Straight Life (14 page)

One time we were at a place and I bought him a pizza and then I wanted to take a bite. He wouldn't let me have any! Hahahaha! What would you call that? That was selfishness. And then, of course, he would have a student, a guy named Joe Martin, and the student would drive him everywhere and do things for him. The Master! We must serve the master! That type of thing. Art used it to the hilt.

Art had considerable charm. Intelligence, a very natural ability to understand things. He was a very handsome man. A great natural talent. These are attractive qualities. His humor tended to burlesque. It could be vicious. Mimicking people. And often very accurately, very perceptively, with the intelligence working. But mostly, it was burlesque. Sometimes playing hillbilly music he'd shout, "Tarnation!" and "Shit fire and save matches!" Hahahaha!

Art is sensitive even though at times the sensitivity is largely an expression of selfishness. He's sensitive to such a degree about himself. A person can be like this and be insensitive to other people at times. Not always. Often he could be very warm and very friendly, and you could talk to him. At times his concern for other people would be expressed as sentimentality: "I really love you, man." Even histrionics. Being stoned and being emotional. But I question whether at any time the concern with the self was ever put aside.

I saw a definite change in Art when he started using heroin. It was rather dramatic. The change, I think, consisted essentially in the intensification and exacerbation of traits that were already there: indulgence in the self, a desire to escape the external world, reality, to sink into the self almost entirely. To be passive. As a musician ... In the case of Art, the musician is a person who expresses himself and does send something out, but even this could be passive at times. It showed in feelings of intimidation in the presence of another strong musician, a reluctance to blow out if there was somebody around, another strong player, or in one of these very sticky social scenes in jazz, tribal games, "Who's number one?" Heroin intensified Art's tendencies to withdraw, not to fight, not to assert. And that was the easiest thing to do at the moment, although it made his life more difficult in the long run.

I was able to use heroin from time to time just for fun. I think we all have a predisposition in our systems for certain types of behavior and certain drugs. With some people, you know, booze is really their messiah, their mission, their destiny; they're just going to be soaked! I didn't have the need for heroin. I don't know why. I got off scot-free. At times I had the need to get stoned, whacked, and I thought of taking heroin for that purpose, but it was never the heroin itself. It was never love. Deep, natural, flowing love.

Art said to me once that all of his life all he'd really ever wanted was to get high. And the first time he stuck that needle in his arm he said, "I finally got high."

6

On the Road with
Stan Kenton's Band

1946-1952

AFTER I SNIFFED IT that morning in Chicago, I bought up a whole bunch of heroin, got a sackful of caps. We traveled back to Los Angeles. I guess it took us three months to get back, playing all the stops in between, and at this time we had a little vacation from Stan, about a month before we had to go out again. I told Patti I had sniffed a little bit, but it was okay, it was alright. She felt bad but she went along with it. Then I ran out. I got totally depressed and my stomach hurt. My nose hurt something awful, terrible headaches; my nose started bleeding. I was getting chills. I was vomiting. And the joints in my legs hurt.

I had to go to a session so I got hold of some codeine pills and some sleeping pills and some bennies, and I got a bottle of cough syrup and drank it, and I went out to this session because I still couldn't believe I was that sick.

Everything was real clear to me. Everything was so vivid. I felt that I was seeing life for the first time. Before, the world had been clouded; now, it was like being in the desert and looking at the sky and seeing the stars after living in the city all your life. That's the way everything looked, naked, violently naked and exposed. That's the way my body felt, my nerves, my mind. There was no buffer, and it was unbearable. I thought, "Oh my God,-what-am I going to do?"

I looked around the club and saw this guy there, Blinky, that I knew. He was a short, squat guy with a square face, blue eyes; he squinted all the time; when he walked he bounced; and he was always going "Tchk! Tchk!"-moving his head in jerky little motions like he was playing the drums. Sometimes when he walked he even looked like a drum set: you could see the sock cymbal bouncing up and down and the foot pedal going and the cymbals shaking and his eyes would be moving. But it wasn't his eyes; it was that his whole body kind of blinked. He'd been a friend of mine for years and I knew he goofed around occasionally with horse, heroin, so I started talking. I said, "Man, I really feel bad. I started sniffing stuff on the road and I ran out." I described to him a little bit of how I felt and he said, "Ohhhh, man!" I said, "How long is this going to last?" He said, "You'll feel like this for three days; it'll get worse. And then the mental part will come on after the physical leaves and you'll be suffering for over a week, unbearable agony." I said, "Do you know any place where I can get anything?" He said, "Yeah, but it's a long ways away. We have to go to Compton." We were in Glendale. At that time they didn't have the freeway system; it was a long drive but I said, "Let's go." We drove out to Sid's house.

