Tales Of A RATT (45 page)

As a result, I fall into relationships pretty easily. I always figure, we'll eventually gel really well. I mean, how can you not, right? I'm so goddamned good-looking and irresistibly cute, and shit. How can the world not love me? Right? Right? Nevermind...

I'm obviously a pretty demanding person. Even my family says so. Carol, my sister, is always "Well, you know, it's always gotta be Bobby's way!” But, I'm a guy with ideas.

I'm like, "You got ideas? Let's hear them! Maybe they're better ideas than mine.”

"Nah! You'll just shoot them down.”

"No, tell me. I want to know.”

"Well, I think we could…”

"Nah, that sucks! I don't want to do that!” Like I said, at least I have a sense of humor!

I've always been the kind of person that is the epicenter. Not in an arrogant or conceited sort of way, but there's always a core of people that spreads out from me. So many of my friends have other friends that they met through me. I mean, down to getting married and having kids, because they met while hanging out at the lake with me, or going out to Catalina with me, or hitting a club where I introduce them.

There are people who are lifelong friends of mine who had no idea the other existed until they run into each other at some sort of function I'm having. I'm a catalyst. I'm that radical stimulus that causes a chain reaction. I'm an impetus. That's right! I had to find a fucking thesaurus to describe what I am, but that's me. An impetus. So, go forth and befriend, for the impetus has spoken in your life. Whatever, right?

It's always been that way, though. It's a very interesting ride. A whole 6 degrees of Bobby Blotzer.

It's the end of the 2005 tour, and I've been flying Misty2 out, and flying to Texas to see her. We've been trying to figure out what the next move is going to be. Is she going to move to LA? Can she handle that? Am I going to Texas? The idea of moving to Texas wasn't on the menu until I went there and started hanging out.

I knew some of her friends, like Trey and Tanya Gabler, and Rick and Daphne Ward, and I just started cruising around the place while she was at work.

People tend to trip out a little bit when they run into you in those situations. Anytime I would pull up to an average situation in Texas, I was a celebrity. To them, they're meeting a rockstar that they grew up loving. In Texas, I got that a lot. Lots of people coming up and doing the fanfare thing, which I love. I've always loved that stuff when they're nice and cool about it. I love our fans. They put food on my table and make me feel that I matter.

Texas was a great place to experience that. I'd hang with our friends while she was working, enjoying the local flare, and before long I started cruising real estate. Are you kidding me? With the real estate prices in Texas, how could you not? I'm talking about a huge house by California standards. Four thousand square feet on an acre and a half of land...in the city and for less money!

I started thinking, I could go and cash a California house out, move to Texas, and be cruising in an amazing pad. I was looking at stuff that was comparable to what I had in California, and it only cost $190,000. That's a third of what I paid in Canyon Country.

I was seriously considering it. Then again, I do that a lot. Wherever I go in this country, I'm always checking out the real estate situation. California, Texas, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Doesn't matter. I'll check out the real estate. Anywhere in these great United States.

I got to thinking; the housing market in California was as high as it had ever been. I had enough equity built up that I could sell the place, move to Texas and have an even bigger place with a new life and a new girl, and, there would still be money left over to open a recording studio, which is something I've always been interested in.

To leave California was ludicrous. I'd always been there. My sons were there. Almost all my friends were there.

But, coming out of the Misty situation, I had to distance myself from it. I still love the woman, but it's a tainted, broken kind of thing. I missed the 5 and half years we were together, and the things we did. You build something like that, and you get accustomed to it. It feels comfortable, even if it doesn't work on any level.

In Texas, I had Misty2, and while I would eventually get into it with her as well, I still loved her. She was very good to me, and I thought we had a lot of growth potential there. I thought that if I opened the recording studio, business would come.

It did, too. Big time.

I sold my house in Canyon Country. I still had to pay off an equity line that I'd taken out to build a pool, and I spent a little elsewhere, but I walked away with about $220,000.

I was back in the real estate side of things.

