by Nik Richie
Half an hour later. Wake up. Vomit. Vomit my stomach into the toilet. Stick my finger into my throat and retch. Vomit blood. Torrents of blood. The toilet water is a deep, dark red and there’s blood all over my gag-hand and face. Chunks of stomach matter pollute the water, coat the rim of the toilet, and my body is shaking but not from cold. My body is fighting, resisting all the pills I fed it. Pushing, ridding itself of drugs and blood and liquids. I throw up blood. More blood, and I’m too fucked-up to be afraid of it. I flush and the water is still pink and holding parts of my stomach. Every limb is dead. Can’t feel my chest, my face. No heartbeat or breathing. Just burning vomit. Sour bloody vomit. I should call someone. A hospital. Can’t move. I pass out again. Sleep in the toilet. Sleep, and the world keeps going. It’s totally unaware of me.
The next day, Scooby is lecturing me. He doesn’t talk down to me or yell at me. It’s not a one-man intervention. He’s simply asking the questions I should be asking myself.
“How is this fun anymore?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. What Scooby knows is that I’m in bad shape. I don’t have to explain the part where I overdosed in my hotel room or woke up naked and covered in vomit. Telling him I saw “colors to the max” is enough to get the point across.
“You’re going to Vegas and what—partying out of spite?”
I couldn’t go to my parents. They don’t support the Nik Richie thing, and I’ve got too much pride to admit that he’s broken. My father is traditional Persian, so having one of your identities blow up in your face doesn’t exactly earn sympathy. I had to go to somebody that gets it.
Scooby asks, “You’re so concerned about leaving a name for yourself? What name are you leaving?”
No answer. Again, he’s not yelling at me or trying to make me feel bad.
These are the questions that I should be asking.
That’s all.
For twenty days, I’m depressed.
I stay at Scooby’s place, literally on the couch all day unless it’s to use the bathroom or get food. Most of the time I’ll text Scooby to bring me something from Jack in the Box or Carl’s Jr., and he’s too nice to tell me to fuck off and get it myself. He’s either coming home with greasy comfort food or booze. We eat in his living room, and sometimes he’ll try to bullshit with me about sports or make small talk but I’m not feeling it. His heart is in the right place, but at this point I’m a fucking wall. I’m not acting like me. I don’t feel like me—Nik Richie or otherwise. Something about that overdose in Vegas has stuck and I haven’t shaken the numb feeling. I’m defective, and even though I can technically be a sad fuck on a couch and hide from the world, The Dirty has to appear business as usual.
For twenty days, I blog.
Submissions come in the same as they always do, asking me if I’d fuck this or that chick. They want my opinion on some stranger’s social life based off of one photograph, and the photograph is them drinking or partying or making out with some girl that’s not their girlfriend. It’s all the stuff that I do, but I’m exempt from my own rules. I can be the double standard. I can say this chick is too fat or she needs a nose job. Nik Richie demands improvement of everyone but himself, and he’s doing this from his best friend’s couch after an almost-suicide. He can’t answer basic questions about where his life is going and who he wants to be, but he can eat a cheeseburger in his underwear and tell people they need to change. You’re the one with the problem. Not me.
For twenty days, I act like I’m fine.
Running the website helps sell it. If you can work, people assume you’re perfectly healthy and happy. That’s the beauty of what I do. I can work from anywhere without anyone having to see me. I can work from a couch and not shower for two or three days. As long as I say my little remark regarding some chick’s hopeless modeling career or whatever, people continue to think Nik Richie is fully operational. So I blog all day. Scooby brings me food, brings me the occasional bottle. Not to get drunk, but to stay calm and keep the spiders away. Sometimes I’ll put the laptop aside and stare at my phone. People call. Text. I’m trying to figure out who my friends are. Who cares or who’s just saying “hey.” It’s a string of non-personal stuff: if I can get a table for someone at a certain club or a girl who wants to hook up or it’s business-related. Everybody wants something. Everybody has an agenda. I don’t return any calls or texts, and everybody is okay with that because they just assume I’m too busy.
