DETOXING IN & OUT OF HELL--FROM CHAPTER VIII--CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Near Christmas, the real estate market, after years of unprecedented growth, tightened, much like the noose around our necks. My emotions, sloppy and unwelcome, found relief only when soothed or silenced by drugs and alcohol, in great quantities. This time, I went back to using heroin in conjunction with all other types of medications. Everyday, I’d go down to the alphabet blocks and find what I needed which would be bolstered by what I had at home, or could get from Paul. Each day presented a consistent configuration of misery, remembrance, anger, regret and avoidance--not necessarily in that order.
There were times when Jean would come into the bedroom and I’d be out cold, the needle still in my arm, blood trickling down from my vain and curling around my arm. At first, she’d run down to The Cedar Tavern and bring Dutch upstairs to discern if I was in trouble or not, but soon she’d become expert at being able to decide that on her own.
It was bad and it was ugly in the same and different ways. It’s grimly ironic that the outer world resembled my inner one. Sometimes, when I was able to stand outside myself and watch, it was hard for me to believe that it was me waiting under a bucket that contained mine, and the ten or twenty other drug addicts’ dope. The bucket would descend from the highest point, dropped by a person who balanced himself on a beam, inside the skeleton of an abandoned building of broken brick and wooden planks, and I’d watch myself watch the bucket as it came down from heaven with dollars exchanged for bags that honored the request for nepenthe. My inner world had become wizened and my imagination, my means of escape, lost the playthings so necessary for me to take flight: humor and music. I stopped listening to the latter and had subverted the former, the first and, for me, most important benchmarks in my spiritual decline. I became as boring and as predictable as bad writing. Don Quixote had wandered off, not to tilt at windmills or twirl golden curlicues of language, but to waste away in rigid habit and was tracked, not by Sancho Panza, but by Detective Joe Friday and his partner, Nurse Ratched.
My diabetes was addressed every day in this way: I’d take an insulin injection each and every morning, sixty-five units of NPH-U100 and then I’d ingest sugar, and heroin, and Luckys (“if that ain’t love it will have to do, until the real thing comes along,”). Processed love. Sugar, heroin, and nicotine coated my system and, to me, it was as important as breathing. In fact, one allowed the other to happen. If I thought that a giant condom would’ve protected me from the world in the ways that those substances did, I might have worn that as well, although I’d have probably put on my Floyd Patterson disguise. I’ve often wondered, and still do, that had I not used alcohol and drugs the way I had, would I have been alive to tell this, or any other tale. There is no way of answering that question, of course, but I’d be hard pressed to deny, out of hand, anyone’s desire to keep their life free of mood altering chemicals because of the problems they eventually cause if used in quantity over long periods of time.
My piss was white, thick, and heavy. When it mixed with the water in the toilet bowl, I could see it as a separate entity. I tried to discern how I was doing diabetically by the color of my urine; slightly yellow, or yellow meant I was better balanced than if it was white. Frequently, I’d develop what I labeled “junk hiccups.” I’d remember my first bout of heroin addiction when after a few days of constant use I’d hiccup furiously. The hiccup was sometimes accompanied by the “dry heaves.” Little did I realize that my system was so saturated with glucose that I was dehydrated. My body, having little nutrients to sustain it, coupled with a very high blood sugar count, was beginning to feast on its own proteins and fats, drying out my system. Hyperglycemia in its most crippling form. The body eats itself up. I’d drink ice water continuously to no avail. Only when the symptoms would cause me abdominal pain or other concerns like that would I slow down from my route of self-destruction and try to eliminate my use for a day, perhaps two, and eat something healthy. Even that, however, meant a bottle of wine with dinner in order to assuage my emotional brittleness. After the symptoms receded, I’d pick up where I left off. “What marvelous recuperative powers I still have,” I thought.
Periodically, Jean would reach her own point of saturation. She’d demonstrate that to me by throwing various things around the apartment in brief displays of frustration and anger, accompanied by a scream, yell, or curse. I’d ascribe various psychological determinants to her make-up depending upon the time of day, month, or year it was. She was tough as nails, a gun moll, and a man’s woman when I wanted her to go to the Lower East Side for me on a drug run. She was loyal if she covered for me, had great insight if she believed in my abilities to eventually right a listing ship. Or, she was a controlling bitch, doling out dollars to a suckling infant. Consumed by her own failure, she nurtured mine and truly believed in Hollywood’s sucker punch: love conquers all.
Jean would come home and ask me what I wanted for dinner. It would depend. It would depend on what drug I had, what drug I was shooting, what drug I wanted to get and when I wanted to get started. “You have to eat,” she’d say. I would confirm that but say I’d eat later. “Later,” sometimes meant never. “Eat” could mean a slice of pizza or Swanson chicken potpie or chocolate pudding, pie, cake or ice cream at six in the evening or three in the morning depending on nothing except circumstance. Often, after sleep would take me, I’d snap up in bed as if someone stepped on a dry twig, sweat sealing the blanket to me, dizzy, knowing I was in the grip of insulin shock but too disorganized to get out of bed and into the kitchen. I’d wake Jean. She took one look at me and knew what it was I was experiencing. She’d come back from the kitchen with soda and a Milky Way and stand over me as I ate and drank it down. She’d implore me to see Bernstein, and I’d shake my head affirmatively. She’d ask when, and I replied soon. She’d say I needed to stop, and I again nodded my head. We were all right. We were all wrong. We were helpless. Then Jean, who had never threatened to leave and who had never gave me ultimatums, did.
It was a day much like any other of recent months. I’d awakened with a knot of fear in the pit of my stomach and a sense of existential dread. It sounds (even to my own ears now) overly dramatic. It is not. Anyone who’s lived the life of an addict for any period of time can recollect what that fear felt like and, though words are more often than not inadequate to express that sense of dread I felt, it is enough to say that each moment I had to spend without the benefit of a buffer or analgesic was fraught with more than just a belief of impending doom. It was doom. An addict alone, especially an active addict, is in bad company.
Jean, I thought, had forgotten to leave me money for my day’s fix. I called her at her office, and when she told me that she was not going to do that anymore and that I should call Bernstein or anyone else who I thought could help me and take care of myself and by so doing would be taking care of her as well. I hung up on her. I was furious. The fucking nerve she had in telling me that shit now! The fucking nerve in telling me anything! Who the fuck did she think she was? I took in the sonofabitch and I can throw her ass out. I called her back and began to tell her a few of the things written above. She hung up on me. I thought for another moment and decided to change tactics. I called her up and told her we’d talk about this when she got home. She told me that wouldn’t do. Instantaneously, the fury returned. I called. Again, she hung up.
Jean had run the limit on her credit cards. I’d already kited enough checks to merchants and friends in my neighborhood to hold my own Ben Franklin convention. I walked upstairs and knocked on Paul’s door. Judy opened it and invited me in. When I asked where Paul was, she said he had gone to see his parents. She invited me to stay for coffee, but I had other things I had to do and thanked her. I left quickly. I made a few more calls but to no avail. Left with very few options, I called Jean.
After pleading, cajoling, lying, and wearing various guises masquerading as the truth, I convinced Jean that after hanging up on her I’d call Bernstein, level with him, and ask him to get me into Lenox Hill Hospital as soon as a bed was made available. It was only after that that she told me where she’d hidden some money in our apartment. Once Jean had divulged where that money enzyme was, my being turned to the broom closet, or couch, or mattress, or garment, honing in on its next task, breaking down the substrate so that digestion could occur. It could not wait to get her off the phone and fulfill its biological destiny.
My teeth brushed and money in hand, I went down to Eighth Street and Avenue D. They were selling a pretty good bag of dope there, Executive. It was cold but I hardly felt it, having my hand around the bills in my pocket.
I had enough money to buy a “deck” of heroin. It cost a hundred dollars and you’d usually get an extra bag for that amount. I gave the money to Willie, waited up the block for ten minutes and when he returned I gave him two bags from my purchase and we went our separate ways. Just having the scag in my hands the tension began to ebb. There is most definitely a physiological response before you ingest the dope; my bowels would loosen a little, a layer of sweat began to dry, my mind, geared for disappointment, betrayal, or apprehension, slowed down to where I could think of more than what I’d been obsessed over a second before.
Now, however, the walk back seemed too slow and unreasonable. There was a car service located near Tenth Street and Avenue B. Usually, a few cars were available, and for three bucks I had one drive me back to my apartment. Once inside, I thought for a few moments of all I could possibly do to delay dialing the numbers that would signify the beginning of the end of this drug run, before I decided to call Bernstein. After weighing the options I thought I had, I decided it would be better to play and manipulate this angle than any other. I’d fuck her, fuck him and fuck them! No one was going to tell me what to do without them paying a high price! The world had fucked me long enough, I thought. They’re not going to do that again without a fight from me. His receptionist told me he’d call me back within the hour. I’d be somewhat embarrassed to talk to him on the phone in an hour but I couldn’t wait without doing some of the dope. I proceeded to do what I’d hungered to do since I awoke and then waited for his phone call.
Bernstein had me come in the next day. This time I wasn’t sitting atop an examination table staring at the fish on his map, nor was I thinking of an opening line to say to him when he entered. This time, I was waiting to be called into his office like a wayward child or student about to be chastised. I wasn’t ready to give up the life, but I couldn’t let on to that. I needed to feel my way around this new set of circumstances while I figured out how it could best serve my demon.
After telling him what my life had been like these past few months, trying my best not to stink up the room with the stench of self-pity, I laid bare most of a rather boring and predictable life, which the life of a drunk or drug addict is when his habit supersedes all other entities of concern. The only facet of it that I embellished was the amount of junk I was using. I did this in expectation of his suggestion that I be hospitalized. The more heroin he thought I was using, the more methadone I’d be given to detoxify which would keep me sedated very nicely for a few more days.
Again, without criticism or judgment, Bernstein looked at me sitting across the desk from him and suggested I go into Lenox Hill Hospital. There wasn’t much more to say. I was eager to get from his office to Jean’s where, once I told her the process had begun to get a bed for me, she’d give me money to score more dope.
They got a bed for me two days after I saw Bernstein. In anticipation of that call, I waited and tracked down Paul. He supplied me with a few grams of coke which, I knew, would not be affected by the methadone they’d give me like heroin would be. Yet, on the day of my hospitalization, I was in the East Village getting as much junk as I could before reporting to the admissions office of Lenox Hill. I was supposed to be there at one P.M. but didn’t arrive until almost three because the connection I had took me and a friend of his to Williamsburg in Brooklyn to cop. He told me that the dope, which he’d had the night before, was much stronger there and the bags were bigger. We got into his friend’s car and drove over the Williamsburg Bridge. By the time we copped and drove back, I had snorted two bags and Jean, who had taken off from work that day to accompany me to the hospital, thought I’d gotten arrested or had died.
While Jean was in the living room calling Lenox Hill Hospital and telling them we were on our way and waiting for me to finish shooting a speedball into my arm and then throw some stuff in a bag to take with me, I secreted syringes, a spoon and Q-tips to go with some of the coke and the few bags of dope I had left, to the hospital. I joined her, lit-up by the cocaine pulsating through my body, wanting to do more but unable to, and we left for the hospital.

