High On Arrival

by Mackenzie Phillips

  Waiting for Dad: It happened a lot. When I was growing up in Virginia he hardly ever visited. He became an untouchable, unattainable figure. I’d watch him on TV and say, “That’s my Dad,” but he wasn’t a reality.

  My sixth Thanksgiving: Dad was coming. Jeffrey and I were all dressed up, sitting on the couch, waiting for my father. My legs stuck straight out—they weren’t long enough to dangle over the edge of the couch. I stared at my Mary Janes and ruffled socks, clicking my toes together. Click, click, click. We waited and waited. Then the phone call: “I can’t come. I just took acid with Donovan.”

  My father was frequently four or five hours late, but this time stood out because when she heard he wouldn’t make it to Thanksgiving, my mother lost it. She screamed, “That bastard,” and started crying and yelling, storming around and slamming doors. Jeffrey and I sat there stunned. We weren’t shocked that he wasn’t coming. That was already a familiar disappointment. But my mom went off the wall. What followed was a quiet, terse Thanksgiving meal with the three of us, throughout which my mother drank buckets and buckets of whatever she drank.

  An amusement park outing: Michelle and Dad promised they’d take me, six, and Jeffrey, eight, to an amusement park called Pacific Ocean Park. Like any kids would be, we were dying to go. Finally, the big day arrived. They drove us to the park, handed us a hundred-dollar bill, and told us to meet them in the parking lot at the end of the day. Then they left.

  The trip to the Virgin Islands: Once Dad called in the middle of the night and asked Mom to bring me to the airport immediately. I was five years old. I flew by myself to Philadelphia, then boarded a Learjet with the Mamas & the Papas. They took me with them and a couple friends to the Virgin Islands for a trip that was to last until the money ran out. We camped out in tents on the beach for months. My dad and Michelle had a huge tent with an Oriental rug on the floor and candles everywhere. I had my own little pup tent nearby, where I got eaten alive by the bugs. I remember waking up one night with a spider crawling on my arm and realizing that if I didn’t want the spider on me, I would have to be the one to get rid of it.

  The whole group was on acid or speed all the time, from the moment they woke up. An unpredictable point in time that ranged from late morning to late afternoon. I remember walking through the forest with a bunch of them, including Duffy, the owner of the club in Saint Thomas where the Mamas & the Papas got their start. All the grown-ups were freaking out about the forest for some reason. I took Duffy’s hand and said, “Don’t worry, Duffy, I promise the sun will rise again tomorrow.” There I was, a five-year-old, talking adults down from bad acid trips.

  I couldn’t afford to be shy—I was hungry. Literally. With all the partying and sleeping in and writing the songs that would make the Mamas & the Papas a world-famous vocal group, feeding the little kid wasn’t top priority. I was a tough little survivor. I’d walk into town all by myself and go to church. I convinced some sailors to buy me breakfast and one man to buy me a new pair of shoes. (I could have used that boldness when my dad deserted me in London.) When I told my father and his friends what I’d done, they thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and sent me to other camps to steal food for them—apparently we’d run out of money. I was happy to have a mission.

  I don’t want these stories to sound self-pitying. For the most part I was perfectly well cared for, and all the waiting added up to only a small part of my life. But those moments created a dynamic that forever dominated my relationship with my father. My dad was so tall. I was a tiny girl. I was always pulling on his pants leg, saying, “Hey, hey, hey,” trying to get his attention like a little puppy, hoping someone would throw the ball for me. Dad would keep talking, oblivious to the tugging sensation around his knee. I so longed to be cherished.

  I waited at his mansions for my guardian to show up. I waited in the mornings for someone to drive me to school. I waited on Friday nights for my father to watch me tape One Day at a Time. And now it was still happening: my trip to London.

  Three days later Dad and Keith finally showed up in a Lamborghini. They announced, “We’re here!” I didn’t say, “Where the fuck have you been?” I was just relieved that I hadn’t been completely forgotten. My gratitude for that eclipsed the rest.

  Dad and Keith had my little brother, Tam, who was five, and Keith’s son Marlon, seven, in tow. I deduced that they had already been to Redlands and now had used picking me up as an excuse to drive into the city and score more drugs.

