Crash and Burn (14 page)

The place shines so brightly that you can probably see it from space, but as we approached it that night in February of 2009, the helipad and landing tower were black as night. I had no idea at first because I was sleeping (I mean nodding out), but apparently no one had gotten the memo that we were arriving by air. We circled for about twenty minutes while Mike tried to get someone on the radio and Teddy called people on his cell phone. If you’ve never been in a helicopter, let me tell you why everyone wears headsets as big and soundproof as the earmuffs they hand out at shooting ranges: helicopters are fucking loud! They’re basically an engine with seats below it, so I imagine that those phone calls Teddy made sounded like a guy calling from the inside of a vacuum cleaner. At least he tried; he’s not a bad kid, Teddy.

We kept circling, which started making me nauseous, and woke me up from my “nap.” I go in circles enough in my mind that I don’t enjoy doing it in real life, so I turned up the sound on my headset and used the microphone to ask Mike what was going on. I was actually really excited for this gig, enough that I’d brought a decent set of clothes to wear, which is something I never did at that point. I was proud of myself for taking that extra time, to think about my appearance, and to think ahead, so as a gesture, this outfit meant a lot to me. I sure as hell wanted to be sure I had enough time to change into it.

“What the fuck!” I shouted into the microphone attached to my headset. “Why aren’t we on the ground yet?”

“No one’s in the tower, Art; I have nowhere to land,” Mike said. “We’re waiting for them to turn the lights on or else we’re going down in complete darkness.”

“Really? I’ve got serious money on the line, Mike. I have to start on time.”

As we kept circling I got progressively more pissed off; they kept calling and radioing and nothing happened. It seemed like an eternity passed before we were finally told that it would take half an hour to get the lights on—which would put me onstage over twenty-five minutes late.

“Oh, fuck that!” I yelled. “Mike, if we don’t get our asses on the ground and get me to that fucking stage, I am losing money, which means none of you are getting paid. You’ve got to land us right now!”

Mike looked over his shoulder at me with a funny look in his eye. “Okay, man, I can do that. Just don’t expect it to be smooth.”

“Well, don’t kill us either, dude,” I said, “I have to be onstage on time, alive. Is this going to be some
Apocalypse Now
shit?”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning maniacally. “Look at them breaks, soldier!”

He flew about a half mile from Foxwoods to a space where he thought he could put the whirlybird down. It was ballsy because he had no idea for sure what was down there, but he didn’t hesitate. He brought us down slowly, looking out for power lines, until it was clear that we were above an empty field. There was a cabin nearby and nothing else, so there was plenty of room to land, so he went for it successfully. We got out of the copter in the dark, trying to figure out where to find the nearest road. Out of nowhere a huge flashlight went on and blinded us.

Then we heard the sound of two shotguns being chambered.

“Now, tell me something, boys,” this grizzly voice said. “Who the fuck are you? You a bunch of terrorist motherfuckers?”

Beyond the light I could see three redneck biker types straight out of Central Casting: shaggy beards, cutoff jean jackets, overweight. They were a father and two sons, two of them holding shotguns, one holding the flashlight, all of them with open cans of Bud in their free hands. Clearly they thought the race war started by Barack Obama
had arrived in their backyard, just as their dear old pappy had predicted.

“Guys, it’s okay,” I said, with my hands up. “Relax . . . I’m a comedian.”

I was hoping they’d recognize me. None of them did.

Even now I don’t think any amount of heroin I could have done earlier that night can justify a statement as retarded as
It’s okay, I’m a comedian
. They should have shot me on sight, and if we ever cross paths again I will understand if they decide to. But as these things often do in a way no one can plan, my idiotic off-the-cuff statement broke the ice.

