My very first memory is a dream.
I’m held down on my mother’s bed by something unseen. The room’s lit a thick hepatic yellow, gradating out to shit-brown at the edges. Screen right stands my lumpy great-grandmother, vacuum-packed in black silk and accessorized with clumps of Baby Jane Hudson mascara and red-black rouge over gray pallor, the star of some tarted-out mortuary diorama. Nana won’t face me squarely - either embarrassed to be, quite literally, ‘caught dead’ in this graveyard get-up or, more likely, mortified to be revealed as a genetic accomplice to the invisible forces immobilizing me on the worn chenille. Now, slow and sly as an infection, a dozen disembodied female hands - nails polished, rings a’sparkle – materialize in the airspace above me, hard-slapping my face, ears, head, torso. But The Hands cause no pain and no fear. In fact, my only emotion is rage. At being pinned down. At being ignored and left to fend for myself. I want to run away, far, and destroy shit on the way out. Some things never, ever change.
•
My very first lesson is to distrust my own spontaneity.
This sounds simple enough, but actually it’s almost impossible to stay on point when you’re a kid with theatric crime impulses to burn. But I’m strongly motivated to keep this nature on a short leash by its dangerous chain reaction: what blurts out of me will, either sooner or later, ricochet off Mom and activate The Hands, the real ones.
To keep me safe, I begin tinkering with an Early Prevention System.
My first EPS experiments are based on the usual Biblical and cultural mores of the day: Don’t call other people asshole. Don’t fill a squirt gun with urine and shoot it in a department store. Don’t instigate sex with my fourth grade classmates. I find that sticking to these rules helps me avoid juvie – for awhile - but aren’t much protection from The Hands. Moving beyond the laws of Jehovah and J. Edgar, I enter the metaphysical realms of Nikola Tesla in an attempt to control the satanic ethers responsible for Mamageddon.
Hours are spent in the mirror, trying on various looks of innocence and matching them up to verbal denials: wronged victim? or, no, let’s try: emphatic defender! Perhaps a light ‘n summery, “What do you mean?” Fine—tuning lilt and gaze, pose and timbre, I settle on what I believe to be palm-proof protection. But, no. In the end, the project is scrapped, my 9-year old instincts beyond my control, already hard-wired to a gestating nuke of rebellion.
Fortunately, like other accidents that changed the world (the X-Ray, the Slinky, LSD), I caught a glimpse of all those seemingly wasted hours of imagination and mugging in a brand new light, faintly lime, that would change no less than my entire life:
This is Acting!
Therefore: I’m an Actor!
Therefore:
I’m A Movie Star!
From that moment on, every day is lived for The Camera. And, as suspected, I’ve been under constant observation by a studio-assigned Talent Scout who’s going to step out of a shadow any day now and I’ll be Discovered!
Yes, I know it sounds glamorous, but I found out pretty quick that living life on a sound stage is not without its pitfalls –especially when you put all your trust in that fickle director, the Dialing for Dollars afternoon movie.
Once (and only once) after dinner at my Godparent’s across the street, I stood up from the table, slowly opened my arms wide as if to hug the entire universe and earnestly intoned,
“Thank you oh so much!”
Not, “Thank you all so much” or the simpler, “Thank you so much” – no, I had clearly e-nun-ci-ated, “OH so much”. And that one little word had the eerie power to freeze an entire room-full of adults and children solid. All except me. I ran for the door, desperate to shake the excess Loretta Young off into the cool Bay Area night air.
But, really, what else was I gonna be? What other kid’s Hollywood mom prompted him to pay close attention right before Katharine Hepburn sunk those piano-teeth into a scathing monologue? Who else amongst my little friends was encouraged to spend Saturday afternoon watching Camus’ masterpiece, Black Orpheus? I sucked at sports, played jacks with girls at recess and was 95% certain I was, most likely, criminally insane.
So, strap me to a Warner Brothers cartoon rocket headed straight for the center of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis where I am Superior! Loved! Unslapped! Where a kind Movie Mother stands firm beside a kill-the-bad-guys Movie Dad. It only makes sense. It has to happen. Before they get me… Aaand: Action!
Another skill my shifty spontaneity taught was the art of the compulsive lie.
White sticky smeared chin to eyebrow?
“I swear to God, I didn’t know this family even used RediWhip.”
Fortuitously, this facet of my dramatic gifts would come in handy during those pre-stardom careers as runaway street urchin, narcotic enthusiast, sex chameleon and thieving hustler. Like children everywhere, I received essential tools for living.
Now, every day, some part of me was in perpetual rehearsal for the future performances I knew would appear on the pages of my life’s shooting script.
How about you?
Did you, too,sit around re-working fresh reactions to that chorus of “surprise” before your birthday?
Or decide how wide your eyes would pop when winning the sure-to-be-yours Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes?
Maybe we share the chin-tilt obsession, where you find the angle most telegenically effective for your 12-second appearance on the nightly news.
No?
Well, I know everybody’s got that secret terminal illness scene ready to roll, guaranteed to elicit appeals of wet forgiveness for not having loved you enough while ‘still here’?
But enough about you.
My rehearsals were unique! Inspired! Gloriously lit scenarios spinning out from the galaxies of my infinite mind, mixing with sound stages, back lots and cigar-chomping production heads, to become, as us actors say:
Preparing!
