Over the next four weeks, in groups and one-on-one counseling sessions, I came to understand that whatever was in me that demanded appeasement with drugs and alcohol was not of my own creation. There was no logical reason why I was destroying myself. Some secret combination code existed inside me—and when those tumblers fell into place, the craving took over. Science couldn’t define it, love couldn’t conquer it, and even the promise of a certain death didn’t deter it. I was an addict and I would always be an addict, the counselors told me. But—and this was the key—I didn’t have to live like one.
On the final Saturday of my stay there, I was allowed to leave the center with a friend to run the Sky Climb, a 7.5-mile trail race to the top of Ollason Peak in a beautiful park outside Salinas. I had run only once while in treatment, and I was feeling fat and out of shape. When the gun went off, I zoomed to the front of the pack and stayed there for about a mile. I felt great until the trail started up a steep hill and I realized I was in trouble. I tried all the tricks—looking ahead, not at my feet; shortening my stride; pumping my arms—but it was no use. Lactic acid built up in my quads and I gasped for air. There was nothing I could do. I slowed to a jog as runner after runner passed me. Finally, I had to walk.
But instead of feeling defeated or humiliated—even as a woman old enough to be my grandmother trotted by and said, “Keep it up!” and “You can do it!”—I felt something else, something new. I felt clean. My body was free of drugs and alcohol. Nothing was masking the pain or clouding the effort. The course leveled off at the summit and I could run again. After I crossed the finish line way back in the pack, I stood in the breeze and looked out across the yellow and gray-green hills toward Monterey Bay. It had been a dry winter; the blue lupines were still weeks away. But that land had a beauty that suited me at that moment: barren, stark, on the cusp of coming back to life.
CHAPTER 4
. . . drunk with the great starry void . . .
I felt myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
—PABLO NERUDA, “Poetry”
I got out of Beacon House at the end of my twenty-eight-day stay and dedicated myself to sobriety. I went daily to AA meetings. I also threw myself into running, not so much because I loved to run—that would come much later—but because it gave me and everyone I knew tangible proof that I was doing well. I entered the Napa Valley Marathon, partly to see how it felt to run that distance as a sober person and partly to see if I could qualify for the Boston Marathon. My mother was there to see me run a 3:07, and five weeks later I was on the starting line in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. About a week after that, I ran the Big Sur Marathon again—this time as a sober person and a member of a thirteen-person bungee-cord-connected “centipede” team. Centipede groups were common sights at short, fun races such as the Bay to Breakers 12K in San Francisco; we decided to be the first centipede to run Big Sur. Three of the team members dropped out, but the remaining ten of us finished under 3:30, which had been our goal. We had even stopped for a group pee twice along the way. A photo of our centipede appeared inside the back cover of Runner’s World magazine. My friends cheered me on, and even my dad seemed impressed by my running and my commitment to staying sober.
Sobriety was awesome. In forty-five days, I had run three marathons—all in respectable times. I was in good standing at work and at home. I was sticking with the 12-step program. I went fifty days, sixty days, eighty days. Picking up my ninety-day sobriety chip felt like a turning point. I misconstrued it as a graduation, of sorts, as if it confirmed that I had this sobriety thing in the bag. Then, for reasons I will never understand, I let it drift away. I stopped calling my sponsor and I quit going to meetings.
Instead, I focused on money. We’d just gotten the devastating news that Fort Ord was shutting down. The servicemen and their families had been the engine of the local economy. Without them the value of our house would plummet and Toyota sales would tank. I had to find another way to make a living. My friend Joe, a guy I knew from Gold’s Gym, told me about a new thing called automotive paintless dent repair. This technique saved car dealers and insurance companies money by eliminating the cost of painting cars that sustained heavy hail damage. Joe was going to Oklahoma City to learn how to do it and asked me to come along. Pam and my father were against it.
“You finally found something you’re good at,” my father said. “Why screw it up?”
