My Dark Places

I socked in a case of vodka, a load of steaks and a load of inhalers. I gorged myself on fantasy, fantasy sex, cholesterol, and the work of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and some junk crime writers. I stayed inside for days running. I lost and gained and lost weight and worked myself into a near-insane frenzy.

I stiffed my landlord for two months’ rent. He started banging on my door and talking eviction. I didn’t have enough money to muzzle him. I had enough to secure a cheaper pad for a month.

I found a place by the Paramount Studio. It was a genteel dive called the Green Gables Apartments. A small bachelor rented for 60 a month—very cheap for 1970.

Lloyd helped me move. I packed my stuff into his car and pulled a classic late-night rent dodge. I got squared away at the Gables and looked for work.

I didn’t find any. The low-skill job market was soft. I took a series of inhaler trips and started seeing and hearing things that might or might not be real.

The tenant next door smirked at me when we passed in the hall. He banged on my window when I inhaler- tripped. He knew what I was doing. He disapproved. He read my lips and deciphered all my dirty sweet nothings. He read my thoughts through the wall that separated us.

He hated my porno books. He knew I murdered my mother and killed my father with neglect. He thought I was a freak and a pervert. He wanted to destroy me.

I flew and crashed, flew and crashed, flew and crashed. My paranoia raged in proportion to the dope in my system. I heard voices. Sirens on the street sent me hate messages. I jacked off in the dark to deceive the man next door.

He knew me.

He put bugs in my icebox. He poisoned my wine. He hooked my fantasies up to his TV set.

I bolted midway through an inhaler trip.

I left my clothes and fuck books behind. I ran out of the apartment and fast-walked three miles northeast. I saw a For Rent sign in front of a building at Sunset and Micheltorena.

I rented a convenience room for $39 a month. The building was filthy and reeked of spilled garbage.

My room was half the size of a six-man jail cell. I moved in with the clothes on my back and a short dog of T- Bird.

I popped some inhalers the next morning. New voices assailed me. The tenant next door started hissing through my air vents.

I was afraid to leave my bed. I knew the heat coils in my electric blanket were microphones. I ripped them out. I pissed in the bed and tore the pillows apart. I stuffed foam rubber in my ears to muffle the voices.

I bolted the next morning. I headed straight for Robert Burns Park.

It went bad from there. It went bad with self-destructive logic.

It went bad slowly.

The Voices came and went. Inhalers let them in. Liquor and enforced sobriety stifled them. I understood the problem intellectually. Rational thought deserted me the second I popped those cotton wads in my mouth.

Lloyd called the voices “amphetamine psychoses.” I called them a conspiracy. President Richard M. Nixon knew I murdered my parents and ordered people to stalk me. They hissed into microphones wired to my brain. I heard the Voices. Nobody else did.

I couldn’t stop taking inhalers. I heard the Voices for five years.

I spent most of that time outside. I lived in parks, backyards and empty houses. I stole. I drank. I read and fantasized. I walked all over L.A. with cotton stuffed in my ears.

It was a five-year daily sprint.

I’d wake up outside somewhere. I’d steal liquor and lunch-meat. I’d read in libraries. I’d go into restaurants, order drinks and meals and ditch out on the check. I’d hit apartment-house laundry rooms, break into washers and dryers and steal the coins inside. I’d take inhalers and notch some nice moments before the Voices claimed me.

I’d walk.

Wilshire Boulevard cut straight to the beach. I’d walk it out and back in the course of one inhaler trip. I had to keep moving. Traffic noise deflected the Voices. Lack of movement made the Voices cacophonous.

I walked five years away. They went by in a slow-motion blur. My fantasies ran through them at fast-forward counterpoint. Street scenes served as backdrops for the Voices and my own internal dialogue.

I didn’t babble or betray my state of mind overtly. I always shaved and wore dark cords to hide accumulated grime. I stole shirts and socks as I needed them. I doused myself with cologne to kill the stench of outdoor life. I showered at Lloyd’s place occasionally.

Lloyd was headed nowhere at a nice sedate rate. He was drinking, using drugs and making stabs at college. He flirted with danger and lowlife and kept his mom’s house as a backup option.

Lloyd walked me through some bad dope withdrawals. He disrupted me with little jolts of the truth. The LAPD disrupted me and force-fed me jail time.

They hassled me and arrested me. They popped me for plain drunk, drunk driving, petty theft and trespassing. They detained me as a suspicious late-night pedestrian and kicked me out of deserted houses and Goodwill bins. They held me at various station houses and shot me to the Sheriff’s for an aggregate total of four to eight months county time.

Jail was my health retreat. I abstained from booze and dope and ate three square meals a day. I did push-ups and worked trusty details and got a little muscle tone going. I hung out with stupid white guys, stupid black guys and stupid Mexican guys— and swapped stupid stories with them. We had all committed daring crimes and fucked the world’s most glamorous women. An old black wino told me he flicked Marilyn Monroe. I said, “No shit—I fucked her too!”