After de-coding piles of the better movie magazines, I’m pretty sure it works like this:
It begins with the feelings – something I’ve got more than enough of. These feelings team up with physical action, insuring it all looks right, to finally become, via a divine Stanislavskian intervention, Genuine True Emotion®, convincing not only astounded audiences everywhere, but, most importantly, Methodically replacing my own daily bottomless terror with any other Genuine True Emotion® but the ones gnawing my testicles.
But there was one scene that baffled me and sure to be the Biggest Scene of all: How would I play it when they told me my mother was (catch of breath - good – loooong beat) dead?
Dissolve into a quivering blob of post-trial Fatty Arbuckle rumbles? Perhaps my mirror-perfected stoic Eastwood squint. How about a smoke-cured Bette Davis cackle: “Ha! Just because someone’s dead doesn’t mean they’ve changed!” What choice to make here? What the fuck is the correct response to the news that the woman who professed her love for me between echo-chamber screaming rants, a chipped tooth and the occasional puncture wound had finally Dropped the Bunny? Neither Big Daddy Cinema nor Fuzzy Mommy T.V. had coached this delusional young star for that yet.
•
I spent one cool, black San Francisco summer sneaking past the stoned doorman and into the infamous original Stud on Folsom near 12th. I had big blonde hair halfway down to my ass and a goatee that only bikers and Satanist wore in those days. I sported a vaguely Edwardian velvet jacket, torn Levis and cheap platform shoes – the best Rock Star drag a kid from The Peninsula could put together. Actually, location wasn’t the deciding factor - there were good vintage boutiques all over. But instead of fancy duds, I was already spending every dollar on inner beauty. The injectable kind.
The Stud was an anomaly on every level: A huge hall packed way past legal capacity with cut leathermen chatting up dingy hippie kids who were palming reds to the bi girls and boys with laughter like slow piano scales pressed up against the macho cycle-dyke sharing a joint with two Japanese girly-boys, stunning straight couples and singles with their sexy, easy smiles buying Quaaludes from the Afro-Asian-Euro-Latin hetero tough-guys bumming a light from the Brooks Brothers jacket-and-tie acidhead. Post-show Lou, Iggy, Etta or Bette breezed past gender-fuck bearded dragsters in torn ball gowns and opera length gloves doing the Angel Dust Shimmy right behind a curious (and actual) work-booted longshoreman – all of us transfixed by the bombshell starlet too high to realize she was clearing paths like Moses. Everybody young, shiny and pleasantly stoned, all of us creating a sweet ‘n dusky aromatic moment of magic never to reoccur. When the DJ spun, say, the Pointer Sisters, “Yes We Can Can”, an invisible tendril of warm sextricity shot thru the room, knotting us together like strings of incandescent pearls on the alter of the Church of More, the entire mélange of dirty gold, electric fuchsia and denim blue human life rocking back and forth together on shoes way too high. The Stud was a glimpse of the future bars in Heaven: welcoming, filled with laughter, open to every persuasion – no specializations, no segregations, no ‘tude. A pictogram in muted hues on the temple wall, one big, naughty bedroom-eyed smile telepathically whispering, “I love you.”
Down at the end of the bar near the pool table is where I met Ubee – a meeting he wouldn’t remember. I forgive this because it’s a trait common in big stars and big drunks. Ubee was both. He liked that end of the bar so he could keep an eye on the tough guys playing 8 Ball as well as my competition: the other underage dope whores working roughneck poses in the shadows. Ubee was my idol sartorially: Wrapped up in a thousand ivory/silver/Bakelite antique bracelets up to the elbows, Ali Baba twisted braids of rich foreign scarves and mint-condition retro dinner jackets, he was a walking, talking work of Rock ‘n Roll Art. Strong waves and peaks of black hair surrounded the heavy eyeliner framing his always-smiling amber eyes that were either saying, “I love you” or “Fuck you” – impossible to tell which. And the rings: Massive twisted silver confections frosting the big Slavic fists that wrapped around doubles of well bourbon, all lit with sexy bar light. If Keith Richards had sired Janis Joplin’s full-grown twenty-five-year-old son, that boy would have better skin than either parent, a noir stripper’s deadpan delivery and his name would be Ubee. I was in awe of every facet of this rock ‘n roller who fell to earth - especially The Mouth. Ubee’s was foul and famous. He’d say anything to anybody – the drunker he got, the more entertaining: Haughty compliments. Hilariously damning judgements. Cringe-inducing street-slut sex scenarios. He looked like I wanted to look, said what everyone else was afraid to and every night I saw him that summer, he’d give me a nod and sneer/smile that said, “Ah, you again – back for more, huh?”, sometimes even clearing a stool for me to sit and watch the show we were a part of.
Like all people worth knowing, Ubee was like a movie star: True physical beauty barely masking an unchecked self-obsession demanding unflinching attention. Oh, and completely fucked up on everything. As a bonus, Ubee possessed the required fame connection: He’d done the whole Sunset Strip/Whiskey/ Roxie/Rainbow Bar L.A. rock circuit replete with first-hand drug-n-sex stories about all the boys in all the bands. Ubee grew up in Chicago, life-long friends with one of the world’s most infamous groupies who’d notoriously plaster-casted the cocks of rock royalty. But I wouldn’t learn this detail until much later, after heroin had sealed us in it’s tragic/romantic balloon of best friendship. For all his loud-mouthed, styled-out iconic splendor, Ubee was actually very private – so much so that, even after years of sharing clothes, crimes and needles, I never found out what or who it was that installed the demons woozily carrying him away. One tough, beautiful and lonely motherfucker, my boy Ubee.
