Long Way Home

by Cameron Douglas

  Rafting the Grand Canyon with Dad.

  After Joaquín, I got a new caretaker, Geoff Akers, who was twenty-seven. He was from the Hamptons originally, but his mom lived in Santa Barbara. He lived with us, cooked for me, took me to school, picked me up, and played with me. We had a blast together. I’d ride my dirt bike, he’d be on his bicycle, and we’d chase each other around the grounds of our house in Montecito. Friday nights, we’d go to high school football games, and I’d run around with my friends while Geoff hung out with a girl he later married.

  * * *

  —

  It was around that time, right after we moved back to Santa Barbara, that I really began to find comfort in my friends. I had a little crew—me and Jay and David, who I called my brothers—and we named ourselves the Sewer Rats, because we’d all wear long-sleeved blue shirts and chase each other through the pitch-black darkness of the giant cement water pipes that run beneath the town of Carpinteria, where Jay and David both lived.

  I joined a Youth Football League team called the Cowboys. We’d do a drill where everyone lined up facing in one direction, and the kid at the top of the line, who’d have the ball, would start sprinting down the line. Then the coach would call out a name, and that kid would have to jump out from the line and tackle the oncoming ballcarrier. If you were the tackler, you’d want to get as much momentum as you could before making contact, because whoever had more momentum would hit harder and steamroll the other kid.

  I was chubby, and picked-on, and I kept getting knocked on my ass. One day I asked my friend John, who I carpooled with, why I didn’t tackle as well as other kids did. He said, “ ’Cause you’re afraid to hit. You’re pulling up, and putting your hands up in front of you, right before you hit.” Something clicked: if I was the sprinter, I’d still get tackled, but if I was at top speed, it would be the tackler who really got hurt. That day, I laid a kid out flat. From then on, I was a hitter. In one of our games, I sacked the quarterback, and he had to be carried off the field. I was thrilled, and I heard Dad boasting about my hits to his friends. “My son,” he’d say, beaming. “He’s a tough little kid.” I loved hearing him say that.

  * * *

  —

  I started to become slightly more mischievous than the average kid. Once, my friend Sean and I called a 1-900 sex hotline and kept getting put on hold or transferred, never reaching a live woman. Mom and Dad grilled me about the $400 charge on their phone bill. I don’t remember exactly what the fallout was, but probably they grounded me.

  S’Estaca, besides being a place of wonder for me, was also where I had some of my earliest brushes with adulthood. There were a lot of parties at the house, and Dad’s friends who’d regularly come to visit included Jack Nicholson, Pat Riley, Oliver Stone, Danny DeVito, and Mansour Ojjeh, who owned the McLaren race team, and his wife, Kathy.

  Even as a really young kid, I remember running joints back and forth between Dad and Jojo. Dad would say, “Hey, bring this over to your uncle,” and I would, not realizing until years later what it had been. As I got older, I would creep from house to house on the compound, climbing balconies and seeing more than I was supposed to: beautiful grown-ups doing the things that beautiful grown-ups living lives of excess do.

  When the guests were out of their rooms during the day, my friend Taylor and I would comb their rooms, riffling through their bags in search of whatever was responsible for their good times the night before. We agreed that if anyone asked what we were looking for, we’d say “Snickers.” I was only twelve and didn’t really have a handle yet on stash spots, or know exactly what we were looking for. We just knew there was something secret awaiting discovery, and that was enough to make our hunts exciting. It was activity I wasn’t engaging in yet, but I was right at the brink, just about to start trying to smoke cigarettes.

  6

  1991: Thirteen

  When I was in sixth grade, Dad announced that I’d be going to boarding school for junior high. He and Mom were fighting more than ever; he says now that he thought I should be away from their acrimony. At the time, he sold it as a great experience he’d had and that I should have too. He’d gone to Eaglebrook, where he roomed with Henry Kravis, the future buyout king, and loved it. I felt differently. I was tired of bouncing around, wanted to attend the same local public junior high school my friends were going to in Santa Barbara, and was staunchly against the idea of being shipped off to Massachusetts. Mom didn’t want me to go, either. She hadn’t liked her boarding school experience, and she says she enjoyed having me around. But she deferred to Dad, who insisted, saying he thought that I should be in a structured environment with other boys. In the face of my tears, he asked me to give it a chance. He was sure I’d have a good time, but if I didn’t like it after a year, I could come home.

