The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes

by Dawn Schiller

  The next day John is gone into the evening and calls me from work. With disco music blaring in the background, he tells me to meet him at David’s by nine o’clock. “Make sure that asshole knows I’m coming,” he says jokingly. “And tell them I got a surprise for all of you.”

  “Ooooh, a surprise. What is it?”

  “You’ll see, baby. You’ll see. ‘Cause we’re gonna have some fun tonight!” he says, sensually cupping his hand over his mouth on the receiver. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, John.”

  “He’s here,” Karen calls, hearing John’s van pull up.

  “I told you,” I mumble, stretching my legs in the beanbag chair.

  “It’s about time,” David gripes.

  It is almost midnight, and we are tired, dozing where we sit. Echoing up the courtyard, we hear the soft thumping of John’s boots against the cement walk and the whistling of the tune from Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din.” The door opens and John enters singing the end of the song into the air. “Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, by the livin Gawd that made you, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!” He pauses and, as always, waits for applause. Finding none, he grins anyway and shuts the door. He is in a great mood.

  “It’s about time,” David whines.

  John ignores him and steps over the mess on the floor to be next to me. “Hey, wake up, baby. I got a surprise for you.”

  “Mmmmmm. Hi, John. I’m awake. What is it?” I sit upright, my skin squeaking against the vinyl beanbag chair. His hair is tousled, and he is wearing his blue jeans and a skintight, scrub green T-shirt. The large dragonfly ring on his left hand stands out in contrast and in size. He reaches for a kiss, and I notice his breath is stale from too many cigarettes. David and Karen gather around voraciously.

  Nestling down on the edge of the bed, John opens his briefcase, pulls out a mirror from its top compartment, and sets it next to him. Next comes the surprise. From the watch pocket of his jeans he removes a small glass vial with a black screw-on lid. Inside are the shiny white crystals—cocaine. He doles out four fat lines with a single-edged razor and swiftly snorts up the first line with a short, white gold straw. Snnnnnnnnufff. The tap, tap of the straw cracks on the glass. He runs his finger along the remaining residue of his line from the mirror and rubs it on his gums. “Tiffany’s,” he chokes out. As his face reddens, he throws his arm across his eyes and plops back on the bed, cringing from the sting of the powder in his head.

  It takes me a minute to understand that Tiffany’s refers to the white gold straw.

  John hands David the mirror next. “Ahhh! Shit! God damn, that’s good!” he exclaims after he inhales his line and falls back on the bed with John. Karen has her own method, and I watch her carefully, knowing it will be my turn next. John knows I snorted coke with my father a couple times back in Carol City; he got mad about it when he found out. He is very strict when it comes to me getting loaded. He is the one who passes out the pot or shares a shot of aged Scotch. Sharon gives me a Valium occasionally when John’s not home, but he doesn’t like that either. He only approves if he hands it to me when he does one too. This time John is watching me, and I don’t want to make a mistake. When Karen takes her turn, she lies back and holds her face, as if painfully gripping for the rush. John hands me the mirror. Shakily, I accept and bend to snort my line. Large clumps of my hair fall around my face, blocking my view. Awkwardly, I swing the long locks back and try to sniff the line a second time, but my hair slides in the way once again.

  “Here. Let me show you,” John says firmly. “You hold one side of your nose in with your thumb while you use the straw to snort with the other.” John sets the mirror on the bed and holds my hair.

  Snnnuuuuuffffff! I shake visibly and cry out in pain. Instantly I roll into a fetal position, covering my head. My eyes water uncontrollably. The pain takes forever to subside, and my face goes numb.

  “That’s pure shit!” John sniffs.

  David and Karen are in a deep embrace on the bed. Karen begins to moan.

  John, feeling his high, nestles next to me on the beanbag and leans in for a deep kiss. “Let’s get out of here,” he says, pulling me up and out of the chair. On the mirror he taps out a small pile of coke from the glass container and closes his briefcase. We tiptoe out of the house, David and Karen oblivious to our departure.

