I peered in. It was a woman. She was in a brassiere and panties, and she was evidently going to take a bath. The tub was right under the window; the toilet was to the left; the washbasin was to the right; and there was a little scale. She got off the scale and then she stood looking in the mirror over the washbasin. This chick was very pretty. She had blonde hair and white skin, and when she took off her bra and panties I saw she had blonde hair on her cunt and her nipples were hard. I thought, "What am I doing, man? What if somebody sees me or the slats break and I fall?" But I was all fired up. I held on to the sill and peeked in.
She's standing in front of the mirror. She takes her breasts and hefts them in her hands, and then she rubs them around in a circular motion, looking at herself in the mirror, and she starts to get a glazed expression, and she rubs and tweaks at her nipples with her fingers. She does this for a little while and then she runs to turn off the bathwater. She stands and looks at herself. She starts rubbing her cunt, rubbing down her legs and rubbing her cunt. She sits on the toilet and spreads her legs and takes the first two fingers of her left hand and rubs up and down on her cunt, and she closes her eyes and she's got her head back and with her other hand she's tweaking her nipple, and she starts quivering and shaking and then she holds her hand real hard on her cunt, and I guess she had come, and then she got up and looked at herself again and she kissed those two fingers, which really turned me on. I just couldn't help myself. I had unzipped my fly and reached in and grabbed my joint and started rubbing across the bottom of my joint, and I came right about the same time she did. And then I really panicked. She got up and got into the tub, and I jumped down to the ground. I was scared to death. I thought, "What if somebody's seen me? What if somebody looked out a window and called the police?" I got back to the club and sneaked into the bathroom. I had come all over my shorts and the top of my pants. I wiped myself off, and when I buttoned my coat it covered the area. I felt awful and I thought, "What's happening to me? What would Stan think and the guys in the band?" I thought, "I've got to stop this!" Heroin stopped it for me.
In 1950 I was in Chicago at the Croyden Hotel. That was the hotel all the musicians stayed at. I was rooming with Sammy Curtis. He was a tall guy with a roundish face, rosy cheeks, blonde, curly hair, and he had this lopsided grin; he played the little boy bit. He thought it was charming. He was very talented.
I think we played the Civic Opera House that night. I was featured. I got all the praise and applause, and it was great while it was happening, but after everybody left, there I was alone. I wandered around the town. I went to all the bars. I ended up back at the hotel and went into the bar there. I just had to continue getting loaded; it was a compulsion; I had demons chasing me. The only way I ever got loaded enough, so I could be cool, was when I passed out, fell out someplace, which is what I used to do almost every night. They kicked me out of the bar at about four o'clock in the morning, and I didn't know what to do. There was no place I could get a drink. It was getting daylight, and I couldn't peep in any windows. There was no one on the streets.
I went back up to the room. Sammy was there and Roy King, a tenor player, and Sheila Harris, who's a singer, and some piano player. They were all using heroin. Sammy had been using stuff for a long time, and I knew it, but I never would try it because I knew that the minute I did it would be all over for me. I asked them if they had anything other than stuff, and they didn't. I was so unhappy, and Patti was two thousand miles away, and there was nothing I could do. I had to have something.
Sheila came over to me. She was a good singer who worked with another band. She was about five foot, two, and a little on the chubby side-what they call pleasingly plump. She had nice breasts, large, but nice, and although I've never liked chubby women she was one of the few that turned me on. She had long eyelashes and large eyes, bluish-green. Her face was oval and full, and she had full lips, and her eyebrows were full. Most women in those days plucked their eyebrows, but she had let hers grow, and I liked that. She had long fingers and nice nails. And she was a nymphomaniac. When she looked at a man she was thinking of sucking his cock; that was her thought and she turned you on because you could feel that; everyone could. And you were turned on by the stories. She was a legend among musicians. Whether they had ever made it with her or not they'd all tell stories about balling her. She was purely sensual, but only in a sexual way, no other. No warmth, no love, no beauty. When you looked at her you just saw your cock in her mouth.