Lenox Hill Hospital is located on East 77th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. I had no idea of what I looked like in the the admission section filling out one of many forms but, if I thought about it at all, which I didn’t, I couldn’t have looked all too good. The heroin was as my connection said it would be, strong. My head was nodding forward as I wrote, no longer buoyed by the cocaine. With this knowledge came some skewered self-consciousness. I put the pen down and went into the bathroom where, after making sure the door was locked, I proceeded to shoot some of the cocaine I’d brought. It did what it was supposed to do, and I went out and sat down and tried to finish the questionnaire without getting up and going back to the bathroom.
Finally, I finished the forms and was taken up to a room where I was told someone would come into see me shortly and to get undressed and into a hospital gown and pajamas. I’d brought my own from home and once again went into the bathroom to inject more coke and the last of the junk before being denied the opportunity. I don’t remember how long I spent in there but I heard Jean’s voice asking if there was anything wrong and that a nurse was here to take my vital signs. Quickly, I placed the syringe, spoon and drugs in a pocket of my pajamas. I was sweating some by now and when I emerged, it took me some time to adjust to the light. I looked at Jean and then the nurse looking at me and felt humiliated. The nurse, in her early thirties I thought, came over to where I stood, unable to decide where I should go or sit, and said in a voice so low as to be just audible for my ears, “Have you ever tried N.A.?”
“Huh?” I replied.
“N.A. Narcotics Anonymous.” she said.
“No, I haven’t. Should I?” I said. By this time my eyes were closing without my ability to stop them while the coke was pushing the roller coaster the other way. Here I was being asked questions and trying to conduct a conversation, about what I had no idea.
“We’ll talk some other time,” the nurse said and guided me towards the bed where she took my blood pressure and left. Jean stared at me and finally asked, “How much did you take?”
“I don’t really know,” I replied, “but obviously enough,” and smiled this ridiculous smile.
“I meant how much did you take with you? Norm, maybe you should just get dressed and leave. I know I’m going to.” And with that, she got up and left.
For a few seconds, I sat on the edge of the bed watching the empty space that her body left. I thought for a few moments before deciding to go into the bathroom and use what remained of the coke. The last shot elevated my jitters and I, with syringe, spoon and empty vial in my pocket, left my room to find a suitable place to dispose of the evidence. It wasn’t too difficult and when I returned, a young doctor, probably a resident, was waiting for me with the same nurse who was there before. I knew she’d ratted me out, but I had nothing left to feel frightened about but was frightened nonetheless. He asked me the questions I expected him to, and I invited him to search the room and my belongings, which he did. I’d secreted my last bag of heroin underneath the tongue of my sneakers for use later that night knowing that by next day I’d have gotten the first dose of methadone, negating the properties of opiates. I was pretty manic while talking to this doctor, and he must have ordered a sedative because a few minutes after he left one was brought to me and, a few hours later another one was administered as well. Late that night, while the room was dark and only the little T.V. that was hooked-up next to my bed was playing, I did the last of the drugs I’d brought with me and began thinking of who I could call that would bring me more.
Bernstein came to see me early the next morning, but I was so out of it from what I had ingested and the other doctor ordered, that he took one look at me and said he’d be back later to talk. When he did return, I’d been given methadone and some other drug to help detox me and was pretty high from that. He told me that he planned to complete this process in ten days and then release me. He suggested that I take this opportunity to speak with someone in the hospital, a psychiatrist, whom he thought would be better able to help with this problem than he could. I thanked him but did not take him up on his offer. Instead, I spoke with the nurse about what she’d told me during the first time we met. She told me about N.A. and its antecedents. It was the first I’d heard about groups like that being for people like me and not those Bowery bums that I thought A.A. was designed and designated for. I told Jean about my plan for attending those meetings and did manage not to call anyone else to bring drugs in and, in a few days, when the effects of the methadone was no longer acting like another narcotic and my blood sugars were stabilized, I felt good enough to begin thinking that I could basically do this on my own and would get a job after they released me. I told this to Jean, and she was relieved that I was finally thinking this way and sounded committed to making our lives together work.

