Running with Monsters

by Bob Forrest

  I could feel something was different even as the key slid into the lock on the front door. I knew something was up as soon as I stepped inside. The place was … empty. Marin had decided to split while I was away. That was a shock, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I didn’t really care. The house seemed bigger with all of her stuff gone. And there were other changes. One, in particular, that I had noticed before I left town. A lot of people I knew had jumped on the sobriety bandwagon and had ridden it to what they said was a better life. Now that I had stopped the booze and drugs for the moment, I hoped they were right. It did make staying sober easier, even though most of the time I felt scared and alone. At least I had company.

  I had been introduced to the twelve steps at Hazelden and I continued to attend meetings once I was back in Los Angeles. This was a super-secret society that had its own customs, a big book that spelled out its mission, and, at its core, a set of actions that one had to follow to attain enlightenment and freedom from addiction. Of course, from the start I was schooled in the absolute importance of secrecy. This was not stuff for the outside world. It wasn’t fodder for gossip. Whoever dared to break the code of silence would be cast out and forever be condemned to wander the wasteland. Or at least that’s how it seemed.

  I wasn’t completely sold on this organization or its program, but everywhere I looked I found friends of mine or old using buddies who were its devotees. A lot of them were in the music business. A couple were close friends. Under the influence of this system, I found that I was a lot closer to Anthony Kiedis than I ever had been when we did drugs together. But something inside didn’t feel right. This community had allowed me entry, but I just never felt truly a part of it. The meetings were full of people I couldn’t relate to, even my friends, like Anthony. They seemed to be buying into something wholeheartedly and I was much more guarded and suspicious about the whole idea.

  Bob Timmins was a guy who specialized in getting help for entertainers, actors, and musicians. Celebrities. In Los Angeles, there was no shortage of those and a lot of them had drug problems. A former addict himself, Timmins had found a niche and he worked it well. When I arrived back home, I heard about a kind of group therapy meeting that was made up of mostly musicians and actors whom Timmins had put together. “You should go, Bob,” said Anthony Kiedis. “It might click with you.” It was at a recording studio I was well familiar with, and I got myself together and walked over. It was a Wednesday night. I found my way inside. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the group members as they sat in a circle on metal folding chairs and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee from flimsy white Styrofoam cups. Oh … my … God. What the fuck am I doing here? I wondered as I looked around. These were the heroes of my youth. These were guys from all my favorite bands growing up.

  I sat down as the meeting started. The speakers began sharing the same generalized secret-society-speak I had hoped to get away from. It was the same spiel I heard at every other meeting I had attended. I just tuned it out. As I daydreamed and looked around at their iconic faces, their songs started playing in my head: “Don’t stop belieeeeving!” Oh, God, I thought, now I’ll never get that song out of my head.

  “I am Iron Man! Duh duh duh duh duh duh.” Okay, I thought. That one’s a little better.

  “Rock of ages … Still rollin’ … Rock ’n’ rollin’!” This was fun. I was glad to have found something productive to do during this charade. Then, just as I began to groove to my mental jukebox, he walked in. His presence was enough to zoom me back to attention. He was my idol. In my mind, he was the greatest musical genius of all time. My whole life, up to this point, down to the brand of cigarettes I smoked, was based on him. I was in the presence of slender white royalty. When I was a kid I would sing along to his albums. I had posters of him all over my bedroom walls and here he was, in this little recording studio, breathing the same air as me.

  “I tried to kill myself a few weeks ago,” he stated with matter-of-fact English reserve. “This struggle with drugs had me at my wit’s end. I didn’t know what else to do but to swallow some pills, wash them down with some wine, and then walk into the sea off Malibu. Rather dramatic, I know.”

  The room fell silent. Always the consummate showman, he laughed and said that this was all inspired by the 1954 musical version of the movie A Star Is Born.

  He flashed his famous smile, which was both vulpine and warm. “I felt just like James Mason as Norman Maine, but the water was too cold.” He laughed. “And there was no Judy Garland waiting for me when I walked back to shore.” While the other members of the group laughed and nodded, I was torn. On the one hand, I thought, If this guy, with all his success and talent, has that kind of struggle with addiction, there’s absolutely no hope for me. On the other hand, I thought, A Judy Garland movie? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s totally lame. I stayed and politely listened to everybody’s stories, and I went back the next Wednesday night and the Wednesday after that, and it became a habit. It was entertaining, and now that I was staying clean, there wasn’t much else to do. I never shared during the meetings. I just listened. Timmins was a big proponent of the idea that celebrities needed to be protected. They couldn’t just mingle with ordinary civilians at open-to-all twelve-step meetings. He had created the equivalent of a club’s VIP area for recovering addicts and alcoholics. This clan was tight-lipped and stuck together. It was private and invitation-only. And these people needed these meetings. Although I couldn’t see the disease in myself, I could sure see it in them. It was obvious that drugs had taken their toll and these artists had all lost something big. It was clear to see in their shaky hands and nervous tics. The group members were older than I was, so I kind of assumed the role of the new recruit. I made friends with some of them and we’d meet for coffee and superficial talk outside of these meetings, but I could already feel the pull of my old way of life and it seemed inevitable to me that I’d go back to it soon. I was bored with sobriety. The twelve steps may have been ready for me, but I wasn’t ready for them. But I liked the exclusivity of the Timmins group.

