Long Way Home

by Cameron Douglas

  In the beginning, there were huge trenches along the route, and the workmen stretched boards over them so their trucks could get through. The whole project took many years. Once the main construction was out of the way, adding the details and accoutrements was a massive undertaking in itself.

  Eventually the house became a compound, with seven different buildings, a cobbled driveway, grassy terraces stepping down to the Mediterranean, a Moroccan-themed guesthouse and an Italian one, and star-lights cut into the concrete base of the pool, which was directly above the kitchen. Long before “sustainability” was a buzzword, Mom designed S’Estaca to be self-sufficient, with generators, organic vegetable gardens, preserves, organic wine, spring water, fish from the port, and forest deadwood for the fireplace. S’Estaca was Mom’s masterpiece.

  * * *

  —

  At the house, I’d tag along everywhere with Juán, the caretaker. Deià, which was nearby, had an arty, commune-like vibe. Many of the residents were foreigners, and my friends were their children. S’Estaca was always fun and filled with people. Dad would swim out into the bay of the Cala Deià, and I would follow him with Shirk, our giant schnauzer, paddling behind me. Eventually I’d turn back, but Shirk would follow Dad all the way out and then, when they were both tired, back in to the beach.

  S’Estaca was also where Puma, a capuchin monkey Mom got after Sangral, lived year-round. Puma was a baby when we got her. At night she slept next to me, in a bed I made for her in a shoebox, and I fed her with a dropper. During the day, she’d attach herself to me while I walked around, hugging my wrist or ankle. Monkeys show affection by grooming each other, and she’d act like I had thick fur, weeding through it and pretending she’d found a bug and was putting it in her mouth. Then I’d do the same to her.

  As Puma got older, she became more aggressive. She liked to collect things, and guests lying around the pool at S’Estaca would catch her grabbing a set of keys with one hand, a wallet with the other, and a pack of cigarettes with one foot. If you wanted to light your cigarette and approached her to reclaim your Zippo, Puma would start rapidly puffing her cheeks in and out, like she was hyperventilating. If you reached for your property, she might drop it, jump on you, and bite you. People started refusing to come to the house if she was going to be outside, so Puma spent increasing amounts of time in her cage, which only made her behavior more erratic, until it became difficult to let her out if guests were around.

  Eventually, Mom would get a miniature baby owl named Merline.

  With Mom and Dad in Spain.

  * * *

  —

  When I was a kid, I chafed at Mom’s tendency toward grandeur. Before every plane trip, she’d dress me up in a suit and tie, like Little Lord Fauntleroy, over my scowling objections. I’d buck at her efforts to keep my hair a certain length. Later, Mom went through a period where she put together Sunday high teas, with finger sandwiches and scones, which I’d smirk my way through but must admit I found extremely tasty. When Mom was around her European or society friends, our dog Pumpkin would suddenly be named Luna, and Mom’s voice would acquire a vaguely Continental accent. I was always hyperaware of how she seemed able to turn it on and off at will.

  But over time, I came to admire her ease in gliding among different worlds. When she later had a series of assistants, young girls who looked up to her, she became their mentor, changing their lives by teaching them grace and style. Her sense of aesthetics rubbed off on me, as well. I started taking care in how I dressed. It definitely wasn’t the clothing Mom would have selected for me, but it was my style, with its own flair.

  3

  Dad

  I don’t remember when I first became aware that the man I called Daddy, then Dad, then Pop, wasn’t like other fathers, that he didn’t belong only to me. When I was a few months old, my godfather, Jann Wenner, put me on the cover of Rolling Stone, a naked infant slung over Dad’s shoulder and mooning America. As I grew up, there were always people nervously/aggressively/amiably approaching Dad for his autograph. We lived at posh addresses: the house with a view in Beverly Hills, the spacious apartment on Central Park West, the seven-acre estate in Montecito, the compound on Mallorca.

