“All I’m gonna do is leave it unlocked so you can get in. If you get caught, you haven’t seen me since you stopped working here. Ok?”
“Yeah. Ok.”
I got up and hurried out of the yard. I had to try and make this spot last as long as I could. Kenny had been real nice to me and I didn’t want him to have to pay for that kindness. I was in a bad way and I knew it. The voice in my head was SCREAMING to go get dope. Screaming into a megaphone blasting in my ear drums.
I walked over to a phone booth and went inside. It was a glass booth, one of the old style and it blocked me form the cold and wind. I stood there and just thought about my life. I decided to call my father. He tried to help me once he might try to help me again. I put my coins in the slot and dialed the number. It rang six times before he picked it up.
“Hello.”
“Dad?”
Click. He hung right up. I stood there and listened to the dial tone for a moment then hung up the phone. I stood in that booth for a few minutes and looked out at the city. There was no one to call. I was in the great Northwest about as far as I could get away from home and still be in this country. I had nowhere else to go. Time sort of stood still for me. I knew I was at the biggest cross roads of my life. Absolutely alone and deathly afraid of myself, it was at this moment I would say I had an epiphany, a defining moment in my life. A moment of clarity I think it’s called.
I decided right there I had to figure a way out of this mess now or I was going to go back to San Francisco and be the best junkie could be till I die. It had been almost a year since I left the city, I wasn’t worried about the dealers I robbed. I was more worried about myself.
I made a command decision. I realized I was different from normal people because they had never been exposed. They had no voice in their head screaming to go get dope because they didn’t know dope was even in the world. I decided I would pretend I had never been exposed, that all this had never happened to me. That I had no idea at all that dope was in the world or that I new how easy it is to find. I decided I would back track further and trade addictions. Anytime I even thought about dope I would smoke weed. This was my new plan. I had lost my way in the world. I was now going to retrace my footsteps to the point when I lost my way and find it back. I had to start again, and to do that I had to go backwards. Back to when this started and take a different road. And this wasn’t going to be easy. No more smoking dope on foil. No more dope period. If I even thought about dope I would smoke weed. I made another big decision to back track even further. I had to reverse this lifestyle completely and become what I once was before it was too late.
I stepped out of the phone booth and the cold hit me hard but I was still excited. I was excited about taking my life back.
50
“Hey. Wait. STOP.” I turned back and there was a guy about forty dressed real nice chasing me down. He had my application in his hand. I stopped and he caught up with me. He was out of breath. He looked down at my application.
“David?”
“Yes sir.”
“You’re hired.”
I had been pounding the pavement applying at ever restaurant in Seattle. I wanted to work somewhere that was indoors and I could eat at. I knew restaurant work so well because my dad owned a few growing up and I had done ever facet of restaurant work. He held out my application.
“This is the best application I ever saw.’
“I grew up in the restaurant business. It was my family business.”
“I see that. It’s very impressive. You are going to have to start in the dish pit but you can work your way up. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He owned an upscale Mexican restaurant on first street way above Pike Place Market. He took me inside introduced me around
“Have at it.” There was a mountain of dishes that needed to be done.
“We just lost both our dish washers in one day. They both quit so you have your work cut out for you.” He handed me an apron.
“No problem.” I attacked those dishes with a fury. I was as happy as a kid. I had a job indoors. Things were looking up. At the end of the day the boss came over. The mountain of dishes was gone. Everything was clean.
“So. How was your first day?”
“Perfect. Can I get an advance?” he had to laugh.
“You coming back?”
“Absolutely.”
He gave me a two hundred dollar advance, which was enough to get a hotel for a few days and some weed. I was eating every meal at the restaurant, so I didn’t worry about food. The only thing I did worry about was staying clean. Getting off dope is not the easiest thing in the world to do, but a lot of people do it. It’s STAYING off of dope that is the hard part. Not many people get that job done.
I worked my way out of the dish pit and got to be a prep cook within one week. They got two new guys to replace me. Being a prep was cooler than washing dishes. I got to eat as I worked. I came in later and left earlier and made more money. I started doing two shifts a day, prepping food all day, then working the line or salad bar at night. Whenever I even thought about dope I had to run upstairs and hit my one hitter filled with green weed until it passed.
It’s kind of like being startled in the dark thinking about doing dope when you don’t want to do any. You jump out of your skin and your heart starts pounding. Weed was my new old addiction and I didn’t mind at all. If I even thought about dope I smoked some weed till it stopped. Yes weed helped save me. I wasn’t living outside to smoke weed. I wasn’t robbing people to smoke weed. I wasn’t using myself as a human pin cushion to smoke weed. I still couldn’t sleep, but I was on the way to myself and I knew it. One day at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time.
I split an apartment on Capital hill with another guy that worked at the restaurant named Johnny.
Johnny had the best weed in town so I was never out. I would work all day then skateboard at night through the city with a bunch of other kids that skated. The only thing I was doing was living. I had no big aspirations except staying clean and letting time go by. That’s what I was doing, accumulating time off dope.
I worked in the restaurant for over a year. Then I also started doing jobs around the city. I sold flowers on Pike Place market, bounced in some night clubs I roadied for some bands, whatever was out there to make money. Just not sell drugs.
