One night in Gleneden Beach, Oregon, where Knots had gone on location to shoot a couple of weeks’ worth of picturesque exteriors, Julie shared her most priceless sentiment with me. I drove Julie back to the hotel after having dinner in Lincoln City. Sitting in front of the Salishan Lodge, I asked her, “Are you anxious to go home?” “No,” she said. Surprised, I asked, “Aren’t you ready for this trip to be over?” Julie said, “I don’t wish anything to be over. To wish something to be over is to wish your life to be over.”
I wondered if the closeness I had with some people in the business would last, or if it was all just of the moment. Was my home now the set of a show, where a kind of instant familiarity was bred, and was it always meant to melt away? Somewhere in the loneliness and insecurity of being among people I didn’t know while seeking some bond with them, I searched for ways to kill those feelings. I subsequently bonded with others in a more self-destructive way. One night, in my room at Salishan, I lost myself to those feelings. It’s a story I don’t like to tell. I don’t want to tell it. But it’s so real and unreal at the same time. That night changed my life forever. It had its own staccato rhythm, distorted sound, and spasmodic imagery. It went something like this:
Salishan Lodge, 1984
There’s that knock at the door that I’ve been waiting on for over an hour and they told me it would be only thirty minutes and they always say it will be thirty minutes, these FUCKING PEOPLE! Why won’t they just do what they say they’re going to do? Motherfuckers. SNAP!!!
When I called room service, I fumbled for the words, saying something like, “Hello? Room service? This is Mr. Baldwin in Room 224. I have some guests arriving for lunch and I know how busy you can be and I was wondering if you might send over a bottle of champagne NOW!”—punching certain words, as I am slightly deaf when high. “I won’t have to bother you later and I would appreciate that. One bottle of champagne. NOW! Baldwin. Room 224.”
My hair is a bird’s nest, my black T-shirt sweaty and covered with white chalky crescents. The Today show is on, signaling officially that I’ve stayed up all night getting high and smoking cigarettes, calling people back in New York and LA to keep me company and nurse me through this run. All the while that I’m on the phone, I’m wondering, do they know? Can they tell? It’s getting a little hard to breathe. But Jane Pauley is my center. Jane is my center. Breathe, baby, breathe. I lie down and focus on Jane and she will talk me down. She’s like Naloxone coming out of the TV. If I just sit and focus on Jane, this will pass. Her goodness will counteract all of this shit. Another knock.
A merciless and unstoppable death squad has been marauding up and down my nerves throughout the predawn hours. By sunrise, it’s clear that they’re going to torch the whole village. I put up no resistance. I am their hostage, simply feeding the troops more drugs and filing for the spiritual bankruptcy that cocaine always demands. Cue “Midnight Rambler,” as the Rolling Stones are always the soundtrack when I’m driving this road. I’m looking at Jane, but hearing Mick. KNOCK, KNOCK!! I’m on my feet and moving across the room like I’m hopping over hot stones. Not bothering to pull myself together, I look through the peephole before I open the door. The sun, with its effortless power to shame, jumps at me. The man’s back is to me and I can’t get a look at him. Could he possibly know something? Fuck. When he turns, he looks like a Rick or a Steve, a bit whiter and older than I anticipated, and that throws me. Is he a fucking cop?! I open the door, the sun crashes in, my heart rate spikes up. CRACKLE!!
Oh, no. I feel an unfamiliar tingle move over my chest. Forty-year-old Nancy Reagan Country room service Rick assesses me. My eyes are looking everywhere but at him. Then he hands me the champagne bottle, in a bucket, and the glasses. The booze is all I see now and I tip him and he goes and I’m closing the door with my ass so I can open the bottle as fast as I can, because I’m gonna do WHATEVER IT TAKES to solve this. Jane, I’m coming! Don’t finish without me!
POP!! . . . goes the champagne bottle. Shhhhhh, Jane is speaking. She’s like chicken soup. Breathe. Up it goes and down it goes and I drink the bottle in four gulps. It’s eight a.m. I’ve been snorting cocaine since around four the previous afternoon. By midnight, one of the two girls I’ve been hanging out with at the crew hotel, about thirty miles away, said something crazy and wonderful. “Our husbands are going on a fishing trip tomorrow morning. They leave real early. You get some more coke and come to my house and we will do whatever . . . you . . . want.” She lays out the offer like we’re discussing subletting an apartment. They leave, presumably to stage their bedtime at home. At around one a.m., I knock on the nearby hotel room door of a guy in the crew who I knew had what I wanted. He was a casual user, not twitchy. He was friendly and together. For him, cocaine was an amuse-bouche among other available relaxations during an evening out. He opens the door and I’ve broken his heart, it seems. “You?” he sighs, in the way that someone signals that they now know a sad truth about you that you both wish they didn’t. “I got these two girls,” I stammer, as if that explains everything. He sighs and leaves to grab the stuff. He shoves it at me, saying, “Don’t come back.”
I drive from the crew hotel up the coast to Salishan, where the cast is staying. In the car, a rare moment of clarity descends on me and, as is often the case, it’s a movie that screens in my head. A car slows on a dark, leafy road. Inside, a man, a big guy wearing outdoorsy clothes, says, “Bob, did you bring the propane for the stove?” Bob, also big, says, “Shit, I thought you did.” “Jesus, Bob. We gotta go back.” What Bob will go back to, obviously, is his house, which I am settled into for a night of partying with their wives. As they walk into the living room, they’ll find me naked on the floor, drink in one hand and Trivial Pursuit cards in the other, playing a friendly game of Strip Trivia with their spouses. The requisite cocaine lines, paraphernalia, alcohol, and cigarettes are on display.
I pull over to the side of the winding road. My eyes are wide and I am hyperventilating. Thank you, God, for intervening with this insight, this gift. Fuck. If they’d shot me, I would have deserved it. Or maybe stabbed me. Then they’d chop me up! My eyes are really wide now. I’m breathing harder. Fuck. Thank you, God. Maybe twenty minutes later, I return to my hotel, holding on to not only the couple of grams of blow, but also some sick, lingering remorse that I’m not deep into the Strip Trivia tourney by now. In the hotel, I am alone with my least favorite company, the guy who complains to me about his life and criticizes me about mine, more than anyone I know.