It was a wintry snowy day when, with Brasz, I went to an agency located somewhere in the garment district, to apply for a bartending job I’d seen advertised in the papers. I was depressed and miserable but, even though I was smoking a little reefer and drinking again, didn’t look too bad. And, as usual, we needed money.
The employment agency had one long and thin rectangular room. It had plastic folding chairs on both sides of a water cooler which had no water, although an empty bottle perched on top of the mouth. Mostly Hispanics sat on the chairs while others tried to find room by standing at odd angles. Most were smoking. I pretended I had an appointment and walked into the door that had the name of the gentleman I’d spoken on the phone with earlier. He was slightly perturbed when I pushed my way in, excusing myself, but saying we’d spoken. Maybe being white had something to do with his subsequent generosity, but whatever it was, he gave me a clipboard and a card to fill out and then directed me to the restaurant that was hiring staff. It was a new Lindys, once a revered name in Broadway’s legendary eateries, but now a chain store of many different restaurants and saloons owned and operated by the infamous Riese Brothers. They were known by those who worked in their restaurants or competed with them as bastards of the first order. Their ways of doing business were cut throat and how they treated their staff was supposedly worse. I needed a gig and, as mom used to say, when you’re hungry, really hungry, a shit sandwich tastes like filet mignon.
Their new entry was located in the corner of The Port Authority, facing 42nd. Street and Eighth Avenue. Brasz and I went there and I had a talk with Mr. Avinash, the General Manager, after I filled out more forms they required. After Avinash reviewed my application, he asked me what shifts I wanted and after I told him he gave me the job. It seemed too easy.
New York’s infamous Port Authority was a refuge to America’s lost and disenfranchised, was home to our nation’s homeless, was where runaways ran to, was a hub for those who worked in New York City but lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and all points between to enter and exit, was a way station, pit stop, and bathroom for the prostitutes, transvestites, addicts, hustlers, pimps and degenerates of all stripes and colors. The Port Authority. I was getting closer to Hell, at ground level. I could smell the sulfur.
The Port Authority provided enough street level drama to host it’s own television series. Like any port offering the exchange of people and goods and services, it operated on a 24/7 basis. This bred and fostered a culture of predators and victims, a brief and illusory haven for those who’ve left their own particular rendition of hell, and all manner of peoples who operate outside the boundaries of man or god. It was a place where I could practice what I was good at and attuned to, the observation of any and all manifestations of madness in, and outside, myself. The illusions, or delusions, that I had of myself were rapidly being punctured by the reality of where I was and what I was doing. No longer could I say I was here doing “research” on the underbelly of New York’s tapestry. No longer did I think that bartending was another form of the rough and tumble night life or food for the poet in me or vehicle for romantic interludes, each so necessary, alone or in consort, for me to believe I was Savage, somebody. Yet, here and now, there was no mistaking this for what it was and, what I was. I was working in a bus station, the lowest form of commercial transportation, in an area that could be described as a urinal or armpit. There were no beautiful ladies sidling up to the bar for a drink, no athletes, performers, entertainers or artists having achieved notoriety or struggling for some. Here, I was unable to dream. Here I was “somebody,” but all in lower case. Here was nowhere for me.
Having lived in Project Return, the next block over, during the early Seventies, familiarized me with Times Square and its habitués. My eyes, from the earliest of ages, were attuned to seeking out and finding the unusual, the perverse and, the illegal. They didn’t have to look too far.
My shift began at six and I arrived at four-thirty. I wanted to eat, look over the bar and get comfortable with how it was setup. Luckily, I had no pains in the ass beer kegs to tap. We sold only bottled beer.
The restaurant section of Lindys was adjacent to the bar and could be entered from the bar by a narrow passageway than ran the width of both or from two other entrances, one on 42nd Street and the other on Eighth Avenue. Windows wrapped around the entire establishment. The saloon could also be entered by a door on Eighth Avenue or directly from a door inside The Port Authority.
Mr. Avinash welcomed me that first night and showed me my locker. They required the staff to wear uniforms. I was given a bartender’s vest with a Lindy’s logo and a name tag. I’d always despised wearing anything that smacked of orthodoxy which smelled, to me, of stupidity. If I wanted you to know my name, I’d tell you. If you wanted to know my name, you’d ask.
I was allowed to order anything from the menu except steak, lobster tails, or roast beef cuts. I ordered a bacon cheddar cheeseburger, fries and, for desert, the famous Lindy’s cheesecake and coffee. The food wasn’t bad but tasted pretty much like the standard fare you’d get at a Greek diner except, here, you’d pay double the going rate. The waitress, Beth, was a willowy dyed blond, fortyish, with bad skin and dull brown eyes. She brought me my food and, with a tired air, welcomed me into The Riese Brothers’ family by saying, “Good luck” to a person about to walk his last mile. As I ate, I watched people peer in and enter Show World across the street. Show World was a multi-floored emporium of sex shows, peep shows, massage parlors, “Hot Lesbian Sex” shows and “Chicks With Dicks,” performances by transvestites. I’d never gone inside but was always curious. .
After I finished, I left a tip larger than what I knew most patrons would leave. Beth noticed and tried to give it back to me saying I didn’t have to do that. I know that, I told her, that’s why I did what I did and to stop in for a drink after she got off from work. It wasn’t that I wanted her to return the favor, which she did, but I wanted her to bring in her friends and coworkers if she could. She couldn’t.
Some people, as soon as you lay your eyes on them, you know they’re “wrong.” You realize that in their hearts some form of depravity beats. Tony, my partner behind the bar, had multiple forms. “DEVIANT” in that beautiful old faded technocolored neon was written across his forehead, with one or two letters half-gone or missing. No bigger than five foot four or five, he seemed like Kong behind the bar. He was the kind of bartender who served you but, if you paid attention at all, knew it was not him who served you, but you who, he believed, served him. You were there merely to either pay him or have your money taken.
Tony was an old time, died in the wool, drug addict and thief. In the two weeks I worked with him, I saw him do some wicked and disturbing things. The first thing he asked, after we were introduced, was whether I did any dope. He looked at me as if he were doing a personality profile and, without any wariness, asked that question many would not, even after being acquainted for a long time. When I put that observation in front of him, he waited a beat before saying, “It’s in your eyes. I know I can trust ya.” And that was that. After that, he told me he was stepping out for a bit to cop at The Peerless Hotel, a place on 43rd. Street, off Broadway, and a known heroin spot. He brought back a few bags for me. His other actions were, how can I say this without sounding like the hypocrite I sometimes am, fucked-up. When a woman would go to the ladies room, he sometimes snatched money from inside her purse if no one else was watching. When a man would leave for a few minutes to take a leak or call someone, the money he’d left on the bar would be a little light when he returned. One evening, he said to me that if business ever picked up in this “fuckin’ hellhole” to where they were raking in some “long green,” he was thinking about bringing in his own cash register to help divest them of some of their profits. I’d heard about another bartender doing that at an East Side saloon years ago and wondered if it was him.
Mr. Avinash would not change my hours, except to the graveyard shift. I’d have to come in at eight and work until four in the morning, even though we hardly had customers there until midnight. When I tried using my diabetes as an excuse not to work those hours, he answered me with a one word expletive, “Quit.” Fortunately, I didn’t have to. Tony announced to me the evening after that, “This fuckin’ bar is a drag. Can’t make enough bread to support a habit of a flea, you know what I mean?” I shook my head indicating that of course I knew what he meant. “But I’m goin’ outa here with my guns loaded, you know what I mean?” This time I did and didn’t know what he meant, but shook my head anyway. That night, besides going out to get his dope, he didn’t ring up one sale, (not that we had many of those), and, while saying goodnight and goodbye to me, he loaded five or six bottles of booze into a duffel bag and took them with him. I never saw him again.
Hardly anyone had made this a place to stop by for a drink except those who arbitrarily came in or those you didn’t really want to see after you saw them once. I used whatever money I made on drugs and left it to Jean to pay our expenses. My world had shrunk to this expanse of habit and, without sex, without music, without humor, was fast becoming necrotic.
One evening, towards midnight, I had one person sitting at the bar. He was one of my few regulars, a big, burly construction worker from The Grand Hyatt, then being built on 42nd Street and Lexington. He seemed nice enough, although we never spoke much. He was on his third or fourth J&B when a guy straggled in and, with nineteen empty stools in front of him, sat next to the construction worker. As he did, I could see the construction worker’s neck tighten, his shoulder’s haunch and his eyes lower. I went up to them and tried to position myself in such a way that I simulated a wedge between them and leaned forward and asked the guy if he wouldn’t mind taking another seat. The guy made no motion to move nor did he acknowledge that I’d even spoke but instead asked for a vodka tonic.
“You might have had enough,” I said.
“No, no I haven’t. I’m all right, I am,” he said. “Let me have one and then I have to be going.”
I looked to the construction worker who seemed as immovable as the buildings he worked on, and turned and made the drink. When I’d finished and turned back, the guy was trying to say something to the construction worker who was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. “Shit,” I said to myself, “this is not going to be good.”
“Hey Norm, get this fuckin’ guy away from me,” the construction worker said. But the drunk, if he heard anything, made no move nor did he respond. “Norman, I’m gonna hurt this fuckin’ guy,” he said again. “This motherfucker is lookin’ to get hurt.” I placed the guys drink three stools away from where he was.
“Hey pal, let me buy you this drink. Take a seat over here, would you?” I requested, but to no avail. I then went around where they both sat. The construction worker gripped me by the crook of my arm and brought me to his left side, furthest away from where the guy could see. He then opened a gym bag he had on his lap and lying on top was a .357 magnum pistol. He placed his ham-like hand around the gun and inserted his finger into the trigger, gripping the arm.
“If you don’t do somethin’ I sure as hell will,” he said in a voice without inflection.
“Don’t do nothin’, wait here. I’ll take care of this in a second,” I instructed. I hurried to the other side of the bar to the restaurant where we employed a security man, who had about as much desire to perform his duties as anyone would who earned minimum wage to protect profits and property that had nothing to do with them. Quickly, I told him the scene around the other end and to avoid something terrible just follow my lead.
We hurried to the other side and saw the guy still trying to say something to the construction worker who now had swiveled around in his stool with his back to the other guy. The security guard and I hurried over to where the guy was sitting, put our hands on the edges of the stool, picked it up with the guy sitting on it, and carried him down to the furthest end of the bar. The security guard stood over him, not letting him off the stool. When I turned around, the construction worker had gone, leaving some money on top of the bar and a bullet, standing straight up, next to his untouched J&B.
I couldn’t live any closer to Hell without taking up permanent residency. What money I was making was going into feeding my fiend. I decided not to go back to work there except to collect my thirty-six dollar pay check. Mr. Avinash asked why I hadn’t given them notice. “Notice this,” I said as I turned my back and walked away.