Pam reminded me that making a big change such as this wasn’t advisable in early sobriety. As usual, I assumed conventional wisdom didn’t apply to me and left with Joe for Oklahoma City.
At the end of every day of training, most of the guys in my class went out drinking—but I went straight back to the motel. On our final night, the guys convinced me to come out to celebrate our graduation. I figured there wouldn’t be any harm in tagging along. I could just drink water. I sat down at the bar and someone slammed a shot of tequila in front of me. I looked at it for a few seconds. I wanted it. I really wanted it, but I knew I couldn’t have it.
On the other hand, was this not the perfect opportunity to demonstrate my ability to drink like a regular person? To show off the new me, the one who now recognized his limits and maintained control? I picked up the drink, tossed it back, and felt that beautiful warmth pass through me, a fast-burning fuse that started in my head and sparked right down to my feet. I called for another shot and a beer and another beer and another shot, and then, shit, I don’t know what happened. The next morning, I woke up hungover and bewildered by how easily I had picked up that first drink. I had thrown away six months of sobriety without a fight. I was ashamed of my behavior, but the good news was that I had done it in relative privacy. Pam didn’t know I had relapsed and neither did my father, and I wasn’t going to tell them. I didn’t plan to keep drinking, so there was no reason to share my secret.
Back in California, I was eager to try out my new dent-repairing skills, and I began calling on dealers. One day, I talked my way into the office of the manager of the largest Honda dealer in central California. I told him I had a service that would save him money and I wanted to give him a free demonstration. He was intrigued enough to hand me the key to a car with a dent in its door and point me to a vacant corner of the lot. I had requested privacy; the technique I was about to use was a closely guarded secret.
I went to work. It only took a few minutes to realize that two weeks of dent-repair training had been about three months too short. There was no way I could reach the dent by sliding my hand tools down the window opening. I’d have to take the door apart. Before long, the door was in pieces on the ground. I finally wedged a tool in behind the dent, but my lame attempt at fixing it left it worse than it was when I began.
When I saw the manager coming out to check on me, I hurried over to talk to him before he could get close to the car. “Almost done! I’ll bring it around in a bit.”
I didn’t know what to do. I felt sick. I headed for the men’s room, and on my way I passed the manager’s office and noticed the keyboard just inside the door. I knew that a code matched each key to every car on the lot. That gave me an idea. I walked outside and wrote down the key number to one of the burgundy Accords identical to the one I had been trying to fix. I reassembled the car I had mangled and parked it as far from the showroom as possible. With the keys I swiped, I pulled the new car around to the front of the dealership—just as the manager was walking out the door.
“Okay, here she is!” I said as I got out of the car.
“Hey, that’s fantastic. I can’t believe it. Looks brand-new.” He shook my hand and asked me if I wanted to fix more cars right away.
“I’d love to, but I’m swamped.”
He offered to pay me but I told him this one was on the house. I went home and never returned his phone calls offering more work.
Joe had discovered h
e was equally inept at dent repair, so we called the guys who had trained us and complained. They invited us to meet them in Rapid City, South Dakota, where they were headed to repair a fleet of hail-damaged cars. They promised us we would really learn how to fix dents this time, and—this got my attention—we’d get paid while we learned. I packed up and drove straight through for two days.
After several weeks, my skills improved. The cars really did look as good as new when I was done with them. I was proud of that and of the way I had avoided trouble in Rapid City—except for that one night I went to a Merle Haggard/Clint Black concert with the guys. I remembered draining a flask that someone handed to me. Then things went black. I came to the next morning, barefoot, inside a giant cement irrigation pipe with a Native American named Cactus Feather and several members of his tribe—all of whom had their own bottles of wine, apparently purchased by me. And one of them was quite happily wearing my shoes. I was, it seems, a generous drunk. Once again, I had carelessly tossed aside whatever sobriety I had accumulated. And once again, I decided the best course of action was to keep this latest relapse to myself. I felt guilty, but who was it hurting if I blew off some steam from time to time? I rationalized it by congratulating myself for not doing drugs.
