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- [00:00]
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- [01:23]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. The Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories on the podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York and Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org this week we bring you one from the Vault. The story you're about to hear by Jerry Stahl was recorded live at the moth mainstage in 1999. The theme of the night was Gotta have It, an evening of stories on cravings and compulsions.
- [01:56]
Jerry Stahl
All right, I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag now and say I was a heroin addict for a little while. And this is a story about how in the early 90s, I made the decision to try and get off heroin by doing crack. It's a controversial method. It's not been approved by Drug czar General McCaffrey at this point, but it made sense at the time because at that point in my life, I had. I've been thrown out of my marriage, lost a house, lost a kid. I got fired for writing for Twin Peaks, for turning in scripts with blood on them. So I ended up basically nowhere to fucking live. So I took what little money I had and I said, I'm going to change everything. And I moved up to rustic Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles and I found a nice kind of big room in the bottom of a house where the people upstairs a really nice couple. You know Mr. And Mrs. Santa Claus. Really nice. And the place I moved into was like a 360 view. Glass everywhere, view of the woods. I was gonna jog, you know, everything was gonna be different. Unfortunately, I was still strung out like a lab rat. So, you know, the jogging thing went first, but then I said, you know, the crackheads I knew really didn't have heroin problems. So I made the decision to get it to crack. And what happened was instantly, instantly things got chaotic, as things tend to do on crack. My life developed a pattern where basically, like five times a night I would drive downtown to Los Angeles to cough so I'd have enough for the night. Then, of course, I would run out immediately and I would have to come home. And the reason I had to come home was because I had to take a shit every time I copped. And the reason it was really bad is that at that point, my diet consisted only of tubular foods like Cheez Whizz, beef jerky. And since I didn't want to do opiates and crack makes you really fucking paranoid, as some of you might have read. I was doing Robituss and DM nighttime formula to calm myself down, which is this blue liquid which goes right through you. I was like spraying the toilet, electric cobalt, rushing back downtown, coffee, more coming home, spray painting the toilet. And it was a life, you know. In about two weeks, things got really chaotic, really bad. And one night, about four in the morning, you know, in the middle of the woods, I take off my driver, this is my landlady waving at me in her nightie at 4 in the morning. And of course, I pretend I don't see her because I figure, fuck, I'm busted, I'm in trouble. But, you know, nothing's gonna stop me. I go down, I cop, I come back, there's police cars. I'm fucked, it's over. So I drive up the hill. I like, you know, sleep in the woods, skulk back down the next morning. And actually, it wasn't about me. Her husband had had a heart attack and she was flagging me down to try and get me to take him to the hospital. And he died mysteriously. I got evicted after that, but I didn't know for a while because I never opened my mail. And I couldn't answer the phone because it was always bad news or weird little voices or the phone wasn't really ringing or, you know, something to that effect. So what I ended up doing was moving into my Cadillac. At that point, I had this sort of 1983 P piss test Yellow executive Cadillac. A really unfashionable year. You know, this was the kind of Cadillac that comes with a proviso that you must wear white shoes and a white belt in order to drive it. You know, the full Cleveland. So I move downtown and instantly I know I'm in trouble because there's no bathroom. So within like a day I'm sleeping in my car, looking for places to relieve myself. I get the bright idea I better get some adult diapers. Some Depends. I'm just going to tell you right now, there's really no more crippling humiliation than being busted. Shoplifting? Depends. Which is what happened to me. However, I made it out of the store and perhaps the second most humiliating thing is realizing somebody's watching you as you're sitting in your Cadillac putting on an adult diaper. So there was this sort of snaky African American fellow looking in, you know, he's totally like, you know, he doesn't give a shit. All he says to me is, hey, man, I