Showtime!

C/W: substance abuse

“Showtime!”

When I was 19, I fell off a cliff over 200 feet high. People fall off 9 foot ladders and die, yet I, obviously, lived.

Contributing to my fall to Earth: a months-long addiction to barbiturates - Nembutal (“I’m comin’, Norma Jean!”), Seconal and Tuinal. My death-defying high dive was made possible through the generosity of an insatiable acquaintance employed inside a pharmaceutical warehouse in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before cameras, bag-checks and global distrust, she casually stuffed thousand-count plastic jugs of these candy-colored dream-dumplings into an oversized lunch tote, tossing out heaping handfuls of chemical confetti every time we fucked. Two years earlier, my reptilian group-home “brother” Dean taught me how to inject them – a tricky endeavor, cuz, once you split open the caps, you never knew if that sparkly-white powder would gelify in the spoon or, worse, clog a vein as you pressed down the hammer. So my addiction included both oral and IV application. True, by 19, heroin already occupied Top Spot on the My Drug of Choice gameboard, but smack’s sloppy alley slut, Barbs (pimped by a tankard of booze) subbed nicely while my Mexican tar supply chain was forged.

But back to the cliff:

Invited to a beach party north of Santa Cruz, of course I accepted. Party. Friends. Summer. The beach. I’m in. But the day of the bash, an unpredictable 30 cap-a-day habit foreclosed on my motor skills, leaving me a in pile of cheap silver rings, patched jeans and long, blonde rock’n roll hair. Since it takes years of abuse to render a not-bad-looking and totally fucked up hippie’s company unwanted, my friends insisted. I mumble-groaned acquiescence, but with one proviso: get me a hit of acid. Already adverse to meth and coke, acid seemed the exact right choice to re-animate my disabled anatomy. They agreed, proof my favorite dark spell, “I ask and I receive” still worked. And, y’know, to this day, I have no clue why. Yeah, I was interesting, but not well-traveled, educated nor adjacent to any kind of wealth or fame. I was fairly good looking, but not breath-taking. And since I’d pretty much fuck anybody, no one’s sexual Everest. Yet, as best friend Jeff once chuckled, “Brother, people just want to give you things.” Unfortunately, this spell, with all the others, was squandered on drugs, quick sex and adoration instead of serious money and authentic friendships. Live and learn.

Forgive the digression.

With a history since toddler-hood of winding up, over and thru those dangerous, semen-scented Santa Cruz mountains to her golden sands, my sedated state made this evening’s jaunt a grimy smudge. Lying in the backseat, waiting for the acid to save me, I watch sunlight become dusk. I don’t know who drove or who else is with us except my new, enabling step-sister, Michelle and her Jimmy Page look-alike pal, Gay John. 

Full black night, we park along Highway 1. Though not visible, far-away cries of El Pacifico lash out at lover California. Like all the great love affairs, California and the Pacific are a tempestuous pairing – sometimes, the most welcoming of lovers separated by mere microns, other times, their cinematic land-sand-sea affair is fraught with seismic acrimony insisting the world bear witness to their mutual rejection and blame for any rugged flora or deadly ledges keeping them apart. Their celebrated love, the stuff of timeless art, sometimes felt mean and ugly.

For a decade plus, I’d inched down California's steep rock faces and sea-side paths that only goats and immortal adolescents would dare: Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, Carmel’s magical Point Lobos, Sonoma’s Purple Dirt, all the way up to Oregon’s border, I had, again and again, made my barefooted tough-guy way down spectacularly treacherous edges.

If a Special Best Actor for Appearing Sober award were ever bestowed, my engraved name would own that bitch. Buzzed since age 13, I’d honed my specialized craft, shaping and shading my ruse into a professionally convincing one-act: Walk, talk, smile on cue, “earnestly listen” (ha!), my clear-headed hustle was the complete shit! So, when one of my fellow beach partyers weighed assigning me the task of carrying a foam ice chest containing the ubiquitous glass gallon of Red Mountain wine, I nearly pirouetted for the chance.

As mentioned, California's land-to-beach configurations vary: from the casual stroll from car-to-sand to a gates-of-hell endurance test, an ingress lined with hatchet-edged rocks whisper-daring you to reach the shore deep below. As a first-time guest at this particular beach, I had no idea which of those possibilities were in my immediate future. Night sky and chemicals aside, other factors intrude. Exhibit One: Ice plant, an unyielding ground cover used along CA’s coast-hugging thoroughfares and famous freeways, ice plant is one tough muthafuca to traverse. This sturdy, thornless succulent - even in daylight - is no traipse across the lawn, darling. Whether sure of foot or, in my case, deep in the quicksand of strong sedatives, each step requires you lift your feet high or it’ll trip your ass. True, a fall into ice plant is a surprisingly well-cushioned dip on your journey to the sand, securing a foam-cased fat jug of vino requires some focused high-steppin’. Add to this acres-wide obstacle the fact that I’m barefoot – and have I mentioned my famous feet yet? Haight Street-toughened since runaway childhood, I was, at this point, literally able to put out cigarettes with my Calcutta-worthy callouses. Infamy aside, tonight the only thing they offered was 10 more places for this tricky vegetation to grab on.

Through the handsy greenery - wine intact - I now feel the rhythmic Pacific pounding like a desperate lover and - look! - an M-G-M full moon hangs with lysergic precision atop our indigo sky! Though still unseen, the surf’s pulse moves thru my body, reminding: the beach is near… yet, somehow, far off, too... aaaand, huh? Okay, got it: the acid’s making quick-cut cameos thru the noirish downers, tiny flashes of clairvoyance striking - now! Oh - there! And again! Bright rhythmic punctuations shooting thru thick chem-murk as I am, for the first time ever, faced with a frightening realization: I don’t know which drug to listen to. 

