The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  I’m way nicer now. Say a friend walks into the room with a new sweater she thinks is fabulous and you think is god awful. Usually you say, “That’s interesting,” or nothing at all. Like Thumper’s mother said, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. But when I’m drunk, I say whatever is in my mind. It doesn’t make any difference who you are or when you are. But it’s rude half the time what I’m thinking, and I need to censor my thoughts. I still think the same but don’t say it because it’s pointless to make people miserable. All the relationship stuff improves for me sober. I’m also better living alone sober, and I should not have lived with anybody—though I enjoyed it. I would have been a better mistress than wife—screw our brains out and then Monday return to work—because I only do one thing at a time. I like to pay attention to people when they’re here, but I can’t do that day after day. And I can’t draw when others are around me. I’m very singly focused. The work takes precedent. Now I’m able to make a better time frame of being with people, and it’s a whole lot easier to frame it out sober. When I was singing for a living, being high wasn’t a detriment. I was far more interested in that than doing my relationships well. What I’m doing now is more interesting than being drunk. In fact, it keeps me from the realm of drink. Being drunk removes a lot of brain cells, and I need them all for what I’m doing now. I draw all day and pretty much all night. I do my laundry and will go to a movie with friends, but if I’m here in this house, I’m drawing constantly. I erase and correct, erase and correct. Then I’ll put the paint on and do the backgrounds. I’ve just finished a drawing of Janis looking really joyful with her arms up in the air, and it makes me happy to look at it. Then again, I look at the other drawing here next to it, of Miles Davis. He has a hat on, and what’s going to be in back of him is what has happened often in the jazz world: a person who’s a heroin addict in the city, with an extreme amount of passion and talent. The look on Miles’ face is different.

  To some extent, LSD opened me to my own psychic ability. I used to get very quiet, and unconscious thoughts came up. I wrote some songs that predicted my own life. “Lawman” came true. Twenty years after I wrote it, I picked up a shotgun that had never been fired, just like in the song. A cop did a football roll into me and knocked me down. He got an award, as well he should. Nobody got shot. It was a mix-up where the cops came to my house to protect me, because my boyfriend called 911, but I thought they might be fake cops. In another song, it says something will slide down on you like brakes in bad weather, and that happened too. It scares me now to write lyrics. There’s a cosmic thing, as though everything is happening at once, and it could be we’re all conscious of that to varying degrees. When you’re really concentrating on what you’re feeling, you come out with some of that stuff. LSD tells your mind there’s more than one reality, so your mind is open to appreciate various forms of spiritual life, consciousness, and intuition.

  I always felt very close to the story of Alice in Wonderland for a real good reason. If you remember what happened to her, she came from a very straight-laced Episcopalian Republican background, and at some point between twelve and twenty-four—mine at about eighteen or so—you go down the rabbit hole. Something leads you down there. In my case, it was a combination of Lenny Bruce and the suggestion to come back to San Francisco from my girlfriend. Some rabbit comes along. Everybody’s rabbit is different, but it comes along and you follow it. You know, life is short. I believe you follow that rabbit. What else can you do?

  I’ve lost a good saddle and bridle,

  My rope and some other good things,

  But I’m sure glad to be here to tell yuh

  To stay off uh horses with wings.

  —Curley Fletcher, “The Flyin’ Outlaw”

  Destry Forgette

  (rodeo cowboy)

  * * *

  DESTRY FORGETTE IS ONE of the more romantic figures interviewed for this book, because of his association with the Old West. As a five-year-old, growing up in post–World War II Los Angeles, I loved cowboys. In the movies, on radio and television, and in comic books, cowboys ruled. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tom Mix, the Cisco Kid, the Lone Ranger, Lash La Rue, and the greatest of them all, Hopalong Cassidy.

  I can still remember that little outfit my parents bought me—a very cool red felt cowboy hat, a matching gray suedelike vest and chaps combo, a neat pair of fancy stitched cowboy boots, and a pair of six-guns holstered on each hip. I think I wore that outfit every day. I even pretended my two-wheeled bicycle was my horse, and I rode around and around my block in pursuit of the bad guys. (I was not yet old enough to cross the street.)

