OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-seventeen.

NOVEMBER, 1999, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

THERE WASN'T ENOUGH alcohol in the world for Dave to drown himself in. Not even in Scotland, where the brew ran plentiful and was more often than not given to him for free. He raised another swig of lager to his mouth, the closest selection he'd been able to find to Coors.

He should have been happy and he knew it. The Foo Fighters had just released their third album, which was continually being met with soaring reviews and high praise. They were touring again, as of now an ocean away from home in Europe, and the guitarist they'd nabbed to join them — Chris — was easily one of the coolest guys that Dave had ever met.

If he'd been able to extract himself out of his body and view the world from somewhere above the clouds, he would have envied himself. He would have marveled at all that he'd accomplished and was still accomplishing, finally having leapt the hurdle of club touring to the big time of courting arenas. He'd produced his own album without the help of anyone but Taylor and Nate, and it all been impressively done in the basement of a house.

All of those things were admittedly great and something Dave would have never taken for granted. He was grateful, humbled even by the success that he'd poured blood, sweat and tears into to earn. It agitated him endlessly that despite that success, he was still bothered.

It was like having an itch he couldn't scratch.

He missed Virginia, for one thing. Fleeing there in the spring to record had been one of the best decisions he'd ever made. Being back home, making music, had cleared his mind. He'd been able to concentrate on something else besides the downfall of his love life.

The second thing, the biggest thing of all, was Reagan.

Always fucking Reagan.

Dave had done his best to accept the brutal end of their relationship. He'd been amiable, perhaps even too amiable, as they'd gone through the divorce proceedings and signed away their history together. Looking back, he occasionally wished that he'd fought harder for her, refusing to sign the papers or getting down on his knees begging until they bled, but he'd seen how his initial resistance had hurt her.

He didn't want to hurt her again. And now, their divorce was finalized. They were officially separated, legally declared single, yet Dave still felt hopelessly bound to Reagan by a force that couldn't be broken by court documents.

He belonged to her. No matter how much he tried to tell himself that that was no longer true, her constant presence on his mind suggested otherwise.

Sitting at a tucked away table inside of the smoky local bar that Nate had picked, Dave drained the rest of his beer and watched his band mates. They looked a hell of a lot happier than he did, drunk and laughing as they mingled with the entourage of Scottish girls that had followed them there after the show.

Dave knew what Taylor would have insisted he do in that moment. He would have demanded that Dave 'get his ass up' and have fun. He'd been saying that since September when the tour had officially began.

Dave had honored the request, working to the best of his abilities to put himself out there the way his friends had. It'd been a long time since he'd tried to pick up girls and although they flocked him to without prompting, Dave still struggled to put on a confident facade in front of them, pretending with failure that he wasn't still nauseating in love with his ex-wife.

Despite that, there had been girls. Groupies. He'd embarrassingly lost count of how many he'd brought back to his various hotel rooms. Being that the starting leg of the tour was overseas, the majority of the girls he'd met only spoke broken English, which Dave preferred. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk — he just favored conversing with their bodies instead, sometimes so it would all be over sooner.