  On the way to Redlands Keith drove 125 miles per hour. Tam, Marlon, and I were in the backseat sliding back and forth and laughing hysterically. My dad, parent for the moment, said, “You can’t drive that way—the children are in the car.” He insisted that Keith pull over so he could take the wheel. In his head, he was a great parent.

  Redlands was a gorgeous castle in Chichester, with big gates at the entry and rolling lawns. When we walked in, Keith’s girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, doyenne of rock ’n’ roll wivery, turned to me and snarled, “Who invited you?”

  I was thrown. I said, “Um, my dad?” The guy who drove me here? The guy I walked in with? First I’d been abandoned for several days, now I was apparently unwelcome. But I’d learned not to take what the grown-ups said at face value. The rudeness was random and meaningless. Indeed, eventually Anita and I would play dress-up together, with me trying on all of her seventies finery.

  Not everything at Redlands was so innocent. The adults were partying. Tam and Marlon, little rug rats, ran around unsupervised. There were syringes in the cups in the bathrooms. Drugs were just another part of the posh rural retreat. Later, on another family trip to Redlands, my grandmother Dini came with us. Dini was a drunk, but when it came to drugs she was oblivious. Keith would come downstairs after doing a shot of heroin and nod out. Dini would say, “He’s on drugs now, right?” And I’d say, “Yes, Dini, Keith is on heroin.” She’d nod, and we’d go back to eating our lunch.

  A couple days into the visit, Genevieve and I were sitting on the couch, enjoying the view out a vast picture window overlooking the countryside. There was a grassy hill that dropped off steeply enough that you couldn’t see what was immediately behind it. Out of the blue, Genevieve said, “Oh, look at all the lovely white balloons.” At first I didn’t look twice. Genevieve was the queen of the non sequitur. In her high-pitched Betty Boop voice she’d say, “Laurie, I love it when you smile and your gums show.” Or, “Laurie, you’re like a bottomless lake, so deep.” Then I noticed several white globes bobbing along the crest of the hill. As I watched, the white orbs rose up over the hill and I saw that they weren’t balloons. They were helmets. Helmets atop the heads of several uniformed bobbies. I said, “Those aren’t balloons. It’s the cops,” and ran to tell Keith.

  Redlands had been raided before, and Keith had been tried for drug possession three times. We all panicked. As the bobbies approached, everyone scrambled around the house, flushing dope and hiding syringes.

  Only a few crazed minutes passed before the doorbell rang. Keith sauntered to the door as I remembered the toothbrush holder full of syringes and hurried to hide it in a chest. The bobby-in-charge stood stick-straight in the doorway and politely said, “Mr. Richards, someone seems to have set off your burglar alarm.” The little kids had unwittingly hit a hidden panic button that set off a silent alarm. We had called the cops on ourselves. They were very civil and everything was sorted out on the threshold. They never set foot in the house.

  After we returned from Redlands, I found my footing in London. First I ventured out to shop in Soho to spend some of the great stack of traveler’s checks I kept in my purse. I was walking down Kings Road in a paper minidress from Fiorucci when I got catcalls from guys. I’d gotten catcalls before, stateside, but these were different. One Day at a Time was a hit in the States. It was a huge show. I was completely recognizable—people called me Julie everywhere I went. Add to that my Dad’s fame and Graffiti—when I got catcalls back home, I always assumed the
attention came from my notoriety. And when I met people, part of me always wondered, Do you really like me? Am I really cute or fun or sexy? Do you actually like who I am? These Kings Road catcalls—from men who didn’t know who I was—meant they actually thought I was just plain worth a whistle. It was a nice confidence boost for a self-doubting sixteen-year-old girl.

