MY BROTHER

is sick.
His life
is littered
with addiction
like a NYC subway
is blanketed with disease.
My family tree
has syringes
hanging off the branches.
And each branch
has fucked each other
royally: absence, suffocation,
adultery, lies, betrayals, coke,
weed, booze, pills, and
that grandmaster,
heroin. Arms shot,
noses gone, lungs coal mined,
jobs destroyed, homes foreclosed,
cars repossessed, heirlooms pawned.
Few
have made it out
at any age,
but I did.
I got lucky.
After 50 years
of trying to fill
an inside straight,
I changed the game.
I found fear,
healthy fear.
I did not want
to die. Not
at 52, not
like this;
not then;
not now
at 68.

My brother
is stuck
in an addict's nightmare:
too easy to cop,
too hard to refuse.
His brain
is turning
to mush.
But after four years
I've persuaded him
to go into a program.
In all probability
it won't work,
but there's a shot
it will. If you're willing
to change the hand
& gamble in a game
where you don't know
the rules you might
get lucky
too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

TENDING MY GARDEN

on my little patch
of Hell:
A memorial
this morning
for Mr. Bamberg
who spent 15 years
in Green Haven
on a 25 to Life bid
lived for 6 months
with us
before pancreatic cancer
did what the streets couldn't:
take him out.
The staff
& his cousin was there.
It seems Mr. Bamberg
was real pleasant
to work with & his nephew
claimed he taught him
everything his dead parents couldn't:
except how to get out of his own zip code.
And then there were our tenants
who came our of their caves
for the free cake & coffee.

Then there are the live ones:

Ronny's on a cocaine binge;
his two hands as big as pillows
from I.V.ing his veins
and missing;
Little Paulie has an abscess
from shooting dope into dead highways;
Bent Over Paulie
who has a hump back
from scoliosis
& great nutrition, split
from his hospital bed
& was last seen hustling
roses down the avenue
of the dead
on 42 do-wop street; Eva
was issued a bench warrant;
& Marty began a gig--
his first one in ten years
since his 7 year bid
in Dannemora
and looked like a kid
when he came back
to tell me.
Some
might find that depressing.
Too bad
for them. They've never
missed a meal
or slept on a grate;
they never walked
down a street
that wasn't lit
for them.
But I've got
an easy two days
off that I'm going
to enjoy. Praise
the Lord.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

"HABIT, THE GREAT DEADENER"--FROM CHAPTER VIII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Slowly, Jean had begun to tell me bits and pieces of her life with Jeff. She had met him when she was a young, twenty-one year old, a stewardess for T.W.A. Airlines and, after a brief courtship, began living with him. Shortly thereafter, he was having this young, but ballsy, lady fly to Italy, where she smuggled in baby laxative, used by him to cut cocaine. He was from a well to do family on Long Island, had already been married and divorced, and was supporting two kids he had fathered. At six feet, six inches in height and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds with a mane of red hair, he was an imposing figure. Kenny, who worked behind the bar with me, had a girlfriend, Merrin, who had worked in a bar across the street from Elaine’s that Jeff frequented. He was not a man to trifle with, Merrin told me after Jean had already moved in. She related several incidents in which Jeff had pursued those with whom he’d argued and even shot at. Jeff, Merrin had told me, was said to “eat trees.” Jean concurred. She told me however, that I had nothing to fear, since he was taking it “on the lam” after DEA agents had begun pressing him to provide names that had bankrolled his last drug deal. Jean, not knowing the name or names of his drug contacts, did know that it was some crony of our late president, Richard Nixon, that the DEA wanted to nail through him and was pressing him for. Rather than give up the name, Jeff had cut a deal with them that made them believe he was going to inform on this person and, once the meeting was set, never showed. Instead, he left with pounds of cocaine, while the DEA was left with egg on its’ face and anger in its’ heart.
I was impressed by the story, but not too concerned about my safety. At that time, I was more concerned that a potential supply of free drugs was out of reach. After walking her back to my apartment, helping her unpack, and giving her space in my drawers and closet, I made a hundred different compromises in my mind to allow her to stay with me. But it was Jean who was quickly compromised. I needed all things an infant does: food, clothing and shelter. It began as a lie and ended in this truth: Jean probably saved my life.

As this life with Jean began, other things ended. My attempts at getting my last screenplay bought went nowhere. I left Jay Allen’s cable TV show for which I’d been writing.
I started to resent everything that I “had” to do. I hated the fact that I was “serving” people; I disliked paying rent; I felt that therapy was a poor excuse for living; I believed I should be out in Hollywood pushing my work. Hearing what Jason and Sig would say about “them”, meaning the studio executives, having to see you in order to believe you and your work existed, made me that much more obsessed about getting out there. I reasoned that success hinged on three things: you had to have been born into it, fuck into it, or luck into it; a boxed trifecta, but, in all instances, you had to be there to lay down a bet.

I broached all the subjects with Handelsman. He knew about my slide back into drug taking to some degree and felt me slipping away. He cut down my sessions. I felt he was lining up new meat. However, there was one session when I casually related the conversation I had with my mom, the one about my father not being able to visit me in the hospital when I first got diabetes. For Handelsman, this had epic ramifications. He’d known, of course, how crucial diabetes was to me, how it had altered my life, reached me at the time of puberty and effectively separated me from my father. I had no real memory of what my life with my father was like before diabetes. Try as I would, I’d only be able to recall certain vague incidents before the onset of the disease: when I tried to put my fingers through the slats of a metal electric fan at the age of four or five, he, sitting next to me, slapped me hard in the back of the head; I remember rubbing my groin up against his leg (and it felt good) when we’d play wrestle on Sunday mornings in his bed; and I remember the time we faked boxing with each other when I was about ten in the living room where we had a floor length mirror. I backed up into the mirror which broke in a million pieces and he chased me around the kitchen/living room with his hands outstretched trying to grab me by the throat. Other than that he was a very “gentle” man. I probably brought this up at the very time when therapy was unraveling. I knew, subconsciously or not, my drug taking would make it impossible to delve any further into this now. In effect, I protected my very destruction.
Handelsman asked, a few sessions later, if I wanted to take a break from therapy for the rest of the Spring and Summer and resume in September. I took this as rejection saying to myself, “That motherfucker!” and then out loud, “Yeah, sure, I think it’s best,” and left. Had I developed a sense of entitlement, a self-esteem, an anger properly directed, I would have said something like, “You ain’t throwing me out now! Not after the pain and the money and the effort that I put in here! Yeah, I’m using drugs again, but that’s what a drug addict is supposed to do. Let’s find a way out of this mess!” Instead, I felt like I let him down, like I let my old man down. That weepy self-pitying bullshit that I so much loathe hit with a vengeance. I was embarrassed by the fact that here I was again doing it in the same old self-destructive, morally indefensible way. I had a very difficult time deciding who were my doctor, my friends, and my family. It all fused, I thought, into some sort of bizarre conspiracy, one that was out to get me. Probably, more to the truth, was that Handelsman thought that maybe the intensity of therapy could be better addressed after a brief respite and that we’d pick it up again come September. That idea never made it into my head.
Jean, my “need” incarnate, was the exception but I didn’t know her all that well yet, so I was also none too sure about her. I quickly tested her and put her through, what can only be described as accompanying me on a trip through Hell.
When Jean’s cocaine ran out, I found myself asking Paul, my upstairs illegal tenant, to sell me quarter grams to grams of coke (when I couldn’t obtain the drug for free from the patrons at the bar or other characters I knew), and deduct it from the monthly rent. Also, I was about to change business addresses.
Ray Garcia, the maitre d’ from Tavern On the Green, whom I’d written about previously, and the new manager of Oren & Aretsky’s were going into the restaurant business together. Bankrolled by this wealthy tax shelter operator, Herman, who had successfully backed this French restauranteur, Robert, in a number of well-known places, such as La Cage Au Foile and Chez Pascal, was now going to put the three of them together in another venture, Bistro Pascal. The location was in prime territory, Sixty-third Street between Second and Third Avenue. It had three separate floors, each with private banquet rooms, a small, but cozy marble bar, floor length sculpted mirrors, seductive lighting, plush carpeting, fresh flowers, the best in wines, champagnes and liquors, three different chefs preparing foods, and waiters, skilled in the art of presentation and service. I opted for what I thought would be a better job, but it wasn’t.
When Bistro Pascal first opened, we enjoyed the blush of first love. Celebrities, whom the owners knew, paid their respects and brought their friends and others who fed off, or on, them. The booze flowed. The food was wonderfully prepared and consumed eagerly by mouths that were really more concerned with talking, while coke spoons glittered in recessed corners. Most everyone who patronized us for the first few weeks did so gratis. And, at first, the tips were generous. Later, after the bloom was off the rose, The Bistro generated little heat. Decadent though it was, it was not enough to interest those who either created scenes or took part in them. Those of us who had been around restaurants for awhile could smell the odors that emanated from the corpse, only hours old, once the process of decay took over.
First to be let go was the chef who was hired just to make pasta, next to get the ax was the sommelier. Then, as business worsened, waiters left, either on their own volition or they were asked to leave.
However, at the time, it didn’t bother me at all. I was experiencing a rebirth of the senses, of creativity, in part fueled by the alcohol I was consuming but especially from the reefer I was smoking. Again, it coincided with Brasz arriving from New Orleans.

