Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (10 page)

A Friend of the Devil

T
he circumstances may have been less than ideal, but Eric and I came through the abortion together, closer, and eager for more privacy and space. He responded by buying an old, two-story Spanish-style home in Laurel Canyon. We moved there from his parents’ home without anyone in either his or my family knowing the circumstances that led us to go out on our own.

Aside from the pleasure of nesting, we adored one thing above all else about the new home, and that was its proximity to Bill’s. That should have been a warning sign to both of us, but who bothered to think like that when all of us seemed to have so much fun? Caravanning as a group in our BMWs, we went to the biggest concerts of the day: Fleetwood Mac, Chicago, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the Jefferson Starship. We had the best tickets. We commandeered corner tables at the Roxy and the Troubadour nightclubs, snorting lines off the table.

In those days, everyone did. But there was a difference. Bill sold most everyone their coke, making our all-access pass something to be envied. We took a private jet to see the Eagles. He flew us to a place in Northern California where his coke was made or stored; there were large trash cans filled to the top with white powder; we returned to Los Angeles with new supplies for his business. On several occasions, we traveled to Telluride, Colorado, where we skied all day and partied all night. Back in Los Angeles, Bill hired a young contractor named Harrison Ford to build an indoor hot tub. No ordinary hot tub, there was a button next to it. When pushed, a secret stash box rose from out of nowhere.

I took it for granted when someone took off their clothes and slipped into the Jacuzzi or made out with someone else’s girlfriend, as began to happen. As long as Bill approved, anything went. In a way, we were like a cult—good people corrupted by bad drugs. Bill drove a BMW 3.0 CS. I bought the same car. I don’t think any of us realized the sway he had over us.

One day Eric, Bill, and several others introduced me to a new drug—mushrooms. Bill had bags of them around the house. I had seen them before—ugly, brown, dried-up stems and tops in plastic bags—but didn’t know what they were. Now enlightened, I followed the guys into the kitchen. All of us were going to trip, I was told. Bill made a milk shake, then blended in a handful of
’shrooms.

“Ah, the magic ingredient,” he said, smiling at me.

Bill poured me a large glass, then let others take their own portions. I chugged it down, the ice cream tasting sweet and cold in my mouth. Looking back, I shudder at how blindly and blithely I consumed it, asking no question.

It was a little while before I felt anything, but then all of a sudden,
wham,
I began to hallucinate. Whatever pleasantness I initially experienced faded as I got higher and higher. It was like being on a rocket-powered express elevator that kept going up without stopping. Both out of my mind and out of control, I went into Bill’s garage and climbed into the front seat of his car, where I imagined myself shrinking to the size of a molecule and caroming through space.

“Mo, are you okay?”

It was Eric. I recognized his voice.

“Maureen, can you hear us?”

No, that was Bill.

“Mo!”

I could hear them, but I could not respond. My brain would not function. I was a molecule.

“I’m so fucked up,” I said.

F
or all I know, I may have been on the threshold of insanity—that’s how high I got. Eric, Bill, and Clark picked me up out of the car and took me to Andy’s house. Bill probably wanted me out of his house in case something bad happened. At Andy’s, someone put a tiny spoon up my nose and told me to snort, thinking coke would counter the mushrooms. Eventually I came down, but I needed a couple of days before I felt like myself again—whatever that was.

“How was it?” Bill asked when I saw him next.

“How was it?” I said. “It scared the hell out of me. That’s how it was.”

He laughed as if he knew something I didn’t.

“It will be better next time,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Is that why Eric calls you his teacher?”

Bill laughed, then took me in his arms and kissed me gently on the check, in the soft part just above my neck. I don’t know whether I heard him whisper “don’t tell Eric” or I imagined it, but when he let me go, I swear to God that I saw a twinkle in his turquoise eyes, a devilish glint that was pure evil—I just didn’t recognize it.

B
y early 1976, after Eric and I had been together slightly more than a year, I started to hear noises. They came at night when I was up doing coke. While Eric could stop and go to bed, I couldn’t. As a general rule, I did not stop doing coke until it was gone, and thanks to Bill, we usually had enough to keep me up for two or three days of round-the-clock tooting.

It was during the wee hours while I was hunkered down with my stash and backgammon board that I first heard the sounds outside. The first few times I ignored them. When they persisted, I told Eric, who said they were nothing. But if they were nothing, why did they keep occurring?

