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I negotiated with two street guys at the bus stop and offered to pay them ten bucks each to carry four of the bags. Their names were Clemence and Don. “You must be having some kinda partee, my man,” said Clemence. “I mean, you’re doin’ it up right. Am I right?”

“I’m decorating my room,” I said. “I just moved in.”

“Good idea, bro. Excellent. And while you’re at it, gettin’ your own self ready for the holidays.”

“Never hurts to have an early start.”

“Right as Ripple, my man,” said Don.

T
hat night, after I set up all the bottles on my fake-oak dresser, Tub and I got drunk in the living room watching TV cable reruns of a sadistic crime show where normal-looking guys make dates with young decoy girls online in chat rooms then go for a visit and get humiliated on camera by a self-righteous prick
investigative reporter,
then busted as they leave the house by the local Gestapo. Me and Tub watched five episodes in a row. Real quality TV snot.

But my brain’s peace had been restored. LeCash’s bulldog seemed to favor black Russians topping his all-beef canned burger meat, while I stuck with straight-blended whiskey after a couple of salami-and-cheese sandwiches.

Around midnight we took our evening walk. It was later than usual and I had to rouse Tub from a deep sleep. While getting my jacket from my room I noticed that a party appeared to be in progress across the courtyard. My neighbor’s two bright exterior wall lights were on and a couple was drinking and talking against the rail on the deck.

Half an hour later when Tub and I got back, the people were gone but the lights were still blazing. I took off my clothes and poured four fingers of Schenley and was ready to get some sleep, but as always, my room’s thin curtains were useless against the searing beams from beyond the courtyard. Just for once I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I didn’t feel like crashing on the couch again. The smell of Tub and his dog hair permeated the thing, even with a blanket slung over it.

I made up my mind. Screw it. Enough was enough. Out on my balcony in my shorts I yelled across the way. “Hey guys! You across the way! It’s almost one o’clock, would you mind turning off the lights? How about it? I’m trying to get some sleep over here!”

No answer. No response.

A minute or so later I tried again. “Hey, over there,” I yelled. “This is your neighbor! Turn off the goddamn lights! Do you hear me?”

Across the way the sliding glass doors were closed but the dim living room lights were still on and I could hear faint music.

Then, beneath my balcony I heard a glass door slide open. “Hey,” a man’s voice yelled. “Over there! You’re keeping me awake too! C’mon, give it up! Cut us all a break. Turn off the goddamn lights!”

I couldn’t see the guy below but he called up to me. “Yo, howz it goin’? You’re Ronny’s new roommate, right?”

“Right,” I said, “That’s me. I’m the new designated doggy sitter.”

“My name’s Victor.”

“Bruno,” I said. “Hey, tell me something, Victor; does this shit go on night after night?”

“No, once in a while they turn ’em off. But they’re dopers
or some damn thing. Don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes those lights stay on for three or four days in a row.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t fucking sleep,” I yelled. “I’ve been on the couch for the last few days but tonight I want to use my bed. I mean, this is bullshit. How ’bout this, Victor: Let’s go over there and bang on the door?”

“Nah. No good,” he called back. “That’s a security building. I’ve tried it before. They never answer the freakin’ buzzer anyway. Hey, you sound like you been celebrating, Bruno? You sound ’bout half in the bag, my man.”

“I just set up my new bar. A move-in party kinda deal.”

“Well, good luck to you, bro,” Victor called. “Yo look, I’m done in, okay? I gets up early. I bought me some night blinders from the drugstore. Thatz what I use when this stuff happens. You should get you some too. Sorry I can’t help you, man. Good night.”

“Right,” I called back. “Okay. See ya.”

Then Victor was gone. I heard his balcony door slide closed.

Ten minutes later, still pissed off, after another tall whiskey, a solution came to me. Ronny LeCash, along with his granola and spinach leaves and microbiotic grains and health-food shit, was an audio buff. On either side of his living room’s wall unit were powerful twelve-inch speakers that were hooked into the TV. All the apartment’s electronic sound came through those speakers with annoying power.

