Things in the book

Note: The first person comments in this section are primarily from the character “known as Dan” in the book, which will be in the default font. The club’s fact verifications will be bolded. References to sections will be italicized.

From “Dan”:

I was dating or married to “Suki” during the time when all of the events in her book happened. My comments below are from what I recall and things “Suki” said in court documents.

It is notable that “Suki” was not doing drugs or drinking at that time.

I need to be clear that this woman has hurt many people I care about. This document is not meant to be funny. There are times when jokes will be made, but they aren’t funny ha ha, they are funny awkward or sad.

Fun fact, I’m also the guy who paid for her adult braces.

Page 1

Kinda weird that the author needed to immediatley say “This story is true”, of course it’s true, that’s what we assume, why are you saying that? Is it not true? It’s not true? Someone made her do that.

Prologue

Pulling over and parking on the median for a police officer.

I wasn’t there, but I do remember talking about this. I think she had gone by Felix’ house in Berkeley because he had an extra couple of vicodin. 

However, the important thing is what Phil pointed out at the time, “Imagine if it was one of us scruffy men that drove like that and pulled over on the median, we’d be in jail right now.” He was alluding to the fact that she got away with it because she played the hot chick damsel in distress card. A lot.

Modeling and hanging out with rock stars

She never worked or made money as a model. Not sure why she flew to LA, if she did.

I don’t know if being a member of Laaz Rockit would make someone a rockstar, but that could have definately been in the Oakland hills. Maybe the guys from Le Mans or Tesla were there? Note: those are all hair bands.

Chapter 1.

She’s early for a speaking engagement at an AA session.

She’s never early. She has this affliction that she can’t show up anywhere at anytime that someone expects her to show up.

Chapter 2.

Her Dad coming from old money.

Her Dad wasn’t connected to old family money. Her paternal grandfather took over a small business selling car parts that his father founded (timing belts if I remember right) and expanded it into multiple stores and regions. They were new money.

Regardless, his family money is what attracted her mother to her father. She (Colleen) had told me they were from different sides of the tracks and she was lucky he talked to her. He was attracted by the likelyhood she’d put out, which she did, which is why she was pregnant before marriage. 

Chapter 3.

Her name.

Her parents never called her Suki. They named her Susan and they called her Susie. Suki was a nickname that (then) Suzi liked because it was Michelle Pfeiffer’s character’s name in “The Witches of Eastwick.”

When I met her she went by Suzi. She had legally changed her name from Susan to Susi ands then to Suzi (a hooker’s name). She didn’t go by Suki until much later when she picked her “stage name” of Suki Jones in her thirties. Jones being her husbands last name that she never adopted for herself while married. However, she tried to talk him into changing his last name to her maiden name, Nicholson, when they married. When he said no, she asked him to hyphenate it to Nicholson-Jones, he said no to that as well. At the time she went by Nicholson-Jones or Nicholson.

Chapter 4.

Her father doing crazy stuff.

There are two famous stories of her father that didn’t make the book. One was the time when he discovered way too many ants in some stuff in the pantry/basement/garage/something. The other was him turning the family car toward what could be the origin of a tornado because he wanted to see it. Both times the girls freaked out and then repeated the stories a lot.

I’ve heard he bought her stuff that she had to keep at his house.

Weird then that in her adult life, Suzi would try to keep an N64, that I owned, at her own house for her kids and she wouldn’t let her kids bring it back to mine? Great story about trying to get that back, she and her mother held a tape recorder in my face while I was asking for it and they recorded it! Can’t make ships like that up.

Her father taking out a “hit” on her mother.

I’ve heard multiple versions of the “take a hit out on her mother” story from her and her Mother. I have trouble believing any of them. For one thing, if they were true, her mother would be dead. 

On California being vastly different

That’s because she was in Concord. And there were not (actual) rich kids in Concord. 

Her Grandmother’s doll collection.

I’ve seen the “doll room” in Omaha, museum quality as only good financing can bring.

Chapter 5.

Correctly holding records and Vicodin.

I told her how to handle records. I don’t think Vicodin existed in 1980. 

Wikipedia; “Hydrocodone/paracetamol was approved for medical use in the United States in 1982” aka Vicodin.

Synchronized swimming.

The synchro swimming was a blip on the radar. I don’t think she’s ever been tanned or toned. There was no department store modeling at this time.

Doing PCP and talking about other drugs.

PCP was not very available for teens in Concord in the early 80’s. And if it was, it was considered an old dumb hippie thing to everyone besides Helen Hunt who took it and jumped out of a second story window in an after school special we had all seen.

And in the 80’s no one from northern california who took LSD referred to it as “dropping acid” that was again, an old dumb hippie term. People would use the word “dosed” or “lit” as in, “I dosed on 400mic tabs last night. I was so lit.” I point these out as she was not in the “druggie” scene as her mother would say. 

Drawing on a map in a Thomas Guide.

She’d never heard of a Thomas Guide when I met her. I kept one in my car. I’d never let her draw in it. She once argued, “But I might go there again.” That is not a reason to change that policy. 

Chapter 6.

