PENTHOUSE/POORHOUSE: AN ADDICT GOES TO HEAVEN: FROM CHAPTER VII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

“Nothin’ happenin’, brother,” Julio said when I called him several times over the next few weeks. I kept myself busy by pecking at poems and a short story that had my interest, but I knew I was just really killing time. Also, I made myself not call Diane or Nina. It would have been another form of addiction. No matter what I thought my intentions were, I would eventually try to use them as a buffer against the frustrations I was experiencing. Besides, I’m a superstitious bastard. Should I fuck around, mess with, lie to, manipulate someone else, or have anything less than honorable intentions, the world will repay me in kind. In this instance, not reward me with a job. It is, I know, the dumbest form of black and white morality; it denies the complexities of life; it negates human instincts and compulsions and it puts in motion the gears that grind down every decision; it rewards pleasure, sensual and otherwise, with a discipline that punishes any act that is less than stoic. The possibility exists, of course, that all of what I just said is bullshit. Maybe, I was just frightened or not in the mood. Or, maybe not.
“Maybe, there might be a little something,” Julio said the following week. I jumped on a train and breezed into Manhattan and sat outside his office and waited a long time.
“Well brother,” Julio gleamed, “I told you I’d get you somethin’.”
“Man, that’s great,” I said. I was sitting opposite him in his office on 28th. Street, off Broadway. “What is it?”
“You ever do any P.R. work before?”
“I don’t even know what the fuck “P.R.” means, let alone do any,” I replied.
“Public Relations,” Julio said laughing.
“No, never did but I can do it, whatever it is. You think I can do it?”
“Yeah man, sure. You can bullshit, can’t you?”
“Yeah, good at that.”
“That’s it brother. You just stay with me and you’ll know all you need to know. Besides man, I wanted you to work with me, even though it only pays 10 thousand a year. That’s what the line is man, sorry but that’s it.”
“ No, that’s cool, man,” I said feeling important by working with him, but shortchanged at the same time.

Not only did I get a job but it was with Julio Martinez, the president of Project Return, a major player in the substance abuse field. Martinez, coming from Spanish Harlem, was stricken with polio of the hip as a child. Later, to support his addiction, he carried two sawed-off shotguns underneath his arms to use in stickups and drug dealing. After years of prison, and more heroin abuse, he was given, in the 1960’s the first dosages of methadone in what was Morris Bernstein Institute, a division of Beth Israel Hospital. He was then recruited by Phoenix House, while he was in the hospital, to come out and help build a program founded on the drug-free concept contained in the philosophy of the first drug-free therapeutic community, Synannon. He helped build and establish Phoenix House’s first facility on 116th Street in Manhattan. After successfully completing treatment and working for Phoenix House, he decided to open up a program of his own, targeting adolescents and Hispanics by being bilingual.
Project Return (now Palladia), currently enjoys multimillion dollar government and private funding. Subsequently, Martinez lobbied for, and became the Commissioner of Substance Abuse for New York State. He successfully navigated the political and heavily trafficked, shark infested waters to secure that title, wresting it from the many other people who had a much better and more traditional resume who had vied for the position.
For the first few weeks, besides helping to move the Executive Offices from 28th Street to University Place, located three blocks from New York University in Greenwich Village, my old stomping grounds, I went to meeting after meeting with Martinez. I learned how he thought by listening to what he said, and what he didn’t say, and then having lengthy conversations with him about both. I familiarized myself with the local, state, and national representatives in the media and began learning, without benefit of traditional education, how to communicate with them in order to sell Project Return. I took funding proposals home to read and stacks of literature on treatment methodology, media relations, and community based organizations. Gradually, I began writing speeches for him, and public service announcements (P.S.A’s.), press releases, producing and editing radio shows, conducting tours for politicians, funding-sources, and visiting professors and dignitaries. I would be able, in time, to make decisions that would impact on how we were perceived, hence funded. It was an exciting, not to mention heady, gig. The only real drag was living in Seagate. It would take me an extra three hours, round trip, traveling to and from Manhattan a day, but finding an affordable apartment was difficult.
However, it felt like I was coming home for a second time except that these people, unlike my folks, hugged and greeted me like I was a soldier returning from battles, some lost and others won. It was a drug addict’s fraternity. Almost everyone there, except for their natural family, never belonged to anything that could be considered traditional, like a club or fraternity. They might have tried at one time or another but failed at it. No one here had ever asked to be an outsider, nor would they know how to describe what an outsider was to those who were not. They, we, me, simply are and were. In this instance, we had all struggled against the same opponent which had kicked our collective asses. We had handcuffed the beast inside our bellies with the knowledge and fear that we were our own jailers and the only ones to hold the key.
“We the fuckin’ underdogs, man...and that’s good, man; you sneak up on the motherfuckers in the night, man, and make off with the goodies before they know they be taken,” Julio would expound and add, “’positive manipulation’ bro, that’s what we do man. Where else can you be a dope fiend without shooting dope, man? You still get the fuckin’ rush, man, you still cop, you still get over, only this time you help another motherfucker and their fuckin’ family to save their asses. You go to bed at night and you feel good, man, real good.” I began to feel like the team who always beat the spread.
Julio made sure I was introduced to all the public officials involved in the field of addiction and the other directors of public relations from the other rehab programs, especially the more powerful ones: Phoenix House, Daytop Village and Odyssey House.
Phoenix House was led by Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal who was a handsome, suave, and savvy MD. Between his commitment to, and knowledge of, the field of substance abuse, plus his ability to persuade the most reluctant of human beings, Republicans, to believe in his approach to treating addicts, built Phoenix House to where it is today, the largest therapeutic community in the world. Also, his social circle which included business leaders and entertainers made notoriety, legitimacy, public profile and fund raising that much easier. Daytop Village, had Monsignor Bill O’Brian at the helm. Bill had God, and his associates, sitting on The Board of Directors. While Odyssey House had Dr. Judiann Densen-Gerber as founder and president who was also a JD, and also from the Gerber Baby Foods family, quite a trifecta.
Project Return had government funding and little else. Not even a Latin band playing Guantanamera at Christmas to help us with some “non-discretionary funds”--moneys to be used however the program saw fit, and were not given or raised for specific items. When I asked Julio if he wanted me to help him add some board members he answered me by saying, “Bro, I thought you’d never ask.”
Wanting to stay away from any family members, the first people I thought of were Ron and Leslie. Ron was away for business but Leslie, delighted to hear from me, accepted my offer to show her around the program. She’d offered to have Tom pick us both up in her limousine, but I declined the offer. Instead, I said we’d be taken around in the program’s van. I wanted her to get close to some of the kids I’d selected that day to show us around, figuring a little “slumming” might be just the thing she needed to get involved. We set a time and I began making my preparations.
On a cold December morning, with the sun just able to get shafts of light through Manhattan’s buildings and onto the streets, so that you had to use your hand, at times, to shield the glare, we parked in front of Leslie’s building. The doorman walked Leslie out and to the van. The light played off what she wore: a white cashmere coat, a herringbone white and beige cashmere scarf, a white woolen dress and, on her head, an expensive white fur hat. I was glad that I had them clean the van. I waited outside to open the door for her.
“Good morning, and thanks for coming,” I said.
“My pleasure,” she replied, “I’m very interested in this.”
“Terrific, let’s get going,” I replied. My hopes in involving them ignited, and I began thinking of giant fund-raisers at The Plaza Hotel, shit, maybe Madison Square Garden.
We began at the Treatment Facility on 43rd. Street where I introduced her to the staff and explained what this part of the program was trying to do. I had arranged for her to speak with a few of the trainees--or residents--who’d been there for awhile, were doing well, and were able to articulate how their lives had changed through the efforts of both themselves and the program. I made sure to point out the areas of the building and program structure that were in need of repair and that additional funding would help address. Government moneys, I was quick to say, do not cover all our needs.
From there we moved back to The East Side, where our Education Facility stood. She told me she had noticed it on some of her daily excursions from her apartment. This facility was much more sedate because of the nature of this phase of the program. However, I had arranged for her to meet the director, some staff, and speak to some who were still trying to gain employment or were studying to complete their GED or college education.
Next and last was the Adolescent Component on 34th. Street where we housed and helped kids as young as thirteen, who were usually mandated there by the courts or The Bureau of Child Welfare. Starling Lee, my old bunkmate from my treatment days, was the Assistant Director of the facility. He was made for these kids and they him. They took to each other like fish to water. Leslie watched as this black bear of a man took me around and hugged me. Starling and I had resumed our friendship, occasionally going out to dinner and jazz clubs after work. We picked up where we ended with a naturalness that defied logic. I could see in her eyes a genuine affinity for this kind of friendship, which led me to wonder about her background. Many people, particularly white people like her, who enjoyed bank accounts containing money measured like long-distance telephone numbers, looked askance at relationships like the one Starling and I enjoyed, but not her.
The kids took one look at her get-up and flocked around as we toured the facility. Young black kids, who were not too shy about many things in life, wanted to get closer to a woman who, up until that point in their lives, they had only seen in the movies, on T.V., or in commercials. She was very comfortable, not at all awkward or nervous. After I showed her certain aspects of this modality, answered her questions and had the kids ask her a few questions of their own, said good-bye to Starling and took her to our last stop, the Executive Offices, where Julio was waiting.
Julio was on the phone looking and sounding busier and more concerned than he usually did. Leslie and I sat facing him in his office after I introduced her to the staff there who had a similar reaction to her as the kids on 34th Street. I watched their eyes follow her as she went with me to each person there.
Julio cradled the receiver, looked at us, lit a cigarette, and said, “Sorry about that, always something crazy happening in this business.”
“I’m sure,” Leslie said.
“Has Norman been a good guide, showed you what we’re about?”
“He’s been wonderful. You have something very special here.”
“We try, we try. I’m very glad you had the chance to see it. Sometimes you just work and work and you never know if what you’re doing really has any value to anybody outside the, the, how should I say it?, program itself,” Julio said. I could see him looking at Leslie trying to size her up. He could see, and I could feel, that although she might be directing her words towards Julio, she was really looking at me.
“Those kids, those kids can break your heart,” she said, and added, “People should know what you’re doing. They should care about that.”
“I agree, absolutely agree, but man, brother, sister!, that’s so hard, getting the word out. That’s what I hired Norm to do.”
“Well, I must tell you, he’s very good at it,” she said, trying to sound objective.
“Well thanks, but before this turns into a Norman Love Fest are there any questions you’d like to ask the boss here?”
They both laughed at the remark with Leslie shaking her head “no” and Julio getting up from his desk at that gesture.
“Well I’m sure,” I continued, “that Leslie will share with her husband Ron what she saw and felt today and then, if they’re both agreeable, maybe we can all get together to see if we can take this thing a step further, but no matter how this turns out, I’m sure glad you had a chance to visit today. And the kids loved you. You know that don’t you?”
“Yes I do, I really felt that, I did, and Ron should be home from business at the end of next week, but I’ll be speaking with him this evening and I’ll tell him how excited I am over this program,” she said, and got up as well.
Julio took her hand warmly in his, and shook it, thanking her again, as I held the crook of her arm and began to go out of his office.
“Just a second Norman, I have to ask you something about the meeting you went to last week. I have to speak to The Monsignor in a minute, and I need to know exactly what happened. Leslie could you give us a minute?”
“Yes, of course,” she said and moved to the outer office.
“Mary, could you give Leslie some information about the program?” Julio said, and closed the door.
“Don’t fuck her, whatever you do,” he said once the door was closed, barely able to contain his smile.
“What are you talking about, man?” I replied, but knew what he was talking about.
“I’m telling you we got her, man...if you don’t fuck her. She wants to fuck you, I could see the way she was looking at you, man, she was eating you alive, but, if you do that, we could lose her, you know what I’m talking about, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.”
“O.K. go on, but don’t fuck her, you hear me?” he said, laughing as he ushered me out of his office.
Sitting over a cup of coffee, in a restaurant near her apartment I asked, “Now that the boss ain’t here, what do you really think?”
“Oh Norman, I wasn’t kidding when I said I was so touched by what I saw, especially those youngsters; they could just break your heart, they really could.”
I thought I had her. I thought Julio was wrong. She’d been honestly moved by what she had seen and now wanted to do something about it. She wanted to get involved with the program and help these kids. “Leslie, how would you and Ron feel about really helping us?”
She reached over and put her hand over mine. Her fingers were soft, her nails were polished a beautiful scotch salmon color and her ring, a Tiffany cut, five karat diamond, sparkled in my eye. I could smell her perfume. My heart raced a little faster. “I couldn’t really answer for Ron,” she began, “but I...I...” and here she leaned toward me and said, “would like if we continued this conversation lying down. Do you think we could do that?”
The end of her sentence came so quickly I felt myself blushing. “Leslie, what did you just say, I thought I...”
“I said, it would be so much nicer if we were lying down next to each other while we discussed this.”
I looked into her eyes which were back lit with sin and watched as she brought my hand to her mouth and placed the flesh between my thumb and index finger between her lips and lightly bit it.
“ Ah, geez, I don’t know Leslie,” I weakly replied, Julio’s voice inside my head.
“If you’re worried about Ron, I can tell you he really doesn’t care. We’ve had this arrangement for years now; we’re together because we still do care for one another, but really for the kids and we allow each of us to...to, to go our separate ways, sexually. He’s out of town most of the week and we’re just together on weekends, but even then, in separate beds.”
“Even so Leslie, I don’t know...I.."
“Don’t answer me now, think about it...and I’ll think about what you said...about the program, that is.”
I got up, reached for the check and she reached for the inside of my pants leg and rested her hand on the inside of my thigh. I looked down at her and she laughed.
“I could be bad,” she said.
“I believe it,” I replied, paid the check and was gone.

