Imagine me telling you the following story, only you’re not only reconstructing the words, you’re fully imagining me reading in a raspy monologue that borders between the vibrato of a phlegmy tenor and bass, articulate yet self-deprecating; you’re watching me rise from the couch cushions center a throng of addicts to reenact one of the most confusing moments of my life. I’m telling a story, this story, in a mansion up Lake Avenue in Altadena, California. The owner loves his six tenants, all access to a palace of excess, and he’ll trim a bit off the rent if you love him back. I know because my girlfriend at the time shared … in more ways than one.
This story is the prologue to one of many stories that were birthed there that very evening as meth heads and speed freaks hung on every word between the begging orgasms calling from pipes and pills stashed in the pool house. But the important thing isn’t to beckon the inevitable. It’s to coax out the present with memories of the past.
I’m standing before you, and I say …
“My second wife was working. We worked opposite shifts, which is how we stayed married so long. That and the fact she never knew my infatuation for our neighbor in the apartment on the second floor. Rachel. She was a red-head. She was a red-head and an intellectual and an athlete. She drank beer and talked shit about George W. Bush, and this particular evening she decided to smoke pot with me in my bathroom, God forbid the skunk stench get into the sofa from Pier One.
I asked her and her roommate, Jim, over. And after a couple beers we made our way to a closet-sized enclosure near my bathroom, closing the bathroom door, bedroom door and another privacy door to create a sauna-sized hotbox for the three of us.
Half an hour squatting knee-to-knee in this tiny space, four feet by four feet by eight, conversation wavering between foreign policy and a song I made up on the spot:
I Rock! You Rock! We All Rock, For Iraq!
I heard Jim mention he was from Santa Rosa, California, the same city an old Army buddy had said he too was born and raised. My friend was Christopher Welch and he once told me he was going to make me famous by inserting a few lines of mine into a short story that was destined to get published. Destined to be the most famous and important story ever. I rose to my feet excited that they might know each other, and if he didn’t, he should.
‘Christopher Welch! Do you know him?’
He didn’t. But it put me on the path to locate him, high and mighty.
I opened the door to the bathroom and gave ourselves more room, leg and lung-wise. Then I grabbed my cordless phone and dialed what I assumed was 411, the number for information.
It was not. Instead I heard …
‘911. What is your emergency?’
Click.
I laughed it off. I told Rachel and Jim that I dialed the wrong number – 911 – for which they informed me that the police would undoubtedly arrive to check out the possible emergency.
‘Fuck.’
In a panic, considering my condition and that of my drug-laden apartment, I tucked the phone under my arm and proceeded to bark commands to my friends.
‘Jim! Grab the dope and the doodads (I forgot the name of any and all paraphernalia)! Rachel, some movies and the beer! Let’s go!’
Within seconds we were out the door and running upstairs to Jim and Rachel’s balcony apartment. Safely inside, I held court over my grief-stricken friends and calmed them with my ego-maniacal banter while rolling a joint.
‘Fuck the police. They’re idiots. They’re not going to do anything.’
Then karma happened.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!
The three of us cowered under the thunderous hammering coming from the lower courtyard.
And then.
‘Oh shit.’
I looked down to the cordless phone sitting on the table between a tiny Ziploc baggie an eighth filled with weed and a two-foot bong. It was on.
I hung up.
It rang within seconds, pleading I answer.
I reluctantly answered the phone, peering through blinds at three officers standing at my apartment door below.
‘Hello?’
‘This is 911 Emergency. Open your door.’
I said I wasn’t home, but I said it with an unwavering and unnecessary attitude. ‘I’m. Not. Home.’
‘I know you’re within 100 feet. Answer you’re door.’
Fucking cordless phone.
‘One second,’ I said. ‘I’m upstairs at a friend’s apartment.’
It’s important to note that the following can only be verified by the Pasadena Police Department as my friends were hiding in a closet and a shower.
‘Exit the apartment slowly and contact the officers nearest your apartment.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
I stepped outside, left hand holding the phone to the side of my head and the other hailing the police officers like a taxi.
‘Hey there! Up here!’ I said.
Then I watched a police officer speak into the microphone clipped to his shoulder.
‘Ask him to approach the apartment,’ he said.
Then the 911 Operator spoke to me on the phone.
‘Approach the officer.’
‘I’m on my way,” I said.
‘He’s on his way,’ the operator said, loud enough for me to hear over the receiver and echo from his person.
‘Tell him I’m watching him closely,’ the officer said.
‘The officer is watching you closely,’ the operator said.
Stoned and panicked I raised my voice into the phone and courtyard below.
‘I can hear everything the police officer is saying! Can’t I just speak with him?’ I yelled.
‘No,’ the officer said.
‘No,’ the operator said.
Shaking my head in disbelief I descended the stairs, the entire time narrating my every move. Did Jerry Garcia go through shit like this? Willie Nelson. My God.
‘I’m walking down the stairs.’
‘He’s walking down the stairs.’
Pass the pool.
‘I’m walking beside the pool.’
‘He’s walking beside the pool.’
‘I see him.’
‘He sees you.’
‘I’m near the pool.’
‘He’s near the pool.’
‘I see him. He’s ten feet from me.’
‘He sees you. He’s ten feet from you.’
‘I know. He’s right in front of me.’
‘He’s right in front of – ‘
‘Hey!’ I interrupt. ‘Can I hang up now?’
‘Can he hang up now?’
‘No.’
‘No.’
There I stood poolside playing a game of telephone with law enforcement, a surrealist and pseudo-interrogation via an operator and police officer while two backup men from additional squad cars watched joyfully, hands holding flashlights in a fashion ready to beat a public nuisance senseless.
‘Why did you call 911?’
‘Why did you call 911?’
‘It was a mistake. I meant 411. You see, I have this friend – ‘
‘Why did you run away?’
‘Why did you run away?’
‘You’re the police. It’s what I do.’
‘What have you been doing tonight?’
‘What have you been doing tonight?’
Echoes of berating and the light headed chill one gets from a bum high sent shivers through me. And before I could answer, another call came in. This time a real one. I didn’t catch the code, but it was a HELL of a lot more important than a grown man misdialing the police and hiding in a neighbor’s apartment.
By the time the police were ready to leave, moments before asking me to open my door to prove all was safe and sound, my landlord – a fellow ingrate – saved me by confirming with the authorities I did, in fact, live there but was somewhat a party boy.
‘Party boy?’ I said, turning to my landlord. ‘You want to know a party boy, you should meet my old Army buddy, Chris Welch.’
And as if on cue, I went upstairs and coaxed my friends from their hiding places, begging to use my phone which they had hidden in the case that I had made the mistake a third time.
