Straight Life (52 page)

My friend Ann Christos had a place right by the beach. Below her was a vacant apartment, and we moved in. One night while we were living out there, we went to a party at the house of a friend who lived in Venice; they were having a little session; the place was full of weird people-they really seemed loaded to me. The guy asked us if we wanted a drink. He brought in a couple of little tumblers: they had ice in them and the drink was clear with a light purplish color to it. I said, "What's this?" He said, "Vodka with a little something special." We drank our drinks and stood around and then all of a sudden I had feelings that were so strange that I went to the guy and asked, "What was that?" I was really getting loaded. And he said, "That was acid."

I felt good, extremely good. I had no worries. I felt I could do anything. He had a long, L-shaped front room, and the phonograph was on loud, playing rock, the Mothers of Invention. I walked out into the middle of the room and started dancing. Always before I'd been too self-conscious to dance, but the acid killed that. I was shaking and wiggling, and I really felt elated. I felt I could do anything with my body. I felt I could fly if I wanted to. I walked back to the couch where Christine was sitting and I said, "My God, I've spent twenty years taking everything in the world to try to feel like this. This is it!" I went back on the floor and started dancing again, and the guy whose pad it was came over. I said, "Boy, I hope I'm cool. I feel like I might just float through the ceiling." He said, "Horn some of this." He handed me an inhaler. I took a couple of big snorts and I'm holding on to it and he grabs it out of my hand; all of a sudden my whole body starts vibrating and I feel a ringing, roaring in my head. I feel as if I'm going to explode, I grab hold of the wall, and I keep going up and up. I said to myself, "God, if I ever come down from this . . . " I started praying, "Please let me come down." Finally I came out of it. The guy opened the inhaler. He'd busted a popper of amyl nitrate in it.

I don't know how we got out or got back home. The guy gave us four of these amyl nitrate things and he said, "When you're balling it's really great. Just before you come, sniff that." We got into the pad and ripped our clothes off. We grabbed each other and fell on the floor and started making love like animals. And then we opened one of the amyl nitrates and sniffed it before we came. About two hours later I started getting weird tastes in my mouth. I looked at myself in the mirror and my eyes were illuminated-they were all different colors. I looked awful. I was scared. I felt a pressure in my heart; I was afraid it was going to burst. Something was working inside of me and my body couldn't contain it. Christine was panicked. I said, "I can't stand this. We've got to come down some way." I ran upstairs to Ann and told her, "I've got to have some stuff. We took some acid and we're going crazy. Please!" We didn't have any money, but I begged her, so she made a phone call to a guy, and we fixed, and that brought us down. I said, "Oh God, never again!" That was my first experience with acid.

Christine went to see a guy she knew in Culver City and got some acid to sell. It was liquid with a purple hue to it. You'd put a drop of it on a piece of paper and sell that: To take it, you'd put the paper under your tongue; the acid would go into those little vessels there. You couldn't see what you were getting but it wiped you out. The first time we'd taken it, at the party, we were drunk and had been taking Dexamyl Spansules and had smoked pot. The second time we decided we'd take it sober.

We got up in the morning and took the acid. Then we got in the car. They were having a jam session at a club in Gardena; a waitress I knew invited us to come. I figured we'd better have a drink. We bought a bottle of Red Mountain.

At first the acid didn't affect us at all. While we were driving we had to be cool and concentrate, and we saw people dressed up to go to church-that whole thing of Sunday morning. Then we stopped the car in the parking lot, got out, and walked into this place where you couldn't tell if it was dark or daylight, where there were all these people who looked as if they'd been going for days, all the chicks laughing and everybody high on pot and junk and juice and acid. There was a jazz band playing, and it was as if we'd entered Dante's inferno. The acid took over.

