We got back to the house, and I don’t know if it was the same day or the next day, but we got a message on the answering machine. “Hey, guys, I’m really sorry, I forgot I was supposed to meet with you guys, and I had to run down to San Diego.” We just lit into his ass … cussing the answering machine at least. “Fuck you, cocksucker!” That kind of stuff. This guy was from our hometown, and we didn’t understand how he could do this to us.
A little while later I remembered that the guy’s sister sat in front of me in science class when we were in junior high and got her period right in front of me. It was, like, the first time she got her period, and she got shit all over the chair. Now, I didn’t do this, but I wanted to call and leave him a little message: “By the way, I fucked your sister.” Which I didn’t, but I was going to say I did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Hey Joe Public”
I WROTE A SONG CALLED “HEY JOE PUBLIC” BY THE FACT THAT TIGER Woods went on television and apologized to me and you for messing around with those women. Tiger Woods doesn’t owe anybody an apology except his wife and his kids. They’re the only people he has to say anything to, but for some reason public apologies have become popular.
Whoever decided that if you want to sleep with somebody you got a disease? This goes for women the same as it does for men. I don’t think, if my girlfriend messes around on me, that she’s got a disease. I’d think she was an asshole for it, but she ain’t got a disease. Sex addiction? I’m sorry, I just don’t agree. You’re horny. Maybe overly horny. But a goddamn disease? Leprosy is a disease. If you have any red spots on your face, or boils, or your nuts are falling off, your finger is falling off at the joint, you’re so weak you can’t get up out of the chair, those are diseases. Seeing some chick working at the car wash and deciding to get her phone number is not a disease.
And if somebody does think it’s a disease, and if it is making people miserable, then God bless them, I feel bad for them. I’m not a scientist. But if Tiger Woods has to apologize to the world for his transgressions because he’s a role model, then I can think of a whole lot of other athletes, preachers, movie producers, TV personalities, etc., who should do the same thing. There have been athletes that have committed armed robbery, sold dope, and worse. This world is out of control with its judgment of others and whatnot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Never Been Dead in My Life”
People tell me I oughta slow down, on the chemicals and booze
But I’ve put everybody under the table, it seems I just can’t lose
I don’t take shit from a livin’ soul, I sleep with a butcher knife
I’ve pissed on Mother Nature’s shoes, but I’ve never been dead in my life
My friends all warn me
But luck adorns me
You see
Never been dead in my life
Never been dead in my life
Death has called me to his door
But I’ve never been dead in my life
—“Never Been Dead in My Life”
(Thornton/Andrew)
I NEARLY STARVED TO DEATH IN 1984. I WAS LIVING IN A SHITTY APARTMENT in Glendale. I hadn’t been there too long, it had just been painted, and I woke up on a Sunday morning with a pain in my right side—a pain in me that I can’t even describe to you. It felt like a toothache in my chest—a real bad toothache where you can’t sleep at night, right in my chest.
It lasted for three or four hours, and then it finally went away. I thought, Goddamn, that wasn’t fun. I mean, it was bad. I didn’t have a job, I had no money … The last thing I ate was a loaf of ground beef—they used to sell ground beef in plastic, like a loaf—and a bag of potatoes I bought from Lucky’s Supermarket. I just drank tap water. I couldn’t get any help from my mom because she didn’t have any money and the guy she was married to wouldn’t allow her to send me any of his. But in all fairness, I was never able to ask for shit. I just never wanted anybody to know. I had read a story about how when Errol Flynn was at his lowest point, that’s when he wore his best suit and acted like he had money. Tom didn’t have any money either, but he had more than I did, so he gave me a jar of pennies, nickels, and dimes before he went on a train to visit his mom back in Arkansas. He also left me his shitty old Mustang because I didn’t have a car, and if it hadn’t been for that car, I would never have made it to the hospital.
It was on a Sunday when the pain came on the first time. That following Wednesday night I got the same pain, only this time it was on my left side. This time it got so bad I didn’t even know who I was. It was a pain that’s indescribable, and it spread all the way to both arms, my shoulder blades, my whole back, my chest, everywhere.
For some reason, I thought if I could maintain contact with myself, I wouldn’t die. If I keep looking at myself in the mirror I won’t die, I thought to myself. But I was as white as a sheet and in a cold sweat, so I ended up getting in the car and going to the hospital.
It was a real busy night around the hospital, and the girl at the desk wouldn’t admit me to the emergency room there because I didn’t have any insurance, I didn’t have a credit card, and I didn’t have any money. But this intern, a woman—I’ll never forget her face, though I can’t tell you her name—came up to the girl at the desk, which was a setup like a little booth, kind of like paying two dollars to go to the movies, and said, “What’s the problem here?” I started something that resembled talking, but I could barely speak. This thing took my breath away. I felt solid, like the inside of me was full of modeling clay, and I couldn’t breathe the pain was so intense. You know when you hear a kid crying and it’s kind of broken up? That’s the way I was talking.
