When we got in there she started playing with my joint. She said, “Do you want me to say hello to him?” She was marvelous, and she really turned me on, but I said, “Wait a minute. Let’s get into this other thing and then we’ll get back to that.” I was all excited about something new, the heroin. I had made up my mind.
She had a little glass vial filled with white powder, and she poured some out onto the porcelain top of the toilet, chopped it up with a razor blade, and separated it into little piles, little lines. She asked me if I had a dollar bill. She told me to get the newest one I had. I had one, very clean and very stiff. I took it out of my pocket and she said, “Roll it up.” I started to roll it but she said, “No, not that way.” She made a tube with a small opening at the bottom and a larger opening at the top. Then she went over to the heroin and she said, “Now watch what I do and do this.” She put one finger on her left nostril and she stuck the larger end of the dollar bill into her right nostril. She put the tube at the beginning of one pile, made a little noise, and the pile disappeared. She said, “Now you do that.” I closed my nostril. I even remember it was my left nostril. I sniffed it, and a long, thin pile of heroin disappeared. She told me to do the same with the other nostril. I did six little lines and then she said “Okay, wait a few minutes.” While I’m waiting she’s rubbing my joint and playing with me. I felt a tingly, burning sensation up in my sinuses, and I tasted a bitter taste in my throat, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, all that feeling—wanting something but having no idea what it was, thinking it was sex and then when I had a chance to ball a chick not wanting to ball her because I was afraid of some disease and because of the guilt; that wandering and wandering like some derelict; that agony of drinking and drinking and nothing ever being resolved; and .. . no peace at all except when I was playing, and then the minute that I stopped playing there was nothing; that continual, insane search just to pass out somewhere and then to wake up in the morning and think, “Oh, my God,” to wake up and think, “Oh God, here we go again,” to drink a bottle of warm beer so I could vomit, so I could start all over again, so I could start that ridiculous, sickening, horrible, horrible life again—all of a sudden, all of a sudden, the demons and the devils and the wandering and wondering and all the frustrations just vanished and they didn’t exist at all anymore because I’d finally found peace.
I felt this peace like a kind of warmth. I could feel it start in my stomach. From the whole inside of my body I felt the tranquility. It was so relaxing. It was so gorgeous. Sheila said, “Look at yourself in the mirror! Look in the mirror!” And that’s what I’d always done: I’d stood and looked at myself in the mirror and I’d talk to myself and say how rotten I was—”Why do people hate you? Why are you alone? Why are you so miserable?” I thought, “Oh, no! I don’t want to do that! I don’t want to spoil this feeling that’s coming up in me!” I was afraid that if I looked in the mirror I would see it, my whole past life, and this wonderful feeling would end, but she kept saying, “Look at yourself! Look how beautiful you are! Look at your eyes! Look at your pupils!” I looked in the mirror and I looked like an angel. I looked at my pupils and they were pinpoints; they were tiny, little dots. It was like looking into a whole universe of joy and happiness and contentment.
I thought of my grandmother always talking about God and inner happiness and peace of mind, being content within yourself not needing anybody else, not worrying about whether anybody loves you, if your father doesn’t love you, if your mother took a coathanger and stuck it up her cunt to try to destroy you because she didn’t want you, because you were an unclean, filthy, dirty, rotten, slimy being that no one wanted, that no one ever wanted, that no one has still ever wanted. I looked at myself and I said, “God, no, I am not that. I’m beautiful. I am the whole, complete thing. There’s nothing more, nothing more that I care about. I don’t care about anybody. I don’t care about Patti. I don’t need to worry about anything at all.” I’d found God.
I loved myself, everything about myself. I loved my talent. I had lost the sour taste of the filthy alcohol that made me vomit and the feeling of the bennies and the strips that put chills up and down my spine. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked at Sheila and I looked at the few remaining lines of heroin and I took the dollar bill and horned the rest of them down. I said, “This is it. This is the only answer for me. If this is what it takes, then this is what I’m going to do, whatever dues I have to pay . . .” And I knew that I would get busted and I knew that I would go to prison and that I wouldn’t be weak; I wouldn’t be an informer like all the phonies, the no-account, the nonreal, the zero people that roam around, the scum that slither out from under rocks, the people that destroyed music, that destroyed this country, that destroyed the world, the rotten, fucking, lousy people that for their own little ends—the black power people, the sickening, stinking motherfuckers that play on the fact that they’re black, and all this fucking shit that happened later on—the rotten, no-account, filthy women that have no feeling for anything; they have no love for anyone; they don’t know what love is; they are shallow hulls of nothingness—the whole group of rotten people that have nothing to offer, that are nothing, never will be anything, were never intended to be anything.
All I can say is, at that moment I saw that I’d found peace of mind. Synthetically produced, but after what I’d been through and all the things I’d done, to trade that misery for total happiness—that was it, you know, that was it. I realized it. I realized that from that moment on I would be, if you want to use the word, a junkie. That’s the word they used. That’s the word they still use. That is what I became at that moment. That’s what I practiced; and that’s what I still am. And that’s what I will die as—a junkie.
(Hersh Hamel) We were playing at a place called Esther’s in Hermosa Beach, and I was with Jack Montrose. Jack and I were friends. They used to have a session at this place almost every night, so we had gone down there to play, and Art came down, and we all enjoyed ourselves together. This must have been in the late forties. Art was serious about playing, liked to laugh; he was drinking, smoking pot. Art immediately hit it off with Jack and I, and we all decided to meet there again, and we did, on succeeding days. Art was very handsome at that time, lean and dark, black hair combed back, and very fastidious. Art was a very interesting player, swinging and very intense, sort of trying to do his own thing under the cloak of the strong sentiment and strong popularity of Charlie Parker. Art was trying to create a style of his own.
Art was married to Patti and they were living somewhere between Washington Boulevard and Adams in a nice, little place. Patti was a sort of naive girl who wasn’t terribly interested in music, jazz. She was very pretty. She was blonde and very pretty. Very much a take-care-of-business type of girl. She did her thing. Around the house. Wasn’t lazy. Sort of serious and not terribly talkative or friendly with any of the musicians. She had her own set of friends, whoever they were. She was always nice to me, said hello, but Freddy Rivera—we got to know Freddy; he would always be around Art, you know, coming over to the house, and I got the impression that Patti didn’t like Freddy, didn’t like Freddy over there. Art wanted Freddy there. Art got a big kick out of Freddy. Found Freddy amusing. So, there was a little tension between Patti and Art about Freddy. As for me, when I came over and picked Art up or whatever it was, she was more friendly with me, but I felt I was still one of the musician friends of Art’s.
Patti and Art seemed to be on different mind levels. They didn’t seem to have the same likes and dislikes. There wasn’t a great rapport between