Based on a True Story Read online

  “I’m gonna quit drinking and be just like you, Adam Eget.” We both laugh hard at that one.

  As we dance and laugh, Gabe walks in and he is carrying two bags from 7-Eleven. He empties them into the middle of the room. Food spills everywhere. There are Twizzlers and Butterfingers and Rolos and Creamsicles and PayDays and more and more and more.

  “There you go, Fatso. That oughta hold you for a while.”

  “He’s back, Gabe. He’s back.”

  “Yeah, I’m back,” I say. “I’m sorry I missed out on all the fun. Adam Eget says we’ve been to every casino in town.”

  “Yep,” says Gabe.

  “Listen, Gabe, I really want to thank you for taking care of that knife-wielding pimp I outdrank.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ve never liked pimps,” says Gabe. “Love should never be for sale.” Gabe is always saying wise words like these, words that you’d expect to see on a T-shirt or a coffee mug.

  I want to know if I’d made the million yet and, if not, how close I am. “How much did I win, Gabe, how much did I win?”

  Gabe just looks at me. “How much did you win? You black out on whiskey and expect to wake up in a bed of cash? No. You wake up in a cold, hard bathtub, which is what you did.”

  “But Adam Eget told me I couldn’t lose.”

  Adam Eget has two Entenmann’s donuts in his mouth. “Oh, I was just talking about last night, Norm. You couldn’t lose last night. Sorry for the misunderstanding.”

  “SORRY FOR THE MISUNDERSTANDING?” I leap across the room and am on Adam Eget and choking him, but his ubiquitous sweat protects him. It is like trying to keep hold of a greased pig. But I stay on top of him and finally have him pinned to the floor. I’m throwing punches and Adam Eget is whimpering and crying and I keep screaming, “SORRY FOR THE MISUNDERSTANDING?” I feel Gabe on my back, trying to pry me loose, but my enormous girth prevents anything of the sort. It seems like Adam Eget is certain to die by my hand, but Gabe finally hits me across the back with a chair. The chair does not smash to pieces like in the movies, so he just keeps hitting me with it until finally I roll over, finished. Gabe places the chair back where he found it. The chair looks fine; it hasn’t lost a single splinter. I can barely breathe.

  “Where do I stand, Gabe?”

  “You’ve worn out your credit at every casino. You owe a million and you have roughly seventy thousand from your hot streak last night.”

  I try to get up, but I’m not used to all the extra weight and my knees buckle. I crawl to the candy and empty a pack of Junior Mints in my mouth, then begin to unwrap a Butterfinger. “Why am I eating like this, Gabe? What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been thinking on that,” says Gabe. “Did you ever see the movie Milk?”

  “I love milk,” says Adam Eget.

  “Right,” Gabe says, “but, you mean you love to drink it out of a glass or maybe put it on your cereal.”

  “Oh, yes,” says Adam Eget.

  “Well, this movie, Milk, it has nothing to do with that. It’s about a politician in San Francisco who is killed by this crazy guy. And it was a true story. So when this guy goes on trial, the media dubs it ‘the Twinkie defense’ ’cause this crazy guy ate a lot of Twinkies. But the media had it all wrong. They said the defense was claiming eating Twinkies made their client crazy. What the defense was really saying was that eating a lot of junk food was a symptom of mental illness. That when you’re going crazy, your brain craves sugar.”

  “Gabe, you trying to tell me I went crazy?”

  “You went crazy and you went fat.”

  “I can still win, Gabe.”

  Gabe puts his mouth close to my ear. “It may be time to begin readying yourself for Plan B.”

  Adam Eget and I take the last seventy thousand over to the craps table. I bet five thousand on every number, so I have thirty thousand dollars on the table. I know as I do it I am out of control, but I cannot stop. Gabe was right. I’m still on tilt. My only hope now is to hit a run of good luck. Hitting a run of good luck at the exact time you are on tilt can make you a fortune fast. But instead I watch as my bankroll goes up, then down, then up again, and I think how this will likely be the last time I place money on a game of chance.