Architecture.

Eichlers in Concord have A frame roofs? Most houses in concord were built for post World War II ex-GI’s and their spouses and flat roofs were the norm. 

Appearing on a syndicated evening news entertainment program,

She was not on a syndicated evening news entertainment program. I don’t think she knows what syndicated means. 

Listening to punk rock.

No one listened to Punk in Concord in the 80’s. The white kids all listened to hard rock. Punks from Berkeley, Albany and Oakland hated people from Concord for various reasons.

Drug references, parties and music.

Drugs again, it was not easy at all to get mescaline in California at that time just like it was not easy to find LSD on the East coast then either. They had mescaline instead, I don’t know why. What the fuck are black beauties? not a thing teenagers in Concord did in the 80’s. Cross tops were usually caffeine pills that older kids duped younger kids into buying. 

Then she claims to go to a party in Berkeley. Fang did exist in the early 80’s. Hells kitchen did not exist until around 87/88 after Tom left Fang to form it. Most important, that was a very small hardcore crowd that hated people from Concord.

Unrelated, at that time, the hardcore (mix of thrash metal and punk) crowd that Fang was apart of did not mix with the Gilman street crowd that Op IV (Operation Ivy) came out from. When I met Suzi, she told me I had to stop going to Fang shows because they and those people were “gross” and “yucky”. 

Attending that party in Berkeley on page 82 plane old did not happen. 

The time in the book that she claims to have smoked pot and blacked out was actually in Arcadia California home of Humboldt State University. She was engaged the first time, to the first guy she thought was rich. (they had Jolt Cola money!) she had smoked pot with him and his friends in a car and then freaked out and couldn’t move. I don’t know where the story about it being laced with PCP came from, her to not seem lame? Usually PCP does not make people pass out.

There was no holiday fashion show she was getting ready for.

I would not be surprised at all if what she’s talking about is that thing department stores do. They invite girls and/or their parents to come “model” on a “runway” for free as sometimes, the mothers will buy the outfits that the girls wear. She took our daughter to one of those at Nordstrom when she was about 6 or 8 years old. And yes, she bought the dress after with money from my paycheck. 

She didn’t start smoking until after she and I broke up.

She would have never be caught dead listening to Blue Oyster Cult. 

Chapter 7.

Modeling.

She wasn’t interested in modeling until her late twenties in the 90’s. She was born in 1967. She doesn’t have a book of tear sheets, because there were no pics to tear out of anything. She also never was paid money to model. 

A tear sheet is something models collect to put in their portfolio. They are literally pictures of themselves that have been published in things such as magazines that they carefully “tear” out. A book of tear sheets is a model’s resumè.

I sound cranky saying that because of the number of lies about modeling in the book is a lot, is it only there for sensationalism? Or because that’s the persona she invented for herself when she decided to stop being Suzi Nicholson and became Suki Jones? I guess I just answered that. She is known as a chameleon, often taking on the traits and personas of those she is hanging out with, inventing personas. 

Going to the movie “Cat’s Eye.” and dates.

Finally a date. The movie Cat’s Eye was released in 1985, the year she graduated high school. Not her junior year. However, that untruth is only a year off, so no big deal. However, this is evidence setting precedent of many events in the book that are years off, for instance she is currently claiming her kids are college age, they are in fact in their 30’s, which places Susan in her late fifties, not her forties. 

Non-consensual intercourse.

The time she told me about being date raped was in her mother’s apartment/condo on her couch while her mother was upstairs. I don’t know why she couldn’t tell the real story instead of fabricating a similar one. It doesn’t matter to the reader. 

I first heard the first story of her being date raped seconds after the first time I told her I loved her, and asked her to marry me, a week after meeting her. I was in that first met bliss. First time. It was kind of a downer. She held me to that proposal. ten months later, after older friends told me we could still live together (yea, living together was too quick. I needed a new place to live and I didn’t want random roommates and I asked if she was ready to move in) When I said to her that we shouldn’t plan on getting married month after next, we’re too young, She wept and moaned loudly.

She literally sat in the kitchen and moaned. Did I mention it was loud? And it went on for a week. I’d be trying to do homework (no kids yet) and she’d be in the kitchen moaning. It wasn’t 24/7. Just at night. That lasted until I rescinded and said we could continue with our plans to marry. I didn’t realize what a serious red light that behavior was until I was older. I was married at 20 which meant this happened when I was 19, a teenager. 

Chapter 8.

Blank sections.

Why are there so many pages that are only two thirds full? I keep thinking I’ll put the book down after the chapter ends, and then, the chapter is not over and I had to keep reading.

Not being all about modeling.

Her thing at the time was being a poet and a singer. She self published a poetry book I never could get through. I’d start it and she couldn’t stand imagining what I was thinking and would take it away from me. As mentioned, modeling wasn’t a thing for her yet.

