The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [97]
I waited behind the car, talking to his partner, a guy with a grey mustache. He said he used to be a nightclub bouncer, twenty years ago, and doesn’t drink now. “I had two libations the day before I put on this badge,” he said. “When they legalize marijuana, I’ll start smoking it,” he said.
When, not if?
“They’ll legalize it as soon as they figure out how to tax it.”
He said it’s not addictive. I said I agreed it should be legal, but I know lots of people completely crippled by it, they wake and bake, can’t get their lives together. Creative people that think their creativity depends on weed, but don’t seem to notice when their art dries up and dissipates. Haven’t you noticed that you can have a glass of wine for a mild buzz, but if you get stoned, you’re going to get wasted? They don’t grow weed that gives you a glass-of-wine feeling anymore. It’s all turbo-charged Amsterdam shit. If you want to just get a little purr on, you have to, like, use tweezers to meticulously pluck a single tiny leaf off a bud and put that in the bowl. The gateway drug thing may or may not be true; some people get fucked up just hanging out in front of the gate for the rest of their lives.
“Marijuana is not addictive,” he said, with some hostility.
He told me he had a ’68 Fender Stratocaster once owned by Minnie Pearl.
I put up a notice on my blog that I was looking for a bass player. This one guy sent an MP3 of an esoteric free-jazz jam from which I could discern almost nothing about his playing. His e-mail read:
My name is Andrew Livingston. I have a Ph.D. from Brooklyn College in composition. I live in Brooklyn with my wife and child and dog. I’m diabetic. Sometimes I cry at commercials.
There’s no way this is the guy, I thought, listening to his MP3. But man, I wish this guy could be the guy.
I went to his place. He was wiry, wore octagonal Ben Franklin spectacles, and was dressed like a homeless golf coach. He was a deft and responsive player. He was indeed the guy.
After our first rehearsal with the full band, we were taking the F train downtown, and our drummer turned to him and said, “You don’t look like an Andrew. You need a nickname.” Rubbed his chin. “Scrappy.” More chin rubbing. “No, Scrap.”
Thus was Andrew “Scrap” Livingston named. I’ve been touring with him for years—sometimes he plays the upright bass, sometimes cello, sometimes electric guitar (I lent him a solid-body Silvertone that was lent, in turn, to me by Molly Escalator years ago, when we were going out).
“Aw, word, B,” he’ll say, in his Mississippi drawl, to assent. “That’s how I’m living today.”
His self-description in an online profile reads: “I like many things, and mini things. I like to check my blood sugar. I like to speak when it’s appropriate.”
He’s preternaturally gentle. As there is a Theoretical Wayne, so there is a Theoretical Scrap. He was a Dallas street kid as a teenager, shooting dope, driving around with a gun in his glove compartment. He once nodded out and fell asleep while placing an order at the drive-through window in a Whataburger.
He concocts nicknames. He calls our friend Daniel Old Tin Rummy. He calls our drummer McBible. He calls our electric piano player Benjack Ladstack. He calls his best friend from Mississippi Tumpy. He calls his daughter Larry. He called his daughter’s mother Funticus, which perhaps bespoke the fate of the relationship. None of these have any discernible logic to their etymology, except my nickname, which is Foss: my middle name is Ross, but there’s a typo on my Social Security card.
He uses the word friends instead of things: “We should move these friends over there.” Or, “I think I’m gonna eat those friends for lunch.” I’ve heard him call chicken carbonara