Postcards From the Edge Read online

  “No, we don’t need to talk about what happened yesterday! I’ve talked about as much as I’m gonna talk in this place. Yeah, I know my parents are coming in. Oh, you would? You’d like the four of us to sit down? You’d like that? Good, the three of you sit down and talk, ’cause I’ve fuckin’ had it. I’ve had it! I’ve sat in rooms with my parents and I’ve sat in rooms with you, and I didn’t like either one and I don’t think I’d like both. I’m fucking out of here! I’m gone, so you can kiss my ass good-bye. I don’t need this clinic, and I certainly don’t need some asshole ex-junkie like you.

  “Oh, really? I don’t get it? I get it, mister. From the day I came in here I got it. I got that you were an asshole and this place sucks. I don’t need this place to not do drugs. No, I don’t. What happened to me was purely accidental, and you can tell me from here to tomorrow all this shit about me being an addict—you, with your shooting up. Carl told me you even murdered somebody once to get drugs, and you’re gonna tell me? I grew up in this nice part of town and you, Mister Murderer Junkie, are gonna tell me how to stop doing drugs? I have nothing in common with you. Sayonara, you asshole, I’m outta here.”

  Ha! I told that fuckin’ asshole, that murdering junkie son-of-a-bitch. I told him, I fuckin’ told him. Christ, I’m so sick of the sterilized smell of this place.

  “Hold the elevator!”

  I bet they think I’m just gonna walk out of here and do drugs. Well, they’ve got another think coming. I’m not the cliché everyone else in here is. I’m different. I know they told me everybody here thinks they’re different, but what about the poor son-of-a-bitch like me who really is different? Why do I have to pay for everyone who came through the door and thought they were different and weren’t?

  Aaaahhh! I’m out. Aaaaaaahhhhh! What a relief to be outside and not in a fucking group going to the park to listen to Carl go on and on about that stupid wife of his. I don’t want to know about anyone else’s personal life. I don’t even want a personal life of my own. I’m so sick of personal lives.

  Whew! I’m never gonna end up in one of those places again. It’s like I got out of jail. I could sing with relief. So, I guess I’ll go home. Maybe I’ll read. I’ll have an old-fashioned Norman Rockwell kind of Sunday. I think I can really appreciate this kind of normalcy I’m gonna go for now after that prison camp experience in the clinic. That’s behind me now. At least I got a little of that anger off my chest. How was that for dealing with my emotions, Stan?

  Okay, how do I get home? How do I get home? I’ve got a little cash, I’ll take a cab. First I’ll stop in the Blum’s and have a little cake and celebrate. I’ll eat a little something, maybe have a couple of beers and go home . . .

  Nah, I’m not gonna have any beers. Fuck it. Sure, and what if that asshead comes looking for me and finds me with some beers. “I told you so, Alex.” Well, fuck you, you know? Suck this, you know what I’m saying? I’m no alcoholic. I’ll have some cake, maybe a little chocolate ice cream and French fries, and I’ll get home. And no red meat. I don’t want to fuck up my arteries . . .

  Aaahhh! My own apartment. Goddamn, it’s good to be back. My car is back in the garage . . . I wonder how they got it back. Who cares, it’s here. Let’s see, did I get any messages? Two? Only two messages in ten days? Okay, who called? Jesus Christ! Joan. My mother must have told her. “I’m so glad you went into a clinic.” God, that I-knew-it-all-along voice. Gloat, why don’t you? Who else called? Shit. My mom. So they know I left the clinic. Great, now I’m not safe in my own house. This is a nightmare.

  Wait, what’s this? A lude. No. No. If I take this, they’ll say it proves their point. Well, I’m not one of their traditional druggies. Here’s the lude, I’m throwing it in the toilet, it’s gone. Good-bye lude, hello no drugs.

  I guess I’d better go out in case my parents show up. I’ll go for a drive. I’ll just go out and drive around and enjoy life like I’ve never enjoyed it before. I’m straight, and I threw away a lude. That proves I’m the master over this. I’m not what they thought I was. Hey, here’s that Valium. Down the toilet with this, too. I’ll show them. I’ll throw all my drugs away. There goes the Valium, and there goes that little piece of hash. All right. All right. No real drug addict could throw away their drugs. They’d laugh out of the other side of their clinic if they could see me now. All right! No junkie I.