I must say, at this juncture, I was, in the parlance of literature professors, an “unreliable narrator” for chunks of time between 1980 and April 1987. Not that I would purposely lie or fabricate events in order to make this memoir more engaging, or readable. Simply put, I was under the influence of many different drugs (sometimes singularly and other times in consort with one another), that consequently, the events which I’m going to describe, flow into and out of one another with no clear remembrance of time. The clarity of each experience is also colored by various substances. There was the tedious suction of the cycle of addiction, the repetitious stutter of days without content or light, there also were days, weeks and months, whole chunks that, while hardly ever being devoid, or free, from the influences of certain chemicals, were however, given to flights of fancy and, in no small measure, hope. It was in those times that I had some marvelous bursts of creative energy, and certain adventures, that would not have happened if I were stolid and tame, instead of being, what I was, which was, unquestionably, “unreliable.”

I wore an off-white suit with a party colored, striped tie and blue shirt that I’d bought at Paul Stuart to my parents’ anniversary party I’d made for them at Bistro Pascal. They were celebrating forty-two years of wedded bliss. My father, almost sixty-two, was nearing retirement. In expectation of reaching that milestone, he’d bought a large two-bedroom condominium in, what once was, one of the more exclusive buildings in Miami Beach. A man whom he’d helped get his start in business, who became a multimillionaire thanks, in part, to my father’s introductions at his initial business undertaking, had lived there before him and introduced him to this luxurious way of living. My father, not nearly as wealthy, nevertheless wanted to emulate him. Also, he had little patience to hunt for a place that would be more suited to his and my mother’s lifestyle. He was a Jew, who liked Jews, defended Jews (he was busted in the Army after he punched a Captain who’d passed an anti-semitic remark), yet he didn’t want to be around Jews who were...too Jewish. His plan, though not well thought out, owed more to expediency than anything else.
Bobby, according to my father, had cost him close to three quarters of a million dollars by persuading him to purchase another store in Brooklyn that would be his to nurture and run, but instead ran it into the ground. Bobby, along with a young butcher (who liked his whiskey, his women and his cocaine), tried to make the store successful but could not. Once seeing that this new sibling of a store was deformed they, like the elders in Sparta, left it on a mountaintop to die. My father could not make it any better and, six months after they bought and renovated it, sold it for a substantial loss. Still, my father could not let go. My brother, not thinking very clearly and caught in the addictive process as well, abandoned the business and went out to make his way in the world, but he was floundering, like I was. I had, of course, introduced him to Paul, who was subletting his pad and so Paul also became one of his cocaine connections. And so my father, wanting to facilitate a lifestyle of “the rich and famous,” reluctantly turned to figures he knew could not be trusted, but instead thought could be manipulated. It would prove, in the years to come, to be his undoing.
My mother, closing in on sixty-one, was experiencing the Jewish version of living death: having a first-born Jewish son co-habitating with a woman of not only another religion but another race as well, in this case, Chinese. She’d long ago given up the wish for me to be with, let alone marry, a Jewish woman. She was fond of the expression she’d often repeat to me: “Lord, throw me amongst my own.” I, however, had never really had wonderful dealings with “my own.” In fact, in so many ways, I was running away from “my own,” my own mother in fact. However, my mother imagined what others would say about her and her parentage, after seeing her son involved with an Oriental woman, and it embarrassed her. Mom, whose sensitivity knew no bounds and whose pain was visible and endless, demanded a respect from her immediate family that, due to all of our self-serving and narcissistic natures, was impossible. Never realizing the price she tried to exact from this particular family, she grew more bitter and angry as time went on in response to our collective inability to honor her wishes, in matters both deep and superficial. She, unlike the three males that circled around her and flew into her arms only when necessary, was essentially honest, hardworking and guileless. Her one flaw that caused her immeasurable suffering and pain, among the many flaws that each of us has, was her inability to allow people, especially herself, to have flaws.
Ray and Ron treated us to a wonderful anniversary dinner that night. Oysters, shrimp cocktails, melon and prosciutto, rack of lamb, Halibut, scalloped potatoes, asparagus, salads, champagne, whiskey and brandy were brought by waiters who lit our cigarettes, emptied our ashtrays, and fawned over my parents in ways each of them thought they deserved, but rarely experienced At the end of the evening, when my father asked for the check, even though I’d already told him that I had taken care of everything beforehand, was simply told, “It’s been taken care of.”
I was comfortably uncomfortable. My father could have stayed longer and stared at the “action,” especially the women, but my mother was relieved when he decided to leave. I would suspect it was when I ordered my third cognac, which John poured, with a heavy hand.

Brasz was now contemplating moving back to New York City and teaching in one of the public schools here, something Louis, his father, had done all his life. Becoming his father freaked him in similar ways it freaked me when I noticed my own replications with my father.
As early as 1965, my first go ‘round at Kingsborough Community College, a professor had us reading Max Lerner’s text on American history. The title escapes me now. It was there that I read about the symbolism involved in American’s defeat of England, its’ father figure, necessary to becoming a man, or independent, in its own right. Later, of course, once I became enamored of psychology in general, and Freud in particular, the book which profoundly effected me, among his many works was, Totem and Taboo. Many times Brasz and I would discuss this work in relationship to others, such as Levi-Straus’ Trieste Tropics, but mostly in ways that impacted on our upbringing and current lives. The love and disgust we had for our fathers manifested itself in the many ways we were drawn to their lives, emulated their lives, but were also repulsed by their lives and, sometimes in the case of my father, his flesh as well. The thought of having to assist him in getting up or, if a time came when I’d have to assist him in managing his hygiene or other daily needs, was enough to make me want to either be so far away as to make my intervention impossible or die first. Brasz, unlike myself, confronted his demons, walked over and through them, never around them, ate them, laughed at them, and accepted them, sometimes without the benefit of understanding or liking them.
Jean, who was always a diligent and hard worker, had begun a career in selling co-ops and condominiums in the hot New York real estate market in the early 1980’s. She’d made a few quick sales, which totaled well over fifty thousand, and made my life a hell of a lot easier. By this time, we had settled into a domesticity that seemed quite natural. We were together and, as such, shared in expenses and confidences. Her time, scheduled around showing apartments, was her own and we, Brasz included, made the most of it.
Brasz and I were like two old washer women. We could talk and gossip forever, sometimes calling each other two or three times a day, whether we saw each other or not. We could trade barbs, create syncopated riffs, ideas, indulge ourselves in music, literature, and painting, comment on writing and writers, loves--past and present--and compliment each other’s strengths and weaknesses. In short, we, while never fucking each other, were the closest thing to lovers, falling over and sorting out each other’s adolescence in an attempt to sway and subvert the advance of age.

