Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (27 page)

We bonded deeply during the shooting of
Bad Influence
. I was impressed with her artistry and prodigious work ethic. I was happy to be included in the many adventures she concocted for the large group of friends who orbited her. Her advice in my time of chaos was unique and practical, not the airy-fairy navel-gazing or the by-the-book, play-it-safe strategy I encountered elsewhere. When she came by to see me, she sometimes cooked (a total shocker for a beautiful girl in L.A.) and organized my coffee-table books. Eventually, we were lovers, but each of us was well-known to be “tough to catch.” Sheryl Berkoff came to Australia with me and this set in motion a series of events that would unfold rapidly and change my life forever.

Australia is a blur. I’ve brought along a number of pain pills for my old
Footloose
knee injury and I gobble them like Sweet Tarts. Sheryl, who is the most even-keeled girl I’ve met when it comes to partying, spends most of the time making sure I don’t wander off with the more dangerous members of the band INXS. In spite of her attempts to keep the craziness to a dull roar, I leave Down Under with a big tattoo and a series of press appearances, neither of which I have any memory of participating in.

By the time we reach Turtle Island in Fiji, I’m out of pills and feeling more present. Sheryl lends me books to read (Richard Bach’s
Illusions
) and new music to listen to (Sinead O’Connor). There are only twelve other couples on this tiny, romantic tropical paradise where they filmed
Blue Lagoon
. I haven’t had this kind of escape from L.A. or the concerns of my life and career in years, if ever. And I’ve never been with such an easy companion. I begin to feel the lift of the hazy, heavy fog of career, pressure, partying, and self-obsession. In fact, on my first day on the island I have an epiphany.

Sheryl and I are being led along a jungle trail, overgrown with palms, ferns, and bamboo, as the Fijian tribesman shows us to our quarters. Rounding a giant, vine-encrusted tree stump, we come to a small, thatched-roof bungalow.

“This will be your home,” says the tribesman, with a beautiful smile, making his exit.

But something has caught my eye. It is a small wooden sign, placed on the front door and hand-carved by the locals. Branded into the wood and then hand-painted, it says:
ROB
+
SHERYL
.

I’m flooded with emotion that I cannot name. My eyes blink back tears. I feel lonely and comforted all at once. At the sight of the fairly innocuous sign, I feel an overwhelming sense of occasion, like someone has put my future in writing and I am witness. And irrationally I know that we will be
together
, Sheryl + Rob, and the years unfold before me. Ebbing up from my unconscious and unnamed fantasies, a road is opening and a world is forming and it is full of love and marriage and children and joy and fear and wonder. It is a crystalline vision of our potential lives together. Rob + Sheryl.

But I shake it off. This is ridiculous! What is this, a bad movie on the Hallmark Channel? This type of life is the
last
thing I’m looking for. I order up some kava, the local root that makes you buzzed, and try to push my vision out of my thoughts. But in the days on Turtle Island, watching Sheryl run along the azure water and lying with her head on my leg under the blazing nebula, I can’t stop thinking about the little wooden sign on our bungalow door.

By the time the helicopter arrives to fly us off the island, I’ve given in to my growing affection for Sheryl. The time away from my normal life has cleared my head enough for me to listen to that tiny voice cued by the sign and to acknowledge that even I may be worthy of something more, something real, something with no agenda, that doesn’t live in total, slavish service to career, public perception, family turmoil, or the pursuit of a good time. I tell Sheryl I love her.

“I love you, too,” she says, and in her remarkable blue eyes I see the full range of response.

We climb into the waiting chopper, its rotors blasting sand into the lagoon. We lift off, hover for a moment, then head into the rising sun. We are moving quickly. Sheryl and I have a long journey ahead.

CHAPTER
17

It takes less than twenty-four hours back in L.A. for me to destroy this relationship that, away from the chaos of my life, I had wanted so much. Away from the pressures and temptations of my everyday existence, I was a different person. Someone who wanted to slow down, someone who wanted some consistency and commitment. And finally, I’d found the right person, Sheryl, with whom I could attempt to fashion this new life.

But back in my bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills, this vision is immediately fogged by fear and force of habit. I am frozen and unable to see a way off the merry-go-round.

As usual, a night out with the boys leads to tequila and a party. Properly anesthetized for a night among the throngs, I look for the cutest girl I can find. Sheryl, ever the career girl, is asleep at home, leaving early in the morning for yet another movie on location. I’m drunk and back at my place with a total stranger.

At about midnight Sheryl calls to check in on me (I was supposed to have called earlier). She hears a girl’s laugh in the background. I try to play it off but she knows what’s going on.

“This isn’t a good idea,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“You and I. We should just be friends.”

“No. I’m sorry. I want to be with you. Really! I…”

“Rob, stop. Listen to me. We’ve always been friends above all else. Let’s not ruin that. You should go do what you need to do, be with who you want. But I can’t be your girlfriend.”

She’s not angry. I can’t even tell if she’s sad. It is actually the worst possible scenario because she just seems
done.

