David Kelly - Dont Worry

Dedication

For my family and Debbie Levin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

On the last day I walked, I woke up without a hangover. I was still loaded from the previous night.

It was 11:00 A.M., a hot July 22, 1972. I had no idea where Id been the night before. Past experience told me I had an hour or so of grace before withdrawal symptoms set in. So I was a man of leisure. First thing: light a cigarette. Everybody in the house was gone. Id slept right through the taped mariachi music that Jesus Alvarado turned on at 5:30 every morning to pump himself up for another day of house-painting. Music from a Taco Bell in hell.

Alone, I could pad down the hall to the bathroom in the nude. I took a piss, making the sign of the cross in the toilet with the stream of urine, a compulsion I hated but couldnt shake. Then I flushed and hopped into the shower.

Even there I had to smoke, holding the butt above the curtain with my left hand while I scrubbed the left side of my body with my right, then switching it over to my right hand so that I could use my left to scrub my right side. It takes imagination to support a three-pack-a-day habit.

Shaving, I checked myself out in the mirror. A big, six-foot, three-inch twenty-one-year-old Irishman, body hardened by work, ruggedly handsome if you discounted a little acne scarring, flaming red hair. Not bad. No handicap with the girls and a nice contrast to the creative artist, poet, and songwriter hidden somewhere within. But I felt the edge of nervousness. After all, what was I doing getting out of bed at almost noon? I was supposed to be job hunting, down here in Buena Park, California.

Drying off, I began to feel hungry, a sign that pangs of withdrawal were imminent. Stepping down the hall to the kitchen I dug a tortilla out of the fridge. No point in waiting for the oven. I just singed it on the stove element and spread on some peanut butter. Nutrition had no priority. The key thing was to get to the liquor store before the paranoia cranked up. I was beginning to feel very nervous just thinking about it.

So I went back to the bedroom and put on thongs and jeans and the Hawaiian shirt I had bought, which the Alvarado family had snickered at when I moved down here from The Dalles, Oregon, a month or so ago. The full heat of a Los Angeles summer day was leaking through Mrs. Alvarados spotless venetian blinds. I lit another cigarette. Outside, the Alvarado Doberman growled briefly at some passerby. In the L.A. suburbs attack dogs and eight-foot-high chain-link fences seemed to be standard household equipment.

Nearly noon. My nerves were telling me: get to the liquor store. I set out on the six-block hike, irritated at myself for not being able to enjoy the beauty of this day and the beauty of my life in general. The sky was brownish blue. The street seemed unnaturally wide and the palms that lined both sides of it had a grimy tinge. The white adobe-style tract houses, all with yucca plants, were pleasing enough to my eye, but I could sense the occupants peering out at me through closed blinds. The air was stifling. I felt certain the sky was going to cave in before I could get a drink.

Without breaking stride, for there was no time to waste, I tried to light a cigarette but burned my fingers instead. The shakes! My heart was starting to pound. I had to do something about it. All these staring people I couldnt see knew all about me, my blackest secrets, my entire history: that I was a depraved alcoholic, the worst that ever lived. Two blocks to go.

The boozeI couldnt let myself think about it. I took deep breaths. I tried to concentrate on something. I made myself stop and pet a cat. I prayed, Jesus, let me make it to the store! My hands were clammy, I was starting to sweat and my mouth was totally dry. I was so scared. What if I lost control, flipped out and started to scream? Each thought was worse than the one before it. I just kept forcing them back down again. Why did I have to be this way?

The store was at a major intersection. Whatsa-Vista Ave. and Three Millionth Street stretched away in that uncompromising L.A. perspective that implies, if not infinity, then at least the curvature of the earth. Uncounted liquor stores, Jack-In-The-Boxes, 7-Elevens, topless bars and rent-to-own furniture marts serviced hundreds of characterless towns just like Buena Park. A faint smog hung over everything, an atmosphere of boredom and menace.

I bought a half-pint of tequila and stayed to chat a while with the owners, just to show how in-control I was. In fact they would have to have been blind men not to notice that my hands were shaking when I handed them the money. They probably knew my whole story. They could tell how ashamed I was. So what? Liquor store clerks are probably sworn to silence, like priests.

Next door there was a topless bar, the Club Heaven. Sometimes I stopped in there for an eye-opener, but the dancers were floppy-breasted and middle-aged, and there were more hookers than clients.

Maybe I could get all the way back to the Alvarados without opening the half-pint and taking an embarrassing first hit in public. Besides, as I headed back down the block, my hands were shaking too violently to open the bottle. Id drop it on the sidewalk. The neat little half-pint, so inconspicuous and sophisticated, was snug in my hip pocket.

One of the whores in front of the Club Heaven yelled after me, Hey Whitey, wanna date? A lowrider cruised slowly by, full of tough-looking kids. Mexican gangs shooting from cars supposedly killed somebody nearly every day and had shot a three-year-old girl not far from the Alvarados the week I moved in. She had wandered in front of a shotgun aimed at somebody else.

In the heat the air seemed to have no oxygen. This featureless city, a thousand suburbs stitched together, stretched out around me. I felt unconnected to any of it. I had traveled maybe half a block before I stopped, willed my hands to be fairly still, and twisted off the screwtop. I took a big hit and jammed the bottle back out of sight as fast as I could, hoping nobody had noticed. If only I could shoot the stuff into my arm and not have to wait for the booze to take effect. I was panicked that the stuff wouldnt start to work on me before I went nuts. What had I gotten into? How could I be so scared?

But seconds later I didnt have a problem. I could feel the warmth coming through my body. The noise was turning down in my mind. The faces were pulling away from all the windows. Walking back to the house, I did not feel quite normal yet, but the edge was off. I was hoping to get back quickly so I could take a second shot. Then Id be steady enough to light a cigarette.

At the house the sound of a ghetto blaster playing White Bird by the hippie uplift group Its a Beautiful Day announced that Teresa Terri Alvarado was back for lunch. I didnt like Terri. The Alvarados teenage daughter was a self-confident little number who probably thought I was a bum mooching off the household, when in fact I was paying room and board and helping her father, Jesus, rebuild his boat.