  There was a heat wave in London that summer. It was humid and sticky and nasty. Restaurants notoriously skimped on ice cubes in drinks. The only way to escape the brutal heat was to find the surprisingly few bars and clubs on Kings Road that had air-conditioning. Now I was on familiar turf. At first I went with Dad and his friends. Then it happened that as I walked past a table at a club I was stopped by Lorna Luft, Judy Garland’s daughter. Lorna said, “Don’t I know you?” We’d met in L.A. I joined her table. That night Lorna introduced me to her boyfriend, Jake Hooker, and a guy named Alan Merrill. Jake and Alan were in a band called the Arrows. The Arrows were extremely hot—there was rampant Arrowmania in London that summer. Alan was the lead singer. I started hanging out with Lorna and her friends, and soon I started dating Alan. He was ten years older than I was and drop-dead gorgeous.

  Alan and I had a hot, hot affair. There was a first kiss that I should remember, and I know I used to remember it because of the song I wrote for him about it after I came home:

  Hey your pixie misses you

  She wants it all to last

  Hey your pixie kisses you

  But our love grew too fast.

  Our first kiss at the Bellgravia Fair

  About that she reminisces

  And runs her fingers through her hair

  Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker were the center of teen-pop craziness. When I went out with them, Lorna Luft, Papa John, and Keith Richards, we had the run of the city. And we often had parties at the Glebe Place flat. At one of those parties Mick Jagger made fun of me for listening to the Don McLean song “Starry Starry Night.” Another night, out at dinner with Dad and some other people, apropos of nothing, Jagger told me, “You have to exercise or by the time you’re forty your ass will be at your ankles.” He stood up from the table and demonstrated how to do squats. I didn’t care what words were coming out of his mouth. I thought he was luminously attractive.

  • • •

  That summer was a coming-of-age for me Phillips style. My memory of that time has fogged over—I’m left with a blurry sense that it was bright and fun and a nonstop frolic. It’s not that I was doing drugs that summer, at least not enough to account for the fogginess, but the drugs that came later obscured bits and chunks of my past. What I remember without doubt was that sex for me hadn’t been anything too special until Alan. I loved having sex with him. I said as much in my journal, where I went into great detail about having sex all night in every imaginable position. And I remember Aunt Rosie finding my silver diary, ignoring the pages documenting the tortured days I spent alone, skipping to the naughty parts (who wouldn’t?), and discovering that in spite of all the times she waited up late, screamed over the phone, and made threatening calls to various older male parties over the years, I wasn’t a virgin. Poor Rosie.

  It was a romantic, amazing, idyllic time. I was sixteen, I was in love, and I was totally free. I expected only more of the same ahead.

  9

  Home in L.A., when Rosie found my diary, she called me a slut. She told me that I had a personality disorder, that there was something terribly, terribly wrong with me. Now that she said it, I thought maybe it was so. When I was a little kid I’d sometimes wondered if I was different and nobody was telling me. Was something wrong with me? Was everybody hiding it from me? Were they suspiciously cautious around me? I’d been put on Ritalin for hyperactivity—Ritalin, which at least one study has linked to later smoking and cocaine use by children who take it. Now I was fully formed, successful, and newly confident in my sexuality, but still with underlying doubts that I could function like everyone else.

  Meanwhile, during the first season of One Day at a Time, in the episode “Julie Goes All the Way,” her boyfriend, Chuck, pressures her to have sex. He says, “Only freaks and weirdos don’t make love when they feel the urge.” Hmm. Wasn’t that the exact opposite of what Rosie said?

  Julie’s life on One Day at a Time resonated with mine, not because the writers knew what went on between me and Rosie (or me and Alan for that matter), but because the struggles of a teenager chasing independence are so universal. Season two started with a four-parter called “The Runaways.” In the course of those episodes, Julie runs off with Chuck, the sex-seeking boyfriend with a leopard-spotted van.

  The guy who played Chuck, William Kirby Cullen, was myopic or something. He had terrible eyesight. When we rehearsed he wore glasses, but when we taped the show the producers would ask him to take them off. The guy couldn’t see for shit. He’d be saying, “Julie, I love you,” but instead of looking into my eyes he’d be staring deeply and soulfully at my armpit. It was all I could do not to grab his chin and say, “Hey, buddy, I’m over here!”

  Julie runs away because her mother is trying to control her. She says, “Fuck you, I’m outta here”—or she would have if such things were acceptable on network TV. Then she and Chuck move into a seedy motel. Bonnie misses her prodigal daughter. She goes to find her and ask her to come home. Of course the comic relief is Schneider talking to Rest Stop Rosie on the CB radio as he and Ann hunt Julie down.

