Destroy (6 page)

The
New York Times
hailed
PieGrinder
as “Brash, daring, sexy, seductive, dangerous, and most important, brutally honest.”

The
Washington Post
raved, “James Morgan is a breath of fresh air. He has succeeded where most other authors have failed, bringing us an uncompromised vision of life that feels all too real and all too honest, but at the same time, his dedicated compassion for the characters in his book never wavers once. Bravo, Mr. Morgan. The reading world welcomes you with open arms.”

And the
San Francisco Chronicle
gushed, “Even though others will find it desirable to compare Morgan's book to the work of other great authors from generations previous,
PieGrinder
stands alone at the top, and Morgan has assured his own generation a voice for years to come.”

To some, I was the next Ellis.

To others, I was better than Ellis.

And to
Mojo
magazine, “If Ellis and Palahniuk ever got together and had a literary baby, that baby would be James Morgan.”

The readers ate it up. The book took off big-time. I mean, it absolutely blew the fuck up, and just as importantly, so did I.

Aside from the moped gangs, there were seventeen bands with names that were references lifted from my novel.

Twelve album titles.

And over four-hundred songs.

Rolling Stone
sent me on tour with the Bronx for three weeks to write a cover piece. I covered the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers farewell tour for MTV News. And I wrote a huge piece about my brief time in New York with the entire cast of
The Lost Boys
for
SOMA
magazine.

There were lavish parties in New York and LA and London and Paris. I was on the cover of
GQ
.
Playboy
did a huge piece on me. I wrote the annual Best and Worst music list for the Buddyhead website. I did a photo shoot and interview with the Heartless Bastards for
Interview
magazine.
SOMA
used me as the male model for their annual fashion issue. I kicked it with Vincent Gallo during a leg of his European tour with Sean Lennon. I got wasted with a Hilton girl in a private hotel bar.
Vice
magazine did a Morgan Says issue where I ripped and ranted about everything from fashion to music to movies to literature to the best cities to use drugs in. The hardest bars to get kicked out of. The best places to end up swaying in an intersection at three in the morning with no identification and no money and no shoes on.

I got drunk on six bottles of wine with that artist, Barney, in the south of France. Flew on a private jet to Tokyo for a club opening with this designer, Jacobs. There were a few dates with a Zooey, that chick from
The
Brown Bunny
, and one of the White Stripes. A million rumors of me hooking up with a crazy Lindsay, another Hilton girl (multiple times), then Miss Furtado (true), and even one about me and Ohhhhhh Karen occupying a bathroom stall at the Warfield for an hour (very true).

I was at movie premieres and book release parties, did four national signing tours, and took a weekend trip to Hawaii with PJ.

But even amid all this glory and wealth, there were plenty of downer moments as well.

A newspaper in Seattle called me “a very careful plagiarist.”

Another one in Boston said, “The best thing for Morgan to do is quit writing books and roadie for Ashlee Simpson.”

And a magazine in New York wrote, “James Morgan is to literature what Jessica Alba is to acting. Ugh.”

To some, I was Ellis Light.

To others, I was a black mark on the literary world.

And to the
San Francisco Bay Guardian
, I was “nothing but a rip-off artist posing as an author.”

I lost many friends along the way. A bunch of art-scene kids showed up at a reading in San Francisco and accused me of being a jock because I'd been a standout football player and a wrestler in high school.

Twenty school districts banned my book. Two teachers were fired for recommending my novel to their students to read outside class. And James Dobson called me “a disgusting hedonist with pedophile tendencies” on the Bill O'Reilly show.

Churches in Kansas and Nebraska and Missouri held book-burning ceremonies. There were death threats to me and my family. Four readings on the last tour were called off because of bomb threats. And I was arrested in Ohio on suspicion of supplying three underage girls with alcohol (the charges were later dropped when the girls admitted they'd stolen the beer and a blank tape I'd made—the Suicide Pussy Mix—from the back of my rental car at a gas station outside Cleveland).

