“Mom, this isn’t about that. This is about Jordan. But anyway, I am sober. I’ve been sober for two weeks.”
She doesn’t buy it. She’s almost yelling at me. Then suddenly Zelda flips out and starts screaming at my mom, through me. She starts calling her a nosy bitch—saying she’s heartless. She’s pissed that my mom called her family about us using again. She’s telling my mom (again, through me) about how crazy her father is and how my mom had no right to involve them.
“You don’t understand what he’s like. You don’t understand what he’ll do.”
I pass the message along—though I know my mom can hear Zelda just fine. Somehow the whole Jordan being dead thing has completely gotten lost in all of this. I’m screaming, Zelda’s screaming, my mom’s screaming. Somewhere in the chaos Zelda’s phone rings. The guy from Flaunt is calling, rescheduling our appointment—which, under the circumstances, seems like a good thing. We stop driving, but the argument keeps moving along. I’m so fried out, I kinda wish Zelda would be quiet so I could yell at my mom by myself. Finally, I just hang up the phone and then I cry some more about Jordan being gone and how hopeless everything is.
We call our dealer and meet him in Larchmont, where we’re almost at anyway. We buy lots of cocaine and crystal and some pills. We’re basically out of money. I’m not sure how we’re going to pay rent, or eat, or anything. I have this hope that maybe I can get a job somehow, but that is fleeting.
There are very few things I’m sure of anymore. I love Zelda—I know that. But we fight so often, and honestly I’m scared of losing her all the time. I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust her. I’ve watched her lie so many times.
And then there’s the drugs. We shoot up in the car and my arms are so scarred and I don’t know how to stop—if I even want to stop. I feel like I’m living with death so close every day and Jordan crashing his bike only adds to this.
I’m scared.
I need to get my life together, I know that. I need to start working again. But I don’t have a computer and can’t possibly do movie reviews and stuff without one.
Yes, I reason. Work will fix everything. I need a computer.
We go back to the apartment and spend hours shooting drugs and talking about money and what the hell we should do. We talk about my mom and how angry we are at her for treating us like this. I talk about how angry I am with my stepdad for the way he’s treated me and my mom, really.
We shoot drugs and now it’s three o’clock in the morning and we’re pacing the apartment like caged animals.
“Zelda,” I say—the thought just coming to me like that. “Let’s go to my mom’s. I know how to break in and I can steal Todd’s computer.”
“Perfect,” she says. “You need a computer.”
We spend a long time getting dressed. We get in the car and I drive and we are very high and Amon Tobin is on the stereo. The early morning dark is cold and I’m holding my jaw tight, too tight. I mean, more than normal. I’m talking real angry about my mom and my stepdad and blah, blah, blah.
When we get to my mom’s neighborhood, Pacific Palisades, we decide, first off, to stop and get some stuff at a supermarket down the street from my mom’s. It’s still only, like, four o’clock in the morning. We park in the lot and shoot up more crystal. Wandering around the too-bright aisles of the grocery store, we laugh to ourselves and make out and I wonder who the hell is looking at us and what they’re thinking. I’m kind of paranoid, and I keep my eyes on the floor. After all, we are the only two people in here.
Anyway, we get some ice cream and Lucky Charms and we want to buy a bottle of wine, but they won’t sell it to us until six, so I tell Zelda I’ll be right back—I’m just gonna go get the computer. She kisses me bye and I go drive up to my mom’s house.
The fear takes hold about the time I make it to their driveway. I park far away and walk up slow. I suddenly remember my mom’s dogs and how they’re gonna bark like hell if I make any noise. I’m really very scared. I feel like all the neighbors are looking at me—watching me. The computer is in the garage, so I figure I can get in there, no problem. For some reason, though, I decide to climb on the roof of the garage and I think maybe I can break through the shingles in the roof. I start tearing ’em off.
I don’t get very far.
They’re hard as hell to get off. I slide down a tree, hurting my arms real bad—then I run into the garage and lock the door.
