My various internments weren’t respites from my fighting lifestyle but opportunities to practice it. The kids called juvie “gladiator school.” We were all pretty proud to be there, and we all had troubled father-son relationships. Each of us was seeking an identity, looking to test ourselves, and fighting was the best way we knew how to do it.
Entering the system, I hadn’t been afraid to fight, but my experiences there made me much more comfortable with combat, and even with getting beaten up, because for me fighting was less about victory than about balls. I had many opportunities to sharpen my skills. I got into fights at Juvenile Hall, at Los Prietos, and at Sherburne House, where my nickname was Bear, because of how rough and physical I was.
It was in these outposts of the juvenile justice system that I fully internalized an essential truth of hand-to-hand fighting: Sometimes the stronger kid prevails, but usually it’s the fiercer kid—the one who’s there to win—who comes out on top. That seemed to come naturally to me. I started to grasp the importance of shock-and-awe in fights. I’d skip the whole pushing-and-posturing thing. I wanted to move first and get the first blow in, especially with someone I thought could hurt me.
After a few more months back in Juvenile Hall, I was released to Mom’s house, but I still had to show up for school every day at La Posada, a trailer behind Juvenile Hall, where the principal doubled as my probation officer.
* * *
—
I’d taken a sick satisfaction when I was made a ward of the state, right in front of Mom. I had tried to tell her that reporting my home-probation violation would have serious consequences. A home supervision officer had tried to tell her. But she lived in a world of her own at times, and we’d both suffered the consequences. Now our relationship was less mother-son than I am the man of the house, in her house. I loved her, but sometimes I didn’t want to be bothered with her.
On a boat with my friend Jay, whose face has been obscured to protect his identity, and Jann Wenner.
During this period, Mom had an ever-shifting cast of houseguests and hangers-on. One of the best of Mom’s inner circle was Suzan Pelfrey, her on-call shaman, who lived up in Ojai and whose guidance Mom sought on decisions big and small. Then there was Ann, a plump, long-haired, beatifically smiling yoga teacher who was a lovely, grounding presence in the house and who also had a stash of psychedelic mushroom powder. My old friend Isaac and I would go into her room in the main house at 2 a.m. and wake her with a short break dancing routine, then cajole her into giving us some of the magic dust.
After Ann left, a smooth and handsome didgeridoo player named Patrick moved into her room. He’d come down to the pool house when my friends and I were hanging out there, and at first I liked him, but then his sponging became excessive. He convinced Mom to bankroll a didgeridoo album. Eventually, Jay got into a fistfight with him, and he moved out.
Finally, Mom became involved with a man I did like. Todd Raines was a property manager in Santa Barbara who lived in a beautiful house he’d built himself. He was a genuinely good guy, a hard worker who’d made his own success and had some tough breaks. His wife had died, and he was raising their kids by himself. He was a good father, and he loved Mom and was loyal to her. He always treated me like a friend, and he and I hung out a lot together. He and Mom would date for several years and eventually become engaged.
* * *
—
My sojourn as a ward of the state had not reformed me. When I was seventeen, over Halloween weekend, Dad took me and Jay to Las Vegas. We checked into a suite at the MGM Grand, and then Dad headed off to the blackjack tables. As he left, he said, “Just promise me one thing: no fighting.”
“Of course. Yeah. Sure. Absolutely. No problem.”
Jay and I ate some mushrooms, then headed to the new Scream Park, which had just opened on the lot next to the hotel. Ahead of us, in the line for bumper cars, was a group of teenage tag-bangers, Southern California quasi-gangsters/quasi-graffiti-artists, with a couple of girls. When the gate opened and the scramble for cars began, one of the tag-bangers and I were stragglers, and soon it was just the two of us, with only one car left. I shoved him out of the way and got into the car. The bar clicked shut, locking me in. Then he slapped me, which was much more disrespectful than if he’d hit me, and got in the passenger side of one of his friends’ cars.