  I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that I gamble in order to escape the reality of life, and I told him that’s why everyone does everything. But I’ve had plenty of wasted nights, after losses and bigger losses, to consider the question more seriously. So why the attraction? Most people would think it’s the wins that keep the gambler going, but any gambler knows this is not true. As you place your chips on the craps table, you feel anxiety and impatience. When the red dice hit the green felt with a thunk and you’re declared the winner and the chips are pushed toward you, you feel relief. Relief is all. And relief is fine, but hardly what a man would give the whole rest of his life to gain. It has to be something else, and the best I’ve come up with is this: It is a particular moment. A magic moment that occurs after the placing of a bet and before the result of that bet. It is after the red dice are thrown but before they lie still on the green felt where they fall. It is when the dice are in the air, and as long as they are there, time stops. As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.

  “Better luck next time, sir.”

  In a casino, these are the words that tell you that you are broke. “Better luck next time, sir.” I stumble over to a chair by the slots. I light a cigarette and take a deep drag. When the casino takes all I have, I usually feel lost and don’t know what to do. But this time is different. I know exactly what to do. I have Plan B.

  I find Adam Eget by the video keno machine and take the news that he is up a dollar and eighty-five cents in stride. “Adam Eget, listen to me. Go now and find the man you think is a lady and stay with her somewhere downtown. Somewhere you will be noticed. Start a fight in public. Make yourself seen. Tomorrow evening, return here and find me in my bed.”

  “Gotcha, boss.” And Adam Eget turns on his heel to leave.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna see you tomorrow night.”

  “You never really understood Plan B, did you, Adam Eget?”

  “Not really.”

  And so I have to explain the plan again to Adam Eget, and when he finally understands it, he begins to weep like a woman and asks me to promise that I will do no harm to myself.

  “I will not promise that, Adam Eget. It goes against everything Plan B stands for. But remember this: When you come back tomorrow, it will not be me you find in the hotel room bed”—and then I have him touch the flesh of my arm and the bones underneath—“but only these clothes I wear.”

  Adam Eget goes off into the night and I go to my room.

  I sit on the edge of my bed and open the drawer. I take out the 600 milligrams of Dilaudid, the fresh syrette, and the Gideon’s Bible. I read a few of my favorite Scripture passages as I prepare the syrettes. And then I inject myself with the lethal dose of Dilaudid. I fall to my knees and rest my elbows on the bed. I pray forgiveness for what I am doing. And then I feel joy and peace fill my soul as my consciousness quietly drifts away.

  And then…I don’t die.

  22

  MEETING GOD

  I find my way through the casino and in a moment I am on the Strip. There is a dry chill that begins to freeze my naked face, and the buildings of iron and glass feel as immortal as the ancient streets they sit upon. I look above and the sun shining amid the blue sky and white, white clouds casts a pall of futility over the man-made monuments and their sickly neon light.

  And I stand by the Pyramid of Luxor and gaze upon the firmament above, and in a sudden the sky becomes a face and I look away in fear and shame.

  It is the face of God and He speaks, and His voice is both yours and mine at once, and He speaks unto me.

  “WHY DO YOU NOT LOOK AT ME, NEI
THER YESTERDAY NOR TODAY?” And so I remove my Dirty Work hat and look upon Him and study His countenance.

  Now, people always wonder if God is a man or a woman or black or white or yellow, but I’m here to tell you that none of this silly stuff matters. (He’s a white guy, by the way.) What matters is how truly big He is. He is bigger than the cities, than the world, than the sun. He is bigger than your hopes, your imaginings, your dreams, and even your ambitions. Plus He has a mustache.

  And when I lock eyes with this supernatural giant, I feel the emptiness that I have always carried deep in my gut vanish, and a sudden quiet peace replaces it.

  “WAIT A MINUTE—YOUR EYES ARE WEIRD; THE PUPILS ARE ALL DILATED. YOU AREN’T STONED, ARE YOU?” God looks concerned, and He moves His face close to inspect me.

  “No.”

  “ARE YOU SURE? ’CAUSE YOU LOOK REALLY STONED.”

  “No. I mean…Oh, yeah, kinda.”

