Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

Complicated Theater

There is a bar in the Newark Airport Marriott. It’s almost midnight and I phone the front desk and find out that last call is at one. I shower and shave and clean up as best I can before going down for a drink and company. I put in a new pair of contacts because when I’m getting high, no matter how much water I drink or how many eyedrops I empty into my eyes, the lenses dry up and pop out. I have packed four boxes of contacts for this trip, and since I’ve been in the hotel, I have already replaced the left one once and the right one twice. I know I will have to be more careful but as with everything else — drugs, money in my bank account, time — at this point there seems more than enough to last. I wear my navy cashmere turtleneck because it’s thick and cabled and hides my rickety frame; it is also expensive and, I think, obscures the cracked-out truth of me. I wear my jeans, and even though I am now cinching my belt to its last hole, I still need to tuck the front of the sweater in to keep them from falling down. I know I will have to find a leather shop in Berlin to punch new holes.

Once I get dressed, I pace through the routine of taking a hit, guzzling a glass of vodka, going to the mirror to make sure I look okay, messing with my hair until I give up and put on the Parks & Rec Department cap. I start to get warm and a little horny and restless in my clothes, and I take my sweater off, lie down on the bed, turn on some porn, and jerk off. I wallow in the little patch of dizzy pleasure for a few minutes, and as it fades and I pour another vodka to cut the speedy buzz and mellow out the high, I think, Just one more, a big one this time to kick up my courage. And so one more. I put my sweater back on, fuss in front of the mirror, squeeze a few eyedrops in, pat down my hair, put on my cap, yank on my jeans, and before I know it I’m on the bed again, shirtless and shimmering and enjoying the short while before I need my stem, another drink, and just a little more time before I leave the room.

I finally make it downstairs to the bar and am immediately disappointed that the place is nearly empty and dotted with a few couples and business colleagues traveling together. I don’t see the vulnerable and restless loner I’m looking for — that magical kindred partner in crime, game for a long night.

I slam three or four vodkas and begin to get shaky. More than twenty minutes without a hit is pushing it, and I’ve been downstairs for at least half an hour. Vodka usually eases that jittery feeling, smooths the little wrinkles of horror that slip in as a high teeters toward a crash, but it’s not helping much now. In any case, I’ve got the largest pile of crack I’ve ever seen waiting in the room and there is no good reason to stop. I signal the waiter as calmly as I can, leave two twenties and a ten with the $35 tab, and make for the elevator.

The night swirls with thick smoke, and I go through nine of the sixteen bags by early afternoon. I have never smoked so much in such a short time — two bags, shared with at least one other person would normally be a big night — and my skin tingles with heat and I’m aware of every breath and every heartbeat. All my clothes and toiletries are scattered around the hotel room and still I have too much left to smoke to make leaving the room seem like a good idea. I call the cabdriver from last night and leave a dozen messages. He doesn’t call back. It takes hours to pack and clean up, with hundreds of pit stops to smoke and drink along the way.

With three hours before the flight, I finally make my way down through the lobby. As I check out, I notice, near the door, five or six men between the ages of forty and sixty. Each has some distinct but unspecific quality — gray slacks, grim shoes, Windbreaker. Head-to-toe JCPenney. They mumble to one another and it seems — though it’s not exactly clear — that they all have earpieces with wires tucked discreetly into their shirts. There is no one else in the lobby. Only one cab waits at the taxi stand. I hear, That’s him, from one of them, or I think I do, as I make my way through the electric doors to the breezeway outside. As I get into the taxi, I notice all five or six of them leaving the hotel and heading toward two or three cars parked in front of the building. The driver gives me a knowing look and states more than asks, Continental, which is of course my airline, but how does he know? I ask him and he says, It’s Newark, everyone flies Continental. I look at his ID displayed in the Plexiglas partition and see that the photo, just like the one in the cab yesterday, is obscured by a piece of cardboard. I begin to panic. He starts the car, pulls away from the hotel, and as I watch the cars filled with the JCPenney guys follow us, I know I am, right now, crossing over from one world into another. I can already imagine myself remembering this cab ride, how it will signal the end of the time when I was free.

I’m about to be arrested. I have a bag of crack and a very used pipe folded in tissue in the front pocket of my jeans. I don’t see how I can get rid of it. Throw it out the window? No, these guys, whoever they are, are right on our tail. Stash it in the garbage when we pull up? No, same reason. Stuff it in the seat cushion of a car that is probably being driven by an undercover DEA agent? Obviously no. Swallow it? Maybe. But the glass pipe… what do I do with the glass pipe? These solutions flash and burst, one by one, again and again, as we crawl toward the terminal. None are possible.