  One day I was out playing on the sidewalk in front of our apartment when my mother yelled out the window for me to come in. I had a phone call. Reluctantly, I left my fellow cowpokes and headed inside to see what was going on. Five-year-olds didn’t receive many phone calls in those days.

  I could see my mom was quite excited as she offered me the receiver and urged me to hurry up and take the call. I uttered my hello, and to my complete shock and amazement, an unmistakable voice was greeting me on the other end. “Hi, Gary, you know who this is?” I nearly died right then and there. Of course I knew who it was … Hoppy … Hopalong Cassidy … the greatest cowboy of them all was talking to me! I have no idea what words we exchanged, and the entire conversation lasted but a few seconds, I suspect. I later found out that Hoppy, William Boyd, had come to the office of my Uncle Paul, a Hollywood attorney, on some legal business. My uncle, knowing how much I loved America’s number-one cowboy, asked if he would take a minute or two and speak with me. Hoppy said, “Sure,” and that’s how it happened.

  Anyway, as soon as we hung up, my mother said I should go back outside and tell my friends about the phone call. I raced out the door in an explosion of energy, screaming, “I just talked to Hoppy! I just talked to Hoppy!” What happened next was devastating. No one believed me. “Sure, you just talked to Hoppy, and my dad is Babe Ruth.” They all began to taunt and tease me, thinking this was a story I just made up. Insisting that they ask my mom did no good. It only increased the level of teasing.

  To this day, I remember the excitement of that event. I never really lost my love of cowboys or tales of the Wild West, so when the occasion to interview a real-life rodeo cowboy for this book arose, I jumped at the chance.

  I met Destry Forgette at a small horse ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona. He looks like a cross between Kris Kristofferson and the Marlboro Man. Destry was going to take a few of us “dudes” on a guided sunrise ride through some incredibly beautiful and rough desert terrain. Unfortunately, he had just injured his wrist in a rodeo fall and thought better about riding that morning, but we met up later in the day. He spoke of his years of rodeos and alcohol abuse. To him, the romance of the Old West was not always what it’s cracked up to be.

  I started drinking at a very young age, I guess about age four. I knew there was something different about me. I snuck drinks on the weekend. My dad would hide his whiskey because he was an alcoholic. We’d go to dances the fourth Saturday of each month, and all the ranchers would get together from the whole community. There was booze everywhere. This was in the 1970s, in Elizabeth, Colorado, about forty-five miles outside of Denver.

  I always wanted to be outstanding. I wanted people to notice me. I strived for that because I was picked on. There was something different about me. I was kind of introverted, yet I wanted to be popular. So I fell into drinking right away. It was very easy to do on weekends. There was no school, and I had plenty of free time. Like I said before, my father was an alcoholic. And I used to drink his whiskey and then replace it with tea. I became a weekend drunk.

  We had a recruiter come to my high school during my freshman year. The town I was living in had maybe 150 people. I was working at the school about eight hours a night as a janitor to help support my family. I guess I was around twelve or thirteen years of age. I was making $3.13 an hour, more than the minimum wage back then. I was
doing a man’s job and I was a kid. My mom wouldn’t let me spend my money the way I wanted to, but I bought a car before I was old enough to drive it. We weren’t wealthy, but I was very well taken care of materially by my father and emotionally by my mother. I always had what I needed, but I wanted more. So this Navy recruiter came to the school and he told me that I could rodeo, and I could be somebody, and I would learn a trade and be paid. My mom wanted me to go to college, but my dad promised to send me to Annapolis if I was successful in the Navy. It was just another of his grandiose ideas. The recruiter told me that if I joined, I could travel and see the world. And I went, “Yes!” So at the age of sixteen, I was enlisted in the Navy.