It didn’t take long for me to unplug his audio speakers and system, then drag the stuff into my room to do a quick reconnecting job with my penknife. The speaker wires were just
long enough for me to remount the units on my balcony wall, facing out.

Back in the living room I looked through my roommate’s stack of CDs. The rap disc I chose was by a
singer
named Sam’yall K. I’d never heard of the guy but I queued the disc up and pressed
play
on
low
to test my selection. Now satisfied of the desired effect, I re-queued the disc then cranked up the sound.
“Sha-baba-ah-babah uh uh uh! Sha-baba-ah-babah uh uh uh!!! You done know me butcha know me nowwww! I seen yo bitch at my back door…Sha-baba-ah-babah uh uh uh…Say she lookin’ for sugar but I gah more…”

It took less than a minute for the living room lights to go fully on in the apartment across the way. I had just lit a cigarette and was sipping my Schenley refill.

A tall guy in boxers appeared across the way. I couldn’t see his face because it was obscured from me by his blasting wall lights. But I saw him scratch his head then squint out to locate the source of the noise. Finally, seeing me, he yelled out something that I couldn’t hear. So I walked back into my room and faded the volume slightly, then returned to my balcony.

“How ya doin’, asshole?” I yelled.

“Hey, man,” he snarled, “what’s your problem! You nuts or what?”

“Me? Nuts? Is trying to get some sleep an abnormal desire? Do you consider that nuts?”

“You’ve made your point, okay? Turn the sound down. We’ll call it even.”

“Fuck you,” I yelled. “I’ll let you know when we’re even. This shit goes on every night. Now it’s time for a free concert. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Look, asshole, kill the noise before I come over there and
really
put you to sleep!”

“Suck my dick!”

“Okay, how ’bout this: no joke. If you make me come over there I’ll take those speakers apart and shove them down your throat—one at a time!”

“How about this, Lucifer: Lick the shit off my dick after I fuck your mother up the ass.”

“Whad’ya call me? Wha’d you say?”

“I said fuck you, moron!”

“You’re making a mistake, my man. I don’t like mama-rippin’.”

“It was your mama that made the mistake. That mistake was not to flush you after she took the shit that made you.”

“Okay, you got it! Stay right there. I’m on my way.”

I hadn’t factored in the other neighbor’s reactions. Apartment lights in both buildings were now coming on. People began appearing at their windows. Balcony doors came open. But I was too crazy now and too filled with rage. It didn’t matter. I didn’t give a shit what happened now.

Captain Strobe appeared in the courtyard below wearing workout shorts and a cut-down college sweatshirt, carrying what looked like a pipe wrench in his fist. The sweatshirt was red. USC. Joshua, my ex-night dispatcher, had attended fucking USC! I’d flunked out of Santa Monica College and UCLA as a kid but I never would have attended that pissant school. Not on a bet. Dentists and engineers and wannabe psychiatrists. The offspring of the Los Angeles elite went to USC. Rich kids with family money. Those who considered themselves better than everybody else. Those who carried pipe wrenches in their hands to ensure their advantage.

He was standing directly beneath my balcony now, yelling up. For the first time I could see him and his face clearly. His round head and short, light hair and expression somehow looked familiar. Maybe I’d known him from a job somewhere, or a bar. Maybe we were once neighbors. Then it hit me. This asshole reminded me of myself.

I couldn’t hear what he was yelling because of the angle and my blasting rap music, so I went in and lowered Sam’yall K a little more.

On my way back to the balcony I ripped my computer’s monitor off the desk and brought it along.

“Hey!” I yelled down. “Lost your guts? You’ll need more than that wrench to deal with me. I’m waiting, fucker!”

“C’mon down here you little shit,” he bellowed, waving his pipe. “I’m going to adjust your speakers for ya.”

In a single motion I raised my computer monitor and threw it down at him. The guy’s reflexes were good and he ducked quickly. The thing missed him and crashed on the concrete patio, glass and plastic flying in all directions.

“You’re dead,” he raged. “You are a fucking dead man!”

“Maybe I am,” I said. “But I’ll take you with me. That’s a promise. Now I’m coming down. Wait right there!”

