“Pandemonium, Matt. Sheer pandemonium. The place is going crazy!”
“Cue ball careens off—it’s going . . . going . . .”
“SCRATCH! CAP GUY SCRATCHES! IT’S OVER!”
There was no crowd going crazy, of course, except the three guys over by the pool table. They were doubled over, unable to shoot from laughing. At the bar and the tables, people were starting to look up, look at each other, chuckle . . .
This was something nobody had seen at a bar. The next week some of them were back to see if it happened again, and a few of them brought friends. Word-of-mouth began to build interest. We did sportscasts of all kinds of stuff, then we’d take breaks and chat with the people at the bar.
“I think we ought to take this to another level,” I mentioned to Matt as we closed up the bar.
“You think anyone will come for that?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Matt and I decided to give it a whirl. We needed to do a whole program. I went out and bought a bunch of video equipment, and now we could actually bring in the comedy instead of fabricate it. Our potential was as wide as our imagination.
I was like that amplifier in Spinal Tap with the dial that goes to eleven instead of just ten. I do everything full blast—and we fully had a blast. Our model was Tom Green, who was a new hit on MTV in those days with his form of “guerilla humor,” going out and making funny things happen, sharing it with his audience.
We went all over New Orleans and into the bayou, filming—imitating intrepid crocodile hunters stalking an obviously fake, inflatable croc and rubber snakes falling from the tree branches. We’d walk through the French Quarter, asking crazy questions—the kind of thing now commonplace on late night TV, but very new and fresh at the time. All of it would go up on the screen at the bar, and people would stop to watch, laugh, applaud, and leave generous tips.
Larger crowds were coming now, which was an amazing thing for a bar on a Sunday night. Once again, my whole identity was wrapped up in the role I was playing. I was surfing on the adrenaline of laughter and acclaim, loving every minute, and Matt had to leave—wait, what?
“What do you mean you have to leave, Matt?”
“It’s August. School is starting up, and I have to go back. You knew that.”
“But what about—what about our show?”
“Oh, you’ll come up with a new guy.”
As if! The act was based on this chemistry that we’d cultivated over months. Too bad, Matt was gone, and I had to regroup.
I talked to my friend Chris from high school, and he suggested we rebuild the show all around me, with more of a sidekick than a full partner. And he had a real brainstorm. “You sell cars with your dad, right? That’s the world you know, so build your comedy around that experience. We’ll call it ‘The Closer’s Corner,’ and your thing is, you’re always trying to sell something. That kind of comedy writes itself. So the first thing is, you go infomercial-style.”
I said, “I like the way you think.” Everybody saw late night infomercials, and it was a medium that cried out for parody.
“The second thing is, you’re going to go on location, just like you did with Matt. People love seeing you in recognizable local spots. Maybe in these segments you’re trying to buy something instead of sell it. You might even work in a magic trick in the least expected place.”
“Okay—yeah,” I said, the wheels turning in my head already.
“And third, we’ll do something with you going back and forth with your cohost.”
“Who’s my cohost?”
“I have an idea about that.”
He explained his idea, and I said, “Hey, I know a guy.”
There was a guy we knew from middle school named Randy. We found him sitting on the sofa smoking and drinking. Perfect. “How’d you like to be a star?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said calmly, taking another swig. “Except I don’t like talking or nothing.”
“That’s the best part of the whole thing,” I said. “You don’t have to.”
“I’m in,” he said, and belched.
We dressed up Randy in gold Elvis glasses with the cheapest leisure suit we could dig up, and bought him a six-pack of Schlitz beer. He’d come out to the song, “Lit Up” by Buckcherry, climb a ladder, crack a beer, and down it before taking a seat on his couch where he’d do his thing, which was to quietly smoke and drink the entire time. No dialogue at all, though I’d play off him and work him into the conversation.
The audiences loved every minute of it. I wouldn’t consider it appropriate now, and we’d find it politically incorrect to be sure. Alcoholism is no joke. But this is where I was, and certainly where downtown New Orleans was, in the late nineties.
My theme song was “Eye of the Tiger.” Music blaring, I’d walk out in a full suit with blue-shaded, silver-rimmed glasses. There was nothing else like our act on the bar scene.
Soon we were selling T-shirts and videos, bringing in extra money, and packing the place out. People regularly stood outside the bar just to catch a glimpse. Then Gene added a cover charge. That sounded like good news to me. “I’m not making any money at the bar,” I told Gene, “because obviously I can’t work that while I’m performing. So what’s my cut of the door proceeds?”
He looked at me as if I were crazy. “You’re joking, right? Answer is zero. I just hired you as a bartender.”
“After the way I’ve built this audience? And on Sunday nights, when you had almost no business? That’s not fair at all, Gene!”
He shrugged. The way he saw it, he was the owner and everyone else worked by the hour and for whatever tips they could manage.
“Well, if that’s how it works,” I said, “then I’m nothing special. You could just hire another bartender to write and perform a show. Because, if you don’t give me a cut of the door, I’m gone before next Sunday night.”
I guess you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em. He said “Okay” and wished me luck.