When the announcer said, “Everyone go in the same direction,” I spun my car around and floored it, heading against the flow of traffic and straight at the kid who’d slapped me. I sideswiped him as we yelled at each other. When the ride stopped, I leaped out of my car and ran over to him. A bunch of other people got between us, and one said, “What are you doing? There are police everywhere here.” This snapped me back to reality, and we went our separate ways. For the next hour, I was enraged. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the kid had slapped me.
An hour and a half later, Jay and I were in a zigzag line for the Haunted House when I heard, “Hey bitch, fuck you.” It was the group from the bumper cars. I jumped out of line and said, “You know what? Let’s go,” and we all headed to the parking lot. On the way, I said to the girls in their group, “Listen, as soon as I’m done beating your friend up, we have a nice villa with a Jacuzzi.” The girls giggled. The guy was fuming.
The moment we reached the parking lot, we started fighting. I got him down on the ground and held him there with one arm, punching him with the other. People were telling me to stop, and pulling on my shirt, and one of the girls was kicking me, but I was fully in the grip of the mushrooms by this point and in such a fury that I just kept hitting this kid.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. I jumped up and turned around. A kid was standing close to me, holding a knife. He’d been aiming for my liver and hit bone instead. Blood was pouring from my elbow. The other guys picked up rocks and started throwing them at me. Jay had taken off, and now I was getting hit in the head with stones. The guys ran at me, jumped on me. I fell to my hands and knees, and they were on my back, punching and kicking me. I broke away and managed to outrun them, but I was leaking blood from my arm and from my eye, where I’d caught a solid punch.
Back in the hotel room, I got ice, yelled at Jay for ditching me, and braced for Dad’s reaction. When he came in, he said, “Oh hey, boys…Man, I had a good night. I did pretty good at the tables.” Then he saw me, and my shiner, and the big knots on my face.
“What the fuck?! The one fucking thing I asked you not to do!”
He called for the hotel doctor to come up, and the guy gave me some stitches in the elbow. When I went back to school, one of my eyes was still completely red.
Dad was angry about that one for a while, and I think seeing the damage to my body scared him. It was one thing for him to hear about my brawls and imagine them in the abstract, but another to see the ugly outcome up close.
* * *
—
I still had a strict curfew, but it was overseen by home supervision officers I knew from juvie, who were fond of me and lenient about enforcing it. I was smoking pot and snorting crystal and its dirtier cousin, crank. I was playing a game of chicken with myself that I was determined not to lose. I was crashing high school and college parties late into the night, but somehow I also kept making it to school in the trailer at La Posada the next day.
Every morning, on the bulletin board, there’d be a list of names of people who had to give urine by the end of the day. If your name was on it, you couldn’t use the bathroom until you’d provided a sample. It was stressful, but I passed every time. With only three weeks left at La Posada, I’d almost made it. Then my supervision level would be almost back to normal, and I’d at last be able to return to Carpinteria High.
14
2006: Oblivion
In Dublin, Erin and I have the whole day to kill until our flight back to the States, and to ease the pain we order two double vodkas each, charged to the production. Room service brings the four drinks, we chug them, and we order
again. The sickness is getting worse. I’m puking all over the floor, rushing to the bathroom with bouts of diarrhea, babbling. Now I’m plastered, too.
The flight is another eleven hours of misery. Erin asks a cabin attendant if she has Advil. “We have food poisoning,” Erin adds. The woman scrunches her face in sympathy and keeps serving us booze.
This whole time, I’m torn about Dad’s ultimatum to kiss Erin goodbye and keep a relationship with him, or stay with her and go my own way. I can’t believe I blew the acting job. I chew over what Dad said. He’s always been kind of distant—and in fairness, I’ve given him plenty of reasons not to trust me—but the whole conversation is difficult to swallow on multiple levels. Comparing me to Uncle Eric, yet again, is sobering. And now he’s giving up on me? There’s part of me, I think, that has given up on myself. I know I’ve blown so many opportunities. I’m not living the life I feel I was meant to or that the people who love me want me to; and I’m not having the kind of relationship with my family that I’d like.