Long straight hair like Paulina Porizkova

Her hair at the time was long, permed, and with bangs. More than once, she’d get a perm, hate it, and then never see that hair stylist again. She had that hairstyle even after Lily was born (we were living in Martinez at the apartment on Alhambra Ave blocks from where it was called Pleasant Hill road.) I remember one time her walking into the apartment, I said her new perm looks great, she said I was lying to spare her feelings and it was awful and she was going to undo it and get another and until then she was horrible looking. (her words)

Thinking of undo, that’s a theme, look at her ankle and the poor job someone did removing a tattoo of three animals.

The musicians of notoriety

The musicians of notoriety were Michael Papenberg of Missile Harmony and Rob Cavestany of Death Angel. They were young then and not famous. 

Bands whose shows she didn’t go to.

• Metallica shows, they had already hit big venues, like the Kabuki and the Warfield in 1985 and the cool kids were done with them. She would join in on making fun of them with her Tower Records co-workers.
• Jane’s Addiction, they were from LA and only played rarely in the Bay area and when they did it was a big deal and that started around 87/88. For one of those big shows in the city, she was offered tickets by a fellow Tower Records employee to either that or Living Color and she got the latter as she didn’t know Jane’s Addiction.
• Slayer, yea no, she went to Death Angel shows because of being friends with Rob and Mark, but didn’t like that kind of music. Slayer was a definate no from her. Also, they were also from LA and didn’t play in the Bay area all the time
• Green day. she first heard of them when their first album came out (we had kids then) and never saw them until after that, if ever. 
• Mabuhay gardens was a place she would have never gone in to. Too scary. And it had died off by the late 80’s.

At the time she was in to 4AD bands like the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. She also liked Siouxes Sux. (blame Fred Armisen and Carrie for that spelling.)

Backstage at a Death Angel show.

I was at the Death Angel show at the Omni with her. We didn’t party back stage after. Neither of us were partiers at that time. The members of Death Angel were also not big partiers, especially in clubs, as they were underage. We would have only drank if we were ate a family event and someone like my father offered.

There were two notable things that night. Lars Ulrick was there being a pretentious dick and Rob Cavestany’s Mom’s Mercedez broke down out front and we waited with them for a while for a tow truck. We did not go to a party after that. We went home.

Speed drugs.

Page 115, that’s crank they were doing, no one called it speed, it already had a slang name, crank. And… once you did it, you didn’t do more, it lasted for hours. And bonus, you could drink like a mother fucker. (imagine Dax saying that in “CHiPs” in regard to motorcycles)

Chapter 9.

List of things she quit.

She left off singing in her things she quit. She actually took lessons and would go to a friends studio (once or twice) to sing into microphones. She has a story about being ridiculed after an audition. She had sang the Yardbirds’ “For your love”. She was ridiculed by the girl who was principle of the band “Glass candle grenade” who the audition was for. Susan hated that song ever after.

I once recorded her singing background on a song Michael and I were working on. By me recording her, I mean, she had me set it all up, show her the record and rewind buttons and I then was told to leave the room and the inside of the house. Afterward, Michael and I pulled it up and I turned everything down but her vocals and he said “That’s mean” because I was showing just how bad she sounded, deer in the headlights I would say. Maybe that’s why she left it out, she was really bad. 

Incorrect cultural references.

“The Lost Boys” was released in 1987

“For fuck’s sake” is something no one said back then. I brought it to the California and her life from working with Euros in Europe, and my best friend was Irish. I would spend weekends with him and his friends in Dublin and I liked the phrase.

Stone roses did not hit the California until Lily was a baby and they weren’t her thing. Kevin (from Ponyshow) brought them into my life and if she ever liked them, I doubt she made a mix tape. The pointless making shit up, why didn’t she just say 4AD mix tape? Or siouxie sux tape?

Lily was born in February 1990

Chapter 10.

Incorrect background stories.

Which Jane’s Addiction show at the Stone was that? The one in 1989 that she declined tickets to? Or the one in 1998? We were together in 1989, but not in 1998.

https://www.concertarchives.org/venues/the-stone-689b839c-1ab4-4622-90bb-d3b62aee55f3

When Silvia moved out of her parents house it was with Vjay, her boyfriend, they shared a room, and lived with Bobby Lee and some others. Death Angel roadies were often there.

Not a lot of ecstacy in california in 1989, none at all before we met. 

If the Jane’s Addiction show was 1998, then yes, there could have been ecstacy.

The character “Known as Dan” is introduced.

Oh! It’s my Entrance!!!

How we met

Yea, that’s not what happened. Short version, I was late for class, ran into the store, grabbed an expensive blank cassette pack and went to the register to buy the tapes. Suzi was working the register and made a point of bending over and looking into some bins on the floor a few times while flirting with me. We exchange names and I left. As I was driving out of the parking lot I craned my neck to get a glimpse of her in the store and was embarrassed to see her standing in the parking lot with her friend Pansy looking at me and waving. I was embarrassed because I was obviously trying to sneak a look at her when she didn’t know it and she caught me.

Pansy had seen us meet, asked what happened, and then told her they had to run to the parking lot to catch me and get my number.

the reason I was there was because I had a recording and arranging class at DVC and it was my day to finish my mix and if I had a cassette, I could get myself a copy. I had forgotten to bring a blank cassette, which was why I was running in to Tower to minimize how late I’d walk into the recording studio.