  Quietly, John unlocks the darkened door of my old apartment and we sneak into the bedroom giggling like kids. John lays out two more lines for us on the side table, pulls my hair back gently from my face, and afterward falls with me on the bed holding me tightly till the burning pain of my sinuses clears and the euphoric rush of the coke takes over our bodies.

  Just before sunrise, the two of us, red-eyed and bedraggled, slowly creak open the front door of our house. Sharon is still sleeping. Pokie and Thor lethargically greet us. John kisses me on the cheek as I scoop Thor into my arms and we head for our separate rooms to sleep the day away.

  John and I wake late that afternoon and stumble out into the living room wearing our pajamas. Sharon is folding her laundry. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she scoffs, loading up her basket. “You both missed your cartoons.” I shuffle to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and groan. I feel sick.

  We spend the rest of the day hanging out on the couch, unable to do much of anything. We try to play off our cocaine hangover as if we just want a day to be lazy.

  Sharon becomes bored with us easily. “If the two of you insist on being brain-dead, then I’m going to bed!”

  Neither of us has the strength to argue.

  John lies on the couch next to me until Saturday Night Live, when the phone rings. We look at each other to see which one of us will move first, until I give in and get up to answer it.

  “It’s David,” I tell him, holding out the phone.

  John stiffly gets up. “Yeah? How ya feelin, asshole.” He laughs, then laughs harder at David’s reply. John’s expression quickly changes, and his body tenses. “Fuck…you!” he snaps coldly and slams down the phone.

  “What’s the matter? What’d he say?” I’m shocked. John is furious.

  He falls down next to me, jerky and tense, flings his arm around my shoulders roughly, thinks hard for a minute, then snaps, “You don’t want any more of that shit, do you?”

  “No. Baby. I don’t…really.” I look deep into his eyes and hug him reassuringly, guessing that David has just asked for more.

  John studies my gaze intensely. Then, satisfied, he faces the TV clenching his jaw. “I’ve seen people sell their lives for that shit. People who had everything—everything—sold it all. Lost their houses, their cars, their jewelry, their wives. Now they’re sleeping anywhere they can…and can’t even bum a cigarette.” His lip curls with disgust.

  Standing, John reaches up to the shelf above his chair and pulls down a bottle and two shot glasses. “Old Parr. Thirty-year-old Scotch.” He stares somberly into the amber liquid, then pours us each a drink. “The older, the better. Skoal!” He slugs down the shot, and I do the same. Then we call it an early night.

  As if he hasn’t remembered his own words, John arranges for us all to meet at David and Karen’s once again the following weekend. They are very happy, and it doesn’t take a lot to make a gram of coke sound like a fun time to me either. Was it the dare from his brother, or has John been doing some coke all along? I wonder as he spreads another round of crystalline lines. Naw. He’s just a fast learner, I calculate. Besides, he hates the stuff. He told me so. I blow off any doubts about John’s sincerity. He wouldn’t lie to me. Whatever it is, to me, this is the beginning. Before my eyes, the warm colors of my contentment are rapidly turning to a cold, cold gray.

  Within a few months, our weekend cocaine high turns into twice and three times a week. John begins to need to work again on overnight shoots and comes home looking haggard and grumpy. On those weary days, the minute he steps in the door, David and Karen call or come over to discuss some
thing important. A ruse only; their true motive is to score more coke. They like to party, and John is their connection. Tired, and complaining that David won’t leave him alone, John drags himself to their cottage to hand down a line or two from his little glass vial with the black lid. But by now, John always makes sure he has enough for a wake up for himself when he sleeps into the afternoon.

  The days when John is in a good mood anymore are the days he comes home with a nice amount of coke, ready to party. The tiny container is full most of the time, accompanied now by a couple of folded paper bindles, each containing a gram of coke. John calls me at the house. “Be at David’s in an hour.” Sharon knows it is John on the other end of the line, and by my voice she can tell we are making arrangements to be at her brother-in-law’s that evening. Sadly, of late, our conversations have run dry. We never tell Sharon about the pot. Never have. She is straitlaced, and getting high is another thing we don’t talk about. I know how she blames David for bringing it into John’s life in the first place. We definitely can’t say anything about the coke. Sharon and I watch television in silence until it is time for me to make some excuse to meet John a few doors down.