Saturday morning I was getting dressed to meet some friends to play basketball by the boardwalk in Coney Island when my phone rang. “Hello,” I distractedly said into the receiver.
“Hello, Norman, this is Leslie.”
“Yes, Leslie, hello. Howareya?” I replied, a bit confused as to why she was calling me at home on a Saturday.
“Naughty, Norman, very naughty. I told you I could be bad,” she nearly whispered.
“Naughty, why naughty?” I curiously said, belying my cock’s activity as it sprang to life.
“Norman, I went into the bathroom this morning, took off my nightgown and just as I was going into the shower, I looked down and, and,...and decided I wanted to be a little girl again...Do you know what I did?” her voice getting even lower.
“No, tell me,” I said, whispering as well, and feeling myself being sucked into the receiver.
“I shaved myself; I shaved my pussy---I’m a little girl again. Norman, can you come over now, right now; there’s no one home. Ron is away for the weekend with the kids. Come over, now.”
I wanted to go. Christ, you know I wanted to go, but Julio’s words were still inside my brain dueling furiously with the image I now had of Leslie’s pussy. “Leslie, I can’t today. Jesus Christ, I want to but can’t. Shit. I have an appointment with Julio today. We’re taking...”
“Oh, don’t tell me that, please, Norman, come over, now.”
“Ah, I want to, I really do, but can’t. How’s Monday though?” I weakly countered. The idea of fucking her blowing whatever chance I had of getting what the program needed from her, ringing in my head.
“Monday’s not good, but Tuesday, Tuesday is very good. Eleven o’clock Tuesday?”
“I’ll see you at eleven,” and hung up. My prick stood at attention. “At ease,” I instructed it, “you’ll kill me yet.” I looked at the phone, so at peace in its cradle, belying its potential for madness, mayhem, and endless destruction. However, nowhere was safety less imagined and heeded then in the hidden recesses of craving. There was never really a question as to what I would do, only when I would do it. The mental ping-pong match over this was just that, merely sport. But unlike sport, the outcome had already been decided once the question was posed. It was never “if” I’d fuck Leslie, but when. The only thing I knew for sure was that I had some piece of work on my hands, with more work to be done.