  It was a weakness of mine. I’d always had an attraction to groups and places that were difficult to get into. And if drugs and alcohol were readily available, all the better. Timmins’s meetings always reminded me of a drug-free 01 Gallery, or the Zero One, as everyone called it. In 1981, it was the toughest after-hours place in L.A.’s fashionable Melrose District to get past the doormen. For all its hip exclusivity, the price at the Zero One was right. Ten dollars was the cover, and for that, you could drink your fill and do whatever else you wanted. The doors opened at two A.M. and stayed that way until sunrise, weekends only. The catch was that you had to know a trusted regular to cross the threshold. Even then, that was no guarantee that you’d get in. But, if you did, it was all drinking, drugging, and fucking. I had only managed to gain entrance because I worked there. I was a jack-of-all-trades. I walked drinks to the patrons, cleaned up, and sold speed to a chosen few. The place was owned by a hip art dealer named John Pochna who opened the upstairs area of his gallery as a sort of anything-goes haunt for Hollywood celebrities who didn’t want to be bothered by civilian gawkers when they felt the need to get loose. The first time I walked through the doors and up the narrow staircase to the second floor, I felt like I had stepped into an update of what I imagined Andy Warhol’s Factory had been like: a space dominated by art, the latest music pumped through a first-class sound system, and lots of pretty women. The walls were decorated with works by Robert Williams, a master of chromelike gleam; punk rock godfather Tomata du Plenty; and other Los Angeles artists. This was a late-night crowd, full of punk rockers, ghostly-pale black-clad artists in pointy shoes and shades, and A-list celebrities. It felt special to work there. It was a hidden, cool world that the rank and file didn’t know existed. At the bar sat a burly, talkative guy. Oh, my God, I thought. That’s John Belushi! On the bar were huge, fluffy rails of cocaine, and some of the crowd snuffled it up like hogs at a trough.

 
; I idolized Belushi, though I can’t really say I hung out with him. Belushi didn’t really hang out with anybody. He drank and did his drugs and when he talked, he didn’t talk to you so much as he talked at you. “You” being the audience of millions he constantly saw himself before. This little gig of mine was a great way to meet people. It wasn’t long before I earned the reputation as “that kid who knows everybody.” I liked my new title and it led to some interesting situations. I was good at making introductions. A well-known record-business A & R guy named Mark Williams approached me one night in regard to one of the Zero One’s regulars, David Lee Roth. I knew him because he was always at the club.

  “Uh, hey, Bob,” he said. “I have this couple here from England and they really want to meet David. Do you think you could hook that up?”

  “Well, yeah, I think I can. But David likes to be prepped before he meets new people. What can you tell me about them?”

  “They play in a band called New Order. You remember Joy Division, right? This is kind of an outgrowth of that.”

  “Never heard of New Order. Joy Division was so great, I don’t think I’d want to hear anything that followed it.”

  “They’re awesome, Bob. They really want to meet David. They’re right over there,” he said, and pointed to a pasty, nondescript English boy and his dewy girlfriend who stood off to the side. “That’s Stephen Morris and her name’s Gillian Gilbert.”

  “Let me go find David,” I said. Mark gave the thumbs-up sign to his English friends and I saw the chick bounce on the balls of her feet and clutch her hands to her chest like an overexcited schoolgirl. I searched every corner in the joint and couldn’t find David. Someone said, “I think he’s in the bathroom,” and jerked a finger toward a closed door. “The bathroom” wasn’t technically a bathroom, although it did have a sink. It was more of a storage room that housed some cleaning supplies and a mop and bucket. What the fuck is he doing in there? I wondered. I knocked. “David? Are you in there?”

  “Just a minute, man!” a familiar voice boomed from behind the door before it creaked open an inch. David peered out, looking every inch the rock-and-roll god that he was, if slightly bug-eyed at the moment. “Hey, Bob. Come in, come in,” he said, his face cracking into a huge grin. I slid through the door and there was David with the Disco King, a guitarist who had set the dance-music template with his chart-topping band. David Lee Roth might have been the rock star in the Zero One, but the Disco King was the real badass musician in the place. There was a big bag of coke in the room and David and the Disco King were in good spirits. Each wore a sheen of sweat that was, no doubt, the effect of the night’s ration of white powder. “Hey, man. There’s a couple of English people who want to meet you. They’re from that band New Order.”

  “New Order? I love those guys!” said David effusively.

  “They’re good,” said the Disco King.

  “Well, I never heard of them. Let me go get them.”

  I left the confines of the storage room and went and found Gillian and Stephen where I had left them. They were giddy at the prospect of meeting a flamboyant American rock star. They didn’t really make them like David in England, at least not anymore. Of course, they didn’t really make anyone like David here in America either. “Okay, it’s cool. Follow me,” I said.

  “Is he nice?” Gillian asked.

  “Oh, he’s great. He’s David Lee Roth. You’ll love him.”