A little reefer, clams and black bean sauce, Chinatown, Sonny’s East Broadway Run-Down, Cecil Taylor’s loft, Chambers Street, Fat Tuesdays, Museum of Modern Art, the rumblings of hip-hop Bronx, graffiti, Crash, Daze, A-1, East Village run-down, comeback art scene, midnight ramblings, day-glo, Haagen-Daz, a smattering of coke, The Bistro, painting and a different way of writing: short poems, titled, “One For...” which took jabs at our cultural heroes of the day, such as: One For Nancy
Nancy Reagan is on top
of the drug problem.

It’s made five Colombians
With stiff dicks,
Very happy.
Or,
One For John

John Wayne, doctors said,
Is in stable condition
After having everything
From the neck down
Removed today.
He’ll be given,
As protective measure,
A football helmet,
Upon his release;
Baring any further
Complications.

It was in that vein that one hot summer afternoon that I, high as a kite on some powerful sinsemilla, ( a potent strain of marijuana), strolled in the summer garden of The Museum of Modern Art, and came up with an idea for a play, Starsky and Butch. I was with Brasz and Jean and we, besides digging the paintings, were enjoying a glorious June day in New York City, talking about whatever nonsense came into our heads. A few weeks before, a building exploded in Queens, (certainly, nothing to make light of--except when your twisted on some good pot), and a Puerto Rican terrorist, Willie Morales of the FALN, was taken into custody, but not before he’d blown off all the fingers of one of his hands in this, their hideout and bomb factory. Yet, miraculously, incredulously, Morales had escaped from a locked ward in Bellevue Hospital, under the twenty-four hour a day guard that our finest, The New York City Police Department, was able to provide. John Santucci, the Queens District Attorney at that time, had sat red-faced in front of a blistering assault by the city’s media, and sworn that they were in hot pursuit and it was just a matter of time before he’d be apprehended and the city could, once again, sleep peacefully. The question of “how” he’d managed to escape, despite having no fingers and little left of his hand, (not to mention the rest of his cuts and bruises over his whole body), remained unanswered...until now. I surmised, to Brasz and Jean, that a gigantic ace bandage, with a metal clip, was hurled into Morales’ room by none other than the District Attorney, John Santucci, (named “Douchie” in my play), himself. Morales was having an affair with Santucci’s punk-rock daughter, compromising pictures were taken by a renegade terrorist, and Santucci had promised the FALN that no efforts would be made to stop their next and last act, (they’d promised to leave the country if they’d successfully complete their final and most appalling act of terrorism) until Morales had thrown a wrench into the agreement by blowing himself up. This came at the worst time: Santucci was about to be supported for a higher political office and his wife, a long suffering, whining, Jewish woman would, at long last, get out of Queens and into a position she’d long aspired to: First Lady of Brooklyn, where her parents still lived. Santucci, forced to put his best detectives on the case, called into the investigation: Lt. Tootsie, modeled after Telly Savalas’ TV character, Kojack, a New York City police detective and Starsky and his irrepressible partner, Butch, a send-up of another TV cop drama.
Brasz and I took the idea and created these mad riffs until the bones appeared, followed by the flesh and viscera. We lampooned our TV heroes, politicians, marriage, alternative lifestyles and love; we even managed to broach the subject of AIDS, (just beginning to gain notoriety in the media), by creating a character who was a doctor who lived in a bubble, rode around in a wheelchair, and treated all police personnel.
After this burst of energy subsided, after the laughs, and the insights and the language and the inspiration retreated into the reality of work--work at The Bistro and work on the play--I could not sustain both. The play was shelved.
Artaud, in his book of essays, The Theatre and Its Double, equates writing with any biological process. You can no more “give up” writing than you could pissing. It’s really not a big deal, almost like being born with a sixth digit on you foot or hand. Hopefully, you never learn how to live with it, but how to use it.
Because I had difficulty staying with one thing when that one thing presented obstacles (I was either unwilling or unable to work through), I flitted from one thing to the next, much like the women and jobs I’ve had in my life. Poetry, was usually what I returned to unless the spirit had been temporarily extinguished from my world. Besides, poetry, as Bukowski has said, is the fastest horse in the literary race. Why say something in a hundred pages when you can say it in ten lines? For me though, it was not philosophy or literary principle; the reality was (and is), that that is how I thought; that is how I trained my mind to think. I have done it so often and for so long that it’s as natural as, well, pissing.
And so, with a niggling feeling inside me, a feeling that was not new to me, a feeling that told me I was copping-out, lying, that I was too easy on myself, that I was afraid, afraid of failure, looking stupid, unlearned, not assured, clumsy, awkward, and most importantly, vulnerable, I went back to concentrating on poems.

The summer passed in a kind of blue haze interspersed with jolts of lightening. I worked and I wrote poems And when I wasn’t working I was with Brasz in Cecil’s loft on Chambers Street, listening to him, Jimmy Lyons, alto sax, Allan Silva, bass, Andrew Cyrille, drums and Ramsey Ameen, a gone violin player from New Jersey, rehearse for their gig at Fat Tuesdays. It was magical and I felt privileged to be in their presence digging the way Cecil’s compositions came together.
It was at Fat Tuesdays that the music, played in front of an eager and receptive audience, adhered to the structure of practice yet allowed for the thrill of improvisation: Jazz. Brasz and I would meet at my place and go to the club where we’d be let in and into the band’s dressing room. We’d break out a little reefer, while others opened a secret stash of hashish, and we’d pass the joint or the pipe. It was in these moments I felt that I’d realized a dream: to be among jazz men and writers and friends, sharing a moment like it’s no big deal, like I belonged there, because I was there. At the end of the sets, when evening turned into night and then morning, we’d sit with the musicians sometimes commenting on how they (and we) thought the sets went, any interesting occurrences that were detected by the few and many, and where should we go now, either to eat or hear more music.
Luckily for me, I mostly kept myself in check that summer. But, ever so slowly, I was becoming pray to the web that I myself was weaving, shutting off avenues of escape as this cocktail of chemicals and creativity sweetly spiked and distorted what I thought were opportunities or interpreted as reality.