My fantasies of dying would present themselves at times that were often predictable but sometimes shocking. I’d lie in bed at night wishing to be diagnosed with an incurable disease that would legitimize my eventual death like cancer, or help explain my aberrant behavior, such as having a brain tumor. But then, while standing on a train platform I’d see the lights from the impending iron horse approaching and, in a instant, imagine myself caught, in flight, across the light’s beam, splattered against the face of the oncoming beast. Sometimes, I’d laugh at the romanticism I’d given my demise but too often the truth of my despair had soiled whatever humor or irony I could generate. These thoughts, or fantasies or what some psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers or watchers of Oprah, would call suicide ideation, were not new to me. I’d had them at least since puberty, after I became diabetic. I’d never had anyone in my family offer words or actions that showed empathy or understanding in regard to my diabetes while cancer, brain tumors, leukemia and the like were fawned over, loved, understood and respected. I’ve no idea if that fact alone shaped some of what I’d become, but certainly I am sure that diabetes was, at that time, too slow a death for me and not nearly romantic enough for me to appreciate.
Perhaps, it’s not the flash of brilliant intuitive insight that lights the inter cranial sky like lightening across a hot dark humid summer late afternoon day, but the slow, almost imperceptible, accumulation of knowledge that prompts one to action. Or perhaps it was instinct; perhaps, it was just animal, protean instinct wrapped and honed in Twentieth Century human garb that appeared when my sixth digit disappeared.
Unfortunately, my mind, maddeningly ambivalent, made it difficult to decide and act, even though the evidence was overwhelming. Fortunately, money, always a prime motivator in my decisions, once again came to the fore. Having little of my own and Jean having money only to keep our bills paid and relatively up to date, prompted me to call Bernstein’s office and make an appointment. This time, I did not ask to speak with him. This time, there were no discussions weighing the merits of this and that. This time, I was not sanguine about my life after I cleaned myself up. This time, I didn’t know what came after “this time.”
Sitting opposite Bernstein I tried not to lie. I laid out for him, in detail, my diet of heroin and processed sugars, my constant depression but left out my thoughts of suicide. As I was talking, I could feel being tugged at by my demons who didn’t want me to let go of my sickness. That’s how they get paid. “Tell him this, but not that; offer to go into a hospital, but not right away. Bargain with him; negotiate this. You’re smart, see what you can arrange to stay out, just a little bit longer.”
“I wish I knew more about addiction,” Bernstein began, “but I do know something about diabetes. I’d like to put you in Montefiore Hospital, consult with some doctors there who do know about addiction, detoxify you and get your diabetes stabilized. After that if you feel, after speaking with some people up there, that you need a drug program we’ll discuss that, or if there’s outpatient alternatives, we’ll discuss that. What I do know is a program that’s just come to New York City, The Diabetes Self-Care Program, and I think it’s something you’d benefit greatly from, once we get you stabilized.”
“Yes, it’s something I’m interested in, but geez Jerry, Montefiore, the Bronx?”
“How far would you go to get some heroin Norman? C’mon will you,” he said impatiently.
“I’m sorry, I sound like an asshole. Get me a bed, please.”
“It might take a little time, but hang in there.”

Jean came home and I told her of my decision. “I’m relieved,” she said.
There was nothing to do now except wait for the phone call...and use drugs.

pgs 179-186: 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

A HARD DEATH OF DREAMS IN NYC--FROM CHAPTER VII: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

New York City is saturated with dreams by people of all ages. Everyday, those dreams are crushed out, if they’re lucky, or shit rubbed into them if they’re not. Numbers are big. Lotto is big. People are working at what they don’t want to be: There are actresses as waitresses, writers as bartenders, actors as cabdrivers, dancers as horticulturists. All of them are making the rent while waiting for a phone call. When the phone rings, it could be from your agent, a publishing house, Vegas, Hollywood, Broadway, or God. Usually, it’s your mother complaining about her hemorrhoids and why you haven’t called. It’s such a tough town that your dreams have to be tougher, more tenacious, and harder to extinguish. If you give them up you’re no longer a child, you’re just an adult with an asshole and an opinion, and Christ, everybody has those.