I didn’t look like a punk, I looked more metal or pink floyd and I wasn’t carrying a skateboard. Although there was one in my car which I used to get to class in a hurry at DVC when the only parking spot I could find was far far away. 

Asking her out happened a few hours later, over the phone, and I was really worried, I could have remembered her name wrong, Susie could easily be Susan or Silvia. Luckily I got it right and it was Pansy that answered and Silvia wasn’t working that day. 

I was in there a lot and I would always talk to Phil and AJ. That’s probably where that came from. Phil, AJ and I were old friends.

First date.

Pretty sure I took her to get food, like Chinese, with the main event being night swimming at the pool I worked at. (I honestly wrote that down before reading more.)

I wasn’t a VJ at the time for a local public access show. I was the host and MC for a local public access show. Big difference there see. The show was called “East Bay Rocks!” after originally being called “East County Rocks!“ The latter focused on the scene in Pittsbugh (CA) and Antioch. I wanted to cover things in Berkeley and Oakland as well. My producer’s boss agreed and there you go. 

I have never been in a punk band. Phil, AJ and I were in a band that most notably covered Pink Floyd. AJ went to Mt Diablo public high school which still isn’t catholic. Again, an easy fact to check.

Can confirm

It was AJ who warned her about me, I’d hooked up with a girl in high school once who had a boyfriend I didn’t know about and got pregnant, and then got an abortion. AJ told Suzi this because he had a crush on her, as she flirts with everyone, and didn’t want me ruining his chances. Sorry AJ, I’d let it go until she put it in print. 

Strychnine treatments.

Strychnine is not something doctors prescribe anyone. Strychnine was slang for whatever bad thing someone put into LSD to make it toxic. Strychnine was the term because it was poison and LSD had an S in it. The story we repeated was that as LSD went bad, it turned into strychnine. That isn’t true. At the time, dead heads, which are stupid, were into LSD that was mixed with amphedamines to dance and trip all night. The kind of amphedamine that could be mixed into liquid and then applied to paper was of questionable origin. Why take bad LSD? Because you never quite new what was in LSD until someone took it and could tell you. Unless that someone was you, and by the time you knew, well, there you are.

In this particular case, earlier that year, My friend and I took some and went to Pink Floyd’s second show in the Bay Area since forever and I say second because it was outside in the Oakland Coliseum. Point here is I was feeling bad as the LSD came on in the rain and my eye site was becoming tunnel vision and I was starting to think, this isn’t good, when my friend passed out onto my lap. Normally, people do not nod off from LSD. So I knew it was bad. I quit drugs and alcohol soon after. I was full on sober for five years. And as mentioned here later, I never got any sleep from three jobs and school, there was no way I could have handled even alcohol besides moderately on special occasions

The Doctor friend of mine was a homeopathic doctor (retired) who had prescribed something in micro doses that he thought would help my body to recover/fix any physical problems that came from the toxin overdose.  

My roommate hated Suzi

My roommate hated her because in his opinion, she took me away from my friends.

Chapter 11. 

Driving with the windows down.

She was afraid to drive with the windows down with the kids. She knew something would fly in and hit them. 

When her uncle died she got some money, like $20K. What wasn’t blown on Max’ opera cafe takeout was available to get a second car. Found one in Walnut Creek, a convertible VW Rabbit. She test drove it with the top down and loved it. I put down $500 and we left with the car. We got home and she freaked out that she couldn’t have the kids in that car and I had to return the car. I ended up returning the car and leaving the $500 as compensation for going back on the contract. 

Our kid’s name.

The name my father and I suggested for our second child was Maxwell Dylan Jones. Suzi liked it but insisted it be Dylan Maxwell. Axel is something Dylan’s friends made up decades later, which he now goes by.

Radical attitude change.

Should be noted that it was getting pregnant (a month before the wedding when she didn’t want to use birth control anymore) and having the first baby when she could no longer contain herself and act like she was sane. She FFFFRRRRRREEEEAAAAAAAKKKEEEEEEDDD out. I thought that in actuality, she stopped hiding the crazy person she was from me and let it come out because I was stuck. All the manic crazy shit started then. The car thing above is just one example out of ten to fifty new ones daily. 

The character “Known as Dan’s” a Computer Prodigy?

I wasn’t a computer prodigy, I was just good with math and found out in a high school computer class that it came easier to me than it did to my friends who had straight A’s.

I didn’t pursue computer science until I had a pregnant wife, was working three jobs, was in college, and I had to make more money fast to support a family. The only jobs I was able to get for a while were data entry jobs because I was a computer science major in college, and data entry was done with computers.

Did the character “Known as Dan’s” career include being recruited out of college?

I had a breakthrough hiring at Wells Fargo Mortgage Processing. I had gotten another data entry job there and one day my boss asked me if I could write code. I could in fact, and that’s what I did there from then on.

