Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [201]
“I was told the person needed someone who could travel, someone who could take the ball and run with it, someone who could wear a lot of hats and handle a lot of assignments,” said Quirk. “Until I walked in the door to interview with him, I had no idea the businessman was Walter Payton.”
Upon being hired, it took Quirk approximately twenty seconds to understand the craziness of celebrity. Payton needed someone to organize his massive piles of fan mail (“I hired a slew of temps to knock it out and get a system in place.”), to handle speaking engagements (“He made between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars a talk, and was brilliant at it.”), to oversee merchandising, and to make sure he never forgot or overlooked a request. Payton insisted on hiring a night owl, and Quirk soon learned why. He called her up to thirty times per day. At two in the morning. Again at three in the morning. Again at four in the morning. He asked her to check in on Holmes and Richman. He needed her to take care of something involving the children. He complained to her about Connie and confided in her about other women. Not for approval—just because, well, it seemed like she should know. When one saw Walter, one almost always saw Ginny. She was his shadow. Or, to be accurate, he was hers. “I talked to Walter more than any family member, more than any friend or boyfriend,” she said. “Before cell phones were widespread he had this beeper that went off all the time. Then he had this big ol’ Motorola cell phone, and he’d use it constantly. He was addicted to knowing if anything was going on—‘Ginny, anybody call? Ginny, what you got? Ginny, tell me something.’ He could drive me crazy. Really insane. But, at the same time, he became a family member. I loved him, and would have done anything for him.”
The burden of loneliness and a dreadful marriage weren’t Payton’s only problems. As a player Payton had numbed his maladies with pills and liquids, usually supplied by the Bears. Now that he was retired, the self-medicating only intensified. Payton relied on Tylenol 3 and Vicodin, mixing the two drugs into cocktails he habitually ingested. In a particularly embarrassing episode, in 1988 Payton visited a handful of dental offices, complaining of severe tooth pain. He was supplied with different prescriptions for morphine, and hit up a handful of drugstores to have them filled. When one of the pharmacists noticed the activity, he contacted the authorities, who arrived at Payton’s house and discussed the situation. Payton was merely issued a warning. “Walter was pounding his body with medication,” said Holmes. “I wish I knew how bad it was, but at the time I really didn’t.”
Back when Payton drove his own RV to training camp, he used to load the rear of the vehicle with tanks of nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas. Used primarily in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic and analgesic effects, Payton was provided with the chemical by a friend who dabbled in medical supplies. At nights and during breaks in the action, players snuck into Payton’s trailer, loaded the nitrous oxide into balloons, then carried them around while taking hits. The goofy laughter could be heard throughout the training facility.
Now that he was retired, Payton turned to nitrous oxide more than ever. Large tanks filled up a corner of his garage, and he held a gas-stuffed balloon throughout portions of his days, taking joyous hits whenever the impulse struck. “I don’t think Walter was addicted,” said a friend. “But he sure liked it.”
In need of some semblance of sanity, Payton decided the best he could do was throw himself into as many activities as possible, hoping one or two would fill the void. He took helicopter lessons. He bought more guns. He looked for antique automobiles. He dabbled in golf. He ran