I’m not sure what happens at this point. I guess I kind of lose hold of reality for a little bit. The garage is full of boxes and hanging clothes and clothes piled up on the floor and just stuff everywhere. Quickly, I empty one box and put the computer in it. But then, well, I’m not thinking too clearly ’cause I start just going through everything. I’m emptying boxes and throwing things and climbing up into the rafters. I’m tearing at the roof again and hours pass with me just crawling around—gathering things in little piles—just totally tweaking out.
I find these two porn movies that I’m pretty sure are my stepfather’s and I break them with my foot. I feel like a giant oozing insect or something, climbing over everything—maybe a worm, or a writhing slug, or who knows what. Then, in the crosshatched beams that hold the roof together, I’m like a long-legged spider scurrying in the shadows.
More time passes.
I’m hot and thirsty.
It’s midday now. The sun is streaming through the cracks in the shingles. Beams of yellow light pierce through the dusty, thick air of the garage. I dodge these shafts of brightness. I feel like maybe they will turn me to ash—like a vampire.
Thoughts race through my head and I’m losing it. Suddenly I can’t find the door and I realize I’m trapped and I’ve no way out. I go into a dream where I see myself as a child, cowering in this same garage—shaking with fear and almost throwing up as I hide from the fighting. My mom and Todd are screaming at each other and I am little and terrified. My mom keeps trying to get me to go with her to a hotel, but I am too scared. I don’t want to betray Todd.
Next I remember a time, driving down the freeway to San Diego. My mom and Todd are fighting while I pretend to be asleep in the backseat. My mom grabs the steering wheel and begins trying to turn the car around while Todd is driving.
Lying in the backseat, I feel so guilty, like it’s all my fault.
Then another memory begins to crawl into my mind. It’s so dim and clouded that I can’t see what is happening. I feel sick and throw up some foamy liquid in a corner.
It’s been over five hours when the knock comes at the door. Somehow I come out of my psychosis long enough to open it. Spencer is standing there and I’m pretty sure that’s real, not a hallucination—especially once he starts talking to me all about twelve-step stuff. My mom is there too—looking appropriately freaked out. I’m not too sure why she’s not at work. Standing next to her is my older brother, Ron—my mom’s son from her first marriage, who I’ve met only a couple of times.
All three of them are talking at once. They tell me that Zelda is freaked out because I left her in that grocery store for, like, half the goddamn day. She’s called my mom along with a million other people and she had to borrow all this money from Yakuza to get a taxi back to Hollywood. Zelda told everyone she wants me to go into rehab—no more fucking around. Spencer wants me to go to rehab. My mom wants me to go into rehab. Even Ron says I need help.
I’m not sure how long we’re talking there, but soon a cop from the Los Angeles Police Department shows up to make a report. I’m pretty sure my stepdad must have called him. I guess Todd is staying inside—away from me. The cop—square-jawed, with a crew cut and all—threatens to arrest me, but my mom agrees to hold off pressing charges so long as I agree to check into rehab.
I don’t want to go to jail, so I tell them what they want to hear. They allow me to return to Hollywood and pack and whatever. I drive back home, cursing and wondering, for the thousandth time in my life, “How the hell am I gonna get out of this one
?”
Zelda beats me up when I walk through the door.
Everything of mine is in a cardboard box in the middle of the room. She’s crying and yelling and I try to grab her arms to keep from getting slapped. I try to get her to understand, even though there isn’t really an explanation that could possibly make the situation any better. I mean, I left her in a supermarket for five hours because I had a drug-induced psychotic breakdown.
After a few minutes I manage to calm her down. I make up some lie about hearing my brother outside and having to hide and being trapped in there. She seems to accept my excuse, but still wants me to get help. We shoot more drugs while we talk about it.
Zelda’s phone rings a little later and it’s my dad calling. He and Zelda talk for a while about I’m not sure what. Zelda puts on this whole “responsible party” persona with my dad. She’s suddenly the voice of reason and maturity and manages to remove herself from my drug use. I’m not sure how much of it my dad actually believes, but she does put on a good act.
