Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

Flight

Snow is falling outside the Holland Tunnel. Cars aren’t moving. Horns sound and drivers yell. My flight to Berlin is scheduled to take off in less than an hour, and there is no way I’m going to make it. Noah is already there, having arrived at the Berlin Film Festival directly from Sundance to show his film two days ago. I call my assistant, who booked a four-o’clock car for a five thirty flight, which I only now realize isn’t enough time, particularly with the snow. It is, of course, not his fault, but I tell him it is and that my life is about to change, and not for the better, as a result. I hang up. These will be my last words to him, to anyone in my office.

I have nearly a full bag — three medium-size rocks and a scattering of crumbs — in my pocket. A clean stem and lighter, wrapped in a kitchen towel, are wedged somewhere in my L.L. Bean duffel bag, between manuscripts, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a pile of Kiehl’s products. The driver is a young, deep-voiced Eastern European woman, and I’ve already sung her my if-you-only-knew-how-important-it-is-that-I-get-there-on-time song to persuade her to work some kind of magic and levitate us past the traffic. She just stares at me through the rearview mirror. I wonder if she can see how strung out I am, how far over the line.

I know this is going to be the last straw. Even if Noah forgives me again, despite the fact that he knows I’ve been using since I left him at Sundance, Kate will not. I’ve been out for almost two weeks and canceled three meetings with her to go over our long-avoided partnership agreement and finances. I have told everyone — friends, clients, employees — that I have thrown my back out and am going to doctors, acupuncturists, and masseurs. But the truth is that since I got back from Sundance five days early, I’ve been rattling around the apartment in a thick cloud of crack smoke. I’ve left the building only a few times, to run across 8th Street to the cash machine and next door to the deli for lighters and Brillo wire. The liquor store has made daily deliveries of Ketel One, and I’ve called the housekeeper to tell her I’m home sick and not to come.

At some point before getting in the car, I send Kate an e-mail telling her to do what she needs to do, that I’ve relapsed and that she should protect herself in whatever way is necessary. Before I press Send, I look out the window at the thick flakes of snow coming down in slow motion between the buildings and think I am doing her a favor. Giving her permission to get out and move on. But I feel next to nothing as I end our partnership, our business, my career. I regard that nothing the same way you observe a cut on your finger just after accidentally slicing it with a knife but seconds before the blood appears. For a moment it’s like looking at someone else’s finger, as if the cut you made has not broken your skin, the blood about to flow not your own.

I finally get to the airport and race ahead of the line to the first-class counter. The woman there tells me right away that I’ve missed my flight. I ask her if there is another and she tells me there is one that goes through Amsterdam in three hours. Without hesitating I buy a first-class, full-fare ticket. I have over $70,000 in my checking account at this point, and I think, barely think, that five or so thousand is nothing. I ask her if there is a hotel at the airport, because I want to lie down and rest before my flight. She looks at me and pauses before telling me there is a Marriott a short cab ride away. I thank her, check my bag through for the seven-o’clock flight, and take my ticket. In the cab, I call Noah and leave him a message that I missed my flight—The traffic was terrible, I say in mock frustration — but I’m booked on the next one out.

The cabdriver is a handsome, dark-eyed Hispanic guy, and I immediately strike up a conversation. How I get to the moment when I ask him if he parties, I don’t know, but I get there. He says yes and I say, With what? and he answers, Beer and pot. He asks me with what and I come right out and tell him. He pauses and asks me if I have any on me and I say yes. He asks if he can see it and, without hesitating, I reach into my pocket, pull out a rock, and hold it up between the two front seats. He slows the cab, eyes the drug seriously, but says nothing. When I pull it back, he laughs and tells me he’s never seen it before, and I ask if he wants to hang out. He tells me sure, later, after his shift, and gives me his cell phone number. I take it, even though I know my flight will take off before he’s done. He doesn’t say his name so I look at the driver’s ID framed in Plexiglas behind the passenger seat and notice that it’s obscured by a piece of newspaper. I ask him his name and he mumbles something inaudible. I ask him again and he says what I think is Rick.

