by Dave Navarro
Dave walked upstairs in his underwear, looked at her, and—much to Melissa’s disappointment—knew her name. “Sara!” he exclaimed. “It’s not cool for you to just do a drop-by without calling.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m dropping these clothes and dog biscuits off for Sylvia,” another prostitute. Then she proceeded to sit on the couch, pull a crack pipe out of her purse, and light it with a small silver torch.
Dave asked her to leave and then ran downstairs. “What the fuck?” Melissa yelled after him. “We’re late for the party. Enough of this drama. Let’s go already!”
But instead, Dave called Sylvia, who came by for her belongings. He then proceeded to sit on the couch and carry on a long conversation with Sylvia about how it wasn’t cool for the other prostitute to do a drop-by. As Sylvia’s dog ran laps around the house, Melissa sat isolated in a desk chair, smoke practically rising from her salon-styled hair, repeating to herself, “This is not happening, this is not happening.”
While Dave and Sylvia continued to chat away, Melissa called a limo, which took an hour and a half to arrive. By the time the two of them finally arrived at the Playboy Mansion, the party was well into its fifth hour of revelry.
Wandering through the estate’s tacky game room, they noticed a girl following them. And when Navarro walked into the bathroom, the girl slipped inside with him. “Oh my God, Dave Navarro!” she gushed. “I fucking love you.”
Afterward, she trailed behind Dave and Melissa until they all found themselves in the larger of the game room’s orgy chambers, with mood music playing, a spongy floor, adjustable soft lighting, and boxes of tissues around the room. Dave’s interest in entering the room was purely in getting his drugs in his system, but as the group walked in, a third girl Dave knew appeared.
As Dave sat down to pull out his supplies, he suddenly found three naked women using the orgy room as it was intended. “It was like something out of a movie—and it was all happening as I pulled out a syringe and got high, which to me was part of the decadence,” he remembers.
In a gesture not unlike the Fiona Apple incident that landed Navarro in trouble (spraying a message to the singer in blood—or, as he puts it, from the bottom of his heart—on her dressing room mirror at a concert), Navarro took out his rig and started writing on the wall of the orgy room in blood. “The mansion has always been somehow holy to me, and I began to feel weird,” he says. “All my life I’d wondered what it was like, and here I was at thirty squirting blood on the walls with three naked girls at my feet. So I cleaned it off. But it was too late. They had the whole thing on video. When we left the room, several security guards escorted me out of the mansion and asked me never to return. I wonder what they did with the video.”
That was one thing Navarro and Hefner had in common: they were avid documentarians. In months to come, not only would there be a photo booth in Navarro’s house, but there would also be a tape recorder under the couch, a recording device hooked up to the phone, surveillance cameras outside the front door, and several fake VCRs and clocks with hidden cameras capturing the alternately mundane and bizarre events taking place at the end of this dead-end street.
It’s important to note that for Navarro, like Hefner, the installation of these low-tech devices was not just a product of paranoia. It was life as art, with most of the evidence routinely uploaded onto the elaborate Internet homepage Navarro started this same month and worked on obsessively during his sleepless days and nights.
part II THIS IS HOW I DO IT
BY DAVE NAVARRO
One of the ideas that I am attempting to execute on my own is to allow the audience a chance to have a glimpse at what it is that I am actually whining about. Many times, artists have made me say to myself, “Sure, you’re sad. But you have a great life, so stop whimpering and trying to sell it to us!!!! How full of shit you are to think that I could ever believe that you are a miserable, suffering, dark, and misunderstood loner when you are ‘made up’ to appear that way in some video!!!”
Don’t get me wrong. I am not invalidating the right of an artist to express his or her pain; I am simply challenging it. I believe and feel that a positive future can come from the expression of a negative past. This part of the healing process, not to mention any part, has yet to be shown to me by any of the whimpering babies out there today. As some of you know, I am not a huge follower of contemporary music, so perhaps I am wrong. I suppose that I just haven’t heard about them/it/him/her yet. Just know that there is the possibility of a time in one’s life when gratitude for the wrongs done to us and those we love is in order.
This is not to say that I am happy I lost a loved one. I have simply come to a place in my life where I can be thankful for the losses and troubled times I have been through, as well as the love-filled and magical times. My experiences with drugs fall into both of these categories. Now of course I would never claim that we should all have our mothers killed to find a future with which we are happy. However, the same concept applies to all misfortunes. We all have different elements of our lives that are the ingredients of who we are as individuals. I have been asked, “Your work is so personal. Do you expect us to relate to all of the mother and loss issues you confront?”
My answer is yes, because everyone has lost something they have loved: a puppy, a girlfriend or boyfriend, a parent, a baseball card, etc. My mother is, for me, a symbol of all things lost and irreplaceable. The creative process of moving through the experience of loss, and learning from such experiences, is where the gratitude for life and all experiences comes from.
