Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock

by Stephen Pearcy

  The ambulance flew through San Diego traffic, headed to the ER. I was unloaded, wheels down, whipped through the hallways. As I was admitted, an orderly gave me the quick once-over.

  “This one’ll never walk again,” he said, quietly.

  That was the last thing I heard before I disappeared into shock.

  ALL TIED UP

  FOR TWO WEEKS, I was down for the count. No speaking, no thinking. I just lay motionless on my back, drinking in the blurry haze of hospital beeps and smells and fuzzy overhead lighting. If it hadn’t been for the dull, throbbing pain that seemed to pump from my core, I might have thought I was dead.

  Then: movement. An unfamiliar sound. And the strong whiff of bad breath.

  I cracked open an eyelid, grimacing at the effort, and found myself looking directly into the pupils of a weird-looking doctor.

  “The boy lives,” the doctor cackled. I shifted my gaze down to his name tag. It read DR. HANDLER.

  “Hey man,” I groaned.

  “Stephen Pearcy,” Dr. Handler said patiently, “do you know where you are right now?”

  “In a hospital?”

  “Correct. You’re at Doctors Hospital. You are a very. Lucky. Young. Man. Did you know that?”

  “Lucky?” I mumbled. An immense throb of pain ripped through me like a hot wave.

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely. Not everyone comes out of an accident like yours with their spinal cord intact. But you did, and that means we can fix you.”

  “What happened to me?”

  “You were hit by a car. Both of your legs were shattered. It’ll take a serious operation to get you walking again. But we’ll get you there.”

  “How long will it take?” I looked down at my legs. Both of them were all tied up in ropes, strapped into traction. They hung there, huge and useless.

  He gave me an encouraging pat on my arm. “Try not to make any immediate plans. I think we’ve got you here for a while.”

  You find out real quick who’s your true-blue friend when your legs are fucking bundles of firewood and you’re stuck in room 342B for months on end. My L.A. buddies, Andy, Victor, Dennis, and Mike got it together quickly to pile into a car and drive down to give me shit:

  “Pearcy, I told you to learn how to ride your bike. . . .”

  “What does this button do? Raise your . . . Oh! Sorry! . . . are you okay??”

  “Stephen, I gotta be honest with you, man, you look terrible. But truthfully, you looked terrible before the accident. . . .”

  The novelty of cheering me up wore off pretty quickly for them, though, and those guys soon disappeared from sight. I couldn’t really blame them—it was several hours down to San Diego, and it was summer. I would rather have been going surfing, too. Walt Rhoades popped in to see me once or twice, but then he went over the guardrail at some racetrack in his Top Fuel dragster and ended up in a hospital himself. Mostly it was just my mom who was there for me, sitting beside me, slipping her hand into mine, encouraging me to stay focused and positive, to pray.

  My surgery involved a bone graft from my hip, and a tangle of wires and metal rods had to be inserted in and around my shattered femurs. The whole thing took more than eight hours. Today, the procedure would be a lot more streamlined, but it was the early 1970s, and techniques varied greatly from hospital to hospital. Success depended largely upon the skills of the supervising surgeon.

  “He’ll be just fine,” Dr. Handler assured my mother when I came swimming out of the anesthesia. “Some amount of pain for the next few weeks, of course. But nothing Stephen can’t handle.”

  Nothing I couldn’t handle? The postoperative pain felt like a mass of swarming poison ants had been unleashed into my lower body. It made the original car accident seem like a gentle swat in comparison. Plain and simple, it was torture. And that’s where the IVs of morphine drip started. I can still remember the setup: the tall metallic pole, the plastic tubing that ran the liquid opiate into me, the tiny catheter that was inserted into one of many veins, even the clear surgical tape that bound the apparatus to my arm and hand. If I sound a little nostalgic as I recall the paraphernalia of my very first addiction, forgive me; I’m having a little junkie moment.

