We All Fall Down

by Nic Sheff

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  For my family.

  For my mom and Karen and

  my dad and Jasper and Daisy.

  And Charles Wallace.

  And Quimby and Ramona.

  Hold on, John.

  John, hold on.

  It’s gonna be all right.

  —JOHN LENNON

  NOTE TO READERS

  This work is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of his experiences over a period of years. Certain names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed.

  Dialogue and events have been re-created from memory and, in some cases, have been compressed to convey the substance of what was said or what occurred.

  INTRODUCTION

  2002

  20 YEARS OLD

  Akira lived in the basement apartment of his mom’s house.

  Actually, I didn’t even know he’d be there, but I knocked a couple times, and then his voice came through—soft, always calming.

  “Yeah?”

  The bathroom window was still broken more than a year later. I could see the reflection, turned upside down, of the tall grass and the eucalyptus trees silhouetted against the darkening sky. The Presidio stretched out all the way to the beach behind me. Just forest and Army housing. Akira lived at the very edge of the city. I’d always loved that.

  “Hey, Akira, man, it’s Nic.”

  He became suddenly visible behind the dirty glass garden side door.

  Long dreads all tied together behind his head. Eyes soft and lined and smudged with black underneath. Skinny, skinny like me.

  “Holy shit, Nic, what the hell?”

  He opened the door and I stepped forward, giving him a hug. He smelled like pot and incense and something else familiar.

  “I always knew you’d show up like this,” he said, keeping an arm over my shoulder. “I just had a feelin’. So, what’s going on? How you been doin’?”

  My eyes looked down beneath a shadow covering the base of the door and cobwebs and things.

  “Great” was what I told him.

  I followed him inside. I mean, I knew the goddamn way.

  I’d been using again for about five months at that point. I was enrolled at Hampshire College, but I’d pretty much done nothing my last semester there except teach myself how to shoot drugs and finally make it through all of the original Legend of Zelda. No one knew I’d relapsed, though. Not even my girlfriend.

  But coming home for summer break, back to San Francisco, well, I was pretty much ready to self-destruct good and proper. As much as I’d tried, I couldn’t find crystal meth in Western Massachusetts. Heroin, though, was everywhere, so I’d gotten pretty sick on that shit. Actually, when I went to see Akira, I was trying to wean myself off opiates with a whole bunch of Vicodin I’d stolen.

  Opiates weren’t ever really my thing, though.

  I mean, crystal was the drug I’d fallen in love with.

  It was Akira who’d given it to me the first time. But, look, I was gonna find it one way or the other. I was searching. Akira just helped me find it. I woulda done the same for him. He’s one of the most incredible people I’ve ever known. I sensed that about him the first time we met.

  So here I am, being led back to his room, where I see the same bed and couch and Björk poster and record player and, actually, a drawing of mine that I’d done more than a year ago and forgotten.

  Since then I’d been in two rehabs. At one point, I’d been sober and going to meetings for over six months. As it was, it had been more than a year since I’d done crystal. I mean, I hadn’t done it since the last time I saw Akira.

  We sat down on the bed together, and we talked and laughed and smoked a bowl.

  Then I asked him, all casual-like. “You still talk to D ever?”

  Akira looked at me, and then looked at me again.

  “Ha-ha, man. What you thinkin’ ’bout?”

  “You know, if the factory’s still on, or what?”

  He lit a cigarette—a True.

  He offered me one.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s goin’. But D ain’t there no more. She went crazy, man, so Gavin’s running the place now.”

  “Crazy?”

  “Uh-huh, all paranoid ’n’ shit. You wanna see if Gavin’s around?”

  “Sure,” I said, not wanting to sound too, uh, desperate or something.

  So Akira called and, yeah, the factory was still operational.

  We got in the car together—my dad’s car. We both lit cigarettes and drove listening to a mix tape I’d made. The afternoon light was turning dull and gray as the fog slowly stretched out across the bay. The Bay Bridge kept going on for way too long, spilling out onto the different East Bay freeways like veins running in every direction.

  The cookie factory was a series of warehouses with trucks coming in and out. There was a smell of cooking dough always—hot butter and sugar. There was a code Akira had to enter to get in the big electronic gate, and then we drove around back, to the offices that’d been converted into a sort of live/work space. The work being selling drugs.

  I always loved how the place just looked like straight outta some movie or something. It was like magic, exciting, full of possibilities. Of course, it also looked like the kinda place the cops would straight raid. I could see the helicopters circling, the flashing sirens, the guns being drawn. Really, the place was a perfect setup.

  But not that night, I told myself. That night was protected—sacred—my night. I willed everything to be okay.

  We climbed up the concrete-block stairs and then around to D’s, or, uh, Gavin’s door.

  Akira knocked.

  It was a good couple minutes before we finally heard something click. Then the door opened very slowly, and the arc of a crossbow was pushed out, the arrow sticking right over Akira’s head.