  So it’s drive time. Maybe I’ll go to a movie by myself. That’s kind of a mature thing to do. I’ve seen people do that. It looks desperate, but it’s probably not desperate at all. I don’t want to see any of my friends yet. I don’t want to talk about this. I’m gonna have to reevaluate a couple of things. I think I’m really getting a sense of what my life is about now. I’m feeling real strong after throwing away all those drugs. I’ll show them . . .

  Wait. Wait just one minute . . . My secret stash. My secret just-in-case-gram-hidden-in-the-holed-out-dictionary stash. I’ll just throw . . . No. No, I won’t throw away my coke. I’ll leave it there and never do it. That’ll show them. Yep, there it is. If I was really a junkie I wouldn’t be staring at it right now, I’d be snorting it.

  Well, I’m not. I can just imagine them laughing and saying, “Yeah, yeah, what a drug addict.” Well, I’m not. I threw away all my Valium and my hash and that lude, and now I’m just looking at this cocaine. I’m not doing it. So there.

  All right, all right, let’s go for that drive. Should I take the gram with me, as kind of a willpower test? Nah, I’ll just leave it right here, as a symbol of the new me.

  A drug addict, am I? I’ll show them . . .

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE

  Alex left today. He and Stan had a fight and he marched out. I was in my room with my mother, and suddenly, from down the hall and behind his closed door, we heard him yelling, “Fuck you!” and so forth. I guess it’s not a tremendous shock. He was never totally here to begin with. It’s as though he came to leave. But what a departure. It was almost operatic in its melodrama.

  It’s always frightening when someone bolts back into the blue. I guess he hasn’t been scared enough. Just because everyone else thinks he’s hit bottom doesn’t necessarily mean he has.

  Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland. She told me she thought my problem was that I was too impatient, my fuse was too short, that I was only interested in instant gratification. I said, “Instant gratification takes too long.”

  The glib martyr.

  . . . What a stupid film. Doctor’s Orders. What could I have been thinking? There’s a lesson here—just ’cause a movie is playing near your house doesn’t mean it’s not a piece of shit. Jesus, I could act better than that. I could certainly write a better script. I should write a script. I’m gonna start writing my script.

  I wish I could do speed, though. I always wrote better on speed, the ideas would just come. I wrote my first pilot in two days on Dexedrine. I bet I could take that again. I don’t see how they could say I’m a drug addict if it’s for work . . .

  So, my script. My script about my experiences in the rehab and my insights into that whole world. Maybe it could be the story of somebody who is accidentally put into a clinic, like Cuckoo’s Nest. The guy is just having an allergic reaction to some drugs, but they put him in a clinic with all these addicts and one’s a celebrity, and they fall in love and get married. Maybe I could take a couple of Didrex and write it. I think that would be okay, if I only take speed to write. I think that’s fair, because I’ve always had a lot of trouble writing without a drug. I don’t even think speed is technically a drug. You can get it from doctors, and if doctors prescribe it, it’s a medication. And I need a medication to write.

  God, it’s so good to be back in regular life and just be driving onto my street in Laurel Canyon. It’s a nice night, I had a mature evening. I went to the movies in my car. I’m in my life. Everything is going my way. It’s all uphill from here.

  Oh, fuck. My fucking parents! I can’t even have a normal night
at the movies by myself. Almost thirty years old. I should be able to come out of a clinic and go back into my life unattended. I think I’m quite capable of doing that. I shouldn’t have to come home from a movie and find my parents’ car in my driveway. I can never grow up if they keep treating me like a baby. Well, if they think I’m a baby, I’ll act like a baby. They can have it their way. If they think I’m such a junkie, I’ll be a fucking junkie. I’ll go out and get loaded. Fine. If they want to worry, I’ll give them something to good and well worry about. Fuck ’em. I’m going to Brentwood. I’ll fucking go back to Brentwood . . .

  I would never have done this if they hadn’t come over. I would never have done this if they hadn’t driven their Cadillac up to my house, where I’m trying to relax and enjoy the rest of my youth, the twenty more minutes I have left. I go to the movies, I’m handling it beautifully until . . . Well, fuck them. I’m in Brentwood and it’s their fault. They pushed me to this. If they would just let me grow up, maybe I would. Forget it, I’m gonna do what I want to do now, or what they think I want to do. I’ll just do what they think I want to do now. I hope that guy’s here. He’s always here. They think I’m such a loser junkie, I’ll be a—

  “Hi, man. No, I’m fine. No, I know you had to call my parents. Yeah, yeah, it’s cool. I was in a hospital, they detoxed me. I’m fine. I left today, I’m a little upset. They just . . . You know parents, they don’t get off your back. They can’t just blend into another relationship where they leave you alone. I can’t even go back to my house now. They’re there, probably going through my stuff.

