journey…this turns out to be a blessing, as Chris and I get to move through the site at our own pace, stopping in whatever shade we can find so that I can rest a bit…
Back from the honeymoon, we inquire about the 2 videos that were shot of the wedding…Hippie Bob tells us that, much to his dismay, his camera ran out of batteries after only one minute, so all he has is Chris coming down the stairs…this is so typical of him that we just laugh it off, figuring we are safe with my step-mothers husband’s camera…much to our dismay, he tells us that something went horribly wrong, and for whatever reason half the screen (the top half) of what he shot is missing, in it’s place only digital white noise…(the hired photographer of the wedding, an art school friend of Chris, has some dispute with Chris over the photos, so we never get the negatives from her, the only surviving pictures we get are just one small set like you would get from any grocery store)…
The day after I return from Mexico, I get an alarming phone call from my mother’s boyfriend…”something has happened with your mom, she is in the hospital”…when I press him for details, he tells me nothing bad has happened to her per se, but that she had a little ‘meltdown’ and the state is now trying to commit her…he tells me that he found her wandering my neighborhood, claiming that space aliens were after her, and not knowing what to do, he took her to a hospital, where he unknowingly had signed papers to have her commited…she is now on a 72 hour evaluation, and the state now refuses to let her go…I ask him “did something happen”, and all he can tell me is that maybe she took too many diet pills…
I finally get my mother on the phone from the hospital…”Get me the fuck out of here!” she growls, and asks me to please hurry and find a lawyer to pry her out…she is afraid she will miss work, and they will fire her if they find out…since one of my good friends is a lawyer, and I ask her to intervene on my mom’s behalf, and through name dropping and threats of legal action, springs Martha in about 8 hours…I never discuss this incident with my mom, because she doesn’t want to talk about it…to her, it is in the past…
Copyright 2005 Billy Corgan. All Rights Reserved. Do not do reproduce or publish in hard or electronic form without written authorization.