I stayed in Rapid City for another few weeks until we got the news that Denver had just been hit by one of the biggest hailstorms in history. One hundred thousand cars were pocked with golf-ball-size dents. Joe and I packed up the next morning and headed for Colorado. We worked long hours and made huge money. I was pocketing about $1,000 a day, but rather than making me feel happy and secure, this windfall made me anxious and irritable. Cash had always meant coke to me. I was vulnerable when I was in the money. Why not do just a little? I’d say to myself. It doesn’t have to turn into an all-night thing. Have a little fun. You’ve been humping it so hard. Take a break.
After work one Friday, I told the guys I was going back to my hotel. But that was a lie. I went straight to a bar. After a few shots, I told the bartender that I was visiting and asked him where I could find some fun. He mentioned a nightclub nearby and even told me about a party in his neighborhood that I could come to later that night. As I was paying, I asked him if there was any part of the city I should avoid.
“Stay clear of Colfax,” he said. “A lot of bad shit goes down there.”
I thanked him for his sage advice.
Colfax Avenue ran through the heart of the city for more than twenty miles, so it took a while to find the section he had warned me about. Finally, in Aurora, I hit some blocks with boarded-up windows, short-stay motels, liquor stores, pawnshops, and clusters of guys hanging out on the corners—just waiting for a putz like me to roll through. Bingo.
There was an art to getting coke—good coke—from a stranger. If I just pulled up and straight out asked to buy some, it would almost certainly be lousy—cut with laxatives or even rat poison. What I needed was some local talent, someone who could hook me up and keep me from getting robbed or worse. I drove around for a while until I spotted a petite young woman dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt. She looked safe, as if maybe she were just enjoying a nice evening stroll.
I pulled up next to her and caught her eye. She gave me a slight lift of her chin that told me she was willing to find out what I was looking for. I rolled down the passenger-side window and said, “What’s happening?”
She said her name was Jasmine. I told her I was looking for coke and asked her if she wanted to drive around with me. She got in the car and directed me through a series of turns that took us deeper into the neighborhood. She kept looking back, as if she was expecting to be followed. Dusk became dark and I felt myself getting anxious.
“Almost there?” I asked, trying to sound relaxed.
“Keep going. There. Up there. Pull over behind that dumpster.”
I did as I was told, and moments later a huge black man emerged from the shadows and knocked on my window. He was holding a gun. What had I gotten into? I rolled down the window. Just then, Jasmine reached over, grabbed my balls, and squeezed hard. I wanted to scream but I held it in. The big guy seemed amused that I hadn’t reacted to having my nuts in a vise. He said something that sounded like “Whassupmothafuckafuckinkillyouassholewhatchoowant?”
Trying to not to let my voice shake, I said that I was hoping to buy some coke, an eight ball, please, if he could get it.
“I thought maybe you was a cop, but no cop would be stupid enough to ask for powder down here.” He nodded at Jasmine and she released my balls. “Here’s what I got.” The big man opened his hand and showed me a dozen yellowish rocks.
Jesus. Crack. I had never smoked crack, had never wanted to. But I was in no position to negotiate. I handed him $250 and he passed me the drugs. I started rolling up the window, but before it closed completely, he stuck the barrel of his gun in the opening. I thought he was going to kill me.
“Come back and I’ll give you a better deal next time.”
I drove away and, with my heart hammering, turned to Jasmine. “I told you I wanted coke. I didn’t ask for crack. I don’t smoke fucking crack.”
“If you like coke, you gonna like this better. You don’t love it, I’ll take it off your hands and we can negotiate something . . . you know?”
I pulled over and parked under a broken streetlight. She took a little glass pipe from her bag. It was charred and had what looked like a clump of copper Brillo pad stuffed in one end. She held out her hand and I gave her a rock. I was mesmerized by the length of her fingernails and the dexterity with which she loaded the pipe. She held a lighter under the rock and it sizzled and popped as it melted. Then she brought the pipe to her lips and, holding the flame to the dope, inhaled the swirling white smoke that had collected in the chamber.