After a couple of years I started to get my sense of self back. I still had the voice in my head telling me to get dope, except the voice wasn’t yelling anymore. It would just calmly say, ‘Dope is in the world and you know it.’
This was a crucial time in my life. I was just accumulating time clean. I was just letting time go by. On the one hand there was this giant foreboding presence that I constantly ivied with which was the monster in myself that I had created. On the other hand I was slowly reverting back into who I was before I was exposed. I was working two shifts in the restaurant, getting there early and leaving late. I would skate for a few hours every night with a bunch of guys who tripped on acid and bombed hills. We listened to a lot of White Zombie. I smoked tons of weed did art like I was a kid again, drawing and tagging on every thing. Whatever I could do to keep busy. I knew if I stopped motion bad things could happen. I knew how far away I was. I knew in the back of my mind I was going to win. And the only way to win was one day at a time. Sometimes one minute at a time.
It’s pretty amazing that Seattle is the place I really took a hold of my life again. Especially because dope is huge in that town, or at least it was when I was there. The mind is a powerful thing, in fact the most powerful tool we have. It works like a super computer and I set mine to a default program. Going start all over again. And it was working.
There was a goal in the back of my mind but I knew the only way to reach it was patience. I wanted to be one of the Brothers. I wanted to be a member of the family I met in Holland. I wanted to own bikes and understand them. I had a clear goal and the only way I would even start that jo
urney was to finish this one. And that was going to take more time. I knew I had to be clean way longer than I had been loaded. I had to comfortably feel that my dope habit had really left me, that t would and could never happen again. And I had to do that alone.
Once I had a few years clean I felt safe to venture back out into the world. Not to chase my dreams yet, just be a person. NOT a person chasing something he can never catch. NOT a junkie. Just a man.
I went through countless triggers. Thousands of times something would trigger a thought about dope. A movie or TV show, or a conversation, or seeing someone with his eyes pinned back. His pupils dilated. Any of those things or a hundred different ones or just plain boredom….. ANYTHIING can be used to be a trigger to set my brain in motion to get dope. I made that go away. I willed it out of me. I used to want dope so bad that I could find it anywhere. Now I wanted it as far away from me as possible. At the same token I wanted to be able to have it near me, sell it even and not do it. I was absolutely not into selling dope, just to stress a point a real gangster doesn’t get high on his own supply. That’s rule number two.
It is so important to be a ware of your surroundings at all times. Know how much change is in your pocket and which side of the umbrella your shoes sit. I was well aware of the road in front of me. And I was excited to be on it.
My dad had now moved to Eugene Oregon and the place he lived at needed a painter, so I packed up my stuff and took the Greyhound bus to to Oregon.
51
“Here’s your place.” I looked inside and thought ‘not too bad for someone who used to live in a cardboard box’. The manager of the complex was showing me my apartment. This was an apartment complex with about six hundred apartments. Eugene is a college town. People were always coming and going at this place.
“You don’t have to pay rent. That will come out of your pay. As fast as you can paint apartments is as much as you get paid. The faster you do it the more you make. You understand?”
“Got it.”
My dad had a place an apartment at the complex a few buildings over. They gave me one in the back. My Dad didn’t do much except smoke weed and read books since he retired and had a triple by pass. He was the only person I knew in the town so we spent some time together which was cool. We hadn’t done too much of that in thos life so far.
Eugene is a college town so it was always cracking. Local kids would walk up and down 13th street and sling weed and psychedelic drugs to the college kids. Mostly mushrooms and acid. Once in a awhile a guy would show up with Peyote buttons but that was very rare. I always loved Psychadelics, especially acid. I liked making my whole brain work. I started tripping on acid fairly often which made me look at my previous life as pin cushion in horror. I couldn’t believe I had done that to myself.
I spent the next few years painting. I saved up for a bike and flew to Miami to get one. I got a good deal on a rigid frame evo, and I shipped it back to Eugene. I was slowly putting my life back in order, piece by piece. I made some friends, I met a girl, I spent my time being normal. Working a job. Painting houses and living life just riding my bike around. I was never into drinking alcohol and I always smoked tons of weed. I was learning to appreciate life again without the constant struggle of life on a mission. It was slowly disappearing from my mind. The voice that used to scream was now only talking. It was no longer telling me to get dope, it would just whisper, ‘Dope is in the world and you know how to get it.’ I was beginning to realize that awareness would never completely go away.
I was feeling more and more comfortable in my own skin. I bought a 1962 Volkswagen Van and going everywhere in it. The inside was like a ship. It was totally redone inside in teak wood. I got it from this college kid that lived at the same complex I did. It was all green with rainbows and had NAMASTE painted across the top. Life was good. I was going to shows again. Dead shows. I started to feel in control of myself and it felt good. I was becoming who I was. I could talk about dope or my past, even joke about it. If I saw someone with his eyes pinned I got away from them.
In my job I spent a lot of time alone in empty apartments painting them. I had lots of time to think. I started to formulate a plan. It wasn’t going to happen overnight. I wanted to be one of the brothers. I wanted to be in that family. And I wanted to do it an ocean away. I had a lot of work to do.
