I haven’t found a regular dealer here yet, but coke isn’t hard to come by. Needles are. In New York, we bought packs of insulin syringes over the counter at Duane Reade, but when I send Erin to a pharmacy on Wilshire Boulevard to get more, she returns empty-handed: “They said in California you need a prescription.”
“Fuck,” I say. “Okay, let’s find a needle exchange.” There’s one in Echo Park, and I wait in the car while Erin goes in and says she is from out of town and has diabetes. They give her a couple of points, which we keep using until the tip breaks off one and the other gets clogged. Then Erin finds a medical supply company online and e-mails them pretending to be in the phlebotomy field, and after that we just order them by the case, ten packs of ten in each one. We get two sizes, shorter and thinner for surface veins, longer and thicker for deeper injections. I’ve already destroyed the veins in my arms and am quickly tearing my way through the good ones in my legs.
* * *
—
At the apartment in Koreatown, I have my second seizure (my first was back in New York). One moment, Erin is shooting me up. The next thing I know, the doorbell is chiming. “I called an ambulance,” Erin says. She has a fat lip from giving me CPR, and I have one too. My chest hurts from the compressions. My face stings where she’s slapped me trying to wake me up. I am pissed, and not because Erin has resuscitated me. I am fine, but now, because of medical protocol, I will have to go with the paramedics to the hospital and get checked out.
It’s hard to convey the degree to which a serious drug habit muffles emotion, choking off natural feelings and expressing them only in relation to the addiction. The closest I come to feeling any fear for my health or life is when, occasionally, I do a big shot and feel the signs of a possible overdose coming on. My legs get shaky, and I can’t stand up. When this happens, I tell Erin to stay with me until the feeling passes, which it usually does after about thirty seconds. Then I tell Erin she can go.
Having seizured, I should feel more afraid, and there’s no logical reason why I don’t, but the reality is that my only fear is that the O.D. is going to cause me some kind of inconvenience. Either there’s going to be a legal issue, or it’s going to get in the way of what I want right now, which is simply to keep doing what I’ve been doing, even as I know how destructive it is. Years past my teens, I still have a teenager’s delusions of invincibility, made all the more delusional by my reckless, incessant, intravenous coke habit. Even after what happened to Eric, I feel a bedrock conviction that the same thing won’t happen to me. Mainly I’m just embarrassed and annoyed at the attention focused on my drug use. Now Erin and Curtis are going to be fearful and risk-averse and a drag.
In the car back to the apartment from the hospital, Erin seems shaken.
“New rule, Erin,” I say. “If I overdose, don’t even think about calling a fucking ambulance. You start giving me CPR and mouth-to-mouth immediately.”
“Baby—”
“By the time an ambulance arrives I’ll either be fine, or I’ll have irreparable brain damage.”
“Cameron—”
“I’m serious. People panic and call an ambulance and wait for it to arrive, but it makes no sense either way. You need to start getting oxygen to the brain right away.”
Erin doesn’t say anything.
As soon as we enter the apartment, I grab a paper bindle of blow and tap some out into a spoon. I don’t lessen the dose. What’s so dangerous about shooting coke is that the feeling you’re going for is obtained only just sub-overdose. People call it a “bell ringer,” because you literally hear bells ringing in your head, like you’re in a French restaurant at lunchtime and hear only the clinking of silverware. It’s intense. You chase that feeling and keep shooting up in pursuit of it. I squeeze a few drops of water over the powder. This coke is good enough that it dissolves into a clear solution without any heat, and I draw it into a syringe, which I plunge into my left thigh.
Shooting coke takes me to another planet. What’s wrong with the one I’m on? At this point, I couldn’t tell you. I’m not living an examined life. I don’t know why I don’t want to face reality. I’m not sure why I don’t want to challenge myself. Am I afraid of success? Am I afraid of discovering my limitations?
I don’t want to sell short the visceral and immediate rewards. I know what I’m going to get from coke every time, and it’s always there for me. The ups and downs of life are unknowable and unnerving. The ups and downs of drug addiction are entirely predictable. There’s a comfort in that. And I like the instant gratification. I want to do what I want to do right now. I want to feel good right now. The only thing I know of in life that can do that is drugs. I don’t want to work for it, or expend the effort, or wait for who-knows-how-long for who-knows-what-result.
If the seizure has any chastening impact, it is to make an incremental contribution to my overall feeling that this can’t last, a creeping, ominous desperation that has started to darken my days.
* * *
—
Everyone who meets Junior recognizes that he’s a special dog. In Aspen, I’ll huck a golf ball out into a snowdrift. Junior will pounce in and disappear, but you can see him moving under the snow, displacing it like a tunneling worm, and he brings that ball up every time. He’s amazingly adaptable. Sometimes I sleep for eighteen hours, after being up for seven days straight, and Junior crashes with me.
I do love dogs. I’ve grown up with them my whole life and always had one. I enjoy their company. I’ve always felt that I understand them. I get their thinking. I know how to raise good ones. When people compliment me on how well-behaved Junior is, I tell them: It’s not a secret or mystery. You treat them well, give them time and attention, and train them to be obedient, and that’s what you get. You get out of a dog what you put in. Some dogs are smarter than others, but you’re never going to get passive-aggressive behavior, or a lie, from a dog.