I opted out of group. I felt I had had enough. I didn’t want to hear the same people with the same voices enunciating the same problems, including myself. “Shut the fuck up and get on with it,” I said to myself. Perhaps the decision to leave group was evidence of a further withdrawal from humanity where everyone was allowed to be human, painfully human. I, however, was leaning away from that. My next screenplay, A Case of Insanity, would testify to that. What is closer to the truth, and what I believe today, is that the addict (me) on an unconscious level always desire a substance or substances that will allow them to return to the fantasy. They are never neutral and each and every decision or rationalization that turns you away from a structure or situation that represents “health” or the possibility of staying in “reality” is a step, perhaps a small step at first, back to the abyss.
A Case of Insanity was a fictionalized recounting of the Son of Sam murders. In it, I tried to sum up the narcissistic and dangerous 1970’s. It was a cold, ice-like work that should have been directed by Fassbinder, in black and white. There was no one in the work that the audience could root for, let alone identify with. It was self-interest that paved the way for the decade of mergers, consolidations, ice, cocaine, and money, that was but a prelude to our run toward shallowness and homogenization.

The latter part of September, a thin strip of magnesium was lit: flash/poof. When that happened in science class, a blinding flash occurred and then, like The Lone Ranger riding out of town, you Hi-Ho’d Silver’d it to another class. However, when that flash occurred in my life, it lay smoldering in my brain for weeks, sometimes months.
A friend to whom I’d given my first screenplay, Coney Island, had in turn given it to a big-time producer, and he called me. He told me that my script was one of three being considered for production. He was to have lunch with him later that week and, since he’d done many favors for this man, was sure that he could push my interests further. The flash occurred, and I was not to wait. I wanted to work harder on A Case of Insanity. I went out for coffee to fuel the effort.
I bounded down the flights of stairs and out the door into the afternoon bustle. Nothing could go wrong. I was invincible again, a king in spite of myself. There, parked in front of my building, sitting in a blue, beat-up Kharman Ghia reading, was a beautiful Asian young woman. “Jesus, this is too good to be true. Everything fits,” I said to myself. Fate grabbed me by my balls, and led me toward the car.
She looked like my alter ego sitting there. She was tranquil, self-contained, and absorbed. I was like an inert gas possessing no valance. “Ah, excuse me,” I said, bending my knees slightly to get on a level with her window. Her face turned slowly toward me. “Christ,” I said to myself, “she’s more beautiful full-face.”
“Excuse me,” I said again, “are you an actress?”
“No, I’m not,” she replied pleasantly enough, with no hint of being put off or arrogant.
“You’re not, huh?...Well, maybe you should be.” I pressed on. “Listen, I know this might sound a bit strange but I just finished a screenplay where my protagonist meets and falls in love with a woman of Asian background, and I’m not sure whether some of the scenes I wrote work. Would you mind reading it and maybe we could talk about it later?”
“I’m not an actress, and I’ve never read a screenplay before.”
“You read; I see you reading,” I said, and we both laughed. “That’s all you really have to do. Either it will sound right to you or it won’t,” I continued, pushing her.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she said, trying to let me off easily and without too much discomfort for either one of us.
I was not to be deterred. “Why don’t you give me your number?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Stop saying that, will you? You’re not married, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” she answered.
“Well, I’ll give you my number. How’s that?”
“No, that won’t work. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Do you live in the neighborhood?”
“Yes, not far.”
“Good, think about what I said. I’m sure we’ll meet again or, if you change your mind, you can contact me through The Cedar Tavern across the street. Everyone knows me there. My name’s Savage and,” I turned around pointing, “I live right here, 2-A.” I looked back at her, smiled and said, “O.K. take care of yourself.”
“You too,” she said. I turned and walked away. By the time I returned with a container of coffee it was after six p.m. (the time when those who play the alternate street parking game in Manhattan can safely leave their cars without getting a ticket or towed), and she was gone. As I was going up the stairs, I thought about being out there the same time tomorrow, but, once I got upstairs, I couldn’t wait for tomorrow. I wrote a note and put it on her windshield with my phone number, asking her to call. I got upstairs and it began raining. It was the kind of rain that stopped and started again. When it stopped, I changed the note. It began raining, again. I changed the note. Again, it rained. “Fuck this,” I said to myself. I set my alarm for six a.m. I woke up, wrote the same note and left it under her wipers. I forgot about the trees, they leak. The Kharman Ghia and wet note was still there; I ran upstairs and changed the note.
Two weeks later, I saw her again. I went up to her car and leaned down. “How come you didn’t call?” I asked, trying not to startle her.
She turned her head slowly in my direction and said, “I’m still deciding.”
“It’s a good thing I didn’t need open-heart surgery. Well, how about it? Will you read it, or what?”
“I’m going away to my sister’s in Cape Cod. I guess I could read it then, up there.”
“Wait, don’t go nowhere. I’ll get you a copy. And call me when you’ve finished. My number’s on the first page,” I turned to go but quickly added, “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Jean.”

A month later and I heard from no one: not Jean, not the producer, and not from my friend who gave it to him. I decided to call him. I’ve learned, most painfully, that when you have to call “them,” “them” being jobs, producers, women, in short, any person that you want or expect something from, it’s usually no go and no good. The answer you were hoping was “yes” is invariably “no.” This time was no different. “Norm, I’m sorry,” he began, “I made a mistake. I’ve been meaning to call you back, but I’ve been busy, ya know? Anyway, I misinterpreted what he had said to me initially, I’m sorry.”
“That’s O.K.” I said to him. “You only heard what we both wanted to hear. Anyway, at least you tried for me. Most wouldn’t have done that. I appreciate it.”
After two years of waiting and hoping, I resigned myself to the fact that Coney Island, was a dead issue.

