Bill Clegg - Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

What are you DOING? thunders from the other side of the door. His father again. The boy calls out that he is coming, just a minute. He mutters to himself— Please God, please —actually, he’s been muttering this to himself since he locked the bathroom door over forty-five minutes ago. He will never be more specific in his plea. His pants and shirt are soaking with water, with urine. He pats himself down one more time with a wad of toilet paper and puts it in the wastepaper basket under an empty tissue box and a used toilet paper roll. He wipes everything down, again, just one more time — the radiator, the bowl, the toilet seat, the floor. He scans the room again for signs of his time there. He wipes, with his hand, the sweat dripping from his brow and pats his hair carefully into place. He breathes in, murmurs another quiet prayer, turns off the light, and hopes the light in the hall is off so his soak-stained clothes aren’t obvious.

He calms his breath, palms the doorknob, and braces for what’s on the other side. He is five years old.

Snow is falling outside the Holland Tunnel. Cars aren’t moving. Horns sound and drivers yell. My flight to Berlin is scheduled to take off in less than an hour, and there is no way I’m going to make it. Noah is already there, having arrived at the Berlin Film Festival directly from Sundance to show his film two days ago. I call my assistant, who booked a four-o’clock car for a five thirty flight, which I only now realize isn’t enough time, particularly with the snow. It is, of course, not his fault, but I tell him it is and that my life is about to change, and not for the better, as a result. I hang up. These will be my last words to him, to anyone in my office.

I have nearly a full bag — three medium-size rocks and a scattering of crumbs — in my pocket. A clean stem and lighter, wrapped in a kitchen towel, are wedged somewhere in my L.L. Bean duffel bag, between manuscripts, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a pile of Kiehl’s products. The driver is a young, deep-voiced Eastern European woman, and I’ve already sung her my if-you-only-knew-how-important-it-is-that-I-get-there-on-time song to persuade her to work some kind of magic and levitate us past the traffic. She just stares at me through the rearview mirror. I wonder if she can see how strung out I am, how far over the line.

I know this is going to be the last straw. Even if Noah forgives me again, despite the fact that he knows I’ve been using since I left him at Sundance, Kate will not. I’ve been out for almost two weeks and canceled three meetings with her to go over our long-avoided partnership agreement and finances. I have told everyone — friends, clients, employees — that I have thrown my back out and am going to doctors, acupuncturists, and masseurs. But the truth is that since I got back from Sundance five days early, I’ve been rattling around the apartment in a thick cloud of crack smoke. I’ve left the building only a few times, to run across 8th Street to the cash machine and next door to the deli for lighters and Brillo wire. The liquor store has made daily deliveries of Ketel One, and I’ve called the housekeeper to tell her I’m home sick and not to come.

At some point before getting in the car, I send Kate an e-mail telling her to do what she needs to do, that I’ve relapsed and that she should protect herself in whatever way is necessary. Before I press Send, I look out the window at the thick flakes of snow coming down in slow motion between the buildings and think I am doing her a favor. Giving her permission to get out and move on. But I feel next to nothing as I end our partnership, our business, my career. I regard that nothing the same way you observe a cut on your finger just after accidentally slicing it with a knife but seconds before the blood appears. For a moment it’s like looking at someone else’s finger, as if the cut you made has not broken your skin, the blood about to flow not your own.

I finally get to the airport and race ahead of the line to the first-class counter. The woman there tells me right away that I’ve missed my flight. I ask her if there is another and she tells me there is one that goes through Amsterdam in three hours. Without hesitating I buy a first-class, full-fare ticket. I have over $70,000 in my checking account at this point, and I think, barely think, that five or so thousand is nothing. I ask her if there is a hotel at the airport, because I want to lie down and rest before my flight. She looks at me and pauses before telling me there is a Marriott a short cab ride away. I thank her, check my bag through for the seven-o’clock flight, and take my ticket. In the cab, I call Noah and leave him a message that I missed my flight— The traffic was terrible, I say in mock frustration — but I’m booked on the next one out.

The cabdriver is a handsome, dark-eyed Hispanic guy, and I immediately strike up a conversation. How I get to the moment when I ask him if he parties, I don’t know, but I get there. He says yes and I say, With what? and he answers, Beer and pot. He asks me with what and I come right out and tell him. He pauses and asks me if I have any on me and I say yes. He asks if he can see it and, without hesitating, I reach into my pocket, pull out a rock, and hold it up between the two front seats. He slows the cab, eyes the drug seriously, but says nothing. When I pull it back, he laughs and tells me he’s never seen it before, and I ask if he wants to hang out. He tells me sure, later, after his shift, and gives me his cell phone number. I take it, even though I know my flight will take off before he’s done. He doesn’t say his name so I look at the driver’s ID framed in Plexiglas behind the passenger seat and notice that it’s obscured by a piece of newspaper. I ask him his name and he mumbles something inaudible. I ask him again and he says what I think is Rick.

Something in his manner shifts as we pull up to the Marriott. He suddenly cools, and I’ll remember, later, that he barely asks for the fare, that when I hand it to him, it seems irrelevant. I hardly register this, since I’m preoccupied with how lucky it is that I missed the flight, that I now have a few hours to get high.

I get to the room and shut the door behind me as if I’m closing the curtain on a great, terrifying stage where I’ve had to perform a grueling part, the skin of which I can now finally shed. I take off my coat and pack a big hit. Crumbs scatter on the bedspread as I hold the stem up to light, but I don’t care. I pull hard and hold the smoke in for as long as I can. When I exhale, the stress of the last few hours disappears and in its place swells a pearly bliss.

I soon become aware of my body and feel restless in my clothes. I take my sweater off between the first and second hits. They seem like part of a constricting costume for the performance on the other side of the door and of no use now. By the third hit I’m naked, though I grab a towel from the bathroom and tie it low around my hips. I will always do this when I get high. I will always think my torso looks lean and muscled and sexy. I will always, many times, clock myself in the mirror and think, Not bad. I will remember some version of the lines from Ben Neihart’s novel Hey Joe, when the narrator checks himself out in the mirror and thinks smugly that he’s keeping his shit tight . I will, to be perfectly honest, turn myself on.

I scooch the towel lower down my hips, cinch it a little tighter, and begin to get restless for company. I call the number of the taxi driver but no one answers and it doesn’t click to voice mail. I do this thirty or so times in the next hour. I put what’s left of the bag in an ashtray and thrill to what seems like an endless amount. I’m sloppy as I pack these hits. The bedspread and floor are soon speckled with crumbs. I know that at some point I will be on my knees picking them up, trying to tell the difference between crack crumbs and other debris. There will never be a time when I smoke crack that doesn’t end with me on my knees, sometimes for hours — hunched over carpets, rugs, linoleum, tile — sifting desperately through lint and cat litter and dirt, fingering the floor, like a madman, for crumbs. I know this is where it will end up. As I pack those lazy crumb-scattering hits in the beginning, I will, each time, think of the floor like a retirement account. Little bits neglected into a place where I will seek them out later. It will comfort me to know there is somewhere to go when the bag empties, something to do while I’m waiting for the next delivery. But in the beginning, in the abundant beginning, this will always seem a long way off.