So for twenty days I hide in Scooby’s apartment on his couch, not talking to anyone, essentially hiding from the world, but I’m doing just enough so everything appears normal. I’m on an island that only one other person can see, and he’s the guy bringing me food and booze and the occasional sympathetic glance. Then, close to three weeks after I set up camp in Scooby’s apartment, he brings me news. Fucking terrible news. A death sentence.
He tells me, “We have to go back to Vegas. You’re hosting again.”
Nik Richie hosting LAX nightclub at the Luxor in Las Vegas, Nevada with the sixteen hottest girls in America.
54Refer to the 1998 comedy-drama Pleasantville, starring Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon.
Vegas; Lavo
I’m in Vegas again. How many times have I been to Vegas?
Scooby says I have to be here even though I’m not feeling it. We’ve already been paid up front to host, and giving the money back now would look really shady. People will start asking what’s wrong with Nik Richie, if he’s having personal problems, and we can’t have that. Also, I believe Scooby secretly thinks that if I get back out there, back in the scene, I’ll get over whatever my issue is.
So we’re sitting at the table at Lavo with all the usual stuff happening: bottle service, house music blaring, photos firing off, people yelling, screaming for my attention, and I’ve got my hood up with my hat pulled down. Ignoring it. Hiding. Not talking to anyone. I’m being paid five figures to look bored right now. Scooby tries to get me to perk up, suggesting I have a drink or talk to a girl.
“Chill, man. Try to have fun,” he says. “It’ll be okay.”
“It’s not fun. What part of this is fun?” but it’s a stupid question.
Scooby can’t see what I’m seeing. He didn’t watch me almost die, so he won’t understand what I’m about to do.
We’re at Lavo: myself, Scooby, and twenty-five girls from ASU.
I’m drinking. More than usual. I’ve never drank so much before. I’m standing on a small ottoman-type thing, drinking, college girls are chugging to keep up while the club lights cut through the dark and hip-hop music plays. I don’t even like hip-hop music, but I’m above the crowd, drunk out of my mind and pretending like I do. Our bottle server approaches and I yell at her to bring me a bottle of Jack. An entire bottle. I want to bury myself. A blackout. Bring it now. And there’s twenty-five girls around me, laughing, dancing, smiling. Careless. Just living in the moment—hoping that they somehow end up with me. Any one of them could be mine, but none of them love me. They don’t know me. It’s the story they’re after: the night they partied with Nik Richie, so I give them what they want and keep drinking. Keep going because I want to show them the worst.
My fingers start to unbutton my shirt, and now my bare chest is out and soaked in liquor. Girls from ASU are rubbing their palms on me, touching and groping, and then I lose my footing and fall off the box onto the floor. Sal Wise, another Vegas promoter, is asking if I’m okay. He’s yelling this over the PA as he props me back up onto the box.
Asking, “You good, man?”
I say, “Fuck you!”
“Are you okay?” he tries again.