As the years passed, we’d see each other around town - across the over-crowded parlor of a mammoth Victorian somewhere up on Buena Vista West, sharing a plastic sofa in Dr. Quaalude, MD’s waiting room or copping junk in some nameless, scummy bar in the Tenderloin.
“It appears Miss Winters has outgrown her costumes,” like a lover, his point-blank whisper trilled my inner ear. “Harry Cohn won’t be happy.”
Ubee’s diamond wit was multi-faceted, blindingly brilliant and able to cut through anything. Of course, the inside Hollywood reference warmed my intoxicated heart, but in the same breath, the motherfucker not only called me fat, but worse, a girl – an insinuation my macho ego always despised. I’m telling you, this kid was a master. Later I would learn that these jibes were the closest Ubee could get to any sort of sentimentality.
Our scary/hilarious interludes were interspersed with me disappearing for extended leaves as I kept trying to ‘get it together’: Film school, trips and/or brief re-locations to L.A., Matzatlan, New York, San Diego, a shrimp boat gig in the Gulf of Mexico – even running a boiler room for the mob in hell-hole Phoenix. Yet no matter where I went, what I did or who I fell in love with (assigned to save me), my 300 lb. smack-hungry pet python had a way of convincing me the journey would be so much easier with him along.
SLOW FADE TO BLACK.
QUE: ERIC BURDON – “WARM SAN FRANCISCO NIGHT”
SOUND FADE UP:
(scratchy vinyl)
“Guess there’s no place left to go… San Francisco.”
More that any other city, San Francisco is obsessed with it’s sumptuous, tragi-comedic pasts:
The Big Bang of the ’49 Gold Rush festooned with Chinese opium, drunken bloody murder and toothless perfumed whores on the Barbary Coast; The self-fueling saga of the ’06 Fire and Earthquake told in tin-types of over-dressed Crockers and Stanfords fleeing their grand cinders to pitch pasha tents in Golden Gate Park; 50’s grayscale Kerouac/Burroughs/Ginsberg groupies calcifying their livers over in North Beach. And finally: The breathing, kaleidoscopic walls of 60’s Haight-Ashbury, decrees of love and acceptance impotently enforced by a Misfit Supremacy writhing to Jefferson Airplane ‘neath the eternal strobe-lights of Temple Fillmore.
After working a stint in porn post-production down in Hollywood, I crawled back home yet again to San Francisco and was offered a job in what I was too loaded to recognize as a mirage:
The Question Mark at 1437 Haight Street.
The ‘Mark’s previous incarnation had been filled with bitter, married old men drinking themselves to death in an oblong room lined with an elaborate shuffle board machine, a pool table and dozens of stuffed deer heads nailed to the cabin-in-the-pines paneling. Now it appeared to be shaping itself into the very thing we said could never re-occur: The blurry reincarnation of our tribe’s beloved Stud, located on that hallowed ground from whence sprang Peace, Love and Patcholi-sented b.o.: Haight Street near Ashbury.
No longer a minor – really, was I ever? – with nearly 15 years active duty shooting it out in the smack trenches, I knew how to work every angle. This was a charmed moment in which I was still young enough to get away with a variety of hustles, but now wound wire-tight by a life lived in and on streets, freeway on-ramps and bars since 14, leaving me fine-tuned to any and all “opportunities”. The bartending gig landed right in my lap – or tried to - as The ‘Mark’s mustachioed new owner hit on me the first night I walked in. Two nights later, charmed by my ability to simultaneously spout lines from obscure movies while hustling shots of top-shelf, he offered me the job. The fact that I’d never bartended wasn’t a deterrent: “I cun tetchu to ten bour en fiften menuts”, a barroom scholarship presented to me by one of the nicest guys in the world: Janos Kovacs, new owner/operator of The Question Mark. Heavy Hungarian accent, skinny, nervous, brilliant and very funny, Janos’ family had walked from Budapest to the Austrian border a couple of decades before, their escape eventually landing them in California where his father slurped up all available milk and honey to create San Francisco’s premiere real estate empire. And buy his now grown son a bar on that great street, Haight Street.
My first year behind the bar showered down on me a lifetime of answered prayers: I starred nightly on a sticky, roach-infested stage beautifully lit by dime candles and cigarette lighters. My first addiction – even before the dope, food or sex – was attention. Number One with a bullet. Every ilk of addict I’ve ever met is an attention addict, too. Yes, even the ones that claim to shun it, as it takes a lot of energy to pretend to be invisible and even more attention to pretend someone isn’t there. But this wasn’t my problem, oh no, ‘cuz I was playing my home town, bartending in my own neighborhood chock-full of the fabulously delusional misfits I’d known for years: the aging, trust-funder with Doris Duke blonde highlights casually carrying a 1940’s see-through plastic purse, syringes, pill bottles and a rhinestone cock ring proudly displayed. The strung-out Irish hustler playing pool while pretending to listen to the to-the-marrow boring pineapple-coiffed O.W. (Original Wigger) musician tell about last night’s gig down in San Jose as he perched mantis-like beside the permanently affixed trio of Courvoisier-nursing, zero-tipping African Queens angelically harmonizing to the best jukebox in town. My lonely, hootch-dependant captive audience was as much attention as I was gonna get until Hollywood insisted I return, finally, for movie stardom. ‘Til then, what a moment in time to be barroom famous: Just a split-second before that first wave of no-survivors AIDS Slaughter and – what luck! - during one of the most abundant heroin gluts the world had ever known. Welcome to my very own prime-time party projected onto a smoky scrim of a thousand burning cigarettes. Dreams really do come true!
