Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

by Bill Clegg

  The room has a long table, with flowers and bound galleys of the book arranged beautifully. People apparently have just sat down. There has been a sort of mingling with cocktails before the lunch, so luckily I haven’t been as obviously absent as I would have been if they had sat down at one o’clock. Jean stands as I walk in the door. I just got here! I’m so sorry I was late! she coos. So Jean doesn’t even know that I’m late. Another miracle. Somehow I talk to the author, her Legendary Editor, and a few others and sit down at the table, next to Jean, and the event glides on without my help and with no apparent controversy over my lateness. I tell everyone I have the flu and am not feeling well. I make up a story for Jean about some trouble in my family that I had to attend to, and she shivers with genuine concern. I excuse myself twice during the lunch to slam glasses of vodka at the bar downstairs and duck into the toilet to smoke. I say good-bye to everyone around three thirty, wander out onto Fifth Avenue, and when I see a man in his thirties handing out flyers for some discount men’s store, I recognize something in him and ask him if he parties. When he says yes, I ask, With rock? He flashes a smile and laughs more than says, Oh boy.

  I won’t remember this guy’s name, but we become fast friends. We hunt for a cab together to get back to the hotel on 24th Street but can’t find one. A van pulls up next to me as it stops for a light, and I ask the guy driving if we can hitch a ride and, amazingly, he says yes. My new pal—who has ditched his flyers in a trash can—giggles in the back of the van and for a moment he’s Kenny in the woods with a bottle of Scotch, Max in the cooler setting up lines of coke, Ian wielding a fire extinguisher. I giggle, too, exhilarated to be on the other side of the lunch, on the other side of the line that separates me and my new friend from the rest of the world. The van rattles down Fifth. Drugs in pocket, partner in crime at my side, hotel key in hand, a whole night ahead.

  The afternoon and night play out. We don’t have sex, though I want to. Rico comes at ten with more, and it is all gone by four in the morning. My pal gets restless and disappears. He asks for $50 for a cab up to Harlem and I give him $40. Alone, I smoke down the few crumbs I’d hidden. Alone, I scrape the broken stem for the last resin and burn the pipe black as charcoal trying to suck the last drop of venom out of it. Alone, I look at the window and wonder if I am high enough up to die if I crawl through and jump into the air shaft. Fourth floor. Not even close.

  And then, because there is no other thought or action or crack crumb left to get in the way, I think one thought: Noah. I can’t bear it and I pick up the last burnt stem from the ashtray to make sure there is nothing left. I scan the floor to see if there is one last dropped chunk of drug kicked to the carpet’s edge, waiting for me to rescue it so that it can rescue me. But there is nothing. Not a thing left but me and the knowledge that I have not called Noah in three days. It’s seven in the morning and I’m alone in a hotel room on the other end of a three-day crack binge. I’m in unfamiliar territory, terrified. I feel as if I have been picked up by a tornado and spit out in pieces. Why did I drink so much at L’acajou three nights ago? WHY, oh, Jesus Christ, WHY? I’ve asked myself the question hundreds of times in the harsh light of hundreds of mornings and, as always, there’s no answer. I pick up the mess, gather my few belongings, and walk down Fifth Avenue in the dark, silent morning, toward what I hope is still home.

  Noah is not at the apartment when I come in. I call and leave a message to say that I am at the apartment, in bed, and safe. That I am sorry and that this is the last time. That I love him. I crash asleep for what seems like a few minutes but is actually three or four hours. Noah wakes me sometime after morning. He has tears in his eyes and speaks in kinder tones than I could possibly have hoped for. He hugs me as I lie in the bed and pats my back like a child who needs consoling. He looks worried and I know something is not quite right. There are some people here to see you, he says, and I know right away that, after all this time, all these nights and mornings, the jig is finally up. Who? I ask, and he tells me that my sister Kim, David, and Kate are in the living room. The world stands still. Time stops. I can’t believe they know. That they’re here. Noah holds my hand and I am grateful for his tenderness. That he is not leaving me. But the horror of what is happening thunders down on me, and I am numb with shock. Let’s go, he prods. And with his help I put on my bathrobe and shuffle toward the door from the bedroom into the living room. Noah has his hand on my shoulder as I open the door and see them sitting around the coffee table in the sun-flooded living room, looking up, seeing me for the first time.