  So a couple of years went by, and I was still only drinking on weekends. Partying. I had a perfect record in the military until I re-enlisted. My dad had to have open-heart surgery, and my grandfather had just passed away, so I went AWOL. My alcoholism was pretty prevalent by then. I guess I was nineteen or twenty. Around then I requested to go into alcohol treatment, which I thought would make me look good. The Navy would back off of me if I said I needed treatment before they did. So I went through treatment and stayed sober for a year, and then I got married to my first wife, Lori. After serving three years, I re-enlisted for another four. The Navy gave me a whole bunch of money to re-enlist. While I was in the Navy, I was allowed to participate in rodeo riding. I continued to get into trouble and finally received a court-martial. Afterwards I got a letter from the Bureau of Naval Personnel stating that if I was ever in any more trouble relating to alcohol, I would be released from military service. I took that personally, even though the notice was a formality. So I wrote a letter back to them stating that I had no desire to let anybody tell me when or where I can take a drink, and I have no desire to finish my military service. So a week later, I had my discharge and I was on my own.

  I was married by then, and I was so insecure I couldn’t leave her. I had to know where she was all the time. She was getting real tired of my drinking and abuse. Anyway, I took off and I rodeoed for a little while, and my drinking became more rampant. I drank because it made me feel like something I wasn’t. It made me feel bigger than life. I was noticed by people. I didn’t think I was a very good rodeo cowboy because it took courage. It took a man to do something like this. My insanity was so prevalent that I couldn’t even see how sick I was. The drinking got bad enough to where I knew I needed help. I was only about twenty-four or twenty-five, and my daddy, who was an alcoholic, told me I needed to stop drinking. But I couldn’t listen to that coming from him. So anyway, I went to a treatment center, which was becoming a way of life for me. I’d get well and stay sober a year or so, and I’d get a good job on a ranch, making good money. I was trying to be a man, a cowboy—“I can do this on my own. I don’t need any help!” But I’d always end up crawling back to the Veterans Administration to straighten me out. I tried recovery programs several times. I would make friends and use people to get me a job or a place to live. Then I’d go back out and start drinking again.

  It got to where Lori didn’t want anything to do with me. I had put her through a living hell. I was moving, traveling, and expecting her to sit still and be my wife, while I was riding and running around and having all the fun. I was doing what I wanted, when I wanted, and not paying any attention to what she needed. We ended up getting divorced. About a year later, we got remarried. I met Brenda, who was young and enticing during that time, trying to make Lori jealous.

  My life was turning into a nightmare, a vicious circle. I’d go out and get a good job. I’d be doing really well for six months to a year, and then I’d sabotage it because it was too good. I didn’t feel I deserved this. I would end up getting fired, or I would cause some kind of crisis. I’d get injured, some kind of horse accident, or I’d get a DWI and get thrown in jail. There was always some kind of crisis that would bring me down, where I thought I should be. Then I’d get drunk in the gutter. Then I’d move on and start the process all over again. I did that for probably twenty-seven years. I’ve had thirteen DWIs, been in jail many times for being drunk in public, drunk and disorderly, criminal mischief, and criminal trespassing.

  Brenda, the wife I have now, and whom I love very much, got pregnant right after I got divorced from Lori for the second time. We got married ’cause I was living with her, and I was afraid I would lose her. I loved her, but my drinking was becoming more important, so we got married—my third marriage between two women. It lasted a year and a half. She seen how I drank, so she left. I was binge drinking, going on these four- or five-day benders. By then I didn’t have anything of material value at all. I’d lost everything. I can remember selling a belt buckle I’d won at a rodeo to get a bus ticket and a bottle of whiskey. I sold the boots off my feet to get a bus ticket and a bottle of whiskey. I sold my truck and my saddle.

  Everywhere I’d go I’d have the intent of starting fresh. I’d get everything rebuilt. I’d establish some credit with a saddle maker, and I’d get me another saddle, get my tack built back up where I could do a job. Or I’d borrow some money from a rancher. I was such a good con artist. I would con them into loaning me a month’s paycheck, so I could go buy a new pair of spurs, saddle, chaps, stuff like that I’d sold to get drunk. And that became my way of living. In the process of the twenty years that went by, I did learn how to be a cowboy and a rodeo rider. I loved being outdoors. I could relate better to the animals than I did to people, because I was so afraid of what people thought of me as a person.

