by Hunter Biden
It was a dangerous place to visit and a more dangerous place to live. There was no brotherly, down-and-out kinship at that hour: when two people encountered each other, both froze and stared until somebody walked away—if somebody walked away. There was no “Hey, bro” conviviality. There was no testimonial to the human spirit underlying the nihilism.
There was no fucking poetry to it at all.
“Pull over here.”
My guy got out with the $100 I gave him and told me not to stay parked on the street—too many cops. I watched him disappear through a cut between two tents, then circled the area. I was starting to get nervous after my third pass—conned again!—when I recognized my guy waving at me, a specter in the shadows. He got in the car with $100 worth of crack. I handed him another $200 and told him to use half of it for himself.
This time I only had to circle once.
The guy asked if I could drive him back to Sunset and La Brea. I dropped him off at the encampment there, then sped to my bungalow, the sun barely peeking over the horizon.
* * *
I returned to that scene by myself a few more times during my five-month self-exile in Los Angeles—a death wish, really. I’d head there after the clubs closed at four and the after-hours clubs closed at six and X, Y, or Z dealer had clocked out for the night. None of it would be up and running again until past noon. That was too long for me: I couldn’t wait six hours for my next hit. The sun was up and I was still rolling, frenetic, jonesing.
Even in that crazed world, there’s no master network available to someone who’s up twenty-four hours a day, smoking every fifteen minutes, seven days a week. Nobody can attend to those needs. No matter how big a dispensation system somebody like me pieced together, there were always gaps in the service.
This downtown tent city filled in those gaps.
The first time I returned there alone I found the cut between the two tents that I’d watched my Air Force buddy slip through. As makeshift and chaotic as the layout seemed, there was a remarkable logic and consistency to it. I went through and stepped around people curled up on thin pieces of cardboard. Beyond them, I noticed a tilting, unlit tent. I pulled back a flap. It was pitch-black. All I saw was the gun pointed at my face.
I stood there unfazed: I assumed I was in the right place. If the guy squatting there had a gun, he had something worth protecting. Turned out I was right. I told him I’d been there before with Joe, or whatever name I gave him for the homeless guy who’d brought me there previously. His reply: “Who the fuck you talking about?” So I just asked if he had any hard. “Oh,” he said. He lowered the gun, rummaged around, and pulled out a bag. He never even got up. I saw somebody else lying to his right, sound asleep, snoring softly. I only bought a little because he only had a little, but it was enough to hold me over until the rest of the miserable, bloodsucking world I now belonged to was up and back to work.
I walked straight to my car and slipped inside. I was shaking and ashamed. Then I lit up.
Thirty seconds later, I was numbed and flying and no longer ashamed at all—until the next time.
For months and months afterward—for most of the next year—there was always a next time.
* * *
It sounds absurd now, given that first day, but I came to California for a fresh start. I wanted a new place to be lost in and a certain level of anonymity. I wanted to get away from Washington and every bad reminder and influence there. I wanted to go someplace that wasn’t always gray. I wanted a do-over. I planned to find a rental, settle in, and stay.
Instead, I holed up inside the Chateau for the first six weeks and learned how to cook crack. At that point in my free fall, I was acutely aware of the hotel’s more depraved history. It was part of the attraction. My bungalow was near the one John Belushi died in from a drug overdose. Not long after Jim Morrison supposedly leaped from a fifth-floor window at the Chateau, he died in a Paris hotel bathtub. I thought about those kinds of things a lot. The amount of alcohol I consumed and crack I smoked was astounding—even death-defying. Morrison was a fucking piker compared to my shenanigans.
Cooking crack took practice, but it wasn’t rocket science: baking soda, water, cocaine. That’s it. I’d decided I wanted to cut out the middleman who could dilute the stuff with God knows what. Besides, my bungalow had everything I needed: stove, microwave, glass jars, and a tutor who made house calls—Honda, the skateboarder-turned-car-thief.