  “Who’s with you?” asked Gavin.

  Akira sort of crouched down lower. “What? No one. What’re you talking about?”

  Gavin panned the crossbow slowly above our heads.

  “All right,” he said. “Come in.”

  We went quickly through the door, both of us trying to maybe duck down a little.

  Gavin locked everything and then let the crossbow hang down. He still hadn’t dropped it, though.

  “Akira, Nic, it’s been forever, right?”

  His eyes were very wide. He had a dirty trucker hat covering a bald spot, with long hair still trying to hang down in back. He had on loose shorts and a T-shirt and big ol’ construction boots. His hand was bandaged, which he quickly pointed out.

  “Nearly cut it off with a hacksaw. Good thing I jerk off with my left hand, huh?”

  What I did was, uh, laugh awkwardly. That’s what I can give myself credit for.

  The factory was set up like this, right? A waiting room with a big-screen TV and couches. Gavin’s office is in the back, and normally you wait in the waiting room while they fill your orders. But that night Gavin led us back to the office.

  Basically, the office was a bed and four computer screens all playing different porns. There was a swivel chair, where Gavin sat. There was also a table in the corner with a woman sitting at it—hunched over, her cheap-looking, stringy, overgrown black weave hanging long down her sharply protruding backbone. She said absolutely nothing to us as we entered the room, and Gavin didn’t acknowledge her. She was too busy with a big pile of cocaine on the table. She was like a precision machine, the way she was going about cutting and doin’ those lines.

  Cut a line.

  Do a line.

  Cut a line.

  Do a line.

  It was fucking crazy.

  But
, anyway, Gavin asked us the question that made me love the cookie factory more than any place in the whole world.

  “So, y’all wanna line of coke, or, no, meth, right?”

  “Awesome,” we both say together.

  “Meth?”

  “Yeah.” I answered that one.

  I’ll tell you what, when he handed over that plate with the two generous lines of crystal cut there, man, it was like they almost looked evil to me. I could see it right there, in the color and smell and texture. It was sinister. It was like being in the presence of death.

  But, fuck, I did the goddamn line, now, didn’t I?

  Akira did his line.

  I counted.

  It wasn’t very long before the rush of it exploded in me like thousands of Cupid’s arrows shot up and down my whole body.

  I breathed out long, long, and slow.

  There was no turning back, right?

  Motherfucker.

  And then that girl cutting lines sat up and spoke suddenly. Her eyes were crazy open, and her words were hard to understand. Her accent sounded Jamaican maybe.

  “Earthquake,” she said.

  We all looked at each other.

  “What?” asked Gavin.

  “Earthquake,” she said again.

  And then it hit.

  The whole place, like, lurched on its foundation and then just started shaking, shaking, shaking. The sound of metal and concrete grinding came through deafening.

  Growing up in San Francisco, I’d been in the big ’89 earthquake, when part of the Bay Bridge collapsed, but I’d never felt the world shaking around me like that night at the cookie factory.

  Akira and I got in the doorway—force of habit from countless earthquake drills at school.

  The shaking went on.

  And then it stopped.

  “Holy shit,” Gavin almost yelled. “What the fuck?”

  “Man, a fucking earthquake” was my brilliant observation.

  “Yeah, and she sensed it, man,” said Gavin, pointing at the girl. “That bitch sensed it—like a goddamn animal.”

  The woman didn’t respond. She went back to her whole line cutting/doing thing.

  In my stomach I knew.

  There was a tightness there, a knotting and twisting.

  That earthquake was the start.

  It always worked out that way.

  I start using, and the whole world just closes down on me. There are never new opportunities, no callbacks ever come. My car gets towed, and I end up losing everything all over again.

  The world shuts.

  I always know it’s gonna come, but I try to tell myself it’ll be better next time.

  And maybe the earthquake wasn’t a sign, didn’t mean anything.

  But a week later I’d been kicked outta my house and would eventually find myself living in the park behind Fort Mason.

  So you tell me.

  ’Cause it goes the other way, too.

  The longer I stay clean, the more the world just opens up with possibilities and hope.

  But it’s so hard to remember that shit.

  And I guess that’s the problem.

  So today I wanna remember.

  Let me tell you what happens:

  It

  all

  falls

  down.

  Just like that.

  Every fucking time.

  Ch.1

  2005

  23 YEARS OLD

  She hasn’t called.

  I mean, I haven’t called her either, but still—she hasn’t called and I know it’s over.

  I know she’s not gonna wait for me.

  I know it.

  She hasn’t called.

  The only reason I can figure is that she’s afraid of telling me—afraid of what I’ll do.

  But I haven’t called her either.

  At least this way I can still pretend it’s my choice.

  Besides, I know leaving her is the only option I have. Practically all the therapists in this whole goddamn place have made it their personal mission to convince me she’s nothing but poison for me—that what we have together isn’t really love—that she’s been using me—that I’ve been using her.