The intern chewed the girl out for a second or two because when somebody has chest pains, you’re supposed to let them in. She brought me in and put me behind a curtain. They had me lie down and gave me morphine. The curtain was probably a foot or two open—they didn’t shut it all the way—and I saw some things that were not cool. The guy next to me—I saw his face for a second because his curtain wasn’t shut all the way either, and I heard people talking. I later learned that the guy was in his twenties and a steering wheel had crushed him in a car wreck. He died within the first half an hour that I was there. They also brought in a black guy on a gurney who had been shot in the stomach.
They were going to ship me over to County because I didn’t have insurance, but the doctor on duty that night—I’ll never forget this guy as long as I live—looked at my medical records, saw that I was from Arkansas, and made them admit me to a room. Turned out he was a gastroenterologist from the Ozarks. It was just one of those connections.
They gave me so much morphine and Demerol it knocked me out, and I woke up the next afternoon. When I woke up, the pain was exactly like it was when I went in. But I remember a big fat dude that was a nurse on the floor—he was real funny, like John Candy. “You’ve been through quite a thing, huh?” he said.
They never determined what I had, but they put “probable viral myocarditis” on my records. That’s when you get an inflammation of the heart muscle. Bob Dylan had something called pericarditis, which is different—myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, whereas pericarditis is an inflammation of the sac around the heart—but they feel very similar, supposedly, so when Dylan had his heart problem, I felt I knew exactly what the fuck he was going through. Really not good.
My mom told me they thought I had a heart attack, but I didn’t have a heart attack. I wasn’t any kind of candidate for a heart attack. I’ve never had any cholesterol or plaque issues. What it was was I was starving to death. Same thing that happens to anybody who doesn’t eat. I had no potassium, no electrolytes, I had none of that shit.
I’d sit in my hospital room watching TV at two o’clock in the morning because I’m an insomniac and the fat guy who looked like John Candy would come and sit and talk to me. We were talking one night about food, and I told him my favorite thing in the world is b
utterscotch milkshakes. After that, while all these other patients got their three meals a day or whatever it was, he would bring me a butterscotch milkshake and a turkey and Swiss sandwich at one or two in the morning. He’d say, “Now don’t tell anybody I’m bringing you shit because I’m not the dietitian.” But he knew what was wrong with me, how I hadn’t eaten in a really long time. He was a big dude, and he understood things like wanting to eat.
There was this cardiologist who was a real prick. Seemed that all he could think about was getting me the fuck out of there and over to the county hospital where all the other street people were. One day I’m sitting up, eating hospital Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes like a fucking crow because I’m starving, and this doctor comes in and says, “Well, I guess you’re pretty happy. You must be pretty happy. You got free room and board and a nice meal.” I knew right then that this was the wrong cat to put in charge of me. But then this doctor that admitted me, Dr. Dwyer—the Ozark guy—came around to see me. He was a really cool cat. He wanted me to stay until I was okay. I saw him over the years but lost touch with him. I wish I knew where some of these fucking people who helped me were because I would give them a television set or something.
They ultimately did ship me over to the county hospital, where I got to stay because our buddy Coby put his credit card down. It looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, all these people in one room. There were probably ten or twelve people in that room with me, and there were all these intern doctors talking about what an amazing case I was because I was so young and it was a cardio-far-whatever they called it. These motherfuckers are going to experiment on me, I thought. I’m going to become a fucking laboratory rat here. So after two or three nights there I found my pants and my shoes, but I couldn’t find my shirt—and called Coby collect from a pay phone.
Coby came to pick me up in his truck, and I never went back. I was fine for all those years until I starved myself on purpose in 2000 and went back in the hospital for the same thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“The Walking Extinct”
We are the walking extinct
Stumblin’ over the bones of memories
We’re the invisible link
Waiting and hoping that someone will see
We are the walking extinct
Watching the fossils fall and break apart
We’re an ark about to sink
Drowning all the magic in our hearts
And it happened so slow
You’ll never know what didn’t hit you
—“The Walking Extinct” (Thornton/Andrew)
WHEN I WAS IN GLENDALE RECUPERATING FROM THIS SHIT, I TRIED to get social services to help me. I tried to get food stamps and whatever, but they needed so much shit from me, so much information, and I didn’t know how to give it to them. I didn’t have the proper paperwork or tax shit, and I couldn’t remember my social security number, so I never got any of the stuff I needed. I was like, “Goddammit, I’m a fucking American, why can’t you help me?”
But things started getting a little better when I got a job for a time. I also had a girlfriend then who kind of felt sorry for me, so she helped me pay for stuff. So I thought, I better start doing some physical activity and eating right, and I joined the YMCA in Glendale. The Glendale YMCA is a nice YMCA, not some shithole, and they had a world-class basketball gym, and since the job I had was kind of spotty—off and on—I could get to the YMCA to shoot hoops most days at seven A.M., when all the regular people were getting ready for work.
There were just a bunch of old men in the locker room when I was changing into my short britches at seven in the morning. I don’t know how old they were then, but it was 1984 and they were World War II veterans, so you figure if the war ended in 1945, that would probably put them in their late sixties then. At the time I thought they were ancient. I would talk to these guys, and a couple of them would come out and shoot free throws with me. Turns out three or four of them were B-17 crew guys during World War II. One guy was a pilot, couple of guys were ball turret gunners, one guy was a tail gunner. Then there was a navigator, an engineer, a sergeant, who was a top turret gunner. I got to love these guys because I’ve had this thing for the B-17 bomber ever since I was a little kid.