So eventually the phone is passed over to me and my dad sounds concerned and worried. He is stern and talking fast. Apparently they’ve talked to lawyers. Basically I’m looking at ninety days and they might even be able to get Zelda as an accomplice. That would mean both of us having to detox on the jail cell floor—kicking the Suboxone, Xanax, and Klonopin—which could make us go into seizures and could even kill us.
I’m so fucking angry at myself. I have no choice but to agree to everything my dad’s saying. He tells me there’s a treatment center in Oregon that has an open bed. He’s arranged for an interview with them. They’re gonna call Zelda’s cell phone in about an hour. I hang up.
“Baby,” I say, “they want me to go to Oregon.”
“What? Why can’t you stay in L.A.?” She’s wearing little boxer shorts and a tank top. She looks unbelievably cute and she’s suddenly very clingy and scared of me leaving. I kiss her and just want to die, really. This is all so depressing. Zelda and I are so damn strung-out and emaciated. My body has actually stopped producing stool, a doctor called it “compacting.” The shit in me is like this hard, petrified rock. I have to spend hours in the bathroom literally digging out these pellets with my hand. My eyes are sunken in, my skin yellow and scaly—my sweat smelling like chemicals. My body is just bones at this point.
We make love until the phone rings.
I answer and than everything kind of goes black again for a while. I know the caller from the treatment center is a woman, but I can’t remember much else about the conversation. I think I talk a lot about Zelda and how I don’t want to live without her. I guess that freaks the woman out or something, because I don’t get into that place in Oregon. I mean, they won’t take me. They just will not let me in there. I’m not sure why that is, exactly, but anyway, I gotta figure out something else to do.
My dad is very upset with me. I think he feels like I did it on purpose or something. Like I faked out the interview lady—intentionally said stuff to not get accepted. But that’s just not true. I answered her honestly.
So now I’m waiting again, shooting drugs with Zelda.
Around nine o’clock at night my dad calls again. He says there’s this detox in the Valley that’ll take me. He says I better go, or I’m gonna be arrested right away. I’m not sure how true that is, but I’m not willing to chance it.
So I go.
Well, first I take a shower and Zelda packs for me. She also gets a photo album ready with lots of photos of her. Plus she writes me a long letter promising to never leave me. We’re still gonna get married, after all. We kiss, cry, and tell each other over and over that we love each other.
I’m thinking ten days in detox, max—then I’ll just be sober and living with Zelda and writing again and everything will be perfect. Still, I’m scared of losing Zelda.
She drives to the detox and I’m snorting, shooting, smoking, swallowing any goddamn thing I can get my hands on. I’m deliriously high and the fear around this detox has subsided some. I show up there looking like a rock star. It’s around two in the morning, but I got these big sunglasses on, bell-bottoms, a jacket with all this fringe, and a crazy, multicolored hat thing made by some designer. Zelda kisses me good-bye and I give her some stuff, like my wallet and all, because I’m not sure how bad this place is gonna be. This is actually the first exclusive hospital detox I’ve ever been to. All the other places have always been connected to twenty-eight-day programs. And after Lauren’s I just kinda did it on the floor. With meth and coke, all you have to do is sleep a lot. With benzos and Suboxone, well, I don’t know what to expect.
Anyway, Zelda says good-bye and I want to cry as she drives away. I feel totally defeated. But I’m high as hell, so I talk myself into a place of everything being all right.
The Mission Community detox is a hospital and, well, it looks like a hospital. The whole thing is very antiseptic with flickering fluorescent lights and white tile. The beds have plastic coverings and it’s freezing as hell all the time. There are two TV rooms with a VCR and a lot of videos. There’s a little kitchen area with a refrigerator full of cheap junk food and stale sandwiches. A short little Hispanic guy with a goatee and a Hawaiian-print shirt checks me in. A teddy-bear-like, extremely fat woman who is also short takes my blood pressure. But goddamn is she nice. Both of them are really just so nice. They’re polite and gentle and they don’t seem too horrified at the amount and variety of drugs in my system. It’s a relief not to have to lie for once. I just tell them everything—meth, coke, heroin, Xanax, Klonopin, Somas, and Suboxone. They smile and nod and take my picture and draw my blood.
