Straight Life - Art Pepper [268]
Art was as happy and as focussed as I had ever known him to be. He was hell to travel with. Complaining constantly about any discomfort, he could be as droopily unhappy and unhelpful as a small child. But almost every interview reenergized him-because he was talking about real things that went on in his world and in his soul. He hated most social interaction, with its cold-hearted small talk. He loved the Synanon game because it was a truth game. He played his own game with these journalists. Most were willing participants, the rest could be manipulated into intimacy (or else into being an audience-a close thing, for Art, to intimacy). Sometimes they'd be moved to confess to him. He loved to talk about himself, but he could be all ears for your secrets. And of course he was unshockable.
Instead of picking up his daily methadone at local clinics (where he'd run into other addicts and lead them or be led astray-as on the '77 East Coast tour) we carried it with us, and I doled it out, a daily bottle at a time, from a handsome, costly, locked leather case I'd bought in New York. We both adored pretty, expensive things, and I guessed correctly that Art wouldn't risk damaging the case by trying to pick the lock unless he was desperate, and there was no reason for him to get desperate. He was getting coke mailed to him at our hotels from a connection in L.A.
I was handling the money and the drugs. After Art's last hospitalization, I decided that that was the way it would have to be. Art, on the prowl, got into too much trouble. He'd been scratching around with ex-cons in bad neighborhoods, disappearing for days, buying grams and half grams, and ingesting any unpredictable get-high substances these people had handy. And he wasn't going to stop. He was sure he hadn't long to live, and he was determined to spend what time he had left loaded. It seemed likely, the way he was operating, that he'd soon be busted again-and go to prison. I had no criminal record. And I had old friends who knew upscale dealers. One day I went out and came back with an ounce of the best cocaine he'd ever had. Art made an immediate and joyous commitment to the new program. Inevitably, it wasn't long before I was snorting cocaine too.
I'd gone into Synanon in '68 because my life was chaos and I was suicidal as a result of using pills, pot, and alcohol. In 1979, I'd been clean for eleven years. Then one day, while I was repainting the bathroom, Art suggested that a sniff of coke would make the work go faster. I'd never tried it before. Within the next week or so I'd not only repainted the bathroom, I'd put new linoleum on the floor, built shelves, made window curtains, repainted my office and the kitchen, wallpapered Art's room, and recarpeted the whole house. By my self. With probably half an ounce of coke. And built a trellis around the front porch and planted bougainvillea to climb it in front of this dilapidated shack we were renting in Van Nuys.
Over the next months and years I continued to use cocaine. It wasn't always fun. Frequently it was nerve-wrack- ingly, teeth-gnashingly just awful, but whenever it was around, I still had to use it, and it was around most of the time because it was Art's fuel. I started drinking in order to come down. I gained weight, lost health, lost dignity. Many people we knew during the next few years used coke, too, and I believe I was sufficiently sneaky to make most of the ones who didn't use it think I didn't use it either. No one, except Art, seemed to notice that I was an addict. And Art liked me getting high with him, especially since, when we only had a little, or we were traveling and had to make it last, all the coke was his. Not long after Art died I cleaned up for good.
So I was using coke on the book tour. I was energetic