First of all, please forgive my anonymity. I was anonymous when I knew Layne and there were lots of reasons for that. I don't know why I chose here, maybe I need to vent or maybe I just want to share a little bit of the truth as I perceived it. (Doubtlessly there are some people who were there at these times and knew things differently. It's the nature of things and I think that this is dictated by how we feel about certain people.)

I knew Layne circa '94 - '99, Demri circa '96 right before she died. I see a lot of conjecture and guessing about the nature of these relationships and it’s bugged me for years. I’m not jumping on this now just because our wonderful Layne is gone as much as because of the conjecture.

Back in '93 - early '94 Layne was seeing this dipshit model who did more harm to him than good. She was wicked to him but Layne was being a dumb kid and he just wanted to date a model, he said to himself when it was over. She wasn’t making a lot of money back then, but she did manage to get a lot of his. She had talked him into putting a lot of big purchases in her name. They broke up around spring - summer '94, or maybe even earlier. It was hard to tell because as many times as he said it was over, she was still going around town telling everyone that they had gotten married.

Layne later said that Demri wasn’t too bothered by this, but I didn’t know her then. Actually I was bothered by it though. ;) I was only then getting to know Layne and I liked him a lot. I was jealous of the model dipshit and I hated her. *sigh*

When they cancelled the '94 tour it was because Layne was afraid. He really freaked out over Kurt a few months before that. He’d had a close call and he didn’t think that he’d be able to stay clean on the road with that lifestyle. At the time, Jerry was very understanding and more than supportive to Layne. They were less like brothers than like a weird married couple. I’m not saying they were gay, lol! But they just often acted like a married couple.

Jerry was REALLY different back then. He loved Layne more than anything, I think even more than Courtney sometimes (Courtney as you all know was Jerry’s on - off gf.) At least, Layne came first. I think Jerry really was sincere, too, at least back then.

I’m not totally sure when that started to change. When they began the KISS tour, Layne had been clean for a (relatively) long time, but I remember he was very scared to leave. He didn’t seem to want to do it because he had a bad feeling about it. He fretted and fretted. One of his friends told him that he’d had an image of Layne trapped in an airplane as it filled with smoke (what a thing to say!) and Layne almost backed out then, but the others talked him into it. He had someone call a psychic for him to make sure that he would be okay.

Layne was okay until the last night of the tour. Personally, I have no idea exactly what happened, but I got a lot of stories. Layne was always really quiet about it. One of his more moronic friends told me that he had actually died, but what little I did get from Layne told me this wasn’t true. He always kept saying that he had “slipped”. Most of what everyone heard then was nonsense. I know he did get an infection because of his very, very stupid way of not looking after things. He became sort of ashamed and let it go longer than he should have. That’s where all the “gangrene” rumors started. He went into rehab after that. Then there was some stuff with his mother that I just can’t share here. Suffice to say that she got the wrong ideas about some things, Layne was hurt by her assumptions and they parted ways for a while.

I understand that Jerry started doing cocaine again around this time. Mind, I never knew him entirely well and I never saw him do it, but it’s what people were saying. Layne was trying to quit EVERYthing at this time (he even attempted quitting smoking) and Sean was still bringing pot around everytime they would get together. Jerry started to stay away from Layne though.

By '96 or so, Jerry was fed up with Layne’s fear of touring. Layne had admitted that he was mostly finished with show business. From then on, he said, he just wanted to do art and make music for his friends. Jerry loved the rock star lifestyle and didn’t want to give it up and he was pissed at Layne. But he never said so outright. Jerry would make these stupid, hazily spiteful remarks like “we’re standing by Layne” and “I love him anyway”. Who wants to be loved “anyway”? And the thing was that Layne was really bouncing back at this time. In spite of all the rumors he WAS clean. He was getting more and more into one of his favorite hobbies too, which was anime (which he helped get me into. Thank you again, Layne. :D ) His anime of choice back then was Vampire Princess Miyu.

Late '96, Demri started backsliding and this was around when I finally met her. Now whether or not Layne ever knew just how much I liked him, I don’t know, but Demri knew. We got along at first. Demri was sweet and helpful and fun. Then she moved in with Layne because she had nowhere else to go. They weren’t dating at the time, just sharing the apartment. Layne had told her that if she started using drugs again he’d have to make her leave. But Demri did start using drugs again, and instead of asking her to leave, because then she would really be in trouble, Layne took a hike. I don’t know where he went though, and even the people who he rented from thought he was still living there. He just didn’t tell anyone that he was leaving.

Demri made a mess of the house and the living situation in Layne’s absence. She turned really different, and believe me when I say that she was not truly the person that she was becoming. When she was herself she was a very sensitive and fun girl. Around October 20th or so she made some phone calls and wrote some letters to some people. Sparing the details, I ended up having a stupid fight with her about Layne. I was somewhat envious of her because Layne always seemed to forgive her each time, and there is something TO that, but at the same time I felt I was right; she was making a mess of things and she was in big trouble. She said something to me, I said something back, and that was it. When I spoke to Layne I was pissed off and crying, and told him what was going on at the house, but he pretty much already knew. That’s when he came back and Demri left.