  * * *

  —

  I’d barely started at Eaglebrook when Dad went into rehab for what was reported and distorted around the world as “sex addiction.” As far as I could tell, he was there mainly for his drinking and to placate Mom. She had caught him in bed with another woman, given him an ultimatum that he had to deal with his drug and alcohol intake, and two weeks later he checked into Sierra Tucson, a clinic in Arizona, under the alias Mike Morrell (my and Mom’s middle name). Part of the 30-day program at Sierra Tucson was a “family week,” and I was pulled out of school to go to Arizona, where I mostly sat in group sessions with the kids of other patients, talking about our familial woes. I felt like a passenger in someone else’s car. Mom and Dad had issues to work out, and I was just a kid along for the ride. I was more confused than anything, unsure what it would mean for me, and telling myself that I didn’t care. Then I went back to school.

  * * *

  —

  Boarding school in New England was a culture shock. I was thirteen. I had to wear a coat and tie to classes, and the school had its own ski slope. It was at Eaglebrook that I smoked pot for the first time. It was a joint rolled from a dirty dollar bill by Russell, one of the school’s token black kids. He was outgoing and popular and a great athlete, and we had a lot in common: we both wrestled and played football, were into snowboarding, liked rap and hip-hop, and soon shared a taste for weed, too.

  * * *

  —

  We were behind a dorm named Halsted House, at the foot of one of the ski trails. We’d only taken a couple of hits when we heard someone coming, and we panicked and snuffed the joint out. I’m sure the high felt good—before long, I’d be a pothead—but what comes back to me is the pleasure I felt in getting to tag along with Russell, who I wanted to be friends with. Drugs for me were, among other things, a path out of loneliness. But as I’d also learn, my drug friendships would tend to be based on little else, and if I took the drugs away, the bonds would dissolve.

  * * *

  —

  I was still chunky. This was my first all-boys environment, and Matt, an older, bigger, good-looking kid in my dorm, singled me out for torture. Russell was Matt’s best friend, and Matt seemed jealous that I was horning in on their bromance. I’d be walking down the hall in Macy, the dorm where we both lived, when I’d hear “Hey, Down syndrome,” or sometimes just “Hey, Down.” Matt would say this, as he lumbered toward me, in the speech-impeded voice of a person with a cognitive disability.

  Wrestling at Eaglebrook.

  Basic Instinct had just come out, providing him with easy fodder. If Matt had an audience, he’d announce, with mock sympathy: “Leave Cameron alone; his dad’s a sex addict.” I experimented with various comebacks until landing on two subjects that seemed to get under Matt’s skin: the way he ran—slowly, legs girlishly akimbo—and his puppy-like adoration of Russell. I knew I’d hit a nerve whenever Matt grabbed me by the throat. I was terrified of him, and I’d never been in any fights, and I didn’t want to fight him.

  If Matt was going to treat me like that, I was going to pay it forward. My roommate, J.D., was the nicest kid in the world, but I made him play Bloody Knuckles.
Even after both our hands were swollen and bleeding, and he said he wanted to stop, I forced him to keep playing, saying, “No, it’s your turn. No, it’s your turn.” There was another kid in my class whose life was Guns N’ Roses. I remember his face clearly, but not his name. He played guitar and had stacks of GNR T-shirts. I’d go into his room, mock his devotion to Axl Rose, and start whaling on him. One time, I overdid it. I felt terrible and apologized, and it was the last time I bullied anyone.

  Me, as number 55, playing football at Eaglebrook.