know what you know, he knows that I obviously want the same thing he does. You know, I know where to get, you know, the good rock and I'm getting the good shit. You know, I know where to get a checkup from the neck up, you know, all that shit. And, you know, so he gets in the car with me and instantly, you know, begins my life of crime. You know, I know he's a good guy because he's still got the plastic LA County Jail bracelet on. He's been sprung that morning, you know, Calvin. And so the crime that he, you know, I'm like, down now. I'm going to be like, you know, homeboy. Well, the crime, you know, he busted me into is like, we're going to shoplift canned goods from Ralph's or A and P or whatever you have here and put a dent in them and take them back. So not exactly good fellows, but you got to start somewhere. So the first thing I do, you know, I'm like, I'm smuggling out that buck 89, Diddy Moore beef stew. You know, putting a dent in it, taking it back, getting my buck 89, you know, it's really worth. Unfortunately, it takes a little while to make bank when you're doing the Cannes thing, you know. So, you know, finally, at the end of the day, we get enough. We get all fucked up. We're driving, smoking the car. So we're driving by the Cecil Hotel, which in LA is this notorious sort of SRO fucked up nightmare hotel downtown. And this guy comes tooling out of the fucking hotel carrying, like, three beige rotary phones with the wires trailing, followed by some, like, Indian guy with a hoe like chasing. And my man Calum says, yo, that's Delmore. Get him in the fucking car now. Now. So we open the door, this guy jumps in the car. It's like we planned, you know? The big fucking, like, rotary phone robber. This guy dives in the car, you know? We take off downtown, you know, and suddenly I've got two felons in the backseat, you know? And the deal is, his friend Delmore is like, you know what, man? A lot of guys don't steal phones. Let me tell you. We get nine bucks for those motherfuckers, you know? So his whole thing, he goes to the hotel, he knocks on the. And, like, you know, people open up. He fucking dashes in, clicks the light, and steals the phone. He has totally got this to himself. It's his own racket. So these guys get the bright idea since it's just like, them and, you know, white boy me, you know, we'll be fucking the guys who, like, we're gonna find some, like, 18th street gang, you know, who's selling crap in the corner. We're rip them off. You know, I'm gonna pull up, and they're gonna hand it to me. My mind you, this weird dynamic starts happening right away, which is Calvin starts slapping me in the head every three fucking minutes. Like, yo, bitch, I need some fucking water. Pull over. You know? Like, I don't really give a shit. Cause I'm focused, you know? I just want the drug. I don't care about my reputation. What do I fucking care? You know? I just want the drug. I got a job. I don't have to think. No gray area. So what happens is, you know, we start doing this. You know, the first time we do it, we pull up, I'm in a Cadillac. They're hunched down the back. The guy, you know, the kid sticks his hand in with the rocks. I grab him, we take off. Boom. Rock. Somebody throws a fucking brick through the back of the window. Shattered everywhere. I'm taking off, you know, I'm totally adrenalized. It's like the greatest rush of my fucking life. I immediately want to do it again. So we're smoking this crack. We're sitting in the car, I'm all fucking tweaked out, and it's like, man, why don't we do it again? You know? So we go around the corner. This time, we're already A little suspect having a blown out rear window, you know, and, you know, plus all these motherfuckers are born with cell phones. So, you know, like little Pepe was calling the other cholo on the other corner and that's it, you know, they fucking know some white boy with bad teeth is like trying to rip us off, you know, stay down for that. So I go to the next place, same thing. They stick the fucking rocks in the window. Boom. I take off. This time it's like, booyah. You know, I get fucking shotgunned. It misses us. We take off, we're tooling out of there. I've got the crack pipe lit in my mouth. There's rocks everywhere, two felons in the backseat. We're driving away at top fucking speed. It's like rush hour in Los Angeles. We're on Wilshire Boulevard going west for no apparent reason. I'm smoking crack, the rock falls out. Still burning, lands on my dick, starts to burn. I've got like scorched scrotum hair. I'm fishing around. I slam into a bus. Instantly my car is accordioned. Black smoke pouring out Calvin and Delmore. It's like a Flintstones to them. It's like the funniest shit they've ever fucking. Hey, that's you really good driver, man. You know, smacking me in the fucking