Somehow, I was still charmed and still charming, as evidenced by all the essential pieces of life magically falling into place just for me: I found a view apartment down in dangerous, still-affordable Hayes Valley. I then quickly hooked my star up to Isis, San Francisco’s most coveted heroin connection, famous for keeping visiting rock stars and Euro-royalty smacked back while in town. I once shared a rig with the post-Velvets Nico, who, after shooting enough smack to buckle the knees of a mastodon, passed her works over to me, looked down into my own bent spoon and croaked, “Eezzzat all yoor d’wing?” Not only had Isis granted me full access, but he’d sometimes let me swap pilfered bottles of Janos’ best liquor for his best Mexican, Persian and Chinese powders. Of course, sweet, shaky Janos never knew, still operating under the spell of my cinema-dangerous stories, friends and habits, even encouraging them by allowing all manner of depraved behavior to take place in the small office in back of the bar... you know, where the liquor’s stored.
Though I often didn’t remember how’d I’d gotten home – or sometimes actually even working - I left with Levis packed tight with cash tips every night. After one completely blacked out shift, I woke up in my own bed with a red-black sticky coating on my hands – the fuck…? - accompanied by a creeping fear speed-carving into my heart the possibility I might have done something horrible, but can’t recall. My hungry mind lurched, stumbling, frantic to sink it’s teeth into even a whiff of last memory, creating alternate scenarios, a hysteric race to fill in a blank that’s rapidly flooding with terror – oh fuck oh God oh no. Oh no! I raise up off the sticky pillow, my hair clumped with congealed smears of a dark scarlet viscous – am I bleeding? Is someone else? I look behind me, find a fragment of bone. And another, with a bit of black flesh covered in the same gummy gore… baby diaper bile gushes up my tongue and I steel myself to look down over the bed’s edge, a B-movie real life horror clip racking focus and now I see it: Spare ribs spilling out of a slashed aluminum bag, a puddle of hot sweet sauce crawling up my mattress, a disgusting mass of chicken bones, slices of Wonderbread, dull cold fries and Styrofoamed potato salad clumped near the hand-stamped receipt: Do-City Bar-B-Q – 553 Divisdero. Numb white drunkie/junkie in ghetto Heaven. Ah, home!
To top off these blessings, my boy Ubee – now more matinee idol-ready than ever - magically appeared, planting himself down near the pool table - same old spot for the same old reasons. The dozen or so years since our first barroom meeting had been good to him – at least physically: The rich black horse’s mane now styled within an inch of debonair, the twinkling smirk no longer a permanent installation, was employed with appropriate discretion. The amazing clothes and jewelry were no less theatrical, just not as insistent, more refined in their antique splendor. Also muted was the street-meat banter, seeming to indicate he was more accessible. But, no. He was now just more cautious, the smart-ass force field still at the ready to protect his tender, buried soul. And broke. Always. But in a bar, this was never a problem: Everyone wanted to buy Ubee a drink, as he still held star status amongst us and – just ask Mel Gibson - who doesn’t want to buy a star a cocktail?
•
One year later.
No. Not fucking again.
“Get the fuck UP, motherfucker”.
I drag Ubee to the edge of the bed, flipping him forward toward me, try to position his chest onto my shoulder and stand him up, but he slides down the front of my body, puddling to the floor like a 175-lb. greased eel in black cashmere, a faint broken neon smile flickers on, flickers off. Stays off. I slap his face so hard he tilts his chin three millimeters upward, winces a single eye one-sixteenth open, locks it on me, but the effort takes it’s toll and the eye rolls up to Heaven, full white, slams shut. “Oooca… mmmaah” he softly exhales, wounded animal deep rumble. Now total stillness. No connected inhalation. Vacuum. I am the only living object in this frozen frame of film, baffled. Perversely intrigued. “Oh God, please save my friend – I’ll stop this shit tonight! I swear!” What should I do this time? Mouth-to-mouth? Pack his balls in ice? I dig deep into arm pits, dragging his 6’1” frame across the fake Persian carpet – no easy feat, as I, too, have been drinking the 12 hours previous to shooting the far heftier portion of a two hundred dollar bindle of China White. By the time I’ve dragged him thru the bathroom door, he’s taken another breath, a single barely audible moan of protestation and I know I won’t have to somehow lift him over the claw foot bathtub and immerse his chemically mummifying body in cold water. "Thank you, God."
I sit down above him on the toilet, exhausted, the dope flooding back over my ebbing adrenaline and I know it’s not as bad as two weeks ago:
The ambulance out Portrero Avenue to General, Ubee already angry after the Narcan injection, swatting at the EMT, slurrily demanding to be left alone, police waiting for us in the Emergency parking lot, sneering, watching Ubee’s stretcher disappear inside, the cops letting me know how disgusted they are to have to even be near the human garbage we all agree I am: my blue irises so washed out from junk as to show nearly no color at all, the pupils puckered black pin-pricks. And my face: a slack, back-alley vampire-to-reptile cross-breeding accident stinking of a hundred Tanquerays, a thousand Camel straights, sandalwood and smack sweat wafting up beneath Ubee’s antique college letterman’s jacket. “No, officer, he’s not a regular heroin user.” The cop with the Italian surname actually laughs out loud.
