It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [120]
Now, fifteen years after my last classroom—or even beanbag—experience, I wanted to head back to school. Fortunately at eighteen I had taken a GED test. I did well—scored a 97. I even received a letter of commendation from the governor. My mom had kept that along with the paperwork from my various schools and a copy of my GED. I returned with copies of all of that and Santa Monica Community College gave me the all clear to take a class in the summer term. But that turned out to be just the first hurdle.
For my first class, I purposely dressed low-key. My hair was still short. But people still knew who I was immediately—this was L.A. After that first class, people were hanging out in the parking lot to ask me for my autograph. From then on, though, it was fine. After that, I had only to deal with class.
The professor was cool. He’d had a hand in bringing the Power Rangers TV show to the United States. He taught because he loved to, not because he needed to work. Things he covered in class quickly became clearer, but I found I didn’t know how to study on my own. I would call my brother Matt and ask for help. Eventually I hired a tutor—an assistant professor from USC. We met at a library. Before I could pose any questions about the classwork, the guy had questions for me.
“Tell me about the chicks,” he said. “How many girls have you had?”
What? We’re in a library, and I’m looking for help with my class.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk numbers.”
Still, I made it through the class, and by the end I was able to see GN’R hadn’t gotten ripped off. Hallelujah. Guess all those threats about wanting to know the accountants’ home addresses had paid off.
From my experience, once you were pegged as a rock guy, people just assumed that you were either brain-dead or off high-flying on a private jet with hookers and cocaine. (Or both.) While I had definitely been guilty of both of the aforementioned clichés, in that classroom I found—don’t laugh—a love of academia.
I earned an A in that first course.
And I was totally hooked.
CHAPTER FIFTY
West Arkeen suddenly stopped coming to the dojo. Sensei Anthony called him and drove to his house on multiple occasions—but was unable to make contact. I called West once or twice, but then my old defense mechanisms quickly went up when I figured he must be using again.
You fucked me, man!
I was filled with a searing black anger I hadn’t felt in a while.
West started to call my house again. I sat idly by, listening to his voice messages and not picking up the phone. He wanted help.
Yeah, I gave you help and you fucked me. You can forget it now.
I had yet to learn the art of forgiveness. I couldn’t yet feel compassion when someone like West didn’t follow through.
Then, at the end of May 1997, West Arkeen was found dead in his apartment, his body badly burned from a crack torch and riddled with track marks and bruises. His drug buddies had robbed his apartment and made off with all his musical equipment while he lay dead nearby. They also stole tapes with demos of all the songs he had written.
I felt I had let West down. Maybe there was something more I could have done. Maybe I could have at least been there at his apartment in his last minute—if for no other reason than to let him rest his head on a friend.
I loved you like a brother from the day we met and started playing guitars together and telling jokes. I am sorry, West.
I began to think more and more about getting the hell out of L.A.
Susan and I went for a drive one day to look for a lake I’d heard about in Malibu. I still had a waterskiing boat up at my cabin on Lake Arrowhead, but it was so far away that I rarely used it anymore. I thought instead of having a place right in town and one far, far away, maybe we could find a house to live in full-time where we’d be close enough to town for work but could