Worried on Monday that Julio would, as they said in a period not too long ago, “queer my action,” I resisted telling him of my phone call from Leslie. My mind, or cock, was already set in stone. Come Hell or high water, I would see Leslie the next day. What I’d do afterward was anybody’s guess.
Tuesday morning, I went into the office and tried to look busy. I lied to Julio telling him that I had an appointment with a director of public affairs from a radio station in the late morning to discuss airing p.s.a’s for us. If I thought things were going well, I told Julio, I’d invite him to lunch.
“Sure go ahead. Do what you have to do,” he replied, not very concerned with what I told him.
There is something about the promise of sex when it’s illicit that ratchets up the stakes. New is new and that’s exciting in and of itself, but new and taboo elevates the game to a new level.
The concierge behind the desk made the call up to her apartment and motioned me to the elevators. The uniformed operator took me to her floor and left more quickly, I thought, than the previous time I visited. Both attendants had to know, I was sure, why I was going up there. When I approached her door, there was a large stone holding it open. I lightly pushed it away, entered, and closed the door behind me. Her voice said, “Lock it, please,” which I did and began making my way down the foyer and, instead of going into the living room, turned right. I passed three large rooms that opened off the hallway and poked my head into each one, finding nothing. The room, which seemed like a quarter mile away when you first entered, faced out into the hallway, and was, the master bedroom. It seemed nearly as large as the living room, and it also had a bank of windows covering one entire wall facing The East River from a considerable height. Leslie, lay underneath the ivory colored sheets.
“You should have a fuckin’ cab service in here,” I said, as I walked to where she was. She tilted her head back on the pillows and laughed. She sat up and grabbed the front of my pants, pulling me closer to the bed, and began to undo the belt, button, and zipper. I got out of my coat and watched as my slacks fell around my ankles. She reached in, held my cock in her silken hand, and slipped it out from the fold in my underwear; her head bobbed over it, then placed me in her mouth and gently sucked. “Whoa man,” I said to myself, “if I let this go on a minute longer one of us is going to be very disappointed, and it better not be her.” I pushed her shoulders back and placed Leslie on the pillows and began to get out of the rest of my clothes.
Once in bed, after we kissed and touched and held each other, I was eager to see what had gotten me so aroused: her young and innocent pussy. I pulled back the sheets and slowly, with my head near her thighs, began lifting her nightgown, kissing and nibbling at her as I went. When I pushed her lace as far as it needed to go, I saw it, as pure as the time when I hid, at five, with the little girl my age, who was my next door neighbor, in my closet only to be discovered by each of our parents. This time, there would hopefully be no discovery, and no reprimand. Her mound was white, slightly swollen, and smooth as a cue ball, only moist. I went down for a closer look. She came twice before I penetrated her.
After cigarettes, she took my hand and led me into the bathroom, larger than some apartments I’ve been in. We got into the shower and were attacked by water coming out of eight or ten different nozzles at the same time. We soaped each other up and washed each other off. Coming out, I dried myself on a heated towel from a rack near the shower’s glass doors. We went back to the bedroom where, after little coaxing, we started all over again. After showering again, Leslie went out of the room and returned with a tray of Brie, crackers, strawberries, and a split of Moet champagne.
Thinking we had nothing much to talk about, I was anxious to leave. Yet, within a short period of time it proved otherwise. Not only did I find Leslie extremely intelligent, but very much the outsider too, in an era that made it more difficult to be one, in many different ways. Born to a religious Jewish family she soon discovered she did not fit and consequently, when young, took off for a life as a bohemian in Greenwich Village. A story almost paralleling my own, except that she’d done it a decade or so earlier. She took up with a black folk singer which explained the photograph, in a time when interracial couples ran far greater risks than they do today. Her love of and, interest in, music, literature and the arts dictated what she was willing to do. Ron, a casual encounter, turned serious when she got pregnant. The rest, as they say, is history.
We talked some more about the program, drugs in this time as opposed to her time, writing, parents and the general meandering conversation you have when you’ve been unexpectedly surprised by someone else. After a few hours went by I said that I had already stayed too long and promised to call her in a day or two. She told me to be sure to bring my work the next time. “What do you think I brought this time?” I replied.

It was a wild ride that I was on with Leslie. I had thought that I was pretty sophisticated and aware of most every strata of life that Manhattan had to offer. I wasn’t.
Soon Leslie had become involved with Project Return. Ron, though interested, indulged his wife’s “passions.” In turn, they introduced Julio and I to a few people who they thought might be interested in our cause, such as Alvin Ailey, who eventually did become a supporter of the program. It also freed Leslie to become more involved with me as well. Having to meet me for lunch or dinner to help promote or sponsor this or that gave her excuses to slip away, almost at will.
During that Christmas, up through the new year and the winter months beyond, she showed me a Manhattan that I never knew existed, much less experienced. She shopped with me in Bergdorf’s, Dunhill and Paul Stuart; dined me at Le Cirque, The Four Seasons and Le Cote Basque and, of course, picked up the tab. We went to dinner at restaurants that had no name and were housed in brownstones where there was no menu and the food was as pampered and exotic as the patrons. I went to art auctions at Southby's and The Met to hear opera and, afterward, she in a gown and I in a suit, to Greenwich Village to hear jazz and eat bacon and eggs at some greasy spoon at four in the morning. I would go downstairs, after work, and Tom, her chauffeur, would be waiting to open the door for me and drive me back to Coney Island. The first time I was surprised, but by the second time I walked into the car like I was paying the tab. One evening, Leslie, bedecked in a floor length fur coat, waited for me inside the limo. On the way home she asked if I knew who’s coat this was. “Yours,” I said.
“Who’s was it before it was mine?” she coyly asked.
“I didn’t think you bought used,” I teased.
“Funny, very funny. No, I’m the first one to wear this, but it was made for someone else.”
“Who?” I asked, playing the game.
“Streisand. This was her coat until three this afternoon. My friend at Bergdorf’s got off the phone with her, and she just decided that she didn’t want it, and I did. Look at what she had them do to the inside.”
I peered as she took the belt off and the coat fell away showing her nakedness. The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, smeared with grease and dirt from decades of grime from the exhaust fumes of cars, buses, and diesel trucks, now twinkles as it reminds me of an escapade of excess each time I pass through it.
I was working at my desk at Project Return when the phone rang. I picked it up and found Ron, Leslie’s husband on the other end. The conversation began innocently enough, he telling me how pleased he was that Leslie was so involved with the program and he wanted to thank me. I was somewhat confused and leery, thinking that a shoe was about to drop, but I was wrong. He told me that he had read my work, liked it, and was encouraging his wife to try and help me get it published. To that end, they were arranging a poetry reading at their apartment for a certain date with people they thought could be instrumental in achieving that goal. However, he assured me, Leslie would start making contacts now. I thanked him and said goodbye. I thought of two dozen reasons he had made that phone call to me but, in actuality, will never really know the constellations in another person and how his, or any other life in this life works.

pgs 122-128, From Chapter VII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

BLACK & BLUES OF RED LIGHTS--FROM CHAPTER VI: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