  I fought it at first.

  I fought it real hard.

  But I can’t deny it anymore.

  I know the truth.

  Even if I still can’t give her up.

  Even if I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.

  Being with her is the only thing that’s ever made me feel good about myself.

  The fact that she chose me. I mean, Christ, she could’ve had anybody—fucking anybody.

  And who am I?

  Nothing.

  Nobody.

  She’s everything that I’m not—everything I’ve always wanted to be.

  She’s just so cool, you know?

  So fucking cool.

  The way she talks, dresses, carries herself—her experiences—her beauty—how much older she is than me—how goddamn funny she is.

  I admire everything that she is. Her famous ex-husband. Her famous family. Her charisma. The way every goddamn head turns when she walks into a room.

  The first time I saw her—that first moment—I had to go talk to her.

  I never do that.

  Especially at a fucking twelve-step meeting in West Hollywood.

  Being with her, I felt important—beautiful, for the first time ever.

  She introduced me to her friends, family.

  People in LA knew our story.

  I finally had an identity, and I needed to hold on to that.

  So we planned on getting married.

  I made payments on a goddamn ring.

  We made love all morning—all night—all afternoon.

  We never wanted to get out of bed.

  She told me her secrets. She gave me her past.

  But then, well, then we went down.

  Relapsing—shooting heroin, cocaine, crystal—popping pills till we couldn’t even feel them anymore—smoking crack. We sold our clothes, books, CDs for drugs. We fought—yelled—screamed at each other. I felt her fingernails dig into my face—tearing. I ran to get away as she bit down hard at the bridge of my nose, pounding her fists into me—accusing me of hiding drugs under the tiles in the bathroom floor.

  We stayed locked in our apartment.

  I went into convulsions shooting cocaine.

  My arm swelled up with an abscess the size of a baseball.

  My body stopped producing stool, so I had to reach up inside with a gloved hand and pull out solid pieces of excrement the size and density of goddamn hockey pucks.

  We both lost most everything we had—our relationships with our families, the respect of our friends.

  And then I tried to steal a computer from my mom’s house. The cops showed up, and I was faced with the choice, you know: detox or jail.

  I chose detox.

  But my family was determined to get me away from her, so they shipped me out here to Arizona.

  She went into UCLA’s county program, and then the owner of the old sober living we’d both been at allowed her to come back for free.

  That was over a month ago—three days before Thanksgiving, to be exact.

  And at first, you know, we talked all the time.

  Her detox was even worse than mine, and my detox was the worst hell I hope I’ll ever have to know.

  But I’m twenty-three—my body’s still pretty young.

  She’s almost forty, and her body just couldn’t take it.

  First two major seizures landed her back in the hospital, and then they discovered she had gallstones, which had to be removed.

  She was sick, fucking sick.

  But I talked to her every day, borrowing people’s calling cards so I could dial out on the one phone they had set up for us in a little enclosed room off the kitchen.

  I’d sit in the wooden office chair that rocked back and forth, listening to the static hum of th
e space heater and my love’s sweet, sweet voice. I’d have to close all the blinds ’cause I’d be crying so much—my body still vibrating with tremors from my own detox—freezing—always freezing, in spite of the space heater and the jackets and sweaters I’d borrowed from my roommate ’cause I had almost no clothes of my own.

  She would tell me she loved me. We’d make plans for when I’d be able to get back to LA.

  But then one morning before group, I called and things were different.

  It was her voice—vacant-sounding, the sweet seductiveness gone.

  I told her I loved her.

  She said she didn’t even know what that meant anymore.

  My stomach went all tight suddenly—twisted up—knotted—the pressure building like I’d been swept down, down into the deepest ocean.

  I called everyone I knew, asking for money to help me get back to LA to be with her. No one would even speak to me. I guess I’d used up every last favor from every last person in my life.

  At one point I even thought about hitchhiking.

  But, honestly, I’m still too weak.

  And, besides, I know damn well she’s not gonna fight for me anymore.

  I mean, at one point she would’ve.

  At one point she actually believed in me.

  Before we relapsed, I’d been offered a book deal to write a memoir about my life. I’d finished half the manuscript, and I’d received nothing but positive feedback. I’m pretty sure she saw success in my future. Hell, maybe that’s why she stayed with me.

  But now I’ve lost all that. The book is on hold. Actually, I may have blown the whole thing completely. I have no money—no place to live—no car—no cell phone—nothing. My only prospect of getting out of here is to go into sober living and start working some shit-ass minimum-wage job. I’m just not glamorous enough for her anymore. She’ll find someone else—someone with money—someone in the entertainment industry who can open doors for her.

  I know how she works. I know her so goddamn well.

  We explored each other fully.

  Physically and otherwise.

  There was a time making love, locked in our goddamn apartment, where she lay on her back. Without really thinking about it, I began rotating my body, fucking her from every angle until I was facing completely away from her, and then back around the other side.