Up Till Now

by William Shatner

  Now, had we done that rescue the re-creation certainly would have been interesting. Perhaps you’d like to write my introductory narration: “For Jane and John Doe it started as just another boring evening at home; as usual he was dressed in his Batman outfit while she lay naked, tied to the bed...”

  Another story which we could not use on the show was my personal encounter with an EMT. Just before Rescue 911 went on the air I’d bought a horse farm in Kentucky. I had always wanted to own a brand-new pickup truck with those big tires and a rifle hanging in the rack on the back of the cab. I don’t know why, perhaps I’d seen too many Marlboro commercials. The horse farm provided the rationale for me to buy me a rip-snorting new pickup, although I never did get that old rifle. One night just after I’d gotten the truck I was driving alone at night on a dark side road, really just having fun with my new pickup, when... boom! I hit something. It was the most awful feeling. Many years earlier, when my father had been teaching me to drive in Montreal, a dog had run into the street and I’d hit it. I’d slammed on the brakes but the car slid on leaves and I’d hit the dog. I looked in the rearview mirror and the dog was obviously dead. I wanted to stop but my father had insisted, “Keep going. There’s nothing we can do.”

  I’d felt guilty for years afterward. And now, once again, I’d hit something in the road. This time I wasn’t going to leave. A dark lump was lying in the road, still moving. A squirrel, I thought. But as I approached this animal I realized it was a skunk. Oh my God, I thought, I’ve killed a skunk. And as I got within a few feet the tail came up and it squirted me. That was its dying wish: skunk juice all over me. I was bathed in skunk juice and I didn’t know what to do. I certainly couldn’t get back in my new pickup which I loved so much, the smell would permeate the seats. I’d never be able to get rid of it.

  I started thinking. All the way back to that summer I’d lived in the back of my truck while doing summer stock. I’d had my dog with me, a beloved Doberman. We would go everywhere together. When I was performing he’d sit in an aisle and watch the show. A wonderful dog. But one night he’d apparently had an encounter with a skunk and carried the evidence with him into the tent theater. The odor was just terrible and the audience couldn’t take it. One of the stagehands solved the problem by pouring several cans of tomato juice over my dog. Apparently the acid in tomato juice neutralizes the stink of the skunk. So standing there on that dark Kentucky road I realized what I needed to do.

  I’d passed a gas station a mile or so down the road. They might have cans of tomato juice there. I ran to that store and shouted my needs to the clerk. He tossed over several cans which I proceeded to pour over my head and my clothes. Within minutes the terrible smell began dissipating and I started walking down the road to my truck. If necessary I would get rid of my clothes before climbing into the cab. Several cars passed but I wouldn’t dare ask for a ride. Then about ten minutes later I heard the wail of sirens coming from somewhere down the road. Soon I could see the flashing lights of what turned out to be a police car and an EMT ambulance racing toward me. I stopped walking to watch them pass, but instead they squealed to a halt in front of me. A police officer leaped out of his car, yelling, “Are you okay? What happened?”

  The EMT personnel was right behind him. “Oh no,” he said, then started laughing hysterically. As it turned out, tomato juice is not as effective as I had believed. “Shatner,” he added—obviously I was not the first person to have had this problem—”you stink.”

  Apparently the driver of one of the cars that passed me had stopped down the road to call 911—there was a guy on the side of the road bleeding very badly from what appeared to be a head wound, he’d told them. They’d raced to save me. A part of me was gratified that the system had worked so well—but a much bigger part was embarrassed. “You get any calls tonight?” the wife of the EMT driver would undoubtedly ask him when he got home.

  “Just one,” he could respond honestly. “We saved Bill Shatner from dumping any more cans of tomato juice over his head!”

  It was almost impossible to work on Rescue 911 without wondering over and over how you would have responded to these situations. What would I have done in that emergency? Twice in my life I’ve faced that kind of crisis. And unfortunately, only once did it work out well.

  Marcy and I were walking on a Malibu beach on an overcast, windy day in September 1983. There were very few people on the beach, but we walked past a father and his son playing in the surf at the shoreline. When we came back twenty minutes later the father was in the water up to his shoulders, but at first I didn’t see his boy. Then I saw him, much farther out, struggling. I realized that the father was trying to get to his son, but the surf was too strong for him. Somebody had to go in and save that kid.

  Marcy and I were the only people close by. There were no options.

  I don’t remember what I was wearing, but it wasn’t much. I’m a strong swimmer, so I put my face in the water and started fighting through the waves. It was a rough surf, and by the time I reached him I was totally out of breath. I knew that seawater would support a person who isn’t moving too much—but if you panic and start thrashing around you’ll go right under. I was out of breath, the waves were breaking into me, and this boy had his arms wrapped around my neck. I was on the edge of panic. And I suddenly realized I was going to die. I didn’t have time to be afraid, I was too busy fighting for survival.

  Meanwhile, Marcy was running up and down the beach, desperately searching for someone who could help me. Nobody could. Finally she remembered someone we knew with a house on the beach who could help. She raced to his house.