In Bermuda, Dad has a blond Labrador named Lola, and he asks if he can borrow Junior to sire a litter of puppies with her. I’ve had Junior since he was a puppy, and I’m proud that Dad thinks I’ve done such a good job of raising him. In our lopsided relationship, it feels good to have something that I can do for Dad.
I’ve learned that when it comes to Lab coloring, blond is recessive and black is dominant, so I think: Great, I’ll take one puppy from the litter and have another Junior. I send Junior to Bermuda, where he does what he’s supposed to and fathers eleven puppies—all black, all beautiful.
When Dad calls to tell me the news, I remind him I’d like one of the puppies.
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“Dad, I gave you Junior with the understanding I’d get one of the puppies.”
“Maybe you can have one, but it would have to live here. Actually, I think Junior should stay here too.”
“Come again?”
“I just don’t think you’re in the best place to take care of a dog, Cam. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you can barely take care of yourself.”
“How do you think Junior got to be such a good dog? Keep the fucking puppies, but you’re going to send him back to me.”
“Nah, I think he should stay down here.”
“Either put him on a plane tomorrow to come back to me, or I’m going to come there and get him, and that’s not going to be a good scene for anybody.”
He sends Junior back, keeps a couple of the litter, and gives the rest away, none of them to me. I’m insulted. Now I’m not fit to take care of a puppy? I’m sure Dad’s not trying to be mean. Maybe he’s trying to drive home a point. But one thing I take pride in, even now, is that even if I’ve neglected myself, I’ve never neglected my animals, just like I’ve never neglected my friends. It’s offensive to me that he thinks I’m so far gone. It stings even more because this whole breeding episode started out as a seemingly nice interaction with Dad. Also because, on some level, I know that my life has jumped the rails.
With Dad at the Sherry-N
etherland hotel in New York.
Fuck it. I’ll breed my own litter of puppies and keep one of them. I start researching breeds, looking for a good physical match for Junior that’s also strong in traits and characteristics he’s weaker in.
* * *
—
By now, I’m going three, four, five days without sleeping. I feel like everyone’s out to get me. Friends. Police. Am I just paranoid? Not necessarily. I’m hanging out with shady people doing shady shit, and everyone’s fucked up on drugs, not thinking properly. There’s a lot of jealousy in all directions. Jay, my best friend, is never really acting the way I feel he should toward me. When I’m not around, he talks me down. Add all that to the cocaine-induced reality distortion, and the paranoia keeps me on a constant edge, burning me out.
I’ll be at home with friends and suddenly get the feeling that cops are going to come barging through the door. “Everybody be quiet!” I say. “Be quiet!” Then I spend hours looking under the door to the hallway, scanning for shadows, and out the window, studying people and cars for signs of a threat.
I come back from a trip to New York to find Erin wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt that says ROGAN on the back. Rogan is her grandfather’s name, and we’ve joked about naming a kid after him.
“Are you fucking Jay?” I say.
“What?”
“You’re going to have a kid together and name him Rogan?”
“Cameron, what are you talking about?”
“Have you ever been to Las Vegas, Erin?”
“What?”
“You heard me,” I say. “Have you ever been to Las Vegas?”
“Um, I went there once when I was in college. We were on a biology trip and did some experiments in the desert, and we stopped in Vegas for maybe an hour?”
“And you haven’t been there any other time?”
“No.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t go there this weekend and get married to Jay?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? No.”
“I know you’re lying,” I say.
“Baby, you’re being insane. You’re not making any sense.”
I ask why she’s being so defensive.
Another time, we’re with my friend Ryan at the Roosevelt Hotel downtown, and Erin goes to use the bathroom. A few minutes later, Ryan says he needs to hit the head. While he’s gone, Erin comes back.
That night, I say, “I know you had sex with Ryan.”
“What? The only reason you imagine these things is because it’s what you’d do.”
The next day, I find Erin on her laptop, researching people who can come to the house and give her a lie-detector test.
* * *
—
One night, we decide to road-trip to Lake Havasu in Arizona, where the original London Bridge is. We leave in the middle of the night, me and Erin and Curtis and Maria, a very attractive girl who, like me, spent some time in a tough-love boarding school and is now a drug addict and sometime DJ. There are hardly any other cars on the road. One passes us, going what must be 140 miles per hour.
I want to see if I can keep up, so I lead-foot it. Instinctively, I’ve always felt like it’s my job to be a consummate host. I’m like Dad in that way. When he has people to stay with him, he works full-time, around the clock, planning and organizing and taking care of his guests. Our circumstances are different. Our guests are different. But I always want to make sure everyone with me is having the best possible time. If they’re not, I feel like it’s my fault. Right now, that means rocketing down the highway at an ungodly speed.