The logical thing would have been to investigate—open the door, look out the window, ask if anyone was there, or shout “go away wolves” (we did have coyotes and deer in the yard). But when you’re holding half an ounce of coke, you don’t do the logical thing. No, instead I convinced myself the police were hiding behind the trees and bushes, waiting for the right moment to stage a raid.

I was completely paranoid. MY response? I took my baggie of coke and my backgammon board and scooted into the closet, staying there until I knew from the sound of chirping birds that it was daylight, and thus safe to come out. Sometimes I didn’t come out, though. I hated it when Eric opened the closet doors and found me knotted up on the floor.

Around this time I was haunted by recurring nightmares. There were two of them, actually, both disturbingly real. In one, I was falling from a dangerous height. Sometimes it was from a roof, other times it was from a high building. The sensation was the same in each situation: I was out of control. I always woke up before hitting the ground, feeling anxious, frightened, and as if I had escaped with my life.

The other dream was worse. In it, I had killed someone. It was always right after the fact. I never knew exactly how I had killed the person—or any other details, like whether it was a man, woman, boy, or girl. I was just filled with the dread of having done it. In one variation, Bill and Andy helped me bury the person. It was so real to me that the next time Eric and I went on a hike in the hills near our home, I kept an eye open for signs of the clearing where we had buried the body.

After enough of these nightmares, I wondered if I had actually committed such a crime. I didn’t think so, but I honestly didn’t know. All I knew was I didn’t want to go to sleep.

Eric didn’t realize the extent to which the coke had changed me. Neither did I until I was confronted by an important decision. One day Eric came into the living room. I was playing the guitar. I had been up for three days. I was fried. I may have taken a quaalude to help bring me down; I don’t remember. All I recall is feeling on edge, my insides like broken glass.

After listening to me play, Eric got down on one knee and put a small jewelry box in front of me.

“What?” I said. “No! You didn’t.”

Staring up at me from behind a Cheshire-cat grin, he professed his love for me, his desire to have babies, and be together always, and then, finally, he asked the question I had imagined him asking back when he romanced me on the night we met: “Maureen McCormick, will you marry me?”

The diamond-and-emerald engagement ring fit perfectly, but the idea of marrying Eric did not. It was an odd thing that I couldn’t explain. But as a teenager, I had told myself that I wasn’t going to sleep with the man I married until our wedding night. That didn’t mean I planned on staying a virgin, obviously. It meant that the man I wanted to marry and spend the rest of my life with would be so special that I would torture myself in the best way possible, and I hadn’t done that with Eric.

Although we made love that night, I tormented myself after Eric fell asleep. Late the next morning, he found me in the kitchen. He was in such a good mood. But as we made breakfast milk shakes, he noticed that I was a million miles away. He asked if something was wrong. Hesitantly, I said, in fact, there was.

“What? What’s going on?” he asked, switching off the blender.

Tears streamed from my eyes. I took off the ring and gave it back to him, explaining that I couldn’t marry him.

Eric stared at me, stunned. He might as well have seen a ghost; in a way, he had. He asked what had changed between last night and the morning. I struggled to explain my decision while avoiding the real reason for the shocking turnabout—that though he had once seemed like the man I would marry, I no longer loved him enough to make such a commitment. Sadly I loved cocaine more.

We shouted at each other. Eric picked up the blender and poured the milk shake all over me. I ran out of the house. He ran after me and we went at it in the front yard, screaming, grabbing, flailing, and pushing each other until we got to the point of killing each other or walking away. We walked away.

I could not imagine a worse way to end a relationship with someone about whom I cared so deeply.

Eric and I didn’t speak for a long time and gradually I lost track of him as our lives went in separate directions.

Years later, I found him through the Internet and emailed him hello. He then called and we caught up. After we broke up, he’d come down with a virus that doctors weren’t able to treat. It took him a long time to heal and get his strength back. He credited his faith for returning him to health.

When I asked what sort of faith, he simply said it was faith that things could and would get better if only he believed it. It was, he said, like he began his life all over again, a whole new chapter. Indeed, he was happily married, the father of two children, and the owner of a successful business.

“It’s been a journey,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot of lessons.”

As for me, I still needed more time before I’d learn my lessons.

A
few weeks after we broke up, I discovered that I was pregnant again. Although Eric and I still talked, if you can call it that, I did not tell him the news. I was afraid he would convince me to have the baby, and I had already made up my mind to terminate the pregnancy.