It occurred to me then that I wanted to die. The idea came simply and clearly into my head. I was tired—exhausted by my own unending obsessions and my scalding brain and the pain and empty absurdness of my useless life. Death would be a relief. Today—now—was as good a time and place as any.

I still held the advantage over this asshole and I knew it. He was the one without the power. Beneath me three floors down, there on the ground with his big mouth and his weapon. I was up here.

So, instead of heading out my door and down the stairs, I decided to throw something else first.

The next closest thing in my room was my computer’s CPU. I ripped it from the table.

The jerk was looking away when I threw it, waiting for me to come out the ground floor patio door.

The heavy metal unit caught him on the shoulder. He yelled out, then grabbed his arm and went down to one knee.

“Now I’m coming down!” I snarled. “Now
you’re
the fucking dead man!”

On my way out, in LeCash’s kitchen, on the counter in a wooden holder was a butcher’s knife set. I grabbed the biggest one he had, then went to the door and started for the stairs.

But suddenly, as I stomped down the steps, on the landing below stood a big black dude blocking my way. He had his hand up like a traffic cop. “Hold it!” he ordered.

I was the one with the knife and nothing was going to stop me. “Move,” I yelled. “Get out of my way. Don’t fuck with me.”

In a one-two motion the guy grabbed the knife from my hand and punched me. I second later I could feel my head strike the wall with a thud.

Looking up from the floor he was standing above me. “I’m Victor,” he said, “your downstairs neighbor. You’re Bruno, right? Remember me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now I do.”

“Time to call it a night, Bruno. You’re in pretty deep as it is.”

“That fuckshit is waiting downstairs. The prick’s got a pipe in his hand.”

“I know. I saw what happened. And you winged him pretty good with that amp.”

“It was my computer’s CPU. Just let me up, okay? Get out of my way.”

“You gonna kill that fool or maybe get killed.”

“That’s right,” I hissed. “One hundred percent. Someone’s going to die tonight.”

“Not here. Not now. I live here too, my man. This is my house too.”

“Look, he started this.”

Victor outweighed me by fifty pounds. He yanked me to my feet, then threw my knife up the steps to the third floor landing. He grabbed me by the back of my shirt and one arm and began pulling me down the stairs. I tried twisting myself free but it was useless.

When we got to the front door exit he reached into my pants pocket and pulled out my house keys. “Get going, Bruno,” he said quietly. “If you come back here tonight you gonna be dealing with me. Juss go find a park somewhere and sleep it off.”

T
he first couple of days at the beginning of my six-month stay at Charles Street Recovery House, near the beach in Costa Mesa, were the worst of my life. By calling in a favor from a probation judge, Attorney Busanzian had managed to wangle me a scholarship grant to the program. I was a charity case. Had he not done so I would have been on my way to Wayside jail for the full term. But I hated the place. It was a jail without bars.

My group was comprised of twelve guys. Most were crackheads or tooth-rotted meth suckers. Only one or two were like me: drinkers. The current catchphrase in the recovery business is “dual-addiction.” They tell you it’s all the same disease, but that’s crap. Alcohol and drugs are very different. They affect the brain differently. But
recovery
is a big, snowballing industry. They want your money—everybody’s money—and they mix all species together in the same bubbling piss pot.

At first you sit in “group” three times a day and listen to the raging rock-heads scream and whine about their bizarre lives; this burglary or that carjacking or ripping off their
parents’ jewelry to get money. Confrontations and fights between the speed freaks are common in the first few days. Then, luckily, the staff physician, Dr. Fix-You-Up-Right-Away, prescribes load-levelers and downers for the rock-heads and they become more like amiable, distracted zombies. That’s what you get for your 10K a month. And Charles Street was cheap by comparison.

But either way drunks simply don’t fit in. Me and the other boozer, Paul, didn’t relate to any of what was being said and our best conversations were between sessions when we talked about our favorite bars in L.A. and the nasty women we’d met. So, at least for me, “group” turned out to be a waste of time.