  God throws up His hands and shakes His head in exasperation. “WELL, THAT’S JUST GREAT. BECAUSE I HAVE COME TO YOU WITH A MESSAGE FOR THE PEOPLE OF EARTH, AND WHO BETTER TO DELIVER MY MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF EARTH THAN A STONED GUY. DOESN’T GET ANY MORE CONVINCING THAN THAT.”

  “Look, Lord, there’s no need for sarcasm. Listen, maybe you should find someone else. I’m just a nightclub comic who travels across the country and gives people the gift of happiness with jokes about answering machines. I’m sure I’ll go to heaven, right?”

  “FINE, I’LL FIND ANOTHER. AS FAR AS GOING TO HEAVEN, I CAN’T SAY.”

  Well, that really scares me, so I think fast. “Hold on, hold on. It was only a joke! Of course I’m your guy. I’m your guy. I was kidding earlier when I said you should find someone else. It’s so funny that you thought I was being serious, because I was totally kidding.”

  And the Lord begins to speak His message, but just as He begins, a second wave of the drug hits me, much harder, and the sidewalk becomes quicksand beneath my feet and I sink into it, fast. I clutch at a lamppost and hold on hard so that the sidewalk does not swallow me and fill my lungs with sand. Around me I see, in a circle that grows ever smaller, a pack of wildcats sauntering nearer and nearer, and their green eyes shine and their white teeth are slick with saliva and their breath can be seen in the cold, cold air. Time that is beyond all human calculation passes, and a crash of thunder makes the mountain cats race up to the top of the Luxor hotel, where they fasten themselves like gargoyles to the top of the pyramid. I am alone now but for Him. I look up and He is making pronouncements, and He looks mighty and self-satisfied too.

  “…AND IT HAS TO BE IN THOSE EXACT WORDS. NOW REPEAT THEM BACK TO ME.”

  And I say, “I’m sorry, man, some weird shit was going down. I wasn’t listening.”

  “OH, WELL, THAT’S COOL, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.” But I can see that He is sulking.

  “Hold on, I’ll get a pencil!” I race to the Luxor’s gift shop to buy a pencil and a notebook from a half-man half-alligator, and I am now ready to write down all His words, the better to convey them to the people of earth.

  “SAY UNTO THEM, REDEMPTION IS NEAR!”

  “Got it. Redaction is near.”

  “REDEMPTION!!”

  “Revenging.”

  “REDEMPTION!!!”

  “Got it,” I say again. “Got it.” I look down and the pencil is the finger of a dead woman and it is blue-black.

  “AND THE PERFIDY OF MAN…”

  “And the ferfectly on man.”

  “NO! NO! THAT’S NOT EVEN A WORD. JUST FOCUS.” I can tell that God is getting very frustrated, but it isn’t my fault. God knows way more words than I do.

  And on it goes, with Him making pronouncements and using very difficult words, and then me getting something wrong, and Him getting all disappointed in me, until finally it ends.

  “AND SUCH IS THE WAY TO ETERNAL BLISS.”

  “Got it, Chief!” I say, and place my notebook and the dead woman’s finger in my pocket.

  “WELL?”

  “Well what?” I say.

  “WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY SPEECH TO THE PEOPLE OF EARTH?”

  “I’m sorry, but I was transcribing it, so I wasn’t really listening. I can’t do both.”

  He is about to begin sulking again, so I quickly say, “But you know what? I’m sure it’s just great.”

  “YEAH, RIGHT.” There’s that sarcasm, but I can tell I’ve hurt His feelings as well. I guess everyone wants to be heard, even if it’s your own Creator. And His face is gone, and where it had been lies the sky and on the sky lie the clouds and the moon and the stars.

  I look down at my scribbling and can’t make out a word of it, due to my awful handwriting. It’s too bad, but I can’t do anything about it now, so I crumple up the paper and throw it on the sidewalk and it bursts into a jagged flame and thunder crashes in my ear. I know that He is not at all cool with my crumpling of His message, and I am afraid. That piece of paper had words upon it that would save the souls of all men, and I could have been the one to deliver them to the world. I could have spoken to all of mankind, and my name would have been one with Abraham, and Moses, and David.