  My days fell into a steady pattern: boredom, then pain, then morphine. Then a rush of joy, followed by a calmness. Then sleep. If I was lucky, when I woke from my doze, there would be some semblance of an appetite; but more likely, I’d just feel kind of blah, as the morphine rush dulled and faded. Then pain would enter the scene, black and sharp. So I’d wait for the next infusion. The time did pass by.

  I guess those nuns didn’t quite beat all the faith out of me, because at night, when the ward got deathly quiet except for the breedle of some oldster’s heart machine and the soft squeak of the nurses’ shoes, I actually did find myself taking my mom’s advice and praying. Let me walk again, please.

  My legs showed no immediate signs of healing, though, and that was kind of distressing. If the man upstairs was listening, he was dragging his feet. John Dudrow, a surfer friend of mine from the Canyon People, whose arm hair had been bleached white by the San Diego sun, offered more immediate assistance.

  “Brought you a hit pipe and a little baggie,” Dudrow whispered to me.

  Dudrow and I puffed away in a workmanlike fashion, stuffing the one-hitter again and again, exhaling each hit directly into my shitty little hospital pillow to mask the smell. Stir-crazy the way only a teenage boy trapped in a hospital in the middle of summer could be, with the aid of weed I could feel temporarily satisfied with staying right where I was. When I was fucked-up enough, I truly didn’t mind being laid up in a hospital bed.

  And when I was surging on a fresh dose of morphine? Forget about it. I became a master of self-medication, vibing out the moment when the newly connected IV drip was at its most powerful, then taking an enormous hit of Dudrow’s weed and holding it in for what seemed like ages. Fuck regular walking, I thought, choking on smoke. I’ll spirit-walk. . . .

  It was almost enough to make a guy feel happy. But I had teenage hormones to do battle with, too, and in my present condition, certain needs just weren’t being met.

  “Dude, bring me a Playboy,” I begged Dudrow the next time he came in for a visit.

  “I’ll swing you something,” he said. “What’s your preference, man? Blonde? Brunette? Black chicks?”

  “I just need to see some tits.”

  Dudrow didn’t let me down. One week later, he handed over a skin magazine, its cover still warm from having been smuggled into the hospital under his shirt. It was Playboy’s July issue.

  “It’s my dad’s,” Dudrow warned. “Don’t mess it up.” And that’s how the world’s soon-to-be most frequently utilized porno magazine took up residence underneath my mattress.

  Watching life happen from a hospital bed put things in a whole new perspective for me. New patients were accepted to the ward; under my watch, they got well and were released. One day, the doctors began to wean me off the IV drip. Pain pills were administered instead. They packed a weaker punch and were generally a lot less fun. Depression peeked its little head out at me.

  “Dude, you gotta wheel me out into the sun,” I begged Dudrow on his next visit. “I need a change of scenery.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll let me do that.”

  “They certainly fucking will,” I said, my voice cranky. “I live here now.”

  Dudrow used his best bullshitter tone on the nurses, and somehow, within an hour’s time, he had me out in the courtyard. The warm sun felt incredible on my skin, the best medicine that had ever existed on the planet.

  But of course, an hour later, I was right back inside. There was simply no way around it. I was a bedridden invalid: even a goddamn wheelchair was out of my reach. Searching for a way to exert some control over my own life, I grew mildly obsessed with my own cleanliness. I shat into a bedpan: Lose a point. But I received daily sponge baths from nurses and interns, which included my asshole and balls. Gain a poin
t. As my healing progressed, dead blood began to accumulate in my legs. It raised the skin along the line of the suture, forming plump mesas along my pale white thighs.

  “Let me clean them out myself,” I said. “Just give me the cloths. What do you say?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Dr. Handler agreed. “Just be thorough.”

  Each evening, I’d squeeze my leg from knee to hip, pinching the incision gently until dark purplish, jellylike blood oozed forth from underneath the stitches. I mopped and cleaned myself, eventually gaining a precision and sure-handedness that would have impressed an obsessive-compulsive.