A hotel for transients and a massage parlor bracketed my home for the next month. During the 1970’s dope and sex ran like rivers through Times Square in reds and neon's giving light to the pimps and pushers and the stiletto heels of women and the wigs of transvestites who were followed, none to quickly, by the worn heels of policemen’s shoes, who gave less than an fiddler’s fuck about pursuing them.
Project Return, in those days, was a poor program, serving mostly blacks and Hispanics. I was one of two white guys, out of three hundred, in the program; the other blanco being Joe, a brilliant chemically mercurial Ohio nut, who possessed no valance. Phoenix House and Daytop Village were our rich cousins. Like the founding of America, those there first were loathed to share the wealth. The facility itself lacked certain amenities in the dead of winter: consistent heat, hot water, running water, working bathrooms and nutritious food. Besides that it was paradise. There were about thirty of us living in the facility learning about the program before being promoted to the Treatment Facility, located on 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Each morning I’d take my insulin injection in front of a staff member, who’d then put back the syringe, insulin and alcohol in a locked cabinet. He would then check the number left against the total count and I’d go and have breakfast. I’d begun dealing with the fact that I had diabetes, a dangerous disease that demanded vigilance which, unfortunately or not, had to be acknowledged and dealt with by people who could, and probably did, (in my head,) equate having a disease with weakness. And since these men had, for the most part, spent a portion of their lives in jail, my masculinity was even more threatened. In the first few days I was there, we had orientation sessions about our expected behavior in the facility. There were the cardinal rules that, if violated, were grounds for expulsion: No drugs; No sex; No violence or threats of violence. There’d be no ”selling wolf tickets” which were verbal threats designed to challenge one’s “manhood.” There were other suggestions, one of which was, “Do not sneak up on anybody; do not touch anyone on their backs; do not make sudden gestures that might be misconstrued.” Some of the men who I was living with were men not to be trifled with.
The first important thing that effected my diabetes that I had to adjust to were the meals. I’ve heard that meals in the “joint,” (prison), were similar: high caloric, simple carbohydrate starch foods: pancakes, syrup, powdered eggs and bread, bread, and more bread. Lunch: Father John (who was a real priest, and who’s parish was in Greenwich Village), Sandwiches: Two slices of bologna, a slice of cheese on a roll which was as round as a beach ball. Dinner: meat, which was mostly gristle, deep fried chicken, potatoes, pasta, rice, and more rice, pasta and potatoes. Everybody ate it, and nobody complained much, except me.
Each person coming into the program had to get on welfare. Besides getting funded by other parts of the city, state and federal governments, food stamps were granted to those who showed special needs. I was one of those people. I’d always wanted the light to shine upon me, but not that way. Not only did I buy food that only I could eat, but I also brought in soda, juice and/or candy, like Milky Ways, to fight insulin reactions. When the soda, juice and candy were pilfered, which they initially were, and since no one owned up to that, I had to, in groups, confront the entire facility. The idea was that it would be close to premeditated murder to steal something that would help keep a person alive in a medical emergency. Not many would, or could, buy that argument, especially when they were sitting across from a reasonably healthy person. Others could give less of a shit who died, as long as their sweet tooth got filled. But struggle is a strange thing. Live with men long enough, and engage with them to fight the same demon, a similar foe, piss in the same toilet and shower in the same stall, wash with the same soap and eat the same food, build a common home and something happens. You still might not like the cocksucker, but you begin to respect him. However, men are also men, and being men, are animals, and because they are animals and also human which gives them the capacity to think, it makes them, at times, more dangerous than animals.
Alcoholics and drug addicts, while not like the proverbial myth of the “hooker with the heart of gold,” are, once they’ve given up the drink and/or drug, simply emotionally damaged people. It is also true that addiction is pleasurable and huge chunks of real life are difficult and painful, and they want nothing to do with that reality. Whether their addiction can, or should, be classified as a disease, a physical and emotional bodily pursuit to compensate for a lack in natural hormones and other secretions, a flaw in their character, make-up, upbringing or environment or all of the above, is not for me to say. What I can say, and will say, is this: If a scumbag stops using drink and/or drugs that person is still your ordinary run-of-the-mill scumbag, until he or she decides to work their ass off to change that as well. At Project Return, as in life, I met plenty of scumbags, and some of them, one of them, most of them, was/were stealing my candy.
We were good at lying. We had to be: “Who me? No, man, no couldn’ta been me; I waz visitin’ my dead aunt in Baltimore, man, you crazy.”
Even caught red-handed: “No man, that ain’t no Milky Way you be seein’, you see some guy, who it might be I can’t really say, but he be breezin’ by me and handed me this wrapper man, and stupid as I am, I just latched onto it. I tried to shake the motherfucker loose, but it just sticks to me, you see?”
“C’mon John, I saw you take the fuckin’ candy.”
“Me!?” You saw me take the candy!? Not me, you didn’t see me; it was not me you saw.”
“Yeah you, I saw you. You.”
“Who you gonna believe,” he said, pausing for effect, “me or your lyin’ eyes?” On and on and on it went until I got up some nerve, spoke to a staff member and called a special group to confront the whole house. It’s so easy to remain as passive as I was and watch as your life slips away from you. People will tear small bits of flesh until only the bones remain, and they’ll justify it. “Hey, man, you were just lyin’ there not doing a damn thing to save your poor ass and I needed those shoes, your job, your wife, your space. If you wanted to live so goddamn badly, you shoulda said somethin’. How the fuck were we supposed to know?” A good question. I could talk about many things, but how I felt wasn’t one of them. I did not like to verbalize what I was feeling, and for good reason. It simply never felt safe enough for me to do that. Like it or not, I simply had to grow up.
Growing up is painful at any time, but some people begin growing up emotionally from birth, instead of at twenty-five years of age. Since I still go kicking and screaming from, and to, any and all responsibilities, I can say with certainty that the structures I have had to build inside my body and psyche, ones that have enabled me to work and love with a degree of maturity, were, and are, fought for everyday. It was never a question of rebuilding what was destroyed. Instead, it was almost a matter of building from scratch. Nobody gets out of this life without paying dues, some more than others.
After speaking up, confronting the house about the Milky Way thief or thieves, and staying alive through the medium of verbalization and, working my ass off, I was promoted to the Treatment Facility, or The Wild West. The “Treatment Facility” sounds like something that neo-Nazis had thought up for a remote corner of Idaho and the two Jews who live there, but it was really the place where the addict was either going to “grow” or “blow.” Either they were going to go through the pains and frustrations of “growing up” or they were going to “blow” this opportunity and usually end up in a jail, an institution, or die.
I slept on the top bunk of a metal framed, double bunk bed, with a mattress as thin as a wafer. Underneath me was Starling Lee, nicknamed, “Heavy,” a three hundred pound black man, who was born and raised on the streets of Harlem. He’d been sent from Rahway Prison in New Jersey, where he was doing time for assault with intent to kill, to Sing Sing, in upstate New York where he’d been convicted of manslaughter and was about to serve seventeen to twenty-five years. However, he was not without friends who had friends. A judge had offered him a way out, a “last chance”: Go into the program and complete it, or do the seventeen. He opted for the program.
Starling had begun using heroin in the 1940’s, when a fifty cent cap would last for days. He was one of Billie Holliday’s morphine connections when she’d come to the city to play. Starling was not only a jazz aficionado but had hung out with many of the musicians as well. He’d been in and out of jail since he was a kid. His body still contained metal from three gunshot wounds. He’d used so much dope for so long that most of his veins in his arms had collapsed. His hands and forearms were swollen like balloons from trying to shoot dope into his arms, missing and finding nothing. Eventually, he’d have to pay someone to find a vein in his neck in order for him to get the “rush” he was looking for. He’d point to the veins in his arms and say, in his voice, sounding like sweet gravel mixing, “I got a Cadillac in this one here, a little ol’ Chevy here, and a goddamn Rolls Royce over here.” Starling not only made it through the program, but he worked for the program as well after he “graduated.” As you might imagine, the young kids looked up to this giant of a man. He really did have a spirit that infused the work with a joy of being alive and clean of narcotics and jail cells, some real, and some self-imposed.
We were an odd couple only in appearance. We listened, when we could, to the albums I brought with me: Monk, Miles, Cooke, Holiday, et al. I told him stories about Sam, The Towne Hill and The Copa and he told me tales of Monk and Miles and Sonny and Billie; how he had breakfast in Monk’s kitchen with Monk doodling on the piano while eating scrambled eggs, the grease on the keys as thick as a thumb; Billie kissing his cheek before she went on stage to sing; the nights of hanging out at Minton’s with Cluck and Bags and Monk. I was like a sponge. We’d sit and watch the thick blue smoke from our Lucky’s or Commanders, and listen and laugh to Monk’s solo on Bag’s Groove or sing to Sam’s Night Beat late, while the house was going to sleep. Those were wonderful times.
But it was treatment I was supposed to be getting, not a cultural sabbatical, and, in fact, it was treatment I got. Areba had only twenty or so people to deal with at any one time. Our home, at full capacity, held one hundred and ten crazy-assed dope fiends, men and women. In some ways, the women were harder to treat then the men. Men could be men in the street and still get over without giving up their identity, but women, in many cases, lost whatever they had of their femininity in order to boost, rob, hustle, mug and, in some cases kill, or nearly kill, to support their habits. In many ways, they’re tougher than men and not at all ashamed to demonstrate it. Also, their stories were more heartbreaking and tragic. There was one woman who, while bathing her young son, nodded off to sleep, killing him. Some would say that she deserved whatever harsh consequences awaited her, and they might be right. However, it is my experience that no one can punish anyone as stringently, as punitively, as relentlessly as an addict punishes themself. It is never ending and endures whether they stop taking drugs or not.
“Treatment” in a therapeutic community is designed to be a pressure cooker. There were confrontation groups three to five times a week, day long marathons, conducted monthly, designed to break down one’s resistance's in order to accept truths and admit vulnerability. There were individual sessions as needed, and the daily regimen of your job function: service, kitchen or maintenance crew, acquisition team--”acquisition” being a fancy word for “hustling,” where those of us who could bullshit the best, got to go out, with an old, battered and shorn tax-exempt certificate, to any and all variety of merchants and other business owners, to “acquisition” what was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, such as fresh fruits and vegetables.