But I also have a lot of resentment toward Dad. I’m only skimming by financially, but he continues to restrict my access to some money Pappy put in trust for me. I understand his reasons. And in fact he has helped us get a better apartment to move into when we return from Ireland. But it all feels infantilizing. And now he’s cutting me off. In my anger, I find resolve: Time to get serious about making money and taking care of myself and my family of friends.
Right now, to me, “getting serious” doesn’t mean abandoning the path I’m on. It means committing more fully to it. In these early days of my new addiction, I see heroin as the missing piece of the puzzle. What happened in Ireland wasn’t a sign that I should quit using; it was a sign that I should stop trying to live a normal life. Withdrawal from heroin may be terrible, but the heroin itself is making me feel more competent, more able to take care of the things that I need to take care of. I’d felt utterly lost on cocaine. Compared to that, heroin is a safety blanket, and right now I’m focused on the moment when we land. Gabriel is supposed to pick us up at the airport. “He better have cheeva with him,” I say to Erin.
“Cameron, you’re five days into detoxing, why start using again?”
It’s true. We’re through the worst of the withdrawal. After another two or three days, we’ll probably be in the clear. But physical discomfort wins the moment. “Fuck it,” I say.
* * *
—
Erin and I emerge from the terminal like walking dead, pale and sweaty and rank, shrinking in the morning light. Gabriel is at the curb, standing next to his Jetta, and helps us with our bags.
“You got cheeva?” I ask.
“Nah, bro.” He shrugs.
I’m furious. I tell him to drop us off and go get some. At least we have our new apartment. Erin calls the new landlord to say we’re back early, and to ask if we can move in now. But the landlord says Dad called and broke the lease, and we no longer have the place.
Motherfucker. This is real. He knows I have no money and nowhere to go, and he is cutting me off. How can he do this?
I have Gabriel drop us at the Rodeway Inn, a cheap hotel on Beverly Boulevard. Erin calls her mom, who lets us use her credit card to pay for a night there. Then I call my friend Adam in New York and he wires me $2,000, which will cover a room for a month.
It takes Gabriel a long, painful hour to bring us the dope. Finally he arrives, I shoot up, and the world feels tolerable again.
* * *
—
I need money fast, and I still owe Emmanuel the ounce of crystal that Jay was supposed to send to him. Gabriel fronts me a replacement ounce, then Emmanuel gives me the green light and sends me money for another pound. The shipment brings me, the middleman, $10,000 in profit, which I split fifty-fifty with Gabriel. Within a couple of days, Erin and I have $15,000 to live on. After months of scraping by, we’re suddenly flush.
* * *
—
In the first weeks after I return from Ireland, Dad and I don’t speak. Then, as a conciliatory gesture to him, I agree to meet again with Candy Finnigan, the interventionist.
When we meet in West Hollywood, I look at her and say, “You know, Candy, this isn’t going to end well.” I have a sense of foreboding about my life, and about my relationship with my family.
“You’re not a psychic,” she says. “You don’t know how things are going to end.”
Candy exudes a sincere desire to help me, and she sends me to a doctor for a Suboxone prescription. I get the prescription, but I don’t fill it.
I know Dad is trying to help me, but if help means not using drugs anymore, then I’ll pass. Drugs are still the one consistent, dependable thing in my life, and cheeva is all the medicine I need. And now I have income. Emmanuel’s orders become regular, and my crystal operation quickly expands. Within a month, I’m shipping him three to four pounds a week. Dad and I meet for dinner a couple of times. I tell him I’m taking the Suboxone, and he can see that I’m doing well and look healthy. Appeased by my meeting with Candy and apparent sobriety, he invites Erin and me to move out of the Rodeway and in with him in his rental.
With Dad, Dylan, Catherine, and Carys.