Something in his manner shifts as we pull up to the Marriott. He suddenly cools, and I’ll remember, later, that he barely asks for the fare, that when I hand it to him, it seems irrelevant. I hardly register this, since I’m preoccupied with how lucky it is that I missed the flight, that I now have a few hours to get high.

I get to the room and shut the door behind me as if I’m closing the curtain on a great, terrifying stage where I’ve had to perform a grueling part, the skin of which I can now finally shed. I take off my coat and pack a big hit. Crumbs scatter on the bedspread as I hold the stem up to light, but I don’t care. I pull hard and hold the smoke in for as long as I can. When I exhale, the stress of the last few hours disappears and in its place swells a pearly bliss.

I soon become aware of my body and feel restless in my clothes. I take my sweater off between the first and second hits. They seem like part of a constricting costume for the performance on the other side of the door and of no use now. By the third hit I’m naked, though I grab a towel from the bathroom and tie it low around my hips. I will always do this when I get high. I will always think my torso looks lean and muscled and sexy. I will always, many times, clock myself in the mirror and think, Not bad. I will remember some version of the lines from Ben Neihart’s novel Hey Joe, when the narrator checks himself out in the mirror and thinks smugly that he’s keeping his shit tight. I will, to be perfectly honest, turn myself on.

I scooch the towel lower down my hips, cinch it a little tighter, and begin to get restless for company. I call the number of the taxi driver but no one answers and it doesn’t click to voice mail. I do this thirty or so times in the next hour. I put what’s left of the bag in an ashtray and thrill to what seems like an endless amount. I’m sloppy as I pack these hits. The bedspread and floor are soon speckled with crumbs. I know that at some point I will be on my knees picking them up, trying to tell the difference between crack crumbs and other debris. There will never be a time when I smoke crack that doesn’t end with me on my knees, sometimes for hours — hunched over carpets, rugs, linoleum, tile — sifting desperately through lint and cat litter and dirt, fingering the floor, like a madman, for crumbs. I know this is where it will end up. As I pack those lazy crumb-scattering hits in the beginning, I will, each time, think of the floor like a retirement account. Little bits neglected into a place where I will seek them out later. It will comfort me to know there is somewhere to go when the bag empties, something to do while I’m waiting for the next delivery. But in the beginning, in the abundant beginning, this will always seem a long way off.

In the room at the Newark Airport Marriott, as in most rooms where there is crack, porn flickers on the television. This time it’s straight and soft and on Pay-per-view. I pay for all six movies and flip between them as one scene disappoints or dulls. I have drunk the small bottle of white wine, the two beers, and both small bottles of vodka from the minibar by the time I realize I need to get back to the airport and onto the plane. Since there is still a large pile of drugs left in the ashtray, I wonder whether I should go at all.

But I do. I let my stem cool and wrap it in a wad of tissue paper. I gather the two rocks and the remaining crumbs from the ashtray and put them back in the mini zip-lock they came in. I ditch the towel, scramble into my clothes, and shove the pipe, bag, and lighter into the front pocket of my jeans. I scan the room a dozen times. Clean every surface and pick up whatever crumbs I can from the floor. I unpack the bag and pipe and lighter at least three times to smoke just-one-more-hit before leaving, to get just the right high to face the lobby and the airport. I leave less than an hour to check in and get on the plane. Noah has called three or four times, but I have not picked up, nor have I listened to his messages.

I don’t bother checking out. I go straight to the taxi stand and get in the only cab there. The driver is a big black guy — fat but muscular, linebacker-style. Forty, maybe fifty. The stem, still hot from heavy use in the room minutes before, burns in my jeans pocket like a little oven. Of course I ask him if he parties. He says he does, and I ask him if he ever smokes rock. Sure do, he says, and right then, within the first minute of getting into the cab, I know that I am not getting on the plane. That I will probably never make it to Berlin.