Gene called my bluff, and that was the end of my rock-star-of-the-bar career. I’d burned through another identity and was right back at square one.
Before I closed down that act, however, there had been a particularly big show. It was Labor Day weekend, and the place was packed. On a holiday weekend, the city was always rocking. Knowing it would be a great night, I’d invited my family to come and see what I did. I knew they’d be proud of their son who was making all these people laugh.
What I hadn’t thought at all about was that the main skit required me to wear cheap spandex tights in an attempt to sell a workout video. The outfit was highly unflattering in the worst way, and I looked out and saw the sadness in my mother’s eyes. It was embarrassing, and it wasn’t the reaction I’d been going for.
In that moment, in a flash of insight, I saw myself as my family saw me—a clown who would do pretty much anything in the world for a laugh. What kind of acceptance was I going for? Didn’t my parents give it to me?
Of course they did. They loved me lavishly, unconditionally, perfectly. In their eyes, I could do no wrong. I didn’t need to be anything other than who I was. Yet I stood now in my skintight spandex, debasing myself for the applause of inebriated strangers.
For one instant, the look in my mother’s eyes caused me to step outside of myself for a touch of true perception. A clue. A wake-up call.
Then the moment evaporated. The show must go on. I delivered my next line, waited for the laughter, and continued the performance.
Chapter 6
An Absolute Wreck
Why do things come crashing down, just when you’re beginning to fly high?
That was the question I was trying to work out as I drove home from work on November 22, 1999. I’d been knocking on the door of financial success, and it all blew up in my face. So I
’d switched doors. I’d knocked on the door of fame and acclaim—same thing.
Was it me? No way! Was I jinxed? Who knew?
I was beyond frustrated, but there was nothing I could do but pick myself up, clean myself off, and see what came next.
I was selling cars for Royal Honda in Metairie—a regular paycheck, and that was about it. I could connect with people and move vehicles, and I knew my way around cars and all their features from working with Dad. So I had the pleasure of being pretty good at sales.
Yet I felt deep inside I was meant for greater things than hitting monthly quotas on a car lot. I felt I had gifts. I was two for two in proving myself—in business ability and then in creative entertainment. For me, life felt like a game of Monopoly, where I was just about to land on Boardwalk, but I kept drawing the card that sends you back to “Go” without collecting $200.
So, back to square one.
It was late on a Monday, three days before Thanksgiving, and I was on my way home from the Honda dealership in Metairie, heading east toward Chalmette, cigarette in hand, lost in my thoughts. I never saw the eighteen-wheeler that slammed into me.
He was merging from I-10, and I was coming in from 610. I was in his blind spot as our vehicles approached the same location. His truck slammed into my left rear bumper, which locked our two vehicles together. The semi shoved me into the right guardrail.
My bumper ripped off, and the truck slowed for an instant, then kept moving. To my great fortune, another driver saw the whole thing, and he wouldn’t let the truck flee the scene. He chased him down, and the truck driver had no choice but to pull over.
My Mustang was one of Dad’s fix-up jobs. He’s terrific at rebuilding totaled vehicles, but on this one, there had been a hairline fracture to the seat frame in the earlier collision. You’d never have known it except that now, with a truck slamming into it, the frame didn’t have enough strength to hold up. As a result, my seat broke off the hinges as my seat belt locked, and I was hurled to the right side of the interior.
As the car came to a stop, I was thinking what everybody does in that situation: “I could have died just now.” Given the speed and mass of the eighteen-wheeler, this could have been fatal to me, and I understood that. What I couldn’t have known was that it would set events into motion in my life that were almost fatal in another way.
For now, I was shaken up and hurting all over. I hobbled out of my car and checked out the damage to my Mustang. Pretty bad. The truck driver, defensive and ready to intimidate, was walking back in my direction. “This was your fault!” he said. “You came over into my lane.”
“I don’t think so! You came out of your lane and slammed me into the rail.”
We argued, but to my relief, a witness to the accident soon accompanied the police officer that drove up. The officer wrote the truck driver a ticket, establishing that the law was on my side.
I tried to flex my back as the officer wrote up his account. Looking up ahead to the left, a steeple caught my eye, gleaming over the trees of the neighborhood. It made no impression on me, but it was the perfect symbol of what the future held. What was beneath that particular steeple made all the difference. Behind me lay a traffic accident that would almost doom me; ahead lay a hope that would redeem me.
Death, life, and eternal destiny, together in one place. This was an intersection of more than highways.
I called Dad and told him what had happened. “A truck just hit me from behind on the way home, Dad,” I said. “Mustang’s in pretty bad shape. Totaled again, I’d say.”
“Never mind the Mustang, son, are you okay?”
“I’ll be all right. A little sore.”
More than a little sore as the evening drew on. All I could do was take a few ibuprofen, but the next day my doctor took a good look at me. He checked out the X-rays and told me I had two herniated disks in the neck and two in the back. “You were messed up pretty good,” he stated. “You might need surgery down the road. And I imagine you’re in some pain.”
The doctor went out of the room and came back with a prescription for Vicodin and muscle relaxers. Vicodin combines an opioid (hydrocodone) with acetaminophen. I filled the script and used them as directed, every four to six hours, which took the edge off the pain.