  I was holding on to the boy, trying to keep his head above water while fighting my way to shore. But I wasn’t making much progress. A strong element of self-preservation kicked in. I don’t know how I did, but by the time the strong swimmer had gotten to us I’d made it closer to shore. I did save that kid’s life and I felt...I felt unbelievably good and exhausted. I don’t think the man ever knew that his son had been saved by an actor who played a hero on television.

  The second time was a lot more personal. It was the night several years later when my wife Nerine drowned in our swimming pool.

  Marcy and I were married for seventeen years. I think if a young actor were to ask me for advice about relationships I would probably respond, whatever you do, don’t marry an actor. Of course, Marcy probably would respond exactly the same way. Marriage is the most complicated of all relationships, made considerably more difficult when both people are dealing consistently with professional acceptance and rejection.

  Marcy was a wonderful person, a terrific stepmother to my three girls. As an actress, she had talent, she had class and style, but she didn’t have luck. And the reality that her career never seemed to take off always bothered her. We worked together quite a few times, she was killed in Kingdom of the Spiders, she stood in a long line in Airplane II, she played a crew member in Star Trek:The Motion Picture, we appeared on game shows together, and I had directed her in a good production of Cat on a Hit Tin Roof. We built a home and a family and that horse-breeding ranch in Kentucky together. We were good together for a long time. We liked so many of the same things; for us a perfect day would be to go to two or three movies, eat unbuttered popcorn with beer or Perrier—and then finish the night by going out for sushi.

  But her career was an extension of mine and that did not make her happy. She spent a lot of time searching for that elusive balance between being a mother and wife and being a successful actress. The fact that she never found it to her satisfaction made her unhappy.

  The failure of our marriage certainly wasn’t her fault. Where divorce is concerned, it takes two to tangle. And I played my part, I certainly played my part. The humanistic philosophy to which I faithfully adhered at that time might be accurately summed as: it seemed like a good idea at the time. Look, I’ve always taken responsibility for my actions. The reality of some marriages is that over time a husband and a wi
fe grow apart. Their needs and desires change. Marcy realized that; in fact, she once told a reporter, “Life took us apart and it was time to move on.”

  Our marriage ended long before it was legally over. Few marriages end because of one event; rather, it’s an accumulation of things culminating in one incident that may even be very minor. What? You didn’t turn the light out? You know how much that cost? That’s ridiculous, I’m done. It’s not the light or the electric bill, that’s just the evidence of a lack of caring in many areas.

  Our divorce was relatively amicable—although several years later we did have a serious legal fight over my sperm. That’s a joke, readers! A joke! Remember last chapter when I started my career in comedy? The truth is that it wasn’t physically my sperm, it was the sperm of several champion horses I owned. As part of our divorce settlement I agreed to give her “fresh-cooled” semen from our champion saddlebred horses, which is extremely valuable to horse breeders. There was a mistake made one season, which was eventually rectified by lawyers.

  I’ve never been very good at being alone. I’ve had a lot of casual relationships: one-night stands, two-week stands, six-month layabouts. With cars, Italian food, and women, when I find something that excites me I become passionate about it. But almost always I’ve lived with the hope of a long-term relationship.

  I met Nerine Kidd when I was in Toronto directing an episode of the television show Kung Fu. Ironically, as it would turn out, we met in the bar of a hotel. It was the place where movie folks who were shooting there would meet at the end of the day. I was there meeting an old friend of mine, and we were laughing maybe too loudly and I looked over his shoulder and saw her. I can close my eyes and still see her. I was struck instantly by her beauty and this marvelous sort of fuck-you attitude, this arrogance, that was so much a part of her. She had strawberry-blond hair and freckled pale Irish skin, the brightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen, and a spectacular figure, and, I was to soon find out, street-smart intelligence and a wonderful sense of humor.

  We spoke briefly that night. But I remember thinking, I’ve got to meet this girl again. Just about every night after we finished shooting I would go to that bar to look for her. It was almost a full week before I saw her again and we just fell into each other’s arms.

  The first days of a relationship are a gift that lives forever in memory. You always remember the smiles and the laughter and the moments of discovery. Nerine and I went to the Ontario Fair with a male friend of hers. One of the amusements was a bungee cord jump built for two. Let’s go! she said.

  “I’m not going up there,” I told her. I rationalized that I had done enough exciting things in my life. I didn’t need to make myself sick to prove to her that I could do dangerous things. I remember standing below watching her flying through the air, screaming with absolute delight, being free.

  There was some chinaware for sale at one of the booths and we looked at it together. We stood there comparing our tastes; we’d known each other a few hours and both of us knew we were picking out dishes for our future house. We were together for more than seven years.

  I had met the girl of my dreams. I fell in love with her and believed she was everything I’d spent my life looking for in a woman. She had the beauty and brains and a joy for living that I had rarely seen before. And she also had one other thing that I didn’t learn about for quite some time: she was an alcoholic.