It took me a few minutes to convince them that I wasn’t lying, that I really was a comedian and that I had to be onstage at Foxwoods in fifteen minutes. After a round of pointed cross-examination (“You ever been on TV?” “Why we ain’t never heard of you?” “You ever met Dane Cook?”) they eventually believed me. When I told them that if they drove me to the casino they’d be my guests at the show, which included all the Bud they could drink, we became fast friends. I’ve got to admit, I’m not the best negotiator—I probably could have gotten myself a ride for two cases of Bud and nothing more if I pushed it. Then again, if I were Jeff Foxworthy, no bargaining would have been necessary at all. If I were Jeff Foxworthy I could have walked out of the helicopter and just said,
Hey, guys, you might just be a redneck if you land a copter in someone’s backyard in the dark!
and they would have taken me right to the venue and named their next out-of-wedlock firstborn after me. Looking back I can say one thing without a doubt: I was high enough that I assumed entertainers on their way to Foxwoods landed in their backyard all the time, so I didn’t understand how they weren’t used to this. And that is the most liberal, douche bag, Hollywood assumption I’ve ever made about anything in my entire life.

“So this probably happens a lot, right? You guys should start charging for helicopter parking.”

There was a long pause. “This ain’t never happened before,” one of them said. “You’re the first set of numb-nut dumb-fucks to ever set a copter down here. You’re lucky we like you. If we didn’t, we’d have filled you full of buckshot for trespassing already.”

They loaded all of us into a pickup truck and drove us down a dark dirt road to Foxwoods, where I got onstage with about two minutes to spare. I saw the promoter afterward, who was having such a great time by that point that I’m not even sure he knew how close a call the entire night was. He thought it was hilarious that we’d circled the tower and had to land in a field, as if it were an orchestrated entrance, or some bonus joke I’d worked out for the night. That guy had to be stoned out of his mind.

I would have made more of a stink about the helipad being out of commission, but how could I be mad after he handed me a check for $90K plus another for $20K as a bonus? Money makes all things okay because it’s the great equalizer; that shade of green is everyone’s favorite color. So after I got paid, everything that went wrong up to that point transformed into a joke. And the night wasn’t over: I had heroin left to do, which was a good thing since I had a book signing that took three hours, during which I drank all the Jack Daniel’s I could handle. Finally, at three a.m. I was done and we got a ride back to the
Deliverance
brothers’ backyard, where Mike was waiting to fly us home.

Before we took off I gave those hicks five hundred bucks for driving us to the gig and letting us use their yard, and for the first time in my life I had someone refuse to take a tip. I’m not kidding; these guys were living in a log cabin but somehow they were insulted by me offering them that kind of money. They probably thought the cash was fake. I’m serious, they looked at it and at me like I was an alien holding space coins in my three-fingered hand. It was awkward; they just stared at it for a minute then huddled up and talked about it before saying no. I’m not sure they’d ever seen that much cash in one place before. They didn’t trust it, like I was offering them exploding
gum. I guess they figured that all comedians aside from Dane Cook and Jeff Foxworthy are clowns, so our money must be as useless and fake as balloon animals.

————

That’s how it began, and soon after that, Mike started doing security for me too.

What Mike could provide symbolized freedom to me, but Mike the guy was someone else. He knew what was going on with me and was disgusted by it, and since he’s a smart dude who has seen a lot, he didn’t come at me right away about this. He silently observed me for a while and he kept his opinions to himself and minded his own business. But after we’d been on the road together a good few months, one night in Niagara Falls, after we’d flown up to the gig in one of his planes, he took me aside.

“Artie, why don’t we have dinner together tonight?” he said.

I did my usual thing: “Nah, man, that sounds great, but I’m gonna crash; it’s been a long week. I gotta rest up for Monday.”

Mike didn’t flinch, and he didn’t let it go. “Do me a favor, Art, just eat with me. We can do it in your room. Just real quick, then you can go to sleep.”

We went up to this big suite that the promoter had given me and we ordered a couple of cheeseburgers, and after a while Mike said what he wanted to say.

“Look, Art, I know what’s going on with you,” he said. “I know you’re doing drugs and I know the type of drugs you’re doing. And I know you’re battling them. I know this not because I’ve done it but because I have friends who have. I also have friends I’ve helped get off it.”

Mike mentioned a well-known rock-and-roll guy whom I am a very big fan of (whose name I can’t mention, sorry), and he told me that he was able to successfully get that guy clean.