The most critical parts of the process are procuring a proper jar to cook it all in, one that’s not too thin (it’ll break) and not too thick (it won’t heat properly); and getting the proportions just right. I became absurdly good at it—guess that 172 on my LSAT counted for something—though I wasn’t beyond the occasional major fuckup. I’d heat the mixture over the stove in a baby food jar that would splinter and ruin everything. Or—this was later, in a hotel room without a stove or microwave—heat it with a torch lighter, hold the jar too long so it didn’t cool down too quickly, and burn the shit out of my fingertips.
It’s less potentially toxic to buy from somebody who knows how to cook. But cooking my own opened new avenues to me: there were ten times more people who sold powdered cocaine than sold crack. Buying it was a more genteel process, relatively speaking. Except for my desperate forays into Tent City, I figured I could eliminate one layer of drug-world repulsiveness.
I was off to the races.
With a room right by the pool, I didn’t leave the Chateau’s lush hillside grounds for a week or more at a time. I cooked and smoked, cooked and smoked. Occasionally, I slipped out late at night and drove for hours through the Hollywood Hills—back and forth on winding Mulholland Drive, up and down the switchbacking two-lane Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Even with LA’s vast galaxy of lights twinkling below, it was like being dropped into a whole other world. It was wild and primordial and, except for the howl of a far-off coyote or some fierce avian screech, fantastically silent. I’d watch the sunrise from Runyon Canyon.
Subconsciously, it was the beginning of me falling in love with the California I love now, the one with untamed hollows and feral creatures tucked all around. Even in my ludicrous state, I kept those images in the back of my mind, noting that this could someday be a refuge. This was a place full of beautiful things, if only I could keep my eyes open long enough to appreciate them.
Sometimes I stopped and composed hurried letters about it to Beau:
Dear Beau,
It’s different here than either of us thought it would be. It’s not all just Beverly Hills on the beach. It’s horse country and mountains. There’s a real feeling of ancient wilderness that still exists here. You’d be amazed by the green of the city and how beautiful the Hollywood Hills are. Did you know there are mountain lions and coyotes here? I mean RIGHT HERE? I wish we’d both learned to surf. I remember when we used to say that you, me, and Dad were going to ride motorcycles up and down the Pacific Coast Highway. I regret we never did.
Love,
Hunter
Then I’d head back to West Hollywood to cook and smoke, cook and smoke.
* * *
The extent of my human contact was hanging out with a bunch of Samoan gangsters. I was connected to them through Curtis and his girlfriend.
For the next four or five months, my orbit was populated by an opaque, sinister night world of interconnected lives that roamed L.A. between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. It mainly consisted of Curtis and his extended crew of thieves, junkies, petty dealers, over-the-hill strippers, con artists, and assorted hangers-on, who then invited their friends and associates and most recent hookups. They latched on to me and didn’t let go, all with my approval.
I never slept. There was no clock. Day bled into night and night into day. With the curtains always closed, there was no visible distinction between the two. It got so disorienting at one point that I demanded one of the hangers-on pull open the shades so I could see for myself—see if it was day or night.
I came to dread sleep. I
f I rested too long between hits on a pipe, I’d be thrown into a panic. I’d crash for a few minutes, come to, and the first thing I’d demand would be “Where’s the pipe?” Other times I’d reach for rocks that I’d left on a bedside table and then find, to my horror, that they’d been blown all over the room—somebody left a window or door open. I’d get down on my hands and knees to scan the floor and comb through the rug with my fingers. Half the time I had no idea what I was picking up: Is this a flake of Parmesan from the cheese platter we ordered last night? Or crack?
It didn’t matter: I smoked it. If it was crack, great. If it wasn’t, I’d take a hit, exhale, and exclaim: “Shit, that’s not it—that’s the fucking cheese!”
