Under the influence of cocaine, the conviviality and sparkling wit that can often result from a few well-managed rails is often replaced by raging paranoia and panic once the dose is increased. We had already gone well past any semblance of recreational use in that little room. David’s ill-timed reference to an old episode of TV’s The Lucy Show, the one that had Lucy and Mr. Mooney trapped in a bank vault, was meant as a joke, but people can get a little weird after they recognize that all avenues of escape are closed. They can get downright spooked if they’re gakked on coke. There was a crush at the door as everybody but the Disco King tried to claw his or her way out. It was like a small-scale reenactment of the Who’s tragic 1979 concert at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati. Compressive asphyxia wasn’t even a remote possibility in that little room, but we all wanted out just the same. I gave a holler and hoped somebody on the other side of that door might hear. David ripped out one of his patented stage squeals. The Brits, being more reserved, just banged on the door with flattened palms. The Disco King merely observed the scene with detached amusement. Because the sound system at the Zero One was in maximum overdrive and the guests were caught up in buzzy little worlds of their own, no one heard our pleas. Or, if they did, they just figured it was private business and let it pass. We weren’t going anywhere. As that thought sank in, we all relaxed and caught ourselves. Then David said, “Man, I can’t believe we’re trapped like this.” That started another round of staccato raps on the door and screams to be rescued. After about two minutes of this idiot show, someone passed by and heard the ruckus. A good, strong push from the outside sprang the door from the jamb and we all tumbled out, looking sheepish. All except for the Disco King, who just adjusted his blazer and strolled out like a man in complete control of his surroundings. “That was crazy!” said David. We scurried off in different directions to our own ends with the understanding that what had happened in that room stayed in that room.
I thought about that code of silence as I sat with the Timmins group. I also could see how the party scene had changed over the course of the eighties. What started out as reckless good times at the beginning of the decade was rapidly devolving into something less fun. There were consequences. Bad press. ODs. Arrests. Tragedies. That kind of thing couldn’t be hidden forever in a town like this, although an army of press agents and managers tried its best to keep scandal, dangerous behavior, and dope-addled lunacy out of the public eye. More and more of my old party pals either had checked in, had checked out, or were knee-deep in the process of transformation. The newly reformed were fervent, and groups like the one Timmins ran, as well as other, more egalitarian rehab programs, gave us all a place of shelter and support. And, I had to admit, I thought things looked bright for me. I had a decent contract. My management worked tirelessly for me and it appeared that my music career was on the move. People trusted me again. They had faith in me. Sobriety was like a metamorphosis. But while I could see it happen to the people I came to know in Timmins’s circle, I couldn’t feel it happening within me. I was just going through the motions. So I went to more meetings and I talked one-on-one with people from all walks of life who supported and encouraged me and held themselves up as examples I could follow. It wasn’t like their message was that difficult to understand: Don’t get high. All fine and dandy in theory, but I felt like a fraud. When one of my old dope buddies offered me a taste, I didn’t hesitate and I found myself right back where I started. I put in eight months of sobriety for that first go-round and, until 1996, fell into a hellish routine of sobriety, another trip to rehab, and, always, the inevitable relapse. I racked up an impressive, if mostly failed, record of attempts to kick the habit. Before it was all over, I’d see twenty-six tries at a cure. But as I felt the dope hit me and I started to nod, all I could think in the crystalline moment was that the drug life was the best and most exclusive secret society of them all. And it was where I belonged.
VIPER ROOM
It was junkie bravado. I figured everything was still okay. The money I had seen in ’89 was gone, but I had the keys to the Viper Room. The house in Mount Washington was gone, and I couldn’t pay the rent at the apartment I kept over on La Brea that I used as a place to arrange drug deals for my friends to ensure the survival of my own ever-increasing habit, but I still went on the road and played concerts. “Everything is okay,” I told myself. I couldn’t sense it, or maybe I just ignored it, but things weren’t as okay as I thought. They were on a steady, inevitable approach to critical mass. I had always loved the records of the old Delta blues singers ever since I first heard them as a kid. Trouble and hard luck were a bluesman’s best friends, but I wasn’t from Mississippi, and Hollywood in October of 1993 was a long way from the Delta.
I had been catapulted into this strange place once Thelonious Monster’s first album hit it big with the critics. It was a place where all things were possible and most things were permissible, an intersection where the worlds of music and film collided and partnerships and friendships were