For the next two months, I lived my life and endured my job with the help of the pain pills. I knew I’d heal, though I couldn’t train to fight anymore. Most of my attention went to getting paid by the trucking company to repair my car. I had no thought of any injury-related lawsuit; all I wanted was eight thousand dollars to cover repairs—eight thousand dollars the trucking company eventually told me I was never going to get, unless I took them to court.
Ridiculous—now I had to find a lawyer just for the car repairs in an accident that wasn’t my fault. I’d never worked with a lawyer before—didn’t even know one. But I did know a guy from my network marketing experience. He had a friend who had gotten a large settlement with a personal injury attorney. I made the connections, and the lawyer took it from there.
When we met, the attorney wanted to know all about my condition, what the doctor had said, and what kind of pain I was in. I told him about my Vicodin and muscle relaxers, and he nodded quickly and said, “I’ve got a doctor who can give you a little more help than that.”
I had no experience in this world of serious pain narcotics. I’d never heard anything about an opioid crisis, and I didn’t know how addiction worked. None of that ever crossed my mind, and nobody warned me.
I wish they had.
This new doctor, who clearly had a referral relationship with the attorney, sent me home with a whole arsenal of addictive pain drugs: Oxycontins, Somas, Percocets, and Valiums. All of these could be dangerous—especially mixed together.
I quickly discovered these pills worked just like magic. I might be lying in bed, unable to sleep because of the pain. Or I might be invited to go clubbing with friends, but I’d be aching. As long as I had my pills, everything was good. My choice was between pain that kept me from living a normal life and a high that felt better than normal life. At first, it’s about pain; later, it’s about the high. I began by taking pills only when necessary; then, I actually looked for excuses to take the pills more and more.
But it was all very discreet. I could get through a workday, sell a couple of Hondas, visit my parents, and go to a bar. My life seemed absolutely normal to everyone else, all while using my meds. As a matter of fact, I had Herculean energy.
I’d climb into my car and store my pain meds right there in the center console of my car without thinking twice—that’s how new at this stuff I was.
I told a buddy about this, and his eyes got wide as he heard about where I kept my stuff. “Dude,” he said. “Never, ever leave your drugs in the car! That’s like leaving money in plain sight on the dashboard. Same thing.”
“Really? Who would steal somebody’s pain pills?”
“Robby. Are you clueless? Do you know how much those things sell for on the street? Five bucks a pop for a Percocet. Twenty bucks for Oxys.”
“People sell these on the street?”
“Every day. It would take you less than five minutes to walk downtown and buy some.”
I’d never heard of anything like that. I assumed drug dealers trafficked in cocaine or Meth, not the little pills your druggist gave you at the pharmacy. I looked at my pain meds and saw them in a whole new light. These thoughts rolled around in my brain and attached themselves to my interest in network marketing. What if . . .
Suddenly I had a new idea for making a little extra money. As long as I could get prescriptions for the drugs, I could sell what I had and generate enough income to cover replacements—plus extra cash, of course.
I was capable of thinking like that in those days, though I rationalized it to some extent. I saw myself as distributing “harmless” muscle relax
ants and pain relievers—not heroin or crystal meth. It was just a little casual profit-making among friends. At least that’s what I told myself, and that’s how it began.
I asked my buddy a few more questions, and he confirmed that he had friends who knew where to buy and sell these pills. “Can you introduce me to them?” I asked him. “I have an idea for us to make serious money.”
I’d been able to sell phone service, and even video technology that was not yet released to the public; how much more successful could I be with pills that could be popped right there on the spot? I knew I could move them like candy.
My friend started introducing me to others, and I explained how we could set up a network, create our own downlines—all the basics. At the same time, I tapped into old friends from the past who dealt drugs under the radar—all the while we had been friends, and I had no clue.
As for business-building, some of them looked at me like I was crazy. “I just like getting high, man,” they said. “What you’re talking about sounds like work!” I eventually connected with two guys: Rick, who would be my roommate, and Rodney. Both had aspirations of making money to support our lifestyle.
I pushed on with the idea. I could still go to the second doctor, and he had no problem sending me home with fresh supplies of narcotics. But if I ran out, it was a lot easier to find a friend on the street and buy from him than to wait for an upcoming doctor’s appointment.
There were guys who looked at the pills just the way they thought of alcohol—they came to it to get high. But there were many others like me—people who had started off with a genuine need to relieve the pain but had gotten hooked. Eventually they found themselves on the street feeding their addiction. Wherever the starting point, we all ended up in the same place—buying and using in parking lots and dark corners of bars.
That’s how a national health crisis begins.
As I checked in with my attorney, eager to find out about getting paid for the repairs to my car, I found he was very interested in my pain and my use of prescription narcotics. “Car payment?” he asked. “They owe you much more than that, son! Look at what they’ve done to you. They’ve made you dependent on pain medication. The truck hit you, and his company refused to do anything about it. They’ve ruined your life, and they owe you hundreds of thousands of dollars at least!”
Recovered Page 5