We didn't have much money left but the waitress said,

"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of you." She brought us free drinks. We started talking to the people at our table, a guy and two sexy girls in low-cut dresses. At the time I didn't have a horn; I think I'd hocked my tenor so I was playing an old, silver soprano sax I'd borrowed from Christine's brother. The girls saw the case and said, "What's that?" I told them I was a musician and they started giggling and flirting with me. I looked at Christine and at that moment something snapped in my mind. I looked at these empty-headed women. I looked around me at all these crazed, laughing people hiding in the darkness on a Sunday afternoon, trying to deny the existence of any reality, and I realized that I was a part of it. I was doing the same thing I had done as a kid, searching for something and never stopping, never being satisfied with anything, always thinking something wild was happening in the next block or the next house. What I was doing with Christine was just the same. We couldn't possibly stop and relax and enjoy each other or enjoy life because we were so busy trying to find the wild things that we thought we were missing out on. After paying all the dues that I'd paid-prison and everything-here I was past forty, with my pierced ear and my beard, and I was still running. I thought of all the people that I knew, that I started out with. They're all living out in the valley with nice homes; and they have two or three kids, they're grandparents, they have nice clothes and cars and money in the bank, they're into businesses; and they long, long ago stopped this kind of life. I looked at Christine and saw that strained look on her face: she looked like one of those pachuca tomboy broads with the tattooed beauty mark. This crazy girl, this child, that wanted to be a jazz singer, playing a tambourine and borrowing money from her mother. It was outrageous. I'm here. I'm hiding from a parole officer, taking acid, and still trying to prove myself as a musician. I thought, "My God, this is insanity! Now, what is wrong! Why am I doing this!" I felt that maybe I was on the threshold of learning something. I thought I might be about to solve my problems so I could be happy and enjoy life and not have to be hounded all the time, loaded every second. Maybe I could finally realize that it all started with me, it was all within me, and all I had to do was stop.

I didn't even want to play at that point. I had more important things to do. But I was there, and I had the horn, and people ... It was an obligation. So then it became the same old thing. The battle started. I had to play because I couldn't be a coward. I had to show the other people up and prove that I was better than them. I got out that old, silver soprano, that relic, and I had to play it as if it were a five- or six-hundred-dollar horn in perfect condition. And I had to cut all these young guys who'd been practicing and working and were really out to play and especially to cut anyone like me.

I played great, and afterwards I was basking in this little adulation I had to have, always felt I had to have. And for a while I was happy. And Christine was happy because she was getting the overflow: she must be pretty important to have me because I'm so far-out. That's the way they think. It came time to leave, and we walked out.

First there's the contact with your old lady. She's telling you how great you were, and you still feel good. But then, like someone on a rollercoaster, I was hit by a depression far greater than the high I'd just experienced. We approached this Anglia, this beat little English car that was just as phony as the whole life I'd led. It had a red racing stripe on it, but the car could barely do forty with its little, dinky wheels. I got in, and Christine said, "You want me to drive?" The sun's shining, and I look around and see the people on the street. A black and white comes by with the rollers; they're looking at us. And then everything came back at me. Reality came back. I started feeling my body and worrying about it and I got this taste in my throat that I always got when I took acid. I could taste my brains in my throat.

Christine started driving. "Oh, Art, fill my bottle." I looked down at the half empty gallon of Red Mountain sitting in a rumpled paper bag and smelled the stench of stale wine we'd spilled before, so many times, on the floor of the car. She said, "How `bout if we go over to So-and-so's?" Her eyes were just crazy, and she wanted to go again. She wanted to go to this guy's house in Venice. She wanted me to play the piano for her so she could sing. So I would tell her, "Yeah, you sound great." So somebody would tell her that. She had to have that. All I wanted was to be left alone. I didn't want to have to generate all this thing so Christine could get her "fix" for singing, but I had to go with her to Venice and I felt really bad.

