My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (68 page)

The only thing he did with his life and that proverbial track, however, was tie that shit up like it was Dudley Do-Right’s girlfriend Nell and he was Snidely fucking Whiplash waiting for a train. The second rehab Ben paid for was a bust as well, with Jason bolting after only two days. Even worse, the Freehold Court back home in Jersey had issued a bench warrant for his arrest, after Jason missed a mandatory appearance. The tragic irony was that the court date in question was the final sum-up to Mewes’s old possession case: he’d successfully completed probation, and all that remained was some final face time before the judge, at which point his honor would’ve declared Jason free to go, case-closed. Too high to make the plane, Mewes never made it back to Jersey, and the bench warrant was issued.

The role I’d told Jason I’d written for him to play in
Jersey Girl
became a moot point, as the boy couldn’t step foot in Jersey without being arrested. When we headed back east to shoot the flick, Mewes asked if he could live at the LA house in our absence, taking care of the dogs. Staring at his crack-pipe burned lips and glancing at the track marks up and down his arms, it wasn’t difficult to say no. Sadly, it would be the first film in nearly ten years that I made without the boy.

While I was back east, Jason declined further. By the time we got back to LA, the word was that he was living on the streets. He’d lost a great deal of weight, and had burned a low budget production in the southeast that’d cast him as the lead in an indie flick. When the director contacted me, I commiserated with him about Jason’s drug-induced behavior in an effort to make it clear that there was little the guy could’ve done. It wasn’t the lack of budget (which Mewes taxed further by insisting they keep him in his “medicine”. or the production’s fault, I’d told the director; Mewes was just a destructive force of nature.

I called Jim, Jason’s former counselor at Promises, to see if they’d take the boy back into the program. Jim finally set me straight, though, as he tried to explain that the Jason situation was out of my hands.

“Part of the problem is you’ve never let the kid hit rock bottom,” he explained. “You’re always there throwing a net out to catch him before he hits. He knows he can count on you to get him out of any jam, because that’s been your role for years as an enabler. You’ve gotta change that approach and practice some tough love instead: don’t allow him into your life anymore. He worships and loves you; to Jason, you’re like the father he never had. And based on his affection for you, you’re the only person who’s got a shot at reaching him and getting him to clean up. But the way you’ve gone about it hasn’t worked so far, and that’s because you haven’t hit him with the worst thing he can imagine: being cut out of your life altogether. You’ve gotta let him hit rock bottom.”

“But what if his rock bottom is the grave?” I asked. “What if he winds up overdosing?”

“Then if that’s the case, there’s nothing you can do to stop that. If Jason’s meant to OD, all you’ve done is prolong his journey to the inevitable. Every addict has to make the decision to clean up his or herself, and each time you’ve intervened, it’s been you making him get clean, so it’s never stuck beyond a few months. He needs to want to get and stay sober for himself, not for you. But where you can really help him is by turning your back on Jason — because I believe he feels that not being in your life is as bad as it could get for him — and then, maybe, he might turn himself around for the best.”

So while I was in post-production on
Jersey Girl
, I took Jim’s advice and laid down the law with Jason: he wasn’t allowed in the house anymore, until he cleaned up. He wasn’t allowed to see Harley anymore, until he cleaned up. I wouldn’t finance his life until he cleaned up. I wouldn’t hang out with him until he cleaned up. The tough love approach had begun.

November 2002 saw the first Thanksgiving we’d spend at our new house in LA. The day before the government-sanctioned food gorge, Jason stopped by the post-production office where I was cutting
Jersey Girl
. His relationship with Amy long-since over, he was there with another girl entirely. She waited in the car while I spoke to the boy in the parking lot.

“Thanksgiving tomorrow,” he observed. “Gail cooking again?”

“Yup,” I confirmed. “What’re you gonna do?”

“Me and this chick are gonna hang out in our apartment, I guess,” Mewes explained, pulling a thick-frosted banana cake purchased at 7-11 from his pocket, biting into it. “It kinda sucks because we didn’t pay the electric bill so they shut the power off. We’ve been lighting a lot of candles.”

“You guys going to her folks’ for Thanksgiving or something?”