That October, I turned thirty-three years old, and still in my own dark wood. Having no guides, either Sherpa or of a metaphysical nature, to navigate this secular Hell I was in, I tried to write my way out. I’d come up with another idea for a play shortly after my folks made the move to Miami Beach. Whether it was an attempt to keep them close or because they were gone I felt secure enough to begin it, I can’t say. The play, Eat It, It’s Good For You, is a surreal exploration of growing up Jewish in Coney Island in the Sixties. The entire play would take place in the kitchen where a gigantic refrigerator would spill some of its contents every time a character would open it while they exclaimed that there’s nothing inside to eat. The characters would sing and dance in response to the mother’s telling them what she was preparing for meals; one son would come to the table swathed in syringes; another son would have his brain removed after consenting to drop out of college and begin working for the father; each character would demonstrate their madness but never have it acknowledged, much less discussed. The kitchen is the battlefield, words are bullets, and food is love.
Try as I might, I could not make it work. As much as I loved the idea of writing this play, I was beginning to get more consumed with the life of decadence that was engaging me at The Bistro. Even when Brasz’s father died, I was not able to make it to his funeral. It wasn’t as if I was too fucked-up; it was too inconvenient to go on a Saturday. Brasz played it off at the time, but later told me how hurt he was that no one, especially me, thought enough about him to be at his father’s burial... “I was by myself, man, just alone back there in the chapel.” He didn’t have to tell me how he never really spoke to his mom and sister much. I knew that, and I also knew that even his father’s death held little sentimentality for him. That wasn’t the point. I felt like, and was, a first-class prick. Some things I did want to look at too deeply, and this was one of them. Had I looked, I would have seen a person as emotionally stingy as my parents were, maybe worse. I gave when it suited my purposes, seemingly afraid that emotions were a finite ingredient and would, if one were not careful, exhaust themselves.
What seemed to be inexhaustible was the cocaine that was permeating every nook and cranny in every social scene that New York had to offer. I had now taken to stealing and bartering with Paul, my upstairs tenant. I’d call him up, all hours of the day and night, and tell him either to leave a package of coke for me under his mat or, if I had some expensive wine or champagne to exchange for his product, I’d see him in person when I got home. There was still the chance encounters in The Bistro that provided the drug to me for free. For instance, one evening as we were all sitting around talking, sipping our drinks, getting ready to close, Robert, the part owner of the The Bistro came to visit. He motioned to me, the largest, (and he thought strongest), of the group to accompany him downstairs to where the dress lockers of the staff was located. He asked which of these was Charlie’s locker and I pointed it out to him. He informed me that Charlie was keeping amyl nitrates, or “poppers” (a capsule that, when broken, emits fumes so powerful that they give the user a rush of euphoria for a short period of time) as they were colloquially called, in there for him and that, before going home, to where his girlfriend or wife waited he would need their company. “I cannot fuck without my poppers,” he informed me in an accent so French I saw Paris on his breath.
“What’s the combination?” I asked.
“I do not know, the fuck Charlie cut out man without telling me,” he growled. “I need poppers to fuck,” he repeated.
“Don’t panic,” I said, “we’ll think of something.”
“I need a fucking crowbar,” he said, “wait here.”
I sat down and lit a cigarette and wondered how my life had come to this. Robert returned carrying a crowbar and a bottle of cognac. He took a swig from the bottle, passed it to me and, while I was drinking, reached into his sport jacket inside pocket and produced a baggy full of cocaine. As I was drinking, my eyes were drawn to the bag where I saw that good yellowish hue of rocks and powder that promised a high uninhibited by coarse mixtures of cut coke of inferior quality.
“Here, have a toot. The coke will make you strong,” Robert said as he passed the crowbar, baggy, and straw to me.
“Hey Robert I appreciate it, but I want to take some of that home, put it in my pocket. I get stronger when some of that shit is in my pocket.”
Robert laughed. “Yes, I know what you mean. Get started I will make you stronger as you go. Take a toot.”
I did. Robert took a twenty dollar bill from his pocket, took the baggy back and poured a very generous amount into the bill and began to fold it just as I snapped the lock. Inside Charlie’s locker was a box of amyl nitrates which Robert took and put the whole box into a pocket of his jacket.
“Those beautiful faggots, know how to fuck,” Robert exclaimed, as he drank off the rest of the cognac and walked back upstairs.
Tommy Sig had introduced to me to a friend of his, Donny ..., who had been the accountant of a famous and legendary entertainment impresario, Bill Sargent. When I had met Donny, he produced two two-gram vials of cocaine, a bottle of Martel, and a pack of Camels. During the course of getting shit-faced that evening, we shared a few secrets, and a few laughs. He’d told me a few things about Sargent that he knew and some rumors that had circulated among the Hollywood gossip mill. I realized Donny, like a lot of the people I had met, was very good at his chosen profession, but also out of his mind.
Sargent had produced the play, “Knockout” on Broadway, which ran for quite awhile, among other theatrical and film projects. He had negotiated, unsuccessfully, with the National Football League to have the Superbowl become a close-circuited event to which he’d have exclusive rights. He was a short, stocky man who, rumor had it, had tastes that were gargantuan. One evening as I was tending bar at The Bistro a limo pulled up outside and out he stepped with two young blond beauties on his arm.
He made his way into The Bistro speaking loudly about how an ugly fuck like him could have the good fortune of being serviced by these two foxy young “things” on his way over here in the limo. He appeared to be somewhat high but, the educated eye could see, he had just begun to fight. Sargent made his way over to the bar and ordered drinks all around. I looked at him and said, “Donny ...says hello.”
He backed away, pushed the two young girls from his arm, and glowered at me. “What did you say?” he bellowed.
I read it like this was anger feigned and did not feel the least bit threatened. “Donny ... says hello,” I repeated.
He rocked on his heels and moved closer. It seemed that all the noise in The Bistro ceased. Ray, who knew he was coming and had greeted him at the door, just looked from him to me, seemingly to prepare for whatever was going to go down.
“Do you know what that cocksucker did to me?” he shouted. He spoke fast, out of Brooklyn, like a Damon Runyon character.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, trying to keep the smile on my face from showing.
“He stole my fuckin’ car in California, the prick. Fuckin’ Rolls, fuckin’ Rolls good choice, huh? Stole the fucker and down in some fuckin’ Southern state, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas some fuckin’ state down there they caught the bastard for drivin’ drunk, drivin’ high drivin’ some goddamn way and he was broke, the sonofabitch always broke, a head for figures but always broke, and they threw him in the clink and who do you think he calls to bail him out, who?...Me, he calls me Goddamnit. And what do I do? I fly the fuck down there, wherever the hell it was and I go and I’m sweatin’ my balls off down there it was so goddamn hot and I bail him out and I’m at the fuckin’ desk signin’ the papers and what do you think the cocksucker did?...He stole my fuckin’ car again! Can you believe that!? As I’m bailin’ him out, he goes behind the cow shit police station, opens up the car with the keys that these dumb ass cops just gave him back and before you know it he was off again. Never did find the sonofabitch, either.” He laughed so hard then that he coughed and turned beet red.
“What did you do?” I finally asked.
“What did I do? I’ll tell you what I did. I found a goddamn bar, had a few quick fuckin’ drinks, and got my fat ass out of there and went home. Do you know where he is now? Cause if you do man call him, tell him I love him, all is forgiven. He’s so good with numbers.”
“Nah, I don’t, but if I do, I’ll tell him...what are ya drinkin’?” I asked.
“ Cognac, of course. If you’re a friend of Donny’s I better watch my ass. I’m takin’ everyone to The Palladium after this. Come with us. I want to keep you close.” And then he laughed that massive laugh again. He came over and stretched his frame across the bar and pulled me close and whispered, “You do any blow?” I nodded my head. He reached into his pocket, produced a suede sack lined with thin plastic, and gave it to me. “Just put it in your pocket, hang onto it.”
Later, when I went to the bathroom and opened the sack, it was filled with a white substance I had little trouble placing.

