Destination (12 page)

4.

She resurrected. She assumed a startling form.

My new probation officer.

Her name was Elizabeth Heath. We met late in '70. The resemblance staggered me.

Her face matched point by point. Her body diverged. She wore loose clothing—her contours eluded me.

I lost and regained a vision. God was responsible. I promised not to plunder Liz in my dreams.

Liz Heath was 30. She hailed from New York State. I saw her once a month and prolonged our visits.

Liz was gracious, intelligent, stern-willed, and funny. I groomed and prepared for our confabs. Liz was an occasion. I rose to it. I didn't know if I was a chameleon or a tight-assed square in waiting.

I knew that I loved her. My restraint proved it. I excluded her from my sex stories. This fueled more than hindered my love and allowed me to listen.

Liz told a good tale. She gave commonplace events a pop and a punch line. She gauged my basic weakness against my will and disregard for the world. She understood hollow boys on missions. They rock impervious. They mistake movement for substance.

Liz figured me out fast. She interceded with a distanced affection. She assessed me as a threat to myself and no great threat to the world. She caught outtakes from the next two years of my slide.

I lived in parks and empty houses. I shoplifted food and booze and dined-and-dashed at restaurants. I broke into apartment-house laundry rooms and jimmied the coins out of washers and dryers. I slept in Goodwill bins. I sold my blood and blood plasma. I got day-labor gigs and read in libraries. Lloyd assisted. I crashed in his yard and his mother's car. The LAPD assisted. They popped me for Petty Theft, Drunk, and DUI. I did jail jolts and purged my toxified system. I stole empty pop bottles from reclamation bins and re-reclaimed them for chump change. I snuck into theaters and watched movies.

I stole inhalers. I popped them. I did not masturbate. The Voices started every time I reached for my dick. They chased me out of parks and empty houses. I stuffed paper in my ears and walked.

I walked and screened stories. Out Wilshire to the beach. Back again. Obsessive movement. Twenty miles per trip. Kaya, June, and a wide cast of faces.

I saw them. I couldn't address them. The Voices drowned out my endearments.

I walked and trembled. People stepped out of my way. Women cringed and grabbed at their purses.

Inhalers sparked the Voices. Abstinence muffled them. The Voices punished me for the faces.

Liz left L.A. in '73. We said good-bye on the phone. She was warm. I was glib. I willed myself to ride out the hurt.

Lloyd's mother kicked him out of the house. He got a cheap hotel room. I rented floor space.

I had a fixed address. The thought encouraged me. I could do things and say things with impunity. The roof and walls would shut out the Voices.

Every floor had a bathtub and shower. I popped six inhalers and locked myself in the 3rd floor tub room.

I stripped and ran a bath. I got in and jacked off to a long line of faces. I ran the water to stay warm and cover the Voices.

I saw my mother's face. I
made
myself see it. I saw her naked. I said, “I love you.” We made love in the last house we lived in.

The Voices swirled out of the water. I ignored them. I stayed with her all the way up to the crash.

IT WAS THE most impassioned and loving story I'd ever conceived. It shamed and horrified me.

It thrilled me. I wanted to screen deeper variations. I couldn't do it. The Voices said, You fucked your mother and killed her.

I stiffed Lloyd on my rent cut. The manager evicted me. I moved back to Burns Park.

The Voices followed me.

For two more years.

Inhaler trips. Trembling walks. A fantasy loop everlasting.

T-Bird. Jail for brief health retreats. Hot meals. No Voices. Good exercise.

I built up a dope tolerance. I gagged down more and more wads to achieve the same effect. Ten or twelve wads per trip. Three trips a week.

It fucked up my lungs. I caught pneumonia twice. The County Hospital cured it.

I trucked on undeterred. I followed my appetites. I missed Liz. I started watching men and women together.

Sweethearts in movie lines. Kids in parks. Who's that geek staring at us?

I read books and shagged epigrams and insights. T.S. Eliot. Highbrow shit. “We only live, only suspire, consumed by either fire or fire.” A classy fuck flick:
The Private Afternoons of Pamela
Mann.

Barbara Bourbon in the lead role. A boss blond with a cool overbite. A cut-rate Kaya Christian.

Pam Mann's a horndog. She's a passive punchboard and a seductress. She's a nympho Candide. She's the poster girl for '70s excess. She fucks half of New York City in one day and comes home to fuck her husband. He's the best. She
really
loves him. Her day was satire and a goof on inclusion. Sex is everything and nothing.

I dug Barb and the message in equal measure. I picked up a subtext:

Sex was a lock for the cute and the glib. Love took balls.

Insight did not equal power or a will to change. My slide continued.

Lloyd had a pad in West L.A. I camped out on the roof. I went on a loooong T-Bird run and got the DTs in his bathroom.

Fluorescent blobs attacked me. Spiders crawled up my legs. The blobs tried to eat my eyes. Monsters jumped out of the toilet.

It was 100% real.

I batted at the bugs. I closed the toilet seat on the monsters. They oozed straight through the lid.

I drank them away. I passed out and woke up on the roof.

I was dead fucking scared. I
knew
the next drink or cotton wad would kill me.

I hitchhiked to the County Hospital and checked in to the drunk ward. I shared bed space with a dozen winos. A nurse fed me tranks. A doctor signed me up for a kick program.

Long Beach Hospital. Three hots and a cot. Antabuse—a deterrent drug that made you sick if you drank.

I spent two days in the drunk ward. I tried to sleep through it. The tranks helped. Other drunks suffered DTs. They saw things and heard things and hit things that weren't there. I wedged pillows around my head and cut off their jabbers.

I was young. The winos were old. They were my prophecy foretold.

A nurse drove me down to Long Beach. I donned khakis and a plastic wristband. I stayed scared.