  Anyway, the wife that I have now, Brenda, she came back to me. She always loved me, and I told her I quit drinking. I got a really good job. I called her and said, “Hey, we can work this out. Let’s get back together.” She come, and she stayed for four months. She told me she was pregnant. I didn’t believe her, so I denied the daughter that I have now. I was afraid. Hell, I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone anyone else. I could not accept my responsibility, and I told Brenda that the baby was not mine. She’d been gone for several months, so it must be somebody else’s. So she left again. Because of my selfishness. It was just another excuse to get drunk. And this time she stayed gone for seven years.

  I was starting to have seizures. I had my first one when I was thirty-eight. I had gone on a bender and stayed drunk for a couple of weeks. I had just walked out of a 7-Eleven store, and I keeled over with a grand mal seizure. My heart had stopped, and I was in the hospital in a coma. When I came out of it, the doctors told me there was nothing physically wrong with me. That it was alcohol that had caused this problem. I had four or five more seizures after that, but it wasn’t enough to get me to quit drinking.

  Next I got thrown in jail by a judge I knew well from my career of getting in misdemeanor trouble. He was a district court judge in Wyoming. One of the first judges to start the drug court program in that state. And I was one of his first appointees to this program. I had been given a six-month sentence for domestic violence. I told the judge that I couldn’t quit drinking, and he said, “It sounds like you need some help.” He said, “I don’t want to throw you in jail. I’d rather help you if I can.” I never forgot those words, but I was so resistant to authority that I told him, “I need to be in jail.” You see, I’d been on probation and violated it, so I’d get thrown back in jail for ten to fifteen days. That happened many times. I was in jail three or four times for being drunk in public. I was just a nuisance. After six months in jail, I was sent to another treatment center. There I met a girl, started a relationship, and within a couple of months, I was drunk again.

  The pattern of my life was so … I knew I could read the future and tell you what would happen. The girls that I met and was with were alcoholics, except for my wives. They didn’t really drink. Most of the women I was meeting were codependent, looking for a man to take care of. I couldn’t be with anybody unless they were drinking and using. I always wanted that serene picture of having a normal person in my life, some kid, and being okay. But I knew I wasn’t okay
, and I couldn’t ask for help. I truly needed help getting sober. I had never been by myself. I always had someone to drag through the mud with me, because I had such a great fear of being alone. Anyway, I found a job that paid five hundred dollars a month. I got a nice house outside of Cheyenne, and I stayed sober. I bought me a pickup. I hadn’t had a vehicle for five or six years. I stayed sober and got offered a bunch of jobs for more money. I wasn’t making enough money. But I was told by a friend that “You need to keep that job. You’re living by yourself, and you’re learning something.” And I learned that it is okay to be by myself. About two years went by, and then I got a phone call saying that Dad was dying. That was another thing that set me off. My dad was always dying because of his heart problem.

  About that time, Brenda decided to visit me and introduce my four-year-old daughter to me. I panicked. I said, “God, here’s this responsibility again, and I can’t handle it.” Then I couldn’t deny it anymore. She was definitely my daughter. She looked exactly like me. Once again I got scared. I quit my job, left, and went to Nevada. There I gambled and got drunk all over again. But I couldn’t get Brenda out of my mind, and how much she cared. The fact that I had this responsibility and that I was ignoring child support—that was another fear factor for me and a good excuse to run and start drinking. If I stayed at my job, they would have garnisheed my wages. They’d already taken everything from me. I don’t have no money. I knew if I went on like this, I’d probably spend the rest of my life in prison. So I came down here to Wickenburg, and I quit for a year. I got a job on a ranch. Brenda and I got married, for the second time. I’ve been married four times. Twice to two women. I started working at this ranch, and right away I got hurt. I got bucked off a horse and hurt my back. I couldn’t work, couldn’t straighten up. I had to have another back surgery. Anyway, we moved into town because the ranch needed the place we were living in. They needed someone who could work. They kept me on as long as they could, but I just wasn’t getting any better. I also wasn’t attending any alcohol recovery meetings. I knew in the back of my head that I was aiming for trouble. Workers’ comp told me they weren’t gonna pay me because my back was a pre-existing condition.