It started to get bad toward the end of November. I’d come home, slightly “lit” or drunk or both, at one or two in the morning from The Bistro. Usually I’d have coke in my pocket or, more likely, I’d made arrangements with Paul to get some in exchange for wines or rent. I’d open the door and the light and hear the T.V. from the bedroom. I knew that Jean was up, but I wouldn’t go in there right away. First, without taking off my coat, I’d get a glass of water, tissue, a piece of cotton and a spoon. Then, I’d go into the bedroom where I’d place them on the table where my diabetic supplies would be, hardly able to make eye contact with Jean. She’d be sitting up and after I took off my coat, got out of my outerwear and sat on the corner of the bed, adjacent to the table, Jean would slide over towards me and we’d kiss, briefly. My mind, my being, all my energies were directed at getting that drug into my vein. Sometimes, because my veins were so beat-up and difficult to find, she’d help me to find a new one. Other times, after the first shot, I’d throw-up the food I’d eaten that evening and wait for it to be over, then continue. After, if I was lucky, and finished with the first run, I’d go to the refrigerator and consume a tall six-pack of beer, or a bottle of booze or wine, until I could relax enough to lay down and try to find sleep.
If I was not lucky, it would be the beginning of a run that would take me into places that only desperate people inhabit, and it wouldn’t end until other forces, from within or without, muted then dissipated the uprising.
“Old money” always danced to its’ own tune. The period of the early 1980’s saw the swift and, sometimes brutal rise, of the new barometers of society’s privileged class: Wall streeters and drug dealers. The climate in New York City, especially in those areas neglected because of social class and voter registration roles, and dominated by an insatiable urge for “more,” made the neighborhoods pulsate with “more” desperation.
In those early years of the 1980’s, the East Village was littered with chicken bones, rib bones, paper and plastic bags from newspapers and bodegas, half-gutted buildings with yawning black doorways or other carved entrances, the sound of mice and rats ticking through the garbage and the wails of fire alarms and police sirens. There were lots more to be seen and heard, but usually I had my head buried too far down in my collar for them to make much of an impression. I’d begun to notice the first wave of crack cocaine from those who flew madly around the streets, their eyes wild with pleading, saliva congealed in the corners of their mouths, young people brazened by necessity displaying different acts of desperation. Neither desperation or neighborhoods like the East Village were unfamiliar to me. What was different was my age. When in my late teens or early twenties, the element of danger was on the periphery of my actions. I was not stupid about the risks I took, and I tried not to be too reckless or visible. The truth is that I was reckless and did stand out though I didn’t think so. I believe most, if not all drug addicts believe, for quite awhile, that their actions go undetected by all who matter, their loved ones, authority figures and, most importantly, the law. Now, I looked at the scene and recognized that I, now in my thirties, was more vulnerable to both those who sold and procured drugs there and the cops who chased them. For now, the drug scene, even during the seven years I’d been clean, had gotten more unstable because the age of those involved got younger and the drugs harder.
There were new indignities and humiliations suffered, beside the traditional dangers that attenuated my cravings, sparked by my appetites and mania. When I first made my journeys into the drug world I’d met up with those who sold “dummy bags,” bags that were supposed to hold dope, but instead had turned out to be nothing more than milk sugar, baking soda or aspirin. Also, I had had my share of run-ins with violence: I’d been cut and held-up at gunpoint. Now, twelve and thirteen year old kids were having us stand in line (which sometimes snaked down entire buildings and into the street), only, at their discretion, accept bills larger than ones, and arbitrarily decide who was and who wasn’t going to get served that day. Sometimes they’d serve you themselves, while at other times you’d have to go to a door, which had a hole cut out, and ask for what you wanted: “I’ll have four D’s and two C’s,” which meant: I’ll have four bags of dope (heroin) and two bags of coke; the dope being ten dollars a piece and the coke five. You would then put the money through the hole and wait for the bags to be placed into the same hand, then you counted it, quickly, and split. Of course, everyone waiting on line and those downstairs knew you just scored, so getting off the block could present problems. Luckily, it never did.
One of the reasons it never did was because there were times when I was able to persuade, cajole, or beg Jean to go down there instead of, or with, me. There were nights where I’d have just enough coke to wet my appetite but be unable to procure the amount necessary to satiate my thirsts. On those evenings, I’d walk or cab down to the alphabet blocks to get what I thought to be the amount needed to satisfy the craving, usually thirty dollars worth. I’d get back, shoot the drugs into my system, get so wired that I’d go right back for more. And more. And more. I had taken the Freudian act of stuttering to new and more frightening levels.
I’m sure Jean thought if she left me, I’d die. And that is probably true. She had also turned into my nurse, as well.
There was a study made of nurses who, during and at the end of World War II, married some of the quadriplegics that they cared for. They loved these men, of course. Yet, on other levels that the study addressed, they discovered that the power and control that they had over these men were enormous. These men needed them completely, forever. In a sense, that gives one a pretty secure feeling. Well, a drug addict or drunk also gives the other person (if they aren’t an addict), a similar feeling of security. Where is a three month old infant going? He might crawl around the crib a little, get lost for a period of time, but that’s about it as far as his excursions are concerned. He’s really not going far and will always come back. And that can, and often times does, infuriate the addict. Because along with all those other fucked-up feelings is that we, I, hate to feel controlled. Of course, we put ourselves in that position being as goddamn needy and helpless as we are and project, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it! In fact, we begin to suspect that there are “ulterior motives” behind the person’s kindness. It’s fucking madness. “If she does that, then she’s really making me do this and I don’t wanna do that, but I want her to do this,” and “what kind of idiot can she (they) be if I get them to do this for me and even though I asked them to how could they do this knowing what “this” really means to me and...” How can anyone win with a stacked deck like that?
This is not to say that Jean was passive or silent during my periods of addiction. She’d prompt me to seek help, keep doctor’s appointments, eat as appropriately as I was able and make it known that she had confidence in me that I’d eventually tunnel out of the hole I was in. She did not demand I do anything, nor did she remove herself from my equation of self-destruction, though she did make a few suggestions. She wanted me to see Bernstein for a physical exam, and, to escape from New York City by visiting her folks in San Francisco shortly after Christmas.
Once again, I sat facing the fish of North America waiting for Bernstein to appear and calm the voices raging in my head. I sat, stripped to my waist, looking at myself in that examination room light. My arms appeared thinner with fresh needle tracks in the crooks of them. I’d lost muscle tone. My eyes felt glassy and dulled, while my nerves, the ones on the surface, were raw and bleeding. I’d decided to just lay it out to Bernstein and see how he saw it. I was hanging on by a thread, even Ray Charles could see that.
Bernstein came in, looked at me, began to smile then thought better of it and remained silent. I told him what I’d been going through. He didn’t look upset or displeased. Those are feelings I am so sensitive to that the slightest hint of them is enough to heat the emotional beaker even before I’m conscious of the match being struck.
In his office, after the examination, I sat opposite him and waited to hear what I’d waited to hear each and every time I sat facing a person I was attracted to and depended upon, magic words to make it all go away, to make it all better, to make me well again. The first words he said to me were words I never imagined him saying and, almost twenty years later, in the writing of this work, are the real “magic” that has allowed me to, so far, avoid the consequences of the spiral of addiction. He said, “Why didn’t you call me?”
A friend? A friend and doctor? Could this be? I didn’t know. That possibility left me in uncharted waters. What did he really want from me? What toll would he exact? And if there wasn’t a toll, if this was not a question designed to manipulate me at best, enslave me at worst, then what? That kind of honesty was beyond my ability to understand, let alone trust. Yet, it insinuated itself so profoundly that twenty years later I not only remembered the question, but the inflection and tone as well. But at that time, sitting opposite him in his office, I couldn’t sort anything out. Instead, tears began welling up in my eyes that I struggled for control. “I’m so goddamn depressed,” I began. “I aborted two things I started to write that I liked. I want to sleep when I’m not using and burn myself up when I’m not sleeping. I don’t know what the fuck to do at this point. Maybe tranquilizers, maybe...”
“No, no tranquilizers, not now. I think that the reality of using drugs again depresses the hell out of you.”
I looked at him and nodded, yes.
“I’d like you to try this antidepressant, Mellaril, twice a day, once in the morning and one right before you go to bed.”
“What should I look for?”
“Don’t look for anything, let it find you. And if that doesn’t, we’ll try something else. Stop the drugs, if you can. Give this a chance to work. And call me. Anytime. Even if it’s just to talk. If you find that you can’t stop this slide by yourself, we’ll figure something else out, but let’s not wait too long. I want to see you in a month, O.K.?”
“Yeah, O.K. And thanks.”
He wrote out the prescription and I left. I didn’t take the pills, stay in touch, call, or see him in a month. In a month I’d be in San Francisco, trying to improvise on a torpid script. I was trying to get some jazz back into my life.