  I was developing a taste for combat, though. I wrestled in the 126-pound weight class and was regularly lifted into the air and slammed to the mat. One time, I broke my thumb and dislocated it. But Pappy had wrestled when he was younger, and he was proud of me for doing it too, and his pride made me feel good. Dad told Pappy I was becoming an athlete, and whenever I saw Pappy he’d check out my body, having me show him my biceps and checking my strength with some arm wrestling.

  * * *

  —

  I really just wanted to be back in California, living at home and hanging out with friends, and I convinced my friend John, from Montecito, to join me at Eaglebrook for the second semester. He persuaded his mother to send him, but he hated it more than I did.

  Dear Mom,

  you are the greatest mom in the world. I love you and Dad more than anything in the world

  You have been so kind to me and loving

  You have made Life so Good For me EXCEPT

  Sending me here.

  Which I Hope was only a one year experience.

  I Love you so much, and Hope to see you

  SOON.

  Alwayes be safe and carful.

  Happy Mothers Day.

  Much

  Love,

  Cam

  Dear Dad,

  Sorry I haven’t been writing to you much but I’ve been working hard. Your new movie sounds really funny, I can’t wait to see it. I am starting right middy in Lax. We’re having a game this Wednesday against Williston Northampton. It should be pretty tough. But our LAX Team is looking good. I can’t wait to get home in the summer and see you and Mom. We’re going to have a great summer. I was wondering if after school ends I can go home for a week or so. I hope you’ll be finished with the movie so we can all spend time together. I’m starting to catch some more flack from Basic Instinct. But I’m dealing with it. Sometimes it really gets me down especially when I’m homesick, but that’s ok I guess. Ned and John are being good friends to me and helping me out. Russell and I are becoming much better friends it looks like, at least I hope so. I’m doing much better in school I think. I got a B and an A+ on the last two math tests I took. I just took a Colonial Test and I think (or hope) I did well. I hope everything is going good for you in the movie. I love you a lot, and be careful. Write back if you get a chance.

  Sincerely, Cameron Douglas

  xoxoxoxoxo

  P.S. Love you lots

  * * *

  —

  At the end of the school year, John and I hitched a ride from New York to L.A. on the Sony jet with Dad and Kevin Costner, and a limousine drove us home to Santa Barbara. When I told Dad I didn’t want to return to Eaglebrook for eighth grade, he said, “Sorry, pal, that’s how it’s going to be.” I reminded him of his promise to me. He said, “That’s the way it is.” I was accustomed to the strains of his marriage to Mom; there was nothing to indicate they were any worse now, and he didn’t explain himself. He said: “I’m your father, not your friend.” My newly hormone-crazed teenage self decided that his about-face was an unforgivable betrayal, and a turning point. From then onward, my focus became less and less about Mom and Dad and more and more about my friends.

  * * *

  —

  That summer, I underwent a minor transformation. I was thirteen now, a teenager. I lost my baby fat and traded in my bowl cut for a more stylish side part. I started pushing my parents pretty hard to give me independence. S’Estaca was a good place to spread my wings. The families I knew there let their kids run wild, and Mom and Dad felt some pressure to allow me similar freedom.

  I ran with a little band of fellow misfit urchins: Oro, Tom, Asher, Aidan, and Sasha. Our parents were all hippies or artists. Dad had a Zodiac with a 30-horsepower engine and a steering wheel connected to the throttle, and I’d take it out every day, stopping to pick up my friends at the beach, then heading away from shore to go wake boarding and kneeboarding. At night, while our parents partied at home, we’d party in town until after midnight. The local police force seemed to consist of one old guy, and you could sit at a bar in Spain at thirteen and order a Bacardi and Coke. As long as we were staying out of our parents’ hair, they didn’t focus too much on where we were. When I came home late, I’d try to avoid them so they couldn’t smell my breath. It all seemed harmless at the time, and I have only the fondest memories of those days in Spain with my parents, but in hindsight I was clearly whetting my appetite for mood-managing chemicals, and for friends who shared that appetite.