  After a while, I resent going to David and Karen’s cottage. Always vying for his attention when a bag of coke is present, they aren’t giving him time with me or with anything else he enjoys—or so I think. I blame them for constantly wanting more coke. David knows John is unwilling to let him down, and he knows just the right buttons to push. To me, it seems David manipulates John, and I agree with Sharon: I don’t think John can see it.

  Things are getting creepy too. Sometimes, when the coke runs dry, mood swings and paranoia kick in and John will order us to take turns peeking out of the windows at the slightest noise. David and John get antsy, and Karen and I find it harder and harder to make it to work after a night without sleep. It doesn’t seem like much time has passed at all, but it is flying. And our worlds…our worlds are changing…dramatically.

  It is late October 1979 and the tail end of Indian summer when John and David hatch their plan. After a usual call telling me to meet him at his brother’s, John shows up at David’s door, looking over his shoulders, a large grocery bag and briefcase in hand. “Hey. Here. Take this,” he says, handing Karen the briefcase. Gently, he places the brown paper bag on the kitchen table.

  “What cha got there, bro?” David’s words roll smoothly.

  John doesn’t answer but races past him over to the windows to pull the curtain shades closed. Deciding it is safe, he opens the bag. “Check this out.” A large, pale green, black, and chrome gram scale appears from its brown wrapping. He sets it on the table and kneels down to meticulously balance the arm. Out of his briefcase he removes a small wooden box. Inside is a metal incremental weight set. John pulls out the weight marked one gram and sets the scale.

  “God damn.” David pulls a drag off of his cigarette.

  Grabbing for my own cigarette, I watch John proudly display the precision of his latest acquisition, announcing breathlessly his intention of a new business venture. He taps out lines for each of us, then passes around the mirror and the now-worn and dull Tiffany straw.

  “Here.” He hands me a ruler and an eight-by-eleven sheet of heavy bond paper. “Cut out a bunch of squares that look like this.” He draws out several even lines, then lets me do the rest. “And here. You get to fold,” he says, handing Karen a sample bindle to duplicate. His words race together, his breathing shallow and fast; then he pulls out the big stash. From his jacket pocket he carefully retrieves a plastic sandwich bag about one-eighth full of powdery cocaine.

  “Son of a b—,” David whistles, and John throws back his head and smiles admiringly. Quick as a flash, he is rummaging through the cabinets looking for bowls and pans. Again, from the brown Samsonite, he fumbles for a small metal strainer, the kind Sharon strains gravy with, and a half a brick of another white powder wrapped in paper.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Menita.”

  “What’s menita?” I ask naively.

  John chuckles slightly and winks at me. “Anyone want to tell her what menita is?”

  “Baby laxative,” David answers, helping John dig for the right tools from the kitchen, his arms loaded with pans.

  “Baby laxative! Why do you have that?”

  “This is pure shit, baby,” he says, holding up the coke. “You can’t sell people this. They’ll never come down!”

  “Oh.”

  I don’t want to look stupid, but I still don’t quite get it until Karen mumbles under her breath, “You mix it with the coke. You get more that way.”

  I nod.

  We all dutifully get busy taking on our specific jobs. John hands out lines of coke, and we are like bees intent on gathering pollen for the queen. I cut squares until the scissors leave an indentation and slight blister on my hand, and then John promotes me to bindles. He teaches me how to fold the perfect one, the edges and corners tight, with flaps secure.

  John and David use the strainer to mix the menita and coke together. Then they weigh one-gram piles and set the powdery gold aside for Karen and eventually me to scoop up and fold securely in bindles. During the night, the lines of cocaine flow. My face and throat stay numb, and my nose runs constantly while I focus intensely on my job. We are like robots, thinking only of doing another line when we begin to feel run down. This is a business now, a way for David and John to earn a little extra cash. Karen helps her man, and I help mine.