Before I left the hotel room, it seemed like a good idea to bring along enough crack to get high in an airport bathroom just before getting on the plane. As the terminal comes into view, I realize, too late, how insane this idea is. We pull up to the drop-off zone and I notice that one of the cars is directly behind us. I look away as I get out of the cab and pay the driver, who seems indifferent to the fare.

As I make my way into the building, my only thought is when. When will they tap my shoulder and ask me to empty my pockets and open my bags. At the check-in counter? In the security line? The gate? It doesn’t seem possible that I’ll ever make it to the gate.

Pilots in their uniforms walk in their particular way toward their flights. I imagine their sunny families in the nice but not so affluent suburbs of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. Their sons who collect little model airplanes and show off by knowing all the names — Cessna, Piper Cub, Mooney, 747. I can see my father’s TWA captain’s uniform and hat hung up on the old-fashioned coatrack in his den and remember how handsome I thought he was when I was young. How he looked like a movie star in those dark pressed pants and crisp white shirts. My father. How did this happen, I imagine him asking when he hears about what is about to go down. How did it come to this, Willie?

There is little distance between the check-in counter and security. I have no idea what to do or where to go. If they’re going to arrest me, why haven’t they done it by now? I think of getting back in a cab and heading into the city, but I begin to doubt my perceptions. It must be the drugs, must be paranoia. I’m too small in the grand scheme of things, I reason, to warrant a battalion of JCPenney guys and a hotel stakeout.

I need to ditch the drugs and the pipe. I see a bathroom to the left of the security area and quickly make a beeline there. As I enter, it’s empty. Two stalls and three urinals. I go to a stall with the intention of flushing the bag and the pipe, but when I get in and close the door, I see the toilet has only a trickle of water and seems to be running without stop. It won’t flush. I check the next one and it’s the same. I think maybe they’ve disabled them so I can’t flush my stuff. I feel like a trapped animal. I hear someone enter and quickly pull down my jeans and sit on the toilet. Minutes pass and I barely move. I try not to make a sound at first but then realize that of course he can see my feet and that I should pretend to behave normally. As if I am going to the bathroom. Whoever entered doesn’t leave and I begin to imagine there is actually a whole SWAT team of DEA agents and police silently filling the room. It’s almost impossible not to peek under the stall to see if there are, as I fear, a sea of boots and shoes. But part of me also wants to prolong not knowing as long as possible. To my left is a toilet paper holder and I slowly tear off some sheets and go through the motions of wiping and the audible pantomime of actually using the toilet. At some point it occurs to me that the only thing I can do is wipe down the pipe and bag for fingerprints, wrap them in toilet paper, and place them under the plastic casing of the dispenser. It crosses my mind to throw the crack in the toilet, let it dissolve in the water and hope the residue disappears eventually; but there is something in me that holds back, that can’t bear to watch the drugs erode to nothing. I start imagining the difference in jail sentences — ten years with a bag of crack? probation with just a pipe? Still, I wipe down the pipe and bag, wrap them carefully in toilet paper, and stash it all in the dispenser. I do this as quietly as I can and then pull up my jeans, buckle my belt, and open the door to the stall as if it is the last free second of my life.

Standing against the wall, next to the entrance, is an airport security guard. He looks right at me as I walk to the sink to wash my hands. As I head out past him, he moves from the wall toward the stalls and our arms brush lightly against each other’s as I pass into the terminal and away from security, toward the escalator.

I try to keep calm as I descend into the baggage area. There is no doubt in my mind that the security guard has headed straight for the toilet dispenser. I don’t look back, but I can feel the eyes of a hundred cops and agents on me as I move past the carousels and up toward another escalator. I wander for twenty minutes or so before making my way back to the security area. I stand next to the stairs going up to the third floor and watch the long line of tourists and businessmen and students waiting to take their belts and shoes off before passing through the metal detectors. I see a man wearing gray slacks, a nylon pullover, and plain shoes. He’s one of the JCPenney guys from the hotel lobby who got in the car, and now he’s here, several feet away, looking right at me. Just past him, back toward the check-in counter, is an older woman, walking slowly, pulling a suitcase on wheels and talking into a cell phone. I notice the blandness of the suitcase, her shoes, her jacket. It’s kindred somehow with his. And then, in the minutes that follow, like seeing one water tower in a city skyline and then suddenly seeing them all, I see dozens of these people. Blandly dressed, middle-aged, suitcase-pulling, cell-phone-clutching zombies whose slow, deliberate movements all appear choreographed in response to mine.