“Nah. Not allowed.”

The girl in the car, a stick-thin junkie with eyes bulging from a hollowed-out face, climbed out of the vehicle and stormed toward us.

“Half of that’s mine,” she barked at Mewes, snatching the banana cake from his hand and heading back to the car.

Jason shrugged, as if to say “Life’s come down to me and some girl I barely know battling over the last bite of convenience store vended single-serving deserts.” I pulled a pair of twenties out of my pocket and handed them to the boy.

“Go to KooKooRoo tomorrow and get yourselves some Thanksgiving turkey with this,” I insisted. “Do NOT buy drugs with it.”

“Thanks, Moves. I won’t.”

As he shuffled back to his snack cake harpy, we both knew that forty bucks wouldn’t make it to the KooKooRoo cash registers.

The next day, as my family finished the Thanksgiving meal, the doorbell rang. I joined Jason on the front steps outside of my house.

“What’re you guys doing?” he asked.

“Just hanging.”

Mewes nodded his head, then lifted his nose skyward, saying “I can smell Gail’s turkey. Was it good?”

“It was.” After a beat of silence, I added “This is the first Thanksgiving in three years you haven’t spent with us.”

“It sucks.”

“It sucks on this end, too. But I can’t invite you into the house — you understand that, right? I can’t let you in until you clean up.”

“We’re going to the Betty Ford Clinic tomorrow,” Mewes informed me, pointing to the car, where the banana cake girl was sitting. “She knows someone who works there, so I think we’re getting in for free.”

“That’s great. Stay in the program this time. Don’t leave ‘til you’re clean. Then maybe next Thanksgiving you can eat with us again.”

“Cool,” he muttered, wiping tears from his eyes. I hugged the boy and sent him on his way.

The Betty Ford sojourn lasted about as long as Mewes could make it in rehabs around that point. Two days later, he signed himself out and came back to Hollywood. He’d stop by the editing room from time to time, always to bum a few bucks off me “for smokes”, which I knew would go into his veins instead. All the while, I was dealing with
Jersey Girl
and other issues that kept my mind off Mewes.

In February, the family and I found ourselves momentarily homeless due to a mini-disaster of sorts. I’d had a fountain coke machine installed for Jen as part of a Christmas gift only two months before, but what none of us knew was that the crew which had installed it didn’t do so properly: they’d tapped into a water pipe under the bar sink and in a prime example of the American work ethic, simply electrical-taped the hole closed. While the entire family was up in Aspen where I was a featured guest at the annual Comedy Festival, the electrical tape finally gave out, and the tapped pipe began gushing all over the top floor of the house. By the time we got home, tens of thousands of gallons of water had flooded the house, soaking the third floor until it collapsed the ceiling of the second floor below it, as well as the first floor below that. The entire dwelling had to be stripped to the beams inside and rebuilt. Luckily, I’d just closed on the house in January, finally purchasing it from Ben after a year of renting, at which time I’d been forced to carry a then-seemingly ungodly amount of insurance, which included a flood policy. My former bitching about carrying a flood policy “on a house on a hill in a desert” was quickly negated, as some $200,000 in repairs were covered thanks to that insurance.

The policy also covered rental expenses for the length of time we needed to be out of the house, so we found a place in the flats of Beverly Hills on Sierra Drive. One day, while I was setting up a DVD player in the bedroom, Jen made a heart-stopping discovery in
US Weekly
that, startlingly, didn’t have anything to do with Angelina Jolie or Jessica fucking Simpson.

“Oh my God...” she uttered from the bed, where she was leafing through the magazine.

“What’s the matter?” I queried.

“I think something’s happened to Mewes.”

She pointed to a small, sidebar feature in the magazine. It was about Mewes, who’d been reported missing for months and presumed dead.

Me and My Shadow, Pt. 8

Thursday 13 April 2006 @ 11:17 a.m.

My heart raced, as I feared the eulogy I’d always been preparing in the back of my mind for Jason’s eventual overdose would finally find an audience.

Immediately, I called Jay’s cell and received a message about discontinued service. I called every number I’d ever had on the boy, but could not locate him. Then, as if on cue, the phone rang.