  Sometimes I saw him on a screen like everyone else. One time I saw him on a screen and he was talking only to me. When he accepted the Oscar for Best Actor in 1988 for Wall Street, I was nine years old and three thousand miles away, at home in New York City, watching as he stood on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, looked into the camera, and said, “Good night, Cameron, I love you.” If he did this now, I’d feel flattered and proud. At the time, in my kid’s mind, it didn’t seem like anything special. This was my dad, and he was getting a big award for the thing he’d been doing as far back as I could remember, and he was saying good night to me, and that he loved me. I loved him, too.

  * * *

  —

  At home, Dad was a regular father. He’d read the newspaper over breakfast. He enjoyed simple food. He liked to watch sports. He wasn’t focused on how he looked. I was confused about our relationship. I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to be my friend. I felt good when he’d come to my sports games.

  In more innocent days, with Dad at a Rolling Stone cover shoot.

  When he was away, which was much of the time, he’d call nearly every day at bedtime to say good night. Our relationship was a series of jump cuts, vivid bursts when we were together punctuating longer stretches when we were apart. Each of our times together, and every one of his sporadic gifts to me, felt especially precious.

  He’d fly me to see him on set. When I was ten, and he was making Black Rain in Japan, I spent a few days in Osaka, where Ridley Scott was shooting the film in a huge steel mill amid gigantic industrial machinery and lots of hot metal and flying sparks. I was really into video games, and Andy Garcia, Dad’s costar, was kind, shepherding me around to several of the country’s amazing arcades.

  Other times, Dad organized bonding trips. Once, just the two of us went on a whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. Another time, when I was sixteen, he rented a houseboat on Lake Shasta and took me, Uncle Jojo, and my friends John and Jesse.

  Later, when I was in and out of juvenile hall, Dad was liberal with me. He let me smoke cigarettes around the house. It made me feel so good, like we were buddies, even though Dad would regularly tell me, “I’m your father, not your friend, Cameron.”

  * * *

  —

  When I was seven and we were living in Manhattan, I went to Jeremy Kaplan’s birthday party at a studio in midtown, where we watched a magician levitate his assistant and pass a ring around her. Afterward, I was expecting Joaquín, my caretaker, to pick me up, but Dad arrived instead. I hadn’t seen him in months and didn’t even know he was back in town. He was holding a present, which I thought might be for the birthday boy, because I hadn’t brought one. But then Dad said it was for me.

  It was a skateboard with a bow tied around it. It had a wood deck, topped with diamond-dust grip tape cut out in the middle to reveal a blue graphic. The underside was an orange-and-black checkerboard. The wheels were a clear, gummy green. It was as tall as me, and I didn’t know how to stand on it. I knelt on it with one knee, using the other leg to kick myself forward. It was a chilly day in late fall, but Dad and I walked home that way, me scooting ahead, Dad strolling behind me. The same year, Dad gave me a Yamaha 80 dirt bike. I couldn’t believe my good fortune, and I decided then that seven was my lucky number.

  * * *

  —

  Later, after we moved back to Montecito, I’d borrow Dad’s Handycam and make short movies. Once, my friend John and I were working on a film starring us, and shot by us, so we handed the camera back and forth to film each other. We shot a motorcycle ride. We filmed in the gym at my house, where Dad worked out when he was getting in shape for a part. The story built to a climactic fistfight between two bodybuilders—us, with not very built bodies, since we were only ten—a
nd we weren’t sure how we were going to get the take, since we both needed to be in the shot. We were standing next to the pool. Mom was on a chair, sunbathing, and we considered getting her to hold the camera, but we were skeptical of her cinematography skills.

  “Hey, Dad.” He was in the Jacuzzi. “Can you help us out?”

  He walked over, dripping, and we explained our movie.

  Dad went into director mode.

  “This just jumped in production value,” John said. He was a precocious kid.