Finally, for those people who had been in treatment the longest and, who now had the responsibility of junior staff members, were the top positions of Chief Expediter and House Coordinator. The house hummed all day long and into the evening. The service crew cleaned all day long. Therapeutic Communities are the cleanest facilities in America. The hint of dirt is enough to get the whole house on a ban. A “ban” is when privileges are denied, such as going out of the facility, watching T.V., or engaging in any social activity. A ban could also be designed to curtail an individual’s activities. The kitchen crew was the next step up in responsibility. You had to get up earlier to prepare breakfast, and were the last to leave after the “family” ate dinner. To compensate for this the kitchen crew was usually granted privileges such as not having to work on the weekends when an alternative crew would be assigned to prepare meals. (And so on up the ladder of success.) I had very little desire to progress that way. That kind of recognition mattered little to me. What mattered was getting passes on weekends to see Diane. I wanted to discover what it was I was going to do with her, and with the rest of my life.
Hector, a thin, Puerto Rican of medium height, who had deep brown eyes, an acne scarred face, Mick Jagger lips, a quick mind and a wicked sense of humor, was the Director of the Treatment Facility. All staff were ex-addicts and most were Puerto Rican as were the founders, Julio Martinez and Carlos Pagan. “Sabige,” he’d say, “you a stupid motherfucker, you know that? You with your B.A.’s, your M.A.’s, your Ph.D.’s, PPP’s LSD’s QXZ’s all them fuckin’ degrees man you just stupid, man.” He’d pause for effect. Usually, he caught me mopping a floor, staring off into space, trying to sneak a smoke, or all of them at the same time. He usually denied me passes of any kind on the weekends on G.P., “general principles,” and kept me on the lowly service crew for nearly four months while people were usually promoted in two to four weeks. “Deny Sabage, and let him deal with it,” seemed to be part of the plan. Hector’s other refrain to me was: “Your father, he stupid too--I see where you get that shit from man. He could bullshit, just like you man. He would of made a good addict man, we tell him that the other week man and he love that shit: lyin’, schemin’, gettin’ high. He eat like a motherfucker man, that get him high I think, no doubt about that shit, man.”
My father had been coming once a week, sometimes with Diane, to attend groups designed for the “trainees’”, (the moniker of the residents there) significant others. Hector continued, “But you man, you don’t wanna be like him man; no, you wanna get the hell out of the city man, be a farmer like me man. This shit too evil man, too hard on the soul. Someday I’m goin’ back to PR, man, be a fuckin’ farmer...fuck this city shit man.”
After months of dusting the air and cleaning the bathrooms, sometimes with a toothbrush, they put me on the kitchen crew, which was an adventure. Up at 4:30 in the morning to begin preparations, I had the job of putting out the bags of garbage from the night before. One morning, I felt something against the front door making it difficult to open. I pushed and pushed and finally succeeded in getting the door to where I could go out, sideways. I found the reason for the difficulty. A dead body leaned against it. It was the second time I’d seen a dead body since being in the program. The first was when a staff member asked me to accompany him to the city morgue, near Bellevue, to identify a guy I’d made friends with in the program, Alfred Rickets. Al had gone home on a pass that weekend and, on his way back to the program, was pushed on the tracks of an oncoming train off the elevated El in The Bronx. I went with Fat John, a staff member, identified his face which graciously still was intact on an otherwise mangled body and was pretty shaken up for days afterward. It was shortly thereafter when I was promoted to be in charge of the kitchen crew, an opportunity I really didn’t want. I had to get up earlier than everybody else; I was in charge of seven people, a hopeless and thankless task, preparing meals in addition to keeping track of, and ordering, the food. I’d never cooked before in my life. After doing this for about a week, the house called a group designed just for me. It was a “Roman Encounter.” A Roman Encounter is when a person sits in the middle of fifty people or more and turns to face them one at a time while they tell him or her not in the kindest terms, what they feel about them.
“What we supposed to do with that fuckin’ pancake man, throw it or build with it, I know we can’t eat the motherfucker.”
“I needed a motherfuckin’ gun for that chicken last night. That chicken was bleedin’ so much, I felt sorry for it. Don’t you care what you’re servin’ your family?” That was it, of course. I didn’t care, I just wanted to get through it. The pride and quality that one should have for their job was lacking they felt. I was awakened in the middle of the night by some senior member of the facility, wearing a white glove with a speck of grease on it. My eyes slowly focused. “You gonna kill us tomorrow morning, man, with all that grease on the grill. Better get your ass down there and clean it good.”
Eventually, in group, I was able to delve into the emotional depths of what food in general, and the kitchen in particular, meant to me. It was a rancid blend of love and disease. Besides the obvious discomfort of having the responsibility of preparing meals for a hundred people, and being in charge of seven who were as crazy as me, there, intertwined with the present, was my past, where food was the hub and the kitchen the wheel. The last thing I wanted to be responsible for was feeding myself or others. The last thing I wanted to address was diabetes. The last thing I wanted was for my life to revolve around what I had so despised and rejected, namely my body. This was compounded by those in authority who had initially dropped me in that god awful situation. In short, I was angry as a motherfucker. I got it out, and got it right. I was put back on the service crew in a manner of speaking.
Staff had other plans for me. They, while trying to keep my ego in check, had begun to use me to “acquisition” goods and services that they had a hard time obtaining for themselves. I was only one of two other people in the facility with a valid drivers license, the other being George, a recent admission. He was a fat, tattooed chef who had spent too much time imbibing chemicals and powders that had nothing much to do with gastronomy and everything to do with hunger. I found myself hustling everything from cartons of cigarettes, fresh fruit and vegetables, to mattresses, linens and couches. I went to The Gotham Book Mart, where I had a slight friendship with Brown, who then owned the store. I thought some of the people in the program would like to do Gelber’s play, The Connection and was able to get ten copies of it. Nothing much happened with it. The same was not true for The Village Vanguard. Starling and I went to see Max Gordon, the owner, whom I knew from my poetry reading days with Fran, and who Starling knew from his forays into the West Village to hear people he knew perform. Max told us to check with him before a performance and he would, if space was available, give us a table or two to listen to some jazz. We caught the first set of Sonny Rollins before going back to the program, drinking club sodas and laughing at our sober glasses and Sonny’s arpeggios.
This quasi-freedom was making me itchy to get out and get going. I was getting edgy, restless. I’d been in treatment for almost six months. If you counted Areba, Lenox Hill and Mt. Sinai Hospitals I had been “institutionalized” for over a year. The next “phase” in Project Return was “education” where you either got a GED, (General Equivalency Diploma) or a job while living in Project Return’s facility on East 52nd Street. It also afforded one the freedom to come and go with few restraints while you learned what it was like to reenter the world of work and responsibilities while building a little bank account. Most people who’d come in with me had already made the move. They were holding me back for reasons I couldn’t fathom, except for one. I was proving very useful to them.
One day in group, George was pissing and moaning about being used by the program. “I’m just driving around all day picking up all your personal shit, the program’s shit, and not getting my shit together,” he whined, “I came here to get help, not to pickup Carlos’ shit.” The staff member who was leading the group shouted back at him to just do what he was told and stop being such a baby while doing it. George incensed, reached into his wallet, removed his drivers license, and ate it. “Now I can’t drive, you sonofabitch, I guess you’ll have to use me some other way now!” he exploded. I also felt used, but was not as famished. It would take a few more weeks for my “shit” to hit the fan.
One hot Saturday morning in June, I was standing outside the facility smoking a Lucky. I was pissed because another request for a pass to see Diane was denied. Instead, I was supposed to drive the van over to a Health Fair that we were participating in somewhere uptown. Carlos, the second in command at Project Return, and a guy I never liked too much, drove up in his car. “Hey, Jewish, come over here,” he said. He, for some reason liked to call me “Jewish” instead of my name. I never warmed to that form of endearment. I strolled over to his car.
“I thought Maxwell told you to get the fuckin’ van,” he said as he was getting out of his car and coming towards me.
“He did, but I ain’t goin’, not until I speak to you,” I replied.
“We got nothin’ to fuckin’ talk about man. You gotta get the fuckin’ van, go to the fuckin’ street fair, run your mouth about what we do here in this fuckin’ program like save motherfucker’s lives like yours, then come home here and do what you have to do.”
I wanted to punch him in his mouth. I wanted to strangle him on the sidewalk, walk over his body, take his car and split. Instead, I calmly said, “No, not me. I don’t have to do that. You might think you own this plantation, but I ain’t no slave.”
Even in the bright sunlight his face turned redder than red. Barely able to contain himself he said, “Well motherfucker, no one sent you a fuckin’ memo to come here. You were just another greasy motherfuckin’ dope fiend who’s ass we saved. Just go and pack your shit and leave.”
A crowd of people from the facility was standing around us now. Starling was tugging at my sleeve but I brushed off his hand. “That’s right Carlos, nobody sent me a memo, but nobody, including you, can throw me out either. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready unless you want to make an issue out of it. One more fuckin’ thing. You didn’t save my ass, I did. Me and the other people in here, but certainly not you.” We glared at each other for a few minutes. “I’m gettin’ out of here,” I finally said. I turned and walked back into the facility, up the two flights of stairs to my bunk and began packing my belongings. Maxwell and Starling followed me and watched as I threw my clothes into the bag I had brought with me when I entered Project Return.
“I’m gonna miss ya man,” Starling said.
I stopped what I was doing, went up to him and put my arms around his massive bulk and hugged him. I was grateful that Starling was too smart to try and talk me out of it. “I’m gonna miss ya too, but this ain’t goodbye, ya know what I mean?”
“I hope not; ain’t too many white motherfuckers to get down with these days. It makes my shit feel legitimate.”
“Don’t be sayin’ that. Hold onto my record player and records til I can get back to them.”
He nodded and pulled me to him. “If I didn’t like women so much, I could fuck ya.”
“Thank God for that! My asshole would look like a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial.” I turned to Maxwell. “You could do me a favor.”
“I’m quiet because I figure you’re here long enough to know what you’re doing. What’s the favor?”
“I need to make a phone call, and I need thirty-five cents for a bus ride.”
“Sure, just wait till that skinny motherfucker is gone. I got to make this month’s rent, ya know what I mean?”
“Thanks.”
I packed my stuff, talked with Starling some more than went downstairs to make my phone call. Diane picked up. “What’s for lunch?” I asked.
“Good, you got your pass,” she said and I could hear the smile in her voice. In the next sentence I would erase that.
“Not exactly. I’ve decided to leave. What’s for lunch?”
“Tuna fish,” she said, her voice a little tremulous.
“Great, I’ll see ya soon.” I hung up. I got the thirty-five cents from Maxwell as well as my insulin and syringes and walked through the front doors. Everybody had already left for the Health Fair. I pushed my way up to Madison Avenue and stood on 43rd Street waiting for the uptown bus. I was scared and kept looking around, as if somebody or something was following me.

