Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

by Bill Clegg

  At some point after Mark arrives, Stephen stops speaking to me directly. There seems to be some new rule that Mark is the only one who can address me, and when he does, he is wildly polite, overly complimentary (the apartment, my looks). It’s as if I’m in the forecourt of a long con, and instead of feeling hesitant or cautious, I’m thrilled.

  The night grunts on until ten or so the next morning. Stephen and Mark amble out into the day, and by Saturday night I have invited them over again. By Monday morning, my bank account is empty and Mark has suggested he and I get together on our own sometime that week. Noah calls a dozen or so times, and I let the landline ring, turn the cell phone off, and don’t call him back. On Monday afternoon, my assistant comes into my office and says Noah is on the line, upset and demanding to speak to me. I close the door, and he cries on the other end of the line and asks me to please stop. Could I just please stop. I feel awful and tell him of course and I’m sorry and that it won’t happen again. He presses for details and I get mad. Amazingly, he apologizes. I throw Stephen’s number away. I throw Mark’s card away. But it doesn’t matter. Both call over the next weeks and months, and at some moment, I can’t remember exactly when or which one, I write a number down. And at some other moment, not long after, I call.

  First Door

  It’s time to go. He’s had to pee for hours, but it’s always the last thing he wants to do. The problem—that’s what his parents call it—the problem is that if he goes, meaning, to the bathroom, he won’t actually be able to go. In the way he describes it to himself then, it hasn’t built up enough yet. There isn’t enough pressure. He will wait a little while. Wait until dinner is over, when no one will notice if he’s gone for too long. Sometimes it takes as long as an hour. Sometimes he can’t do it at all. And sometimes it only takes a few minutes. He never knows until he’s there.

  It’s after dinner and he’s standing in front of the avocado green toilet. Noises happen behind the closed door—a dropped ice tray, cursing, breaking glass, louder cursing, a phone ringing. The house swells with urgency. From somewhere inside these sounds, a voice that will always remind him of wind chimes calls, Billy, are you all right?

  Billy…, his mother calls again, but her voice fades.

  Nothing for a few moments. Just the green toilet. Hurry, he thinks. Hurry. His hands work furiously over the end of his penis. A loud knock at the door. Then two. A different voice. His father’s. Jesus, Willie, don’t make a career out of it in there.

  Little-guy cords—usually navy blue, sometimes green—bunch at his feet. Fruit of the Looms wrinkle just below his knees. He’s been in there for over half an hour. He’s come close at least three times, but each time it doesn’t work. Doesn’t happen. He knows it’s going to sting—like bits of glass trying to push out—but he just wants it over with. He shuffles in front of the bowl—left, right, left, right—and squeezes the end of his penis. Rubs it with both hands. The pressure builds and his brow is sweating. He has a terrified sense that if his parents find out, there will be trouble. His father has told him that he has to stop taking so long in the bathroom. When he asks his son why he jumps around and makes such a big production of it all, the boy doesn’t have an answer. Cut it out is what his father tells him, and he wishes he could.

  He runs the water in the sink to cover the sound. The shuffle becomes a dance, the kneading becomes a fevered pinching. From a faraway room he hears his older sister, Kim, crying. His father yells her name. A door slams. His mother calls out. A kettle of boiling water whistles from the kitchen. None of these sounds have to do with him. But someone—he can’t tell who—is knocking at the door now. Just knocking, no voice. The boy is a panicked animal—jerking and jumping and pinching before the bowl. He braces for another knock. There is more shouting from down the hall. The sound of something breaking. His hands, his legs—his whole body riots around the pressure at his middle. He’s sure his parents can hear him, convinced they will come bursting through the locked door at any moment. He tries to stop the jumping but he can’t. It feels as if the whole house—his parents, his sister, the cats, the whistling kettle—has gathered on the other side of the door.

