My Dark Places - James Ellroy [66]
Jail was my health retreat. I abstained from booze and dope and ate three square meals a day. I did push-ups and worked trusty details and got a little muscle tone going. I hung out with stupid white guys, stupid black guys and stupid Mexican guys— and swapped stupid stories with them. We had all committed daring crimes and fucked the world’s most glamorous women. An old black wino told me he flicked Marilyn Monroe. I said, “No shit—I fucked her too!”
I worked the trash-and-freight detail at the New County Jail and the library at Wayside Honor Rancho. My favorite jail was Biscailuz Center. They fed you big meals and let you read in the latrines after lights-out. Jail was no big Ricking traumatic deal.
I knew how to ride short stretches. Jail cleaned out my system and gave me something to anticipate: my release and more booze and dope fantasies.
Crime fantasies. Sex fantasies.
The redhead was 15 years dead and somewhere far away. She ambushed me in the summer of 1973.
I was living in a dive hotel. I took inhaler trips in a communal bathtub down the hall from my room. I ran warm water and hogged the tub for hours. Nobody complained. Most of the tenants took showers.
I was in the tub. I was jacking off to a cavalcade of older women’s faces. I saw my mother naked, fought the image and lost.
I jerry-rigged a story straight off.
It was ’58. My mother didn’t die in El Monte. She wasn’t a drunk. She loved me woman to man.
We made love. I smelled her perfume and cigarette breath. Her amputated nipple thrilled me.
I brushed her hair out of her eyes and told her I loved her. My tenderness made her cry.
It was the most impassioned and loving story I’d ever perpetrated. It left me ashamed and horrified of what I had inside me.
I tried to live the story again. My mind wouldn’t let me. All the dope in the world couldn’t bring the redhead back.
I abandoned her one more time.
I blew my rent money and lost my hotel room. I moved back to Burns Park.
I took inhaler trips and fought a war within myself. I tried to conjure up my mother and devise a way to let her stay. My mind failed me. My conscience shut the whole business down.
The Voices got very specific. They said you fucked your mother and killed her.
I had a huge prophylhexedrine tolerance. It took ten to twelve cotton wads to get me off the ground. The shit was fucking up my lungs. I woke up congested every morning.
I developed chest pains. Every breath and heartbeat doubled me over. I took a bus to the County Hospital. A doctor examined me and told me I had pneumonia. He admitted me and put me on antibiotics for a week. They killed my infection dead.
I left the hospital and went back to outdoor life, booze and inhalers. I got pneumonia again. I got it cured. I went on a year-long T-Bird-and-inhaler run and ended up with the DTs.
Lloyd was living in West L.A. I camped out on the roof of his building. The first hallucinations hit me in his bathroom.
A monster jumped out of the toilet. I shut the lid and saw more monsters seep through it. Spiders crawled up my legs. Little blobs hurled themselves at my eyes.
I ran into the living room and turned the lights out. The little blobs went fluorescent. I raided Lloyd’s liquor stash and drank myself senseless. I woke up on the roof—dead scared.
I knew I had to quit drinking and taking inhalers. I knew they’d kill me in the fucking near future. I stole a short dog and hitchhiked to the County Hospital. I killed my bottle on the front steps and turned myself in.
A doctor processed me into the drunk ward. He said he’d recommend me for the Long Beach State Hospital program. Thirty days there would boil me clean and set me up to live sober.
I wanted it. It was that or die young. I was 27 years old.
I spent two days at the drunk ward. They zonked me out on tranquilizers and sedatives. I didn’t see any monsters or blobs. I wanted to guzzle booze as much as I wanted to kick it. I tried to sleep around