I took Antabuse and went to therapy groups. I made up sex stories and directed them to the female drunks. I shacked up with June Harding and Kaya Christian. Barbara Bourbon wanted me for her next flick.

Nobody believed me.

My fear subsided. I rationalized it away. The DTs were a non sequitur. That was then. This is now. I could beat booze and dope my way. I was resourceful. I knew I could work out an angle.

I developed a bad cough. A nurse noticed it. I told her I'd had two pneumonias. She called in a doctor. He sedated me. He stuck a tube with a light attached down my throat and checked out my lungs. He didn't spot anything wrong.

I “graduated” the program and stayed on Antabuse. My cough persisted. I bopped back to L.A.—booze and dope free. My fear escalated. I tried to think up an angle. I tapped out. My imagination and will to scheme were shot to fucking shit.

I camped out on Lloyd's roof. My nerves were shot. My cough got worse. My attention span diminished. I felt body- and brain-snatched. It was an all-new sensation. Foreign cells invaded me. They crosswired my circuits and made me someone else. The wires were loose and schizzing me into a shutdown.

It happened.

I woke up on the roof. I thought: I need some cigarettes. A mental fuse blew. My mind went dead. I could not retrieve the thought I just expressed.

I reached for it. I failed. I grabbed at four simple words for an hour. I tried to think and say my name. I failed. I willed myself to think who and where I was. I hit a synaptic black wall.

I screamed myself hoarse. Lloyd heard me. He ran up to the roof. I couldn't think or say his name.

He called an ambulance. Some paramedics ran me to the County Hospital. They left me strapped to a gurney.

I heard voices. Nurses moved their lips and screamed silently. I screamed back. I saw a nurse prep a needle.

I CAME OUT of it.

I woke up strapped to a cot. My teeth were loose. My jaw hurt. Somebody whipped on me. My knuckles were cut and abraded. I fought back.

I remembered my name and those four simple words. God gave me my mind back.

A doctor diagnosed my mental condition. He called it a “post-alcohol brain syndrome.” It was a rare occurrence indigenous to sober drunks. It was physiological. It derived from tenuous abstention. It rarely recurred.

He heard my cough and x-rayed me. He said I had a big lung abscess. Proper care would cure me. Booze and dope would kill me in a week's time.

Live or die. An easy choice once it confronts you.

I spent thirty days on an IV drip. I coughed up jars full of dark sputum. A male nurse pounded my back and brought up more shit.

I began to recover. I was twenty-seven. I had strong genes. God commuted my sentence. He punished me for the thoughts of my mother and rewired my circuits in mercy.

I believed it. My offense was just that transgressive.

I spent thirty days in bed. I charted my life back to day one and up to the present. I plotted my survival and thought about women.

5.

Purgatory—a noun. My revised Protestant definition.

A desert of demonic deprivation. Cloyingly close to the Inhaler Institute and Masturbation Mountain. Limbo for lascivious losers. A rigorous reminder of rapacious appetites and the precious price they extract.

I went there. The main drags were Stay Straight Street and Abstinence Avenue. I lived on Terrified Terrace. My brain wires might broil and brown out any moment. God grants and revokes. He knows me. I only seek Him when I'm scared.

I stayed scared. All day, every day. I tossed my Antabuse. I didn't steal, drink, or pop inhalers. I left the hospital—cured. I slept on Lloyd's roof and lived off plasma money. I read in libraries and stared at women.

I banished June, Kaya, Barbara, and the whole cast of faces. Their love would lure me back to the lung ward. Love was the linchpin of my live-or-die dilemma. I put myself there. I was priapically proactive. Nobody victimized me.

I lucked onto a job. A guy in Lloyd's building worked at Hillcrest Country Club. He got me a caddy gig.

I dug the fresh air and swank atmosphere. I turned some nice coin and got a hotel room. My fear subsided. I sweated it out on the golf course. I dulled it with my semblance of decent behavior.

I stayed off booze and inhalers. I smoked weed and screened potential crime novels. Romantic stories. Dark and obsessive. Women abundant.

I followed women around Westwood Village. I tried to talk to them. I spooked them. They brushed me off. I batted zero.

I kept going. I kept banging that drum. I was headed for an epiphany.

Lloyd knew a bohemian couple. Solly played the flute and the sitar. Joan paid the rent and played muse. They had a crib in West Hollywood.

I spent some time there. Joan was kind to me. I liked her dark hair and blue eyes and nose that hooked off center.

I've got the moment memorized. It's on file as a permanent freeze frame. It was sex and love writ large in an instant.

Joan reaches for a cigarette. Her blouse gaps at the third button. I see her right breast in profile.

You must change your life.

That was '77. It's '99 now. I'm 51. Joan's the same age. June
and Kaya are several years older. Barb Bourbon and Liz
Heath are pushing 60.

They taught me. They presaged the brilliant and courageous woman I married.

I followed the Clinton-Lewinsky mess. I developed a well-reasoned and morally sane hatred of Bill Clinton.

He should have known better. He stole a woman's dignity.
She's the worldwide synonym for blow job. It's a life sentence.
Men will spot her in restaurants and bulge out one cheek. Her
media fees won't cover the cost.

Some friends disdain this assessment. They point to my
wild ride and imply hypocrisy. I would have done the same
thing if I'd had the chance.

No, I wouldn't.

My past taught me better than that. My survival taught
me the wisdom of stern judgment.

It's an exclusionist stance. It acknowledges the ride and
honors the lessons I learned.

The retort is: It's only sex. Sex is nothing.

No, it's everything.

I attribute my survival to the seldom-sought presence of
Almighty God. Skeptics and inclusionists might scoff at this.
They can kiss my fucking ass.