Straight Life - Art Pepper [42]
Right after that, word came that we were going home. I was so happy. They give you examinations before you go, and they found out I had the clap.
I tried to get out of going back but there was nothing I could do. And in those days you had to wait three months, period, before you could ball again or you might give it to the other person. So I had to come home to Patti and tell her that we couldn't make love. She cried, and, oh, I cried, and I told her that the girl didn't mean anything, and she knew that that was true. Patti marked the days off on the calendar. We went a month and three days, and it got so bad I had to do chin-ups on the doorsill of the bedroom because I hurt inside, because I wanted to make love so bad. Then finally the time came, and she forgave me. But that's retribution.
5
Heroin
1946-1950
WHEN I CAME HOME Patti was staying with my dad and my stepmother, Thelma. And when I came to the door my daughter, Patricia, was there; she was walking and talking. She didn't respond to me: she was afraid of me. I resented her and I was jealous of her feelings for my dad. Naturally, she'd been with them so she didn't feel about me the way I wanted her to, and that started the whole thing off on the wrong foot.
I was bitter about the army and bitter about them making me have a kid I didn't want, bitter about being taken away when everything was going so good. I was drinking heavily and started using more pot and more pills, and I scuffled around and did a casual here and there or a couple of nights in some club, but nothing happened and I was getting more and more despondent when finally, by some miracle, Stan Kenton gave me a call.
Stan Kenton was incredible. He reminded me a lot of my dad, Germanic, with the blonde, straight hair. He was taller than my dad; I think Stan was about six, three, slender, clothes hung on him beautifully. He had long fingers, a long, hawklike nose, and a very penetrating gaze. He seemed to look through you. It was hard to look him in the eye, and most people would look away and become uncomfortable in his presence. And, just like my dad, he had a presence. When he spoke people listened. He was a beautiful speaker and he had the capacity to communicate with any audience and to adapt to any group of people. We would play in some little town in Kansas and he'd talk to the people and capture them completely. We'd be in Carnegie Hall and he'd capture that crowd with another approach. We'd be at the Kavakos in Washington, D.C., a jazz club filled with the black pimp type cats and the hustling broads and the dope fiends-and he'd capture them. He would observe, study the people, and win them.
One time we did "City of Glass" at the Civic Opera House in Chicago. It was written by Bob Graettinger, a revolutionary composition, an incredibly hard musical exercise; it was a miracle we got through it. Bob conducted it, a tall, thin guy, about six, four: he looked like a living skeleton conducting, like a dead man with sunken eyes, a musical zombie. He took us through it, and he finished, and he turned around to the people, and he nodded, and the people didn't do nothin'. The place was packed; we'd played the shit out of this thing and now there wasn't a sound. They didn't know what to do. We didn't know what to do. I'm looking at Stan and I'm thinking, "Well, what's going to happen now? What's he going to do now?" Stan looked at the audience. I saw his mind, you could see it turning, and all of a sudden he leaped out onto the middle of the stage, gestured at us to rise, swung his body around again to the audience, and bam! They started