With no place to turn for help, I went home to my parents. Although I knew they’d disapproved of me living with Eric, I still wanted to go there. It was as if a survival instinct took over. I simply didn’t have the strength to handle the situation on my own and I knew that no matter what the situation, they would take care of me, and they did. That’s what makes looking back on my drug addiction so painful. I fell in love with coke because it let me escape my anger toward and embarrassment about my family, and yet they were the ones I turned to in this time of need.

I told my parents that I was pregnant and needed their help. I also said that I had broken up with Eric. For reasons I’ll never quite understand, I didn’t tell them about my drug problem. Maybe it’s because I didn’t see it as a problem yet. Also, it was scary enough to sit across from my Catholic parents and admit that I was pregnant and wanted an abortion.

My father reacted with a passiveness that reminded me of the way he had dealt with Kevin’s problems. Despite his religious beliefs, there were no staunch objections or reprimands. It was my mother, though, who surprised me by stepping up and nursing me through the entire procedure.

With so many frailties and secrets of her own, I think she understood me more than I ever realized, certainly more than she was able to articulate. I think that’s where her strength came from; without being able to say so, she didn’t want me to have to experience the kind of pain she had known all her life. Little did she or anyone else know about the dark thoughts that had tormented me since my teens, when I first learned about her syphilis.

Then again, maybe she suspected as much. We were birds of a feather in that department. Who knows how different my life would have been if we’d been able to speak openly.

No Minor Vices

O
nce I was up and about, I moved into a condo on one of the lower floors of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise in West Los Angeles. My parents had purchased it for me as an investment a few years earlier and rented it out, though it had recently become vacant. I didn’t want to go back to my old place in Woodland Hills. I felt like I had outgrown it and needed a fresh start.

Work, the one thing about which I was most passionate, had been sporadic while I was with Eric, and I wanted to get back to it. So I was excited when I was cast in an episode of
The Streets of San Francisco.
Better still, it shot in San Francisco, giving me an excuse to get out of town. Before I left, my friend Carin, knowing my thing for older men, joked that I’d probably have a fling with the show’s star Karl Malden. She had a point that made me laugh.

As it turned out, I got involved with Richard Hatch, the handsome actor who stepped in after the show’s original colead Michael Douglas won a slew of Oscars for producing
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
and left to pursue a movie career. The episode was titled “No Minor Vices,” and I played a teenage call girl who’s the subject of an investigation after some of her johns are murdered. The culprit turns out to be her father. Richard and I started flirting on the first day. He invited me to lunch, which ended up including a full bottle of red wine.

I returned to work with a serious buzz and learned my scenes had been switched while we were at lunch and I had to work with Karl. I hated myself for not being in a condition to work with an actor of his caliber. It was emblematic of so much that was to come. I cheated myself as much as him. But I had other worries, like standing straight and walking without falling down. Our scene was outdoors. I spotted a line in the sidewalk, and after the director yelled “action,” I followed it to my mark.

Later, Richard assured me that no one could tell I was tipsy. Such a relief. We were in his apartment, an amazing little place in the city, where we began an affair lasting several months. He saw me in Los Angeles on weekends and I flew up to San Francisco a few times. I had no delusions about where the relationship was going or how long it would last. All the girls were into Richard and vice versa.

It was a classic rebound fling, except that in addition to being hot, Richard was also genuinely nice. I had fun being with him, and it was a time when I needed to feel good about myself. He was into health foods and working out, something I wish would have had a more lasting influence on me.

Between visits with Richard, I got a part in the movie
Pony Express Rider,
the story of a young man (played by Stewart Petersen) who joins the Pony Express while searching for his father’s killer. I served as the love interest, Rose of Sharon. The movie was shot in Kerrville, Texas, a beautiful, rugged area of oak-covered hills and green valleys. Again, I enjoyed getting away from Los Angeles even though I ended up with some nasty chigger bites on my legs from wearing a wide hoopskirt.

I relearned how to ride a horse, something I’d enjoyed as a kid when my father was an investor in a Malibu stable. I did my own stunts and got hurt when a horse dragged me a few hundred feet across the ground, but I didn’t complain, not with costars like Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, and other veterans of great Westerns looking on. Those men like tough women, and nothing made me prouder than hearing them cheer
“atta girl”
as I dusted myself off.