Demri died on Oct. 29th of '96 of a heroin overdose. She was made weaker by the fact that she’d contracted heart problems from the use of dirty and used cotton when she used heroin. At 26 she was wearing a pacemaker. I remember a few months after she got the pacemaker that certain “friends” of Layne’s were blaming her illness on him. Why? Because she’d been staying at his apartment at the time that she got sick (when he had gone on tour) and, according to them, he hadn’t thought to leave her enough money to buy new bags of cotton for, what, ninety nine cents? Just how much sense does that make? She had her own connections for buying heroin and she could afford that, but it was LAYNE’S fault that she got sick b/c he hadn’t bought her cotton before he left. This is the kind of ridiculous talk he put up with from people who claimed to like him.

Right before Demri died she had been about to move to Hawaii with her father (or stepfather, I forget which.) She was also seeing this new guy that her family hadn’t met. He was a coke dealer. She went out one night with the new bf of hers and she had shot heroin before they left. They went down to QFC and he asked her to wait in the car while he ran into the store to buy a few things. When he came out, he assumed that she was asleep. He drove around town for a while after that not even aware that Demri was dying in the passenger seat. By the time he tried to wake her she was in a coma. That was the night of the 28th. Demri didn’t die till the morning of the 29th, in her mother’s arms at the hospital. I think that Layne always sort of blamed himself for not looking after her, because she did need looking after. Nice she was, but not very independent. Demri never grew up. I have some copies of her poetry. She once called herself “an alien waiting for a ride home”.

Around '97, Layne had moved to the U Dist. He hardly ever saw Jerry anymore, but Mike Inez was still kind of close with him. As for Mike Starr, if you’re wondering, he was living in a crappy old apartment (same building that I used to live in) with his father. One night he and his father were shooting heroin together and his father OD’ed. He lived through it, but they were kicked out of the apartment. Gah, Mike Starr was a weird one. I never met him, but that’s according to people who did. (At the time, Layne didn’t know what happened with MS. I’d heard it from one of the people I knew who also lived there.)

Jerry was totally dogging out then. He seemed to think that because he never shot heroin he was better than Layne. Jerry did do some heroin but he was all about coke, girls, money and fame. I started to dislike him then. You know what he was like? He was like Layne’s pimp, only he couldn’t get Layne to work. Layne was tired of it and didn’t want to do it anymore, and Jerry became very devious in his words and his actions. He’s a different person on coke. He walks around flipping his hair and trying to hump everything he thinks might have a vagina. He’s got this “I’m Jerry Cantrell and you’re not” sort of attitude. He started doing this whole big martyred thing in the press – “I’m standing by Layne, even though it’s making me sufferrrrrrr!” but in private he was slipping the knife in. God. Just thinking about it. >:(

Around '98, Mark Lanegan was living with Layne. Mark and Layne were really cool together. Lanegan was struggling to quit heroin and I would swear to this day that he’s here because of Layne. Layne helped him a lot in a lot of ways. He was always fighting someone else’s battle when he thought he had his beat. Lanegan was really sick for a while and Layne was like a Florence Nightingale. Oh lord, the jokes... ;D They would go out together and a lot of people thought they were gay. Which didn’t bother them though because they took it like one big joke. “Yeah we're gay, wanna join us?” LOL!

I just don’t know what happened after '98 - '99. Things were mellow, Layne was doing really well. He had his cats and a nice place to live and his art and his hobbies. I know that he was at Jerry’s '98 Halloween concert, and had thought about making an appearance there. He was dressed as a monster that night and no one recognized him.

I don’t know what happened after '99. I left Seattle because I was very stupidly stuck on Layne and I knew that probably nothing was going to come of it. I looked a little bit like Demri back then and I always had the feeling that Layne was a little weirded out by that. He only ever made one reference to the fact though, and that was after she was gone.

I moved thousands of miles away, he changed his email address and, though we spoke on the phone a few times since then it was only about little things. During this year I hadn’t heard a thing. But then I was never much more than a witness.

For Layne to die was just sad and wrong, but for him to die alone was just an abomination. By blaming Jerry and the rest of Layne’s “friends” I also have to blame myself for moving so far away and losing touch. On the other hand I also don’t flatter myself that I could have done something for him; I just don’t know if I was that important. But I will say this: Jerry saw this coming. Now you may say that he was just fed up with waiting for Layne to find solid ground once and for all, and I could totally understand that, but you’d be missing the point. Jerry’s almost entirely about money, or at least he was 3 years ago. I’m sure that he’s sad, I’m sure he feels it. But god, if he isn’t just a little gratified also. Jerry always had this “I told you so” thing going on. When Layne would relapse or even admit to weakness in the last few years that I knew them Jerry would get very patronizing and very smug. I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand the man. I hate the way he made people feel, so worthless and small.

I’m sorry, Layne. I made myself get over my stupid feelings for you because I had to, and when I did that I also got over my frustration with the fact that everytime I defended you I had to hide behind anonymity and lose credibility. I never told anyone that I knew you and you used to tell me “don't let it bother you. It’s just talk.” And things like that. I always had faith in you though.

I remember looking out your window at the docks one time while you were on the computer, and I was making you listen to some stupid old song because I thought it was cool. You were making fun of it and you crooned the line “you are so superduper bravissimo” to me like the big goofball that you were. Layne, I was yours for the asking, but you never asked.

That’s all I wanted to say. Maybe I’ll find a little peace now even without credibility, just like you always thought was possible. Don’t forget me though and please continue to be my angel; I know there’s enough of you to go around for everyone.

I love you still, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry.

Always, your brave Koa.