She came over to me and offered me some stuff, just to horn it, sniff it. She said, "Why don't you hang up that jive and get in a different groove? Why don't you come in the bathroom with me? I'll show you a new way to go." I was at my wit's end. The only thing I could have done other than what I did was to jump out of the window of the hotel. I think we were on the fourteenth floor. I started to go into the bathroom with her, and Sammy saw what was happening and flipped out. He caused a big scene. He said, "I won't be responsible for you starting to use stuff!" But Roy said, "Man, anything would be better than that jive booze scene he's into now. What could be worse? That's really a bringdown." We cooled Sammy out, and me and Sheila walked into the bathroom and locked the door.
When we got in there she started playing with my joint. She said, "Do you want me to say hello to him?" She was marvelous, and she really turned me on, but I said, "Wait a minute. Let's get into this other thing and then we'll get back to that." I was all excited about something new, the heroin. I had made up my mind.
She had a little glass vial filled with white powder, and she poured some out onto the porcelain top of the toilet, chopped it up with a razor blade, and separated it into little piles, little lines. She asked me if I had a dollar bill. She told me to get the newest one I had. I had one, very clean and very stiff. I took it out of my pocket and she said, "Roll it up." I started to roll it but she said, "No, not that way." She made a tube with a small opening at the bottom and a larger opening at the top. Then she went over to the heroin and she said, "Now watch what I do and do this." She put one finger on her left nostril and she stuck the larger end of the dollar bill into her right nostril. She put the tube at the beginning of one pile, made a little noise, and the pile disappeared. She said, "Now you do that." I closed my nostril. I even remember it was my left nostril. I sniffed it, and a long, thin pile of heroin disappeared. She told me to do the same with the other nostril. I did six little lines and then she said "Okay, wait a few minutes." While I'm waiting she's rubbing my joint and playing with me. I felt a tingly, burning sensation up in my sinuses, and I tasted a bitter taste in my throat, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, all that feeling-wanting something but having no idea what it was, thinking it was sex and then when I had a chance to ball a chick not wanting to ball her because I was afraid of some disease and because of the guilt; that wandering and wandering like some derelict; that agony of drinking and drinking and nothing ever being resolved; and ... no peace at all except when I was playing, and then the minute that I stopped playing there was nothing; that continual, insane search just to pass out somewhere and then to wake up in the morning and think, "Oh, my God," to wake up and think, "Oh God, here we go again," to drink a bottle of warm beer so I could vomit, so I could start all over again, so I could start that ridiculous, sickening, horrible, horrible life again-all of a sudden, all of a sudden, the demons and the devils and the wandering and wondering and all the frustrations just vanished and they didn't exist at all anymore because I'd finally found peace.
I felt this peace like a kind of warmth. I could feel it start in my stomach. From the whole inside of my body I felt the tranquility. It was so relaxing. It was so gorgeous. Sheila said, "Look at yourself in the mirror! Look in the mirror!" And that's what I'd always done: I'd stood and looked at myself in the mirror and I'd talk to myself and say how rotten I was-"Why do people hate you? Why are you alone? Why are you so miserable?" I thought, "Oh, no! I don't want to do that! I don't want to spoil this feeling that's coming up in me!"
I was afraid that if I looked in the mirror I would see it, my whole past life, and this wonderful feeling would end, but she kept saying, "Look at yourself! Look how beautiful you are! Look at your eyes! Look at your pupils!" I looked in the mirror and I looked like an angel. I looked at my pupils and they were pinpoints; they were tiny, little dots. It was like looking into a whole universe of joy and happiness and contentment.