My feeling is: If it seems to everyone else that I’m doing great, and I feel like I’m doing great, then what does it matter whether it’s Suboxone or heroin? If I’m doing well, I’m doing well. I’m under the misimpression that there’s nothing a doctor can prescribe me that will affect me in the way that I need to be affected. Many years later, I’ll learn I was wrong. I’ll wish I had taken the Suboxone, once I know what it does. But right now I have zero trust when it comes to authority figures. My knee-jerk reaction to people who are supposedly trying to put me on the right path is: I don’t believe them. They’re all full of shit. I’m also afraid of the withdrawal.
At Dad’s rental, Erin and I have our own little wing, and Dad gives me one of his cars, a big, older, gunmetal-gray BMW with a V12 engine. Dad works days, but we spend many afternoons and evenings together. He’s inclusive, insisting we join him for dinner. A couple of weeks later, Catherine, my stepmother, and their kids, Dylan and Carys, arrive, and it feels like we’re a little family. Sometimes Erin and I babysit my half-siblings. Though there’s unspoken strain among us all, Dad and Catherine are both making an effort.
This is actually some of the best time I’ve spent with Dad that I can remember. I’m present and available. I’m not going out every night, or sleeping all day. I run errands during the daytime but have no urge to be out and about after dark. Every day, when Dad comes home from work, I’m there, we sit down, and we hang out. It’s a nice time, and I’m really happy. As Dad’s work in L.A. ends, and he and Catherine and the kids get ready to return to Bermuda, Erin and I find our own place in Laurel Canyon. I leave a card for Dad that says “Muchas Gracias” and has a picture of a Chihuahua in a sombrero.
Dad,
I just wanted to let you know how much it has meant to me for you to open up your house to me and in doing so opening the doors to a fresh, new loving and strong bond that I have been missing so much. This was a very special time for me and fills my heart with a feeling that I have been missing for a long time. I love you Dad. Have a kick ass day. Sincerely your son,
Cameron
15
2006: Logistics
My new place, on Cole Crest Drive, is a classic Hills house on stilts, with floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, a pool and wraparound deck, and an exhilarating view of the city below. Best of all, from my wary new perspective, the house is invisible from the street. There’s no parking spot, just a gate, and then a long, narrow staircase, built into the side of a slope, that leads down to the house. On the day we move in, I have to call the Realtor, because I can’t even find it.
As I’m building my business, I take a lot of precautions. Erin and I wear gloves and wipe down outgoing packages with disinfectant to avoid leaving fingerprints. We buy a vacuum sealer to shrink-wrap our drug s
hipments, thinking that will keep police dogs from detecting them. I minimize the time I’m in possession of crystal, shipping it as soon as I receive it. Nothing on the packages can be traced to me, and I keep a buffer between me and the transactions. To receive cash, I have P.O. boxes under different names and in several locations around L.A. I keep most of the money in those boxes, staggering my bank deposits to stay below the $10,000 single-deposit threshold that triggers a bank’s reporting requirements. I pay for shipments using an MTV corporate FedEx account number I have from a friend, and I address the packages to a P.O. box in New York that Emmanuel has under a false name. I use an anonymous e-mail service that has its servers offshore. To communicate with Gabriel and Emmanuel, I cycle through burner phones and devise codes for surreptitiously communicating each new phone number to them.
Anytime I get new crystal, I test it before shipping. I tweak and play Oblivion for twelve, sixteen hours straight. Sometimes I play a noble hero, other times a mercenary thief.
I’m low-tech in my packaging. I put two, three pounds of meth in a Ziploc bag, inside a box, inside another box, confident that this will defeat the X-ray machines at FedEx, and the shipments keep going through without a hitch.
For a while, everything goes smoothly. Having started doing this out of desperation, I continue to do it for the income and the lifestyle. My attitude is Fuck It. I’ve given up on any semblance of a normal life, and this new one seems to be working.
Long Way Home Page 13