When she could no longer hold it in, she exhaled and, eyes closed, threw her head back. “Fuuuuck . . .”
She held the pipe out to me. I hesitated. I had snorted cocaine for nearly nine years. I liked it. I knew how to do it. There were downsides, but I could manage them. Fear and ego had kept me away from crack. Lowlifes did crack. I was a marathon runner, for God’s sake. I was not smoking crack.
“Just try it. Going to make you smile like nothing else.”
I took the pipe from her. I wanted desperately to be high. “Maybe just a little one.”
I picked out a small rock and loaded it into the pipe as she had. Then I held the lighter to it and pulled the smoke into my lungs. In that instant, my head exploded with some otherworldly, incandescent orchestral wind—audible light, visible sound. With coke, I was used to waiting for the high to arrive. But this, this was entirely different. There was only the now of it, the insanely glorious, blazing now. It was bigger and better than anything else I had ever felt. It was my big bang, my rebirth. It would be my unraveling. All I could think about was doing more.
When we ran out of the first batch, we went back to the dumpster. We scored four more times in the next twenty-four hours. The big dude and I were best buddies now. He knew he didn’t need to rob me because he was well aware that, sooner or later, he’d get all my money.
Day two, I was running out of cash. Jasmine was getting antsy. She asked if I had any credit cards. I said, yeah, but I couldn’t get cash on them, not without going to a bank, and I sure as hell couldn’t go into a bank in this condition.
“We ain’t going to no bank,” she said cheerfully. “We goin’ to the mall!”
I let Jasmine drive. She pulled up to a corner where a few kids were hanging out. One of them flashed a gun. Another gun. Christ, everybody had a gun. I had been buying cocaine for years and I had never seen even one handgun. Jasmine got out of the car and went to talk to the boys. They all turned to look at me. I got nervous and edged over toward the driver’s seat. Then Jasmine walked back over, with the kids trailing behind her.
“Okay, all set. They’re coming with us. You gonna buy
them all Starter jackets and they’ll hook you up.”
The boys climbed into the backseat and we drove to the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, a fancy mall where I had bought pants the week before. They knew what store to go to. I pretended to be browsing for socks while the boys argued about who got the jacket with the Oakland Raiders logo. Eventually, each had picked out a jacket, and I brought them to the counter and handed over my gold American Express card. The kids put on their new duds and strutted out of the store. One big happy family. When we reached my car, the boys bickered with each other about who should pay me off in dope. In the end, they handed over about $1,000 worth of crack—enough to last several days.
By dusk, I’d smoked it all. Even Jasmine was alarmed. She kept telling me to slow down, take a break, save some for later. But I knew there was no later for me. I knew that I had fucked up badly. I was now missing my second day of work. I hadn’t talked to Pam in days. I wanted to keep my high going for as long as possible because when this was over, I wasn’t sure what I would have left.
- - - -
I opened my eyes. My mouth was dry, my lips cracked and swollen. I sat up in bed and realized Jasmine was gone. I went to the window and looked out at the motel parking lot. It was snowing hard. I didn’t see my car. Shit. I pulled on my jeans and patted the pockets. Empty. No keys, no cash, no rock. Light-headed and nauseated, I sat back down on the stained bedspread, which sparked with static electricity. I leaped to my feet. I had to get out of here. I looked around for my jacket. That was gone, too.
I left the room and in heavy, blowing snow headed down East Colfax wearing only a short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and sneakers. After a few blocks, I came to a pay phone. Perfect. I’ll call the cops and tell them my car was stolen. They’ll find it for me and I’ll be on my way home. The booth smelled like urine but at least I was out of the wind and snow. I picked up the receiver and pushed 9 and then 1, but held my finger over the last 1 button. I hung up, stared at the phone, picked up the receiver, dialed 9 and 1 again, and then slammed the receiver back down. Guess what, asshole? I said to myself. You can’t call the cops. No one is calling the cops.
Running Man Page 5