The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [69]
A consequence of his not giving a fuck was that he was really pleasant to be around.
I got to the Antwerp hotel and into bed, wheezing, body aching. I opened the minibar and drank everything in it, probably spending every dime I’d make on the tour. My phone rang, and I woke in a panic; it was pleasant Pete telling me that the promoters wanted to take me out for dinner that night. I said, call me back in three hours, and he did, and I said, can you call me back in two hours? Pete informed me that it was 7:30 and if I wanted to go they’d be showing up in fifteen minutes. I didn’t. I spent another fitful twelve hours in bed, sleeping and then not sleeping, dreading the time I’d have to go to the theater, and then it came, and I packed my shivering body off to work.
The show, in a plush national theater, was barely attended. Between acts a booming disembodied voice, raspy and menacing, spoke in unfathomable Flemish. Apparently the voice was telling jokes; people were laughing. I went onstage looking like death, and when it came time to speak and sing, my voice took miserable dives on the high notes, squeaked through the lower ones. When the disembodied voice started talking as I left the stage, the people laughing, I was sure it was at the travesty of my performance.
Somehow Pete got me to Amsterdam, and I played a packed room, barely able to sing. They yelled, “Tune your guitar! Tune your guitar!”
Luke came over the first night of a detox. He walked in, drunk, and I handed him a Valium. My shrink called. You have to go, I told him. “No no,” he answered, very amiably, “I’m just gonna hang out.” He walked into my bedroom, picked up a guitar and played loudly. I hung up the phone and told him to leave.
“No, it’s cool, I’m just gonna hang out,” he said.
Somehow I ended up punching him in the face—the only time I’ve ever punched anybody in the face. I then came at him, absurdly, with an umbrella, and he whipped out some weird martial arts move he learned in the seventh grade, and knocked me onto my back. A farcical, slow-drunken-motion fight.
I shoved him out my door. He banged on it to be let back in. “You’re a fool!” he kept yelling. “You’re a fool!”
I actually called the cops on him, saying a guy was menacing me at my door. I immediately realized what a stupid idea that was, and didn’t answer the buzzer when the cops rang. Luke descended the stairs drunkenly, calling out, “You’re a fool, you’re a fool, you’re a fool.”
That was my last detox from heroin. I cadged painkillers from people occasionally, but mostly I just drank. I figured that 1 PM was a respectable hour for a rock star to have a drink with his lunch. I was waking up at noon.
The sampler player wanted me to record a bunch of cover songs for some website. I e-mailed him that it was a stupid idea. He e-mailed me back, saying that I’d make a little money, and there was no other way imaginable that I’d make money playing solo. I wrote him back that he should go fuck himself.
My phone rang. “Doughty, I’m sick of your nastiness—I QUIT.” Click.
This guy who ran a studio in Greenpoint, a friend of my bandmates’, got robbed. I heard through a friend that they’d had lunch with him and told him they’d do a benefit. Apparently the sampler player was back in the band. The guy from Greenpoint called—not my bandmates—and told me about the proposed benefit. He spoke with a pleading tone.
Our manager called me. I learned later that he was calling to fire us. I launched into babble: I can’t do this anymore, the sampler player was in and then out and then in again, they planned this show and didn’t even want to call me.
This was a convenient for the manager, queasy about firing a man at his lowest. “If you want to quit,” he said, “now