pgs 94-99--From Chapter VI: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THE CRUST OF ADDICTION, INSIDE THE PLAYPEN--FROM CHAPTER VI--CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

My folks were, by now, suspicious. My behavior and appearance looked and sounded all too familiar. While in Lenox Hill Hospital, a friend of the family, the same person who had assisted in getting me into New York City Community College, had recommended a psychologist, Dr. Irving Handelsman. After some prompting I made an appointment. I called and spoke with him, but before I could see him, I would have to take some psychological tests on 86th Street. He’d see me a week after that.

Christmas morning, 1972. Diane had gotten up first to go home and change. We were going to The Palm Court in The Plaza Hotel for brunch and then out to her family’s home in Princeton, New Jersey. I made sure that although I was spending more and more money on junk, I’d have enough to cover the tab at The Plaza. I was running with Raymond on my lunch hours up to Harlem to score. When I couldn’t go with him, he brought the stuff back to me. I got up, lit a Lucky, went into the bathroom, shaved, showered...and fixed. I remember putting on a Billie Holiday album and listening to some of her last recordings on Verve, when she was singing with Ben and Sweets, The Hawk, and the rest, sounding oh so old and young in the same moment. It was rumored that she would have to drink a fifth of scotch just to get her vocal chords to loosen before she could attempt to sing. If you could sing like that, would you make a pact with the devil? Would you be willing to live with that amount of pain in exchange for the jolts of ecstasy that come with living life a few speeds below God? I will never know, of course, what it felt like playing Bird’s alto break on Night in Tunisia, nor Billie’s way of twisting the word love around her tongue and mouth like she invented and owned, not only the existence, but the essence of it. However, I do know something about hitting the right chord with a word or sentence that came from a place I knew nothing of, and that’s magic enough for me. And so, I sat on the corner of the bed and listened while she sang, and I tried to sort out why the love of a beautiful and smart and talented woman, the talent that I obviously had, but just as obviously did not believe in and thwarted, that the friends, the job, the family, was not enough to dissuade me from doing what every fiber and bone in my body was telling me to do: destroy it.
Diane looked lovely when she came back to the hotel. We walked to The Plaza and then into The Palm Court. There is something eerily beautiful on holiday mornings in New York City, especially to those who live here year round with little or no means of escape. It is quiet and respectful. The hotel was decorated in plush reds and greens burnished woods and plants and ferns small and large and larger, Christmas trees and Christmas wreaths as centerpiece and ornament giving one the impression that this was how it looked for as long as The Plaza had been in existence. The attention to detail was still there. The silverware weighed heavy in your hand; the dishes were china, the glass, crystal; the service effusive; the food wonderful and plentiful; the cost...worth it.
We cabbed it to Penn Station and caught the train to Princeton. Her parents, she explained, were “disappointed” with her over her two divorces and lack of a “real job,” which translated into “failure” in their worldview. She needed, in their humble opinion, either by benefit of marriage or her own endeavors, to achieve financial independence and so carve a place in this world that would be a hedge against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. “Jewish guilt or Catholic, what’s the difference?” I thought, they were “all variations on a theme.” Today, however, I felt removed. After all, it wasn’t my family we were visiting. But I was curious to observe the dynamics of this family. For to watch heredity in action is fascinating, even when you don’t know a person very well. However, it’s enthralling when you not only know that person, but love them as well.
I was Woody Allen, to Diane’s Diane Keaton, in Annie Hall that afternoon. I felt like a Jewish caveman coming from the brisket of beef emotionalism of my family to the clipped-edged bread of Diane’s folks. Her father, dressed in a worn cardigan, button down shirt, corduroy slacks and loafers, sat in his old glove of an armchair and hardly turned his head when we came in. You might think he saw his daughter just this morning instead of last Easter. She went over to him, he nodded hello, and allowed her to kiss him on the cheek. He turned his head when she introduced us. I went and shook his hand. I asked him how he was, he said, “Fine, thanks.” and that was that. Her mom was a little more demonstrative and friendly, but not much. As nuts as my parents are, I thought, is preferable to this ice. But what the hell is “preference” in this regard? I “prefer” to get shot by a cannon instead of a bazooka? I “prefer” to get cancer instead of leukemia? Fucked is fucked. Sometimes, our sight is limited to only what we can see.
We stayed as long as was necessary. I don’t remember much about their home, the dinner, the conversation, or the ride back to the train station. Diane and I spoke about our families and how each was crazy in its own way, whether suffocating close and overprotective, or cold, aloof and castigating, each family induced feelings of failure and guilt. Merry Christmas, and pass the heroin, please.

That Tuesday, it rained all day. A cold and dirty New York City rain was falling when I left to meet my father at Handelsman’s office. I asked Diane to come along, though I told her to wait for us at a pub across the street, on Lexington Avenue and 38th Street.
My father was already there, sitting on the edge of a sofa with his back to me, talking with Handelsman. Handelsman saw me and motioned me inside. I took a seat in a swivel chair, at the farthest end from them. He looked like who he was: a retired Naval officer, in his late fifties, of medium height, well built, close-cropped bristle of gray hair on top of penetrating blue eyes. He spoke in short, direct sentences. My father turned to face me. I knew something was wrong. “Norman, no sense in wasting time--your time, my time or your father’s money--I think you should go into a drug program, tonight if possible,” Handelsman said, looking directly at me.
I paused, for effect. “What are you talking about? I’m not using any drugs, what are you talking about?”
“You’re trying to bullshit me and your father, but I’m not buying it and I hope he won’t either. I got your tests back. I’m going to say it again: Immediately, tonight if possible, go into a program, full time, 24 hours a day. It’s the only thing that we’ve seen work with addicts. And you’re an addict, no doubt about that.”
I puffed up, pretending I was egregiously wronged. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re saying that, but I’m not using drugs. I’m smoking some reefer, but I ain’t using dope and I resent you saying I am.”
“Resent it all you want,” Handelsman continued, stone cold sober, looking at me like he could see through me--which, of course, he could. “You’re shooting that shit into your veins right now. The only successful therapy for you is in a program.”
“I’m not going into a program. Why can’t you treat me?”
“I can’t. You’ll come once or twice because you’re curious, or maybe looking for magic, and then stop. You can’t do anything that’s difficult right now, and therapy is difficult. I can’t treat you; you’re simply not old enough. Emotionally, you’re just an infant, not old enough for therapy. But go into a program, complete it, and come back after you’re clean, then I can help you.”
“I’m not going into a program,” I protested. The lights in the room were starting to spin. I could not look in their eyes. My father, who had been staring at me, now turned to Handelsman.
“What should I do doc?” he asked him.
Handlesman faced him squarely and said, “Don’t be an asshole. Do him some good, but most importantly do yourself and the rest of your family some good. Cut him off. He’s been sucking on your tit for too long anyway and as long as your tit is out there and it’s fat with milk he’s going to keep on sucking it until it’s all dried up. He’ll never get any help and will probably die. I can’t make it any plainer than that.” He turned to face me and continued, “Grow up and get some help Norman, then maybe we can do something and you can be something.” With that he stood up.
Outside, I said to my father, “He’s fulla shit. I’m using a little pot, that’s all.”
My father looked long and hard at me and said, “Don’t lie to me willya? Jesus Christ, just don’t lie to me. I feel so stupid. So much like a jerk. You know that expression, Fool me once I’m a fool, fool me twice you’re a fool?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
He wanted to say something but stopped short. I thought he wanted to have someone beat the shit out of me like I had seen him do many times to those he caught stealing from him, even those who had worked for him for many years, perhaps, especially them. But all he said was, “The car is parked in a lot a few blocks from here. I’ll drive you back.”
“Diane is with me; I want you to meet her.”
“I’ll get the car and meet you on the corner.” He walked away and for the first time I could detect a slight slouch in his gait.
Diane sat in the back seat on the way to The Navarro. I noticed him looking at her in the rear view mirror. I couldn’t tell if he was attracted to her, impressed, or just wondering why a woman like that was with me to begin with. If one were to look inside the car at the three figures sitting in there, no one would have guessed that we knew each other at all.