My counselor was a guy named Armondo, a former Mexican gang guy who’d done a dime at Pelican Bay and a nickel bit in “Q.” He’d found God in recovery going to prison Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Mondo was huge. He had a shaved head and his body was knife-scarred and covered with prison tats. Sitting behind his desk, the guy’s white, starched dress shirt and tie made me think of a chimp in a TV commercial trying to portray a human. I disliked the fat prick at first sight. His recovery philosophy could easily be summed up in a three sentences:
I’m the MAN
and you are shit. I hold all the cards and you are shit.
I’ve been through it all and you cannot con me because you are full of shit.
This attitude served only to cement my resistance.

I was in his office for our second scheduled session. My first mandatory one-on-one meeting had been aborted after a six-hour group session in which all new residents, me included, went through the first three AA steps. Mondo and I
were supposed to hook up then but I’d gone back to my dorm room claiming sick. I was desperate to get out. The place was a hell.

The meeting with Mondo purportedly had to do with my past. My history. My written fourth step: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

“First off,” Mondo said, “before we get down to it, what would you say is your main objective at Charles Street? What do you hope to gain from completing our program?”

“Release,” I answered. “My hope is to return, in tact, to
living my dreams.”

“Bullshit, Dante,” he barked. “Let’s end the babysnot right up front.”

The office we sat in was small and un-air-conditioned and it has always been my observation that fat humans perspire a lot. And big Armondo was the emperor of flop sweat. His bald dome and face were covered with it, yet the sun was barely up.

He looked up from his photocopied form and glared. “Okay, let’s try again,” he said. “We’re gonna do this every day at five forty-five a.m., so if I were you, bro, I’d juss get used to the process.”

“I’m court-sentenced, man. I’d like to tell you what you want to hear but I’m fresh out of
fake it ’til you make it.”

“Thaz good, my man,” whispered Mondo, “because either I get full cooperation and participation or you get an X on this intake form and off and you go back to County. So, we got us a door number one or door number two scenario here. Pick one. Truth is, it’s all the same to me. I cash my paycheck every Saturday.”

It only took a second for me to respond. “Go ahead,” I said,
staring at the floor, “I’m down. I’ve got zero interest in returning to jail. So let’s do it. Ask your goddamn questions.”

Mondo wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his size XXL shirt then picked up a clipboard. “Question One:
When you look back at your life, what memories are still uncomfortable or painful? What incidents make you feel dirty?”

“Okay, look,” I said, my mind now on scream, “I just can’t do this. I can’t do it right now.”

Big Mondo got to his feet. “Well, I guess that’s that. It’s your call, Dante.”

“Okay, look, what about this: Can I take the thing back to the dorm and do it there? In private.”

Mondo wagged his neckless head then sank back into his chair. “Yeah, okay, that’s allowed.”

Then, reaching down into a drawer he handed me a yellow writing tablet, then a pen. “You got two hours, my man. Have it back here by eight o’clock. Complete. Answer all the questions. Understood?”

“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

Back in my room, ten minutes later, sipping a mug of caffeine-less tea, sitting at the writing desk in my beige-walled dorm room, I made up my mind to complete the annoying exercise. For me, Charles Street was the last house on the block. Fuck it. I’d do what I had to do. I’d been eighty-sixed for the last time.

Then, something startling happened: My hand began to write. My brain switched gears and submitted. Words began pouring out. They were mostly lies but that didn’t matter. I was doing it. Two pages later I was done with Question One.

Question Two was:
In what ways do you experience yourself as inadequate?

No problem. Two more written pages. Boom boom boom. Again, the stuff I wrote was mostly made up, things like being a molested child and being beaten as a kid, and going deaf. But so what. I’d be okay. I could hack it. No more County Jail.

Question Three:
What people do you resent, and why?

I began with David Koffman and listed every employer that I could remember going back as far as I could, and the reason why I disliked the pricks. It was easy.

An hour and a half later I’d answered all ten questions and I was done. The relief was palpable.

In the cafeteria I congratulated myself with three unsweetened jelly doughnuts and another cup of their best swill herbal tea. I could make it work.
One day at a time. Fake it ’til you make it.