I had a moving company drop a big trailer in front of the house, and I filled it top to bottom, front to back, then loaded up my truck and off we went. The company dropped the trailer off at my new place in Texas, and it was a done deal.

I was a Texan.

I bought a beautiful place on Villa Chianti Ct. in Cypress, TX, just outside Houston. Villa Chianti…just like the wine. Misty2, moved in, and it was pretty cool. The place was amazing. Four thousand two hundred square feet, on a fantastic piece of property.

I loved the house, loved the yard, and Misty didn't sweat me too much like the other wives / girlfriends tended to do. She never got on my ass about the drinking.

She was just, "God, you were a fucking piece of work, last night.”

"Yeah, I know. Sorry 'bout that.”

Misty2 was really good to me. At this point in life, I have aches and pains from years of playing drums, golfing, and my various other sport activities. She was always rubbing my back, or my hands, working the stiffness out of muscles that hadn't seen that kind of attention in a very long time. She was completely faithful, a great cook, and lovingly attentive. She kept the house tight, and worked a good job for good pay.

She had that "southern woman" mentality down to a science.

There's something about southern women that makes them stand out from the rest of the pack, and Misty2 is no different. They are very caring, loving, family oriented women by a rule, but the flip side of that is they are extremely possessive. They always want to know where you are and what you're doing.

That will get on your nerves pretty quick.

I'm the kind of person, that where my woman is concerned, I take care of things. I expect her to contribute to the cause, don't misunderstand. I'm not a sugar daddy for anyone. But, as long as she keeps a job, and chips in on the bills, helping to keep the house in order, I generally take care of everything else. I'm the lion; I'll take the lion's share.

Misty2 started getting a little weird, nonetheless. For instance, I bought this huge, sprawling house that had a game room upstairs in the front of it. Our master suite was downstairs in the back. Once or twice a month, I'd have the guys from the bar over. We'd go back to my place and shoot pool all night. You know. Drink beer, and maybe do a couple of bumps of blow.

While I never buy blow, and I never possess it, occasionally if we're drunk and a friend has it, I do a bump or two. Like my friend "Good Time George.” He's part of my Havasu crew,.

When I'm drunk, he'll make a gesture like, "Hey, you wanna do a snapper?”

"Yeah, why not?”

It wakes me up to do more drinking. That's all.

So, we'd be doing that sort of shit up in the game room, and Misty2 would come up with her arms folded and her frowning face, and the whole room would deflate. Such a killjoy.

At first, I would be, "Oh, what's wrong? What's wrong?” all concerned. She's like, "Well, it's really loud.”

After enough times of her doing this shit, it turned into, "What the fuck are you doing up here?”

She'd make more hassles and bang on the ceiling. Finally, I had to sit down with her. "Look, I understand that you have to work in the morning. But, it's Wednesday night. I went out with the guys. We came back here to play pool. This is who I am. It's what I like to do. I bought a big house with a game room so I could utilize it. It's not every night. It's once in a while. So, go to bed, put on the headphones, or put a pillow over your head, whatever you need to do. But, do not come up to that room like that again.”

It was all to no avail.

My phone rang constantly with calls from Misty2. She always wanted to know what I was doing. I could get up from the couch, and she would be, "Where are you going?”

"Nowhere. To take a piss. Stop asking me that all the time.”

It was really kind of an insecure, squeaky mousy kind of approach, and my patience with it was wearing thin.

I'm sure that a lot of this is me, but there is something that happens in my head, and these women begin to get on my nerves. It's happened to a degree with all of them.

I feel bad that I hurt Misty2 with our breakup. She didn't understand, but it came down to a chemistry thing. I tried to explain it the best I could. We just weren't compatible. I love her as a friend, and would hate to kill that. In hindsight, I should have left our relationship alone, and kept it where it was.

As friends. Then she moved out to LA In October of 2007. Oh, boy! Is anything ever going to be easy?

In the end, we just didn't fit together. We were different animals. Even when things are progressing well, sometimes it isn't enough.