  I don’t struggle, not yet. I am quiet and cooperative as each of them, in turn—Kim, Kate, Noah, David—tells me they will support my getting sober but won’t support me, won’t have anything to do with me, if I continue to use. There are many tears and I feel that I’m underwater and their words seem as if they have to swim a great distance to reach me. There is a car downstairs, tickets purchased to fly to a rehab in Oregon, bags packed, and a bed waiting. The ex-cop or ex–Army Green Beret or ex-gym teacher who stands alongside them with muscles and crossed arms and barks at me in stern tones is someone I instinctively know to erase. I do not look at or speak to or interact with him in any way and I agree to go to the airport as long as he does not come with us. And so we go. Noah, Kate, and I get in the car and go to La Guardia. It is early afternoon, and when we get to the terminal, I say I need food and order a plate of eggs and a bottle of white wine and drink it all and barely touch the food. I drink vodka on the flight to Oregon while Noah and Kate look on silently or sleep.

  The place is an hour away from Portland and looks like a small elementary school nestled in the middle of rolling wine country. It does not rain once when I am there, and the sky is a dark, unsullied blue that turns pink toward the end of the day and scarlet at sunset. My roommate is a pill-addicted brain surgeon from Los Angeles whose gorgeous Swedish girlfriend comes up several times and takes us on car rides to Portland and to the coast. There are other guys, too—the retired ambulance driver from Washington State who drank himself into a stupor every night and who would go weeks without a word to another human being; the mouthy rich kid from New York who wore gold Adidas track suits and talked like a mobster; the spooked meth addict from the San Fernando Valley who lined his basement with aluminum foil to outsmart the Feds and cops who he just knew were tracking his every movement. I relate to them all. On the second or third day, after dozens of pleading phone calls to Noah and Kate and my sister, each one a failed attempt to get back to New York, I finally accept the fact that I am in rehab, that I am stuck. Once I stop trying to get home, I am amazed how at ease with these guys I feel, how much the same, and how exhilarating it is to be honest, about everything, for the first time. Each night I walk alone in a gentle field and watch the sky darken and streak with pinks and reds. I walk in that field and feel scared about returning to New York, worry what people will think, but after a few weeks begin to feel hopeful.

  I volunteer to stay for an extra week—partly because I want to demonstrate to Noah and Kate that I have taken this seriously, but mostly because by the fourth week I am deeply enmeshed in the community of patients and counselors. I am not in a hurry to leave this process of letting go of the many secrets that I had spent a lifetime squirreling away, hanging on to, buckling under the weight of.

  In a group discussion one morning I talk, for the first time since the sessions with Dr. Dave, about my struggle with peeing. After the group, another guy, a banker from San Francisco with four kids, tells me that he wrestled with the same problem as a boy. Two days before I go home, he will sneak off the rehab property, relapse on tequila in a strip club down the road, and be asked to leave.

  When I return to New York, my mother calls and wants to see me. I put off getting together for nearly a month and eventually agree to have lunch. On that day she is an hour and a half late. She finally shows up and as we order food, she describes the generations of alcoholism and drug addiction in her family and my father’s, and
tells me I’m one in a long line. Despite my initial agitation with her for being late, I am surprisingly relaxed with her and feel a little of our old ease return. I ask if I can bring up something from childhood, something that I hadn’t talked to anyone in the family about but that I’ve remembered only recently. She says yes and before I get the word peeing out of my mouth, she holds her hand up above the table and shakes her head. I say a few more words, but she is now crying, asking me if I’ve agreed to have lunch only to tell her what a terrible mother she is. Stunned by her sudden outburst, I say that I only need her to tell me if she remembers anything, to confirm that it happened, because all I have are a pile of chaotic memories shaken to life by a shrink. Through tears she says something that sounds like I’m not going to talk about that, your father was the one… The last thing I remember is her asking me if I knew how hard it was for her then, what a nightmare those years were for her. I say yes, that she’s been very good at letting us know how hard it was for her, and she leaves the restaurant. I follow her out to the street as she disappears into a cab without a word. I return to the restaurant, settle the bill, and by the time I make my way three blocks north to my office, I lose my wallet, my keys, and my sunglasses.