  It’s depressing, but that is not to be. And so I wander back to my hotel room and watch Tank Girl four times back-to-back.

  On November 30, 1969, Charles Day reviewed my book in The New York Times Book Review.

  “I have just heard the freshest voice in the last fifty years. It belongs to a young man named Charles Manson, and in his debut work he examines the life and work of this generation’s most talented and influential writers. With his dizzying style and ‘you didn’t have to be there’ storytelling perfection, Charles Manson draws a perfectly observed portrait of the scene that produced the most famous Beat artists. Charles Manson has a reckless style, cutting and dangerous, and he is happily willing to break every convention our literary society holds sacred. Yes, Charles Manson is dangerous, no question, but he also has a charisma that makes one forgive his savage style. I can assert without hesitation that My Beautiful Family is the best work, fiction or nonfiction, to be written in the last decade. It is a masterpiece that will live forever, and its author will be worshipped. The name Charles Manson may not be well known now, but, trust me, it soon will be.”

  And it soon was. Two days after the review, the LAPD alleged that a small, clownish, deranged man had overseen an orgy of murder that had kept the nation in terror during the summer of hate in 1969. His name was Charles Manson, and he was charged with the murder of seven people. But there was an eighth victim, and his name was Charles Manson. Not the Charles Manson who had overseen an orgy of murder that kept the nation in terror during the summer of hate in 1969—the other Charles Manson. Me.

  The next day, My Beautiful Family by Charles Manson was removed from every bookstore in the country. I stood with Julie Grau in Columbus Circle and watched as copy after copy of my book was thrown into a large bonfire.

  23

  MAKE A WISH

  Adam Eget walks in, sees me watching Tank Girl, and faints. I revive him and he begins jumping up and down and shouting, “You’re alive! You’re alive!” He tries to hug me but can’t get his arms all the way around due to my girth, so it is only half a hug.

  I laugh. “Yes, Adam Eget, I am alive. I felt this life had nothing left to offer but I was wrong. Life offers the squeals of delight as you pass a park filled with children. Life offers breakfast with a friend, drinking coffee and laughing at past mistakes. Life offers the kiss of a stranger, unexpected and thrilling. Life offers Dilaudid. What a wonderful life I almost tossed away.”

  Adam Eget suddenly becomes serious. “Norm, when I thought that you had died, I wondered if you were in heaven or the other place. What do you think, Norm, will we go to heaven? Are we good men?” The question stops me cold. I know we are not truly good men, but I cannot tell Adam Eget that.

  “Sure, we are good. We saved a young boy, didn’t we? We saved a young boy who the doctors said was beyond saving.”

/>   I can see Adam Eget is smiling now, and I will need to keep his spirits up. So I remind him of the time we made a young boy’s wish come true.

  —

  It was the end of my first year on SNL, and even if I was never really on the show, just the fact that I was brushing up against it was making me a celebrity. And when you are a celebrity, everyone is always bugging you to do things. Good things.

  The boy had been alive nine years, which made him young, but he would only be alive for one more year, which made him old. He was in a sad situation and he had a wish that he needed my help to realize. It was a simple wish: to meet me and follow me around for a day at the Saturday Night Live TV show. As final wishes go, it seemed like a damned poor one.

  So that’s why I was walking down a dim green hospital corridor that fine cold New York afternoon instead of being where I should have—pitching my hysterical sketch about answering machines to Lorne Michaels for the following Saturday. But there are some things more important than television programs.

  I knew that dragging a terminally ill child around the studio for a whole day was sure to make me the laughingstock of my co-workers and could potentially get me fired, but sometimes you have to look at the big picture. The truth was, I had not lived an upright life, what with the shoplifting, the adultery, the taking of the Lord’s name in vain, the coveting of my neighbor’s ox (Goddammit, I loved that ox), and the worshipping of that golden calf every time God didn’t answer one of my countless prayers. I needed to do something exceptionally selfless to even up the books come Judgment Day and keep me from the Devil’s grasp for all of eternity. Making this boy’s wish come true seemed like it just might do the trick.