I don't think I was totally over Misty. Because, just like my ordeal with Traci, Misty knew how to stay visible in my life. She knew how to keep just enough of my attentions that I couldn't completely let her go. I'm the kind of guy that when I love a woman, I love her forever. Regardless. To this day, I still dream about Jeni. I have dreams of all the women I’ve dated seriously. They may not be erotic dreams, if fact they never are, but it tells me that I love those women enough, that on some level my subconscious will never let them go.

I will say that Traci was definitely the worst. When I say worst, I mean that she epitomizes all of the deliberate, destructive things that people will do to kill a relationship. Despite all of that, though, I still have a glimmer of love for her. I seem helpless to end those things completely.

It is a curse. I'd love to be able to simply fuck and forget. Well...sometimes.

This was a tough time for me, all around. Misty2 and I were skidding, and not long before, I had received some horrible news about my Mum.

Around March 15, 2006, Misty2 and I were at a golf tournament in Houston when I got a phone call. They had just found two tumors on my Mum's brain, and one on her lung. She was in stage four on the cancer scale, and there are only four stages to be had. She literally had months to live, and likely it would be less.

I immediately got on a plane and headed for Pittsburgh. I brought my sons back there, but she wasn't coherent, which sucks, because they didn't get to say goodbye. After the boys went back home, I did get the chance to talk to her. She came around enough to communicate.

It was horrible to watch how she had become a withered, shell of herself. The cancer went so fast, it was terrifying. She had quit smoking five months earlier, and she was so proud of it, but the damage was done. She had been smoking since she was twelve, and she was seventy-three.

I'd had years to prepare for it, because I knew it was coming. She had been on oxygen for a long time, and I could see her slowing down over the years. I think she probably had those tumors a lot longer than anyone knew. It wasn't until she started getting dizzy and fainting that she went in. They did the CAT-Scan and found the cancer.

Both of my brothers and my sister were in the hospital at her bedside. While I did break down over it, obviously, it wasn't devastating like it could have been. It's not like when someone's mother, in the prime of her life, is killed in a car wreck. That's something that is sudden and crushing to the survivors. This was a little different. We had enough time to come to terms. It's absolutely painful, don't misunderstand. It always will be. That's my Mum, and better or worse, I love her with everything I am.

My other siblings, Michael, Carol and Ronnie, all felt the same thing. It was a huge loss, but an accepted one.

Speaking back on Ronnie, he had always been a bit of an enigma to me. He was the straight man, clean cut, and penny loafers. We called him "The Collegiate", and he was the total opposite of what I wanted to be or believed in. He was very much introverted, and pretty much mean as hell to my sister and me.

Don't get me wrong, Ronnie's my brother, and I love him, but we only recently started talking again after eight years of not speaking to each other at all. Even when we were all together this last April while Mum was in her last days (she died on May 7, 2007), Ron was anti-social, and he would hardly acknowledge Pete or even talked to him.

He's been better since Mum passed. It was really sad to watch him break down and cry back there, because he knew that he'd fucked it all up. All these years, he had successfully alienated his whole family, and now Mum was gone.

I had a falling out with him back when Mum moved from California back to Pittsburgh. I had always taken care of things with Mum, mostly because I had the means. I bought her house, bought her cars, paid the bills and the mortgage, gave her whatever she needed. No one else had to take any responsibility.

Carol didn't have any means to give. She was a single mother with three kids, so money was really tight for her. I understood that, and would never have asked her for money. Ronnie, on the other hand, he was a different story.

When she was moving back, I gave him a call and was like, "Hey, why don't you throw some money toward this move for her?” I had set everything up. She was going to drive her car back there, and we were going to send a bunch of stuff boxed.

Ronnie sent her $50.

I was infuriated. Considering the fact he would never make any effort to stay in touch with my sister, or my little brother Michael, yet he would always make time for me, I counted that as a slap in the face.

Mike was Pete and my Mum's son, so he was technically my half-brother, but that never made any difference. He's my brother. Ronnie never saw it that way, and he simply wouldn't engage. It used to piss me off. If you're going to talk to me, then make calls to your other siblings as well. At least ACT like the rest of our family exists.