“Good-bye, Rob. Let’s talk when I get back from location.”

She hangs up.

I hold the phone in my hand. I stare out the big plate-glass windows and see the girl, illuminated by the lights of the cityscape. She is backlit and it is dark, but it looks like she is naked, swaying gently to the sounds of Robbie Robertson coming over the outdoor speakers. She is beautiful, for sure, and she beckons me with a mischievous smile and a bottle of Cuervo.

“How do you feeeeel?” she yells, and I hear it muffled through the glass window.

“I feel nothing,” I answer, even though I know she can’t hear me.

*   *   *

“Rob! Rob! Pick up, it’s your mother!” It’s a few hours later and I’m standing over my answering machine with its seventy-three unanswered messages. “Rob, please. Are you there?” begs my mother, clearly in a panic. But I am too fucked-up to pick up the phone; there is no way I can face her in my condition.

“Your grandfather is in the hospital. He’s had a massive heart attack.”

I listen to my mom as she describes his critical condition and asks for my help. Still, I do nothing. I stare at the answering machine, frozen, until my mother hangs up.

As shame and guilt begin to penetrate my altered state, I begin to hatch a plan of attack.

I need to chug the last of the tequila
, I tell myself.
So I can get to sleep, so I can wake up ASAP and deal with this.

This insane logic holds right up until I catch a glance of myself in the bathroom mirror. Then, very slowly, I turn and face myself full-on. I’m so hammered that I can barely stand. The girl I love has just left me, because I can’t keep my word and I have no integrity. My grandfather is dying. My mother is in crisis, desperate for help and comfort, and I am cowering and hiding in shameful avoidance. I have arrived at the bottom.

Since I was a boy I’ve been running. Running to make my mark. Running to avoid reality. Running to avoid pain.

And now … a moment of clarity. I can run no longer.

I go into my bedroom, past the sleeping girl, and find my wallet. In it is a business card that I have carried for over a year. I find it and pull it out. It’s from a drug-and-alcohol counselor named Betty Wyman. I take her card, head back to my office, and sit next to the phone. I hear the terrible chirping of the early-morning birds. I watch the cityscape, gray on the horizon as the sun begins to rise. A new day is beginning.

I make the call. It’s May 10, 1990.

*   *   *

There are many kinds of rehabs. You can pretty much get any setup that suits you. You’ve got your shaved-head cuckoo’s nests and hard-core lockdowns, you’ve got your latte-sipping, horseback-ridin’, yoga-centric country clubs. You’ve got your remote, spartan locations; you’ve got ’em smack-dab in L.A., convenient for visits from managers, agents, publicists, and dealers.

I’m on a plane headed to Arizona for a middle-of-the-road version. Betty Wyman, in her wisdom, got me the hell out of L.A. to a serious rehab, but well short of a lockdown. Less than forty-eight hours have passed since I called her, but Betty moved quickly when I said, “Help me. I want to stop. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.” Now I sit, shaking with anxiety, next to her associate, Bob, who is escorting me to the monkey farm.

Bob is a former Hells Angel. He’s tattooed head to toe, with a beard that makes him look like Charles Manson but a voice that sounds like Kermit the Frog.

“Let me tell you my story,” says Bob, attempting to comfort my now crushing anxiety, and to bond us together.

“I first remember feeling different and scared and anxious when I was a little boy and my mom invited the mailman into our apartment. We found out later, but didn’t know then, that she was a paranoid schizophrenic,” he says in his sweet, Kermit-like singsong. “Anyway, she stabbed the mailman to death, then cut up his body with a butcher knife. She made me lie down in our bathtub and placed his severed limbs on top of me. She told me that God would be angry but this would protect me.” Bob takes a sip from his fifteenth cup of black coffee and continues. “Anyway, that was hard for me. And growing up after Mom was committed, I got into heroin and selling it. I went to prison. But when I got out, I got sober and have been now for seventeen years.”

I try to conjure up an appropriate response to this story, but my instincts tell me that since there is no way to top it, I should just take it in. Bob smiles. “Don’t you worry about a thing. You are right where you should be. Scared. Freaked out and shattered. Ain’t nobody ever gotten sober who wasn’t.”

The rehab (I won’t name it, to protect anonymity, and any names I use in this chapter have been changed) sits in the low foothills of glowing, red-rock mountains. There is nothing but saguaro cactus for miles. If I decide to flee, it will be a long walk to civilization.

But I won’t flee. Bob will check me in and say good-bye, and I will begin one of the most exhilarating, liberating, and exciting four weeks of my life. Scary, yes, and filled with unspeakable emotional discomfort, but for me, it’s unquantifiable relief that I am being shown a different way to live. I am so tired of the lying, my inability to keep my word, the bullshit relationships, the hangovers, the cover-ups, and the helplessness to stop doing the things I truly want to stop doing. I had long ago become a creation that was an amalgam of self-crafted persona built to succeed and public image made to be consumed, piled on top of a precarious shell of a little boy wanting to be loved. Finally, the whole thing has caved in around me, and I am
thrilled
. Now, just maybe, I could find out who I really am.