  In Deià that summer, I developed a major crush on Galen Ayers, who was worldly and multilingual and head-turningly beautiful, with blond hair and blue eyes. She was also fun and sweet and laid-back, a hippie artist in the making. Her father was Kevin Ayers, the influential British psychedelic-rock musician who’d cofounded the group Soft Machine. But she’d been raised largely by her mother and stepfather, Axel, who owned hotels in Deià. Late at night, our crew would break into one of them, the Residencia, to go skinny-dipping in the pool. Or else we’d go down to the beach at Cala Deià and swim in the ocean, which glowed magically with bioluminescent plankton.

  That was also the summer when Uncle Billy died. Granny was heartbroken. I took it hard too. We were in Spain when we got the news, and I was very dramatic in my reaction, tearing off on my dirt bike to find a spot in the hills to sit and be alone. It was the first death I’d experienced, and I felt a keen sense of loss, but I was at an age when I was still learning how to grieve, and I tried to watch Dad and the other adults to see what they did. I felt particularly terrible for Granny, who I knew had just lost the love of her life.

  It was also that July Fourth weekend, back in Santa Barbara, that I had sex for the first time. It was with a girl I’d been seeing named Tricia, on a damp mattress at the home of my friend Sean, who still wet his bed. I liked Tricia, and thought she was attractive, but those factors were secondary to my determination not to be a virgin anymore.

  The whole thing was awkward. The time and place and activity were negotiated by our mutual friends. I didn’t even take off my boxers. Afterward, I got up and said I’d be right back, then left and didn’t return. I felt guilty, but not enough to do anything about it. Maybe I was afraid of the intimacy; I just knew I felt more comfortable with my friends who were waiting for me outside. The next day, Tricia had a friend call to say that she’d taken a test and was pregnant. Not realizing that such early detection was biologically impossible, I freaked out and told her to get another test. Later the same day, the friend called to say Tricia had taken another test and the result was again positive. I was hugely relieved when it turned out, not surprisingly, that she had invented the pregnancy to get back at me for taking off on her, which I deserved.

  * * *

  —

  It was a season of firsts. Later that summer, a woman in her twenties named Stephanie—who would soon pull a Mrs. Robinson on me—drove me and her younger brother Leland to a keg party at Top of the World, a piece of open parkland in Montecito where kids went to drink. There was a knot of wild boys there, white gangbangers from Santa Barbara, and because I was an unfamiliar face, and probably seemed awkward, they started paying attention to me and giving me unfriendly looks. One of them walked over. With no warning, he punched me in the face. I came to on the ground, seeing lights and tracers and feeling like The Dude in The Big Lebowski after he gets coldcocked. It was the first time I’d ever been knocked out. The guy was already walking away. My imme
diate reaction wasn’t fear that he was going to come back. It wasn’t embarrassment that I’d just gotten clocked. It wasn’t about the throbbing ache in my jaw. It was: That’s who I want to be like, that motherfucker right there. I wanted people to see that I wasn’t a pussy. I could come from a rich and famous family and be just as bad as everyone else.

  I was becoming more detached. That year, a friend gave me a huge dog named Lobo, who was half timber wolf. He was gentle, and was an outside dog, but my pet ferret, Tiki, had a strong odor. One day, Lobo got into the house, smelled his opportunity, made a beeline for Tiki, and ate her. I’d had Tiki for many years, and it was a terrible, upsetting accident, but somehow her death also made sense to me. Tiki had lived a long life, and it’s a dog-eat-ferret world.

  * * *

  —

  When I returned to Eaglebrook for eighth grade, I had a very different experience than the previous year. I still liked sports and was on the varsity football, wrestling, and lacrosse teams. I must have had Stockholm syndrome, because I became friends with my former tormentor, Matt, who also played football and wrestled. It somehow felt like a victory to befriend him.

  But I was also smoking and drinking and skateboarding and making forbidden nighttime runs off-campus, sprinting across fields and through the woods to a store where I’d buy candy and Cheez Whiz and ramen noodles, which my friends and I would make in our contraband hot pots. Eaglebrook began to feel like the sidelines to me.