* * *
—
Eight years into the marriage, Mom learned that Dad was having a fling with Kathleen Turner and told him she was contemplating filing for divorce. She gave him an ultimatum—we move east, or we’re done—and so we packed up and relocated to New York, to the apartment on Central Park West, where we would live for the next five years.
Mom liked being able to reconnect with her East Coast friends, and found her footing when she got a job at the Met, making documentary films. “Hollywood isn’t the whole world, Cameron,” Mom said.
Mom and Dad, beyond just their age gap, were really very different people. Mom put a premium on beauty and refinement. Dad was pragmatic. He didn’t really care what he looked like, would travel with just a carry-on, and could get away with it.
During this period in New York, Dad was laser-focused on his career—on escaping the shadow of Pappy and building his own identity. The perks of his exploding fame—reflected glory, a life of luxury, interesting opportunities—gave Mom a big life, but his success also meant that he was busier than ever, away more often, and more stressed.
The pressures of his work seemed to translate into pressure on their marriage. Even when he was physically present, he could be emotionally absent. Mom felt lonely and neglected, and she blamed the whole culture of Hollywood, with its hedonism and thirst for the adulation of strangers. She thought Dad didn’t understand how difficult it was to be his wife. I think she felt that her main job, for many years, was to do damage control.
Dad, for his part, felt unappreciated and thought Mom was ungrateful. When they’d fight over his inattention, or over his drinking and drugging, he’d say: “Where do you think this all comes from?” Over time, a lot of resentment built up between them, and they lived largely separate lives.
* * *
—
I’d always adored Dad and put him on a pedestal, but for a while I was angry with him, seeing him as the engineer of Mom’s misery. In time, I came to see that Mom’s version of the story wasn’t the whole story. Dad wasn’t the only one with distractions. Sometimes, there’d be men at the house, and Mom’s whole demeanor would change, including her accent and mannerisms. Eventually, my anger flipped toward her. And because she was the more present parent, she probably unfairly bore the brunt of my confused pain.
In early 1992, when I was thirteen and before Basic Instinct came out, as Mom tells the story, Dad took me to a screening. She didn’t want me to go, but Dad told her he’d rather I see it with him than hear about it from kids at school. Mom says I returned home crying and made her “promise you’ll never go and see that movie.” She swore that she wouldn’t, and to this day she says that she still hasn’t seen it. I don’t remember any of this happening, and Dad says, “Cam, I did not let you see Basic Instinct when you were thirteen.”
* * *
—
The fall of 1992, after we got back from Mallorca and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, was when Dad checked into the rehab clinic in Arizona for his supposed “sex addiction.”
* * *
—
My general strategy was to try to tune out whatever they were going through, but I knew things weren’t good between them. I was conscious of whenever something particularly bad happened, and aware of Mom’s tactics, and of what she caught Dad doing, and of what she was doing. I just chose disengagement over the emotional distress I saw other kids whose parents had bad marriages go through.
Finally, in the summer of 1995, when I was sixteen, Mom hired a P.I. to tail Dad, and she later showed me telephoto surveillance shots of him at the Beverly Wilshire with another woman.
Mom had threatened divorce for years, and I think she was hoping to use the pictures as leverage to rein Dad in. In the past, her ultimatums had worked, at least for a time. Maybe because Dad felt guilty—he was the bad guy, in Mom’s framing of their marital problems—he kept coming back, trying to make up for his behavior.
For a long time both of them resisted ending the marriage. Each had been traumatized by their own parents’ divorces. Mom had been shipped off to boarding school, and Pappy has told a story about paying for Granny, after their divorce, to bring their sons to visit him in Paris: “One day we were walking in the Bois de Boulogne when Michael put my hand in Diana’s and said, ‘Now the family’s together.’ ” They thought a divorce would harm me. But this time, when Mom finally filed for divorce, Dad, I think to her surprise, agreed. He was tired of that dance. Dad now thinks they should have divorced years earlier.