“Sal, I know what the fuck I’m doing—I fucking run this place,” I yell. “Watch this,” and then I grab the nearest ASU girl in my vicinity—not caring what she looks like or her name or if she’s even into me. I grab one and shove my tongue into her mouth, squeezing her with liquor-soaked hands until I’ve gotten the point across. Order another bottle. Grey Goos
e. I pound it like it’s water. Then I order a bottle of Patrón, screaming at the help that it better have fifty flares attached to it, and the servers are looking at me like I’m not okay. After seeing me do this for two years, they can sense something’s not right. It’s not going well anymore. They start to see the cracks, the damage, but they bring me the bottle anyway and I pound half of it. Scooby finally asks me if I’m okay, and maybe I’m mad at him for showing his concern too late or I’m just that drunk, but I plant my hand on his face and push him. Maybe I’m hoping he punches me—hits me so goddamn hard that I go unconscious, but he doesn’t. He gives me my space, backing away as I try to give the bottle of Patrón to an ASU girl. She makes a face and refuses to drink it. I call her a cunt, take the bottle back and drink it myself. A different girl, a blonde, comes over to kiss me, and I’m too drunk to say no so I do it. My tongue slides over hers, and we’re grabbing each other under the club lights and music, and she’s clawing my chest and probably saying something about wanting to get fucked, but then I fall over again. My skull claps against the ground, but there’s too much liquor in my body for me to realize I have a slight concussion. It doesn’t even hurt. Arms are hooking under my armpits, lifting my body off the ground so I can get back onto the box. People are asking, “You all right?” and I’m like, “I’m good, I’m good, I’m good. It’s her fuckin’ fault. Get her out,” and all these ASU girls are looking at me like I’m some kind of rock star. A god. Not someone who’s obviously falling apart right in front of them. So I take more liquor. I put so much fucking liquor into my little 140-pound body that I’m sweating it. Can’t focus. Or think. I’m incoherent as I fall off the box again, but this time there’s a glass table behind me. A corner pens its signature from my lower back down to one of my calf muscles, cutting through my jeans and underwear. Blood is seeping out of my leg and I have a concussion, but I’m back on the ottoman again, drinking, yelling at these ASU girls who are going to grow up and have careers. No one is taking me out. We’re going hard, I tell them, and then I shake the bottle of champagne and spray it on the crowd.
That’s the last thing I remember.
I wake up in a hotel room, a bed—which I’m assuming is my bed, and everything hurts so bad I could vomit. Liquor clings to the inside of my mouth. My skin. I stink like vodka and tequila and the smallest traces of girl, although I’m waking up alone. Can’t remember the last time I woke up with just me. And there’s blood. So much blood. My leg has been bleeding all night—enough to soak through the bedding into the mattress. Everything’s fuzzy and unclear, and I think I might have tried to kill myself with alcohol. The back of my leg needs stitches and my skull feels bruised. It’s the first time I consider that I might have a legitimate problem with alcohol. I need help.
Five hours later, Scooby comes by my room.
He asks, “Dude, are you okay? You were fucking crazy last night.”
I tell him, “I honestly don’t remember.”
I just tried killing myself with pills, and then I tried it again last night with alcohol. Scooby still can’t see the problem. I’m too proud to tell him, so he’s going to keep pushing. He tells me it’s time to go again. Flip the switch. Be Nik Richie again.
“Let’s get you a Gatorade…get you back on the horse,” he’s saying. “You gotta host Tao, man. You’ve got to host the beach.”
He’s saying this, looking at me in a bed covered in my own blood, and it’s obvious this is the last thing I want to do. So he keeps pushing me.
“You can’t pull a no-show, man,” he says. “You can’t. Nik Richie has never not shown up to an event.”
I break. Openly.
“I can’t do it. I can’t,” I tell him. “I need to get on a flight home. I need to go home. I need to go to rehab.”
He keeps pushing.
He gets closer, saying, “One more time. You can do it one more time.”
I’m wearing board shorts, flip-flops, sunglasses, a fedora, and a white Venetian robe that I stole from the hotel room. My head hurts. I’m still drunk. The gash on my leg has a soft scab but still bleeding, and Sal Wise is telling me about last night, some bullshit about how he’s seen a lot of celebrities come through Vegas and he’s never seen someone get as crazy as I did. He’s saying this, but he doesn’t sound impressed. He’s worried, so this is Sal’s indirect way of asking me if I’m truly okay.
Maybe I’m an alcoholic.
Maybe this isn’t that cool.
I’m in a cabana at Tao Beach with Scooby and those twenty-five girls from ASU, drinking the hangover away, and some of them are coming up to me in their swimsuits, telling me I’m such a great kisser and whatnot. Some overweight, not-very-attractive chick is saying I kissed her, made out with her. Denial kicks in and I snap at her, saying, “I didn’t fucking kiss you. Get the fuck out of my face.”
Tao Beach is doing some kind of bullshit where they’re going to baptize me in the pool to “wash away my sins,” as they put it. I don’t find it particularly clever, but Scooby says that I’m contractually obligated to play along and get my picture taken. He keeps pushing, but unlike last night, I don’t try to kill myself with alcohol again. I turn on the Nik Richie persona for the next ten minutes, walking into the Tao Beach pool. A bolt of white-hot pain shoots up my leg from the chlorine licking the gash, but I force a smile, wading out toward the middle of the water where Reverend Marklin is waiting to dunk me. To save me.