pgs 154-164, From Chapter VIII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

WITNESSING YOUR OWN EXECUTION: FROM CHAPTER VIII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

PUSH THE PEDAL TO, AND THROUGH, THE FLOOR

"No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car."
--W.C. Williams

The blizzard was on its way, although it was still October of 1979. Trendy bars are one of the country’s social barometers, and I was working in one of them. Rumblings of the storm began in the men’s room, spread to the women’s john, made it’s way into the kitchen and finally, to the table tops and bar proper. First, spoken about in whispers and, later when it had gained the arrogance of the heavens’ participation, shouting its’ preeminence over the lesser pretenders to the social circle of wealth and power. Cocaine was coming to a theater near you.
If I had been watching I’d have noticed plenty of signs to indicate I had lost my bearings and the demons were slinking in. The drinking was obvious. My sarcasm and anger which masqueraded as irreverence and humor, black as that might be, took over. A willingness to entertain, at first, those who offered me reefer and drugs, in lieu of cash, as tips after a night of alcohol was a sign, but I had finished, A Case of Insanity and that, if nothing else, persuaded, or deluded me, into thinking that all was right with the world.
My brother was moving back to Brooklyn sometime before Christmas, leaving me to rent his apartment, as illegal as that might be, for as much as the traffic would bear. An apartment to rent, in the heart of Greenwich Village, was like having “the letters of transit” in Casablanca: I would never be lonely again. It also would bolster my cash flow, enabling me to work as much, or as little, as I wanted, and concentrate on my writing and it’s aftermath, selling the script.
Oren & Aretsky’s was getting almost ridiculously out of control. Indeed, the inmates were running the asylum. One evening, as Kenny and John were counting the night’s receipts and I was tallying the liquor count for the day bartender to replace the booze that was poured, they exclaimed that they were two hundreds dollars short. They recounted twice and still came up with that exact amount. We knew we were stealing of course but were very crafty about it. There was no way we could have been off by two hundred bucks. We huddled around the register and looked at each other, befuddled. John, after drinking most of the later part of the evening and who could best be described at being three sheets to the wind, gazed into the register, seemingly trying to study it’s secrets. Then, with bloodshot eyes and all the seriousness he could command, looked at us and said, “Maybe we should count the dimes again?” Kenny and I looked at each other in utter amazement, poured John another and poured ourselves a hefty drink as well and left, leaving it for the bookkeeper to sort out. The two owners knew that some of their profits were going south, but that was really par for the course in the saloon business. However, they wanted to know “how much” was on I-95 heading for warmer climes. They hired Ron, an exceptionally handsome and charming guy in his mid-thirties, as manager. He was given the responsibility of running the saloon and taking a complete inventory. Ron, a few days after coming on board, announced to the staff, and especially the bartenders, when the inventory would take place. In effect, he told us what side of the street he was on and, essentially, gave us license to steal. In fact, the day before the count was to begin, Ron, long before there were SUV’s, pulled up in an old station wagon and loaded many bottles of Champagne, wine, and liquor, which, I’m pretty sure, stocked his home for many months to come. The fox, once again, was guarding the hen house.
Ron was a friend with one of the great characters I’d ever met, Ray Garcia. Ray was the maitre d' of Tavern On the Green, the legendary restaurant located in Central Park. Ray once told me he was good for well over two grand a week in cash. He’d arrive at my bar late at night, have a Remy, leave between twenty and forty dollars on the bar for a tip and be gone. He was a charismatic Latino, who wore elegant tuxedos, black patent leather shoes, but no socks, ever. I knew his game, and he knew mine. We liked each other from the start.

I’d sit in my chair, or lie in my bed, and fantasize about all the things my screenplay would bring me if I sold it. Money and power of course played prominently in my mind though those were least in importance, while identity and retribution were. All those who’d fired me, doubted me, cursed me, and helped to make me feel worthless, were the powerful elixirs that fueled my flights of fancy. When I was much younger and watched The Roy Rodgers Show on TV, I wanted to be adopted into what appeared to be a loving family who’d not only accepted but championed life’s differences. Roy and Dale had adopted children from all over the world to be one harmonious whole, or so I then thought. I wanted to create a similar family, albeit with adults, from the proceeds earned selling my screenplay. However, my fantasies were far narrower, less forgiving, juvenile, controlling, rage and fear-based. I wanted the same type of outcast as myself, who was literate, artistic, funny, melancholy, and forlorn and, who conformed to a similar and fractured philosophy that informed me, to view me as their savior. It was only those people who’d drink from the goblet of my success. For the others, I had nothing but contempt. In reality, it was me who wanted to be saved.
It was not the quality of my dreams, but the reality of my drinking that led me back into the offices of Dr. Bernstein. The nights and days that I was working were laced with Chivas during the shift and Martel Cordon Bleu, after I got off. The nights that I was off found me in The Cedar, drinking with a friend or two. However, I did not believe I was an alcoholic. In fact, that thought never crossed my mind, and why should it. I never woke up in the morning craving, or needing a drink nor, if days went by without a drink, was I required to inebriate myself. Emotionally, however, I was a textbook example of alcoholism, drug addiction, or most any substance abusing disorder. I was doing what any escape artist did; free myself from the day-to-day grind. Tragedy or crisis, I’d prefer to take “straight-up.”
I sat in Bernstein’s waiting room thinking what I was going to tell him. The words that formed in my mind were half-truths. I could not be totally honest with him or anyone else for that matter. I felt depressed, irritable, and slightly paranoid. I should have been there for a lie detector instead of blood test. I, no matter how good my initial intention, was playing hide and seek with the truth. I was scared in fact to tell him, or anyone else for that matter any part of the truth, as I knew it. If I did that, he could very well suggest (demand) that I give up the booze and I thought I’d probably stand no shot at getting any kind of medication that might soothe my nerves and make me forget who I was for a little while. I was the only one who knew some of the recesses of my mind that I was hiding in, and I was not about to give myself up.
Sitting in his examination room, I tried to concentrate on his map on the wall of all the fish in North America. The closest I had ever been to a fish was in Lundy’s, a seafood restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. There’s not that much to engage your mind within an examination room except yourself. Shit, anything but that. Bernstein came in and all the dramatic dialogues I had had since I made the appointment evaporated. I tried to think of nothing. Nothing’s wrong; nothing to worry about; nothing I can do now.
Bernstein looked as he always did, handsome and healthy. He extended his hand, and we shook. “How are you?” I asked first, trying to perhaps make him the patient. It didn’t work.
“I’m fine,” he said and smiled. “How are you?”
“I’m O.K. Pretty good. Hangin’ in.”
“Is this a multiple choice test?” he quipped, and added, “I haven’t seen you in awhile. What have you been doing with yourself?”
I told him about the bars, and the screenplay, and the drinking. He looked at me and listened without the air of judgment I felt he, or anyone in positions like his, would have. He considered what I said and then, without commenting on what he heard said, “Let me examine you and then we’ll talk.” He took an unusually long time in checking my vital signs and then examined me some more. He called in a nurse to draw blood and after she was finished I got dressed and waited to be called into his consultation office.
Sitting opposite him I expected to hear the worst. “I don’t like the way you look,” he began, “your blood sugar was somewhat high, nearly three hundred; high, but not alarming. What concerns me is your overall physical appearance. Your pallor is sallow, not what it had been and you appear pretty nervous.”
“Well I am nervous. I’ve been working pretty hard like I told you before. I know I’ve got to cut down on the drinking.”
“Well the drinking could be a contributing cause, and it is a concern. If you need to see anyone I could make a recommendation.”
“No, no I don’t need to do that. No, I don’t need you to do that. I’ll cut down and see what happens,” I said, eager to ingratiate myself and wrap this up.
“I’d like to read your screenplay. You know I’m a fan.”
“Yeah, absolutely. And thanks. Is there anything else?”
“Yes, I’d like to see you back here in a month.”
“Yes, sure O.K.” I stood up and we shook hands. It was a good while longer than a month before I saw him again.