I needed a gig. I continued writing A Case of Insanity, but needed to make rent. I was friendly with a guy from Handelsman’ group who was a lawyer, whose family owned banks, who wanted to fool around with television stardom, and thought with the rise of cable and public access stations, he could become a TV talk show personality, eventually being picked-up by the more traditional networks. Really, he enjoyed fucking society dames and this segued nicely into that. He asked me to write for him for nothing until he made it, and he’d give a few bucks as a stipend per week. When I asked him if he knew anyone in the bar business that he could introduce me to he said, “Yeah, sure my cousin has a very successful spot he just opened. It’s right around the corner from the studio. We’ll go after the show for a few drinks. I’ll introduce you.”
Steve Oren, was a half partner in Oren & Aretsky’s. It was one of the more successful watering holes on Third Avenue, between 84th and 85th Streets. It was the saloon of destination for The New York Yankees, Knicks, and Rangers from the late 70’s until the early 80’s. Oren, once the male model for Winston cigarettes, had been married to Jennifer O’Neal. After meeting me, he introduced me to his other half, Ken Aretsky, who hired me. He started me at first with two shifts but shortly expanded them to include brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
Where there are high-priced professional jocks, there are beautiful women, and where there are beautiful women, there are guys spending lots of money to be seen with them and, if they’re lucky, bed some of them down as well. It’s synergistic and combustible, while it lasts. Everyone who’s associated with the saloon makes money, and I was no exception. In fact, I made a lot of money because I knew what to do behind this kind of bar. I was fast, funny, but aloof. I remembered the customers, not by their names but by what they drank and how much they tipped. I manipulated most by knowing who they were and what they wanted and purposely crossing up their signals in conspiratorial exchanges and intelligent and funny repartee; and, like most bartenders I knew, stole. I poured generous amounts of whiskey into their glasses, bought the tippers drinks, and averaged between one-fifty and two hundred dollars per shift, cash. I also ate and drank for nothing during the time I spent there. The food was terrific, and the liquor top shelf.
My three compatriots, Kenny, John, and Barry had been working there for quite some time when I arrived. Kenny and John were bartenders and Barry was the head chef. There were many other people who worked there. There were two Chinese men who worked in the basement, for instance, who did nothing except peel potatoes for the hundreds of orders we received each night for French Fries, but it was those three with whom I grew close. Both Kenny and John were working to support themselves while they tried to do other things. In John’s case it was acting, in Kenny’s, writing.
It did not take me long to make the “Savage Rules” at the bar. No one, no matter how attractive the man or woman might be (unless they were regulars who left a large tip because they were hip to the fact it was your stool they were sitting on, and you needed to see a return on that piece of property), was allowed to stay at the bar waiting for “somebody” to come in without drinking. No one, was allowed to remain at the bar nursing a drink, or worse, a bottle of Perrier, for a period determined by how busy the night was; and no one could drink without tipping. At first, John and Kenny were amazed at some of my actions, but it made them money too so they didn’t complain.
The management was making so much loot they didn’t much care what we did. As long as they heard the cash register ringing, they usually backed our play. Aretsky, a slick Jewish boy from Long Island, dressed in Armani, always had his hand draped around the jocks who hung there, and was the public relations force behind the saloon. The athletes did make the saloon their home, and why not. They were treated like kings and “comped” for what they ate and drank. They made hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions, of dollars a year and never had to reach into their pockets to pay for anything. Interestingly enough, they tipped worse than jazz musicians. At least most jazz musicians had a reason. They worked sparingly and when they did, usually it was for “short money,” but these athletes, Christ! At first I tried to be humorous with them. “Hey, it’s O.K. to tip, I won’t say nothin’,” I’d say to those who would belly-up to my bar, but they were a dense lot, with a few exceptions, like Pinella from The Yankees and Esposito from The Rangers, who tipped and tipped well. Two incidents serve to illustrate their arrogance and density. The first was with Mr. October, Reggie Jackson. He’d come into the place, and we’d have to hang his white fur coat in a room in the basement and, store bottles of Miller Light just for him because he was one of their spokesmen. We’d lug it upstairs to serve him and whomever he happened to be with that evening. He would point to people he knew and motion for us to buy them drinks, which we did, of course. He never got a tab, and he’d leave us nothing. Finally, one evening, after running around for him for hours, he was getting up to leave and I went downstairs to bring up his coat. Handing it to him I said, “Reggie, I know the booze and food are free, but the service isn’t. That’s how we, I, make a living.” He handed the coat back to me, reached into his pocket, and handed me a buck. I handed it back. “Keep it,” I said to him.” He turned and walked out, shaking hands with a few people as he went.
The second incident happened during a Sunday brunch. It was kind of slow that day. I had the TV on to some football game and a few regulars were at the bar, drinking beer and eating some fries. There was one attractive blond woman, who I didn’t know, sitting further down, alone, sipping on a white wine. I had a seven dollar tab for her behind the bar. I ran tabs for everyone. Walt Frazier, or Clyde as he was known, double parked his Rolls outside the saloon and sauntered in. I said hello to him and he to me as I watched his eyes light upon the comely thing at my bar, fingering her wine glass. He went over to her, said something I couldn’t hear, and she rose to leave. Frazier began walking out of the bar when I stopped him.
“Clyde,” I began, nearly whispering, “she has a seven dollar tab here.”
He turned to her as she was going past him, obviously going to his Rolls, grabbed her elbow and said, “Pay your bill, I’ll wait in the car.” He rounded, and left.

Jean called and apologized for the time lapse between her taking the script, reading it, and getting back to me. I asked her to meet me at The Cedar Tavern where we could discuss it over drinks. I did much more drinking than talking about the script. I didn’t have much interest in the script at that time, but pretended, as I often did at any time, especially with women, that I meant what came out of my mouth. She told me that a ten year relationship was coming to an end. When I inquired further she was, I thought, purposely vague, although she did intimate that the guy she was seeing was wanted by many law enforcement agencies for questioning. When I probed, she resisted and said it would be better, for both of us, if she didn’t say anymore. I usually took what other people said, especially about criminal enterprises, with a grain of salt. Coming from the background I did, it was hard for me to imagine how this diminutive, cultured, and very attractive Chinese woman could be involved with real tough guys. Besides, by not telling me too much she was being loyal, which I admired and respected. I walked her a few blocks to where she was staying and kissed her goodnight, and we said we’d continue this at a time in the very near future.
Being involved with so many different things on different levels did not stem my anxiety from escalating. I began asking the types of questions that smack of self-pity and lead, eventually, to the short and sweet anthem sung by the many drunks and drug addicts that I know, “Fuck-it.” ‘All those years that I’d worked, for what? All those years that I’d abstained from drugs, for what? Where had it all gotten me?’ These questions led to more shallowness. It had just made me more aware of what people had that I didn’t. In fact, it was more painful. Self-pity is one of the more nauseating indulgences that a person can perform, whether silently or for public consumption, it smells of the worst kind of sentimentality and corruption. I have engaged in it more times than I like to remember. It usually is accompanied by a drink or a drug which serves to ease the slivers of razor blades as they cut the memory of recriminations and regrets.
Handelsman, sensing my deterioration, cut down on my sessions rather than increase them. He saw I was no longer able to concentrate for long periods of time without getting distracted. I would say to him that I was feeling like a woman who goes to the seashore and tries to put just the amount of shells she can carry in her apron and take them back to her home to get through another day. My days were being lived only to get through. The constant drinking had begun to take its toll and wither away a resolve that I’d spent a great deal of time and energy to secure.
I began to think: If I just smoke a little reefer again it would take less of a toll on my body.
I was about to unlock a bolt.

pgs 144-148--From Chapter VII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

