Crash and Burn (6 page)

“What have I been doing?” he said. Then he started giggling.

“Yeah, Ted, what have you been doing? What
are
you doing?”

Just then Sarah came up and was supernice in that condescending, patronizing bullshit way that she always is, and I love her for that character she plays, but wow, it couldn’t have been worse timing. I still loved her then and now because she just walked up and gave me a hug.

“Do you want some pot?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Oh man, that’s too bad, I don’t have any more!” she said, grinning, all cute.

That’s because she and Teddy had smoked all of it. Awww. Fuck me.

“And you don’t have any more? Or anything better?”

“No, man,” she said. “That’s all I’ve got. Check you later, I’ve got to go onstage right now.”

Off she went, and she went on and she killed. No, she destroyed. She got more laughs than George Carlin at Carnegie Hall . . . like, ever. I’m serious, and I hate to admit this kind of shit, Sarah that night at the Mansion made every dipshit within range completely
crack up whether they wanted to or not, and I hated her for it. I couldn’t even believe I’d been up in front of the same people. When she was finished she bopped off the stage and gave me another big hug (I mean, really?). “So, how was your set?” she asked. I wasn’t even sure if she was being a bitch at that point, that’s how subversive she was.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Ohhh,” she said, completely overdoing it. “Yeah? Not good? I get it.”

“All right, I mean, it was fine. It was . . . whatever.”

“It happens, man!” And off she bounced into the night, smug as a bug in a fucking rug.

She was right, I mean, it does. But this night, it was killing me. And I’d paid my assistant to make sure I didn’t feel this pain!

“Ted, let me ask you something,” I said, turning to him, hating his stoned Cheshire Cat grin. “Where the fuck were you while I was onstage?”

“We went to the monkey cages and got high, that’s all,” he said. “She had pot . . . and she’s really nice.”

“She’s really nice? Why don’t you go fucking be her assistant, then, Ted? I fucking needed you! I got offstage and ripped my pants, you even aware of that?”

Teddy was so high that the minute he heard me say, “I ripped my pants,” he doubled over laughing. I know what that’s like and I’ve been there, but the more he laughed, the madder I got. I wanted to kill him—like more than I usually wanted to kill him (because I wanted to kill that little cocksucker quite often). He could barely breathe, but when he could, he started calling Sarah over. She was a few feet away, surrounded by a circle of well-wishers fawning over her after her set.

“Hey!” I said. “Don’t you dare call her over here, Teddy. NO! I am fucking serious.”

He could tell I was mad, so he stopped, but he couldn’t control his laughter or how red his face was at that point. If I’d told him that an asteroid was going to obliterate LA in five minutes he would have laughed. If I’d told him his parents had been killed in a car accident he would have laughed. He was a mechanical clown in a fun house, just laughing and laughing and laughing. I wanted to kill him.

“Dude, I know you’re high, but you have to get me some fucking pants. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

More laughing.

“Teddy . . . Teddy! Hey, Fuckhead! Go be high, but do it now, get me pants—this isn’t funny.”

Looking back it amazes me that I kept him on for another six months. I know I was fucked up, but whose assistant is so inefficient that they can’t find their boss a pair of sweatpants at the Playboy Mansion? Teddy was a waste of time, money, and space.

“Dude. Get yourself together,” I said. “Get me some pants, a triple scotch on the rocks in a pint glass, and a handful of pills, right now.”

“Why can’t you go get your own drink? I’ve got to get the pants . . . that’s a lot to do.” He said that to me and he wasn’t kidding. Now, listen . . . I’m not even sure if that kind of attitude happened due to me or if it was all that little snot-nosed bitch’s fault. All I know is that I really never wanted to hear that kind of entitled attitude again.

“Teddy?” I said, inhaling slowly, trying to calm down (knowing I was way beyond calm). “I can’t get the scotch, Teddy . . . but I’d like to. Want to know why I can’t get the scotch, Teddy? Because my fucking pants are ripped!”

That of course sent him into hysterics. And made me homicidal.

“You’re right, I forgot about that,” he said, completely serious but laughing still, and headed off toward the bar.

He was that high.

The little prick.

The first thing he did right that whole day was come back immediately with my drink, at which point I told him he needed to score me pills, any kind of pills, as fast as possible.

“Why do you want pills?”

“Because I want to be high. High . . . high like you, Teddy, high off my fucking ass, laughing and having fun. Fucking fun, Teddy! Since you and Sarah smoked all the pot, I’m stranded. I need pills. Get me a Vicodin. Get me one right fucking now! This place is crawling with shit like that.”