That got the words “Computer Programmer at Wells Fargo Mortgage Processing” on my resume. I then got my first full time job at another company writing code at about a third of the salary that a coder would usually get because I was desperate. I replied to their add in the SF Chronicle’s Classifieds. The company, DMC Services, did not have a lot of resources and otherwise couldn’t afford a full time programmer. They’d always used contractors. DMC’s main customer in Northern California was PG&E ( in SoCal it was SoCal Edison. ) They specialized in the power grid industry.

I was then able to put “Contractor at PG&E” on my resume. Which lead to me getting a job with a systems integrator that DMC had hired to replace our Arcnet network with Starlan-10 which was basically a proprietary 10baseT. Derivatives of 10baseT are now just called “ethernet” as it is now the most common form of that. I had helped the guys from the systems integrator do the upgrade so that I could maintain it and put it on my resume.

This is when I transferred from Diablo Valley College to San Francisco State University. I had completed my lower division “GE” courses and was eager to move on to my Computer Science major courses.

The system integrator was company called International Micronet Systems, which was bought by CompuCom a few years later. CompuCom had Cisco ( a Bay Area tech company on my short list to work for along with ILM and Silicon Graphics. ) as a customer and they brought me over to Cisco to help with a project using a very new Microsoft technology called NT and others called Win32 and Win95. I knew these technologies and fixed their biggest problem in the first few hours of arriving on scene. Cisco thought I was awesome and asked me to interview for a job they had open to work on those same technologies for them.

They made me an offer, basically $77K/year. CompuCom counter offered $100K. Suzi didn’t want me to take the job with Cisco because it was less money and she had no idea that computers and the internet would be a thing. It was 1995. I ended up convincing her to let me go to Cisco because it involved me supporting and traveling to Europe on expenses and I could bring her there with me.

I never graduated because Cisco was a full time job plus some and it was a higher position than one I could get as an entry level CS major. Plus, I’d painfully been going to school part time (because of working multiple jobs to support a family) for eight years and I was ready to not be in school anymore. 

So no, I was not recruited out of college.

Buying adult things.

We’d purchased the house when I worked for DMC for a salary of $31K a year. The first BMW, used, she talked me into. I also had to return that because she freaked out that we couldn’t afford it. Which was true, but why did that not hit her head until we were under contract? BMW was cooler about the return than VW. The guy said, if it was new, it would be different, but he was fine with returning it because we’d still like them and would come back years later as a customer. 

Becoming Catholic.

That’s also when she decided to become catholic and made us all us do that. After the kids had already been baptized at the Hope center in WC. Apparently none of that is in the book. 

Family Doctor prescribing opioids.

We didn’t have a family doctor at the time. A pediatrician yes, GP no. The doctor she went to was a friend of Jeff Idelson where Jeff and his doctor friend came up with the Paxil and Vicodin cocktail. Fioricet with codeine is very similar. Both have acetaminophen which is bad for your liver.

“Dan was traveling all the time.”

Traveling for work a lot was with Micronet. One year during the summer I spent a week out of every month (May to September) in Portland or Spokane. Suzi freaked out that she was going to get attacked in our home alone with the kids. So we got a dog to protect her (dog was a hassle I had to deal with, Chow, different story). At the end of that year I went to management and reminded my bosses they had told me I’d only travel a week a year and so they gave me a spot $4K bonus that went right to Suzi. Who knows what she got for it. Max’s Opera cafe take out is a good bet. She loved those blondie brownies.

She used to freak out she was going to get attacked in her bed when I was next to her as well. She was never stable. If I needed sleep, which was a lot, I would have to move out onto the couch where she couldn’t wake me up after every noise she heard.

With Cisco I did get to go to Paris and London once or twice a year. for 7-14 days. The first time I went was by myself. The second time I went, I took her and the kids. The third time I went, I took her and that was when she broke up with me in Amsterdam. That story is in the “Background” page linked below.

All the other trips abroad were after we had broken up. I know of her going to Europe two more times, both for a week long vacation. First time with a boyfriend, second time with her second husband. She never worked in Europe, any part of Europe.

Again there was no modeling agency signing. She did start doing extra work. She also did seasonal work once a year at her Mother’s office. More important she took a french class at DVC where she met Michael (Laz Rocket Michael, not Wire Train Michael) who introduced her to the Claremontions whom she would have lost weekends in the Oakland hills with.

International Travel?

Her only internation travel during our whole marriage was those two trips I took her on. 

The main reason she got the prescription cocktail was for a trip to Omaha we all went on to visit her grandparents to make sure she’d get her inheritance. I got yelled at the day she stayed at the hotel and I took Dylan to her grandparents house to watch golf with her grandfather. I got yelled at because her father could have shown up there and that would have been horrible! I don’t know why.

Making pizza and putting the kids to bed.

That pizza sauce she claimed to have made was pesto, hence the basil, and I made it. Dough from sctratch is a hard one to get right. I’d know because I made it. 

She didn’t put the kids to bed ever. Not even during the day for naps. At night, it was night time and she was off duty, so putting them to bed was my job. Dylan usually took an hour because he wouldn’t let me leave the room. Usually I could only get him to sleep if I laid down next to him. As I was sleep deprived, I couldn’t help falling asleep too. 