head. And, you know, what the fuck am I gonna do? So I'm taking my, like, accordion, you know, El Dorado, you know, tooling left, and we gotta fucking get off the street. We don't know where the fuck to go. And I realize the one, like, white thing I have left, I had declared bankruptcy with American Express, upon which they promptly sent me an Optima Card. You know, figure it out. So I tell these guys I want to be down with the fellas. So I tell them, you know what I want to say? Nothing, ma'am. You know, there was this motherfucker in a brown Beamer and I fucking rolled up on him. I pulled him out, I took his fucking wallet. You know, his wife had the ice around her neck. That bitch wanted to go with me because I'm like, woozy McIsmo. Look, I got this credit card. Gerald Stahl. What kind of a fucking name is that? You know, like, yeah, you know, I mean, at this point, the only way anybody would give me their wallet is if I would threaten to breathe on them. You know, I'm like 83 pounds, yellow teeth, high fucking green skin, you know, the whole nine yards. And I'm wearing a diaper so throw that in the mix, because by now, you know, I've experienced seepage, you know, I've got like, blueberry blue stains in the seat of all my pants, you know, it looks like I've sat in a series of pies, you know, the county fair pie sitting contest, you know. So, you know, anyway, I'm driving away, you know, it's like middle of the fucking day, you know, I've got the credit card. So we decided to go to a motel, you know, we check in on some, like, Travelodge, you know, one of these, like, fucking 18 bucks, 25 bucks a day kind of downtown things. And this, you know, finally, you know, I'm drinking my Robitussin, you know, they're crashed out, you know, they're in the bed, I'm on the floor, you know, and I'm suddenly in the middle of the night. I have this moment of clarity. This is what my life has come to. There's like three leaking canned hams over in the corner, you know, but we tried to dent them too hard. Four fucking beige rotary phones over in the corner. A pair of African American felons in my bed, and I'm wearing a diaper, you know, it's like, you know what? The madness has got to stop. I need a full Susan powder at this point. Stop the madness. So I sneak out. It's four in the morning. I somehow putter back to Hollywood. I park the car behind the Nexon station, crawl off to fucking sleep it off. I come back the next day, the car is gone. Somebody has stolen my accordion Cadillac. And at this point, I remember the second white thing I still have, which I have, insurance. So I call up Allstate and I say, you know, this unfortunate thing happened. My Cadillac has been stolen. I reported to the police. I'm a good citizen. It's like a day later, you know, I get this call from, like, policewoman, you know, Marjorie Goodfella again. She calls me up, she says, you know, Mr. Stahl, it's really sad what happened. I said, well, what happened? We found your car. We think it was stolen. So what happened? She goes, well, it looks like drug addicts, Rocks on the car, paraphernalia everywhere, syringes under the seat, and gee, I'm so sorry. Yeah, that's really heartbreaking. I love that car. You know, at this point, we're just a couple of people talking about how darn wrong the world has gone. We're commiserating, you know, it's like, well. So I called my insurance company they're very nice about it. They decided to cut me a $5200 check and like a month later, not a month, like a week later, I get the check and I realize, you know, it's time for a change. I can't go on living like this. I take the $5200 and I spend it on heroin. And it all worked out. Thanks a lot.
- [14:07]
Dan Kennedy
Jerry Stahl is the author of six books including the memoir Permanent Midnight and more recently the novels I, Fatty and Painkillers. The Moth is a non profit organization. Consider supporting our free podcast by going to our podcast contribution page or by becoming a moth member@themoth.org where you can also buy moth stories on CD, including today's story, which is featured on the Best Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Stories. Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is the author of the recently published book Rock An Office Power Ballad. Learn more@rockonthebook.com he is also the author of Loser Goes First. Don't Miss the Moth in Milwaukee on Saturday, June 6 with host Andy Borowitz. The night will feature stories by Tom Farley and others. Tickets are on sale now@themost.org thanks to Maz Swift for our podcast music and please tell us what you thought of today's episode. What would you like to hear more of or less of? Email us@podcastthemoth.org thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Network Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public@prx.org.