  “Do you have parents? They bug you? Yeah. You’re lucky you don’t have my parents. If you had my parents, they’d be here now. So, what kind of blow are we talking about? You know, I haven’t done any in a while, I’ve been clean and . . . Fuck it, you know? Everybody thinks I’m a junkie. Hey, I’ll bet you have this same problem. Yeah? Yeah, they think you have a problem ’cause you do drugs. Not everybody who does drugs has problems. There are a lot of people giving those of us who just do drugs socially a bad name, but I think . . .

  “Aaah, it doesn’t matter what I think. Let’s get some blow. I stopped at my cash machine, I’ve got five hundred dollars here, and I’ve got this Rolex. Not that I need more than a couple of grams but, you know, I was thinking . . . I got this great idea. I can trust you, right? I’ve got this great idea for a movie. It’s about a rehab. A guy who’s . . . Maybe I could cut you in on a piece of the action as kind of a technical advisor if I . . . Well, anyway, I want to research this idea. I’m just talking off the top of my head now, but what I was thinking is I’ll just go and write this thing. I’d just like to knock it off and get it done, and I want to research the part and maybe see what it really feels like to get strung out on cocaine.

  “I don’t know, maybe half an ounce? I’m good for the money, you know that. I’ve been coming here for years, right? I mean, we’re fuckin’ mates in this thing. Or maybe you could take my watch. It’s worth a couple of thou, you could easily get eight or nine hundred for it. My parents gave it to me. Obviously you can take the inscription off. I don’t know how they do that, but I think they just melt it off or something. What do you think? Great.

  “Maybe you can act in the thing. Can you act at all? You look like you could. I mean, in all the time I’ve known you, I’ve always thought you had an interesting face. You could play the dealer, maybe. The guy who sells him the cocaine. Well, I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud again. You know, the creative process . . .

  “I need some blow. Let’s do some now, let’s just do a hit so I can test the stuff. Yeah, I know half an ounce sounds like a lot but I’m not gonna do it all at once. I’ve got to write a script, and when you write a script that means you have to rewrite it . . .

  “(sniff) Ooooh! (sniff) Oh, man! Now they’re playing my song. Oooh, you know what I like! Oh, man. Whew. Wow, it’s been a while, you know? And I have had a stressful couple of weeks. You can’t imagine. I mean, you guys give me a little smack, you know, to take the edges off, and I end up in this fucking clinic with Suzanne Vale. Can you imagine? Yeah, I think she had quite a drug problem, which is amazing for someone that cute. And she’s little, too, which is probably why it caught up with her so fast. Yeah, there were a lot of interesting people there. Actually there were not a lot of interesting people, she was the only interesting one, but it was an interesting experience. I think it would make a great TV movie about how this writer guy . . . Give me another hit.

  “(sniff) Aahhh. Oooh. (sniff) Oh, I’ll tell you, this reminds me of so many nights . . . God, I’m getting such déjà vu, I feel like . . . I was gonna say I feel like I’ve done this before. I mean, obviously I’ve done this before, but it just reminds me of something so great, you know?

  “Fuck her? No, you don’t fuck in the rehab, but I’m gonna be seeing her again. She’ll probably star in this thing. So, can I have the blow? Oh, right. Here’s the cash, and here’s my watch. I really appreciate this. I’m sorry I was so nuts when I came in. Can I have one more . . . Here, let me give you a hit. I’m feeling very generous tonight.

  “(sniff) Ooh, this is good. This is better than what you usually get, isn’t it? (sniff) Oh, ooohhh! Maybe I could have a beer to take with me for the drive? I’m gonna drive out to the desert, unwind there, and just get away from everybody and write this thing. Thanks, man. Okay, great.”

  This beer is really good. A little beer, a little drive, I’m feeling fine. Glad to be away from that guy, though. He gives me the creeps. Where’s my knife? There we go, there we go.