But no professional re-animation is necessary this time. Ubee’s breathing again, trying to lift his shoulder off the bathroom tiles. I slide down onto the floor beside him. “I saved your life again, kid”, I whisper. The irony that I’m the one who puts the needle in his arm day and night is tastefully edited out of the final cut of our shared poppy dream. Ubee was one of those junkies that never learned to get himself off, choosing instead to offer up the inside of his elbow, close his eyes and turn away. We had an unspoken arrangement: I pour free liquor down him during my shift, divide up my smack with him morning and night, and for this I share his studio apartment and bed. And no, not as a lover. Ubee’s a brother and, besides, everybody knows 9 out of 10 junkies prefer dope over sex. Like there was a choice at this point. I’d lost my apartment months ago, the daily junk bills becoming just too steep to float both a habit and shelter. Balloon payments indeed. Sunrise is beginning to peek around the edges of Ubee’s blackout shades. Looks like we crossed the finish line, another fucking hell-on-earth, endless party in kooky, colorful San Francisco.
One year later.
Heavy fog speed-creeps over Panhandle Park, vaporous tumbleweeds the size of blue whales blow over us, wet our hair and clothes. Tucked onto our favorite bench, Ubee and me wordlessly pass a mickey of twat-rot whiskey back and forth in the darkest half of the park below Masonic Avenue. Silent, careful not to miss even a hint of warmth the bad booze might offer to blunt off the edge of withdrawal. Thankfully, the Arab deli traded one of Ubee’s last $20 food stamps for this $7 fifth. An hour ago, we were a couple of blocks up the hill, in the warm flat of our friends Donnie and Annetta. The four of us fawned around the kitchen table in oh-so-cool anticipation, everyone performing their tasks in unison: filling the water glass, bending the spoon, pulling wads of cotton off a fresh Tampon, gathering books of matches and – my task – spitting out the rolled balloons I’ve been carrying in my mouth since Turk St., the centerpiece to our alternate universe Thanksgiving table serving powdered peace to the eternally famished. But that was then. We were kicked out into the early summer fog because – once again - the dope I scored turned out to be bunk, this time revealing itself to be hunks of cigarette filter rolled up in three fat balloons.
“The best Mexican tar in town, bro”, the white Rasta dude with the speed-bumps croaked.
Burned again. Third time in two weeks. Is it some sort of omen? What does it mean when you’re getting ripped off more in the last month than at any time since sliding that first spike in? Maybe it’s just as well, ‘cuz Ubee’s been flat-lining with alarming regularity - sometimes twice a week, like some semi-living Warhol painting, black-blue lips repeated again and again atop a concrete pallor. And though the romantic novelty of saving my best friend’s life lost it’s luster long ago, every time we play Patient Ubee and Doctor Randy’s Emergency Room in Hell, we tighten some unspoken bond most lovers will never know, a demonic pact sealed with bloody syringes and a mouth-to-mouth CPR kiss.
But not tonight.
Tonight it’s shit liquor on a bench in the milky-black fog.
Donnie had all but accused us of stealing the real junk (if only) and ballooning up those cigarette butts ourselves before kicking us down to the curb. “An’thenks fer fuckin’ up ar night” his heavy Baltimore brogue hisses after us as we speed down the wooden stairs, back to Haight Street that Great Street, to our soggy bench and bottle.
“Why don’t you finally just do it?”, Glen says matter-of-factly.
Glen’s been offering Kevorkonian advice since I was a child. He lives in an illegal squat attached to the inside of my forehead. Glen started out as the male voice of Glenda in absentia: Smart. Funny. But his true specialty – his singular dedication, in fact – is to selflessly and tirelessly insure our death. At this he is astoundingly perseverant. On the job ‘round the clock. When Ubee’s had enough of me and Donnie and Annetta and Janos and Sal and everybody else has, too, Glen’s there, ready to help.
“C’mon, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out: You’re a fuckin’ character, Rand – one of the great ones. Always been. Colorful. Movie screen-larger than life. Two-fisted, hard-drinkin’ dope-shootin’/ snortin’/smokin’/pokin’left-home-at-14, hitch-hikin’, cock-sellin’, mother-hatin’, fuck-anything-breathing Burroughs-Cocteau-Joplin- Warhol King of the Haight/Prince of Hollywood CHARACTER! (Such a sweet-talkin’ silver-tongued devil, Glen is, huh?) And, babe, as we both know, you’ve reached the final page of the final chapter. The story wraps right here. Chapter X. Book closed. This is the perfect time to pack it in – you’re at the top of your dramatic arc, for Christ’s sake… Now’s the time, motherfucker. Am I wrong?”
The whiskey’s starting to warm my reptile brain and Chapter X: The Plan racks focus to the center in my mind’s eye: Borrow, hustle or steal a few hundred bucks and cop as much dope as I can – this part is always how The Plan begins, the infrastructure of Chapter X. The Finale, of course, has been etched in headstone-grade granite for – has it been that long? – decades: Shoot enough smack in my arm to stop my heart before anyone finds me.
I realize I’m looking up the hill at that strange Neo-Spanish monstrosity sitting among the Victorians and Queen Annes on the edge of Buena Vista park. Walden House. Vague factoids congeal: re-hab… Synanony cult… nuthouse. Not sure about the details, except it’s a joint for recovering dopefiends and it’s always been there, eye on all of us.
“Hey Glen, y’think… ?