“What’s up, Moves?”

“You’re alive!” I yelled.

“So are you,” he responded.

“I just read you were missing and presumed dead, you asshole!”

“Really? Where?”

“In a fucking tabloid. You were supposed to be at Slamdance in January for that
R.S.V. P.
movie, and when you didn’t show and you couldn’t be found, the filmmakers reported you missing.”

“That’s weird.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m driving to Jersey. I’m finally gonna settle this bench warrant thing and surrender myself to the cops. HBO’s doing a documentary about me and the drugs.”

He might as well have said “Moves, guess what? I’ve always secretly been Jesus Christ himself, and I’ve decided to head back home to be with my heavenly father, so I’m busting out the rapture a bit early. Start praying you don’t get ‘Left Behind’, sir. Also, I’m gay.”

“What?!?”

“There’s this guy with HBO, and he’s doing a documentary about me getting off dope. So they’re taking me to Jersey, where I’m turning myself in and hoping I don’t go to jail.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah. It’s fucked up. But I was calling because they want to interview you when they get back into town. Would you be down for that?”

“How much am I allowed to say?”

“You can say whatever you want, sir.”

“Then they’re gonna need a lot of film. Are you still using?”

“Yeah, but only ‘til I get to Jersey. Then, no matter what happens with the court, I’m quitting dope. I’m tired of living like this, sir. It sucks.”

“Good for you, man,” was all I could muster. By this point, I’d heard it all before.

“But if I can get clean, do you think I can come live with you guys again?”

“I always said you could live with us, as long as you quit doing drugs, sir.”

“Alright. Because I’m gonna do it this time. So start making up my room. Nayng!”

I hung up, relieved my friend was still alive, but not very confident in his latest clean-up effort — particularly if he was doing it on camera.

I called around to see if this HBO documentary was legit, and discovered it wasn’t: yes, the filmmaker had gotten some exploratory money from HBO, but there was no deal or commitment in place for any documentary. The next time Mewes called me from on the road, I told him as much.

“Really?” he said, gravely.

“As near as I can tell,” I replied.

“That sucks, because the guy made me sign some papers.”

“Papers that say what, exactly?”

“That I’m doing the documentary and that he’s my new manager.”

“Oh, sir...”

“I thought it was kinda weird. I told him I didn’t want to sign anything, but he forced me to.”

“Were you high at the time?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, kind of ashamed.

“Well this may be the first time that being on junk might pan out for you — legally speaking.”

“Why?”

“Don’t worry about it. Meantime, when’s your court date?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Call me after it’s over.”

“If I’m going to jail, I don’t know if I’ll be able to call you.”

“Excellent point. I guess if you’re calling me, then that’d be a good sign.”

“True dat.”

“Be humble in that courtroom, sir. And don’t shoot up beforehand.”

“I won’t, Moves. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Good luck.”

The next morning, I woke up and smoked a pack of cigarettes, waiting for Mewes to call. On one hand, I didn’t want him going to jail; the dude was far too pretty to make it out of there an anal virgin. On the other hand, maybe a few months in county would scare him straight, and finally make the boy realize that steering clear of junk for the rest of his life was the best option — at least as far as the well-being of his brown-eye was concerned.

When the phone rang, I breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Though I’d long wanted Mewes to be drug free, rectal torture wasn’t the preferred impetus I’d had in mind.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The judge gave me a choice: a year in jail, or six months court-mandated rehab.”

“Easy decision there.”

“Not really. Six months in lockdown? I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

“Just for the record, you DID choose rehab, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah. Like I wanna get ass-raped and shit...”

“Good boy. Where’s the rehab? Can you go back to Promises?”

“Nope. I’ve gotta do it in a Jersey rehab. Guess where it is?”

Marlboro, New Jersey was about half an hour away from Highlands, the town Mewes and I grew up in. It was infamous for being the home to the area’s only mental hospital. As kids, it was invoked by our parents as a correctional tool, as in “If you don’t start behaving, we’re shipping you off to Marlboro!”

“They’re throwing you in the booby-hatch?!”

“I guess the mental hospital closed down. They run a rehab out of one of the buildings there now.”