  The pale pink of the breaking day shines through the side of the kitchen window shade. I realize I have to work this morning and have no time for any sleep. Ugh! I think, feeling the ache of my joints from sitting in the same position all night. Stiff and woozy, I leave the table. “John? I have to get ready for work.” I lean in to hold him. Snuggling up, he relaxes in my arms and for a moment we drift off right where we stand.

  “Run down and get dressed, baby, and I’ll give you something to get your day going,” he says, wrapping things up and sending me on my way.

  I walk down the misty courtyard to the house, pulling my sweater around me in the cool morning chill. Sharon is in the kitchen getting the dogs their breakfast and doesn’t come out to see who’s at the door. I am glad. I don’t want her to see me high. Quickly, I dress, play with Thor for a few minutes, and step lightly toward the door.

  “I need to talk to you when you get home from work today, Dawn,” Sharon calls out from the kitchen, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Okay,” I call back. My heart begins to race.

  There is a pause. “Is John letting his brother talk him into being stupid again?” Sharon’s voice echoes wryly.

  “Yeah. I’ll see ya later,” I answer quickly, not quite sure if she really knows what is going on. I wait politely for an answer. “Have a nice day,” she replies.

  It is a miserably long day of lifting, feeding, and bathing patients. Time drags to 3:30, the end of my shift. My body aches, and I’m so worn out I can’t keep my eyes open during my breaks. I return from work, dreading what Sharon might have to say to me. I take a deep breath and open the front door. Jumping off of John’s bed, the dogs run out to greet me. Good, he’s still sleeping, I think.

  Sharon steps out of the kitchen holding a dish towel. “Hi. You’re home.”

  “Yeah.” I collapse on the couch. “I’m exhausted!”

  “I can see that. Listen. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. John and I have discussed it and…well, how would you like to be in charge of maintaining the books and organizing repairs, gardening, cleaning and such for this place? It’ll be fulltime…with pay,” she offers enticingly.

  “You mean I can quit my job?”

  “Yup. Your hours will be up to you so you can also look into enrolling in some of those classes at the adult school you’ve been talking about.”

  “Really? I’d love that!”

  “Good. I’ll let Dr. Nuttycomb know you’ve agreed.” She folds the dis
h towel into a square, pivots, and walks out of the room.

  Giving notice at Royal Oaks is a relief. The place has given new meaning to the term “overworked and underpaid.” Many patients die here after years of suffering. I am glad when they go. To finally prepare their bodies for the morgue and see them in peace is an odd relief. It’s a difficult state of mind to come to, but after working there for over two years, I am burned out.

  Feeling good about changing jobs, I can’t foresee the power cocaine will have over my future. Although I am already uneasy with its powdery bitter presence, it gives me a powerful rush and sweeps me away at times.

  I take on my new responsibilities at the cottages with gusto. Setting up a little table in the corner of John’s office with my own typewriter and file cabinet, I settle into organizing the property’s files. The arrangement gives me and John more time to spend together. We do—together with cocaine.

  Instead of meeting at David and Karen’s throughout the week now, John brings the glass vial home to the house while Sharon works. I feel guilty about doing this, but I never question anything John does in his own home. He is always in command of his domain; John is a Leo, and this is definitely the lion’s den. It is also a place where David and Karen won’t enter unless specifically invited. They rarely are; Sharon makes sure of that. John drops off large bags of coke for them to weigh and wrap, keeping them supplied, but the party isn’t being held there anymore, for the moment anyway. No matter what kind of influence David has about scoring drugs now, John is the one in control. Cocaine is his new instrument of mastery. And he likes his newfound power.

  John dishes out wake up lines, let’s get a job done lines, and pick me up lines. In the evenings, so we can still have an appetite for dinner with Sharon, he lights up his corncob pipe and passes around the mellowing weed. Then, just to be sure we can sleep, down comes the thirty-year-old Scotch from the shelf above the television to wash back half a Valium each.