I wander the airport for what seems like hours before getting in the line for security. I occasionally get brazen with some of the people I think are following me, look them squarely in the eye and smile, even joke several times that this must be a tedious assignment. They usually respond with a smirk or a rolled eye. At one point, when the tension is great, I imagine jumping from the third-floor balcony next to the escalator to avoid the arrest I know is coming. But the height looks too meager, not capable of causing more than a broken leg or two.

Later, bone-tired from hours of pacing the airport in a state of sustained panic and crashing from nearly a week of getting high, I finally turn to one of these guys, a younger one, and ask, Why don’t you just get it over with? to which he chuckles and says, It’s much more fun later, once you’re somewhere else. Just wait. I am certain he says this. I freeze at these words and decide finally to get in line, take my shoes and belt off, and go through the metal detector. It’s not possible that I will make it to the other side, and I’m now so wrung out that I just need it to be over.

But I make it through. I make it through and feel, briefly, cautiously, elated. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe it’s just the drugs, whose good effects have all fled, leaving the body that held them shattered and its mind delusional. I make it to the gate and the flight is already boarding. I hesitate a few times as I see, again, a few of the JCPenneys wandering around the seating area near the gate. The words of the younger Penney ring in my head but I am desperate for a vodka and somewhere in my bag are over-the-counter sleeping pills. If I can just crash in that big plush seat and pass out, I will be okay. If I can just get on that plane and away from these goons, I know I will be safe. So I march over to the check-in, hand the ticket agent my boarding pass, and get on.

My seat is on the aisle, in the second row to the right. Never has anything looked so welcoming. I sit down and begin to feel the high panic of the last two and a half hours slowly fade. I exhale and look out the window to the tarmac and ground crew loading luggage. This is the first time I realize that the bag I checked the day before was on a flight I never boarded. Worrying about a lost bag now seems like a lucky luxury and I decide not to think about it until I get to Berlin.

I stow my tote bag under the seat, sit back up, and close my eyes for a few minutes. Finally, I think, safe. And then, when I turn around to find a stewardess, the wind knocks out of me. I see them. The Penneys. One, two, three, four, at least five of them are sitting all throughout the cabin. At just this moment, one of the stewardesses leans down toward one and speaks softly. About me, no doubt. About the arrest about to take place in Amsterdam or Berlin. Or right here. Right now. The entire cabin suddenly seems to me like a set, like some elaborate stage prop created to replicate the first-class cabin of an airplane. The napkins seem to be flimsy fakes, the stewardesses actresses, and the Penneys androids — half human, half robot, emotionless and menacing.

One of the stewardesses is suddenly at my side. She asks, in a tone that sounds mocking and insincere, if I’d like a drink. I’m frightened by the Penneys, but I’m agitated by her. Angry, even. I ask her if the plane is, in fact, actually going to be landing in Amsterdam. She looks confused, but not as confused as I think she should look, so I ask, Don’t you think this is an awfully complicated piece of theater for just one person? She looks at me for a few seconds, excuses herself, and walks away. Moments later she returns with the captain, who politely asks me to gather my belongings and follow him off the plane. I can barely move. And even though I know this is the long-awaited arrest that’s been coming since I got in the car at the hotel, I am relieved when the captain puts his hand on my shoulder and says, Let’s go. Like a scolded kid, and with everyone in the cabin watching, I grab my bag and follow him off the plane.

But there is no arrest. Instead, the captain explains to me that after 9/11 they need to be cautious and that what I said to the stewardess alarmed her enough that they don’t feel comfortable having me on the flight. I notice his jacket, its hokey military mimicry — epaulets, stripes. Like everything on the plane, his uniform — shabby compared to the memory of my father’s — looks like a flimsy, slapped-together costume. He asks if I have been drinking, to which I answer yes, that I get nervous before flying and drank some to calm my nerves. How I form these thoughts and words, I have no idea. I apologize for alarming the stewardess and just as I am about to make my way back toward security, a man in a white shirt with a binder filled with papers arrives. He says he is the head of operations for Continental at Newark and instantly apologizes to me for the confusion. He asks the captain to reconsider and it’s immediately clear that, for some reason, this guy really wants me on the flight. The captain respectfully declines and begins to get visibly annoyed when the operations guy presses him further. I stay very quiet as this plays out. The operations guy finally gives up and the captain wishes me luck and heads back to the cockpit. I watch him disappear into the jetway and have to suppress the sudden urge to call out to him. I have no idea what I’d say if I did, but I know that when he’s gone, I want him to come back.