Anyway, if there was company over I would get threatened that I better not try and stay in Dylan’s room for an hour or there would be “hell to pay”. ( btw, is that a mid-western phrase? Who says that? ) so again, there I was in a no win situation, if I walked out of his room, he would scream and cry too loud for the guests to think Suzi was a good mother, if I took and hour she would be mad I made her entertain alone without helping her.

Co-op Pre-School.

A co-op pre-school is run by the members. If you want your kid to go there, you must take shifts working at the school. The co-op my kids went to is Creative Play in Pleasant Hill, still there. As a matter of fact, my brother and I went there too. Mrs. Coyle, our teacher, who made an appearance when Lily was there, also lived across the street from where I grew up and her teenage daughters babysat us. So yes, I am very familiar with how that school works.

Suzi told me I had to take time off work to work at the pre-school. What’s more, I was even told I needed to teach 3-4 year olds about recycling, which was kinda pointless in hindsite as there were not community recycling programs to handle the recycling. Anyway, I created some tag lines, a costume, and then presented that to a class of little kids who had no idea. 

Stealing pills from a Pre-school teacher.

I have no idea if she stole from a teacher there, but if she did, she should have shown some words of remorse, as she said “that would just be wrong.”

Pre-K isn’t a thing in California. What she meant was the last year of Creative Play.

Character “known as Dan” being gone all the time.

At the time I was what was called a duty engineer ( on “pager” duty ). It meant once a month I was on duty for a week and would have to respond to pages for any of the services I was responsible for if they had a problem.

It was certainly nice getting paged out around christmas break so I could step outside Susan’s grandparents house, away from that depressing and painful socializing. They don’t talk or do anything. They would literally stare at each other while sitting in the living room until maybe someone said something.

Anyway, maybe five times I had to either perform a scheduled change late at night, or I would get paged and have to work, from home. I only had to actually go in if I needed to change actual computer hardware. 

The commute from San Jose home regularly took multiple hours. 

When I didn’t have a car, which was a lot, I caught the bus by our house in Concord at 4:25AM which I took to Concord BART. I would get on an SF train and then at McCarthur I would transfer to a Fremont train. From Fremont I boarded the 180 express bus that took me to Milpitas. From there I took the local 20 bus to campus. If there were no delays or other snags, it took 2.5 hours each way. If there was a snag it took 3 hours. I would leave the office on the 20 bus at 4:14PM, but that was still up to three hours to get home. Luckily I liked reading books and BART was a place I could sleep. Btw, Suzi would never take BART back then, ever.

When I had a car, I would have to give myself two hours to drive in during rush hour due to traffic and potential accidents. My company gave me a hiring bonus to help with a downpayment to buy a house and move closer and/or pay for a used car to commute. The money for both went to Susan, who probably spent it on Max’s Opera cafe take out multiple days a week.

Modeling? Commercials? Her working? Nope.

The only modeling she’s ever done for compensation was for lip injections in return for receiving them from a doctor in front of a room of people who were considering having the procedure done, but wanted to know what it was like. You know, crash test dummy stuff that didn’t matter what she looked like. Yes there were a few extra jobs. In the movie Flubber, in the gymnasium scene during a basketball game, she says she can point herself out in the crowd of hundreds. She tried showing me, I could never make her out. She did no TV shows and no commercials. 

I was fine with all the pills, they made her temporarily less of a dick. The amounts she was taking as of page 149 were not enough to approach chemical dependency, it was all mental. 

Dates on mornings before flying to Europe.

All flights to Heathrow or Charles de Gaul at the time left San Francisco early, starting at 6AM, I always took the ones between noon and 2PM. The idea of meeting someone before that after taking BART and a taxi to the airport, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Bart didn’t go to the airport back then.

Later in life, after we were split up, I did sometimes go on dates in the city the night before and then have a casual morning before going to SFO. But that was much later, Late 1997/1998 is when that started. Last time we were together as a couple was February of 1997. It was infrequent enough for me to remember.

That particular time was before a party at Phil and AJs and Suzi said “If we [you know] before the party, will you leave me alone? Not follow me around? Be in different rooms?” See now there was a point to it, and memorable as you can’t make shit like that up. 

She never backed away from a fight, accusing me of something or just yelling at me about what I should do. 

Coffee. 

I relied on it while averaging 3.5 hours of sleep a night. When we lived in Walnut Creek she gave me an espresso machine for Christmas. I was excited and I could save money. Except that she hated the smell of coffee, had never drank it, and wouldn’t let me make it in the house unless I brought it into the back utility bathroom by the garage with the window open so she wouldn’t notice. After we split up is when she decided she actually did like coffee and hanging out at Peets with single guys. 

For the record we lived in Martinez, Martinez again, Walnut Creek and then Concord. When the house in Concord was sold, she moved into a house in Montclair (rich part of Oakland) and I moved into no where. See “damage to other people” in the “Background” for that story.

Anytime in this story where she is living in Oakland, we were broken up. I never lived in Oakland with her.

The party on page 151 happened after she was living in Montclair and we were split up. 