“Scoring for you is against my morals, Art. I won’t do it.”

“Against your morals? Really? Your morals? How much do those cost to circumvent?”

“I’ve told you, I won’t score for you.”

“Your morals allow you to get high and talk to monkeys instead of doing your job taking care of me while I’m onstage, though, right?”

“That’s different. You have a problem with drugs.”

“Oh, right. I guess so. Yes, Teddy, I have a problem with drugs. No, I’d say
you
have a problem with drugs . . . because I don’t have any! I need pants and drugs and you have neither of them for me! So as my assistant you need to handle my PVS: pants, Vicodin, scotch. Now get going and don’t come back here empty-handed, you stupid little fuckwit!”

He didn’t look happy, but then again he never looked happy whenever he had to actually do something for me. As usual, a threatening tone yielded results: first came another large scotch, which, much like the first, I treated the way a marathon runner would Gatorade, I sent him off again, demanding drugs and pants. Call me a skeptic but I wasn’t willing to put my faith entirely in Teddy’s hands, so I called over a scummy-looking staffer and proceeded to tell him about my knee injury. You know the one—the one that had started acting up, the one I “got operated on for” a few months back. That imaginary injury was just about killing me that night after my run-in with the French dressing, so I needed something to kill the pain.

“Man, I must have torn my injury wide open tonight. Can you get me something?”

In about fourteen seconds he came back with fifty Percocet, and being a true scumbag he wanted to charge me twelve dollars a pill for them—which, being a seasoned drug addict, I knew was a little high. Really, I was something to be proud of during my Playboy Mansion debut. I was the picture of class: ripped pants; a pint glass full of scotch; a useless, red-eyed, assistant in tow; haggling over the price of a pile of Percocet. At this point, does it matter that I did twenty minutes and bombed beyond belief? (Honestly, I’m not sure.)

I had $280 on me, so I couldn’t afford all fifty pills, because this fucking guy wasn’t budging on his price (really, dude?). If I weren’t so desperate I would have lectured him about it, but I was so I did what I could and bought twenty of them, which came out to $240. Of course, seeing as this wasn’t in any way my night, I didn’t have exact change, so I gave the guy $250.

“I’ll be right back with a ten for you, man,” he said. “You’ll be right here?”

“Yeah,” I replied, knowing he wouldn’t yet still hoping that he’d come back with my ten dollars.

I didn’t get depressed about it for long; I had a bag of pills to swallow, and I got into it immediately. The only problem I had was that I was still a fucking slob wearing half a pair of pants. And my assistant was still nowhere to be found. The Mansion is decadent and there were people making out, half-dressed here and there, but it wasn’t a scene out of
Caligula
by any means. Being sexy, touchy, and debauched is one thing; munching pills hand over fist out of a Ziploc bag out in the open is another—and that’s what I was doing.

Teddy finally came back around then, and for whatever reason I asked him what he thought I should do about munching these pills at this party. I mean, why did I? But I did, and what did I expect this kid to say other than just one more retarded, idiotic piece of non-wisdom?
I really don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me when it comes to some of the people I keep around me, let alone pay for their “services.” I very well may never have crashed and burned if I’d been smart and just made Whoreguide™ my assistant.

Teddy encouraged me to just walk to the bathrooms and not worry about my ripped up, open-assed pants or anything else and to go take my pills.

“It’s the Playboy Mansion; no one is going to look,” he said.

“Fuck it,” I said. I was desperate. I had to turn this night around.

I walked to the Porta-Johns, pants ripped from balls to waist, French dressing on my sneakers, a warm, half-empty pint glass of scotch in hand, thinking that maybe, just maybe I’d be allowed to have fun at the Mansion.

When I was about fifty feet from the Porta-John, I heard hysterical laughter behind me—like crazy-person loud. It was fucking Teddy, still so high that he couldn’t help himself! It wasn’t just the sight of my ripped pants, it was me—that little piece of shit was laughing all out of control. He sounded insane, he was half-crying, he was doubled over like some gleeful maniac, making such a scene that everyone nearby was looking at him, wondering what the fuck was going on.