  In a moment—the one he’s desperate for but can’t create—none of it will matter. In that moment, he won’t hear the slamming and banging and yelling. As the stinging pressure crests and his body flaps away from him, he won’t hear anything. In that streaking moment when he loses control and everything fades out in a flash of pain and relief, he will spray the wall, the floor, the radiator, himself.

  He doesn’t see any of the mess until the little oblivion passes and he’s able to steady himself and direct the pee into the bowl. He aims toward the back to avoid the ruckus of water and it goes on forever. He sees there’s a big clean-up job to be done, and he’s already anxious about what to say when he’s on the other side of the door. Once he’s finally finished peeing, he begins pulling yards of toilet paper from the roll, spools that ribbon around his feet and begin to soak up the pool of urine on the tile. He wipes down the toilet and the walls behind and to the side. He gets on his hands and knees and begins sweeping the damp away in long wide arcs. He pats his pants down with the tissue until it pills and crumbles in his hands. He puts too much toilet paper in the bowl and it clogs and the water rises. He knows to put his hand up the drain and yank the paper free to avoid another mess. He plunges his arm in, tugs frantically at the clog, and, like an answered prayer, the bowl empties. Just as this happens the knocking begins again and now it’s both parents at the door. His pants and underwear are still bunched around his ankles. He hasn’t pulled them up yet because he knows that beads of blood have sprung up at the tip of his penis and it will take a few dabs of tissue and a minute or two for it to dry before it’s safe. Often he rushes through this part and will have to throw his underwear out later as little brown spots of blood bud and dry in the white fabric. He’s tried stuffing toilet paper in there, but it usually slips to the side and doesn’t work. Sometimes he forgets and tosses the underwear in the hamper and sees the dryer-dried briefs folded and spotty in his dresser drawer days later. His mother never says a word to him about the briefs, about the peeing—about any of it. This has been going on for as long as he can remember. He has no memory of standing at a toilet and peeing when he wants to.

  What are you DOING? thunders from the other side of the door. His father again. The boy calls out that he is coming, just a minute. He mutters to himself—Please God, please—actually, he’s been muttering this to himself since he locked the bathroom door over forty-five minutes ago. He will never be more specific in his plea. His pants and shirt are soaking with water, with urine. He pats himself down one more time with a wad of toilet paper and puts it in the wastepaper basket under an empty tissue box and a used toilet paper roll. He wipes everything down, again, just one more time—the radiator, the bowl, the toilet seat, the floor. He scans the room again for signs of his time there. He wipes, with his hand, the sweat dripping from his brow and pats his hair carefully into place. He breathes in, murmurs another quiet prayer, turns off the light, and hopes the light in the hall is off so his soak-stained clothes aren’t obvious.

  He calms his breath, palms the doorknob, and braces for what’s on the other side. He is five years old.

  Flight

  Snow is falling outside the Holland Tunnel. Cars aren’t moving. Horns sound and drivers yell. My flight to Berlin is scheduled to take off in less than an hour, and there is no way I’m going to make it. Noah is already there, having arrived at the Berlin Film Festival directly from Sundance to show his film two days ago. I call my assistant, who booked a four-o’clock car for a five thirty flight, which I only now realize isn’t enough time, particularly with the snow. It is, of course, not his fault, but I tell him it is and that my life is about to change, and not for the better, as a result. I hang up. These will be my last words to him, to anyone in my office.

  I have nearly a full bag—three medium-size rocks and a scat
tering of crumbs—in my pocket. A clean stem and lighter, wrapped in a kitchen towel, are wedged somewhere in my L.L. Bean duffel bag, between manuscripts, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a pile of Kiehl’s products. The driver is a young, deep-voiced Eastern European woman, and I’ve already sung her my if-you-only-knew-how-important-it-is-that-I-get-there-on-time song to persuade her to work some kind of magic and levitate us past the traffic. She just stares at me through the rearview mirror. I wonder if she can see how strung out I am, how far over the line.