It’s sad to think back on, but when they told me they were getting divorced, it didn’t knock my socks off. Actually, I welcomed it. I loved them both, and wanted to be around them if they were happy, but since that was so rare, and my exposure to them was mainly when they weren’t happy, none of us was happy. I wondered if it was normal that I was relieved. I’d seen divorce crush other kids.
I say all that, but when I reflect now on the direction I was going in then—a trajectory on which I was about to skip the rails altogether—I have to think that their marriage was slowly wearing away at me, and that I was sitting on a lot of unacknowledged rage. My behavior, which was about to become dramatically more aggressive and reckless, clearly had something to do with what was happening at home.
10
2006: More Cheeva
Ibogaine, praised for helping addicts to kick heroin, is for me the thing that, by disrupting my cocaine addiction, helps me to embrace heroin. This is a good thing, at first. It’s arguably irresponsible to do a PSA for such a harmful drug, but initially, for me, heroin is a godsend. It medicates my unease in a much less violently destructive way than coke did.
On the West Coast, heroin is sold as tar—soft, tacky black balls that melt in the sun. People call it dope, brown, negra, cheeva. Tar is less refined than the white powder sold on the East Coast, and cheaper. I don’t have much disposable income at this point, and I cop on the street, a few balloons at a time. I break off a little piece of tar, put it in a spoon, draw some water up into a syringe, and squirt it onto the cheeva. The water turns a muddy color. Holding a lighter under the spoon, I heat it. The impurities cook off, leaving clear maple syrup–colored liquid and a few burnt solids. Then I take a cotton ball or the cotton from a cigarette filter and stick the needle into it, using it as a filtration system as I draw the liquid up through the cotton. I find a vein in my leg, put the needle in, pull back on the plunger—people call this “flagging”—and look for a ribbon of blood, evidence I’m in the vein. Then I press down, and lift off.
In the beginning, when I shoot up, my eyes are pinned, but the symptom soon fades, and no one can tell I’m high unless I really overdo it. Erin, who’s right there with me in the transition from coke to heroin, is happy with the change. On blow, I could sometimes disappear for days. On cheeva, I’m never away from home for more than a few hours. Instead of clubbing, Erin and I spend hours at Amoeba Music, a huge independent record store on Sunset, going through racks of vinyl, and at 24-hour newsstands, where I buy muscle car magazines, science magazines, music magazines. At home, on my PlayStation, I devote whole days to Oblivion, a new medieval-fantasy game.
Suddenly, I can function again. I go from hiding in my closet to wanting to go out, even just to eat. Friends find me calm and sweet. I build, and rebuild, relationships. I see my family. I’m focused and go to business meetings. I stop drinking. My life feels like it’s coming together.
“You’re back,” a friend says.
* * *
—
Money is still a problem. Not a problem like I can’t pay my rent or buy food. But I’m supporting both Erin and Jay, who has joined us in California after his roommate in New York descended into a drug-induced paranoid psychosis, putting tape on everything he owned and hurling his laptop off the Brooklyn Bridge. To me, Jay’s return now is a member of my family coming home—but it’s expensive, because I’m bankrolling all of our drug habits as well. And I’m no longer
earning the income I was when I was DJing. Cash is always tight.
A 9-to-5 job is out of the question. There’s no way in my current state that I could get one, much less hold it down. But even if I quit drugs, I’d be unlikely to get one. The closest I’ve ever had to a regular job was working construction with a friend one summer and a stint in high school when I volunteered at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, a retirement home in L.A. for show business people, a gig I really liked. For money, I’ve DJed and I’ve acted. The luxury of never having been forced to punch the clock has left me highly resistant to doing it.
