* * *
—
Viviane is a great mother, and we’re a good team. She had some professional goals moving out here, which she’s already beginning to accomplish. I feel like we’re doing a really good job, between us, in raising Lua. She’s a happy little girl, developing so quickly. Viviane and I both like it out here.
One morning, I drive up to Santa Barbara. I haven’t been there in nearly ten years. It’s nice to be back behind the wheel of a car. I like the tranquility of driving on the open road. I’ve spent so much of my life around groups of people—in cities, nightclubs, prisons—and now I feel a sense of peace and quiet in my chest.
I start out on 101, the inland route. I used to make this drive all the time. There are fewer cops here than on the Pacific Coast Highway, and this was the way I’d come when I was driving with kilos of meth or coke in my trunk. I didn’t have a driver’s license, other than a Bermudan one I kept on me just in case. Especially if I was high, it would be easy to mindlessly start speeding, which could create a problem, so I’d always use cruise control and try to stay with the flow of traffic. One less thing to worry about. Now I use cruise control for the hell of it. It’s a good feeling to not worry, to know that I’m not doing anything I could get in trouble for.
With Lua Izzy Douglas.
I cut over to the PCH. Driving through the canyons near Topanga, I’m struck by the beauty. I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but the nature here is proof to me of a grand intelligence behind it. In Malibu, I pass Neptune’s Net, a restaurant where Dad took me when I was young. I remember him almost getting into a fight with a pair of hippies there who were arguing and cursing in front of me. I see a bunch of surfers out on the water, and I muse about their simple, idyllic lives. But everyone’s life is complex, if not complicated. I know people look at me and assume I have it easy. I pass some steep dunes. Once, when I was a kid, and Pappy was bringing me home after Cirque du Soleil, we pulled over here, and I climbed to the top of them and slid down. Driving through Oxnard, I pass the bar where I tried to kidnap Kevin, the high school friend who stole $11,000 from me. If I were to see him now, I know that any anger I might still feel wouldn’t overtake me.
The drive becomes a montage of my childhood. Golf N’ Stuff, which had my favorite arcade. Rincon, a surf spot I loved. The Golden Nugget, where I’d go with my friend John for breakfast. The Spot, for burgers. Stacky’s Seaside. Big Yellow House. Summerland. In Santa Barbara, I drive down State Street, past the Dolphin Fountain where I once crashed with a Secret Service agent hanging off my car. Out onto the Santa Barbara pier, which has been rebuilt after burning down a year after my crash there.
In Montecito, I see news vans and the aftermath of the recent mudslides. There was so much destruction. I pass the house Mom and Todd were going to move into. I pull into the driveway of the house on Hot Springs Road where I grew up. There’s major construction underway. I get out of the car and pick some jasmine, my favorite-smelling flower, and rub it between my fingers, bringing it to my nose and inhaling.
* * *
—
In July, I get permission to make a short trip back to Spain, where Mom is spending the summer with Imara and Hawk and Hudson. I haven’t been back in a decade, and returning to S’Estaca, my favorite place on earth, is a healing experience. I feel lighter and refreshed, like some of the darkness that has clung to me has been washed away.
My first night here, Mom takes me to dinner at a little restaurant on the Cala Deià where we always used to go. At S’Estaca, Juán makes red wines, including one called Cameron Reserva, which he has made for years. The restaurant, which is only open during the busy season, and whose owners have known Mom since she was a child, has kept a bottle of it since I went to prison, setting it out on the bar at the start of each season and packing it back up at the end. We take a boat to get to the restaurant. I have a happy reunion with the restaurant owners, who’ve known me since I was a kid. They suggest that we open the bottle, but we decide it might not taste the best, so we may as well leave it up there. Forty-five minutes into the meal, a handful of my childhood friends who I haven’t seen in years arrive. Oro, who now has a wife and two teenagers. Sam. Eva and her cousin Maria.
That night, there’s a near-eclipse of the moon, and it gets super red. After dinner, we pack into a boat to go look at it. On our way out to sea, I witness the most amazing shooting star of my life, with a long tail and appearing very close. When we’re out a ways, Sam, who’s always been wild, says he’s going to swim back to shore. That sounds pretty amazing to me, and I jump in first. The phosphorescence is active, and we trail glowing streamers behind us as we swim. I flip onto my back and just float there, looking up at the stars. The sky is so clear, and we’re so far from a city, that it feels like we’re in a planetarium. After all the years in prison when I fantasized about the future, now I close my eyes and imagine I’m back behind bars, then open them, taking in the sea and the sky and the stars and letting my appreciation for my freedom fill me.
Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.
—Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”
Acknowledgments
I’d like to acknowledge all those who have contributed to my journey thus far, both positively and negatively. You have my gratitude for helping to shape the man I am today.
Also to those special few whose direct contributions to the making of this book have been invaluable:
Benjamin Wallace, in particular. Thank you, my friend, for your guidance and your gift.
Janis Donnaud and Peter Gethers. Each of you is an integral piece of this work.
And: Brett Rapkin, for your keen insight and honesty.
The quote on this page is from “Dirge” by Stevie Smith, which appeared in Mother, What Is Man?, Jonathan Cape, 1942), and the quote on this page is from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (Scribe, 2003).
Illustration Credits
1 Courtesy of the author
2 Courtesy of the author
3 Judie Burstein/Zuma
4 Courtesy of the author
5 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
6 Courtesy of Annie Leibovitz and Jann Wenner
7 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
8 Courtesy of the author
9 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
10 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
11 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
12 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
13
Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
14 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
15 Michael Montfort
16 WENN
17 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
18 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
19 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
20 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
21 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
22 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
23 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
24 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
25 Courtesy of the author
26 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
27 Adam Nemser/PhotoLink
28 Jim Henderson
29 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
30 Ben Marsh
31 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
32 Courtesy of the author
33 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
34 Courtesy of the author
35 BOP website
36 Courtesy of the author
37 Courtesy of the author
38 Courtesy of the author
39 Courtesy of the author
40 Courtesy of the author
41 Courtesy of the author
42 Courtesy of the author
43 Courtesy of the author
44 Courtesy of the author
45 Courtesy of the author
46 Courtesy of the Michael Douglas Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
47 Courtesy of the author
48 Courtesy of the author
49 Courtesy of the author
50 Courtesy of the author
A Note About the Author
Cameron Douglas is an actor. He lives in Los Angeles.
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