Coreyography: A Memoir (26 page)

The Australia trip turns into something of a disaster. The publicity portion goes fine—I do Australia’s version of the
Today
show—and we’re put up in penthouse suites with impressive views of the harbor and the Sydney Opera House, but then confusion sets in. Two days before I’m scheduled to appear on stage, my publicist informs me that the entire show has been cancelled, something about disappointing ticket sales. Then we discover that our hotel rooms—paid for by the concert promoters—haven’t actually been paid for at all. Neither have our first-class transpacific plane tickets. I get my uncle Merv on the phone (since, as a successful concert promotor, he’s been bringing groups like the Beach Boys to Australia for years), and he pulls some strings to get us home safely. I would have been devastated but, despite her insistence that we remain “just friends,” Vanessa and I are officially together. Amid the chaos, romance had bloomed.

*   *   *

Vanessa and I
are inseparable. I take her everywhere with me. Which is how, two months after we met, we’re in Vegas—in town for the Consumer Electronics Show—drunk, and talking about getting married.

“How much do you love me?” she cooes, downing another glass of Champagne.

“More than anything,” I tell her, and I mean it. I’ve always been a fall-in-love-fast, love-at-first-sight kinda guy, but what I feel for Vanessa is unlike anything I’ve ever known.

“Enough to marry me?” she asks.

“Yes.”

She seems satisfied with my answer, which gives me the confidence to return the question. “Do you love me enough to marry me?”

She nods.

“If you would marry me right now,” I say, “I would marry you. You are everything I’ve ever wanted.”

She sets down her glass. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Next thing you know, we’re at the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel picking out a wedding package. It’s hokey and ridiculous. We’re an Elvis impersonator short of total Vegas cliché, and I can’t stop giggling.

“What’s so funny?” she says.

I tell her I’m just really happy.

The next morning, hungover and a little worse for wear, we’re back on a plane to L.A. We’re coming in for a landing, I can see the runway at LAX from my window, when Vanessa rests her head on my shoulder. “I can’t wait to tell all of our friends,” she says. “This is going to be so funny.”

“I know, right? No one is going to believe us.” As I’m picturing the looks on all of our friends’ faces, it occurs to me that we shouldn’t share news of the wedding with the fans. I’m afraid having a wife will be bad for my image, since my fan base is made up entirely of love-struck, fanatical teens.

“Oh, I’m totally fine with that,” she says. “I mean, it’s not like this is a real marriage, anyway.”

I turned to face her abruptly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’re not
really
married.”

“Of course we’re really married. We got the license and everything.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like we’re going to live together or anything. We did it as a joke, right? For our friends?”

Her words take the wind out of me. I remembered, vaguely, laughing about how our friends would be shocked, but I didn’t think the entire marriage was a joke. I had meant it when I told her I loved her.

“We’ll keep dating and everything,” she continues, “but I’m not going to move in with you. We have to be practical. We’ve only known each other a few months.”

I thought it was a little late to be thinking practically. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if you’re going to take this whole thing so seriously, maybe we should just get it annulled right now.”

I don’t want an annulment. So I agree, against my better judgment, to take things slow.

*   *   *

Back when all
the bad press started, I had signed on to do a Disney movie. Image in trouble? Sign up to work with the Mouse. The film is called
Exile
—it’s loosely based on
Lord of the Flies
, and it’ll air on NBC’s The Wonderful World of Disney series, as an original Sunday-night movie. We’ll be shooting on the deserted side of Catalina Island, and I already know I’m not going to be able to find drugs there. I’ve only been doing heroin for a few months—Vanessa doesn’t even know about this yet—but my appetite has proved voracious; I’m already up to ten balloons a day. In order to make it through the one-week on-location shoot, I figure I’ve got to detox. So, I gather the strength to tell Vanessa that her young “husband,” if you can even call me that, has a secret heroin problem. She is livid, she feels duped, but she agrees to stick by me. Then, I have my cousin Michael and Tony Burnham sweep me off to the Pasadena Recovery Center. Tony is so worried about me he’s got tears in his eyes. “I don’t want to lose you,” he keeps saying. “I’m afraid you’re going to kill yourself.”

