All the Wrong Decisions

By Hank Fredo

Hank can't say he has seen it all or done it all, but he has seen most of what life has to offer. The joys, the tribulation and the pitfalls. He has lived a life of penury and has climbed up to fame as a brilliant writer and probably the best. In this breezy and beautiful book, he gives account of his past— for you to find lessons and laughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223193999

Book preview

Intro.

Youth is a blunder...

That right there is nothing but the truth as seen from an old geezer’s perspective. Age brings a hunger for a redo like you have never experienced. I admit, it is really frustrating. Sometimes, the past is littered with mistakes—simple and complex ones that could have shifted your personality a completely different way.

I guess it is inevitable that this piece of personal rants must begin with a recollection of a long gone era of love. A time when I thought I was a badass, smartass and every other silly kind of ass that I was thought possible to become.  In my defense, I was young. And from what I have learned from crazy , dead writers who  probably made more than their fair share of blunders is that youth is the time of mistakes and leaping over  the cliff.

Los Angeles was beautiful, as beautiful as any city could have been in ’92. The world was an endless sky for me. I was looking forward to doing things, not like these days where I rather stay home with bottle of beer or a glass of whiskey and brood about the slow and sure depression of humankind.

You can’t blame me. While in my youth I was blind to many of the foolishness and rot that grow and froth out to the brim of human existence, now I can tell you that I have tasted it and it is foul. The inside of my small flat and the clack-clack of my keyboard pushes the noise of the world away.

Of course, the world outside my door pulls me now and then, but I have grown some kind of thick skin; a screen over my senses that keeps me immune to the much of the inanities people exhibit outside. I watch them, make notes in my little notebook and turn them into stories for them to read and laugh. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Back then I had friends and they didn’t think I was much of a pain to be with. In retrospect, I didn’t really care about showing people what I saw and how I felt about people in general. I was more interested in living, being the best I thought I could be.

That was perhaps how I got in a web that determined how I saw women for the rest of my life. It wasn’t about who was at fault, because that part of it was clear. The question I didn’t want to answer was: Hank, how the fuck did you get so stupid?

It was the silliest stunt, and like an addict, I kept at it until my luck ran out and I was swept aside like filth. Perhaps I exaggerate how this experience years ago shaped me, maybe not. Mistakes are believed to be chisels, scraping man into perfection with lessons.

Gah! 

Well, lesson one—and trust me, there are more to come—don’t fucking play with a woman’s heart. I think I learned that way too late in life.

At risk of sounding like some of the many gag books and self-care pile out there: I hope you learn from these words I will be pushing to you.

These are my experience, and I know how we all love to learn from experiences. Hopefully, you will be learning from mine and not yours. Of course I understand that can be a tall ask—those who can’t help being stupid will just walk right on into whatever deep-shit this book is supposed to save them from. I have name for people like that. I am sure you don’t want to know it.

One of the people I hung out with back then would sometimes say something like Hank you think you are clear eyed, unlike the rest of us huh?

Sometimes I responded, and sometimes I shrug and give a half-ass mutter about his shitty hair style and the rest of us would laugh it off.

The truth back then was that I didn’t think I had a better perspective of life and living than any of them. They were all brilliant in one way or the other—I supposed I wouldn’t be hanging out with them if they weren’t.

What I had that was special, at least to me, was my ability to assess what we see and filter out the garbage. I wouldn’t call it a super power, but it helped me x-ray things quietly easily. It gave me that screen that let me expose myself to everything like my friends were doing, and not get sucked into the ridiculous and insane things they do day to day.

Before I got to this point though, I was like you, and I made so many errors that are stuck to me now as I write this. You know what I mean, don’t you?

Youth, Fun and Love

I was twenty five and broke when I met Chloe. Summer was full of brilliance and I was making friends, going out to some parties and doing the normal things twenty five year olds were doing in that time. L.A was beautiful in its ability to provide so many sins for a man my age and I was deep in all them—at least, to some level.

I didn’t smoke, but my friends did. I could drink, but I didn’t drink much because I loathed the idea of being without control of my wits. I had seen really amazing people becoming shit-talkers when they get to the bum of a bottle. People become clowns once their eyes dilate and their voice slur.

I didn’t hate being with those who put themselves in that situations though. I was more forgiving back in my youth—which I think helped me get a complete sense of how people behaved. I wonder what it would have been like I had ignored them because of their propensity to be foolish.

There was Gary, a tall Jewish fellow that liked wine a lot. Cheap white, because none of us was really working. We were all leaving in meagre incomes and trying to experience all the gifts of life Los Angeles could give us.

Gary was like a cool drunk. He would stay quiet, watching the world around him with his eyes squinted and his face in a deep frown. From time to time, he would cough and say something political that people will laugh about and then he would recede back into the inebriated silence that he crawled out of.

He looked wise when he was quiet. His eyes would stay firmly on one thing like a man reflecting on things he had done and things he should do. I always found it amusing watching him.

He wasn’t really a friend—more like the friend of a friend that I could tolerate.

After I met Chloe though, I liked him a lot better. He introduced her