I thought of my grandmother always talking about God and inner happiness and peace of mind, being content within yourself not needing anybody else, not worrying about whether anybody loves you, if your father doesn't love you, if your mother took a coathanger and stuck it up her cunt to try to destroy you because she didn't want you, because you were an unclean, filthy, dirty, rotten, slimy being that no one wanted, that no one ever wanted, that no one has still ever wanted. I looked at myself and I said, "God, no, I am not that. I'm beautiful. I am the whole, complete thing. There's nothing more, nothing more that I care about. I don't care about anybody. I don't care about Patti. I don't need to worry about anything at all." I'd found God.
I loved myself, everything about myself. I loved my talent. I had lost the sour taste of the filthy alcohol that made me vomit and the feeling of the bennies and the strips that put chills up and down my spine. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked at Sheila and I looked at the few remaining lines of heroin and I took the dollar bill and horned the rest of them down. I said, "This is it. This is the only answer for me. If this is what it takes, then this is what I'm going to do, whatever dues I have to pay ..." And I knew that I would get busted and I knew that I would go to prison and that I wouldn't be weak; I wouldn't be an informer like all the phonies, the no-account, the nonreal, the zero people that roam around, the scum that slither out from under rocks, the people that destroyed music, that destroyed this country, that destroyed the world, the rotten, fucking, lousy people that for their own little ends-the black power people, the sickening, stinking motherfuckers that play on the fact that they're black, and all this fucking shit that happened later on-the rotten, no-account, filthy women that have no feeling for anything; they have no love for anyone; they don't know what love is; they are shallow hulls of nothingness-the whole group of rotten people that have nothing to offer, that are nothing, never will be anything, were never intended to be anything.
All I can say is, at that moment I saw that I'd found peace of mind. Synthetically produced, but after what I'd been through and all the things I'd done, to trade that misery for total happiness-that was it, you know, that was it. I realized it. I realized that from that moment on I would be, if you want to use the word, a junkie. That's the word they used. That's the word they still use. That is what I became at that moment. That's what I practiced; and that's what I still am. And that's what I will die as-a junkie.
(Hersh Hamel) We were playing at a place called Esther's in Hermosa Beach, and I was with Jack Montrose. Jack and I were friends. They used to have a session at this place almost every night, so we had gone down there to play, and Art came down, and we all enjoyed ourselves together. This must have been in the late forties. Art was serious about playing, liked to laugh; he was drinking, smoking pot. Art immediately hit it off with Jack and I, and we all decided to meet there again, and we did, on succeeding days. Art was very handsome at that time, lean and dark, black hair combed back, and very fastidious. Art was a very interesting player, swinging and very intense, sort of trying to do his own thing under the cloak of the strong sentiment and strong popularity of Charlie Parker. Art was trying to create a style of his own.
Art was married to Patti and they were living somewhere between Washington Boulevard and Adams in a nice, little place. Patti was a sort of naive girl who wasn't terribly interested in music, jazz. She was very pretty. She was blonde and very pretty. Very much a take-care-of-business type of girl. She did her thing. Around the house. Wasn't lazy. Sort of serious and not terribly talkative or friendly with any of the musicians. She had her own set of friends, whoever they were.
She was always nice to me, said hello, but Freddy Rivera-we got to know Freddy; he would always be around Art, you know, coming over to the house, and I got the impression that Patti didn't like Freddy, didn't like Freddy over there. Art wanted Freddy there. Art got a big kick out of Freddy. Found Freddy amusing. So, there was a little tension between Patti and Art about Freddy. As for me, when I came over and picked Art up or whatever it was, she was more friendly with me, but I felt I was still one of the musician friends of Art's.
Patti and Art seemed to be on different mind levels. They didn't seem to have the same likes and dislikes. There wasn't a great rapport between them, although, you know, Art seemed to love Patti. And Patti's ideas about the way a marriage should be didn't coincide with Art's. I don't think Art really thought about it that much. He was very involved with his music and his emotional ups and downs with his music. They took a great toll out of him, so he wasn't able, really, to grasp the reality of the marriage situation. That was my feeling.