  I start an outpatient program that I never finish, follow the suggestions to stay sober that I was given at rehab and then don’t, talk on the phone a few times to my roommate and some of the other guys—the ones who just weeks before felt like family—and then, within the first month at home, lose touch with them all.

  I think I have it licked. I throw myself into my job, the agency, the writers I represent, and the storm of work seems like something that I can hide in, that will protect me from temptation. I watch people drink at dinners and parties and, at first, am relieved I don’t have to anymore. As months pass, though, I grow resentful. Little fantasies of getting high will start to appear like thought bubbles in cartoons, when I am alone, mainly, and at the end of long workdays, days when I have had little sleep the night before or missed lunch and am light-headed with hunger. In October I find an old crack pipe stuffed in the pocket of a blazer hanging in our bedroom closet. I hide it in various places and circle the thing like a hawk for weeks until I finally scrape it clean of its old residue and take a hit. I feel only the faintest gust of a high, which quickly dies with the panic that I’ve relapsed. It’s over just as it starts, and Noah walks in right after it happens and agrees to tell no one. I hide the stem, bring it to my office, and somehow misplace it. I worry for weeks that someone there—my assistant, Kate, the cleaning woman—has found it and is waiting to confront me. No one ever does.

  And then, seven months later, just before going to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, I have a plan to meet Noah for a sushi dinner at Japonica. On the morning of the day before that dinner, the thought of getting high bubbles up, but instead of flicking it away as I usually do, this time I don’t and it lingers. And it lingers long enough for me to ask: Why not? Noah is leaving tomorrow and I’ll have almost two full days in the city alone. I’ve been working hard, everything is going well, no one will suspect a thing. Within seconds I’m on my cell phone, calling Stephen for the first time in almost a year. We’d stopped using him to bartend our parties, but despite being advised at rehab to erase all drug-related numbers from my cell phone, I still have his. He picks up on the first ring and we make a plan to meet later, on the corner outside my office building. At six I go downstairs and see him leaning against the building. He’s skinnier than I remembered, older. I barely say hello, though he seems eager to hang out. I give him $400 to score and $200 for doing the dirty work and agree to meet him the next day. As much as I don’t want to reconnect with Stephen, scoring through him somehow feels less wrong. As long as I don’t start up with the dealers again, I reason, if I don’t remember their numbers, this tiny treat will be just a one-time-only thing, an anomaly, a harmless but needed vacation.

  I meet Stephen on the same corner the next day, tingling with anticipation. This time he’s all business. He hands me a small brown paper bag filled with drugs and stems. I thank him and hurry away, back to my office.

  I plan to smoke the bags the next night, after Noah leaves, a day and a half before I join him in Utah for the premiere of his movie. This can work, I think, this will be just a little release, a little nothing, a harmless blowing off of steam. In the swarm of faulty reasoning I still know this will end badly, that it always does, and that I’m loading a gun and pointing it at my temple. But that voice, instead of being a deterrent, becomes part of the persuasion. On the other side of this bag is either a groggy day and a no-harm-done return to life or some kind of apocalypse. Lose nothing or lose everything. And losing everything sounds like a relief.