  I shepherded them into the little room. “Bob, shut that door,” said David, and I slammed it hard since it didn’t fit in the jamb all that well. With five of us crammed in the tight space, there was barely room to turn around. Introductions were made and the small talk started. Everybody loved everybody else. Then David pulled out the magic bag of coke. “Who’s in?” he asked. We all were and spent the next hour dipping into it and babbling about anything and everything. The thing with coke-spurred conversations is that even if they’re mundane and essentially hollow, they seem, at the time, incredibly deep and profound. Who knows? Maybe it was, but I have my doubts. Other than the Brits’ thrill at getting an audience with David Lee Roth, what made up that night’s summit topics were likely forgotten the next day. Little meetings like ours, no matter how pleasant and engaging, can’t last forever. Despite the fun we all were having, after an hour or so in the tight grip of that little room, with the temperature rising from everybody’s coke-elevated body heat, it was time to move on and grab a cold drink.

  “Hey, Bob, get the door,” said David. “We could all use some fresh air.” I gripped the knob to give it a twist and pulled. Nothing. I pulled again. The door was stuck. “Hey, Bob, quit fuckin’ around,” said David.

  “I’m not kidding, man. This door’s stuck,” I said, and I wiggled the knob and pulled with both hands to emphasize the problem.

  The Disco King kept his cool. “This ain’t good,” he said, but showed no panic as he leaned casually against the wall. The English girl, Gillian, seemed to come down with a sudden case of claustrophobia. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened like a cat’s during a thunderstorm and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. “Oh, my God,” she said quietly. Stephen didn’t say a word and faced the situation with typical English stoicism. Then David attempted to lighten the mood. “I wonder how much oxygen we have left in here,” he said.

  Under the influence of cocaine, the conviviality and sparkling wit that can often result from a few well-managed rails is often replaced by raging paranoia and panic once the dose is increased. We had already gone well past any semblance of recreational use in that little room. David’s ill-timed reference to an old episode of TV’s The Lucy Show, the one that had Lucy and Mr. Mooney trapped in a bank vault, was meant as a joke, but people can get a little weird after they recognize that all avenues of escape are closed. They can get downright spooked if they’re gakked on coke. There was a crush at the door as everybody but the Disco King tried to claw his or her way out. It was like a small-scale reenactment of the Who’s tragic 1979 concert at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati. Compressive asphyxia wasn’t even a remote possibility in that little room, but we all wanted out just the same. I gave a holler and hoped somebody on the other side of that door might hear. David ripped out one of his patented stage squeals. The Brits, being more reserved, just banged on the door with flattened palms. The Disco King merely observed the scene with detached amusement. Because the sound system at the Zero One was in maximum overdrive and the guests were caught up in buzzy little worlds of their own, no one heard our pleas. Or, if they did, they just figured it was private business and let it pass. We weren’t going anywhere. As that thought sank in, we all relaxed and caught ourselves. Then David said, “Man, I can’t believe we’re trapped like this.” That started another round of staccato raps on the door and screams to be rescued. After about two minutes of this idiot show, someone passed by and heard the ruckus. A good, strong push from the outside sprang the door from the jamb and we all tumbled out, looking sheepish. All except for the Disco King, who just adjusted his blazer and strolled out like a man in complete control of his surroundings. “That was crazy!” said David. We scurried off in different directions to our own ends with the understanding that what had happened in that room stayed in that room.

  I thought about that code of silence as I sat with the Timmins group. I also could see how the party scene had changed over the course of the eighties. What started out as reckless good times at the beginning of the decade was rapidly devolving into something less fun. There were consequences. Bad press. ODs. Arrests. Tragedies. That kind of thing couldn’t be hidden forever in a town like this, although an army of press agents and managers tried its best to keep scandal, dangerous behavior, and dope-addled lunacy out of the public eye. More and more of my old party pals either had checked in, had checked out, or were knee-deep in the process of transformation. The newly reformed were fervent, and groups like the one Timmins ran, as well as other, more egalitarian rehab programs, gave us all a place of
shelter and support. And, I had to admit, I thought things looked bright for me. I had a decent contract. My management worked tirelessly for me and it appeared that my music career was on the move. People trusted me again. They had faith in me. Sobriety was like a metamorphosis. But while I could see it happen to the people I came to know in Timmins’s circle, I couldn’t feel it happening within me. I was just going through the motions. So I went to more meetings and I talked one-on-one with people from all walks of life who supported and encouraged me and held themselves up as examples I could follow. It wasn’t like their message was that difficult to understand: Don’t get high. All fine and dandy in theory, but I felt like a fraud. When one of my old dope buddies offered me a taste, I didn’t hesitate and I found myself right back where I started. I put in eight months of sobriety for that first go-round and, until 1996, fell into a hellish routine of sobriety, another trip to rehab, and, always, the inevitable relapse. I racked up an impressive, if mostly failed, record of attempts to kick the habit. Before it was all over, I’d see twenty-six tries at a cure. But as I felt the dope hit me and I started to nod, all I could think in the crystalline moment was that the drug life was the best and most exclusive secret society of them all. And it was where I belonged.