It got more pathetic. While driving around, I often snacked on white cheddar popcorn that I bought at convenience stores, eating it out of the bag. If I suddenly ran out of crack, I’d scrounge around my car’s floor wells, cup holders, and door panels for any traces I might have dropped. Again, the crack crumbs were often indistinguishable from the spilled snacks. Safe to say I’ve smoked more cheddar popcorn than anybody on the face of the earth.
Over time, I trained my body to function on less and less sleep. After three days straight, I’d get droopy and zombie-walk everywhere. I’d push through it, though, and soon my body reset: I’d feel like I woke up at 8 a.m. after a weekend of lawn mowing and golf, ready for work. I’d smoke some more and be off to the races again for three more days, or six more days, or twelve more days.
My weekly sleep allotment usually topped out at about ten hours. Yet even that was irregular and mostly useless—definitely not REM sleep. I caught a few winks in my car while waiting on a dealer; on a toilet seat; on a chaise lounge by the hotel pool between hits. If I fell asleep there for too long, one of my room’s misfit squatters was sure to shake me awake to cadge something new.
* * *
We’ve all been inside rooms we can’t afford to die in. I put myself inside that room day after day, week after week, month after month.
I stayed in one place until I tired of it, or until it tired of me, and then moved on, my merry band of crooks, creeps, and outcasts soon to follow.
Availability drove some of the moves; impulsiveness drove others. A sample itinerary:
I left the Chateau the first time for an Airbnb in Malibu. When I couldn’t reserve it for longer than a week, I returned to West Hollywood and the Jeremy hotel. There were then stays at the Sunset Tower, Sixty Beverly Hills, and the Hollywood Roosevelt. Then another Airbnb in Malibu and an Airbnb in the Hollywood Hills. Then back to the Chateau. Then the NoMad downtown, the Standard on Sunset. A return to the Sixty, a return to Malibu…
The scene was the same everywhere. I sometimes made sketches of the rooms’ interiors but soon realized they all looked alike. I slapped a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door first thing; a maid never entered. By the end of a stay, in the soft golden glow of the luxury room’s light, the high-cotton-count bedsheets were strewn across the floor, plates and platters piled high from room service, the bedside phone knocked permanently off the hook.
An ant trail of dealers and their sidekicks rolled in and out, day and night. They pulled up in late-series Mercedes-Benzes, decked out in oversized Raiders or Lakers jerseys and flashing fake Rolexes. Their stripper girlfriends invited their girlfriends, who invited their boyfriends. They’d drink up the entire minibar, call room service for filet mignon and a bottle of Dom Pérignon. One of the women even ordered an additional filet for her purse-sized dog.
When they finished, two or three days later, they’d walk out with the hotel’s monogrammed towels and throw pillows and comforters and ashtrays. Minimum-wage bouncers with side businesses—drugs, girls, access to VIP rooms for tips—now had a new hustle:
Me.
That’s the business they were in. One night some women in my room started swapping stories they’d heard of a guy in the Hollywood Hills who’d created a social media platform, made millions if not billions, and now was addicted to drugs. They marveled at the stampede on his house to take his TVs and cars and the last dime in his bank account. They discussed it casually, almost professionally, like exchanging stock tips. Their takeaway: I gotta get up there! It was a way of life that revolved around feeding off people with money who have fallen into addiction.
I hardly held myself above them. I was just as much a part of the depravity as they were. I was smoking crack every fifteen minutes. They’d live off me until I said otherwise. As long as they didn’t touch my drugs—or interfere with my ability to use, or create a scene that cut short my ability to stay at the hotel—I didn’t give a damn.
Most of them came with their own drugs and focused on their own addictions: heroin, meth, drinking themselves to death. If I ran low on mine, I joined in with theirs. Misery really does love company.
I would get a room for one night. Then ask to keep it for another night. Then another. And another. When hotel management wanted me out, they’d refuse to extend my stay, politely but firmly telling me that someone else had reserved the room and there were no other vacancies. Other times the front desk informed me that guests were complaining about the parade of ne’er-do-wells traipsing in and out of my room and asked me to leave. I saw it as blatant racism and let them know it.