PLUCKING THE FRUITS OF A MISSPENT YOUTH--FROM CHAPTER VII--CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

It was nearly summer, and rather than try to land a gig in the straight world of nine-to five, I decided that bartending, with the double-barreled action of quick money and women, better suited my desires. Besides, I had made many friends from my nights spent at The Other End with whom I played basketball on a concrete slab of a park, on Sixth Avenue and Houston Street, in the afternoon, and I wanted to preserve this day/night dichotomy. Also, I had become friends with someone who would become an important part of my life and influence my thinking for some time to come. One evening I was invited to a crap game hosted by a bartender from The Other End, George, where I met the singer/songwriter, Tom Waits. We became fast friends after our bantering back and forth after we discovered that we had much in common, the appreciation of the writer, Charles Bukowski, with whom he used to play gigs with, being just one.
Waits was carving out a place in the music world that would be uniquely his and enjoying the stress that goes with it. Funny, irreverent, and multitalented, he rekindled the writing bug in me. He’d call me in the middle of the night from places that seemed like outposts in America, small cities in Idaho or Minnesota, that he played in to coincide with the release of his album. We’d usually talk for a few minutes and fill each other in on what we were doing, or reading and sometimes writing. When he stayed in Manhattan, usually at The Chelsea Hotel, a few blocks from my apartment, we’d see each other frequently. We’d bounce ideas off each other and laugh, always laugh about the absurdities each of us experienced and tried to formalize in words. “Savage,” he’d growl, “tell me what you know about Potter’s Field,” or, “what can I do with my strung-out sax player?” One of the most important things Waits told me was during an evening in The Cedar Tavern. I drinking Chivas Regal and he, Wild Turkey, discussing the difficulty of expressing the “truth in confessional writing.” “Savage,” he said, “you’re a writer; it’s O.K. to lie.” He was well ahead of the curve on “creative nonfiction.”
Pat Kenny, a legendary saloon keeper, was opening a place on Bleecker Street. I opened the saloon with him that summer. It was a place that was so old it could have been designed by Margaret Mead. You had to walk down a long flight of rickety wooden stairs to get to the ice-machine and then lug buckets of it back upstairs. You’d do this five to seven times a night. I made all my money in tips from four to five-thirty in the morning when ten to fifteen cops, just having gotten off their shift, would come in to kill a few quarts of Irish whiskey before going home, or wherever it was they were bound.
While working and hanging-out with Waits and Doc, I began writing poetry again and, as if by magic, I came up with an idea for a screenplay. Coney Island, would be about a writer who meets and falls in love with a Japanese woman. However, he is being manipulated by a wealthy socialite who has promised him publication and fame. Does he sell his soul, not to mention his balls, in the bargain? Stay tuned, for a hundred and twenty pages.
At the same time, Handelsman and the group were encouraging me to go back to school to earn a Master of Social Work degree. He thought that I’d make a good therapist, especially in treating addictive-compulsive disorders. I didn’t disagree and, in fact, was drawn to that particular area of psychology and therapy.
The plan that Handelsman had put in front of me was straight forward. The shortest route to being admitted to a psychoanalytical training school would require an M.S.W. He suggested the Adelphi School of Social Work. It was too late to apply, but give me an angle to work on, give me a mountain that is difficult to climb, and I’m pretty resourceful. My father had been friendly with Charles Raffa for decades. Raffa owned a business that sold refrigeration equipment to supermarkets. He had a daughter, Matilda, who was married to the then Lt. Governor of New York State, Mario Cuomo. I contacted Charlie, explained that I needed Cuomo to write a letter asking Adelphi to make an exception to their cutoff date for applications in my case. The Lt. Governor was accommodating, as husbands generally tend to be. I was accepted in the fall term and chose to go at night, leaving a few evenings and weekends open for me to still bartend.
Kenny’s Castaways, the bar on Bleecker Street where I was working, was not throwing off enough money to make it worth my while to remain. A friend, Richie Jossin, whom I met while he was a bartender at The Other End, and with whom I gambled on basketball games (and lost plenty of money, but wrote a poem, Hoops, 3 and a 1/2 Points, which, in a way, while never making it even, struck a sort of balance), suggested that I join him working at another saloon on The Bowery, The Tin Palace. The Tin Palace was an interesting combination of saloon and jazz joint, and pretty soon I had a couple of shifts there.
That September my pop got tickets for the Ali vs. Norton bout for The Heavyweight Championship Of The World, held at Yankee Stadium. I had been an Ali fan since he’d won Olympic Gold. My father, who’d only heard his words from the papers he read, had minimized him for years until I convinced him to watch him fight. Once seeing him in action, my father converted. He acknowledged that even his favorite heavyweight, Joe Louis, would probably have lost to this ring magician. He could punch with either hand, hit hard while backpedaling, dance and box like Sugar Ray for fifteen rounds on a six foot four, two hundred and twenty pound frame, could take a punch and, was one of the great ring tacticians to ever lace-up a pair of gloves. Angelo Dundee, his trainer for all his professional life, had said he was the first fighter he’d ever seen who could go the full three minutes that a round lasted and never blink his eyes. In his prime, I don’t believe there was anyone who could beat him. I remember listening on a little transistor radio the night he fought Jerry Quary in Atlanta, after serving a three year exile for refusing to go into the Army and serve in the Vietnam War. I didn’t hate Quary, but I wanted to see Ali destroy him, which he did; he stopped Quary on cuts in five or seven rounds.
Even though we had ringside seats, the action before the fight was, in many ways, more exciting than the fight itself. Sinatra and Stallone and Frazier nestled among the pimps and women plumed and turned-out in the most outlandish outfits of peacock finery and broad-brimmed hats. They walked in and around Yankee Stadium that night, leaving a scent of sex in their wake. Before the fight, you could see the air pulsating and hear the buzz from the swell. Heads swiveled and turned, and when you looked around, you saw fifty-six thousand other people enjoined in the spectacle.
The awkward style of Norton always presented problems for Ali. He, however, prevailed in a decision that night, but seeing him live and moving in the ring was enough for me. It is enough sometimes just to see them live, working their craft. I used to get a thrill seeing Jordan in his prime, just dribbling the basketball up court.
Waits was back in town promoting his second album, The Heart of Saturday Night, with a couple of nights performing at The Bottom Line and appearing on Saturday Night Live. Doc and I made most of his dates and, after watching Duvall perform brilliantly in Mamet’s, “American Buffalo,” sat in the “green room” while Waits performed on TV. The good times we had though were usually quite separate from those of his professional life.
We would journey to Times Square arcades, catch flesh at some strip club like The Baby Doll Lounge, go to The Cedar or Doc’s pad or mine, talk and laugh and bullshit through the night and then get some food, the greasier the better, at an all night diner or cafe. One night, we even saved a woman, Miriam, in Coney Island. It was after a torrential rainstorm that we decided to journey into Brooklyn, eat at Nathan’s, and show Waits Coney Island where we played some Skee-ball and shot some bears.
In a way I felt that Doc and Waits were the embodiment of the years I’d spent at The New School. Waits was trying to carve out a place for himself in the entertainment industry. He was a triple threat: musician, writer, and singer. Doc, though a psychiatrist, wanted to write and was battling those instincts in his everyday life while attending to people, and I was writing now, while tending bar and going to graduate school.
Things were not nearly as exciting or humorous at Adelphi. After seeing the other students and attending the first few classes, I questioned whether this was the right profession for me. Not only did I feel superior to the students there, but to the professors as well, with the exception of Michael Fabricant, my sociology professor, who espoused the redistribution of wealth as the only real answer to rectify the ills of the ruling class.
The students, mostly women, wore “Have A Nice Day” faces in class that went well with their “reindeer sweaters.” It seemed they were prepared to lie down on the curb’s edge in order for “the suffering masses” to step on their backs while crossing over the puddled streets to the other, and more brightly lit, side. Their maternalism disgusted me. They believed their desire to “help and do good” was enough to warrant their place in the social work world. I wanted to suggest to a few of them, after listening to them espouse their reasons for getting into this line of work, to cut off a tit and hang it on a nail in the caverns of Grand Central Station so any poor person who needed a good suck or two could get one. And the teachers were, by and large, no better. Most believed there was a formula that could and would address any and all existing problems. It was hard to sit and listen to those who so obviously had never been outside a classroom (except, perhaps, in the internship phase of their graduate work), and in the world they tried to represent, theorize. The idea of writing papers for these professors nauseated me. In fact, as far as I was concerned, they should just give me the degree based on my life experiences and accomplishments. Knowing they were not about to do that, I was ready to leave and concentrate on working as a bartender and writing, taking my chances on what would happen next.
Handelsman tried to get me to stick it out and stay in school. He thought I was getting too hung up in the process and was losing sight of the goal. I, however, was enjoying the night life, and all that it provided.
The money I made, working behind the bar, was fast, and so were the women. My only two concerns prior to bedding down with them were: Did I have enough to eat that night to thwart going into insulin shock?; and, did I drink enough not to care what I was doing and with whom I was doing it with? Once I got home, a glass of orange juice would eliminate the first concern, and the drinks I had at the bar would have taken care of the other. Alcohol, like drugs before it, created a wall between me and the women I was with at any given time. All of these things, the money, the job, the booze, the friends, the women, and the writing, allowed me to keep the myth I had of myself and the world alive, and that was not necessarily a bad thing.
The Tin Palace was, as I’ve said, situated right on The Bowery. Across the street were two local dens of iniquity and infamy. The first was CBGB’s, the first pantheon of punk-rock in America. The second, adjacent to it, was The Sunshine Hotel, the home of those who have hit the skids and, consequently, the underbelly of life, transients, derelicts, alcoholics, addicts, and other pilgrims who have discovered an America that exists in stark contrast to the dot.com fever of our age. The Tin Palace had a glass enclosed front that served as a dining room and looked out at the denizens on The Bowery who, at times, looked in. Our patrons would sit in front eating a steak or lobster special, sipping wine or a cocktail, and those failures of Puritanism would come over, press their face against the glass and stare at them as they tried to eat. We had a bouncer, Jimmy Blackwell, who tried to shoo them away or sometimes had to resort to tougher measures. One night, Jimmy was late in getting to work and I, besides a waitress and chef, were the only ones in the saloon other than a few customers. I looked out front and saw a young woman walking her dogs. I knew her because she lived in a loft next door. It was a time when lofts were still cheap and artists, not brokers, could live in them. I saw one of those “Plymouth Rock” dropouts, very obviously mentally deranged, accost her. She screamed, and I leaped from behind the bar and ran outside. I tried to separate them, but he had her by the hair and would not let go. I saw from the corner of my eye some other booze hounds and former jailbirds running towards us. I didn’t know if they were going to help me or him. While still trying to separate them, I heard noises coming from the other side of the street. I quickly turned my head and looked behind me and saw people I recognized who worked at the gas station, and they were carrying pipes, as they crossed the street. I did not want this to turn more bloody then it was already. Try as I would, I could not get this guy to let go of her. Finally, I took hold of his hair that, because of the grease, nearly slid out of my fingers, and lifted his head up to a point where I could get in a clean shot. I hit him, as hard as I ever hit anybody, over his eye and knocked him over, opening a gash above his eyebrow. But he finally let go. The others from the gas station had scared off the other wanderers. I took the young woman inside the bar and let the cops, who had just arrived, take care of the mess outside. I gave her a drink and poured myself one as well.
The woman went with the cops to the precinct to file a complaint and Jimmy, who had just arrived, called Jack, who owned the place, to get another bartender to cover for me because I couldn’t work. My hand had swelled so badly that I couldn’t put it around a glass, let alone pour whiskey. I took a cab to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where the x-rays on my hand and wrist were negative. A week later the young woman found me at work, invited me out for dinner a few days later, and fucked me afterward. I told her it wasn’t necessary, and she said she knew that. I’d say she had class to do that as a matter of course. It simply was something she needed to do to balance the celestial scales.