My roommate is a loud, snoring, middle-aged cross-dresser. I melt wax and put it into my ears to sleep at night. I’m gonna be here for thirty days, and I’m not gonna make it without sleep.

Unlike in some rehabs of today, there are very strict ground rules here. Whereas now a rehabbing starlet can check in and still swan around the Malibu Country Mart to get a frappuccino and a copy of
Us Weekly
to take to her mani-pedi before her photo shoot, we have no reading materials, TV, privileges to leave, or even caffeine. It’s for serious folks only, the Harvard of treatment centers.

I am under the care of a hip, young counselor named Mike. And being hip is a big plus for me because my greatest fear is that being sober means being boring. And that, to me, would be worse than cirrhosis of the liver.

I am also worried about people finding out I am in rehab. When I share this with Mike he says, “You don’t think people
know
you party too much? You should
hope
they hear you’re getting help!” But it proves to be a moot point as by the third day I have to hide in the pool to escape the helicopters from the
National Enquirer
. They tell me that there is a wonderful program that’s helped millions get sober called Alcoholics Anonymous. I wouldn’t know. My level of anonymity consists of being on the
Enquirer
cover, dressed in my underwear (they used a movie still), with a headline about rehab for sex addiction, which in hindsight is an improvement from my last national media exposure—at least this time I have underwear—but it pisses me off because the sex addicts in the center have
much
more interesting stories and treatments than my group of drinkers did.

But my relationships with women (and every other relationship in my life) are a big part of the puzzle that was worked on each day in therapy. I dig into my issues with my mother, her illnesses, my father and abandonment, and my relationship with being famous. I am surprised by what I learn about myself. I assumed that since I love “the scene,” I also love crowds and people and small talk and the like. Free of alcohol, I learn that while I do love people, I hate small talk, am bored by idle banter, and am wildly uncomfortable in big rooms with people I don’t know. I want a real connection, not a surface one, and in its absence, I will medicate my discomfort and boredom.

Like being in Fiji, being in treatment lets my real self emerge. But first, it will have to gradually strangle the good-looking, successful, charming poster-boy pod person that stunted its growth many years ago. There is a school of thought that believes your emotional maturity is frozen at the exact age you become famous. My experience tells me this is more true than not, and I got famous as a teenager. So, if I want to be a fully functioning, sober adult, I had better get busy.

Sheryl is the only person other than family I let visit me. And showing her true colors, she works from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. on location in Seattle, drives an hour and a half, catches a plane, flies three and a half hours to see me for the one hour allotted on Thursdays, makes the return trip, and is back at work that same night.

I am never happier to see anyone than when I see her mane of blonde hair in the window of the arriving cab. We hold hands in the dayroom (anything else was grounds for expulsion) and walk along the trails through the enormous cactus.

“I’m proud of you. I love you,” she says. And I feel better already.

Fridays are graduation days. I’m standing in the large circle we form to surround those who are leaving this cocoon to try their hand at a new life in the real world. Some won’t make it ninety days; most won’t make it beyond a few years. And for some, this is not their first time in treatment. Some come back again and again, more broken and yet more brave each time. It’s painful to watch. I don’t want to do this again. Not ever.

I know two things: I take direction for a living and I’m competitive. This gives me great advantage. If they tell me to stand on my head to stay sober, I’ll do it. And I won’t let anyone get the better of me while I try. So as I slowly gather my days free of alcohol or any mind-altering substance, I know that I won’t give up my string of days, my time, for anyone or anything. I can be so extraordinarily self-centered, now I will try to use that for a greater good.

I would kill for a cup of coffee. I would drown puppies for a Big Mac. I would really also very much like to get laid. Forget not drinking for thirty days, how about not having sex! I mean, I hadn’t gone thirty
hours
previously! And what would that be like stone-cold sober? Without even a glass of wine to loosen me up? Will I really
never
drink again? No toast on New Year’s, no celebratory sip at my wedding (if I ever have one), no beer with the boys—if I ever father a boy? Not even a sip? Not ever?

After days and days of therapy, discussion groups, watching some very shattered people pull themselves together, tugging at the frayed strands of their lost lives, it is time to leave. I’ve been to “sober school” and as always was the first to sit in the front row, ready to learn. And I loved every inspiring, painful minute.

But now, as I stand in the good-bye circle, I’m filled with shaky apprehension. In three hours I will be back in L.A., in the bachelor pad, right back in the middle of life designed by a man I hope I no longer am.

But Sheryl will be with me. Over the four weeks of treatment I earned her trust and another chance for us to be together. I hug my counselor, Mike, good-bye. He looks me hard in the eye.

“Remember. You can be one of those celebrities who go in and out of rehab or you can just stay sober. It’s completely up to you.”

Sheryl and I slide into the cab for the ride to the airport and back to our lives. We pull onto the beautiful, winding desert road, the scenery extraordinary on all sides. I try to look ahead, to see where the road is leading, but I can’t.