We used to go out playing all the time. Go over to the east side, play at different places. Sometimes, out of seven nights in the week, we'd be playing five nights, and we had a different place for each night. Even if we weren't working we'd be, like, together, as a group of guys: myself, Jack Montrose, Art, Sammy Curtis, sometimes Chet Baker, sometimes Jack Sheldon, Bill Perkins, Gene Roland, Bob Braucus, Bob Neal. Sometimes Shorty Rogers even came along.
Some nights we'd play at a place called the Samoan in East L.A., right in the Barrio, off Whittier and Atlantic. We knew the owner there; he was very mellow, and he liked us to come in. He knew Freddy. Al Leon had a place for us to play in El Cerrito. And the Mexicans loved Art. I think they thought that Art was part Mexican; he has that Latin look. I don't think they realized he's more Italian than anything else. He was just a hero to them. They'd come in and take us outside and get us high.
At that point Art was just drinking and smoking pot, maybe a diet pill from time to time. And he could always drink me under the table. I remember one night we were at the opening of a record store in East L.A. It was about ten at night, the grand opening, and we played, like, a jam session. The owner asked us to. They closed up the store at about one and we played until four in the morning, and Art, while I was standing up playing my big bass fiddle, Art was pouring this gin down my throat and it was running down my neck. Well, I got so drunk! Art drank more than I did, and I got terribly sick. Art didn't really even show the effect. He was drunk but he wasn't drunk drunk, like I was. He took me home, and my clothes were all screwed up, and Patti washed my clothes and cleaned me up. I was a mess. It was a lot of fun. It really was. The point was, Art was able to consume a lot of stuff, no matter what it was, and show very little effect from it.
About that period, Art went back on the road with Kenton, and the way I heard it from Art was that he was initiated to heroin while he was on that tour. I remember he came back and he was involved with heroin. It seemed like he got involved pretty fast and pretty deep. When Art wasn't on the road with Kenton, he would do some things by himself, and I remember he was down at a place on Sixth and Western called the Surf Club. Hampton Hawes was down there with him, and I remember how loaded Art was on the gig, really zonked. I remember going down to see him and being disturbed about him being so stoned while he was working. His playing was fine, but it seemed like Art began to feel like he couldn't play good enough unless he was on heroin.
Art's really a gifted and talented player. He's given his great talent to jazz, his style. And he did retain himself through all the Charlie Parker years, some pretty rough times. I remember there was a club near Hollywood Boulevard where we used to go play sessions after hours. This must have been 1960, something like that. I was standing outside the club and Art was going in and Joe Maini was going in and somehow there were words between Joe and Art. Joe said something: "Hey, faggot!" About the way Art played. He didn't mean Art's demeanor as a person. And they got into a fistfight and
were rolling around on the concrete hitting each other over the style of Art's playing. Art was defending his playing by engaging in fisticuffs with Joe.
You know, there are Charlie Parker influences in Art's playing but Art was able to retain himself; whereas most of the alto players emulated Charlie Parker and therefore they didn't have as much of themselves to give as Art did. I think that's a great thing.
(Freddy Rivera) At that time, I was completely lost. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I wasn't even close to having an idea of what I was doing. In reality I was doing nothing. Getting drunk. Running around the streets. Screaming. At times it was enormous fun, but much of the other time it was frightening, really, not knowing what the hell's going on. Art was frightened, too. He was frightened of life. At one time, we went into a shopping center and people were going in and out of the doors and he said, "They're making it. Those people are making it." One time we were in a car and we were talking and somebody said, "You know, a lawyer makes eighty thousand a year. You, Art, you're not making anything at all. You should be making as much as a successful lawyer or doctor." It was the truth, too. Art was making, what, twenty dollars a week? Of course, when he was with the bands he was making more money. But he was capable of making eighty thousand. He rationalized it, "It's a rotten world. People are cold and conniving. They won't give a person a chance. There's no justice."
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