Bobby, my brother, had moved into my building. Working in my father’s store and living in my parent’s house were too stifling for a lifestyle that favored alcohol, the occasional drug, and women. Although he was tremendously influenced by what my father said, or didn’t say, he still chose to live in Manhattan. Knowing what I did about him, his life in the store and how he’d had to capitulate to most every one of my father’s demands, I’d been encouraging him for quite some time to, at least, live an independent life out of their home. Perhaps, after going through drug treatment, private therapy, and had begun to craft my own life (or so I felt), I was less threatened, jealous and more giving toward him. He had initially found a place near me on Ninth Street, off Fifth Avenue. However, my father rejected it. He waited until my father approved. I introduced him to all my friends from The Cedar Tavern, and The Other End: Waits, Jason Miller, the author and actor, women and the assortment of friends I consorted with at that time, such as Ken Brown, the Pulitzer nominated playwright of, The Brig, Tommy Sig, the actor/director and Dutch, the waiter, actor, stevedore and professor of life lived on the margins. He seemed to enjoy the differences in personality, intelligence, and wit from those friends he knew and grew up with in Brooklyn. In fact, it was like night and day. He was able to enlarge his universe to include those with talent, art, music, and madness in their blood into his own world, enlarging it, and in the process, making him bolder. I did not know, until many years later, that he’d already begun his cocaine odyssey. Knowing what I’d been through, he hid that fact pretty well from me. I knew he liked his alcohol and could drink, but then again, so could I. The only real drawback of having him in my building was my father. He’d call and wake me up early in the morning to go upstairs and rap on Bobby’s door to get him up to go into work. I asked him why he didn’t call Bobby himself and he responded by telling me my brother wouldn’t pick up. They fought with each other all the time and, though I tried to avoid it, involved me too often in their arguments. I have often thought they liked and, in some perverse way, needed it.

Nearing summer, I had finished Coney Island, and the poetry I was writing was beginning to find an audience in small magazines and presses. I was also finishing my run at bartending. The night life was taking a toll on my diabetes. I felt by arbitrarily taking my morning shot whenever I arose and eating at different times, coupled with the amount of booze I was consuming, I had compromised my health. When I saw Dr. Bernstein, for the first time in nearly a year, he confirmed it. Even though my mood was as good as he’d seen in a long time, he didn’t like how I looked, regardless of what the blood tests would determine. Alcohol, he was quick to tell me, is dangerous for diabetics, especially hard liquor; first it cuts blood sugar and then increases it. Who can say how much and when? If there’s one thing the diabetic, especially the insulin dependent diabetic, needs to be is consistent. I was about as consistent as a person running for president.
At the same time, therapy with Handelsman was becoming more intense and painful. I was dealing with identification, or lack of it, with my father. My feelings of being less than a man were compensated by drugs, booze and, to a greater or lesser extent, women. My anger and self-contempt knew no bounds. However, with that pain came rewards. I was clean (if you forget the booze) going on six years, independent (a rationalization at best--for I still depended on the largesse of my parents), and had a social life which rewarded me. Although I had not found myself “professionally” yet, I was sure it would come.
Waits was up for a role in the film version of Edward Bunker’s novel, No Beast So Fierce. It was later renamed, Straight Time, and starred Dustin Hoffman. I’d sent my screenplay to Waits at the motel that he stayed at in L.A., The Tropicana, and he had given it to Hoffman. A few weeks later, while sitting in my apartment, Hoffman called to tell me he enjoyed the script but felt it wasn’t right for him, nor his production company, Sweetwall. We spoke on the phone about what I was working on now, and I told him it was a legitimate play about the offspring of concentration camp survivors, the premise being that the children were enclosed in the barbed-wire of their parents’ experience and the harshness and brutality of the parents’ lives impact greatly on the lives of their children. He told me that that subject had always intrigued him, particularly Hitler, and asked me to share some of what I had read about the subject, which I did. He asked me to keep in touch, should I finish that or anything else. It boosted my spirits and was a confirmation of sorts. Still, I knew it was time for a change.
I decided to leave The Tin Palace at the end of that summer and concentrate on getting a square, nine-to-five job. Besides, jazz musicians don’t tip.

pgs 138-142, From Chapter VII: JUNK SICK: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNCONTROLLED DIABETIC

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015