After I left the house I went to a drugstore that Blinky knew. At that time you could buy spikes easy, so I got four number-twenty-six, half-inch hypodermic needles, an eyedropper that had a good, strong bulb on it, and went home. I had about nine capsules of heroin left. I walked into the house and Patti met me at the door. I went into the kitchen. I put this stuff out on the table, and she looked at it, and she said, “Oh no!” I said, “Yeah, this is it. You’ll have to accept it.” I got a dollar bill and tore a little piece off the bottom to make the jeep. I got a glass out of the cupboard, a plastic one so it wouldn’t hurt the end of the needle when I put it in to wash it out. I took a cap and put it in the spoon and put some water in it, and all this time I’m talking to Patti, trying to explain because I loved her and I wanted her to accept this. I got a tie out of the closet and asked her if she would tie me, and she wrapped it and held it and she was trying to be cool and be brave, and I stuck the thing in, and the blood popped up, and I told her, “Leave it go. Leave it go.” I looked up, and I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was transfixed by the sight of the blood, my own blood, drawn up, running into an eyedropper that I was going to shoot into my vein. It seemed so depraved to her. How could anybody do anything like that? How could anybody love her and need to do anything like that? She started crying. I took her hand away and took the tie off. I shot the stuff in, and when I finished I looked at her. She turned her head and cried hysterically. I put my arms around her and tried to tell her that everything was alright, that it was better than the drinking and the misery I’d gone through before, but I couldn’t get through to her.
After I got the outfit and started fixing, that was my thing. I still drank and smoked pot, but I was a lot cooler. Things were going great for me. I was featured with the band and we played all over the country. We’d go from one state to another and the bus driver we had at the time was a beautiful cat who knew what all the liquor laws were—some states were dry—and he’d stop just before we crossed into a dry state and say, ‘This is the last time you can buy alcohol until such and such a date.” We’d all run out of the bus. We’d figure out how much liquor we’d need. If we went to Canada and had to pass through an inspection station we’d take our dope, the guys that were using heroin, our outfits or pills, and give them to the bus driver to stash behind a panel. We’d go through the station and get shook down, and then he’d open the panel and give us our dope back. And wherever we’d pass through we’d buy different pot. In Colorado we’d get Light Green and in New Orleans it was Gunje or Mota. There were a lot of connoisseurs of pot who’d carry little film cans of it and pipes with screens to filter it, and when we had a rest stop we’d jump out of the bus and smoke.
Me and Andy Angelo roomed together for a long time and before that it was me and Sammy, and we each had our outfits. I had a little carrying case, like an electric razor case. I had an extra eyedropper and my needles, four or five of them. I had my little wires to clean the spike out in case it got clogged. I had a little bottle of alcohol and a sterling silver spoon that was just beautiful and a knife to scoop the stuff onto the spoon. I used to carry this case in the inside pocket of my suit, just like you’d carry your cigarettes or your wallet. I even carried a little plastic glass. I would set up my outfit next to the bed in the hotel with my stuff in a condom—we used to carry our heroin in one to keep it from getting wet. I’d wake up in the morning and reach over, get my little knife, put a few knifefuls in the spoon, cook it up and fix. It was beautiful.
It was wonderful being on the road with that band. Everyone liked each other and we all hung out together. When the bus left Hollywood we’d buy bottles of liquor and start drinking; that was just standard procedure: it was a celebration. I always prided myself on being able to stay up longer than anybody else, drink more than anybody else, take more pills, shoot more stuff, or whatever. I remember once when we left L.A. we kept drinking and drinking and smoking pot and having a ball until the bus just ceased to be a bus. We wandered up and down the aisle talking and bullshitting. We kept going and going until, after about twenty hours, everybody started falling out. When it got to thirty-six hours only a few of us were still awake, and finally there was nobody left but me and June Christy. She could really drink. I don’t remember how many quarts we put away. We drank continuously, I guess, for a good forty-six hours and we were going to keep it up until we got where we were going, but she fell out, too, so there I was all alone. That was awful and I panicked. I couldn’t stand for anything to stop once it had begun; I wanted it to continue forever. I went up and started talking to the bus driver, and I stayed awake the whole time.
We hardly ever flew to a job, but a couple of times we had to when it was too far and we couldn’t possibly make it in time. Once we flew to Iowa and rented a bus and the bus broke down when we were out on a little, two-lane highway. The weather was bad, like it is in the midwest, alternately raining and snowing, and ordinarily we would have been drug, but we were all in such a happy frame of mind we just played right over it. We were goofing around, and we had a habit, like, in the bus, we would blow sometimes. Andy and I would sit together and scat-sing. We’d sing the first chorus of a song together, bebop, and then blow choruses, trade fours, and do backgrounds. Sometimes other people would join in and we’d really get into it and take out our horns, the ones you could reach easily in the bus. I’d get my clarinet and play some dixieland; maybe June would sing and we’d play behind her. So, as it happened, we’d all been drinking and were having one of these little sessions when the bus broke down.
Our regular driver was back with our regular bus trying to get it ready, and this driver we’d just hired didn’t know what to make of us. He was fascinated. He made an announcement. He was going to radio ahead for help. We said okay and kept on playing, and all of a sudden we just found ourselves marching out the door of the bus. It was freezing cold but we had our coats on and our mufflers, and before we knew it there were twenty guys out there, with horns, marching down the highway. There were farms and stuff, you can imagine, cows and dogs and things. We’re going down the highway playing marches.
June Christy was a pom-pom girl strutting down the road. She was a cute little thing with light hair and a little, upturned nose. She had a lot of warmth and she was sexy in that way, no standout shape, but she was nice and everybody liked her, and she had crinkly marks around her eyes from smiling a lot. Her husband was Bob Cooper, who played tenor with the band. He was very tall with blonde hair and the same crinkly thing around his eyes. People used to wonder why she had married him, being June Christy. People thought that she and Stan might get something going, and there were a lot of guys that dug her, but she married Bob, and I understood it. He was one of the warmest, most polite, pleasantest people. He was completely good if you can imagine such a thing, just a sweetheart, and he got embarrassed easily, and he blushed a lot. And he used to drink with June; he would look after her; they were a great pair. And they were marching down the road.
Ray Wetzel was marching, a fat funnyman, always laughing and smiling. He had a lot of jokes and little comic routines he used to do, and he was a wonderful trumpet player with a beautiful sound. Shelly Manne was out there