Once in a great while, some tender, desperate soul would float into the room who still seemed to possess a trace of kindness or concern. I’d wake up and find all my clothes folded and put back in the chest of drawers. I’d think, “Wow, she really is sweet.” Then I’d find out she folded my clothes after going through all my pockets, taking everything and anything she could find. Others did the same thing with my bags or my car—just cleaned them out.
I lost count of the stolen wallets and credit cards. Charges rolled in: Gucci loafers, an $800 sport coat, Rimowa luggage. I’d trudge down to the Wells Fargo branch on Sunset to talk with one of the tellers about getting a replacement. They all knew me. They’d smile and send me to the same patient Armenian bank manager. Her usual first response: “We can’t give you a new card without any ID.”
But the more I came in, the more she took pity on me.
“Hunter,” she would say with a sigh, “how can you keep losing your card all the time?”
The incongruity between the beauty I saw during my drives through the hills and the scummy subculture I willingly tapped into was demoralizing, depressing, defeating. It was so damn dark. I still feel a pit in my stomach when I think of how much money I dropped, how I allowed myself to think of any of those people as my friends. There wasn’t a conversation that took place inside one of those hotel rooms in which anything genuine or enlightening was ever spoken. Not once. I wouldn’t recognize 90 percent of them if we ran into each other again.
Yet I was so lost in my addiction that I watched the crowd rob me blind and didn’t care enough to stop them—not as long as the cycle of drugs, sex, exhaustion, and exhilaration repeated itself over and over. It was nonstop depravity. I was living in some composite scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Permanent Midnight, the adaptation of a TV writer’s autobiography about his $6,000-a-week heroin habit, a movie that to this day makes me sick to watch because of its ugly parallels to my worst moments.
The self-loathing of that world only perpetuates itself. I wasn’t without an understanding of the depravity of it. I was sickened by myself. It just kept going and going and going, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop it. I was trapped in an endless loop and couldn’t find my way out. I had removed myself from family, friends—everyone, really. I had removed myself from any restrictions.
It makes you hard in a way that’s difficult to come back from. You’re basically banishing your better self. Once you decide that you’re the bad person everyone thinks you’ve become, it’s hard to find the good guy you once were. Eventually, I quit looking for him: I decided I wasn’t the person everybody who loved me thought I was anymore. So why continue to disappoint yourself? Why continue to disappoint
them? Why not just disappear?
It’s easier than you think.
I still held to my connection with Beau. Yet I felt even that slipping. As the summer wore on, the letters I wrote him in my journals began to sound more futile, more apologetic, less trusting in the notion that I’d ever find my way out.
Dear Beau,
Where are you? I’m here and you don’t understand how bad it is. I know you’re there but I need you. I know Dad is sick with worry about me but I don’t know what to do about it. I’ll figure this out, but I still need you. I can’t stand that I can’t touch you.
Love,
Hunter
And:
Dear Beau,
I promise you I’m trying with Natalie and Hunter. I probably screwed this all up but I don’t know how to be here for them when I’m clearly not even here for myself. I feel like I’ve betrayed the one thing we never had to promise each other: to take care of each other’s kids.
Love…
I never considered suicide, not seriously. But I did crave an escape, a reconnection—anything that wasn’t this.
Dear Beau,
How do you expect me to be the one who’s left behind? I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do it. I don’t seem to be doing anything but causing more pain by sticking around. What would be so bad about us being together?
Love…
* * *
I told family back in Delaware I was working on my sobriety—whatever the hell that meant at that point. Here’s what it meant: nothing. I’d gotten good at telling stories like that.
It worked for a while. My girls would call; I’d tell them how much I missed them, that I’d see them soon, then hang up and cry for an hour. I’d do the same with Natalie and little Hunter. I’d end those calls feeling more alone and despondent and addicted than ever, with nowhere to turn and so turning away from everything, filling with self-pity—the addict’s go-to reflex—and believing that they’d all be better off without me. How very fucking convenient.