There’s an emptiness or depression that settles in after I complete a major writing project. It must be similar to postpartum depression that women experience. You’ve gone to sleep and awakened with your characters. You’ve worried over what they feel and how they’re feeling. In some cases you’ve experienced, with them, nearly their whole lives. A void remains where people once were if you’ve done your job properly. I tried to force myself to do things that would fill up my time, even going into work two or three hours early, just to be someplace where I wasn’t alone. As long as I could hear voices, see or detect movement, I was calmed to a certain extent.
Jean and I were seeing more of each other. She had wanted to break off her relationship with a man she called Jeff. She said that he was not the kind of man to anger by doing something he could not tolerate. I didn’t really understand that but made no demands on her. I was trying to psyche myself up to type, print, and push my screenplay. I was also becoming more aware through therapy that I could no longer work off my anger toward women through either sleeping with or manipulating them. My fantasies for revenge and retribution were not directed at women at all, I thought, but men. It was men, and the institutions made by men, that I wanted to break through and/or destroy. But I was wrong: I was an equal opportunity hater.

Christmas time in New York City, 1979, ‘tis the season to be angry. My anger, perhaps hatred, was directed toward anyone having a good time, shoppers carrying the tiny mittened hands of children, families planning their holiday reunions, The Salvation Army, Santa and his helpers, reindeer, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, gifts, Christmas trees and bells. I wanted nothing to do with that stuff. At the bar, I would fantasize poisoning the drinks of those who mentioned the upcoming festivities. And then I heard from Brasz.
Brasz, who could give less of a shit about anything that smacked of religion, wanted to come up from New Orleans and spend the Christmas recess with me. He was feeling particularly miserable himself, having just gotten divorced for the second time, and hadn’t, up to this point, received much commercial success with his paintings. I welcomed the company even though my pad was so small you had to go outside to change your mind. In fact, I awaited his arrival like a man drowning who sees a life preserver coming his way.
It didn’t take us long to catch-up with one another. In a sense, he was much more honest with me than I with him. He laid out his divorce without embroidering it nor reveling in it. C.T., Cecil Taylor, whom Brasz saw before coming to my place, had, he said, penetrated his defenses by saying to him that, “he had brutalized his young wife.” He meant emotionally, not physically. He expressed a desire to return to New York City and begin putting the pieces of his life back together, away from the South and the life he’d had there. “It’s up here, Savage,” he said, “the art, the painting, you, my friends, family even. I just want to get back here. I’m tired of the scene down there.” I nodded my head and told him, without telling him too much, about the last couple of years and what I was doing now. I touched on the high points, the screenplays, bar scenes and women, including Jean, the newest woman on the horizon. I saved my failures and drinking for last. I casually mentioned to him that I thought it would be better, better for my diabetes, not to mention my imagination, if I smoked a little pot instead of drinking so goddamn much. Brasz, not liking alcohol to begin with, quickly concurred...if I could control it. After so many years of not smoking pot, I didn’t think it would be a problem I told him, knowing I was lying as the words were coming out of my mouth.
We were supposed to meet his parents at a nearby restaurant. His parents, especially his mom, were pretty hip when it came to pot, and we had plenty of time. Brasz, at that time, smoked reefer constantly. He went to his suitcase, opened it, and produced a bag of pot and rolling papers. He deftly rolled a joint, lit it, and handed it to me. In the time it takes to blink your eyes, almost seven years of abstinence was inhaled, then expelled. The high hit me in seconds. In a minute or so, I became afraid and started to feel the onset of an insulin reaction. I felt shaky, disorganized, paralyzed and weak with fear. Brasz, who was watching me, must have seen how white, sweaty, and blood-drained I was and asked if something was wrong. I asked him to get me a Coca-Cola. I gulped it down and felt better, but not much. I knew, however, that the sugar was in my system, which calmed me down. I never did meet his parents that night. He told them that I’d gotten sick, which was already, “old news.”
“What else did you bring?” I asked him the next day. He hesitated for a moment and then told me he had brought up some coke as well. I thought about that for less than a minute, then tried a little of that, too.