  I know this is going to be the last straw. Even if Noah forgives me again, despite the fact that he knows I’ve been using since I left him at Sundance, Kate will not. I’ve been out for almost two weeks and canceled three meetings with her to go over our long-avoided partnership agreement and finances. I have told everyone—friends, clients, employees—that I have thrown my back out and am going to doctors, acupuncturists, and masseurs. But the truth is that since I got back from Sundance five days early, I’ve been rattling around the apartment in a thick cloud of crack smoke. I’ve left the building only a few times, to run across 8th Street to the cash machine and next door to the deli for lighters and Brillo wire. The liquor store has made daily deliveries of Ketel One, and I’ve called the housekeeper to tell her I’m home sick and not to come.

  At some point before getting in the car, I send Kate an e-mail telling her to do what she needs to do, that I’ve relapsed and that she should protect herself in whatever way is necessary. Before I press Send, I look out the window at the thick flakes of snow coming down in slow motion between the buildings and think I am doing her a favor. Giving her permission to get out and move on. But I feel next to nothing as I end our partnership, our business, my career. I regard that nothing the same way you observe a cut on your finger just after accidentally slicing it with a knife but seconds before the blood appears. For a moment it’s like looking at someone else’s finger, as if the cut you made has not broken your skin, the blood about to flow not your own.

  I finally get to the airport and race ahead of the line to the first-class counter. The woman there tells me right away that I’ve missed my flight. I ask her if there is another and she tells me there is one that goes through Amsterdam in three hours. Without hesitating I buy a first-class, full-fare ticket. I have over $70,000 in my checking account at this point, and I think, barely think, that five or so thousand is nothing. I ask her if there is a hotel at the airport, because I want to lie down and rest before my flight. She looks at me and pauses before telling me there is a Marriott a short cab ride away. I thank her, check my bag through for the seven-o’clock flight, and take my ticket. In the cab, I call Noah and leave him a message that I missed my flight—The traffic was terrible, I say in mock frustration—but I’m booked on the next one out.

  The cabdriver is a handsome, dark-eyed Hispanic guy, and I immediately strike up a conversation. How I get to the moment when I ask him if he parties, I don’t know, but I get there. He says yes and I say, With what? and he answers, Beer and pot. He asks me with what and I come right out and tell him. He pauses and asks me if I have any on me and I say yes. He asks if he can see it and, without hesitating, I reach into my pocket, pull out a rock, and hold it up between the two front seats. He slows the cab, eyes the drug seriously, but says nothing. When I pull it back, he laughs and tells me he’s never seen it before, and I ask if he wants to hang out. He tells me sure, later, after his shift, and gives me his cell phone number. I take it, even though I know my flight will take off before he’s done. He doesn’t say his name so I look at the driver’s ID framed in Plexiglas behind the passenger seat and notice that it’s obscured by a piece of newspaper. I ask him his name and he mumbles something inaudible. I ask him again and he says what I think is Rick.

  Something in his manner shifts as we pull up to the Marriott. He suddenly cools, and I’ll remember, later, that he barely asks for the fare, that when I hand it to him, it seems irrelevant. I hardly register this, since I’m preoccupied with how lucky it is that I missed the flight, that I now have a few hours to get high.

  I get to the room and shut the door behind me as if I’m closing the curtain on a great, terrifying stage where I’ve had to perform a grueling part, the skin of which I can now finally shed. I take off my coat and pack a big hit. Crumbs scatter on the bedspread as I hold the stem up to light, but I don’t care. I pull hard and hold the smoke in for as long as I can. When I exhale, the stress of the last few hours disappears and in its place swells a pearly bliss.

  I soon become aware of my body and feel restless in my clothes. I take my sweater off between the first and second hits. They seem like part of a constricting costume for the performance on the other side of the door and of no use now. By the third hit I’m naked, though I grab a towel from the bathroom and tie it low around my hips. I will always do this when I get high. I will always think my torso looks lean and muscled and sexy. I will always, many times, clock myself in the mirror and think, Not bad. I will remember some version of the lines from Ben Neihart’s novel Hey Joe, when the narrator checks himself out in the mirror and thinks smugly that he’s keeping his shit tight. I will, to be perfectly honest, turn myself on.