“Naw. Forget it, kid. Do you not remember who we are? We’re a fucking motion picture made flesh! We’re the stuff of epics! Celebrated! Remembered in a blaze of glory! C’mon, babe, there’s only one way we’re gettin’ out”.
Ubee’s banging the bottle on the bench.
“You want any more of this?”
He’s left me half a sip. I pointedly ignore the question, pissed he’s almost killed the whole thing. Well, it was his food stamp.
My silence obviously doesn’t sit well with him. Ubee swigs the last of the whiskey, stands up and turns away from me, a silhouette in the harsh light of the gas station across the park’s edge.
“I’m gonna need the apartment to myself tonight. You gonna be okay?”
Motherfucking GREAT! Just what I need to hear. Now I’ve gotta go pick up some idiot on Haight Street – and maybe hustle a couple of twenties? - or take my chances and sleep right here on the bench.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, Ub. See you tomorrow.”
Ubee walks straight across the grass toward the edge of the park.
Please, my one true friend, turn around right now, have a second thought, a change of heart. Tell me I can stay over. Don’t leave me out here tonight, Ubee.
He disappears onto Oak St., absorbed into ten thousand hell-red taillights moving fast down the hill.
•
“I’m going to kill myself”.
My own monotone recycling back thru the phone's hand piece surprises me. I’d always imagined this magic moment when I finally spoke the words I’ve been rehearsing my entire life would be Dramatic! Profound! Desperate! I could have just as easily said, “There’s never anything on t.v.”, which, in some not-so-abstract way, is kind of the same thing.
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?” The volunteer at Suicide Prevention sounds as bored as I do.
“No, you’re the first. Why?”
“You don’t sound very serious”. This is tinged with a subtle baiting, a “Go ahead, pussy, show me what you got” vibe in there.
Now I’m getting a little pissed.
“So, how’s this supposed to work? I call and tell you I’m going to kill myself and what happens next?”
“You call back when you’re serious.”
Did he actually say that? Yes he did. And, oddly, for once I don’t have an inclination to pop a cap of rage off in his ear, either. Is anything ever going to be as I imagined it? All I feel is numb. Resigned. Finished. Hmph. This must be what it’s like when you truly are ready to hit the OFF switch.
“Thanks”. I hang up, scan the room – the signed Mae West photo near the Maxfield Parrish, the Grandma’s whorehouse antique lace and garish scarves, silk pillows and deco lamps – a chipped, wine-stained version of Ubee’s joint, but 50 miles south in Santa Clara. Once again Kathy says “Yes” when everybody else in my entire universe said, “Fuck off – you still owe me for (insert debt here)”. Kathy and I were lovers for awhile – far less time than she’d wished for, though we’re incredibly well-matched on so many levels. Her quick, creative mind, big heart, oceans of charm and a well-stoked appetite for dope and sex cleaves perfectly to my own mind, heart and obsessions. Over the years, our tastes in drugs and sex hit a series of forks, but that didn't matter: I could always count on Kathy loving me like the family neither of us had.
As often happens, once I get outside the borders of San Francisco, my head clears, allowing all of Glen’s sage advice to sink in as never before. Chapter X is, seemingly by magic, shaping up beautifully, the plot devices falling effortlessly into place: Kathy lives across the street from a gas station and occasionally beds Jojo, the manager. Jojo mentions he’s looking for – ready? – a cashier! I ask Jojo for the job and he says yes! Glen and his army of fallen angels have placed before me that ever-elusive key to the biggest challenge of the entire Final Scenario: The wads of cash for the piles of junk that it will buy. Enough to still my lungs, sweetly sing my heart to sleep and oh so gently close The Book on this gritty and artistic Rock Star/Bill Burroughs Goes to Hollywood fabulous wannabe almost-was drug-draped melodramatic delusion: My Life!
Chapter X seems to be writing itself: Last night I got a preview of how much was in the till, which, even on a slow night, contains more than enough to stop my clock. But tonight – Friday – is The Night. During my 15-minute training session, Jojo said that Fridays were the busiest. “You better be ready for it, bro”, he warned in his fake biker drawl. “Fridays they’re pushin’ tens and twenties attcha faster’n you can piss out beer”. This was It! That smug Suicide Prevention twat dared to challenge me? Sit back and watch the magic, asshole, ‘cuz tonight me and Glen’s perfect prose and plot structure are going from The Page to The Stage, the all-seeing Eye-O’-God Camera locked and loaded. I had two hours before work to get it all together. My old standby Chillo, the oldest junkie I’ve ever known, was always more than happy to do me the service of scoring balloons of Mexican Tar on El East Side de San Jo. Yeah, okay, so he pinched my dope mercilessly, but this time I didn’t give a fuck – he could steal half my shit tonight and I’d still have enough left over to stall my engine.
•
Even now, with our poisoned atmosphere, there’s a quality of blue in the San Francisco sky like nowhere else. Yes, it’s unique in Italy and on the island of Kaua’i, but not the same as S.F.: Sparkling, polished to a high gloss, yet so deep you almost see stars and planets in the black-blue of space. Unfortunately, mid-summer rarely allows for this glittering spectacle, as hot valleys to the east pull in vaporous layers of Pacific – the famous San Francisco fog - that sometimes won’t burn off for weeks.
