I’m traveling further and further out there, toward oblivion and away from family, friends, and myself. No matter how far gone I am, however, I can still locate home base. Still, my story is starting to sound like that of a rock star who fell to earth, or like an episode of Behind the Music. I can’t stand the thought that I’ve become just another Hollywood cliché, but there it is. Gone is the Hollywood mansion with beautiful people partying and skating all day and all night. The luxury cars have vanished as if blown away by an afternoon breeze. There are no world travels, champagne dinners, or sponsorship checks to cover expenses. The crowds chanting my name have been replaced by freaks screeching for me to blow pipes with them. I’ve torn it all down with my own hands, destroyed everything, and left the life I love in ruins. And now my habit is taking a jackhammer to whatever’s left behind.
While I know too many people to actually be homeless, I’m still jumping from place to place. People still want (or are willing) to hang out and party with me, so I generally have decent places to stay when I need them. Mostly, though, I stay in my van. With no legal income, the only way I can get something beyond the necessities is to flip a little dope and turn a little profit. I’m a good customer and know lots of people who use lots of drugs—and I help connect those customers with suppliers—so when I go to a dealer’s house he usually gives me without charge whatever I need for myself. However, if I want to hook some chick up, and I always do, I need twice as much. To get more means doing some sort of work beyond flipping dope—and that means transporting drugs. It’s dangerous for sure, but in the end I’m rewarded with all the meth I can smoke, a girl for a night or two, a place to sleep for a while, and maybe a few extra bucks, which I eventually burn through to score more dope. You know, all the little things that make life worth living.
Before I was ever a drug junkie, I was an adrenaline junkie, risking it all on some ramp or pool. I love going to the edge and barely pulling it. That’s where adrenaline lives. I now fire that adrenaline surge by avoiding the cops, smoking pipes, and hooking up with crazy chicks. It’s entertaining enough to keep me coming back for more, but it’s starting to get old, and I know that my number could be coming up. Drugs are getting more and more risky, and the casualty rate around me is mounting.
What I love most about meth is what most people hate about it—any hit you take could be your last one. When you’re as far into drugs as I am, the idea is to push the boundaries and stay just this side of death. You go as far as you can, until you’re shoved right up against death’s door. You can nearly smell death, but you survive—and you think, This is a good high; this is worth the money. If you don’t brush up against death, it’s not much of a thrill. That’s like chasing the dragon, pushing the line further and further, until you’ve reached the ultimate high. You live on the thinnest line, balancing between life and death, approaching the line fast and backing off at the last second. You’ve been there before, so you recognize the signals. Cross that line and you’re dead.
It may sound funny, but I’m particular about the tweakers I hang out with. I gravitate toward the ones who are talkative—not just babbling, but educated and wanting to discuss some of the important issues of life. I don’t like the usual types of tweakers. They’re always fidgety and are often “projing out,” meaning tinkering with one ridiculous project or another. Those guys are always building meaningless contraptions, taking brand-new appliances apart, and never having all the screws to put them back together again. Then there’s the addict who will snap on you for no reason.
Drug addicts are definitely not all the same. Some are kind of mellow and maintain decent lives. The saddest ones are the kindhearted, sensitive people that you think would never do drugs. You see them around for years, clean and sober, being responsible to their jobs and their families. When something rocks their world, the next thing you know they’re using. Pretty soon they don’t care about anything other than drugs. I’ve seen formerly good family men and women get so bad they’ll smoke meth right in front of their babies and not seem to even notice.
As bad as I am, I always make sure the kid—whether it’s my own or someone else’s—is in another room, away from the secondhand meth smoke. If somebody is gonna use dope right in front of their baby, I’m out. Drawing this line enhances the illusion that I’m both ethical and under control. But nothing about my life is under control. No matter where I go, there’s meth and there are people who want it more than life itself.
People don’t want to believe that meth has seeped beneath their white-picket fences, but it can get into any home. I’ve lived on the streets of Huntington Beach and up the road in some of America’s richest ZIP codes. There’s no shortage of dope in any area I’ve ever been.