  I scooch the towel lower down my hips, cinch it a little tighter, and begin to get restless for company. I call the number of the taxi driver but no one answers and it doesn’t click to voice mail. I do this thirty or so times in the next hour. I put what’s left of the bag in an ashtray and thrill to what seems like an endless amount. I’m sloppy as I pack these hits. The bedspread and floor are soon speckled with crumbs. I know that at some point I will be on my knees picking them up, trying to tell the difference between crack crumbs and other debris. There will never be a time when I smoke crack that doesn’t end with me on my knees, sometimes for hours—hunched over carpets, rugs, linoleum, tile—sifting desperately through lint and cat litter and dirt, fingering the floor, like a madman, for crumbs. I know this is where it will end up. As I pack those lazy crumb-scattering hits in the beginning, I will, each time, think of the floor like a retirement account. Little bits neglected into a place where I will seek them out later. It will comfort me to know there is somewhere to go when the bag empties, something to do while I’m waiting for the next delivery. But in the beginning, in the abundant beginning, this will always seem a long way off.

  In the room at the Newark Airport Marriott, as in most rooms where there is crack, porn flickers on the television. This time it’s straight and soft and on Pay-per-view. I pay for all six movies and flip between them as one scene disappoints or dulls. I have drunk the small bottle of white wine, the two beers, and both small bottles of vodka from the minibar by the time I realize I need to get back to the airport and onto the plane. Since there is still a large pile of drugs left in the ashtray, I wonder whether I should go at all.

  But I do. I let my stem cool and wrap it in a wad of tissue paper. I gather the two rocks and the remaining crumbs from the ashtray and put them back in the mini zip-lock they came in. I ditch the towel, scramble into my clothes, and shove the pipe, bag, and lighter into the front pocket of my jeans. I scan the room a dozen times. Clean every surface and pick up whatever crumbs I can from the floor. I unpack the bag and pipe and lighter at least three times to smoke just-one-more-hit before leaving, to get just the right high to face the lobby and the airport. I leave less than an hour to check in and get on the plane. Noah has called three or four times, but I have not picked up, nor have I listened to his messages.

  I don’t bother checking out. I go straight to the taxi stand and get in the only cab there. The driver is a big black guy—fat but muscular, linebacker-style. Forty, maybe fifty. The stem, still hot from heavy use in the room minutes before, burns in my jeans pocket like a little oven. Of course I ask him if he parties. He says he does, and I ask him if he ever smokes rock. Sure do, he says, and right then, within the first minute of getting into the cab, I know that I am not getting on the plane. That I will probably never make
it to Berlin.

  So let’s hang out, I say to the linebacker behind the wheel, and he says, Sure thing. As we edge up to the Continental departures drop-off, I tell him to head back to the hotel, that I’ll catch a later flight. He doesn’t question or hesitate, just pulls away from the terminal and says, again, Sure thing. I call Continental’s 800 number and tell them I’m sick and can’t make the flight and could they transfer the ticket to the next night. Unbelievably, they can and they do. I am booked in a first-class seat the next night at eight. Acres of time, a bag of crack, company lined up, and a hotel less than a minute away. I’ve just missed two flights, e-mailed Kate and relinquished any say or stake in our agency, tossed my career down the chute, and stood up my beloved and no doubt frantic boyfriend. I’ve done all these things and I couldn’t be happier.

  I leave a message on Noah’s cell phone saying they canceled the second flight and that I will be flying out tomorrow. I speak slowly and calmly, with just a little can-you-believe-it annoyance so as to seem normal and not high. Once I’ve left the message, I turn the phone off so that I don’t have to hear it ring when he calls back.