My use escalated in proportion to my fear and, I became reckless, going up to Harlem alone and at odd hours. I saw ghosts in doorways, cops in rain gutters, and stickup men and murderers waiting for me around every corner. I felt something was coming and it was coming soon.
One day to the week after the meeting with Handelsman, my parents came to my room. They looked pretty beaten themselves. “Norman,” my father began, “we’re letting you go: no money, no contact with us and especially with your brother. We’ve already sat “Shiva” for you. (“Shiva” is the Jewish word for the period when a family sits in their home for a week mourning the death of a family member.) I, we, your mother, and me want what’s best for you...and for us...always have. We want you to go into a program, but that’s up to you. We just wish you good luck.” They had stood the whole time. Now they both turned and, without saying another word, left.
I was stunned, but to keep from becoming hysterical, I used some of the junk I had stashed in my room. In fact, whether or not they would have cut me off or had given me thousands of dollars would have mattered hardly at all. For alcohol and drugs, by this time, was a prelude to, or an ending for everything. If I felt lousy, I used. If I felt good, I used. In order not to get too high, or too low, I used. I had long ago passed that line of demarcation where chemicals were used to enhance or alter my experiences. Now I used them to not experience, and used heroin because I simply did not want to feel.
But for a moment I panicked. I felt the air was being sucked out of me. I called Areba. They would not even talk to me without a deposit from my father. I called my mother. She told me there was nothing she or anybody else could do, and hung up. After a period of time, I calmed down and tried to figure my next move. My rent was paid through December, another week and half. I’d move in with Diane. I still had stolen merchandise to take back for cash, and I still had a gig. “O.K. don’t panic, you’re cool for a few weeks anyway,” I told myself and further admonished, “Get some fuckin’ backbone, will ya?”
New Years Eve, 1972. I was now out of The Navarro and living with Diane. I’d been able to lie to her for the time leading up to moving in with her about my stopping to use, blah, blah, blah, but I knew, in my heart, that Handelsman was right. I needed a 24 hour residential program to watch my ass constantly if I stood any shot at all at beating this fucking demon, but I also knew that I would not go in anywhere as long as I had a dollar in my pocket, a roof over my head, and a way to go. Steve, my old Seagate buddy, had invited us over to his apartment in Brooklyn, on Shore Road, overlooking the Verranzano Narrows Bridge, that I’d seen being built from my bedroom window in the early 60’s, to celebrate the new year. Neither of us felt much like celebrating, but we went because the alternative of being alone with each other was getting to be worse. I had a few bags of dope which I used before he picked us up and kept one for later. Raymond and I had spoke before about hooking up later in the night. Drug dealers were always more generous on the new year, and we didn’t want to miss what could be dope heaven. So with one foot planted in the past, another in the here and now, and a third waiting until I could make an excuse to leave, I sat and tried to tolerate the next few hours.
It was a small gathering. Donny and Tony and their girlfriends, Steve and his future wife, and Diane and I. To be honest, I don’t remember much of what we spoke about. I just kept watching the time and waiting. Finally, I went into his bedroom and called Raymond. Then, I went over to Steve and told him flatly that I needed to leave to meet someone and get some junk. Donny, seemingly disgusted with what I had turned into, kept his distance. “Fuckem,” I thought. I’d always remembered a line from B. Traven, Morals is the butter for people without any bread. Steve said he’d drive us back. I made no apologies but said “goodbye” and left. Diane, who could not as yet identify, nor articulate what she was feeling, sat beside me and understood that this was what it was, a struggle, a battle of herculean proportions. What she hated was her powerlessness to stop me, her inability to do battle with an inanimate substance that I’d invested with so much power over me, that was larger than this life, a life that was filled with betrayals, insecurities and fears. Steve dropped us off on 23rd Street and sped off. He would have stayed with me all night if I let him. I put Diane in a taxi and walked across the street to Raymond’s building, buzzed twice, buzzed again, and waited.

New Years week, Diane and I went to The Museum of Modern Art, to see an Avedon retrospective. I stared at his picture of Pound, with all those meaty creases in his face, his eyes were mad and beautiful and suffused with grief, fucking grief. I was done. I was just waiting for somebody to stop me. We walked back on this cold January night along Fifth Avenue from 53rd to 91st Street not saying much. There was nothing much to say. I told her how well we fit together, how our hips and flanks rubbed against each other walking and how we were probably thinking the same thoughts. She squeezed my hand tighter. Both of us knew the end was near, but we didn’t know how it would be played out.
The next day at work I noticed shoppers hanging around the book department who seemed “off.” They seemed to be watching me as I went from my register to the back to get change. Some of them who left turned up hours later. I knew it was time to leave. And I did.
Diane came home that day from work to find me in her bedroom shooting junk. Enraged, she slapped my arm that held the syringe. The needle ripped from my vein and landed on the floor. I sprang up and slapped her across the room. It was the worst thing I had ever done to a woman in my life, much less one I loved. I sat down on the edge of the bed and just stared. She came and sat beside me. “Norm,” she almost whispered while stroking my head, “I love you, but you’re going to have to do something. I’ll help you, but it’s you who’s going to have to do it. But, I have to tell you, whatever you decide to do, you can’t do it here.” She went into the bathroom to wash her face. When I heard the water running I went, picked up the syringe, injected the junk into my other arm, and told myself something I’d been saying for many, many years: “Tomorrow.”

Paula, the woman who had told me about Areba at Addiction Services Agency, now told me about programs that were free: Phoenix House, Daytop Village and Project Return. Both Phoenix House and Daytop were 12 to 24 months while Project Return was nine. Phoenix House was still shaving heads (a punitive measure designed to penetrate the denial system of hard core addicts), and Daytop’s therapeutic community was located in upstate New York. Still thinking like an addict, I opted for the shorter program.
Project Return’s storefront was in Hell’s Kitchen, on Ninth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Chris Maples, the director of this facility, was a big, white, walrus looking man in his early thirties. He didn’t speak as much as he drawled, like he was from the midwest instead of the city where he’d grown up. The storefront was a small, ugly establishment that, upon entering, had a desk and a few chairs. There was a larger section in the back room that was setup like a classroom with many cheap folding chairs and a blackboard. I sat opposite Chris as he explained how they could arrange a hospital for me to detox in or I could go to a hospital of my choice. Either way I had to come in “clean.” “There’s something else that you should know about, Chris,” I said.
“Lay it on me,” he responded, deadpan. It seemed he had heard it all.
“I’m diabetic; I use insulin, needles, syringes everyday. I need to eat pretty much on time, need certain...”
“Whoa man, hold on a second...wait a minute baby,” he said with his mustache curling into a smile. “You mean to say,” he continued, “that you ate good out there shootin’ dope? You were really picky about what kind of food you’d put in your mouth...and takin’ care of your sickness man, that was a real priority?...are you sayin’ that to me?”
I stammered a bit, felt embarrassed but finally said, “Well, not really, but I do have to eat right, that goes hand in hand with what I have to do and I thought...”
“Yeah, I know what you thought, but don’t think too much--that’s what got you in so much fuckin’ trouble to begin with. We’ll take care of your fuckin’ diabetes man, and the food, well, it ain’t from the fuckin’ 21 Club but you’ll survive. Either you want to do this thing or your bullshittin’ yourself.”
“No man, I ain’t bullshittin’ myself; I just wanna make sure.”
“I know what you’re tryin’ to do, and I know what you’re really trying to do even if you don’t. You want to clean up but you’re gonna make it so hard that you say to yourself, ‘How can I do this man, I gotta take care of myself and this and that bullshit and sooner or later you’re gonna run yourself right out the fuckin’ door man, and into a bag of junk. Now, just get yourself detoxed and we’ll help you do the rest. You won’t eat like you did in the past, but you won’t starve either. And whatever you need, if we don’t have it, we’ll get it. Now get the fuck outa here, and call me when you’re ready to be discharged and I’ll have a staff member pick you up at the hospital. I don’t want you to spend one fuckin’ day by yourself on the street. You got that?”
“Got it. And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me for shit. I did nothin’ to get a thanks for.”
“Then thanks for nothin’.”
“Get the fuck outa here already, and try not to kill your stupid self before you get into a detox.”
I left as the next beaten up, thin, Puerto Rican took my seat at Chris’ desk, and the process began all over again. It was January and it was cold. Junkies had a harder time navigating the streets in the winter. Residential programs might be a pain in the ass, but they usually had heat.
Back at Diane’s, I made two phone calls, the first to a woman who I knew had detoxed a little while ago. She said Mt. Sinai was pretty good. She used the word “pleasant” to describe her stay. The next phone call was to Carol to ask if she was holding any dope. She was, and I went over and got some.
After a weekend of waltzing around each other’s feelings, Monday was almost welcomed, even though it meant I was going to Mt. Sinai to be admitted and Project Return after that. I imagined myself a convict about to turn himself in. I can’t help it. I’m always looking for romance, no matter how mundane and pedestrian the situation is. Besides, living it is always more boring or horrific than remembering it.
Sitting across from the admissions person in the emergency room, I had the distinct feeling that Mt. Sinai did not want to deal with drug addicts. They liked their nuts “shelled” not messy, unpredictable, intractable and “borderline” as drug addicts were generally classified in those days to be, and maybe even now as well. They had an outpatient service for addicts I was told. Quickly, I told the gentleman that only that morning I had been in a train station and imagined myself jumping into the oncoming express. He found a room for me.