  I return to the office and make some phone calls, say good-bye to my colleagues as they leave, and see that I have two hours before I’m to meet Noah for dinner. Two hours. Just one hit now would wear off before then. Why not? I get up from my desk and lock the office door. I find a lighter in my assistant’s desk drawer, sit down at my desk, take the drugs from my jacket pocket, and hold the two little baggies in my hand. I pull out the clean, clear stem—so much lighter than I remembered. It feels like a dream as I split off a little creamy chunk of crack and load it into the end of the stem. It doesn’t seem as if it’s actually happening when I spark the lighter and move the flame toward the pipe. It doesn’t feel the least bit wrong in those first seconds after exhaling the familiar smoke, no more than a reunion with an old friend, a returning to the most incredible conversation I’ve ever had, one that got interrupted seven months ago and, now that it’s started up again, hasn’t skipped a beat. But it’s more than just a conversation, it’s the best sex, the most delicious meal, the most engrossing book—it’s like returning to all of these at once, coming home, and the primary feeling I have as I collapse back into my desk chair and watch the smoke roll through my office is: Why on earth did I ever leave?

  I sit at my desk for three hours, smoking down one of the bags, and finally race out, suddenly panicked, to Japonica, to Noah, whom I was supposed to meet an hour ago. I run into the restaurant and see him sitting at a table, his back to the wall, clearly worried, and when he sees me, he goes white and begins weeping. I remember his weeping. I lie to him and say I got caught on a phone call at work, that I didn’t hear him ringing my cell or the landline at the office, and that it’s all okay, don’t worry, stop crying. He sleeps on the couch that night and leaves quietly in the morning, asking only one thing: Will I make it to Sundance? And I say, yes, yes, of course. I promise.

  And I do make it. But I stay only one night, the night of his premiere and the party after with his friends and producers and family. I smile and nod and engage and play the part of a supportive boyfriend. But I’m fixated on the little zip-lock bag wrapped in tissue nestled in the pocket of my navy blazer hanging in the bedroom closet at One Fifth. I imagine the clear glass stem resting next to that bag, and the lighter on the dresser nearby. I picture these things every second I’m in Utah. From the moment I get there I need to leave. From the second I leave New York I need to return, to get back to that conversation, the one that just started up again; and now that it has, nothing but death can keep me from it.

  Last Door

  I need a new sweater. I need to clean up before I try to check into another hotel. It is evening but some stores may still be open. I get in a cab and ask the driver to go to SoHo. He hums as he drives and I can’t bear looking to see if his license photo is obscured by cardboard or paper or just not there, like all the others. Here okay? he asks, as he pulls to the corner of Houston and Wooster. I shove $10 in the money slot and don’t bother looking at the fare.

  The stores south of Houston look like Christmas. Extraordinary displays—animated, art-directed, intelligently lit—beckon and intimidate from the windows along Wooster. I remember, as a kid, coming into the city with my fourth-or fifth-grade class to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. Th
e streets in midtown were jammed with tourists and city people, and they were lined up by the hundreds to see the decorated windows of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. I remember being confused about why the windows were important to see but also excited that I was involved in something famous, something big. It was the same feeling when we got to Radio City Music Hall. My mother told me it was the best theater in the whole world and that the Rockettes were the most beautiful, most talented performers anywhere, whom people came from around the world to see. When my class finally made its way through the crowds into Radio City I could barely breathe. We were here, in this place that people traveled from everywhere to be, where the Rockettes performed (what exactly they did I still had no idea). The gold fixtures and red carpeting exaggerated the dizzy Christmas-in-NY adrenaline pumping through me, and I remember literally shaking with excitement. At the top of the first set of stairs, there was a bank of pay phones. I made a beeline for the nearest one and dialed zero. I told the operater I wanted to call home, collect. The phone rang and no one answered. This was before answering machines. Before voice mail. So I hung up. But I was bursting and had to tell someone, had to put the excitement somewhere. So I picked up the phone and dialed the operator again—a different one answered this time—and immediately started gushing to her about where I was, what I could see, what I had already seen on this, one of my first trips into the city. I don’t remember anything about the performance that night but I always remember that call, the friendly operator, her kind voice, and how she told me to go find my teacher, to be careful not to get lost.