It is somewhat unfair to place Brasz at that place in time that was to serve as the beginning of yet another run. No one can stop anyone from doing what they are hell bent to do. The ones who do stop, I believe, are either those who really want to be stopped or are bullshitting to begin with. Nobody put anchors on my arms and forced me to shoot drugs. No one forced my mouth open and made me guzzle booze down it. Drugs and booze, though they whisper, talk, or shout out to you, are inanimate. Whatever life, will, and power they possess, you, and only you, impose it. You have to pick them up, and embrace them. You have to fool with them. You have to love them. You. Anybody who says differently is either lying, or has never been in love.
If it wouldn’t have been Brasz, it would have been someone else, if not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Someone across the bar would have said something, left something and I, saying “fuck-it” or a variation of that hyphenated form of defeat or emotional surrender, would’ve taken the bait, accepted the “tip” and taken off from there. It would be too easy to assign blame to those friends or family members who either condoned, helped me and, in some instances, purposely lit the fuse. At certain points in my life I was weaker than others. All the nuts and bolts, all the Fox locks, Medico locks and Fichet locks were unscrewed or unscrewing. The demons, once handcuffed inside my stomach, were slithering through.
Jean knew nothing of my past or present actions. I wanted it that way and would fluff off her questions about my drinking or drug usage. She wasn’t the type of woman who asked for, much less demanded, explanations for a person’s behavior. Either she’d accept it, or leave. She wanted to “do” for whomever she committed herself to. Many people mistake “kindness” for “weakness.” I’m one of those people. Actually, Jean cared too much about the person she loved and not enough about herself. She was self-effacing to the point of it being destructive for herself and, in this instance, me as well. However, some relationships go past the point of no return almost immediately. Each represent something else to the other and the other has absolutely little or no idea at the time what that might be.
Jean had access, through her soon to be ex-boyfriend, to top quality drugs, specifically reefer and coke. Many times in the past, I’ve known women who had the same conduit open for them. These drugs were given to them as gifts, to do with what they wanted. In this instance, however, they were certainly not gifts. In fact, they were fraught with danger. When the subject came up, I didn’t want to appear too excited, fearful of her withdrawing her offer. What I did say was that I could use the cocaine for my rewriting and typing and the pot for creativity and a way of leveling out the coke. I was lying of course, but say something long enough and you begin to hear a smattering of truth and, a short time later, you believe it’s gospel.
During my years of abusing drugs, cocaine had little appeal to me. Occasionally, I mixed it with junk. That was called, “speed balling,” going up and down, like a roller coaster, but I never went out of my way to do that. In fact, I thought it a waste of time, not to mention money. Cocaine was known as “a rich man’s drug” for good reason. The high lasted twenty to thirty minutes, leaving you wanting more, immediately. That was good, while the money lasted, which, in most instances, was not very long, while with one blast of heroin it was, “Goodnight Irene.”
I reasoned, if “reason” could ever be applied to my way of thinking, that unlike scag I wouldn’t “fall in love” with coke, thereby making it a “safe” drug for me, and, if what I had learned was true, coke was not physically addictive, allowing me to stop when the rewriting and typing were completed. What I failed to understand was myself. Had I been a caveman and discovered that dinosaur dung would get me high, I’d be out there with a shovel and extra-large width rolling papers.
I’d meet Jean once or twice a week and each time she’d give me one to two gram vials of rock cocaine and beautiful budded sinsemilla as well. I’d enjoy my new found ritual of chopping the rock into powder, so bright you could almost see your reflection in it, making lines on a mirror, inhaling and waiting for the surge of adrenaline and power, the tingling and the numbness. At other times, the coke was a yellowed rock, and, when cut, smelled like cat’s piss, while at other times she brought Bolivian flake cocaine, pure as the driven snow. I became, in a short period of time, well-versed in the gradations and potency of snow.
The stars of my cocaine constellation were almost aligned. One piece, a large piece, presented itself in the form of tenants for my brother’s apartment. For weeks I’d been interviewing people who had responded to the ad I’d placed in The Village Voice. I was charging roughly three hundred dollars more than the pad actually rented for, or nine hundred bucks a month, which was still cheap, considering the size of the place and the location. None of the people who I’d seen seemed like good candidates. One afternoon, before I had to be at work, I met Paul and his friend, Artie. Paul was in his early thirties, handsome, Jewish and a graduate of Harvard. Artie was one of the original producers of Woodstock, the concert. The apartment was for Paul and his girlfriend, Judy. He told me the rent, for which he’d pay me in cash, was not a concern, and the security I required, within his means. I was comfortable with him and told him the apartment, upon my receipt of the security deposit, was his. We shook on it. He inquired, quite naturally, if I did any blow. I nodded. He produced, from the pocket of his sports coat, what I took to be three to five ounces of powder and didn’t bother to ask me for a mirror or any of the accouterments that went with the ingestion of cocaine. He merely took out a straw, placed it in the bag and gave it to me. The only thing he did was admonish caution. We sealed the deal over the next hour. My constellation, now complete, was the nose of Zeus, with a straw protruding from it.
Before too long, I was shooting the coke. I was curious to feel what the “rush” was like. Comparing “snorting” to “shooting” is like comparing Spam to Filet Mignon. The “rush” from the coke froze you, shocked your system, stopped time. It also made me want to continue doing the drug endlessly. With all the will I could muster, I held myself in check by doing essentially two things. I sniffed rather than shot the coke when I could get it, and I spent much time with Brasz going around town, talking about the writing I’d done and the painting he was doing and, as strange as this might sound, laughing. We shared a very skewered view of life, and each of us had a very funny way of presenting it. Beyond that, I can’t really explain why or how our friendship worked, but for a very long time, and through many upheavals, it did. When speaking with Jean, I sometimes resisted asking her to bring whatever she could to our next rendezvous. Although, often times, she’d bring packages of reefer and coke with her. I couldn’t refuse if that occurred.
Brasz had decided to go out to Queens to spend some time with his family before returning to New Orleans. When he left, he took one of my lifelines with him. However, I still had some controls inside and outside of me that governed my actions in regard to a full scale, all-out, no-holds-barred, assault on my body and mind. I was still in therapy with Handelsman. I needed to show up for work, and I wanted to try and sell my screenplay. As many as two out of the three contributed to my undoing, so had they kept me propped up and functioning.
When Paul arrived with his girlfriend, Judy, to give me the money required to move in, he asked straightforwardly if I wanted to be paid in coke rather than cash. Bartering coke for services, he told me, was something he did all the time. Wanting the cocaine, but needing the money, I opted for the cash. Although, in the weeks and months following his arrival, different arrangements were instituted that would, if they appeared in a work of fiction be both comedic and tragic, the Janus face of drama.
The high point in 1980, literally, at Oren & Aretsky’s came the afternoon I had a bar full of people mesmerized by the American Hockey team playing, and beating, the Russians at The Winter Olympics. The high point, figuratively, was a succession of days and nights all through that year, and the year beyond. I had become friendly with another staff member at the bar who opened with me for Saturday and Sunday brunches. He too, enjoyed his cocaine and his liquor. We lived near each other and cabbed to work together. Once there, we spilled some of what we brought on ashtrays, or the bar itself, and began our day, wired. I then went and began chilling a pitcher of Beefeater martinis in a stainless steel cocktail shaker, and packed that in ice. Once he prepped the kitchen, and I the bar, we indulged in more coke while we drained the cocktail shaker. By noon, we had a pretty good buzz on as the afternoon unfolded.
From this vantage point, it seemed like everyone in New York City either used coke, sold coke, did both, or knew someone who did. As I said, customers who knew me, or wanted to impress me, gave me the drug, gratis; I gave them a drink. In the course of these exchanges, I met some wealthy and arrogant stock brokers who used a lot of the powder and were always looking for new connections, for it. They asked me if I could help them. I didn’t like the sonsofbitches but figured there’d be something in it for me, and there was. They’d give me the money and I’d make the arrangements, always taking a cut, both in money and coke. I was able to be somewhat honest with them for quite awhile and used the Dylan credo, “to live outside the law you must be honest,” until one evening, when they were unable to pick it up when they were supposed to. They called and asked me to keep it overnight and bring it down to Wall Street the next day. Needless to say, by the end of the evening, less than half of what they had purchased remained. I couldn’t replace it, nor did I have anything like lactose or milk sugar to cut it with, but I did have Sweet n’ Low packets. They each contained one gram. I mixed two of them in with the coke and gave it back to one of them the next day. “I should give him a cup of coffee to go with it,” I thought, while I handed the package over. They never called, or came back to the bar. I said to myself, “Fuckem if they can’t take a joke,” but on the other hand, I felt dirty. The longer I was involved using drugs, the lower I’d stoop to obtain them. It seemed every time I opened my zipper to pee, I heard “Taps” being played.

One afternoon, while finishing the typing on, A Case of Insanity, Jean telephoned. She sounded desperate and in pain. She was staying at her friend’s apartment, which was near mine, and I hurried over to where she was. The apartment was dark. No lights were on as I made my way into the dining room and sat down at the table where she led me. I tried to look at her in the winter afternoon’s dimness and saw her eyes red-rimmed, from crying and, as my eyes began to get adjusted to the light, I saw a discoloration around different parts of her face. I got up and went to turn on the lights. When I returned to the table, her face showed sickened hues accentuated by bruises and cuts. Every time she breathed, I saw the effort it took, and the pain she tried to conceal.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Jeff got angry,” she finally replied.
“And what? And did this?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t you breath right?”
“I just came from St. Vincent’s. He broke a few ribs too. He threw me down the stairs and I’m all taped up.”
She began to cry. I got up, went to the bathroom, got some tissues, and returned to her. I took her hand in mine and sat there, watching the tears run down her cheeks. After she stopped crying, I asked her why he’d done something like that to her. She explained that he had suspected her of seeing some one else and when she confirmed it, he became enraged. When he left, and she was able to move, she got some of her things together, took whatever she could from his drug cache, and cabbed over to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
“Can I stay with you?” she asked.
“Yes, sure you can,” I replied, but I was torn. I didn’t want her to live with me. I didn’t want anyone to live with me, but under the circumstances, I would have felt like a complete asshole if I’d said otherwise. I picked up her suitcase and we began a journey that, unbeknownst to us at the time, would take up the next ten years of our lives.

pgs 148-154, From Chapter VIII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015