Gay Meth Addict Fucks Up, Sends Up Red Flags

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 8 Part 2

We had been running a bit late when Richard dropped me off at Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd street.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll make the bus. If you don’t, just give me a call, and I’ll come back and pick you up,” he said, being surprisingly sweet. It was a nice way to send me off after such a turbulent spring.

Dragging my rolling duffel bag behind me, I alternated between power walking and running through the vast, bustling bus station to catch a 7:30 AM Greyhound to Chicago. I arrived at the gate at 7:25 and was relieved. There was still a line of people. I assumed they hadn’t boarded yet and took my place in line.

Several months earlier, before I completely fell off the radar, I co-founded the Springfield Repertory Theater with my close friends Jason, Roger, Dexter and Laura. Now I was heading out to Springfield, Illinois, for our inaugural summer theater festival.

I didn’t want to go, to be honest. With the exception of those couple weeks of sobriety, I hadn’t been around normal people in well over a year. And these weren’t normal people I was heading off to be around. These were actors.

But not going? That was never an option. I had made a commitment to my friends.

Plus, it was a gig. I’d been cast. You get hired. You show up. Simple as that.

Or not so simple. I was very much off the wagon while faking sobriety with my friends. I hadn’t been slamming nearly as often as I had before Richard and Jackson had been arrested, but I had been slamming.

Also, I looked like shit: my hair was longer and unkept, shoved under a faded ball cap; I hadn’t shaved in weeks, yet my beard was thin and patchy; and I had become extremely pale, even for me, which I chalked up to never being out in the sun like the amphetamine vampire I was. I didn’t really care though. I grew my hair and beard out in preparation to play George in Of Mice and Men and, honestly, it was a relief to give myself a break from worrying if I looked fuckable or not. What pressed more on my mind was the long stretch of time I was facing without a single slam.

7:28 AM. The line still hadn’t moved.

The glossy red brick walls made the gate area seem close. It made me think about how close it was going to feel on the bus and, fuck, I was not looking forward to that.

A young man and woman stood in front of me, chatting away. He was clearly gay wearing skinny jeans, hip black frame glasses and a print t-shirt with Jem and the Holograms. He had a hoodie over one arm which made me think it might be cold on the bus. Thank goodness I was always dressed for a cold blustery fall day even in the middle of June in jeans, a long sleeve red flannel shirt and my Crazy for You jean show jacket.

The young woman squatted down to search for something in her bag as they bantered. They seemed like a fun pair. I wondered if they were heading for Springfield as well, if they were part of the acting company. I thought about asking.

7:30.

7:42.

7:50.

Now I was worried. Surely someone would have said something if the bus had been delayed.

“Um…Sorry, excuse me?” I asked the bespectacled gay in front of me. “This is the line for the 7:30 to Chicago?”

“No. The 8:00 to Philadelphia.” His polite tone also said “please don’t start talking to me.”

“Oh…oh.” The realization hit me with the force of a cricket bat.

I’d missed the bus.

It honestly had never occurred to me that a bus scheduled to depart at 7:30 would depart…at 7:30.

After I visited the ticket counter to make sure I could use my ticket for the same bus to Chicago the next morning, I jostled my way outside to the corner of 42nd and 8th. I felt like absolute shit. I had fucked up and I knew I had fucked up. And there was nothing I could do about it but stew in my own soup of disappointment and failure.

I called Richard, told him what happened, and asked him if he could come back and pick me up.

“You’re kidding. You have got to be KIDDING! You missed the damn bus? You missed….are you sure? I’m already in Jersey…fine, fine, FINE. I’ll come back, pay another six buck toll, which I can’t fucking afford, to pick you up. This is great John, this is really fucking spectacular.”

Guess he was done being sweet.

My next call was to Jason. I told him I had missed the bus and would be a day late, though there in time for the first company meeting. He understood and said he’d pass the message along, but I knew I had just sent up a bil ol’ red flag. I was going to be an issue, a problem, a liability. I didn’t want to be, but it felt inevitable.

I called Richard again to ask where he would pick me up.

“49th and 8th. Call me again and I’m turning around and fucking leaving you there.”

He hung up on me. I just stood there with the phone to my ear for a long minute, not wanting to move, not wanting to be here, not wanting to exist, while the throngs of tourists and travelers rushed past me as if I wasn’t there.

I grabbed my rolling duffle bag and walked seven blocks north where Richard picked me up.

