It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [118]
“You sound fired up, bro,” said Cully.
“Yeah, I can’t tell you how excited I am,” I told him.
It was all well and good to share this with one of my best friends, but I should be open about my feelings with Susan, too, I thought.
“I am so happy,” I told her.
This was life without regrets.
And that’s when it hit me.
Today is a good day to die.
I think I just might get it.
If something were to happen tomorrow, my last thought wouldn’t be, I wish I had told Susan how I felt about her. I’d done everything; I didn’t want to die, but I could be proud of not having left anything unsaid or undone. That’s what it meant to wake up with a clear conscience, to be honest.
Maybe that Crazy Horse quote wasn’t morbid. Maybe it wasn’t even about death. Maybe it was about life and how you live it.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
A press release went out in late 1996 announcing that Slash had officially quit Guns N’ Roses. It barely registered with me—I had long since come to grips with the fact that he was done. And anyway, it wasn’t as if Guns was active. He left behind an empty studio being paid for by an entity that itself barely existed.
Neurotic Outsiders finished its live obligations and drifted apart again. The friendships remained but we stopped playing regularly.
One afternoon I went down to the House of Champions and walked in while a class was taking place.
The sensei leading the class said, “Turn and bow.”
The students turned toward me and bowed.
This was a huge and totally unexpected rite of passage. An organic show of respect from the people who trained and taught here was the highest praise I could imagine. It held far more value for me than any belt or diploma—though I did feel as if I had somehow graduated.
In December 1996, Susan and I decided to make plans to go away together for New Year’s. We booked a room at the Hilton Waikoloa on the Big Island in Hawaii.
We were alone together and in love. Things went great. Until one morning when Susan woke up feeling sick. We called the front desk about seeing a doctor. No problem, the hotel had a doctor on-site and we could get an appointment that same day.
Its tropical decor made the doctor’s office feel unusually friendly. A nurse checked us in and then escorted us to an examination room. She asked Susan to describe her symptoms. The woman wrote everything down, smiled broadly, and gave a sort of silent-movie wink. She said the doctor would be right in, and walked out.
“What’s up with her?” I said.
The doctor came in, all chipper and whistling. He asked Susan to give him a urine sample. She did. An exaggerated grin spread across his face and he went back out.
“Weird,” Susan said.
He came in again a few minutes later.
“Well, congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. McKagan, it’s just as I suspected. After all, Hawaii is where love happens.”
“Sorry?” I said.
“You’re going to have a baby!”
I just about fainted.
Here’s the deal: we weren’t yet a Mr. and Mrs., we had been together for only a few months, and neither of us had ever before been in a situation where “congratulations” would accompany a discussion of pregnancy.
We went back to the hotel room and didn’t say much to each other. We had talked about having kids—someday—from quite early in our relationship. Now all the things we had said to each other would be put to the test.
The timing couldn’t have been better, though. Susan was done modeling, so there were no career concerns for her. Once we got over the edge of that first day, all the things we had worried about melted away.
The next step was to get the skeletons out of the closet. I told her all my sordid stories. It took a while. She told me hers.
This was not the way I planned things in my new life. But I realized my idealized notions of a perfect life were nothing more than a mishmash of unattainable images from Frank Capra movies. Those old dreams of mine were too passive. Outside forces didn’t dictate romantic success any more than they dictated the course of other parts of life. I had to take ownership, dictate the course myself—or rather,