DOUG STANHOPE SAVED MY LIFE
PROLOGUE: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
I wake up to a loud bang overhead. It’s six in the morning. I fell asleep at three. Long shift. Everything hurts. I think of her. Another bang. I reach out.
But she’s gone.
Marvin’s getting ready for work. His room is above mine. He’s a normal guy. Twenty-four years old. Sinewy body never tainted by the street. Educated. Bright-eyed. Ready to take on this terrible world with a repulsive aplomb.
Just a normal guy who keeps normal hours.
My head pounds. My body aches. I’m already in withdrawals. I never should’ve touched Suboxone, I think, hearing another bang, then another. I roll over and feel around for my mic bag. It once held the SM58 I bought from a Berklee student for $25 (with her), but now it’s full of drugs. I find it, unzip it, and fish out half a pill from the corner. Clonidine. Stolen clonidine. Lee, my other housemate, left an old script in the bathroom. So I took a few.
I took fifteen.
I wash it down with coconut water, my only solace. I’m drenched in dope sweat, alone in this closet-sized room. The sun taunts me. The bed frame was missing pieces, so I’m literally on the floor. There’s no furniture besides a scuffed bookcase holding my computer monitor, perched atop a pile of pillaged paperbacks. It’s a makeshift lighthouse at the front of the room. Blinking. Glowing. Looming. My nightstand is a cardboard box. A thirty-five-pound kettlebell keeps the door closed. I torture myself with it. Swing it around, jack my heart rate to 170. 180. 190. See if it’ll pop.
But I’m still here. (Unfortunately.)
Whoever created buprenorphine deserves a firing squad, I think, trying to remember a time when I wasn’t addicted to drugs. No, I deserve a firing squad, I decide, half a smile searing my cheeks. I dig into the mic bag, fetch a Suboxone strip (cancer yellow, Alvogen, 8 mg), tear the wrapper with my brittle teeth, rip a sliver of Agent Orange, and tuck it under my tongue. Around 0.5 mg. Enough to push me back to sleep. To stave off the sweats and the shakes.
But not enough to dream.
I close my eyes and turn over. Marvin drops something heavy onto the floor as a blinding shard of sunlight breaks through the window. I cover my face with a pillow and briefly consider asphyxiation.
Then I fall asleep.
◆◆◆
I open my eyes and the sun cackles.
Pain. Arthritis is forming in my right wrist from shaking cocktails. How many drinks have I made? How many mornings have I ruined? How much sloppy sex have I caused? STDs? Morning-after pills? How much regret have these hands borne?
I check my watch (the one she bought me for Christmas): 8:45 a.m. Fuck, I think. Not even three hours. I’m losing my fucking mind to insomnia. It’s hard to sleep after a busy shift. The Fibonacci thoughts plague me, branching infinitely. Someday they’ll kill me.
Soon.
Being the new guy always sucks. I got this job last week. Hell, I got this room last week. Interviewed the day I arrived and started training less than twenty-four hours later. Jersey City feels like a dream. The Vineyard feels like a hallucination. Like I was never there, I just imagined it, and I didn’t even imagine it all that well.
The colors are contaminated.
First, I lost her. Our apartment in Jersey. My life. In a month. I took a bar job on Martha’s Vineyard with housing and we said our goodbyes. I thought I could make some decent money and evade misery. Change of scenery. R&R. Sandy beaches. Rich tourists who tip over twenty percent.
But it was a disaster.
Another booze bag chef stiffed me. The horrors of the restaurant industry. I shoveled him bullshit while I packed and plotted my escape. Left him an empty room and a letter of resignation signed: Fuck You.
Escape is a sublet in Medford, Massachusetts with three clean-cut college kids. Not bad. But only until September. I’ll be kicked to the curb by the end of the summer.
So here I am, thirty-two, still in the same place I was when I was twenty. Minus a spike.
But there’s still time for that.
My feet hit the floor. Dust. Crumbs. Hair and feces trailed from the bathroom. My vision is a rickety projector, each frame pronounced, cigarette burns perforating my parasitic psyche. My knees shake, a mixture of yesterday’s 5k sprint through hell (it was ninety-eight degrees outside) and 300 single-arm kettlebell swings. I grab the half-empty coconut water from the floor, chug the rest, and sigh.
The room’s a mess.
I’m tearing from The Sickness. Involuntary cries. I check my phone: nothing. No calls. Texts. Not even a fucking email. Just spam.
That’s all I’m worth.