This book contains many depictions of graphic and drug-related moments in my life. These moments are included to establish the serious and sometimes life-threatening times in my life. I am not, in any way, promoting and/or encouraging drug use. My intention is to point out and re-reinforce the reality of danger within such actions and life choices. At the same time, I refuse to omit these moments, as they are, in some ways, a factor in the equation of how and why I am where I am today.
part III HOW THE RECORD INDUSTRY IS LIKE A UNICORN
FRIDAY, JUNE 19, was not the best night at Navarro’s house, nor was it the worst. It was a typical night that produced an atypical tale.
BIJOU PHILLIPS: Dave, have you ever shot heroin into your dick?
DAVE: Come over here. We’re recording a story. Like to hear it? Some names and places will be changed to protect the innocent.
When I was seven years old, I was moderately happy. I came from a house in Laurel Canyon and …
[phone rings]
WOMAN’S VOICE: Hello. May I speak to Mary?
DAVE: She’s not in right now. May I take a message?
WOMAN: This is Beth Ann from Triple A.
DAVE: Oh, you want Bijou. Just a moment.
[Phone conversation omitted.]
DAVE: Anyway, I felt that I was not good enough to be commingling with the people that I went to school with. I went to school all the time with this inferiority complex. The school was in Bel-Air, and we had to wear uniforms and every kid was rich and got dropped off in a fancy car. Lisa Marie Presley was two grades under me, and there was a day when Elvis dropped her off with fucking cops on bikes protecting him. I had no idea who Elvis was. All I knew was that I didn’t have a police escort.
This was around the time my parents were getting divorced. I remember seeing a commercial about the circus coming to town, and I had a Barnum and Bailey poster in my room that I would always misread and mispronounce, trying to imagine what the poster was supposed to be advertising. I would make up all kinds of things, like it was a ride or a movie or a type of coffee. The only distinct thing about it was that there was a polar bear on it.
So this commercial came on TV saying that the circus has a unicorn—“The world’s first and only unicorn in captivity! Come see it! Don’t miss it! It’s the greatest thing ever!” I was so excited—like, “Wow, a fucking unicorn, this is unbelievable”—and I begged
my parents to take me to the circus.
So, anyway, we go to the circus and there are trapeze artists and other circus things and, to add to the atmosphere, I’ll say that I had too much to eat, though I can’t really remember. The truth is, I was waiting to see the unicorn. That’s all I knew. And then the lights went down and there was a drumroll and spotlights cruising around the tent, and the announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the first unicorn! It’s incredible.” And they wheel out, on a rickety little cart, this baby goat with a fucked-up horn coming out of the side of its head at a forty-five-degree angle. And it’s shaking and letting out this terrified baa. I was picturing a magical creature, an illustrious, strong, white, muscle-bound horse glistening with freedom and magic, and instead it was this scared little baby goat being pulled around on a decrepit cart by a pack of clowns. I got incredibly sad and felt so bad for the goat.
I looked around the rest of the circus, and everybody was thrilled and excited, taking pictures and going “Wow!” And I kind of felt guilty. I never made the connection until years later, but it was as if because I was so excited to see it, I was one of the people who caused it to be there. It was my doing.
I guess that was my first memory of being flat-out lied to. Those were the years when I learned about lies. I had this pet turtle named Frank, and one day I came home and he was gone. I asked my mother where Frank was, and she said he went to turtle heaven. I was bummed out and I went outside to play. For some reason, I went into the trash cans by the side of the house and I saw Frank lying in the trash. I went back inside and told my mom, “Hey, Mom, remember how you told me that Frank was in turtle heaven?”
And she said, “Yeah.”
Then I said, “Well, how come he’s outside in the trash?”
And she didn’t have an answer for me.
Those years are so important in a child’s life—they mold your psyche, and I felt like I was being lied to all the time. When I’d hear yelling in the house at night, I’d wake up and come into my parents’ room and they would tell me that the dog was in the house, making a mess. Even at that age, I knew what the truth was: they’d been fighting.
BIJOU: I’m serious, Dave, have you ever shot heroin into your dick?
DAVE: It also seems that in my childhood I equated animals with my first feelings of love. And abandonment, because I kept losing them. There was Frank the turtle, the unicorn, a bird named Tweety that died, and a dog named Dusty that my parents gave away when they got divorced. There was a cat that got hit by a car in front of my house, and I found it lying there in the street with its guts hanging out.
It was just a fucked time in my life, and when my parents finally split up, somehow it was all my fault. I knew that because after they divorced, my mom sent me to see a child psychologist. And my perception was that if I’m going to the doctor, there must be something wrong with me. And since I’m going to the doctor because my parents aren’t together anymore, I must have caused that.
BIJOU: That’s so sad. But what about shooting up into your dick?
DAVE: Well, not into my dick. But because of my dick.
part IV STALKED
One of the people working on a documentary about the Jane’s Addiction reunion tour calls Dave to warn him that he has just given a girl Dave’s phone number. Now, this is not a typical girl, brought to Dave’s attention because she may be a perfect soulmate, bedmate, or coffeemate. This is a girl who has been stopping by the homes of movie crew members a little too much, almost every day, in fact. She has also been spotted snooping around Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell’s house and loitering on his doorstep.