  We thought we were only going to get one take from Dad, but as he filmed he continued giving directions. We had to rewind the tape and start over.

  “That punch is weak, by the way,” Dad said.

  We looked at him.

  “Put your hand by your face.” He showed what he meant. I put my right hand on the left side of my face. Dad swung and hit it, and it made a realistic fist-hitting-face sound, without hurting me.

  He said, “Do it to me.” I did, and the same thing happened, but he also turned his face, recoiling as if he’d just received a serious blow to the head.

  “That’s how you make a punch look real,” he said.

  We reshot the scene while Dad filmed. His technique revolutionized our preteen filmmaking.

  * * *

  —

  Dad’s relationship with Pappy had its own tensions. Pappy and Diana, Dad’s mother, divorced when he was seven years old, and Dad and Jojo spent most of their childhood on the East Coast, where they were raised in Connecticut by Diana, whom I’d know as Granny, and her second husband, Bill Darrid. Bill, my uncle Billy, was Dad’s real father figure, and Dad loved him. Pappy, born Issur Danielovitch, had grown up in upstate New York as one of seven children in a Yiddish-speaking home. He later changed his name to Izzy Demsky and then to Kirk Douglas, and he was obsessed with his career. Dad only saw him during holiday breaks, visiting him on set or at his home in Palm Springs, where Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis were regular guests.

  Dad struggled with having a father who loomed so large. “He could do anything,” Dad would say later. “He was a fast gun-drawer, he could jump on horses, he could juggle, he could walk the oars of a ship.” Pappy was guilt-stricken about his disengagement and wrote letters in which he could be hypercritical. Dad grew up determined to prove he was more than “Little Kirk” and “Little Spartacus,” as he was sometimes called as a kid.

  Pappy eventually tried to make up for his earlier shortcomings, and he supported Dad’s acting and producing ambitions. He attended every one of Dad’s stage productions at UC Santa Barbara. He bought the film rights to the Broadway play Summertree and made it into a movie, casting Dad in the lead. He starred in the Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and later, unable to secure financing for a film version, gave the rights to Dad. That Dad then cast Jack Nicholson rather than Pappy in the lead role, and that both Dad and Jack won Oscars for it, resulted in a long-running beef between Pappy and Dad.

  * * *

  —

  After Romancing the Stone became a box-office success and established Dad as a leading man in 1984, his career sped up. Then, between 1987 and 1992, it went to the moon. With Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, and Basic Instinct, Dad became one of the world’s top movie stars. He won that Oscar for Wall Street. And between his roles in Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, and the unending tabloid coverage of various affairs he was alleged to be having, he became identified with a certain kind of edgy, sexual, imperfect man. He’d tell me, “Listen, because of my profession, people are really interested in me, and people like to make up stories. You can’t believe everything you read or hear.” With his late-career success, his net worth ballooned, and during this period he added to our collection of homes, buying S’Estaca in Mallorca and Wildcat Ranch in Aspen. He also became even busier and more stressed. I revered Dad. Every son admires his own father, but everyone in the world admired mine.

  * * *

  —

  My last name was something I was aware of mainly through other kids’ reactions to it. When I went to basketball camp at Westmont College in Santa Barbara one summer when I was around ten, and kids from other schools found out who my father was, a pack of them came up to me and asked about him, and I got defensive. Another time, I was at Blockbuster with my friend John, and a clerk scolded us for running around. John said, “Do you know who his father is?” I turned to him and said, “Don’t do that. I don’t like it.” I wanted to be Cameron, not Cameron Douglas.

  Every now and then, something would happen that put my family in the news. In 1991, when I was twelve, I remember Dad getting a call about Pappy being in a helicopter crash. The helicopter had plummeted forty feet. Dad was really worried and scared, and I was upset. We watched the TV news and learned that two people had died in the crash. Pappy was bruised from the neck down, black and blue but, miraculously, fine. Since we heard right away that he was okay, I felt almost immediate relief, though I was sad about the people who died. The fact that Pappy didn’t even break a bone only added to his aura of being an indestructible champion, a soldier—although, as we’d later find out, he was haunted by survivor guilt.