We bought another gallon of wine and started pouring it down with uppers. We got to the guy's house and I asked him, "Do you know of anybody that's got any smack? Do you know of anything?" He said, "Well, I know a guy that's got some bottles." He meant methadrine. I said, "Alright, man. We don't have any money." He said, "I'll spring for a couple bottles." I said, "We don't have a 'fit either." He said, "I'll see if I can borrow one." He left, and while we're waiting in the pad I started looking around.

There were two apartments above a market. His wife lived in one, and in this one he had an electric piano and books and pipes and paintings. And he had a daughter there that must have been around fifteen, sixteen, and I think he was balling the daughter as well as his old lady. The girl had on a little silk kind of thing that just fell away at her breasts. You could see her nipples. She had on a real short skirt and little, teeny panties. You could see the hairs coming out the side of the panties. She was just sitting around. When I'd get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom she'd figure out how to be in the way, and she'd rub her tits up against me and all that. I'd watched the way they looked at each other, and I'm sure he was balling his daughter.

We were waiting for this guy to come back. Christine's sitting at the piano, pecking away at the piano. She says, "You were great." Then she says, "Sometimes I get the feeling you don't want to let me get my fix, you know. What's wrong?" I said, "Nothing's wrong. If you wanted to make it, you could make it. I just wanted to go home." I felt that all she wanted was to use me to gain her objectives. She wanted attention and I was the bait.

Finally the guy came back with an old, dirty outfit and two bottles. We fixed the methadrine. On top of the acid it really put us in a state. I felt as if my scalp was coming off. I played the piano, the few little things I knew; Christine sang; we drank and drank and drank; and pretty soon I was so far-out nothing mattered anymore. We stayed until about four in the morning, and finally we got in the car. Christine said, "I'll drive." She starts driving, and then she reaches over and unzips my fly and pulls my joint out, and she's playing with it. She takes my hand and puts it on her. We get to the pad and go inside and lock the door. And we made love, you know. And then we just laid there, glaring at the ceiling, each of us thinking our thoughts. I didn't know what I was doing or what I was trying to prove, and I was too tired to figure it out right now, and I couldn't sleep.

Mr. Dom kept trying to reach me, and by this time he knew about Christine. He called her and told her to tell me to come to the office or call him. Otherwise they'd put out an APB on me, and I'd be violated when I was caught and sent back to prison. I called him on the phone. He said, "Man, I want to help you." I said, "That's hard for me to believe." He said, "I really do." He said, "How much are you using?" I told him and he said, "Alright, clean up for three days and come in and take a urinalysis, and everything will be straight. I swear it."

I thought about it a lot. I was afraid that when I went into the office he'd lock me up right away and send me back to the joint. I hadn't tested for about three months. I decided I'd give it a chance. I couldn't really clean up that quickly, so we went over to some friends of Christine's who weren't using. I asked the guy to urinate in a little bottle, and I took that down with me and put his urine in the bottle they gave me as if it was mine. It came back about two days later, clean, and I was reinstated. I saw that Mr. Dom was really for me, and that made me feel good. I had to start taking the tests regularly again, and I had to clean up, which I did do, and I went back to chippying and sweating it out at the Beverly Hills Health Club.

After I'd been on parole for about two years the state passed a new law saying that when a person had done two of their five years on parole the parole officer could make recommendations about him to the board. At that time I couldn't get work in California, but I had offers of jobs in other places. In Canada. I told Mr. Dom, and he appeared before the board and spoke for me. The board agreed that being on parole didn't do me any good if I couldn't work and released me. That finally ended my parole and the Nalline tests.

At this point I started really thinking about what we were doing and it didn't make sense. I think if I hadn't had Christine during that period I might have straightened myself out.

The acid started these feelings. One time when I was loaded it came to me-the reason why I used heroin and the solution. I really found the answer! And unlike my psychoanalysis, where I found out why but found no cure, this time I had a foolproof solution. It was simple. I talked it over with Christine and explained it to her, and she understood it, and when we came down I remembered that I had found this thing, but I'd forgotten what it was. I asked Christine; she'd forgotten, too.