They really weren’t equipped to deal with a drug addict. A psychiatric wing in a hospital is equipped to treat with a host of mental illnesses such as the many forms that depression can take, schizophrenia of certain varieties, affective and personality disorders that Jean be part of a chemically dependent persons’ profile. But chemical dependency, if that is the primary disorder, is not something that traditional hospitals were prepared for in 1972. I believe Dr. Otto Kernberg coined the term, “Borderline Personality Disorders.” The border that exists between neurosis and psychosis. I’ve always considered it more than just ironic that artists have defined the internal condition much quicker than scientists have. Maybe Homer predicted it all, but a wonderful saxophone player, Dexter Gordon, who played in “’Round Midnight,” wrote a tune in the 40’s I think titled, “Disorder At the Border,” intuitively felt “borderline.” Dexter, interestingly enough, was a drunk. At that time the professionals had not yet integrated the psychobiology, neurobiology, and the field of psychoanalysis that are now regarded as the cutting edge in treating these disorders. Now there is a scientific basis that during the period, usually preverbal, that the child’s body, in its reaction to stress--whether one traumatic episode or a cumulative series of episodes--in an effort to restore balance, “dissociates” from that stress or “object” and then “splits off” from that object which can, and often times does, result in lifelong patterns of reacting to external and internal stresses. It has been equated to an early condition of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Scratch the surface of an addict of any kind, and you’ll more likely than not, find the Janus face of “mom” deep deep into the abyss staring back at you. I wonder if that’s what Nietzshe had in mind. Addicts, as borderline personalities often are, were not good candidates for traditional verbal therapy because of their low tolerance for frustration. They were not, on the whole, very verbal in regard to identifying feelings because their traumas had taken place before they had the ability to speak; a primitive or archaic trauma(s), and usually, when they could identify what they were feeling, ran from it. They were not particularly good candidates for pharmacological interventions because of what drugs did for, and to them. In short, they were a very difficult population for traditional modes of psychotherapy and psychiatry at that time. Mt. Sinai did know enough about addiction to detox me using methadone. The process lasted about a week. Aside from individual therapy with a psychiatric resident and his attending physician, there wasn’t much else with the exception of getting my diabetes under control. My blood sugars were stabilized by keeping me on a restricted diet and, after the drugs started to leave my body, my head cleared. That was a good, and not so good, thing. I felt lighter, faster, but now, in a rush. An addict wants things yesterday, and since they had what I thought then was a “basket-weaving” approach to mental illness, I reasoned I could speed up the process. The sooner I could get out, the sooner I could go through Project Return, and the sooner I could get out, the sooner I could get back with Diane, and the sooner I could do that, the sooner I could get back with my family, and everything would be O.K. In not so many words I told this to the attending psychiatrist assigned to me. He persuaded me that just honoring a three and a half week commitment would be a step in the right direction. I couldn’t argue with him, although his interns also benefited from my decision. Fifteen of them were able to probe a white, Jewish, articulate, college educated dope fiend in sessions lasting an hour at a time. Their inquisitions felt like a beehive of dentists looking for cavities with those little silver hooks. I stared into those scrubbed-faced, bright-eyed interns and saw what a disappointment I must have been to my folks and, twisted role model for my brother. They listened to my story, asked questions, and split. Not even a “thank-you” at the end. I guess they’re used to working on cadavers which, as long as it’s nobody they knew, or love, are free of reciprocity and are, best of all, wordless.
Hospitals in general, and psychiatric wings in particular, are fascinating places. Our minds are so eccentric and so wonderfully misshapen that lending, or trying to lend, order to them so that they might function in a disordered, irrational, inchoate world leads, most directly, to many complications. I had the chance to see, and in some instances get close to, other patients struggling for equilibrium in this topsy-turvy world. There was beautiful Valerie, a fifteen year old who had the body of a ballerina, a mind of her own, and a wildness of will. Coming from divorced Park Avenue wealth, she’d had a history of running away and finding men in bars who would take her home, fuck her, and throw her out. Brad, a sixteen year old, acne faced introvert, also from divorced Fifth Avenue old money, found men to seduce and then hurt him, and had come down from a preparatory school near Saratoga, to play havoc with his body and family. Mr. Patrick, a grizzled sixty year old who, when I first met him, couldn’t talk and had to be fed by the orderlies and, after many shock treatments, began to see a curtain lift. The others wore paper slippers and did the “ol’ thorazine shuffle,” where they’d walk along, holding a railing, spit dribbling down their chins, not knowing, or caring, where they were or why they were there. And there was Carol, twenty something, who fucked interns, residents, doctors, orderlies, nurses, and anything else that showed a pulse. She had tits I wished the horses I’d bet on had for noses. We laughed and sang and tried to sort through the mess that we found ourselves in. We all walked through the same fire, but our flesh burned differently. Some people never see this side. What boring lives they must lead.
My fantasies, before sleep would claim me, were, as I view them now, childish, grandiose, bourgeois, and, finally, when all is said and done, delusional. The only thing now that keeps my embarrassment at bay is that it was simply the truth. And to me, as I recall and recollect, touching. It took a lot of work for me to be able to say that now, but at that time I’d imagine myself strong, healthy and responsible. Responsible to my diabetes, and responsibly concerned for my family. I’d imagine myself going into Project Return and coming out the other side with the riches of the world before me. I’d be driving a Porsche again, with Diane beside me, as we’d tool through a countryside, bucolic and inviting, my accomplishments, fused and translated into status and stature. I’d have the respect of artists, and the notoriety that accompanies success on the grandest of stages. I’d make up for the terrible anguish I had put the people who loved me through. We’d all be together again, this time out of love and desire and not out of a need that bordered on sickness. It does not make me proud to say that, but this work would be a lie if I didn’t.
Besides a young do-gooder social worker, who kept persisting that she be allowed to get in touch with my parents to facilitate a “constructive dialogue” between us and whom I had to tell that should she get in touch with them without my permission I would find her and strangle her in the night and probably get away with it since I happened to be in a “fuckin’ nut house” at the time, I had a pretty good stay at Mt. Sinai. Besides using the time to heal emotionally, there was a gym upstairs that allowed me to physically heal and get stronger as well.
February is Diane’s birthday month. She visited me on a frigid evening, looking beautiful and wearing a coat she loved, a fur, three quarter length, very elegant. Eyes followed her wherever she went, but on this night there was an added sensuality that made you, whether man or woman, consciously or not, follow her sight and scent until they no longer registered. We walked into my room where I kissed her lightly and wished her a happy birthday. She took my hand and led me into the bathroom, closed the door, and leaned her back against it. I smiled as she untied the belt and slipped the fur from her shoulders. There was nothing else to undo after that.
The day before I left, I spoke with Chris Maples at Project Return, and arranged for a staff member to be there when I got discharged. I didn’t want to give myself one day out on the street. I thanked some people for what they had done for me, gave out and took some phone numbers, and left. Maxwell, a young black staff member, accompanied me to the Induction Facility on Forty-Eighth street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. But first, before getting there, we stopped for a hamburger; the first real food I had had for three and a half weeks and the last real food I would have for months.

pgs 88-94--From Chapter VI, THE DESCENT: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015