Bill Clegg: Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

I’m about to be arrested. I have a bag of crack and a very used pipe folded in tissue in the front pocket of my jeans. I don’t see how I can get rid of it. Throw it out the window? No, these guys, whoever they are, are right on our tail. Stash it in the garbage when we pull up? No, same reason. Stuff it in the seat cushion of a car that is probably being driven by an undercover DEA agent? Obviously no. Swallow it? Maybe. But the glass pipe… what do I do with the glass pipe? These solutions flash and burst, one by one, again and again, as we crawl toward the terminal. None are possible.

Before I left the hotel room, it seemed like a good idea to bring along enough crack to get high in an airport bathroom just before getting on the plane. As the terminal comes into view, I realize, too late, how insane this idea is. We pull up to the drop-off zone and I notice that one of the cars is directly behind us. I look away as I get out of the cab and pay the driver, who seems indifferent to the fare.

As I make my way into the building, my only thought is when. When will they tap my shoulder and ask me to empty my pockets and open my bags. At the check-in counter? In the security line? The gate? It doesn’t seem possible that I’ll ever make it to the gate.

Pilots in their uniforms walk in their particular way toward their flights. I imagine their sunny families in the nice but not so affluent suburbs of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. Their sons who collect little model airplanes and show off by knowing all the names — Cessna, Piper Cub, Mooney, 747. I can see my father’s TWA captain’s uniform and hat hung up on the old-fashioned coatrack in his den and remember how handsome I thought he was when I was young. How he looked like a movie star in those dark pressed pants and crisp white shirts. My father. How did this happen, I imagine him asking when he hears about what is about to go down. How did it come to this, Willie?

There is little distance between the check-in counter and security. I have no idea what to do or where to go. If they’re going to arrest me, why haven’t they done it by now? I think of getting back in a cab and heading into the city, but I begin to doubt my perceptions. It must be the drugs, must be paranoia. I’m too small in the grand scheme of things, I reason, to warrant a battalion of JCPenney guys and a hotel stakeout.

I need to ditch the drugs and the pipe. I see a bathroom to the left of the security area and quickly make a beeline there. As I enter, it’s empty. Two stalls and three urinals. I go to a stall with the intention of flushing the bag and the pipe, but when I get in and close the door, I see the toilet has only a trickle of water and seems to be running without stop. It won’t flush. I check the next one and it’s the same. I think maybe they’ve disabled them so I can’t flush my stuff. I feel like a trapped animal. I hear someone enter and quickly pull down my jeans and sit on the toilet. Minutes pass and I barely move. I try not to make a sound at first but then realize that of course he can see my feet and that I should pretend to behave normally. As if I am going to the bathroom. Whoever entered doesn’t leave and I begin to imagine there is actually a whole SWAT team of DEA agents and police silently filling the room. It’s almost impossible not to peek under the stall to see if there are, as I fear, a sea of boots and shoes. But part of me also wants to prolong not knowing as long as possible. To my left is a toilet paper holder and I slowly tear off some sheets and go through the motions of wiping and the audible pantomime of actually using the toilet. At some point it occurs to me that the only thing I can do is wipe down the pipe and bag for fingerprints, wrap them in toilet paper, and place them under the plastic casing of the dispenser. It crosses my mind to throw the crack in the toilet, let it dissolve in the water and hope the residue disappears eventually; but there is something in me that holds back, that can’t bear to watch the drugs erode to nothing. I start imagining the difference in jail sentences — ten years with a bag of crack? probation with just a pipe? Still, I wipe down the pipe and bag, wrap them carefully in toilet paper, and stash it all in the dispenser. I do this as quietly as I can and then pull up my jeans, buckle my belt, and open the door to the stall as if it is the last free second of my life.

Standing against the wall, next to the entrance, is an airport security guard. He looks right at me as I walk to the sink to wash my hands. As I head out past him, he moves from the wall toward the stalls and our arms brush lightly against each other’s as I pass into the terminal and away from security, toward the escalator.

I try to keep calm as I descend into the baggage area. There is no doubt in my mind that the security guard has headed straight for the toilet dispenser. I don’t look back, but I can feel the eyes of a hundred cops and agents on me as I move past the carousels and up toward another escalator. I wander for twenty minutes or so before making my way back to the security area. I stand next to the stairs going up to the third floor and watch the long line of tourists and businessmen and students waiting to take their belts and shoes off before passing through the metal detectors. I see a man wearing gray slacks, a nylon pullover, and plain shoes. He’s one of the JCPenney guys from the hotel lobby who got in the car, and now he’s here, several feet away, looking right at me. Just past him, back toward the check-in counter, is an older woman, walking slowly, pulling a suitcase on wheels and talking into a cell phone. I notice the blandness of the suitcase, her shoes, her jacket. It’s kindred somehow with his. And then, in the minutes that follow, like seeing one water tower in a city skyline and then suddenly seeing them all, I see dozens of these people. Blandly dressed, middle-aged, suitcase-pulling, cell-phone-clutching zombies whose slow, deliberate movements all appear choreographed in response to mine.

I wander the airport for what seems like hours before getting in the line for security. I occasionally get brazen with some of the people I think are following me, look them squarely in the eye and smile, even joke several times that this must be a tedious assignment. They usually respond with a smirk or a rolled eye. At one point, when the tension is great, I imagine jumping from the third-floor balcony next to the escalator to avoid the arrest I know is coming. But the height looks too meager, not capable of causing more than a broken leg or two.

Later, bone-tired from hours of pacing the airport in a state of sustained panic and crashing from nearly a week of getting high, I finally turn to one of these guys, a younger one, and ask, Why don’t you just get it over with? to which he chuckles and says, It’s much more fun later, once you’re somewhere else. Just wait. I am certain he says this. I freeze at these words and decide finally to get in line, take my shoes and belt off, and go through the metal detector. It’s not possible that I will make it to the other side, and I’m now so wrung out that I just need it to be over.

But I make it through. I make it through and feel, briefly, cautiously, elated. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe it’s just the drugs, whose good effects have all fled, leaving the body that held them shattered and its mind delusional. I make it to the gate and the flight is already boarding. I hesitate a few times as I see, again, a few of the JCPenneys wandering around the seating area near the gate. The words of the younger Penney ring in my head but I am desperate for a vodka and somewhere in my bag are over-the-counter sleeping pills. If I can just crash in that big plush seat and pass out, I will be okay. If I can just get on that plane and away from these goons, I know I will be safe. So I march over to the check-in, hand the ticket agent my boarding pass, and get on.