Now, though, I remember an encounter in New York, right before I moved to L.A. I ran into Alex Rose, who’d been my trainer at the David Barton Gym on Astor Place when I was getting in shape for It Runs in the Family. He made music on the side, and we became close friends. I was vaguely aware that he also sold crystal by the ounce for Emmanuel Marais, a big dog in dealing crystal to New York’s gay club scene. Emmanuel is in his mid-forties and has a heavy Parisian accent. He studied at the Sorbonne and was a food entrepreneur until he fell on hard times after 9/11. He’s done well enough selling crystal that he has homes in the Catskills and on Fire Island. When I saw Alex in October, he said that if I got to know anyone out in L.A. who could get quality Tina—as crystal was called in New York—at a good price, he and Emmanuel would be interested in buying it.
Until now, I’ve dismissed the idea, not wanting to cross that line. I see the pellet-gun stickups I’ve done as just little stunts to feed my ego, not real crimes. They were the acts of a kid dying for attention, unable to get any from anyone, done to bolster his opinion of himself. Even if I’d gotten caught, I assumed I’d never get much time for the crimes of a drug addict, armed with an air gun, who netted maybe $100. Moving weight is different. I know that on the other side of this line is the potential of serious prison time.
But I’m really feeling broke. Erin and I have sometimes bought blow from my pal Gabriel, our landlord’s handyman, who is five years older than me. He was born in Mexico but grew up in L.A., and he lives with his three children and his parents and brothers in a house north of the city. He and his brother, Carlos, work at a hardware store in Hollywood by day and deliver drugs at night. Gabriel is tough but has a good heart.
One day, over Erin’s objections, I ask Gabriel if he can get me an ounce of good crystal. I explain why. He’s interested, and I tell Emmanuel I’m going to send him an ounce, on me, so he can sample “my product.” Most guys who sell drugs in quantity are older, started as street dealers, and gradually worked their way up; since I’m trying to bootstrap myself straight into a wholesaling role, I’m trying to act the part of someone for whom giving away an ounce is no big deal.
So I’m doing it. I’m crossing the line I wasn’t going to cross. I consider what that means. I know this isn’t going to end well. Then I bat the thought away and forget about it. But it lingers, out of mind, as a feeling of deep foreboding and persistent anxiety.
Mom and Dad after my first sentencing.
* * *
—
I’m still auditioning for movie parts, in a half-assed way, and the producers of a budget-slasher flick called Shrooms cast me in the lead role. It isn’t a step forward, careerwise, but it is a step, as well as a payday I desperately need. Dad is happy that I’ve gotten a part; maybe he’s hoping this is the start of a turnaround. For the two-month shoot in Ireland, the producers will fly me and Erin first-class. Travel poses a new problem, now that Erin and I have a twice-a-day cheeva habit. On the date of our departure, Saint Patrick’s Day, we pack needles in our checked luggage; if they’re discovered, we’ll say they’re for fertility shots. We stuff an orange pill canister with tar, and Erin inserts it between her legs, tampon-style. She is terrified that we’re going to get caught at the airport, but body X-rays haven’t yet become a standard security measure, and we sail through the TSA checkpoint at LAX.
The drugs should last us two weeks, and we arrange for Jay to FedEx us periodic shipments after that. Jay will also take care of Funny, our rabbit, and ship the ounce of crystal to Alex, for Emmanuel, once Gabriel comes through with it.
The first week in Ireland, we’re fine. We’re out in the countryside, over the border into Northern Ireland, and I go through rehearsals and fittings. I’m playing one of a group of American college kids who go hunting for psychedelic mushrooms in the woods and are murdered, one after another, by a serial killer. When I’m not working, I retreat to our hotel room to play Oblivion and shoot up.
Erin and I need to replenish our supply soon, but Jay is suddenly hard to reach. I call Gabriel, who says he gave Jay the ounce of crystal to ship to Alex. I call Alex, who says he never received a package. I call my landlord, Carine, who says she hasn’t seen Jay in days. Fucking Jay. He’s a meth fiend, and he has clearly gone AWOL, holing up somewhere and going on a bender with my ice. He’s fucked me twice over, and also left Funny to fend for himself. I ask Gabriel to send us some cheeva instead, but he gets cold feet. I plead. He still won’t do it.