  In other words, I had too much time on my hands. I was beginning to lose my shit. Stricken by serious cabin fever and on-again, off-again depressive cycles, I was dogged by weird, morbid notions, like Why don’t they put that IV drip back in my fucking arm, except this time, an overdose, so I don’t ever have to wake up. . . . Fortunately, at this critical juncture, they changed my sponge-bath nurse, and I began to be visited each day by a sexy little redhead, dressed all in white, from cap to toe.

  I’m not sure if she was sent by God or by central casting, but I definitely had included shit like this in my prayers, so maybe it was divine intervention after all.

  “Are you Stephen?” She carried a basin and a purple sponge. Warm water slopped against the basin walls. “I’m here for your bath.”

  My breath rose unsteadily.

  “Yeah. So, you’re, like, a nurse?”

  “I’m studying to be a nurse,” she said. “I’m an intern.”

  “Is that right?” I said, feigning interest, as I gazed longingly at her tits. She gave the sponge a squeeze, soapy water extruding from all of its holes.

  “You have the coolest hair,” she confessed. “All the girls who work here say so.”

  “I guess it’s the only part of my body that’s not broken.”

  She touched my body softly. “What happened to you?”

  “I got into an accident,” I said.

  Gently, with incredible sympathy and concern, she began to run the sponge across my chest and arms. Warm water ran across my tired muscles, massaging me, unlocking all the tension in my body.

  “Soap my leg area, okay?” I said. “It’s kind of dirty.”

  “Your leg area?” she said, smiling. “Like, around your knee?”

  “Draw these curtains,” I suggested, “and I’ll show you exactly where.”

  It took some gentle coaxing. But soon the thin green cloth curtains were drawn around us, and we were encapsulated in a snug little rectangle of hospital privacy.

  “You’re cute,” I whispered. “Jump up here.”

  “But you’re not healed.” She giggled. “I might break you.”

  “At this point,” I said, “I’ll take that chance.”

  She hesitated, then pulled up her nurse’s skirt around her waist. Her upper thighs were palest white. I hooked my index finger into the waist of her little white drawers and rolled them down her thighs. Seventies bush: an excellent vintage. She climbed aboard carefully.

  “I’m worried,” she whispered, her eyes shining.

  “Just don’t bounce,” I said. “Or my femur may snap,” I added seductively.

  I discovered a crucial law that afternoon: Women adore broken men. They cannot resist the urge to fuck you back to health. I would use this secret off and on for the rest of my life.

  From that moment on, from candy stripers to senior nurses, my game was constantly on. No attendant was too homely, no caretaker too misshapen: They all received a dose of bedridden teenage comeons, and when I turned on the twin beams of charm and sympathy, most of them could be persuaded into at least a little kiss. Some of them laughed at me, but it was well worth it. I had something to live for again.

  Time moved onward. Some days slid by quickly, but others dragged out with brain-crushing slowness. No matter how many visitors I had, no matter how many candy stripers I managed to swindle into showing me their tits, I was still mostly a mess. My biggest ambition in life had been to become a drag racer, but despite my legs having begun their slow mending process, the truth had long since become clear: I wasn’t going to be racing any cars.

  So, what then? Why should I even bother to take the next breath? It’s probably not the smartest thing to start thinking on an existential plane when you’re all of fifteen years old, but being strapped to a polyurethane mattress for a hundred and eighty days or so will force a few peeks into the gaping maw.

  What the hell do I care about? I asked myself. What am I even good at?

  I stared up at the ceiling, hoping for some response. None came. Then an acquaintance of a stoner friend of mine entered my room one afternoon during the second half of visiting hours, strumming on an acoustic guitar.

  He plunked a few awkward chords, then handed me the guitar by its neck.

  “You know anything about these?”

  “Not really,” I said, accepting the guitar. I had never held one before, but I instantly liked the way it felt in my grasp. Lighter than I had imagined.

  “My sister was dating this guy, and I think he cheated on her or something,” he said. “She doesn’t want to give it back. I said maybe you’d want it.”

  “I can’t play,” I said. I strummed a few strings to prove my point. The guitar made a discordant sound.

  “Well, learn,” he suggested. “You got something else you need to do?”

  I looked at him for a second. “Nah.” I gripped the guitar the same way he did, by the neck, and offered it back to him. “Thanks.”