Yet still, some of these moments were easy to move past so long as the money and the opportunities kept rolling in. I mean, it was easy to make new friends to replace the ones I'd lost when so many people were requesting my friendship. It was easy to get over being called a jock and a frat boy and a plagiarist while I taught a creative writing workshop to underprivileged kids in Paris for three months. It was easy to laugh at being called an Ellis poser after Ellis himself wrote an article for the
New Yorker
defending my novel and ripping those same Ellis Light critics. And it was immensely easy and gratifying for me to move on after suing and breaking the
backs of two hard-core religious publications for smearing my name and raising false allegations stemming from my arrest in Ohio once I was finally cleared (I then donated all the settlement money to Planned Parenthood).

I was in Italy one week and Turkey the next. I dined with a Flaming Lip and got wasted with
the
Patton.

But right now, all that is in the past. My status has been in steady decline. For almost three years, I've been trying to follow up
PieGrinder
, and the pressure has been immense. I've been silently suffering this entire time. There have been weeks and weeks of sleepless nights. Huge battles with depression. I've broken down in restaurants and movie theaters and elevators. Been put in the hospital for “fatigue.” Blown a ton of professional relationships. And pissed off some of those who were closest to me. Yet here I am, sitting in the back of a taxi, not even thinking about giving up, because I know that somewhere deep inside me, to the core of my being, I will be able to write the greatest story of all time. Just you fucking wait and see, critics.

• • •

I get to the party at Fell and Fillmore, and there are much better-looking people here. Some I know from local bands and the local art scene and have a ton of respect for because they're actually doing shit and not just sitting around some smoke-filled room, jacked on blow, talking about the possibility of maybe doing shit. It's a much more fun and rad vibe with a Gil Scott-Heron record blasting while some of the peeps from the Dwarves and Apache and Persephone's Bees and Von Iva are kicking it.

I mingle and walk and mingle and walk my way through this long hallway, when the door to one of the rooms opens and this girl, this almost spitting image of Patricia Arquette in
Lost Highway
, charges out of it and yells, “You fucking creep! Don't ever talk to me again!”

Following her from the room is this guy with a handlebar mustache, wearing just a pair of jeans, and he asks me for a cigarette.

I stop and bum him one and he goes, “Fuckin' bitch lays on my bed and does my coke and then loses her shit when I try to make a move up her skirt.”

“Damn,” I say, lighting his smoke for him. “Maybe she just thought you were a nice guy who's into sharing.”

“That's stupid.” The guy nods.

“You really think so?”

“Duh.”

“Bitch left your room, man. I watched her do it. And she's not coming back. I'm not sure it's all that stupid, ya know.”

“You don't know shit, blazer boy.”

Smirking, I say, “I might not know everything, but I do know you just gave a girl free drugs all night and she's not going to fuck you at all.”

He flips me off.

And me, me I continue my walk. I get to the kitchen and finally spot Daniel through this glass door. He's sitting at a table on the back porch, so I move in that direction.

I step outside and say, “Daniel.”

Daniel flips his head around. “There he is. The published author. Alive. You're really alive, man.”

“Of course, dude. LA ain't got shit on me.” I take a seat across from him and nod at the girl he's talking to, Janet, and then Jimmy and Sebastian, the other two members of Daniel's band, Killing Cowboys, emerge from inside.

“Damn, James,” Jimmy says. “You missed an amazing show tonight. Fucking Vaz destroyed.”

“Vaz always destroys,” I shoot back. “Tell me something I don't already know, man.”

And Jimmy says, “I've never had anal with a black chick.”

“Thanks,” I laugh. “I actually didn't know that.”

“So where are you coming from anyway?” Daniel asks me.

Taking a swig of Beam, I say, “This party on Twenty-First and Bryant. It was Nina's birthday, so I had to pop in. But man, I wish that I hadn't.”

“That fucking bad?” Daniel snorts.

“I got called Captain Hipster by some kid wearing an extra-large Lagwagon hoodie. I mean, come on. Was it that bad? I would've rather played Seven Minutes in Heaven with some gnar pig at a nu metal show.”

“That's pretty bad.” Jimmy smiles.

And Sebastian, who is wearing a black beanie and a blue thermal, says, “So you're Captain Hipster. Nice. You should get some business cards to pass out that have different mottoes on them.”