By the end of that bicentennial summer, I was back in Los Angeles and hanging out with the crowd at Bill’s. Work had kept me away from there, but I hadn’t severed ties and in fact had kept up with the same crowd, minus Eric, who’d drifted away on his own. I was drawn right back into the routine. My use was even more intense than before, and so were my friendships with Bill, Andy, Clark, and Tony.

L
ife got crazier. One day Clark threw a party at his parents’ home and patched together white bed sheets in the backyard to make an enormous movie screen, then projected the triple-X-rated film
Deep Throat.
He thought only the people in the backyard could see it, but it turned out passersby on Sunset Boulevard could see the other side of the sheet, and soon hundreds of people, strangers, came streaming into the yard through the bushes and over the wall to watch the movie.

While all this was going on I was upstairs in Clark’s brother’s bedroom, going through his dresser in search of more cocaine.

Without Eric, I worried that my access to Bill might dry up. Why I worried, I don’t know. I hadn’t been given a reason. But I got anxious when I thought about being stranded with no supply, and so I started dating Tony. Tall, light-skinned, with long, brown hair, Tony was the son of a famous Hollywood songwriter. He was trying to make it in the music business, too, though he didn’t need to work. He had plenty of money, which he spent on drugs.

Though Tony and I did not have anything in common, nor did I feel any passion when we were together, the drugs made him attractive to me. Of course I told myself otherwise. Addicts are the best liars on the planet. Ours was a crazy, coke-driven relationship that burned, as we did, for days, then crashed in a heap of singed flesh and synapses, tangled in bed but uninterested in sex.

We were dating in October 1976 when Florence Henderson, Susan Olsen, Mike Lookinland, and I appeared on the
Donny and Marie
show, one of ABC’s most popular variety shows. Donny and Marie worked with an impressive seriousness. They were everything I wasn’t. But I felt a measure of comfort around my former
Brady
costars, and the skits we did made few demands.

I was at Bill’s the night it aired. My agent called a couple days later and said the show’s ratings were so huge that ABC president Fred Silverman ordered
Donny and Marie
producers Sid and Marty Kroft to put together a
Brady Bunch
variety special. In fact, he’d already scheduled the special at the end of November. It was almost unheard of. Likewise, we had only about six and a half weeks to put a show together.

Marty Kroft phoned each of us to express his enthusiasm and discuss the show. Everyone signed on except for Eve. Having won raves in the gritty issue-oriented TV movie
Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway,
she was intent on pursuing a serious acting career and putting the Bradys in her past. Several of us tried talking to her, but she was adamant.

Though I was disappointed I wouldn’t be seeing her, I respected her decision. I was even envious.

T
he rest of us, though, threw ourselves into a frenzied period of meetings, fittings, and rehearsals. Aside from the affection we had for one another, we also shared a genuine enthusiasm for the wacky endeavor itself. Of course the money was good and welcomed, but we were, oddly enough, swept up by a collective hope that the show would turn into something big, like the next
Sonny & Cher
variety show and we could go on tour and…well, it was crazy.

Crazier still was Bob Reed. After fighting with producers through every season of
The Brady Bunch,
he was the most excited of all. We joked that it was the first time any of us could remember him wanting to do something
Brady
-related. But he sang and danced without caring that he was lousy and the show itself was worse. His inner Dorothy had found her calling.

One day, as I stood next to Florence in rehearsal, I leaned in and asked how I could not have seen he was gay. Suddenly it was obvious.

Years later he told Barry that although he knew he was terrible and slow to learn the dance steps, he had fun. Great attitude. Barry, who had recently starred in a Broadway production of
Pippin,
was also in his element. Florence, the musical-comedy pro, held us together. As for Chris, the poor guy was tortured by two left feet and even less singing ability, but he was game for anything. Likewise Mike and Susie. I fell in between Bob and Barry and Florence. I worked my butt off and secretly fantasized that the show, if it took off, might rekindle a singing career for me.

Fat chance. The Krofts and writer Bruce Vilanch threw together a fractured and downright weird concoction of material, starting with our opening performance of the hits “Baby Face” and “Love to Love You Baby” (yes, our version of Donna Summer’s disco classic). As we worked it onstage, the Kroffette Dancers and Water Follies performed a synchronized ballet in a giant swimming pool in front of us. And that was merely the first couple of minutes.