  The showdown is a scene I loved doing with Bonnie. When Ann tells Julie she wants her to come home, Julie is living in squalor with Chuck. She’s unhappy. She misses her family. But she is still proud and defiant.

  She says, “My relationship with Chuck has to be what we want, not what you want. I see him when I like, go on trips with him, or do anything else we want to do. Mom, this is it. Either I run my life or I don’t come back.” Julie was describing the freedom I myself had been enjoying for years.

  But Ann, hard as it was for her, said, “Okay, Julie. Don’t come back.” It was a powerful scene, and for me it was a brief window into a world where a parent says “No, you have to live in my house on my terms” and is heard and heeded. It was what Rosie tried so fruitlessly to do.

  Rosie was increasingly sickly, and her three charges were increasingly wild. We lived in a big house that I’d rented in Beach-wood Canyon. My cousins and I went to parties and entertained an endless stream of visitors she’d never met before. The inmates were ruling the prison and it took a toll on Rosie. She couldn’t ground me—I had to go to work every day. The more Rosie tried to control me the more I rebelled. I never thought of it at the time, but it must have been hard for Rosie to feel powerful. Dad didn’t contribute anything to our household. I paid the rent; I bought Rosie her car; I financed the household. I’d been paying for my own dentist appointments since I was twelve. I had dependents who were older than I was from the age of fifteen. How do you control someone who holds all the cards?

  Still, it wasn’t a constant battle. There were many times we all cooked together, went to movies, and acted like a family. We’d somehow accumulated sixteen canyon cats as household members: Sooty, Ginger, Andu, Midnight, Brains, and eleven others, whose names occasionally come to me in the middle of the night only to disappear by morning. Each evening at feeding time Rosie and I would stand at the kitchen counter opening can after can of cat food as feline bodies wove in and around our feet. We set down sixteen bowls of cat food and watched the nightly feast. Rosie taught me to take in, care for, and love strays, animal and human. But she never did get me to follow her rules.

  Rosie’s rules weren’t the only ones I was breaking. After my dreamy summer in London with Alan Merrill, I came home to my boyfriend Andy. I hadn’t intended to betray Andy, but Alan Merrill was unimaginably handsome. When I fell in love with him I felt so far away from Andy, from home, from Earth. Then I came back, and Andy could tell I’d been with someone else. He said, “Look, first of all you’re high half the time. I can’t even talk to you, and I don’t
find it attractive.” That was shattering enough, but he wasn’t done. “Second of all, you’re off fucking other people. I love you, but I can’t do this anymore.” We were over. I was crushed. I cried; I told him my summer affair was just a fling; I insisted that I would change: “It’s over. I’m done. I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m not going to get high.” But I couldn’t keep that promise. I took Quaaludes the way other kids might sneak a chocolate bar in the middle of class. One day I passed out on my desk during typing class. I thought it was kind of funny—would the “ASDF” that was imprinted on my forehead fade in time for rehearsal? But Andy had plans for his time and they didn’t involve waiting around for me to wake up.

  It never occurred to me that Andy might have a point about my drug use. I just thought he wasn’t hip like me and my family. My whole life I’d had it drilled into me that I was different. I came from a subculture that ran parallel to mainstream life. My father always said, “First and foremost, you’re a Phillips and the rules don’t apply to you. You can get away with anything.” Textbook megalomaniac. He was the king of a fiefdom where, for a while anyway, everything went his way. With Dad and his cohorts my drug use was completely acceptable, but I was finding out that with others, like Andy, it was not.

  I started dating a lot—guys who’d guest-star on the show and guys who worked on the lot. I wasn’t sleeping with those guys, but I’d had more than one serious relationship. Meanwhile, Val was probably still a virgin. No matter, Val and I formed a special bond in spite of our differences. We were the only kids working a full-time job together. Our days were stripped of the social life that most kids find at school. We had lunch hour off, when we’d relax at my house, each having a glass of wine pool-side. On the weekends we had guys over and hung out with them by the pool.