Headphones. Daïtro. French screamo. Laissez Vivre Les Squelettes. I don’t understand what he’s screaming, but I know he means it. I approach my computer, hit the keyboard a few times to wake it up. The screen stays black. This keyboard’s shot, I think, unplugging it, then plugging it back in, smacking at the weary keys.
The monitor flickers to life.
I type in my password (her name), check my email, my stagnant Substack, yesterday’s drivel, and my recent drafts ("THE KID," "PATRIOT PLACE," "OFFICER WILSON," "THE ENTITY," "KANYE WEST IS A FUCKING HACK," "LESLEY UNIVERSITY," "GROCERIES," "CHEF JOE"). I settle on "THE KID" and start reading it aloud. Tweak a few words. A comma here and there. It’s done, but I’ll rewrite it anyway.
I’ll make sure.
I pause, listen for signs of life in the kitchen, lumber to the stove, and boil water for coffee. #2 filter. Mesh strainer. Same kind I use for cocktails behind the bar. I wet the strainer, place the filter, and grind the last of my beans. The water boils, so I turn the heat off, wait ten seconds, and pour it over the grounds.
I drink. Black. Who can afford milk?
Back to the lighthouse with coffee in hand. I stand before it and give "THE KID" another hour or so, then recheck my email, scanning for Doug Stanhope’s name with delusional optimism. I wrote him two weeks ago to request an interview (verbatim):
INTERVIEW REQUEST
To Mr. Doug Stanhope,
My name is Connor James Desmond, and I am a writer, among other terrible things. I'm reaching out to request an interview with you, as I'm conducting a livestream series on my Substack with artists I admire.
Some of my recent guests were poet Jason O'Toole, writer Jerry Stahl, and painter Chase Langford, just to name a few.
I'll cut the shit: you're a bad motherfucker, and I like your style. No fluff, no bullshit. Just the truth as you see it. You've always been unapologetically yourself, which is rare, and I deeply respect what you do on stage. You're also a great writer, and I'd be honored to chat with you. (That'll be the extent of my sycophancy.)
Me? I'm a nobody, a faceless poet who used to shoot dope in supermarket bathrooms before spraying my blood across the ceiling. My life is a thirty-two-year long trail of piss, shit, vomit, bent needles, smashed bottles, and vile words. Writing is my only purpose, and I've recently started interviewing people as a way to deal with my interminable loneliness/suicidality. My debut novel, VILE SELF PORTRAITS, which I released in January of this year, is a fictionalized recount of my heroin/booze addiction.
In short: I'm expecting you to ignore this email, but I'd be remiss if I didn't send it. If, by some Christ-like miracle, you do accept, I'll send you all of my questions ahead of time for your approval. They usually last forty-five minutes to an hour, depending.
Let me know.
Feel free to call or text me.
C. James Desmond
551-396-2895
You’re probably thinking: Why is some unknown hack with no degree or credentials asking relatively famous people for interviews? And the answer (to pretty much everything I do nowadays) is loneliness.
Doug replied:
Ask me again in a couple weeks when I'm off the road.
xoxo
stanhope
I’ll never hear from that dipsomaniacal bastard again, I think. He must’ve scoffed at my name drop of Jerry Stahl and had no clue about Chase Langford or Jason O’Toole. This is another one of my pathetic attempts to connect. To be seen. To soothe my self-inflicted solitude. How many words must I write. Speak. Hear. Just to outrun the thought of her?
Fuck it, I think. There’s virtue in persistence, right? Besides, if I stop pushing, stop running, I’ll collapse.
I draft another email:
INTERVIEW REQUEST TAKE TWO
Hey Doug,
Just wanted to follow up and see if you're still down for an interview. I know you said you were on the road, so let me know when you'll be back home and we can set something up. Like I said, it would be an honor to chat. Feel free to text me if that's easier.
I'm a lonesome nobody, I would never publicize your number.
I'll just shit my pants and cry tears of obscene joy. ;)
Many thanks,
C. James Desmond
551-396-2895
Tears of obscene joy? What the fuck is wrong with me? I think, my finger hovering over delete. I check the time—12:30 p.m.
Fuck.
Work.
I have to get ready for work.
I click send.
Mic bag. 4 mg of Suboxone. Sublingual.
Bathroom. Shower. Razor. Toothbrush. Clothes. Watch. Shoes. Backpack. Bike.
Gone.
Read my novel, VILE SELF PORTRAITS
Read “AN OPEN LETTER TO BAR GOERS EVERYWHERE”
so so good, as always 🖤
You are the real deal, motherfucker. High quality no-nonsense literature. Thank you.