The operations guy asks to see my passport and continues to be apologetic. I tell him it’s fine, that I’ll just go home and fly out tomorrow. He tells me not to worry, that he’ll have me on another plane tonight. He steps away, makes a few phone calls on his cell, just out of earshot, and comes back to say that he’s booked me, first class, on an Air France flight that goes to Berlin through Paris. It’s all taken care of, and the flight departs in forty-five minutes from a nearby gate. Another person with binders arrives. The little group escorts me to an Air France counter, where a ticket is produced, and then to the gate. I am there for less than ten minutes when the flight begins to board. At this point things have moved so swiftly that I’ve barely been able to keep pace. I do, though, have a strong sense that someone — not just the operations guy from Continental — wants me on a flight tonight.

And then I see them. Three Penneys standing near the gate. Glancing my way, holding tickets, huddled together like the Three Stooges of badly dressed espionage. At first, I’m angry. And then the last words of the young Penney from before roar through my head.

Just wait.

The people continue to board the plane over the next fifteen minutes until the waiting area around the gate is nearly empty. A few last-minute stragglers wander over, and several people rush to the ticket agent with their boarding passes, relieved not to have missed the flight. Finally, there are just the three Penneys and me. The ticket agent speaks to them. They remain near the desk but don’t board. One of the ticket agents comes up to me and asks if I have a ticket for this flight and tells me that it’s the last call for boarding. I tell her I get panic attacks and am not sure I’ll be flying tonight. I ask if everyone is on board and she gestures to the Penneys and says there are a few left to get on but the flight is nearly fully boarded. I tell her I need a minute. Again, as before, I feel as if I am at some terribly important juncture. If I go, I might get arrested in Paris or Berlin. If I stay, I might get arrested here. If I go and don’t get arrested, all might be fine after a few rough days with Noah. If I stay here and somehow don’t get arrested, I will keep using. This I know.

So I stand up, turn away from the gate, and expect to get arrested. I look back once and see two of the Penneys walk over to see if I’m walking back toward security. I don’t turn back again and start heading out toward baggage claim. I know that I won’t make it to the taxi stand. I’m about to be swarmed with Penneys, police, airport security, and God knows who else. The last lines from a novel I worked with years ago somehow surface through the panic. It would be now, they read. It would be now.

I fish for my cell phone and see that it’s on its last bar, which is blinking red. I call David. It’s after eleven and his wife, Susie, picks up. I apologize and tell her it’s important and ask if David is there. They are clearly in bed. He picks up, asks what’s going on. I tell him I’m about to get arrested for drugs at Newark Airport and that I need him to find a good lawyer. I’m probably shouting when I tell him he has to move fast because he shushes me and tells me to calm down. He asks where I am in the airport and I tell him I’m about to pass out of the departure gate into the baggage claim area. He says to just stay on the line and get in a taxi and come home. I tell him I’m not going to make it to the taxi and then the line goes silent. The battery dies. I keep walking. No one is stopping me. I cross the departure terminal and into baggage claim. Suddenly the Penneys have all disappeared. I’m convinced they’ve raced out of the terminal through the upper level and are waiting at the taxi stand. I walk out of the baggage claim area, through the automatic doors, and cross the street. A taxi comes up. I get in. The driver asks, Where to? I say, One Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, but because I expect we’ll be pulled over before we leave the airport, I warn him it’s going to be a short ride. He grumbles and pulls away from the curb. I look at his ID and the photo is unobstructed and shows the same gray-haired, bearded Indian man driving the cab.

I’m floating in a state of shock. Every second that passes, every inch the taxi moves forward without sirens and the glare of flashing lights seems like a miracle. Then it occurs to me that they’re all probably just waiting at the apartment. I ask the driver if I can use his cell phone. He passes it back and I call David. I’m in the cab, I tell him, but I don’t know that we’ll make it to the building. He says he’ll meet me in the lobby and to calm down. I agree as the taxi speeds toward the tunnel, back into the city. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far. I can picture the spectacle of police cars and unmarked DEA vehicles surrounding One Fifth, lights strobing and tenants’ faces lit with appalled interest. I wonder if Trevor, my favorite doorman, is on the desk tonight and what he’ll think when I get cuffed and carted off.

But there is no spectacle. Just David, with bed hair, bundled in a coat, waiting in the lobby. He looks exhausted and annoyed and says he’s spending the night. In the morning we go to breakfast and he asks which rehab I want him to take me to and despite the grim concern I see on his face I answer, None.

We sit in the front window at Marquet, on stools, and the day outside and everyone in it flashes like a taunt. This is a shiny world, I think, for the Davids and the Noahs, for people whose lives I can only see as unblemished and lucky. A place where I’ve been allowed a visit but cannot stay. A place I’ve already left.

David walks out of the restaurant and doesn’t look back. Whatever his last words are, I don’t remember, but they are quick and clear and sad.