“How about this?” I say. “Captain Hipster: My girlfriend just dyed her hair black and wears sunglasses bigger than her chubby face.”

And Jimmy goes, “How about this? Captain Hipster: My girlfriend is fat and has black hair.”

Daniel takes the Beam from me and I say, “Nice. But check this out. Captain Hipster: I swear I've had this mustache for at least six years.”

“Here's a good one,” Jimmy snorts. “Captain Hipster: It's just that it's been so long since I've read all those David Foster Wallace books in my room that I'm having a hard time
remembering what part you're talking about in
Infinite Jest.
But I kinda remember now. Ya know, Joelle, yeah. What a great character.”

Sebastian grabs the Beam from Daniel, and Daniel says, “Fuck business cards. You could make a Captain Hipster character into a comic book or a cartoon show. He'll lash ugly people with his white belt and shoot dudes who wear flannel shirts with his special hair spray.”

“Beautiful,” I say. “We'll all make a million bucks in a year.”

Daniel's phone starts ringing, and he answers it and walks into the house right when this chubby lady with strands of brown hair, wearing a black leather skirt and jacket, comes up to Jimmy and goes, “Hey, guys. I'm serious about what I was telling all of you earlier. I can get you really awesome shows. I've booked huge stuff for the Tight Black Holes and Mirror Mirror in New York and LA and even Boston. I got the Highschool Bombsquad a showcase spot at South by Southwest. I just need some sort of a commitment from all of you.”

Sebastian shakes his head and makes this loud grunting noise. “Listen, Becky. We already told you we're waiting for the album to get mastered. Daniel told you where we stand. We know you can get us some gigs, but you want way too much. I talked to the dudes from the Bombsquad, and you didn't ask for nearly as much when you first started booking.”

“Because they were a smaller name when I first started working with them than you guys are right now. So if I'm gonna go out on a limb for you guys, I wanna know I'm getting taken care of and I'm not gonna get screwed. I mean, I'm not talking about booking Slim's and the Independent, I'm talking about getting you guys on huge bills in New York and LA, Japan and London. I'm talking about getting you guys prime slots on festival bills.”

“Whatever,” Sebastian groans.

And Jimmy says, “Let's just drop it for now. I'm sick of talking about band shit while I'm getting fucked up. It never leads to anything, and nobody ever remembers making any of the guarantees and promises. It's fuckin' stupid.”

“I agree,” Sebastian says.

“Okay. It's dropped,” Becky says.

She winks at me, which makes me shudder, and then Daniel pokes his head back through the doorway and goes, “Hey, guys, follow me.”

So we all trail Daniel into a bedroom at the other end of this house, and like six people are already in there, including Marco, this pretty built and tough-looking Latino dude, who is one of my other sometimes dealers and who is also one of Ryan's re-upper guys.

“What's going on?” I ask Marco.

“Just making the rounds, guy. You know how it goes. Phone's blowing up. People inviting me everywhere, acting like they're my best friend. Typical weekend night.” He grins, taking out a plastic sack full of baggies.

I notice that his right hand is all scratched up and bruised and swollen. “What happened?” I ask him.

Marco holds his hand up. “With this?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened was somebody owed me too much money for too long.”

“Radical.”

Marco laughs and smacks me in the shoulder. “I love you, James.”

There's a loud knock on the door.

“Shit,” this guy in a full-on red velvet suit groans.

He walks over to the door and says, “Who is it?”

“It's Kat, Joshua. Please let me in.”

And I'm thinking, I wonder if it's one of the, like, ten Kats I seem to know in the city.

“Okay.” Joshua opens the door, and it is one of the Kats I know. Kat York. This tiny black model/fashion designer/set designer/amazing Super 8 photographer/hairdresser. She's the one who dressed me for the
SOMA
fashion shoot, and she also fucked my brains out in the parking lot of the Oakland Coliseum after the Raiders smoked the Jets during a Sunday night game on ESPN. And then again, two nights later, when she came over to my place with a suitcase full of clothes and wigs and dressed up like each of the female characters from my book and let me call her by their names while I smashed her.