Erin and I are down to our emergency reserve of cottons. We moisten and mash them to squeeze out whatever trace of heroin residue remains, which yields a couple of small, weak shots.
We start to get sick. We catch a ride to Dublin, an hour-and-a-half south, and roam a neighborhood that looks promising for a street score but come up empty. We decide to go to Germany for the long weekend. We have friends there, club people who we figure can hook us up. But after flying to Düsseldorf and driving to Cologne, where our promoter friend Loki lives, we find out that our friends only have coke connections. We get sicker and sicker. Andrea, my booking agent in Germany, takes us to a soccer game, where Erin and I keep trading commiserating looks: we feel terrible, almost out-of-body. We’re both at a point where we shouldn’t even be seen in public.
The afternoon of our flight back to Ireland, Loki suddenly says, “You guys should get going.” The clock says six, but Daylight Saving Time has just begun, and it’s actually seven. Erin and I grab a taxi to the airport but miss our flight. Fuck fuck fuck. Erin calls the head of production for Shrooms to say I won’t make the first day of filming. By now, we haven’t shot up in four days and are having serious withdrawal symptoms. My nose is running. My eyes are running. I’m getting cold sweats. I’m shaking. Break dancing when I was a teenager, I did some damage to my tailbone, and now my lower back starts spasming. I can’t get comfortable. We sleep at the airport, or try to, and I spend a lot of time in the men’s room, throwing up and pissing out of my ass, sometimes simultaneously. My body is screaming for heroin.
I know I’m in deep shit with the producers. When Erin and I land back in Dublin, a driver from the production is waiting for us with a van. During the ride north to the shooting location, I lie on the floor, feet on the ceiling, muttering incomprehensibly. The driver keeps looking at Erin, wondering what’s up with me. “He’s just exhausted,” she says. “We slept in the airport last night and didn’t get any sleep.” Eventually, I feel so terrible that I ask the driver if he knows of a methadone clinic on our route. He says he doesn’t. I’m skeptical. Heroin is epidemic in Ireland and especially in Dublin, a major port for it.
“Hey,” I say, “please don’t tell the producers I asked you that.”
The driver nods, noncommittal.
I’m on a roller coaster of pain. I’ve heard people say that withdrawal is like the flu, times one million. I’m sweating and feverishly hot, and at the same time I’m freezing. I’m convulsing uncontrollably. I feel like I’m dying. I want to crawl out of my skin.
By the time we get to the hotel, it’s dark out, and Paddy, one of the producers, calls up to our room and says they want to talk to me. I’m sprawled on the bed, blackout drunk because I’ve been drinking to try to feel better. Erin pokes me and says I have to go downstairs.
“This is serious, Cameron.”
I tell her she needs to talk to them. I can’t.
> Erin goes down and tells Paddy and Bob, another producer, that we have food poisoning.
“We know what’s going on,” Paddy says. “Cameron’s a liability, and he’s off the movie.” They’re sending us back to the U.S.
Erin will explain all this to me tomorrow. Tonight I continue to speak delusional nonsense, and I shake and writhe and flail so much that I keep hitting Erin, until she gets up and moves to the other bed.
* * *
—
“What the fuck, Cameron?”
It’s the next morning. Dad is on the phone and livid. Someone from the production has let him know what happened.
He gives me an ultimatum: Get on the plane, come back to L.A., go straight into inpatient rehab, and send Erin back to Pennsylvania, or that’s it—he’s not going to give me any more help or support. It’s not an unreasonable demand, and I might be ready to get clean, but I’m not willing to cut ties with Erin. She has stood by me through everything, and I feel that she deserves my loyalty.
Dad starts talking about Uncle Eric again. “You saw what his problems did to Pappy and Oma. In their eighties, they were still going to rehabs and family therapy sessions to talk about what they’d done wrong. I’m not going to let myself be drawn into this behavior anymore. It’s ruining and disrupting my life. I have young children and a wife who I need to protect. They’ve always been supportive of you and shared their love. This isn’t fair to them.”
Long Way Home Page 10