For the next hour, we mixed the barest bones of a story set in the Bradys’ home with skits and musical numbers. Florence sang “One” from
A Chorus Line.
Barry and I did a fifties-inspired rendition of “Splish Splash” with Donny and Marie. Bob dressed in a bunny suit. “Peter” and “Marcia” fought over the phone. Barry delivered an overly earnest “Corner of the Sky” from
Pippin.
And most of the guys were pushed into the pool. Finally, the show closed with all of us onstage, debating what to sing as a finale. Unable to agree, we performed about six songs in different combinations, finally closing with “The Hustle” and “Shake Your Booty.”

Never had a variety show contained such…variety.

B
ut the special was another ratings hit, and ABC ordered eight more episodes starting in January 1977. Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett provided the sizzle on the first show, and subsequent guest stars included Tina Turner, the Hudson Brothers, Milton Berle, Rip Taylor, Vincent Price, Charo, Redd Foxx, and the Ohio Players.

I did coke throughout those shows. It was the first time I’d showed up for work high. I never should have crossed that line, because once past it, I kept going. One day I showed up strung out after three straight days without sleep. After that, I often showed up late for rehearsals. When no one said anything, I figured they didn’t know. Years later, I found out that all of them knew I had a problem. They just didn’t know how to approach me about it.

Florence knew Chevy Chase, who was making a movie on the lot. One day she passed on the word from Chevy that his friend Steve Martin wanted my phone number so he could ask me out. Of course I gave permission. I was flattered. Steve Martin was like a rock star, not just a wild and crazy guy but a wildly funny and, from what I understood, a wildly intelligent guy, too.

So he seemed on the phone. We arranged to meet for dinner at the venerable Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank’s. Both of us brought a friend to make it more casual. After dinner, we went back to Steve’s apartment, where we talked and made out. I remember him being a very good kisser. But I was insecure and either high or spaced out (most likely both), and I didn’t laugh at his jokes.

Though Steve was too polite and confident of his talent to say anything, I’m sure my inability to carry on a normal conversation or respond intelligently put him off. We never spoke again after that date. I’ve always regretted my behavior because he impressed me as an extraordinary guy. I would’ve enjoyed a second date. I used to think if the circumstances had been different we could’ve hit it off.

I
took my bad habits onto my next job, the movie
Moonshine County Express.
It was a redneck action picture directed by Gus Trikonis, Goldie Hawn’s first husband. Susan Howard, Claudia Jennings, and I played three sisters who took over the family’s moonshine business after our daddy was murdered. Figure-revealing crop tops, short shorts, and fast cars compensated for a thin plot.

The movie was shot in Nevada City, California, an old gold-rush town north of Sacramento, where we decamped in Victorian-style hotels that hadn’t seen as much action since the boom times in the mid-1800s. It was only a few days before people found out who had coke, who had the quaaludes, and who had the pot. Our crew was more like a pharmaceutical convention than a movie. Aside from John Saxon, Susan Howard, and a few other straight arrows, I could barely go thirty minutes without someone asking if I wanted a bump.

Claudia and I became instant best friends after discovering both of us had a great capacity for snorting coke. I didn’t recall that she had appeared in the “Adios, Johnny Bravo” episode of
The Brady Bunch
in 1973, which was strange, because she was a hard one to forget. A sexy redhead, she had been
Playboy
’s 1970 Playmate of the Year, then landed a part in the steamy adaptation of Jackie Susann’s
The Love Machine,
and worked steadily on TV and in B-movies, including the cult roller-derby favorite,
Unholy Rollers,
whose editor was Martin Scorsese.

She was disappointed after losing the part of
Wonder Woman
to Lynda Carter, but, as she told me, that was show business; you had to deal with the bruises.
Sniff. Sniff.
We traded stories, and I learned she’d started doing drugs after injuring herself on the movie
The Great Texas Dynamite Chase.
She also lived with songwriter Bobby Hart, his kids, and a bunch of animals.
Sniff. Sniff.

As we got to know each other better, I confided that there seemed to be quite a few lesbians among the crew. How did I know?
Sniff. Sniff.
Several had hit on me, including one woman who had been quite up-front and graphic.

“What did you say?” Claudia asked, grinning.

Sniff. Sniff.

“I said I was flattered, but no thanks.”

Laughing from embarrassment, I told her how I had a close friend who was straight but had recently gone through a phase of dating other women and tried to talk me into experimenting as well. She’d argued that every woman had it in her to make love to another woman.
Sniff. Sniff.
However, as I told Carin and then repeated to Claudia, I didn’t have a single stirring that would make me switch teams.

“But I’m a terrible flirt,” I admitted. “Guys or women—I just love people.”