He couldn’t contain himself, that little prick; he was pointing at me, crying, cackling at my fat, briefs-covered ass. There were people pointing in disgust, and all of them made me want to crawl inside my skin and never come out. I shuffled as fast as I could into the can, that Porta-John, spilling my scotch the whole way. I slammed that blue plastic door behind me and finally I was safe, and fuck them, I didn’t care anymore. I had enough pills to get high. I had enough pills to get so high that nothing they could do or say would ever fucking affect me. I wouldn’t give a shit what anybody thought the next time I opened that door. I reached into my pocket to get the pills . . . and I came up with nothing. I’d dropped my bag of Percocet. I’d dropped it somewhere between the bar and the bathroom door. Really, this night could not get any fucking better.

Just then I heard a knock at the door and thought more than twice about opening it. I mean . . . Anyway, I did so slowly, just a crack, and I met a young girl who introduced herself as one of the associate producers of the event (which is Hollywood code for bullshit artist who gets people coffee).

“You dropped something,” she said, handing me my bag of pills. She was very nonplussed.

“What is this stuff?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s just aspirin. Prescription aspirin. I get bad headaches. Thank you so much.”

“C’mon, I’m not stupid,” she said. That was debatable.

“Well, okay, it’s not aspirin. It’s something stronger. I’ve got a condition. Listen, you’re not going to write about this, right? You are a publicist, aren’t you? You realize that certain realities should be kept out of the press?”

“Yes. I’ll make sure of that. We are here for charity . . . but you should get yourself together.”

I excused myself, which was easy since I was already in the toilet, locked myself into the darkness of the Porta-John, and started eating my Percocet as if they were Flintstones chewables, taking down five in one swallow of scotch. The thing about painkillers and opiates of any kind is that they make you nauseous, even if you’re an addict who loves them (like I do) and does them all the time. I felt queasy, but I didn’t care. I kept going until the inevitable happened: I threw up.

Actually, that’s an understatement. What I did was hose down the entire porta-potty with vomit as if I were a fire hose and there was a fire. It was violent, projectile-style puke and it coated the walls, the toilet, and the urinal in waves for about three minutes straight. Everyone outside heard it, believe me. I can still hear the echoes, and I’m sure they still can.

After the storm subsided, I heard a knock at the door.

“Boss?” Teddy asked quietly. “Boss? . . . Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. . . . I just threw up.”

For a millisecond I thought that Teddy might actually care about me. Then that motherfucker started laughing again. Fuck him.

I wiped the puke off of myself as best I could with whatever still-dry, limp toilet paper I could find. I didn’t have the means to get all of it off of me; I knew there was puke in my beard and I could smell it on me, above and beyond the smell of shit and plastic that had permeated the air beforehand. To me, I’d made it through the rain, so I ate a few more Percocet, because there was no fucking way I wasn’t getting high tonight. I fucking deserved it. I’d crapped onstage. I mean, please, what else was there besides getting fucked up by now?

I had eaten five pills and thrown them up, and since I still felt nothing, I ate four more. Don’t judge me until you’ve had a night like this. If you do I suggest you take ALL of the pills you can find right away!

That was my plan. And here’s how it went down. I’d bought twenty pills and I’d gone through nine, and I needed to save some for the plane. At that point, if I didn’t have access to heroin, I was up to about fifteen painkillers a day. So I was cutting it close. I looked down and saw three full Percocets, completely untouched, sitting there in my puke. I’d sucked them down so quickly that I hadn’t gotten a chance to chew them. Aside from the puke, they were virtually brand-new! I was such a fucked-up addict by then that I picked them up without hesitation and put them in the Ziploc bag for later. I got puke all over the bag in the process, but that didn’t matter because now it matched my shirt, my beard, and the rest of me.

By then my high was actually kicking in, so everything had suddenly become beautiful in my mind. I didn’t give a shit about the stares I received when I left the bathroom. Who were those fucking people anyway? I was high, I had no pants, and I had one mission: dealing with Teddy’s insubordination. I started arguing with him
immediately, telling him that if I were a corporation, and he were an employee, even if he were a high-ranking executive, he would be fired on the spot for his performance that night. It sucked; the kid was so stoned that nothing I could say got through to him, so he was, at best, halfheartedly apologetic for his lack of being the least bit on point. I fucking couldn’t stand that shit, so I told him the only way to redeem himself was to find me pants, and if he didn’t he’d be dead by the end of the week. At that point I didn’t care about the pants anymore: I was so high that the wind on my ass was actually quite refreshing, and I was amused at all the idiots who kept pointing at me and giggling. Meanwhile Teddy had come down enough to realize that I was his boss and that he should probably take me seriously. And so things got even sillier.