  Nerine was in Toronto visiting friends, actually she was living in a rented house in Santa Monica. She was a model, but at that time was working only occasionally. For so long we had so much fun together. Once, for example, we were celebrating a friend’s birthday on a yacht in St. Tropez. We had dinner at a hotel and when we finished I looked out at the boat floating at anchor and said, “I think I’m going to swim out to the boat.”

  Please, don’t ask. I don’t know why, either.

  Nerine was right with me. “Well, if you’re going to do that, I am too.”

  We jumped in the water without any fear and managed to get about a third of the way there before we had to climb into the tender. Maybe that describes her best, she had no fear. Whatever I did, she kept up with me.

  We were together six years before we began talking about getting married. For much of that time she was able to hide her alcoholism. Unless she had been drinking very heavily she didn’t show it on the surface. What happened was that her attitude would change, when she drank she would get a little meaner. I’d think, wow, that’s too bad. It didn’t occur to me that it was caused by alcohol. I thought she just had a mean streak. I didn’t like it, but because I loved her I accepted it: nobody is perfect.

  I tried to be understanding because she came from a difficult background. She was from south Boston, she was my Irish rose. There was a history of alcoholism in her family. What I did not know then is that to a large degree alcoholism is genetic. Having that gene means only that an individual has a propensity for it, but then so many other things become factors in whether or not the disease ever manifests itself.

  But I didn’t know anything at all about alcoholism then. I’d played an alcoholic in several movies, but really I’d just been playing a cliché. In the TV movie Perilous Voyage I’d been the happy drunk, the back-slapping good-time guy who just goes into a corner and passes out. In The Third Walker, another TV movie, I was sort of a creepy, somewhat crazy drunk. But I had no idea what a real addiction was; there had never been an alcoholic or any addiction in my family. In fact, I always believed that if you really wanted to change your behavior it was just a matter of willpower. I was a smoker, for example, and during the second season of Star Trek I happened to be in a limo with three other actors and each of us had a motive for giving up smoking. Mine was that one morning I went to kiss my girls and they turned away from me, telling me, “Oh Daddy, you smell.”

  So I stopped cold turkey. It was very difficult. At times I was desperate because the nicotine wasn’t out of my system. Leonard remembers a day when I finished a scene and walked away and started screaming, “I want a cigarette! I need a cigarette.” But I beat it and it seemed obvious to me that if I could beat an addiction, then anyone who sincerely wanted to beat a demon could do it too.

  I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  We were together six years before we began thinking about marriage. We certainly were a couple in every other way. But one day she said to me, “Bill, we should get married,” and I understood that she was telling me she needed the permanence of that particular commitment. I agreed. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I was in love with her.

  But it was around that time, maybe a little earlier, that her alcoholism first began to get out of control. I didn’t know then that before we’d met she had been through rehab. The details of that were always sketchy, but apparently it was because of cocaine. Okay, but there were a lot of people in the entertainment business who had successfully fought that particular addiction. It wasn’t unusual and certainly nothing about which I was going to make a judgment.

  We were making preparations for our wedding when she was caught driving drunk—and almost killed my daughter. She had picked up my daughter from a spa in Palm Springs and, apparently, as she drove home she would stop at gas stations, go into the ladies’ room, and down a small bottle of whatever she was drinking. She was exiting the freeway and for no obvious reason suddenly slammed on the brakes. If there had been another car behind her it would have slammed into her car at a freeway speed. What kind of insanity, what kind of mental illness, allows someone to do that? To drive drunk with a young person in her car? After that she swore to me that she was done with drinking, that she could control it and would never drink again. I didn’t just want to believe her, I did believe her. Of course she would stop drinking, she would do it for me, for us. See, that’s all it took to solve this problem. So we set another date for six months later.

  Five months later she was again arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. “We can’t get mar
ried under these circumstances. You promised me that if we got married you’d stop drinking. How can I marry you now?”

  She turned to me with her bright blue eyes and said to me in the voice only lovers know, “Don’t do this to me, Bill.”

  Don’t do this to me, she said, and she said it with such frankness and honesty that my heart just went out to her. It was a plea, it was a cry. I just couldn’t resist her. But by now, at least, I had some help. We had been to a dinner party with several other couples at Leonard and Susan Nimoy’s. At that party she was, as Leonard later described it, “erratic in her behavior.” I thought she had hidden it well, but apparently it had been obvious to everyone. Leonard recognized the symptoms immediately. The next day he called me and said, “Bill, you know she’s an alcoholic?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I love her.”

  “You’re in for a rough ride, then.”

  I didn’t understand what Leonard was saying to me. I didn’t have the vocabulary. I was so certain that by loving her enough I could cure her. I know it’s a romantic concept, but I’d seen it work. I’d seen children flower and animals respond to love. I’d experienced the joy that love could bring to a life, happiness almost beyond description, and it was inconceivable to me that there could be something stronger than complete love. Particularly something so dark and destructive. I believed without any reservation that love heals. So what I thought Leonard was saying to me was that I had to love her that way, I had to surround her with the love and support that she needed to beat this.

  That wasn’t at all what he was saying. What he said was simple and clear and came from the depth of his own experience. “Bill, you know she’s an alcoholic?”