The girl has been insisting that Dave is in danger, that his mother has been communicating with her, that his ex-girlfriend Adria is a black witch, and that she needs to talk to him. It’s a matter of life and death for him, for her, and for many others, she keeps saying. The guy working on the documentary, for some reason, believes her. Maybe it’s because she’s blond (dyed), not unattractive (slightly pudgy with smooth, creamy skin), and seems very sane on first impression (even on second or third impression—basically until she starts talking about the magical powers and insights she claims to possess).
Dave, it turns out, has actually met this girl before: two years earlier at a car wash. He remembers only her strange fashion sense, which seemed stuck in a very Flashdance period of the eighties, and the fact that she is the kind of person who thinks that when she’s staring at you she’s being intense and mysterious when all she’s really being is annoying.
After several of Dave’s other friends call him with strange messages from this girl, he decides to call her back at four A.M. one morning. He is pissed off. “Do I know you?” he says as soon as she picks up the phone. “It’s Dave Navarro.”
Before the word “Hi” finishes squeaking out of her lips, Dave is off and running. “I want to know what’s going on. My friends have been telling me that you’re talking to my mother. And that you’ve been discussing personal, intimate details regarding my life.”
She stutters and grows flustered, caught off guard, but finally manages to tap into her inner neurosis. She explains that when he is hurting his body or doing drugs, he is hurting her and she wants to help. “You are on the wrong path,” she warns, trying to sound prophetic. “And the end of that path is not a bright reality.”
“It doesn’t take a fucking genius to tell me that,” Dave says. “I’ve been on the wrong path for years.”
“Your relationship with Perry [Farrell] is hurting you, because you are on a separate path from him,” she intones.
“I’ve always been on a separate path from him, and I really don’t have any relationship with him right now. So what? My next door neighbor has told me the exact same thing, and he actually knows it.”
“You are entering a perilous space,” she continues. “And you are in very serious danger of hurting yourself and everyone around you.”
Soon it becomes clear that the girl wants what many people in Hollywood want. She wants to get close to a star. Some deal drugs to do that, others find work as entertainment accountants, and others become prostitutes or groupies. She just happens to have become a stalker. “I love you, I need you,” she begs as Dave tries to extricate himself from the conversation he started. “Don’t go away.”
Suddenly it dawns on Dave: she isn’t trying to help him at all. She wants him to help her.
“Why do you try to take your own life?” she asks.
“You know what?” Dave says, deciding to lie. “That was all made up in the press to create an image. I’ve never tried to kill myself. So if your feelings are telling you that I have, then you’re misinterpreting the signals and you’d better take another look at this gift you think you have. The problem is not me; the problem is that if you have this gift, you need to learn how to cope with it. I can’t help you.”
There is silence on the other end. “What is it in your mind that makes you think I can help you?” Dave continues.
“You can love yourself. And that will help me.”
“I do love myself. Don’t you find what you’re doing to me invasive and insensitive?”
“You need to love yourself unselfishly.”
“Listen! I believe that in this universe there is some sort of spiritual lesson that will present itself to me and that will allow me to learn to love myself more if I need to. And that will happen when it’s time. But I certainly don’t believe that you’re the person who has been sent to me, because if you have so much insight and you have such a spiritual message for me, it wouldn’t have been brought about in a way that’s terrifying to me and my friends.”
Of course, this kind of exchange doesn’t discourage a stalker. It only encourages her because she is now making a connection that is deeper than just fantasy. The man she is obsessed with is actually speaking with her, acknowledging that he is aware of her existence on this planet. Even if the exchange is an angry one, they are feeling emotion for one anoth
er. And that constitutes a relationship.
After the conversation, she begins calling Dave’s house regularly. Members of Dave’s family suddenly start phoning, saying that she has been harassing them. In her phone messages (Dave changes his phone service so that it doesn’t accept blocked calls), she tells Dave that she hears voices and that the voices are telling her that there are a lot of people she has to help.
“Well, if there are a lot of people and not just me, then you’re really in trouble,” he tells her when, one evening, she catches him on the phone. “Because if you think that you can affect my life and change it to ultimately better my future and in turn yours, and then in turn the world, then what you’re essentially saying is that you’re acting as a god. And I don’t believe for a second that you’re acting as a god here on this earth. Because to touch my life and change the future is a power that I don’t believe you have. And if you do have it, I don’t want to know anything about it because I want my path to unfold on its own.”
But inside, Dave is worried. When his doorbell rings unexpectedly or he hears footsteps in the house, he thinks it’s her. Friends think Dave is overreacting when he says he’s scared, but he snaps at them and tells them an obsessed man killed his mother and aunt. So of course he’s going to overreact.
However, after the god exchange with Dave, she never calls him or his friends again. But it’s too late. She has already gotten to him, and he can’t keep from worrying: Where has she gone? And, even worse, what if she is right?
part I THE FIRST PERSON DAVE’S PAID TO COME OVER TO HIS HOUSE WHO HAS ACTUALLY KEPT HER CLOTHES ON