I assure him that it’s not that bad, but this is just one more lie in a web I’ve built up around me. I had lied to Drew during the course of our entire romantic relationship—at fifteen, she’d already been in and out of rehab, twice, and had gotten herself sober, while I was off doing heroin and crack cocaine behind her back. I lied to Vanessa, let her get swept off her feet by a closet junkie. And I’d lied to the whole world by starring in
15 and Getting Straight,
and preaching about the dangers of drugs. I was terrified of rehab, but I knew it was where I needed to be.

I think I lasted about ten hours.

Since the emancipation—even before that, really—I’ve surrounded myself with a surrogate family. Sure, many of them are molesters, abusers, and addicts themselves, but the result is that I’ve never,
ever
spent even one night alone. (At least, not one I can remember.) And now I’m in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV, and I’m terrified. I can’t take it. I’m yanking IVs out of my arm and throwing a total, meltdown-style tantrum. I sign an involuntary discharge notice, and get myself back home.

Back on Picturesque Drive, Ron’s managed to score some Quaaludes. “We haven’t done these in forever, man. Not since the days with your dad.” Jon thinks the Quaaludes will be a great way for us to avoid doing heroin. I eat a few, and my body instantly turns to mush. I’m laying across the steps that descend to the sunken living room, too drugged up to really move. Somehow I manage to stumble into bed. An hour later, I wake up. Ron is at me, tugging on my pants.

“You motherfucker!” I lunge for him, but I’m so fucked up, I fall out of bed, flat on my face. I’m screaming at him, “If you ever come back here, you’re dead. I’ll kill you. I will fucking kill you!” I’m screaming at him from the floor.

Ron is finally gone for good. One week later, I get a call from the check-cashing place down the street. Ron had been stealing checks and passing himself off as me. Despite the theft and the betrayal, my cousin Michael remains friends with him. I can’t understand it, even though it’s the exact same situation with me and Corey Haim and Tony Burnham. I’m still friendly with Tony because I’m too screwed up to connect the dots, to make that mental leap.

I move into a three-bedroom apartment in Beverly Hills. Vanessa stays over often enough, but I can’t get her to move in with me. Therefore, I’m jealous, I accuse her of lying and cheating, I hear vague rumors about her dating other people, I’m convinced that she’s started a relationship with Prince. I somehow make it through
Exile,
but by the end I’m going into withdrawal cold turkey. I feel like I’m actually dying.

It’s a spectacular tailspin. I’m flaking on meetings right and left. I’m supposed to audition for
Toy Soldiers,
which will feature my friends and fellow costars Wil Wheaton, Keith Coogan, and Sean Astin, but I blow off the president of Island Pictures. On our second meeting, I flub all my lines. Vanessa and I are a mess; I’m lazy about hiding my habit, and she’s finding balloons shoved under the carpet and crack pipes half-buried in the trash.

By the time
Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Forever
comes around at the dawn of 1990—my first direct-to-video movie—I’m in a freefall. We’re on set one day when the first assistant director comes over and discretely tells me to wipe my nose, because I’ve got brown gunk leaking out of it. Instead of thanking him and taking care of the problem, I make a huge production. I spin an elaborate story about a blown tire, subsequent work on my car, and engine grease—it’s the engine grease that’s rubbed off on my nose—while the crew looks at me with disgust.

Soon, I’m running out of money. I’ve got a three-hundred-dollar-a-day heroin habit, and I’m spending money as fast as I make it. In lieu of cash, I start hawking my personal belongings to dealers on the street. Before I know it, I’m selling my CDs on a corner in exchange for crack rocks. Still, I haven’t hit bottom.

*   *   *

In another attempt
to salvage an unsalvageable relationship, I decide to take Vanessa on a three-day trip to Big Bear; it’s a two- to three-hour drive up to San Bernardino County. Of course, I’ll need enough heroin to get me through the long weekend, so I make another stop downtown on my way to some audition at 20th Century Fox. I’ve never had an official connection; I know the right streets, where to find the Mexican gangbangers I usually buy from. These guys keep balloons in their mouths so that if the police roll up, they can swallow them. I find my guy, and he spits out what I need. I buy twenty-five balloons, well over two grams in total.