I do the baptism.
Take the pictures.
I tell Scooby I’m leaving, that I’m going to check into Promises or something. He gives me this weird look like, Oh…you were serious about that?
Everyone keeps drinking. The party continues. Even when I leave, it’ll keep going. I’m right in the middle of sneaking out of Tao Beach in my wet bathrobe when I get the call from Lonnie Moore. He’s also in Vegas for the weekend, asking me if I’m okay and if everything’s cool.
“I heard about Lavo,” he says over the background noise. It sounds like he’s at one of the casinos or Sports Book. Maybe a restaurant.
“Dude, Lonnie, I need help, man.”
He says, “Come over and meet me at the bar. I’m down 50K at the tables—I need help.”
Lonnie makes light of the situation, but that’s more or less his way. He’s the devil. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. He’s a friend. We’re close, and that’s largely to do with the fact that we’re so similar. We’re both in “the scene,” as they say. Lonnie still runs Geisha House in L.A. He’s a good businessman. Charismatic as fuck. Gets people to do bad things, but they’re the bad things that are fun. Others have said the same thing about Nik Richie, but Lonnie is on another level. He can wake up hungover with five chicks in his bed and be cavalier about it. Lonnie doesn’t play by the same rules I do, and now he’s wanting me to meet him at a bar in The Palazo.
He says, “Dude, you gotta meet my blonde friend.”
I tell him I’m not in the mood to meet anybody. Anybody. If you say no to Lonnie, you might as well say it twice. “I’m going back to my room. I’m going to bed,” I tell him. “I’m shutting the whole thing down. I’m never doing another event ever again in my life,” and people are walking by. Staring.
Lonnie says, “That’s fine, but I’m still down 50K. Be a fucking gentleman and have a drink—or don’t drink. Just come by.”
So I figure, what the hell? I’ll stop by, have a quick chat, and then go back to the room and start getting my shit together. Lonnie’s down 50K and my life is falling apart. Maybe we can get each other’s minds off of things…shoot the shit…whatever. I ditch Tao Beach and walk over to The Palazo, which is only about a five-minute walk through the hotel. A few people give me weird looks because of the wet bathrobe.
Lonnie is posted up at the bar having a drink, something mixed. I walk over and he’s sizing me up, making sure that I’m okay. Functional. Of course, Lonnie is surrounded by chicks. He always is, and normally I’d be down to talk to every one of them, bu
t I’m set on making this quick and easy so I can get back to the room. In my head I’m making a mental list of shit I need to do: pack, book plane tickets, contact the rehab place, etc. Lonnie can tell I’m not feeling social, so he has to give me a reason to stay. It’s the thing he’s good at: giving people reasons to keep going.
He says, “Nik, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine.”
It’s the blonde he mentioned. She’s small. Beautiful.
Lonnie says, “This is Shayne Lamas.”
Nik Richie hosting LAX nightclub at the Luxor in Las Vegas, Nevada with staff and random groupies.
Shayne
Shayne Lamas is about to save my life.
Neither of us know that yet. In fact, by the look on her face, this little sneer she’s giving me (probably due to the wet bathrobe), I can tell she’s not into it. Into me.
Lonnie bolts, saying that he’s going to use the bathroom real quick, but that’s total bullshit. He knows I’m in a bad way. Something’s off, and he’s thinking Shayne will get me back on point. She’ll bring out the classic Nik Richie and everything will be okay again. I’ll stop talking about shutting it all down and rehab and changing my ways, and for a second it almost works. Old instincts kick in and I almost start to flirt, to turn on the old charm, but then I remember two almost-suicides and pull back. Shayne’s beautiful, but she’s not what I need right now. I need to go home. I need help. Not another distraction.
“Your fingernails are painted black,” she says. Out of all the things she could point out, she notices that. “So…what? Are you a DJ or something?”