  After the crash, and later a stroke, Pappy changed. He became a better husband, reembraced Judaism, and focused on writing books. Dad’s own success, too, healed some of the old wounds. Maybe Dad’s repeating of his father’s foibles—seemingly putting career before family, and other women before wives—allowed him to empathize with the old man. They became much closer.

  When Pappy asked Dad whether he’d been a good father, Dad paused before answering: “Ultimately.” Pappy told Dad: “I had it much easier than you. I came from abject poverty, so there was no place to go but up.”

  Me on the Jewel of the Nile set.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t know it then, but Dad was partying heavily through the 1980s. When we still lived in Beverly Hills, every now and then he’d take me out for breakfast on the roof of a hotel on Sunset Boulevard by the 405 exit. In hindsight, it’s obvious to me that those were mornings-after, when he’d been out all night.

  * * *

  —

  Dad’s temper, when he and Mom were still together, scared me. At the dinner table, if I reached for the salt and accidentally knocked over my glass, he’d explode with anger or else brood silently, his jaw clenched, every pore of his body emitting the unmistakable message: This fucking fuck-up kid. When he was around, I walked on eggshells, feeling a persistent low-grade anxiety about provoking his wrath. I developed a tic where I’d put a finger in my hair and keep working it into corkscrews; my hair would become matted. Mom called it the curly-wurlies.

  On our Lake Shasta trip, a couple of Jet Skis came with the houseboat, and John and Jesse and I wanted to take them out. “Don’t get lost,” Dad said. “The boat’s going to be moving. Don’t lose sight of it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” we said. “Sure, sure, sure.”

  Then we took off on the Jet Skis and couldn’t find our way back to the boat. The lake had dozens of finger inlets that all looked the same. It got dark, and when we finally found the boat, hours later, Dad was irate. His arms were raised, his voice high-pitched. John later compared Dad, in that moment, to his angriest scenes in Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. Dad held on to things, and the incident became one of the exhibits he’d trot out to illustrate my knuckleheadedness. I’m sure there was no shortage of those.

  With Mom at a costume party.

  4

  2004: A Consummate Host

  L.A. is supposed to be my fresh start, my geographic cure, as such aspirational moves are called in 12-step meetings. I am putting three thousand miles between me and the nightclubs and DJ world that are inextricable from my cocaine use. I am leaving behind my drug family. Jay, whose favorite drug is crystal meth, is moving in with a dealer named Rob, to shoot ketamine and crystal and pornos. Under pressure from my friend Curtis, who I’m moving in with, I’ve sent E
rin back to her family in Pennsylvania. It’s probably good for both of us to be apart. I have some royalties coming in from It Runs in the Family, a movie I made with Dad and Pappy. I’m in a straight-to-video National Lampoon comedy coming out next year. I’m going to pursue an acting career and try to live a healthier life. This is my hope.

  Acting appeals to me for both the right and the wrong reasons. I have some experience with it and, I’m told, some talent. It seems to come naturally to me. Unlike DJing, which indulges my most self-destructive appetites, acting offers a path where being an artist and achieving success aren’t incompatible with living in a healthy way. It seems like something I have a real shot at. But I don’t appreciate the art of it, not really. Or the work it takes to build a career. Or the extraordinary, door-opening advantages of being a Douglas.

  * * *

  —

  Erin comes to visit a couple of weeks later and stays, moving in with me and Curtis in our apartment in Koreatown. Curtis just shakes his head, exasperated, but I guess my resolve to get clean isn’t as strong as my attraction to injecting cocaine and the life that goes along with that. What I want and what I need are at odds with each other, not for the first or last time in my life. I’m just not willing to let the drugs, or Erin, go.