So let’s hang out, I say to the linebacker behind the wheel, and he says, Sure thing. As we edge up to the Continental departures drop-off, I tell him to head back to the hotel, that I’ll catch a later flight. He doesn’t question or hesitate, just pulls away from the terminal and says, again, Sure thing. I call Continental’s 800 number and tell them I’m sick and can’t make the flight and could they transfer the ticket to the next night. Unbelievably, they can and they do. I am booked in a first-class seat the next night at eight. Acres of time, a bag of crack, company lined up, and a hotel less than a minute away. I’ve just missed two flights, e-mailed Kate and relinquished any say or stake in our agency, tossed my career down the chute, and stood up my beloved and no doubt frantic boyfriend. I’ve done all these things and I couldn’t be happier.

I leave a message on Noah’s cell phone saying they canceled the second flight and that I will be flying out tomorrow. I speak slowly and calmly, with just a little can-you-believe-it annoyance so as to seem normal and not high. Once I’ve left the message, I turn the phone off so that I don’t have to hear it ring when he calls back.

Later, the taxi driver and I sit in his cab behind a 7-Eleven somewhere in Newark. He’s anxious about being seen in the hotel because he picks people up and drops them off there every day. I pack his hit — small because there is precious little left — and as he lights up, I tell him how horny I get when I smoke. He nods in agreement as he exhales, and soon zippers come down — mine first, then his. I take a hit and he holds himself and talks about his wife, how she blows him but never wants to fuck. I inhale so hard that I burn my forefinger and thumb. I should be over the Atlantic right now, I think, but instead I’m behind a 7-Eleven, in the shadow of a Newark, New Jersey, overpass. What I want is the blurry oblivion of body-crashing sex, and instead I get a gloomy jerk-off session without enough drugs to get either of us high. As the bag empties, I start to feel shaky and it occurs to me that I’ve gone nearly a week without sleep. It’s ten thirty p.m. and my flight tomorrow evening isn’t until eight. I ask the taxi driver if he knows where to score more and of course he doesn’t. I hide one last rock in the small front pocket of my jeans so there will be something when I get to the hotel room. I start thinking about whether I should go back to the city — to Mark’s, or to a hotel somewhere in Manhattan where I can call Happy. But the city seems time zones away. And if I go there, I know there will be no turning back, no chance of making it to Berlin.

The taxi driver drops me off at the Marriott, and I call Happy the second I get to the room. After much haggling, he agrees to drive out to the hotel, but only if I will spend at least $800 to make it worthwhile. I say no problem.

It is just after eleven when Happy and I speak. At eleven fifty he calls me from the parking lot to say he’s there. I can’t remember his ever delivering this quickly in Manhattan. I leave the room, take the elevator down to get cash from the ATM in the empty lobby, walk as slowly and calmly as I can, past the check-in desk and out into the parking lot, where his red minivan idles. My heart slams in my chest and my throat is so thick with fear I can barely speak as I hop into the front seat. Happy, as usual, is wearing his white sweatpants and plain black hooded sweatshirt. The only thing missing are the large earphones that usually ring his neck. He’s Dominican, in his early thirties, and we never say much to each other beyond amounts, addresses, and number of stems. He is always calm, and even though he’s driven all the way out to an airport hotel from Manhattan, tonight he’s no different. His movements are slow and patient as he counts out the sixteen bags, and he asks no questions as he hands me two clean stems. I shove it all in my front two pockets, thank him for coming out so fast, and head back to the hotel.

If anyone had stopped to watch me go to the cash machine and withdraw stacks of bills, several times because of the $200 transaction limit, then head out to an idling van with tinted windows, and return minutes later with bulging pockets, it wouldn’t take much imagination to understand what had just transpired. As obvious and sloppy as I know the whole operation is, I know that once I get back to the room and take a big hit off one of the crystal-clear new stems, everything will be okay. That all the grim and alarming truths barking loudly around me will vanish in a blast of smoke.

And so they do. It’s one o’clock and I have a spectacular pile of crack in the little ashtray on the nightstand. This is the most I have ever had on my own, and I know I will smoke every last bit of it. I wonder if somewhere in that pile is the crumb that will bring on a heart attack or stroke or seizure. The cardiac event that will deliver all this to an abrupt and welcome halt. My chest pounds, my fingers are singed, I fill my lungs with smoke.