Four attempts at getting back together.

It was on the ride back to her house in Montclair (after “the party” below) when the truth conversation happened on page 153. We had “split up” twice already at that point, at this time we were doing another attempt at getting back together. This was trying to get back together edition #2. That’s why I was her plus one. If we hadn’t been trying to get back together, she would have brought someone else. 

Like the previous and future attempts at getting back together, it didn’t stick. After about two weeks she’d have ghosted me ( not a term then ) and when I’d get a hold of her I’d ask what was up? Aren’t we trying? And she would have moved on. This time, she said the reason it wasn’t going to work out is because what I volunteered ( see “truth conversation” below ) was too much for her to get over. 

There were four attempts when she suggested we get back together. I remember that because on the third I told her “Okay, I’ll try on good faith, but you are needy, selfish and irresponsible. You need to make progress fixing those things, or this won’t work out.” After that didn’t work out, and the fourth time rolled around I said “Wait, I told you last time you had to have done something about being needy, selfish and irresponsible, what have you done?” Her answer started with “I’ve been a real bitch to you…” but it didn’t address my question and so that attempt of hers ended right there. Usually the attempts failed because she had started dating someone else. 

The party that was supposed to have famous models at it.

The party was a soft opening at a bar called “The Up and Down Club” which was recently purchased by Christy Turlington and some of her family members. An extra friend of Suzi’s had gotten her on the list with a plus one. Christy was not at the party. In fact, there were zero famous people at that party.

It was more likely she asked me to be the driver home. Not designated, just the driver as she had a low tolerance for the things she was going to do that night, like have free drinks. 

“Truth conversation”

The truth conversation happened on the drive home from that party to her house in Montclare. At the bar she asked me if she could go talk to a guy alone. I said sure. She said she might flirt with him. I said, still fine. It was because of that action that we felt like we could have an open truth conversation. We agreed that if we never lied to each other, our relationship could work out. We said some things like who we found attractive and other things. 

At that moment, I thought to myself, if this is going to really work out, I’m going to need to get something off my chest. When we were first dating I once hooked up with the producer of the TV show I was the MC of. Suzi was out of town and we were hanging out at the producer’s pool and apartment until late at night.

I’d had very strong guilt about that for ten+ years. It was that event that made me realize that cheating was not worth the stress and guilt and worry. I felt so bad about it, that it was such a bad thing to do, I didn’t even think I could tell our priest in confession. 

So I told her about it, on that drive to her place. If she could handle that, we had a chance of getting back together. She couldn’t.

I’d had other women flirt with me over the years, but I had never accepted advances out of worry, unless you count the spring edition of the Victoria secrets catalog. When we got to her place I was allowed to sleep on the futon in the kitchen. Which was not really a good sign that we were trying to get back together. 

She had already cheated.

She would not have asked if I’d ever cheated on her as we both knew at that time that she had been dating other people and she had started dating people when we were still together. She had already cheated and we both knew it and she didn’t like looking bad. She wouldn’t have brought that up as she would have had to explain her actions. 

Chapter 12. 

Living arrangements.

I got my apartment in Oakland in 1998. We had not lived in the same house but separated. She had asked me to live in the same house “but separated” at the end of 1999 after I had my first serious (and only) girlfriend, I said no. She asked me in the form of a written card at her second apartment in Oakland (on Park Way.) She handed it to me, and had me read it in front of Dylan. When I said to him “Your Mom and I get a long better when we don’t live in the same house.” She turned to him and said ‘“Just because your Dad said something different than I did, doesn’t make it not true.” I have no idea what lie she had told him to provoke that. 

When she was still in Montclair I was allowed to stay at her place on the weekends and sleep on the futon in the kitchen. I had no other residence. It was really rough Sunday nights when she told me I’d have to leave, especially when Dylan wanted me to read to him and help him get to sleep.

Custody.

Every other weekend and a single night during the week was what Family Court services had granted me for custody. Suki had already thrown out the progressive amicable things, which was why we had to have multiple sessions with a Family Court Services counselor to tell us what the custody was. Of course Suki missed one of the appointments with me so she could see the woman on her own where she told the woman she was afraid to see her with me in the room because “He manipulates.” Her lying to the FCS counselor about how I was never in the kids lives is how I got the minimum custody. 

The small birthday party in Montclare was before that custody decision was made by FCS. It was still the “I can stay there on weekends while she was gone all weekend” arrangement. 

The party was more for Phil than me and I was the one who drove to the safeway in Montclare and bought a box of booze for the party. About thirty people attended. 

She spent 98% of the party in her room with her boyfriend (Peets employee, she calls him Ben in later chapters) playing dress up. Every half hour or so he’d make an appearance walking through the party with a new outfit on. During one of those, one of the guys said “Another jacket?” and not in a nice way to the boyfriend and that was about the last we saw of either of them that night. Again, she’s not very social in public.

The Claremont.

She started hanging out at the Claremont when we were still living in Concord. Michael from Laz Rockit, which she met at a french class at DVC, invited her into that friend group. That was the first time she stayed out until 3:30AM, and when I first had an idea she was up to no good. Why do people, who have been at a bar, stay out until 3:30AM when bars close at 2AM? They went home with someone at the bar.