But, exactly like the day I first laid eyes on the neighborhood I would think of as home for the next twenty years, the July 4th morning I climb up the 45-degree block of Central Avenue to enter Walden House, it’s a clear and gleaming freeze-frame of the most astounding beauty any city has ever displayed, marred only by a smoker’s cough 20 years older than anything that should be coming out of me, followed by a quick vomit in the gutter. Now steps from the entrance, I sit on the curb to watch the oddest mix of men and women, old and young, black and white, moving behind the glass. Looking for another way out, I had tried my first N.A. meeting the night before, but it was like visiting another galaxy: I identified the language as English, but the juxtaposition of words made no sense, and I’m not exaggerating: I could not understand a thing anyone said. Fact is, I’d been living in a rarified subculture of corrosive depravity for so long, the only language I understood was a distant dialect we’ll call Hellish. Lucky for me, Hellish, in all it’s subtle hues and razor slashes, is the common tongue just inside the big glass door now closing behind me.
•
“Good morning Family. It’s 7:15 and now time for Walk to the Park. Walk to the Park, Family. Please move off your floor and out the 815 exit. Thank you, Family”.Lola’s trying-so-hard-to-sound-professional voice blasts over a shrill P.A., the whistle thru her pimp-chipped teeth nearly undetectable. Her announcement ricochets throughout 4 enormous floors, originally the St. Francis Girls Directory. That’s ‘directory’, as in: Direction, a gift from the Catholic Church to those young ladies who’d lost their way (read: got knocked up). This morning’s ear-rape alerts us 100+ recovering dope fiends that it’s now time to finish up our bed making, room cleaning, showering, dressing and get our asses downstairs. From there, we’ll move as a single mis-matched unit into Buena Vista park. What she doesn’t say is why: so room inspectors can make sure our bunks are tight and no one’s hiding guns, syringes, doin’ the nasty or O.D.’d.
Fortunately, during these first 2 months I’ve resided here, no one’s overdosed. In fact, Walden House is dope-free, walking it’s very own talk. Zero tolerance. I’ve yet to see anyone even slightly buzzed. Well, except me. I’ve been on some kind of natural high for the last month.
Since age 12, this is the first time I haven’t been loaded on at least something - smack/pills/liquor/smoke/whathaveyou – for longer than 48 hours. But now, eight weeks later, my own endorphins feel able to power entire nations, so prepare the cabin for take-off.
Yet, the operation of a body and mind free of intoxicants is not without it’s mysteries.
For instance, how does one explain the Zen irony of spending fortunes and decades chasing a lame dream-horse over miles of bloody beach in search of a peace that, as it turns out, is only achieved by quitting the very shit that’s designed to insure it? What the fuck is that?
As my head clears, more, as they say, is revealed:
1. Drugs are liars, every fucking one of them: They said they loved me and I felt their love – truer and more consuming than any other. Now, more than two decades later, I realize my all-access pass thru Heaven’s back door was printed with disappearing ink and, “ …hey! This ain’t Heaven anyway, liar!” I was left for dead in a pit deeper and more deafening than whateverthefuck it was I was running from to begin with. The true masters of untruth.
2. That empty, ravenous, bottomless, demanding hole I spent my entire life trying to fill with fields of poppies, stadiums of sex, forest-fires of smoke, oceans of drink and miles of motion pictures is never going to be satisfied - at least not by anything external. Though it would take me some time longer to find out what, exactly, does sate that indomitable, murderous bitch, just the knowledge that what I’m looking for isn’t ‘out there’, but ‘in here’, is massive.
•
“They’re pagin’ you to the staff office, bro.” My roommate Orlando walks thru the door in a towel, all cool ‘n breezy. There’s not a hotter Latino or a bigger dick anywhere in the Mission district and everybody – especially Orlando – is aware of this. He’s telegraphed repeatedly that if I was interested in helping him blow off some steam, he’d be more than willing to participate. Oddly, I keep to the house rule banning sexual contact – homo, hetero or anything in between. The towel drops. Orlando watches me in the mirror, a half-smile beneath ancient Aztec eyes. I smile back, gaze steady and, just to keep things dangerous - junkies love danger – shoot back a little wink. “Thanks, buddy”. I move out the door and down the stairs.•
Ubee is hooked up to a thousand wires and tubes, an over-grown preemie, an alien unable to bare our atmosphere. I expected him to be pale - frail, even - with an embarrassed little smile and some kind of brassy rebuke for my taking it all too seriously. But not like this. Not in a coma, his body woven into a bramble of hardware, mouth and nose stuffed with machinery to work the lungs.
Everything I know about comas I learned from the movies, the most repeated tip suggests that just talking to the victim can miraculously wake them up. Since Ubee and I are secret magic movie stars, if this works for anybody, it’ll be us.
“Come on, Ub, get up – we gotta go.”
No response. The monitors and machines hold their rhythm, his expression unchanged. I decide to go for something more enticing and familiar.
“Ubee, c’mon, let’s go to Gus’ and get a drink.”
Still nothing.
“I’m buying, babe, let’s get the fuck outta here”.
The nurse who was kind enough to allow me in theatrically clears her throat behind me. I turn in time for one of those arched eyebrow, “You sure you want to go down that road, mister?” silent warnings. She leaves and I change tact.
“Joe Jackson’s playing the Warfield, Ub – you wanna go? It’s really beautiful outside right now. We should take a walk over to Sebastian’s. Or if you want, we can check out the Strand – I think it’s “Blacula” and “Blackenstein” and something else...”
Now I’m making stuff up, but the infrastructure’s all built on things Ubee loves. Even though I’m rolling snake eyes, I know this is going to work. I walk over to the window, see a bus roll up Hayes Street.