As we drove I thought, "God almighty, this is it. This is what I was afraid of." And the thought of getting some more stuff so I wouldn't feel that way anymore seemed so good to me I got scared that something would happen before we got there, that we'd have a wreck. So I started driving super cautious, but the more cautious I was the harder it seemed to be to control the car. The sounds of the car hurt me. I could feel the pain it must be feeling in the grinding of the gears and the wheels turning and the sound of the motor and the brakes. But I drove, and we made it, and we went inside, and I was shaking all over, quivering, thinking how great it would be to get something so I wouldn't feel the way I felt.

Sid was a drummer also, not a very good drummer, but he had a good feeling for time. He was a guy I'd known a long time, too, a southern type cat with a little twang of an accent. We went in and Blinky told Sid I'd started goofing around and Sid said, "Ohhhh, boy! Join the club!" He said, "What do you want?" I said, "I don't know. I just want some so I won't be sick." He said, "Where do you fix at?" I said, "I don't fix. I just sniff it, you know, horn it." He said, "Oh, man, I haven't got enough for that!" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "If you want to shoot some, great, but I'm not going to waste it. I don't have that much." I said, "Oh, man, you've got to, this is horrible. You've got to let me have something!" He said, "No, I won't do it. It's wasted by sniffing it. It takes twice as much, three times as much. If you'd shoot it you could take just a little bit and keep straight." I said, "I don't want to shoot it. I know if I shoot it I'm lost." And he said, "You're lost anyway man." I begged him and begged him. I couldn't possibly leave that place feeling as sick as I did. I couldn't drive. I couldn't do anything. I didn't care what happened afterwards, I just had to have a taste. Finally I said, "Okay, I'll shoot it." He said, "Great."

They both fixed, and I had to wait. At last he asked me what I wanted. I asked him how they sold it. He said they sold it in grams: a gram was ten number-five caps for twenty dollars. I said to give me a gram and he said, "Whatever you want." I said, "I thought you only had just a little bit." He said, "I only have a little bit but I got enough." It was just the idea that he wanted me to fix. I knew that. So I'd be in the same misery as he was. He said, "Where do you want to go?" I looked around my arms. I didn't want to go the mainline, the vein at the crook inside your arm, because that's where the police always looked, I'd heard, for marks. I asked him if he could hit me in the spot between the elbow and the wrist, the forearm.

Sid put a cap or a cap and a half of powder into the spoon. He had an eyedropper with a rubber bulb on it, but he had taken thread and wrapped it around the bulb so it would fit tight around the glass part. He had a dollar bill. Here came the dollar bill again, but this time instead of rolling it up as a funnel he tore a teeny strip off the end of it and wrapped it around the small end of the dropper so the spike would fit over it real tight. That was the "jeep." He put about ten drops of water on top of the powdered stuff in the spoon and took a match and put it under the spoon. I saw the powder start to fade; it cooked up. He took a little bit of cotton that he had and rolled it in a ball and dropped it in the spoon, and then he put the spoon on the table. He took the spike off the end of the dropper and squeezed the bulb, pressed the eyedropper against the cotton and let the bulb loose. When he had all the liquid in the dropper he put the spike back on the end of it and made sure it was all secure. Blinky tied me up. He took a tie he'd been wear ing and wrapped it around my arm just below the elbow. He held it tight and told me to make a fist. I squeezed so the veins stood out. Sid placed the point of the needle against my vein. He tapped it until it went in and then a little drop of blood came up from the spike into the dropper and he told Blinky to leave the tie loose and me to quit making a fist and he squeezed the bulb and the stuff went into my vein. He pulled the spike out and told me to put my, finger over the hole because blood had started to drip out. I waited for about a minute or a minute and a half and then I felt the warmth-a beautiful glow came over my body and the stark reality, the nakedness, this brilliance that was so unbearable was buffered, and everything became soft. The bile stopped coming up from my stomach. My muscles and my nerves became warm. I've never felt like that again. I've approached it. I've never felt any better than that ever in my life. I looked at Blinky and at Sid and I said, "Oh boy, there's nothing like it. This is it. This is the end. It's all over: I'm finished." But, I said, "Well, at least I'm going to enjoy the ride."