House in Berkeley.

That must be Felix and John Nregretty she’s talking about at Alcatraz/Adeline. I’d been there with Phil (who had previously lived there) and Felix. 

Smoking heroin.

(section moved to “Background” page)

Beverly Hills on “your” husbands salary?

I took Suzi to the beverly Hilton both times she stayed there. She had this thing were she had to seem richer, more affluent in her terms, than she was. So we’d driven the BMW down there, that we shouldn’t have financed, went to Disneyland, stayed at the Beverly and then tooled around Beverly Hills the next day trying to look like she belonged there. 

Her driving alone up the I5.

Anderson’s split pea soup is more than an hour from Berkeley. Why does she have to lie so much? About things that don’t matter? F…… annoying.

Kiralla sushi and heroin.

The Kiralla story is mine as well. It was January 4th 1998. It was the first time just the two of us hung out. I picked Felix up, and he was all hanked up. That was slang for having done H. We sat at the sushi bar and I had ordered and drank three warmed sake bottles to try to catch up. The people around us noticed him dozing off and so I made up the story that I had bet him $100 that he couldn’t stay awake for a week. He’d made five days, but look! he’s asleep! He’d then turned his head slightly and said “No I’m not.” 

Here is the story I wrote about that in 1998. That website was created earlier in the 1990’s and still exists:

http://tom-tom.com/travel/kiralla.htm

Chapter 13.

Opening.

She never liked Sonic Youth. Get your drug facts right if you want to pretend to be an addict!

Fiorcet does not contain opiates, it has butalbital, acetaminophen and caffeine. Fiorcet with codiene has opiates and is basically vicodin.

Income and expenses.

You may be wondering how she afforded drugs if she wasn’t working.

She received a check for $4300-$5000/month from me and another check, I never found out how much, from her Omaha grandparents which would have been enough for drugs. Heroin was cheap back then too. 

She still had money problems all the time, she didn’t want to keep track. Besides pills, eating take out from Max’s opera cafe was hundreds a week. While watching her ( formerly our ) bank account after we split up I saw she constantly had overdraft and other charges related to having no finance skills. 

Chapter 14.

Custody battle.

I wanted to have a known agreed upon schedule with the kids as her affliction of never being anywhere at anytime someone expected her to made it hard to pick up the kids. I never asked for primary custody, I asked to see them regular. Half of the time is what I wanted and this was in a “no fault” state. 

However, Suzi served my divorce papers one day in one of her times of being excited that she did something. That was a while before the proceedings really started making any progress. 

She left out the woman from family court services who we had to meet with before the two mediators, Jackie and Sharon, came into the picture. BTW, the deal was they were hired ( of course I paid ) at the request of the court to come up with a recommendation to override the one from FCS.

She also left out the marriage counseling that had happened after we split and before FCS. 

Jackie and Sharon’s office was on Harrison by Lake Merrit and not near any of the court houses in Oakland. 

Note: by this time we were legally divorced (bifurcation). What was left was to complete a “Marriage Separation Agreement” or MSA, which would include family support/alimony/child support as well as custody. Meeting with the mediators was to resolve the latter, which would also resolve former. That process took over two years because Suki was stalling.

Pills and custody.

I knew she was on pills and whatever all the time as she always acted crazy and people would tell me that she was always asking everyone for drugs. It was something the rest of us talked about. Why is she at a kids soccer game at 11AM saying all kinds of weird crazy things. Drugs did come up in the report, however, it wasn’t from me. Suki volunteered information about how she had a pill problem but was on top of it.

Note: The custody battle was after she 2000 when she claimed to have become sober.

One time Dylan was mad at me on the phone because I wasn’t going to give him a treat because he had not made it to school everyday on time for a week as we agreed he would do. He yelled “Why don’t you take another pill!” and I said “Oh, that’s your mothers thing.”

Public courthouse bathroom stories were from actual court appearances. Because Suzi and her lawyer would not agree to make any progress on the divorce, we would have to file paperwork to the court to get the judge to make Suzi and her lawyer explain why not.

Her first AA meeting in the book.

One weekend I had asked that I could keep the kids on a Sunday night. Suki said no. We went to Barclay’s restaurant for dinner after dropping off the kids. And who do we see standing outside the church across the street (College Ave in Oakland) where the NA (yes, NA, not AA) meeting is without her kids? If she needed a baby sitter, why not just let me keep them for the night? Again, she’s not agreeable to anything. It was for me, not for her, so No! 

That place is on college avenue. No she didn’t see me there standing outside and say my name. I saw her and left her a voice message asking wtf. If she had seen me outside, it would have been with my girlfriend at the time that I am now married to. The same one she blamed for us being divorced. That was her story for a while before she changed it.

Why lie about hats?

Buffalo Exchange doesn’t have hats. The hat store across the street does. Again, why lie about stupid shit?

Chapter 15.

NA people also do not like being lied to. Of course she lied to them, about most everything.