Some of my homies from Venice, like Scott Oster and especially Block, get through to me more than most other people do. Block’s a powerful person and a leader, and when he says to do something, it’s a good idea to listen. He knows me as well as anyone, and he tries to help out:
I TOLD CHRISTIAN, “COME UP TO THE HOUSE OR I’M GONNA FIND YOU AND BEAT YOU UP.” HE KNOWS ME, AND SO HE KNOWS THAT I’LL DO IT. HE DRIVES UP FROM ORANGE COUNTY AND IS BACK IN VENICE. HE CRASHES OUT UP HERE FOR A WHILE, AND HE’S TRYING TO GET CLEAN. OF COURSE I’LL HELP HIM. THE PLAN IS FOR HIM TO MOVE IN WITH ME. HE HAS HIS STUFF THERE, READY TO MOVE IN, BUT HE STICKS AROUND FOR ONLY A FEW DAYS. THEN HE’S BACK DOWN TO HUNTINGTON.
I’M NOT TOO WORRIED ABOUT HIM, THOUGH. I’VE SEEN FRIENDS A LOT WORSE OFF. I’VE HAD TO PULL THE NEEDLE OUT OF THEIR ARMS, BREAK DOWN THEIR DOORS, AND BRING THEM HERE, TO MY HOUSE. HE DIDN’T LOOK THAT BAD TO ME.
Block’s right: I’m not “that bad.” Not like those other speed freaks, imagining that my friends are conspiring against me or that they plan to turn me in. I never think that the guy nobody knows at the party is a narc. I’ve heard of other meth-heads running around the yard with a gun, pointing at people who aren’t there. That’s not me. Never even close. But I’ve seen people get that bad and worse. You have to be smart if you’re going to do drugs. Of course, everyone thinks they’re smarter than the guy who doesn’t make it. If anybody ever really expected they’d flip out, OD on someone’s couch, become a street person, lose their teeth, or get all bugged out, they’d probably never do drugs. But nobody ever thinks that will happen to them. People don’t know themselves as well as they think they do, and addicts are uniquely gifted in the art of self-deception. Because of my own self-deception, I’ve always believed I can quit whenever I want to.
So in what ways am I a “smart” user? My advice to other drug addicts is always, Don’t carry drugs outside; you’ll get arrested. I mean, I’m one to talk, right? I’m eventually caught carrying a large amount onto a plane and find myself busted big-time. Another way I try to be smart about my drug use is to put a line around how much I’m gonna do. Problem is I keep moving the line further and further back, using more all the time. I tell myself I’m not like those other drug addicts that use everything all at once; I use mine up a little (actually a lot) at a time. So many of my friends burn up their entire stash all at once.
And I play it smart by not becoming an actual dealer, although I have plenty of opportunities to do so. What I’m doing isn’t dealing, I tell myself; it’s simply carrying for someone else. It’s funny how you can imagine you’re okay when you’re not. It’s because of a game of comparison all drug users play. Jay Adams sums it up perfectly: “When you smoke pot you think, At least I’m not taking pills. When you take pills, you think, At least I’m not doing coke. When you do coke you think, At least I’m not doing heroin. When you do heroin, you think, At least I’m not shooting it. When you shoot it you think, At least I’m not as bad as that other guy.” By the time you are as bad as that guy and there’s nobody worse than you, it’s game over.
But the chances of me turning up dead seem slim, especially living in Orange County. I mean, drugs can kill you anywhere, but I’m never going to OD—smart user, remember?—and
there’s little chance I’ll get shot. As violent as things can get in O.C., with guys getting beat down pretty badly every so often, it’s nothing like L.A. In Orange County there aren’t that many people armed and ready to rob you at gunpoint or to gun you down for your dope. That’s not to say it isn’t gnarly in O.C., but it’s never scary in the way it can be in L.A. There you walk the streets knowing that everyone’s strapped and that someone might actually shoot you.
Even though I’m a mess, I’m still able to stick it to an old sponsor and the established guys in my own little way. It’s my business partner Chicken’s idea, actually. Powell-Peralta has done a skate movie called The Search for Animal Chin, staring the Bones Brigade: Lance Mountain, Tony Hawk, Cab, and those guys. The T-shirt naturally has the movie’s name on it, The Search for Animal Chin. Rumors about my disappearance are always circulating throughout the skate world, so Chicken makes these shirts that say The Search for Animal Christian, and they pass them out to friends. I thought that was hilarious at the time.