On the way to the audition, I tear one open. The heroin tastes like cocoa powder, and I realize that I’ve been sold bunk. I’m on my way
back
downtown, in an attempt to haggle a trade, when I see an unmarked car flip its lights. I pull over and watch the uniformed officer approaching through my rearview mirror.

“Have you been drinking today?” he asks as he fingers my license and registration.

I’m actually genuinely surprised by the question. “No, sir.”

“Why is there an open bottle of alcohol in your car?”

I look over at the passenger seat. In the well, rolling around the floor, is a half-drunk bottle of tequila I hadn’t even realized was there.

“I’m going to need you to step out of the car.”

I’ve got twenty-five balloons of heroin stuffed into one of my socks, and I’m terrified. I take a seat on the curb and watch as a second officer opens my glove box and pulls out a joint. An open bottle and marijuana are already enough for an arrest, but they soon find a single balloon that’s fallen beneath the driver’s seat. Every other time I’ve dealt with the cops, I’ve managed to talk my way out of trouble. I’ve already avoided an arrest for possession, and even got one officer to
return
my confiscated weed. But these guys are loving it; they are reveling in the fact that I’m up against the wall and I can tell, no matter what, that I’m completely and totally fucked. Still, I’m not above begging.

“Please, sir. Give me a chance. This is going to ruin my career.”

“Your career?” he snorts. “What’s your career?”

“I’m an actor.”

“An actor? What movies have you been in?” Now he’s looking me up and down.

“Uh,
The Goonies
? I was in
The Goonies
.”

“
The Goonies
?” I think I recognize a flicker of recognition in his face. “Is that the one with a whole bunch of kids, and they ride around on their bikes and find a pirate ship or something like that?”

“Yep, that’s it,” I say. I feel something that’s not quite relief flood over my entire body. Maybe this is going to work.

“Never heard of it,” he deadpans. My stomach sinks right back down, so low it feels like it’s in my feet.

“What else?”

“Uh,
Stand by Me
?” I offer half-heartedly.

“
Stand by Me
 … what’s that one about?”

“Four kids that go looking for a dead body? Please, sir, have some mercy on me.”

“Wait, is that the one with the kids walking along the railroad tracks? It was a Steven King book?”

“Yes!” I say.

“Never heard of that, either.”

I’m handcuffed now, sitting in the backseat of the unmarked squad car. There’s another guy back here with me, with a ratty beard and tattered clothes. He looks homeless. I watch as the cops continue searching my car, when the man turns to me and says, “Tough break, huh? Well, you gotta deal with it. You gotta pay the price.”

“I’ve got to get out of this,” I tell him. “This is going to ruin my life.”

I manage to lift my foot high enough so that, handcuffed, I can reach into my sock, retrieve the balloons, and shove them, one by one, behind the seat. “Please don’t tell,” I say to my companion.

“Don’t worry, man. No problem.”

When we pull into the station, I watch as the bearded man gets out of the car and whispers something in the officer’s ear.

“Really?” the officer says. “Thanks for the tip.” Then he turns to his partner. “Looks like we’re gonna hafta pull out the bench. Our friend here’s left us a little present.”

I’m booked on suspicion of possession with intent to sell, on account of the large amount of heroin I’d been carrying.

*   *   *

On the very
same night, all the way on the opposite coast, somewhere down in Daytona Beach, Florida, another former child actor has gotten himself into trouble. Danny Bonaduce has been arrested for attempting to purchase cocaine, and the twin arrests explode in the press. By the time Vanessa bails me out, sometime after 4:00
A.M.
, I’m deep into withdrawals, scared shitless, and convinced that I’ve completely destroyed my career. I think about all the kids that watch my movies and think I’m somebody cool. I know I’ve let absolutely everyone down. I figure my friends will bail on me. I’m sure that Michael Jackson, with his still squeaky clean image, will never speak to me again.

I know I’m going to need some serious firepower in the courtroom. Dick Donner, in a spectacular display of compassion, hooks me up with a lawyer, Richard Hirsch, and even fronts me some money for my impending legal fees. Richard, in turn, introduces me to Bob Timmins, the drug counselor with a proven track record of helping downtrodden celebrities get themselves clean. Bob immediately sits me down and talks about getting me straight.