  “(sniff) Ahh. (sniff) Aaahh.”

  What the hell, one more.

  “(sniff) Mmmmhh! (sniff) Ahh! (sniff) (sniff)”

  I’m glad no one can see me. They’d think I was quite the pig. Okay, the idea’s forming in my mind. There’s this guy who doesn’t normally take that much drugs, and he’s spending the evening with some friends from school or something and he gets in this really good mood and they tell him to try some Ecstasy and he does and he gets in this great mood and they talk him into trying heroin and he ends up in a rehab where he does not belong. But when he gets there he meets all these incredible people, like Carl—he’d make a good character for a movie. He was a bad one for real life, but a lot of those people I hated in the clinic were great movie characters. Oooh, this is the thing to write with. Hell, a lot of people write with drugs. I heard Lewis Carroll wrote all of Through the Looking Glass on mushrooms, and Edgar Allan Poe was a laudanum freak. Freud, Sherlock Holmes . . . It’s so good to be out of the hospital, out of the movies, just out. I’m out.

  “(sniff) (sniff)”

  My ear squeaked. I wonder if . . . There’s that drip in the back of my throat. Great . . . I’m feeling real edgy, though, I don’t think it’s the blow, this is good blow, but I don’t want to drive anymore. I feel cooped up in this car. I should . . . I know. Why go to the desert? Fuck it. I’ll check into the Ramada Inn. They probably have some writing paper and a pen, and I’ll start to outline this idea. Ramada Inn. I pass this place a lot, and I’ve always wondered . . . Let me just do a couple of hits to get me to the room.

  “(sniff) (sniff) (sniff) (sniff) Ooooww!”

  Shit, I’ve gotta chop this when I get upstairs, it’s really chunky.

  “(sniff)”

  Okay, I think I’m cool. All right. Go in . . .

  “Yeah, uh, hi. I’d like a room for two or three nights. No, I . . . No luggage, just this . . . Some groceries. Yeah, I eat special foods.”

  None of your fuckin’ business, man.

  “Is there a pool here? Oh, great. Great.”

  That’ll be nice, I’ll get some color. This is perfect, this is perfect. I’ll do some writing, I’ll do some swimming, I’ll lose some weight . . . I’m sweating. God, it’s hot in this lobby.

  “No, I don’t need the bellboy. Just . . . What floor? Eight? Great.”

  Jesus, they do look at you weird if you don’t have luggage
. But I do have luggage. I have my beautiful blushing white bride here. Oooh, my hand is shaking, I wonder what that . . . I must be starved. I’m not hungry, but . . . I’ll order something from room service when I get upstairs. Christ, where’s the fucking elevator? Jesus . . .

  “No, I’m fine. Here, let me sign for this. Let’s see, six Long Island iced teas, two Smirnoffs, hamburger, French fries, and cake. Yeah, great. Thanks. No, don’t come back. I’ll put the tray in the hall. No, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just . . . I have a little flu. Thanks.”

  Who did that guy think he was, prying into my life? Get him off of me. Yeccch, look at that burger, it’s alive. And that soggy bun, those greasy fries. This is an American hotel, you’d think they’d at least be able to . . .

  I’m getting very jumpy. Very, very jumpy. This food made me very tense. I should write. I should chop a couple of lines and then really get down to work. Why can’t there be a dimmer in this room? I feel like I’m in the dentist’s office. Let me have some of this drink . . . That’s what I needed. Obviously I needed to have a little drink. And now a nice fat line, and then down to work.

  “(sniff) Ouch! (sniff) Owww!”

  Fucking fuck! There’s cut in this, I know it! I’ll put some under my tongue. I wish someone was here to blow it into the back of my throat, but then I’d have to talk to them. Okay, where’s that paper? Okay, here we go.

  I wonder if they have . . . They do, they have cable. Let’s just see what’s on MTV. It’s that blond bimbo so it must be pretty late. What time . . . Oh, right, I gave him my watch . . .

  So, what’s my idea? What’s my idea? Let me just do one more line . . .

  “(sniff) Oowwww! (sniff) Ooohh!”

  I wonder if they have a pharmacy open. I could use some Vaseline for my right nostril . . . All right, all right. So, a guy has an allergic reaction to drugs, but they think he overdosed so they put him in a clinic. Such a great concept. I mean, it’s practically written. Whew, we’re rolling now.