The world is closing in, but in part because of the fun I still have with friends, I retain an optimistic feeling that things will somehow get better. They always have in the past, so even now I never get really stressed or depressed. Little things can ruin the moment, of course—like when I want to hang out with a girl and it doesn’t happen, or I want to skate somewhere particular one day and I’m unable to. Usually if I want to skate a park, I just stealth it into the Huntington Beach Skatepark, take a few runs, and bail out quickly. I hear that people will later say, “Whoa, Christian Hosoi just cruised by and skated.” That gives me a little rush, though I know I’m not in the same shape I used to be: I’ve lost some muscle tone and some people have told me my skin is taking on a gray tone, the color people turn after they die. I can only imagine what else they’re saying. Who cares? I can live without all those hypocrites.
I’ve skated for so long on drugs that it’s not difficult. It’s an instinctive activity, like riding a bike once you know how, or maybe Keith Richards playing his guitar. You never forget how. I enjoy my newest role as a ghost that appears from time to time and quickly vanishes. And I still enjoy the rush of the cat-and-mouse hustle required to keep myself out of jail. My mojo’s still working pretty well; I’m still able to pull a rabbit out of my hat when I need to, so in my mind I’m still the man.
THE 900
My life should be a warning to anyone who ever considers doing drugs—I’m on the run from the cops, living in my van, while Tony Hawk is reaching for the impossible as we approach the turn of the millennium. We’ve never seen a skateboarder stay on top beyond his midtwenties at that point, and I sure don’t expect to see anyone’s career last double that—certainly not as long as Tony’s has. Here’s to clean living, right?
Tony is the first competitive skateboarder to reach middle age and still remain relevant. He’s forever dazzling judges with new tricks; I think he has about a hundred of them to his credit. Still, I doubt he would be as big as he is now if he hadn’t continued down the road he was on, reached deep into himself, and accomplished the unthinkable: the 900. (To make it more impressive, he’s still ripping 900s at the age of forty-three, as this book goes to publication. Who knows how long he’ll last?)
As we approach the 1999 Summer X Games, everyone is wondering what the skateboarders will do. Only a few years ago the 540 was considered nearly impossible; now someone has nearly doubled that—Danny Way nearly completed a full 900 a while back. The top young pros all try and fail, but Tony’s like the Terminator; he won’t ever quit. He’s chased the 900 for thirteen years now, and has ended by slamming down hard many times. He finally pulls it off on camera at those 1999 X Games. It gets big press too: this isn’t some tiny blurb in a skate magazine, but full features in publications like USA Today. They didn’t get the press then, but it’s like McGill when he did the 540 and Alva when he did the first frontside air; nobody else can claim those initial triumphs but them. Such accomplishments create a legacy for the individual and change the sport forever. Tony and I have always been stark contrasts to one another, but never as much as we are now. He’s headed for superstardom; I’m headed for prison.
Tony helps put skateboarding further on the map with his Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game series. He’s always been a computer whiz, so he can design all the games himself. They become the biggest-selling video games on the market, a feat that brings Tony a fortune and takes skateboarding into millions of kids’ rooms around the world. (At the time all I can think is that I’ll soon be getting my own gaming character.)
He’s the right guy in the right place at the right time, a good image that no parents are afraid for their kid to imitate. It doesn’t take long for kids, their parents, and their grandparents to realize that skateboarding isn’t just some hula hoop or yo-yo fad that you fall into briefly before storing the board in the rafters forever. These days, you don’t quit skating just because you turn sixteen. Skating has grown from a backyard, underground activity with several thousand hard-core participants to something every kid on every street is into. It’s now a real sport and has a real future, paying real money for those who desire to be the best, fly the highest, break records, invent maneuvers, and win contests. Not everyone’s willing to take it to the edge, however, cuz that’s a price often paid in your own blood.
JENNIFER AND ME. © JENNIFER HOSOI.
“Life had been running downhill quickly until I meet Jennifer Lee Gilbert, a club dancer. Her roommate is a friend of mine, Amber, who has a picture of me in her photo album, one where I’m blowing a smoke ring of meth. Jen sees that photo and decides she wants to meet me. I’m couch-surfing when she calls the place I’m living, tells me her name, and asks if I want to come over. I’m like, “Yeah.” What guy wouldn’t be stoked on some hot-sounding chick on the line, saying she wants to get together? I cruise over to meet her at her apartment, and she’s even hotter than she sounds. She and Amber are getting high on a drug known as GHB, so I join in. We get high, hang out, and I forget to leave.”
As the days go by, we move on to other drugs. Jen snorts meth regularly, but I quickly convert her to smoking it. Now we’re smoking meth every day, and just hangin’ out, always high. In time we fall in love, but neither of us will admit it initially, for fear of rejection. It’s just us together late every night, and from that first day on I’ve never seriously gone out with another girl.