A great deal of life is relationships. I don’t care who it is someone helped them get to where they are. There may be some kids born to millionaires, but they don’t count. For the rest of us, it is a ladder to the top and we have to climb it.
There were Saturday markets in Eugene. Every Saturday in the middle of town was a craft fair. Like hippies selling their crafted goods. Like tie dyes and shit. Everyone was selling weed. And pipes. Glass pipes. Hand blown glass pipes.
“What you got there?”
I asked the dready walking by with three glass pipes in his hand.
“Chicken bones. Just took them outta the kiln, Twenty bucks each. Want one?” He held them out. I had never seen anything like this.
“How’d you make this?”
“You wanna buy it or not?” Impatient hippie.
I bought the pipe for twenty dollars and he took off. Other kids were opening up gun cases full of pipes they made. I was amazed. I thought these pipes were the coolest things ever.
“It changes color.”
“What do you mean.”
“It changes color as you smoke it. Watch it will become every color in the rainbow.”
I was amazed. I started buying cases of glass for five hundred dollars and selling them for a thousand. Doubling my money. I could swing the cases to my friends in Miami through the mail and up in Washington. I went to the country fair and I saw some live glass blowing and I immediately said to myself, ‘I can do that.’
I was infatuated with learning how to be a glass artist. But no one would teach me. I started studying everything I could find about it. I found out it’s actually called lamp working and I was living in some kind of lamp working capital.
It really was a secret society, and all the glass artists wanted to keep it that way. I started learning and studying about glass. I went to that Saturday Market every week for a year buying and selling glass cases. All the heavies at the time were in Eugene Bob Snodgrass had a new school, Bob Badtram was doing ocean to mountain to space to alien scenes on pieces blowing everyone’s minds.
I didn’t have money or time to go to Bob’s school, or any school for that matter, I had to work. I would have loved to go to a glass blowing school, that just wasn’t going to be possible. I had to find a teacher.
I met one cool dude at the Saturday market who was really killing the glass game named Arik. Everyone was talking about this Arik Krunk glass. That he was the Mac Daddy. Super thick color changing inside out glass pieces. All kinds.
Arik Krunk was living in the forest outside of Eugene in a motorhome with his wife Sarah and soon to be daughter. They had a cool set up by a stream with a few kids living in their cars right near him. So this is like, here is Merlin the Magician and these are the apprentices trying to learn the tricks. Arik was just absolutely focused on blowing glass pipes all day long. The best ones. Better than anyone else. I met up with him at the Saturday market to buy some glass.
“I’d like to buy an assorted case.”
“Not a problem.”
“Can I watch?”
“You can watch, but I’m not answering of your questions.”
“Why not?”
“Homeboy you don’t even have a torch.”
“Fair enough.” I said. “I gotta get a torch.”
I made an appointment to drive my Volkswagen van out to the forest the next day and watch my case be made. I was so excited, I knew I had to get the trick. This was my one time glass blowing seminar and I was not allowed to ask questions. I knew I had to get the trick the first time.
As I pulled into the forest I pulled over and took about four hundreds micro grams of L
SD. Acid. Trips. LSD used to be legal and made by the Sandoz corporation and given to schizophrenics. It makes your whole brain work. It is definitely not for everyone. I was already good at tripping. When I first got acid I was fifteen years old and working in the second oldest head shop in the country. I was the kid behind the counter selling you papers. It was paper trips. Little pieces of paper with Snoopy on each one wearing a T shirt that said Joe Cool. One Joe Cool was a ten hour trip.
My buddy Tony walked in and he had a book of one thousand Joe Cools. Tony’s dad owned the head shop and Tony managed it. He gave me the book.
“You can’t give these to anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t know them like we know you. We know you are good in your head so it’s ok. Acid will intensify whatever someone really feels inside. So whoever you give this to might be wrong in their head it might bring that out. And it might not be a good result. You understand?”
“Yes.”
He gave me the whole book. I went to school the next day and gave out at least a third of it. No one freaked out. Needless to say I have been a Psychadelic believer ever since.
Psychadelic drugs and pot were now my drugs of choice. Dope had left me, and thankfully so. I still knew it was out in the world, and I was aware of this fact. But I am great at pretending. And I pretended this horrible drama with dope had never happened to me, and it was working. I was reverting back to the hippie I was before that all started.
One thing about acid is I can really handle it. No one even knew I was high. I pulled my Volkswagen van into the clearing Arik had set up. There were three other kids in their cars just living in the forest to watch Arik blow glass. Everyone wanted to learn this trick.
The motorhome he had was small with a glass blowing bench built into the back. I sat there for fourteen hours the first day while Arik made stems for an assorted case. Bubblers, hammers sherlocks chubs sidecars and a couple of jars. Arik works, his wife Sarah hung around and I took notes. Great notes. I wrote down everything Arik did complete with illustration. At the end of a silent fourteen hour day, these kids pulled a rope from the river and pulled a bunch of cool beers out of the creek, made a campfire and had a party. Hippe life at it’s realest.
Becoming A Son Page 24