“The 21 stops down stairs, Ubee, we should catch it down to Market Street and check out the freaks, or we could get a corn dog at Playland. Or watch the drag queens ho’-stro’ on Turk… Hey, Ub, remember that one with the amputated leg? Chantel, right?”
I’m free-styling, knocking out a kitschy, demented chain of cheap thrills, bits of darkly stupid stuff we do to entertain ourselves.
Ub shows no sign of emotional impact, he's the human equivalent of a dial tone. Sitting down, I pick up his huge white, cool hand and rub, try to pass some warmth, some life, into him. As soon as I touch him, my torso and legs fill with a heavy wet cement of deep sadness. I close my eyes but keep at it.
“Ubee, please, you’ve gotta wake up… C’mon, babe, let’s get out of here.”
And now a rush of love cracks thru the futility, up into the center of my brain, waves of warmth crest and break inside the basin containing my heart.
“I know you hate the sappy bullshit, Ubee, but you know I love you. I know you know that… there’s nobody on Earth I’m closer to. I know you’re hearing me, Ubee - oh, fuck, I am so sorry I wasn’t there last night to help you.”
One of monitors is making a different sound – not an alarm, just a faster tempo. But, no, Ubee’s face and body are cryogenically locked in the same pose and it’s time for me to go back.
“I’m gonna go now, Ub. I’ll be back tomorrow so we can get you outta here.”
Then another machine changes pitch. I scan the various read-outs for clues but the machinery's overwhelming, too sci-fi rococo. Now it all cuts loose, flashing lights, a chorus of alarms swelling up, bouncing off tiles and glass. I zoom in tight on his face in time to see it:
A single enormous tear rolls over his cheek, neck, disappears in his hair.
A blur of women move past me, six hands expertly goosing the appliances keeping my best friend alive.
“Sir, you need to leave now.”
I know I should, but, like other times, I’m mesmerized by Ubee’s frozen, exotic stillness.
“Sir! Now!” Arched Eyebrow’s voice strikes me sober and I move out the door, intercepted by another nurse leading me firmly toward the elevator.
“You’ll have to leave the floor now.”
“Can I just wait out here until he’s…”
…how to finish? Better? Awake?
“Since you’re not family, legally, you shouldn’t even be here. I’m sorry.”
I scan the kind face for clues, but she’s too good: nothing.
Since they’ve already broken laws for me, a pervasive gratitude overrides the animal instinct to demand, if not full access, at least proximity.
“Give us a call in a couple of hours. Your friend’s tough. We’ll let you know how he is then.”
I look back toward Ubee’s room in time to lock eyes with Arched Eyebrow. She looks determined and pissed off and scared and turns away.
Over the 15 years I geezed smack, there were plenty of junkies I’d shared laughs and horror, dope, needles and sex with who’s sun had set for the last time, but those Lost Boys and Girls were easily compartmentalized: Fellow professionals in a death-defying business, no different than a clan of stunt drivers or high-wire aerialists who, on occasion, lose one of their own. Unfortunate. Sometimes even sad. The risk we took.
And then there was Ubee: A fellow daredevil slipping quietly toward the exit, waiting for someone who loved him to say goodbye. As soon as I did, he sent out one last beautiful, clear tear and left the planet.
Besides teaching me how to spot treasure at the Salvation Army, apply Keith Richards eyeliner and go without meals, Ubee activated a mysterious ancient software crammed down deep in my psyche that could only be booted up by the loss of someone loved. We all have one. I knew mine was in there somewhere, but like the orphan who’s genetic predispositions can be a slap in the face, “Hey! Where the fuck’s my hair?”, Ubee’s leaving shocked me by how un-shocked I was by his loss and passing in general. Instead of wails or fists thru glass, I was visited by a quiet and beautiful certainty that death isn’t real. No such thing. The whole process no more than an alchemical transformation of form and mass. Okay, and usually really ugly, rarely making the final cut for a true Hollywood ending.
It was Ubee’s farewell that had uncovered the mystery of how I would react when losing someone I loved, but the acid test came three months later when Mom stepped over the moon, finally shaking off that twisted trickster her body had become. And because death is really all about the survivors, it was time to play the Big Scene – the one sticking jagged glass in my mind and heart since childhood, the finale I could never quite nail. What would it be? Loss? Sadness? Relief? Some dark’n heartless glee? Thankfully, I didn’t have to choose because it was already written as one of those open-ended non-endings that keeps audiences hungry for a sequel, with a tantalizing “Very Special Thanks to Ubee” credit superimposed over the final frames.
The only thing to add: Sometimes, people around you expect more than “quiet certainty” when you lose your mother. Who knew I’d have to act Devastated! so my friends could feel they were doing their job of consoling me? After a few of those awkwardly demanding cameos, I got permission to hole up in my room for 3 days – a luxury unheard of in Walden House, yet bestowed solely upon, well, the guy who just lost his mother.
I used to wonder if I’d feel a freedom when Mom died, like, would I experience a final relief that The Hands could no longer get me? What I found was exactly the opposite: Mom wasn’t gone, she was everywhere, a world-wide transmission of sound and image continually broadcast where ever I went, didn't matter if I was tuning in or not. And this, of course, is exactly how pre-cable television operated, back in an era when some goofy guy might impulsively jump in front of a t.v. camera and blurt out something like:
“Hi, Mom! I love you!”