Because I don’t hallucinate or have paranoid delusions, I think I’m in control, and I assume she is too. Jen’s recollection paints a different picture:
IF YOU LOOK AT PICTURES OF CHRISTIAN ON DRUGS AND NOW, HE’S A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PERSON. HIS SKIN TONE WAS GRAY BACK THEN. BUT THANK GOD HE NEVER GOT VIOLENT OR TALKED TOTALLY CRAZY. I WAS THE ONE WHO THOUGHT THERE WERE PEOPLE FOLLOWING ME AND THAT THE COPS HAD SET UP IN THE EMPTY APARTMENT NEXT DOOR. MY BEST FRIEND, WHO WAS ALSO THE APARTMENT MANAGER AT THE TIME, WOULD HAVE TO ESCORT ME THROUGH THAT UNIT, TO SEE THAT NOBODY LIVED THERE.
EVENTUALLY WE WERE LIVING MAINLY IN CHRISTIAN’S VAN, COMPLETELY METHED OUT. I WAS JUST AS BAD AS HE WAS. WE DIDN’T EXACTLY KEEP A SCRAPBOOK OF THAT PERIOD OF OUR LIVES.
Jen parties right alongside me, but I’m not there the day her girlfriend snaps from using too much speed:
THERE WAS THIS DANCER THAT WORKED WITH ME AT THE CLUB, [JEN REMEMBERS]. SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT AND SHE NEEDED NEEDLES. MY DEALER SLAMMED SPEED, SO I WAS ABLE TO GET HER NEEDLES. WE ENDED UP HANGING OUT. SHE GOT HER HEROIN; I GOT MY METH.
I WAS STAYING AT MY GRANDMOTHER’S PLACE RIGHT THEN, AND THIS GIRL MOVED IN WITH US AND STAYED IN THE SPARE ROOM. SHE WANTED TO GIVE UP HEROIN, SO SHE STARTED DOING METH. ONE DAY I WALKED INTO HER ROOM AND HER HAND WAS WRAPPED UP AND BLOODY. TURNS OUT SHE HAD BEEN SHOOTING UP IN HER HAND AND IN HER NECK AND WAS TRYING TO FIND A GOOD VEIN.
ANOTHER TIME SHE HADN’T DONE ANYTHING FOR A FEW DAYS SO THE DRUGS HIT HER HARD, AND CHRISTIAN AND I WERE BRINGING HER BACK TO MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE. WE PULLED OVER IN FRONT OF A NEARBY E
MPTY HOUSE FIRST, AND CHRISTIAN AND I SMOKED SOME METH. MY FRIEND THOUGHT PEOPLE WERE LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW OF THAT HOUSE AT HER, BUT NOBODY WAS IN THERE.
LATER ON, BACK AT MY GRANDMOTHER’S, SHE WAS SAYING THERE WERE ALL THESE LITTLE BABIES, AND THEIR HEADS WERE UNDERNEATH THE BED. I WAS LIKE, OKAY, SHE’S DONE WAY TOO MUCH METH AND SHE’S TRIPPIN’ OUT. THIS WENT ON FOR TWO DAYS.
AT ONE POINT I SAW HER LYING ON THE FLOOR IN THE HALLWAY, CARESSING THE FACE OF SOMEBODY WHO WASN’T THERE. WHEN I ASKED WHAT SHE WAS DOING, SHE SAID, “WELL, HEATHER’S HEAD FELL OFF AND I’M PUTTING IT BACK ON SO I CAN PUT HER MAKEUP ON.” THAT REALLY SCARED ME. I DIDN’T WANT TO BE LIKE THAT. THAT’S WHEN I SAID, “I’M QUITTING DRUGS.”
HIGH IN THE CHAPEL
I’ve seen people on drugs get close to death before, so I don’t think much about Jen’s story. But she’s really shaken up, as I suppose most people would be. In fact, she’s so freaked out she says she’s quitting drugs and going to church with her grandmother. It’s fine with me that she wants to go to church. I’m not invited, though, probably because her grandmother considers me a bad influence. I’m not hanging out at their house much anyway. I stay in my van up the street, hoping for Jen to join me. I’ve never once been to church before and don’t know exactly what goes on there, but her grandmother and her uncle Chris, who’s a pastor, seem to think it will help. I’m cool with that—whatever works is fine.
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