MY GRANDMOTHER WAS A WRITER AND A SCHOOLTEACHER, AND AT her house where I was growing up in Alpine she had bookshelves all around the walls. Out of all those books she had, I’d just sit and stare at this book that was kind of blue-gray, but I never took it out. I’d just sit there and stare at it. This was before I could read. Then one day, when I was about nine, after I could read, I pulled it out of the shelf and opened it up. It had all these guys’ pictures, and down there beside the pictures there was a little thing about each one like they have in a high school yearbook. Turned out they were all guys in Clark County who served in World War II. Next to their pictures it would say PFC So-and-So, killed in action May 15, 1942, or whatever, who their parents were, and whatever else. There were two guys in particular that I would stare at all the time. One’s name was Olen G. Allison, and the other guy’s name I don’t recall. Olen G. Allison was a real skinny-looking guy. He had on the regular dress-looking hat tilted to the side, like they had in the old days. The other guy was kind of handsome, looked like a movie star, and in his picture he wore a leather jacket, a white scarf, and the leather flier’s cap. They were both killed in action in World War II. Out of everyone in that book, I would sit for hours and I’d read their things over and over.
I was also drawn to these pictures of B-17 airplanes. Now, I don’t believe in a fucking thing, practically—though of course we talked about my mother who has ESP, and I’m telling you she’s told me shit that only exists in my head—but when I started reading about these B-17s, I was reading about something that I knew.
When I first met Coby, it must have been in 1981, he and I went out to the Chino Air Museum because I’d always had this thing for World War II airplanes, and they had a B-17 out there you could walk around in it. I went in from under the hull, crawled up the little steps, and walked straight to the front of the airplane. Now, if you didn’t know a thing about an airplane and you wanted to know where the bombardier was, you’d probably look all over the place, but—and I had never physically been in a B-17—I walked past the waist gunner’s position, straight past the navigator in the middle there, down beneath the cockpit into the nose of that thing, sat at the bombsight, and felt like I was home. After that I was convinced that I was a bombardier in a B-17 airplane in World War II. Now, it can be complete horseshit and explained by the fact that I just liked airplanes and my particular brain chemistry led me to that or some shit, but why did I pull that book out from that shelf and why did I stare at those guys all the time? And how did I know where every position was before I ever went in a B-17? Maybe there’s a perfectly good scientific explanation for that shit. People get struck by lightning and they start playing Beethoven. All I know is, I knew shit that I didn’t know.
Anyway, when I met these guys at the YMCA, I stuck to them like glue. I was obsessed with them. I went to their meetings and became fast friends with a bunch of guys who were about seventy years old. I became real good friends with one guy, who at this time was a schoolteacher in Long Beach, who had been a ball turret gunner. He would come over to my apartment, and we would sit and talk for hours and hours. He even gave me some books to read. I’d planned on making this movie about B-17 bomber crews, because they have stories that would blow people’s minds, but they already made one over at Columbia called Memphis Belle.
I even started going to their veterans’ meetings down in Southgate/Downey and to a lot of Confederate Air Force events.
They made me an honorary member of the 94th Bomb Group, and I got their newsletter up until just a few years ago. I guess most of those guys I knew are long gone by now, but they were great guys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
To Billy Bob, from a Big Fan–Billy Wilder
I knew that I could make it, I knew the sky would clear
The boulevard would dry a spot and my star would appear
Shining on the footprints standing near
When you’ve reached the top
And the gold’s rubbed off the chrome
There’s no way to get back home
—“Every Time It Rains” (Thornton/Andrew)
COMING UP, I HAD NOTHING, YET I ALWAYS THOUGHT I HAD A SHOT. I always somehow accomplished the things I set out to accomplish, even on a small scale, so I didn’t really think that you couldn’t do shit. I got in a band that had regional success. I played baseball and became a very good pitcher. Part of it was ignorance—the fact that I didn’t know any better—but whatever the case, I had belief in my ability. I never had belief in big success, but I had belief in moderate success. I never thought I was going to be a movie star, but I always thought, I’m good enough that I’m going to have a career. I thought I was going to be one of those guys you’d see in the old movies who was, like, the fifth guy from the left—that’s who I thought I was going to be. I thought I might be Harry Dean Stanton. Shit, when Jeb Rosebrook, the guy who wrote Junior Bonner and produced the TV show I was on, The Outsiders, said, “You know who you are? You’re Warren Oates,” I was like, “Wow, what a compliment!” I never knew I’d become a movie star. When I started acting, my goal was to become a great character actor. That’s all I ever thought I would be, or ever wanted to be. The other stuff just happened.
When I was twenty-nine, broke, and getting close to my first Saturn return, if you follow astrology, there was a fourth thing in this spooky through line that ran through my early days: Maudie Treadway at sixteen; Teddy Wilburn at twenty-four; John Widlock at twenty-five. And at thirty, it was Billy Wilder.
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