Ice plant now behind me, the shimmering moonlight reveals my new track: reflective, shifting shale. Jurassic in origin, shale has, over millennia, evolved into a trickster every bit as shifty as good neighbor ice plant, but shale plays a tougher game: sharp yet often delicate, its blade-thin layers are in a constant state of erosion. Shale can cut skin, shift beneath your feet like sidewalk ice, break away like layered glass or, depending on your step, provide the sturdy firma of support – all within a single stride. California’s cleverest mineral, pyrite be damned. Yet, despite these unpredictable qualities, this is not my first shale-shuffle. I slow it up some and continue walking on rock illuminated by an ever-brightening moonlight, trusting my acid-enhanced feet to sense the way because: I am a magical badass. 

Though no path is evident, I’ve now fallen into a loose cue of other exotic hedonists schlepping blankets and various bags toward our promised land of Debauch Beach. The shale becomes less crumbly and I’m aware I’m on a path that’s been worn down into the rock. Though not an issue before, the ice chest obscures my addled perception, blocking a view of where to place my next foot forward. And now, maybe a hundred feet past the vegetation line, the moonlight reveals – is that a fork in the rocky road? With no one ahead of me, I turn to ask a sexy, soft-lit flowerchild, “Which way?” She smiles, shrugs, chin-points left. I smile thanks, step left - and BAM! fall hard on my ass and start to slide. I let go of the chest, grabbing at any available ledge or crag – nothing! I rise, bounced up into the air once, fall back down hard, now a faster, steeper slide – a second bounce up - and

AIRBORNE!

I AM IN TOTAL FUCKING FREE-FALL!

A new time-zone: Lack of Daylight Stretch-Time - every nano elongates, droopy seconds to droopy moments, gum on hot asphalt catching onto all 5 senses, coiling Double Bubble glimpses and slo-mo skin-zings, mixed metal flavors and burnt wood aromas bend into a harmonious chord, the secret text: Studies in The Now! Like no other human, I alone know the sexual swoon of free flight, a floating ecstasy of transcendence. My entire life, stepping stones to this pinnacle of forever - the only real realization:

I’M FLYING!

NO! NO! WAIT!

Thru the disparate chemicals and discorporation, the wine bottle breaks somewhere far below and I’m flash-presented with a vista shot from the Hindenburg: Full moon reflecting on an endless Pacific, her deep blue-black shot thru with acidy neon curlicues of violet and yellow-gold. Big, perfect waves break on the beach a thousand post-card miles away, a full-second .gif etched on my mind’s eye forever. Too fucked up for fear, words move into my mouth - a clear mantra of quiet exclamation recited in peaceful awe, “Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh fuck,” a detached skip on oil-black vinyl, my whispered prayer plays all 200 feet down-down-down into the split-second forever, eternity sucking me fast to the bottom of her void.

Semi-conscious series of dark-edged vignettes:

Trying to stand on sand, my left foot giving way as if made of fresh oatmeal.

Uniformed Search and Rescue personnel guiding the mummy-basket pulleying me up the rocky cliff-face I’d flown past earlier, communication devices crackling in code-speak, a hovering helicopter’s strobing vibrations move thru my lower chakras.

A truck-sized ambulance ride for two, Gay John twitching and unconscious atop stainless steel. I think: “Poor John is going to die.” And thru the drugs and trauma-shock, a giant fist of sorrow yanks the reins and I’m just so fucking sad and sorry for poor John.

Hospital emergency room from another era, technicians asking about the purple scars decorating the insides my arms. “What drugs have you taken? What are you on?” Again and again and again.

Solo ambulance ride back over The Hill.

“How’s my friend John? Is he alive? Ok?” Dead air.

New shiny hospital E.R., X-Ray, all a blur. Someone – nurse? MD? – explaining three lumbar vertebrae are fractured. “Huh? I.. What’s... ?” “You have a broken back.” A flash-transmission to my deepest limbic lizard, his oversized finger panic-pressing the button labeled NOW IT’S REAL. A broken back? New waves of sobering clarity make land as I learn the ball joint at the base of my tibia, as well as every tiny bone down to my toes, is shattered. This explains why my foot’s swollen up the size of my head – and so fucking ugly. A nurse surgically scissors the prized patched Levis off my body to work around the gore. “We’ll do our best to piece your bones back, but our bigger concern is necrosis due to the lack of blood supply.” “Wha..? I’m not sure…” Somehow, this sounds more serious than a busted spine. “Tissue death. Gangrene,” he replies. “The veins supplying blood to your foot are badly damaged and. You. Could. Lose. It.”

And, right on cue appears the architect responsible for this entire lavish production - dear mom - accompanied by husband number three, Don(zilla), both smiling for a camera existing solely in their pep-pilled one-mind, the Marina Del Rey Liz & Dick doppelgangers exuding oodles of chemical warmth and gurney-gripping concern. Not to be outdone, I slip into my role like a Strasberg prodigy: “I blew it, huh? Sorry.” Subtext: ‘golly-gosh, mom.. I didn’t mean to cause you any worry.’ A demented ensemble of medicated “actors” wasting their collective breath on an uninterested audience of one: the frat-boy surgeon whose single previous exposure to theater was banging a big-titted starlet back in Palos Verdes.

Iiiiit’s showtime, folks!