A cop on the side of the road sees us zoom past, turns on his lights and siren, and chases us, indicating for us to pull over. I keep the accelerator floored, the speedometer needle pinned. Everyone else in the car is freaking out. “What the fuck are you doing, Cameron? Stop!” I’m scared too, but there are syringes and drugs in the car. It won’t be good if we get pulled over. Finally we catch up with a cluster of cars. I pull in front of one in the middle of the pack and rapidly decelerate. We wait for what feels like an eternity for the cop cars (there’s now more than one) to catch up. I see them in the rearview mirror, then I hear them, then I feel the adrenaline in my stomach. The cops don’t see us, and fly past. I feel vindicated.
* * *
—
I’ve felt distant from Mom for many years. Her recent chumminess with Amanda is just one more addition to my pile of grievances against her. I’m also not someone she particularly wants around right now. Until last year, Mom was engaged to Zack Hampton Bacon III, a hedge fund manager in New York. She and Zack made plans to have a child via surrogate. I visited Mom in San Diego, where she was staying during the pregnancy, but otherwise steered clear of the situation. “A child” turned out to be twin boys—Hawk and Hudson. But Mom was also determined to have a daughter, and adopted Imara.
I think Mom is scared of growing old and being lonely, and she knows that she can’t count on me to be there for her. Like Dad, with his young kids, I think she wants a do-over, a chance to make different choices than she made with me. I’m ashamed that they feel so poorly about me, and how I’ve turned out, that they want another crack at parenting. But it seems they are doing a better job this time; they’re much more present and hands-on.
Mom and Zack stopped getting along, broke up, and are now in a nasty custody fight over the twins. An unemployed drug-addict son isn’t necessarily going to be a helpful credential for Mom. But she still likes to keep tabs on me, mainly through Amanda, who keeps riling her up. The gist of her reports to Mom: my life is falling apart without Amanda.
When Erin and I have our act together, we hide our drugs and works in a kitchen cupboard, at the bottom of a box of peanut butter Puffins. But increasingly we’re careless, and when Amanda stops by, supposedly to say hello, she’ll see needles or other signs of what I’m doing, then leave and immediately call Mom and tell her.
Amanda and I are at her friend Pia’s house in Topanga Canyon one day. It has a big bay window with a view, and tons of sunlight pouring in. I don’t know what gets into me, but I whip out a needle I’ve already loaded up with coke.
“Cameron, what are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m addicted to heroin, Amanda.”
No one feels sorry for cokeheads. Everyone feels bad for junkies.
I dig around for a vein.
“This is insane. Why are you doing this?”
I start crying.
“Because I have AIDS,” I say, pressing the plunger. “So what does it matter?”
Why the fuck did I say that? It’s not true. Maybe I think it is? Maybe I’m desperate for sympathy. Maybe I just want to freak her out.
“What?!”
I sink into the couch, fading away, as Amanda’s meltdown begins.
* * *
—
Another day, when I’m out, Amanda and Mom show up at my apartment together. For some reason the door’s open, and they walk right in. When I get home later, Curtis says they went straight into my bedroom and found a bunch of points and some bloody Kleenex in the sink. “Dude,” Curtis says. “Your Mom immediately jumped on the phone and called your Dad. She was pacing around the living room. She’s like, ‘Michael, I’m here right now, I just went through his bedroom, there’s needles everywhere, and bloody rags! We’ve got to do something! We’re going to lose our son!’
“Then I get a phone call from your Dad. He’s like, ‘Curtis, I just got a call from Diandra, I know what she found in the bedroom. It sounds like he’s still doing drugs.’
“I say, ‘Yeah, he is, Michael.’
“He says, ‘Curtis, where’s he getting the money to get the drugs?’
“I say, ‘Well, I do recall this check showing up in the mail the other day, and it was from the studio, and Cameron opened it up and got a big old smile and said, “Royalties, baby, gotta love ’em.” ’
“He says, ‘Son of a bitch, I told those motherfucke
rs not to send him checks anymore.’ He starts wigging out, dude. Your mom’s going apeshit in the apartment, your dad’s wigging out on the phone.”
* * *
—
Soon after, I’m supposed to fly to Germany to play my DJ friend Sebbo’s birthday party. Just a few years ago, I was traveling the world for gigs. I spun at a festival in Turkey. I DJed the Vanity Fair Oscars Party, alongside EDM giant Paul Oakenfold. I DJed a Mercedes-Benz event in Milan where Christina Aguilera also performed. I got a booking agent in Germany who started getting me a lot of work in Europe. At the height of my career, I was making between $3,000 and $6,000 for a nightclub set, and between $15,000 and $60,000 for a two- to five-hour corporate gig. It was like a dream to me. For the first time, I had a life and an identity of my own. Mom and Dad, who’d seen Mark Ronson blow up, began to think maybe this DJ thing could work out for me after all. But these days I rarely work, and I’m grateful for Sebbo’s invitation to spin at his party.
The day before my departure, Dad calls and asks me to swing by his house. He’s renting Dan Aykroyd’s house in the Hills, north of Mulholland. I don’t know whether Dad is aware that Aykroyd considers the house haunted, possibly by the ghost of former owner Mama Cass, according to the Internet.
A couple of months have passed since Dad’s concern-fueled kidnapping attempt. I still feel betrayed. He seems to have crossed the threshold between desperate and numb. During our rare phone conversations, he sounds increasingly detached, but now he’s saying that he wants to see me.
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