The guy takes me down for a cigarette outside in the warm Valley air. After that they give me a bunch of meds to knock me out. They search my clothes and I try to sleep. Well, first I mess around with the window and draw a little. Whatever they gave me works fast, though, because I pretty much pass right out.
I wake up only twice in the night and both times this tall, hollow, vacant-eyed kid—probably younger than me—is sneaking into my room. He’s got a shaved head and a basketball player’s body and a jersey thing. I think he’s holding toiletries in his hand. Maybe a towel.
“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” I manage to say.
He freezes. His wide eyes open wider.
“I’m scared,” he says. “Can I sleep with you?”
“Hell, no. Go get them to give you some shit to knock you out.”
At that moment a nurse, this very masculine black woman who looks like she could break me in half with her littlest toe, comes clamoring into my room. Her hair is all standing up and she yells at the kid to leave me alone. He jumps about ten feet and scurries off.
She apologizes to me and winks. I say, “Just give him some shit so he can sleep.”
And then that’s what I do: I sleep.
DAY 581
I basically just sleep for three days straight. They keep having to wake me up so I’ll take my meds. I can’t eat—don’t wanna eat and don’t really wanna move much either. This plump, long-nosed, gray-bearded doctor guy tries to talk me into eating and maybe getting up, but I only ask to be left alone. I have this feeling, like I just wish I didn’t have to exist. I wish it would all just go away.
It’s not as though I’d want to do anything proactive, like actually dying. No, I just want to disappear—to simply become part of the ethos, or whatever. I don’t know who I am and my body feels beyond repair. It is sunken down to nothing.
At one point another big lady nurse shakes me awake and takes my blood pressure. It’s one of those electronic machines and I see the digital electronic numbers pop up: sixty-three over something. She doesn’t like that. They ask me to stand up and, well, that’s hard.
“Please,” I say. “Just let me die.”
“Not a chance, honey—not on my watch.”
The next reading is still pretty bad.
“Okay, sweetie, you gotta work with us here. There’s a fruit plate in th
e kitchen. I’m gonna walk you down there. I also need you to drink some juices. We gotta get that blood pressure of yours up.”
So she helps me stagger down the hall. She also takes the Clonidine patch off my shoulder. I guess that shit has something to do with making one’s blood pressure low.
The other stuff they got me on, Phenobarbital, is supposed to keep me from having seizures, but makes me feel like I’m walking through, like, bubble world or something. Or maybe I’m just a floating head. I can’t get thoughts to come out straight—or go in straight, or something.
Anyway, I do eat some melon and whatever else is on the fruit plate. I manage to keep that down, but I’m so nauseous. Immediately I stumble back to bed and sleep.
At some point the director of the detox, this sleazy-looking car salesman type named Gill, makes me go out and talk to him about my discharge plan and where I’m gonna go. I did manage to have a few hysterical crying conversations with Zelda on the phone. I’m allowed to use the phone whenever I want and there is basically no schedule here. The hospital is designed only for short stays, just to get you through the physical detox. There are visiting hours every day from four to six and visitors are allowed all day on the weekends. Zelda actually almost came for visiting hours one night, but she was too high from shooting coke and she turned around halfway. She says she’ll come on the weekend.
Gill gets me up and actually outside. We smoke and he tells me I look like the guy who started Woodstock. I guess that’s fine by me. He asks me about myself and I tell him a little bit. I do say something about not really knowing who I am or something. I also tell him a little about Zelda and then the interview is pretty much over.
There are some other people from the detox outside with us. I haven’t said much of anything to any of the other patients. Basically I just want to get back home to Zelda. That’s all I care about. But this one fat, tall guy with no hair and a goatee comes over to me. I guess he overheard me telling Gill I was a writer—or trying to be one.