  He shook his head quietly. “I’m not taking that guitar back. You want to throw it away, be my guest,” he said, shrugging. “But my sister will be pissed if I bring it back home.”

  He rose and left, closing the door after him.

  I waited until he was probably halfway down the hall. Then, carefully, I gave the guitar a tentative strum. Muddy. Meaningless.

  “This is crap,” I muttered. But inside, something was moving.

  ON THE DAY I WAS FINALLY ready to leave the hospital, Dr. Handler said, “Stephen, we’re really going to miss you around here.”

  My stay had been the second longest of any patient’s in the history of Doctors Hospital. “I can’t wait to leave,” I confessed. “Sorry.” I left the hospital in a wheelchair, with the entire staff cheering me on. Everyone was pretty proud that I hadn’t withered up and died in there, I guess.

  Life turned out to be anything but normal. I returned home and then to Clairemont High School, but while everyone else was pushing and screaming and shouting, I crutched meekly around the hallways, feeling excluded from the conversations going on around me.

  It was hard to relate. Teenagers are just trying to get by in the first place—hormones are raging through them, taking their brains captive. They don’t know how to be nice to a dude on crutches with two mending legs. I remember this wacky-looking girl with stringy hair and freckles, who stared a hole in me as I struggled with my locker combination.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “I was born this way.”

  She stared at me for a long time, then said, “My brother is deaf.”

  “Maybe he and I should hang out.” I slammed my locker door shut and crutched off.

  I didn’t just feel like a loser out in the halls. The sentiment extended to the classroom, too. I’d missed a significant amount of class while my bones were knitting, and hadn’t spent much time in the hospital hitting the books. From math to English to history, I was miles behind everyone else.

  I felt like an outcast among the happy, loud, constantly stoned teenagers who roamed the halls of Clairemont High School. Lunchtime drinking sessions in the gravel parking lot weren’t really an option in my current state: I couldn’t navigate the rocks. Dances were obviously out. What I really feared more than anything else, though, was that some big kid, drunk off his ass in the cafeteria, would accidentally stumble on top of me and send me back to the hospi
tal with freshly reshattered legs.

  “I really don’t want to go there anymore,” I told my mom at dinner. “It’s not safe,” I said, knowing that would get to her. “Plus I’m so far behind, on account of being in the hospital for so long. I can move at my own pace if I get a GED.”

  My mom examined me for a long moment. “Would you mind telling me,” she said finally, “why I always seem to let you do whatever you want?”

  “Mom! Are you seriously going to let him stay home from school?” my twin sister, Stephanie, cried. “That’s so unfair!”

  “Hey, I want to get my GED, too!” my brother said, outraged.

  My mother shot them the look of death. “Everyone be quiet. Stephen has a health situation here, so the rules are a little different for him. All right?”

  It was all I could do not to throw up my hands and celebrate. Hell yeah! I was on my own schedule now. Immediately, I took full advantage, rising late, preparing delicious English muffin breakfasts for myself, catching up on my ’70s daytime TV. Life got even better when my pain pill prescription came in from Dr. Handler. A double handful of hydrocodones brought back memories from the good old morphine-drip days. Chase ’em back with a shot of vodka, followed by a slim little joint, courtesy of stepdad Jim’s trash-compacted buds, and I was in heaven.

  I could definitely get used to this, I thought to myself, buzzing gently, as I rolled my wheelchair slowly back and forth on the patio that overlooked the San Diego Harbor. Crippled or not, this is the good life.

  My legs grew stronger. Before long, I was testing the limits of those crutches to get around the house. At first, I was so damn pleased with myself. Then the pain in my underarms started. I’d always been skinny to begin with, but my pectoral muscles had done a disappearing act while I was in the hospital. The hard, unforgiving plastic of the crutch pads crushed the ridges of my chest. But I kept on making journeys across the living room, my arms and wrists burning like hell, then into the bathroom, and then, goddammit, all the way to the front door, where I leaned up against the wood, exhausted, and tried to catch my breath.