He laid into me the moment I got in the car. How I couldn’t do anything right, how irresponsible I was. That I didn’t respect him. That I was in fact abusive toward him. That everything in the world had been handed to me and how I couldn’t do the simplest fucking thing for myself. He called me a baby, a parasite.

I just sat there.

He was right. Everything he was saying was right. I was a baby. I was a parasite. Maybe I was even abusive. I sat in silence letting his words cut into me as I stared out the window as the Upper West Side rushed by. Usually when he would come for me like this I would fight back, but not this time.

I felt small, broken, worthless.

I deserved it.

Richard took a breath and, after a moment, said, “I’m sorry. I mean, not for what I said. I mean every fucking word. But I’m sorry. I just…I just think you’re capable of better.”

We rode in silence as he took the ramp to the GWB taking us back over to Jersey.

It made sense. I mean, I’d spent the last year wondering how Richard could be so blind to what Tina was doing to him. It only made sense that Tina was making me equally blind to how worthless I had become.

I went to bed early that evening, not wanting to take any chances that I’d miss another bus.

At around 2 AM I was startled from a deep sleep by Richard jumping onto the bed next to me and frantically whispering in my ear.

“Wake up wake up wake up! You have to come out to the living room. They’re out there. They’re watching. They’re right fucking there. You need to come see. Come out and just tell me you can’t see them, come on.” He scurried off back to the living room.

Fuck, I thought. The people in the trees.

The stress from the arrest while continuing to use had pushed Richard’s psychosis into overdrive. Hard to argue against being paranoid when you learn people have actually been following you. Nearly everything was suspect. A random van in the parking lot? Spies. The upstairs neighbors? Clearly spying. According to him, both his car and the apartment were bugged. God forbid a helicopter hover overhead.

“It’s rush hour. They’re covering the bridge. Just like they were at this time yesterday. And every day before that.”

“Sure,” he would say, shaking his head, pleased with how smart he was to have figured them out. “Sure they are. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

Then came the people in the trees. It took a while for me to fully understand what he was seeing, but apparently it was a reclusive tree dwelling people that lived in the parks and forests around the tri-state area. He told me the name he had found for them once, but I can’t remember what it was. It was something similar to Uruk-hai, J. R. R. Tolkien's orc army in The Lord of the Rings. The way he described them I pictured something between Tolkien's orcs and the aliens from the movie Signs, humanoid but menacing and sinister. According to Richard, these creatures had taken up residence in the trees right outside his window, and they were watching him.

Tired and groggy, I staggered out to the living room. Richard was perched on his couch staring out the window, like a cracked out Wendy waiting for her Peter Pan, ever picking the “staph” out of his face.

He waved me over and whispered frantically. “Come. Come here. Sit down and look.”

“Richard, I don’t want to miss my bus tomorrow…”

“If you don’t sit here and look for as long as it fucking takes for you to see these fuckers, then you can call a cab back to New York right now and worry about getting your shit to the bus station yourself!”

I was too tired to fight.

I walked over, sat down, and looked out the window at nothing.

“See him?”

“No.”

“You…fuck, he’s standing right there.” He pointed at a thick horizontal outgrowth of the trees where a man, or whatever, could stand…if he were there. If he were real.

I shook my head.

“Fuck you’re blind. You’re so fucking blind,” he said as if he felt sorry for me, still picking at his face.

Every time I sighed or yawned, I got “Stop being dramatic! You know, I wish you would just stop thinking about yourself for once and help me. You never fucking help me.”

So I sat there, trying not to yawn or fall asleep or do anything that would invoke another barb.

“Richard, I’m going back to bed…”

“Did you see him?”

“… No.”

“Then I guess you’re not going back to bed.”

Fuck my life.

“Fine, then can I make myself a little slam. Something to keep me awake.” I didn’t want to risk a full slam but I felt I deserved something for dealing with this bullshit.

“Fine,” he said, never taking his eyes from the window.

I got up and fixed myself a mini slam. I injected it and savored the mild rush, disappointed that it wasn’t the hard rush I was so used to, but glad of it just the same.

After another hour, Richard finally released me from my watch. Even with the mini slam, I had no problem falling right back asleep.

My alarm went off a couple hours later.

I jumped out of bed and into the shower.

After drying off, I took a minute to check myself out in the mirror. A strange red rash had covered my entire chest for about a week, but it thankfully had cleared up in the last few days. Whatever it was, it was something that apparently took care of itself.

Richard drove me back down to Port Authority without incident and with time to spare. When I had successfully boarded my bus, I called Jason.

“Hey fucker, just letting you know I made the bus. See you in about 22 hours.”

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