After I left the house I went to a drugstore that Blinky knew. At that time you could buy spikes easy, so I got four numbertwenty-six, half-inch hypodermic needles, an eyedropper that had a good, strong bulb on it, and went home. I had about nine capsules of heroin left. I walked into the house and Patti met me at the door. I went into the kitchen. I put this stuff out on the table, and she looked at it, and she said, "Oh no!" I said, "Yeah, this is it. You'll have to accept.it." I got a dollar bill and tore a little piece off the bottom to make the jeep. I got a glass out of the cupboard, a plastic one so it wouldn't hurt the end of the needle when I put it in to wash it out. I took a cap and put it in the spoon and put some water in it, and all this time I'm talking to Patti, trying to explain because I loved her and I wanted her to accept this. I got a tie out of the closet and asked her if she would tie me, and she wrapped it and held it and she was trying to be cool and be brave, and I stuck the thing in, and the blood popped up, and I told her, "Leave it go. Leave it go." I looked up, and I'll never forget the look on her face. She was transfixed by the sight of the blood, my own blood, drawn up, running into an eyedropper that I was going to shoot into my vein. It seemed so depraved to her. How could anybody do anything like that? How could anybody love her and need to do anything like that? She started crying. I took her hand away and took the tie off. I shot the stuff in, and when I finished I looked at her. She turned her head and cried hysterically. I put my arms around her and tried to tell her that everything was alright, that it was better than the drinking and the misery I'd gone through before, but I couldn't get through to her.

After I got the outfit and started fixing, that was my thing. I still drank and smoked pot, but I was a lot cooler. Things were going great for me. I was featured with the band and we played all over the country. We'd go from one state to another and the bus driver we had at the time was a beautiful cat who knew what all the liquor laws were-some states were dry-and he'd stop just before we crossed into a dry state and say, "This is the last time you can buy alcohol until such and such a date." We'd all run out of the bus. We'd figure out how much liquor we'd need. If we went to Canada and had to pass through an inspection station we'd take our dope, the guys that were using heroin, our outfits or pills, and give them to the bus driver to stash behind a panel. We'd go through the station and get shook down, and then he'd open the panel and give us our dope back. And wherever we'd pass through we'd buy different pot. In Colorado we'd get Light Green and in New Orleans it was Gunje or Mota. There were a lot of connoisseurs of pot who'd carry little film cans of it and pipes with screens to filter it, and when we had a rest stop we'd jump out of the bus and smoke.

Me and Andy Angelo roomed together for a long time and before that it was me and Sammy, and we each had our outfits. I had a little carrying case, like an electric razor case. I had an extra eyedropper and my needles, four or five of them. I had my little wires to clean the spike out in case it got clogged. I had a little bottle of alcohol and a sterling silver spoon that was just beautiful and a knife to scoop the stuff onto the spoon. I used to carry this case in the inside pocket of my suit, just like you'd carry your cigarettes or your wallet. I even carried a little plastic glass. I would set up my outfit next to the bed in the hotel with my stuff in a condom-we used to carry our heroin in one to keep it from getting wet. I'd wake up in the morning and reach over, get my little knife, put a few knifefuls in the spoon, cook it up and fix. It was beautiful.

It was wonderful being on the road with that band. Everyone liked each other and we all hung out together. When the bus left Hollywood we'd buy bottles of liquor and start drinking; that was just standard procedure: it was a celebration. I always prided myself on being able to stay up longer than anybody else, drink more than anybody else, take more pills, shoot more stuff, or whatever. I remember once when we left L.A. we kept drinking and drinking and smoking pot and having a ball until the bus just ceased to be a bus. We wandered up and down the aisle talking and bullshitting. We kept going and going until, after about twenty hours, everybody started falling out. When it got to thirty-six hours only a few of us were still awake, and finally there was nobody left but me and June Christy. She could really drink. I don't remember how many quarts we put away. We drank continuously, I guess, for a good forty-six hours and we were going to keep it up until we got where we were going, but she fell out, too, so there I was all alone. That was awful and I panicked. I couldn't stand for anything to stop once it had begun; I wanted it to continue forever. I went up and started talking to the bus driver, and I stayed awake the whole time.

We hardly ever flew to a job, but a couple of times we had to when it was too far and we couldn't possibly make it in time. Once we flew to Iowa and rented a bus and the bus broke down when we were out on a little, two-lane highway. The weather was bad, like it is in the midwest, alternately raining and snowing, and ordinarily we would have been drug, but we were all in such a happy frame of mind we just played right over it. We were goofing around, and we had a habit, like, in the bus, we would blow sometimes. Andy and I would sit together and scatsing. We'd sing the first chorus of a song together, bebop, and then blow choruses, trade fours, and do backgrounds. Sometimes other people would join in and we'd really get into it and take out our horns, the ones you could reach easily in the bus. I'd get my clarinet and play some dixieland; maybe June would sing and we'd play behind her. So, as it happened, we'd all been drinking and were having one of these little sessions when the bus broke down.