“That’s great, man,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “But you have to be ready.”

“Yeah.”

“And I don’t think you are right now,” he said. “But if you are ever ready—I mean really ready—let me know. I’m not pressuring you, I’m not judging you, just if you’re ever ready, let me know, because I can do it. I can get you better.”

“I appreciate that, man,” I said. And I meant it.

I liked Mike for being straightforward about it, and I liked him for being both all-business and very understanding about what I was dealing with. I could tell he hated it and I could tell he wanted to shake me out of it. I could also tell that should I call on him, he’d be there for me. I knew he’d give it his all and he’d be compassionate and that he’d never be a pushover. That was something that I knew was nonnegotiable when it came to me; whoever got me clean had to be firm and incapable of being swayed by me. I appreciated Mike for telling me very clearly that I had to be ready and for insinuating just how “ready” that meant. He understood that I wasn’t, because he probably knew better than I did at the time that I had a lot more fucking up to do.

Even though I didn’t let Mike take control of getting me clean for quite a while, that didn’t stop me from telling friends and family who knew I was starting to lose it that he was helping me out with the drugs. The guy has the kind of aura about him that people just trust, so he served this purpose perfectly. I also began to hide my drug use from him, choosing to play this cat-and-mouse game, pretty much hoping that I’d fool him along with everyone else in my life. I wasn’t fooling him at all, of course, because Mike knew something that everyone should commit to memory: there is no way in hell that anything or anyone can keep an addict from what they want. The relationship between addict and addiction is impossible to penetrate, whether their poison is booze, gambling, crack, sex, opiates, chewing gum, or collecting fucking teddy bears. A true addict will be faithful to their addiction above all; it’s the only thing they’ll never cheat on
or lie to. And nothing will ever change that relationship unless the addict, and only the addict, decides to change things and break up with their main squeeze—addiction. There is no magic pill and there is no easy solution, and that’s just the way it is. This unassailable truth is based on a premise that is so simple that you’ll thank me for sharing it with you if you don’t already live your life by it: you can’t change anyone, so don’t bother trying. I don’t care if you don’t believe me on this point, because I know for a fact that someday you’ll have to admit I’m right. If I were you I’d do it now. Humans are all the same and people are going to do what they want—addicts especially—until they, and only they, decide that they don’t want to do what they’re doing every day anymore. Whether you’re an addict or just someone who knows one, trust me, you’ll all be a lot happier once you stop trying to believe anything but what I just told you.

By this point in my life, the cycle that ended up dragging me under in the spring of 2009 had begun, fueled by my addiction to opiates and aided by my inability to say no to any professional opportunity. I literally said yes to every meeting, gig, or business-related introduction that came my way. Which was ridiculous because I could barely get through the week. It just goes to show how much drugs can make you think you’re doing great when you’re really limping along looking like week-old trash. Most of the business obligations I signed up for weren’t even necessary! Some were a complete waste of time and only a handful were golden opportunities, and all of those, for the most part, I fucked up. The following is the story of the one I fucked up most royally. And boy, did I.

The guy at the center of this story must remain unnamed; he’s the head of a very high-end, multibillion-dollar hedge fund. My friend’s wife was his executive assistant, and when she heard that I was looking for investors to put some capital into developing my website, she arranged a meeting for me with her boss. The moneyman was a fan of mine, both of my stand-up and my presence on the
Stern Show
, so potentially, our partnership was a natural fit. We met in his office,
which had the most beautiful view of Central Park I’d ever seen, and we talked about what I wanted to accomplish with the website and with my career beyond Stern, and we got along well enough that we made tentative plans to do some business together. We also agreed that this guy and his wife, plus my friend and his wife, would come see me do stand-up in Detroit in two weeks, and we’d all fly out together on the company jet. We were all chummy, agreeing to stay a few extra days in order to hit the town properly, which would include a run through Windsor, Ontario. For those who don’t know, just across the water from Detroit, in Canada, sits Windsor, a paradise of strip clubs and brothels full of beautiful women. I couldn’t wait.