The State of Our Broke Ass Union, And Leg
Trigger warning: this will possibly be the dullest substack posting ever. Do not later say you had not been warned.
You know of all the people I ever wanted to meet, that I later got to meet, I never got around to being excited at the prospect of meeting Hunter S. Thompson. Bukowski? I hounded until he died. His singular advice to me eventually: “Come by, bring a broad, and some booze, leave both of them here, and we’ll talk after.” But no meeting.
Dennis Hopper? After relentless hounding he finally agreed to a sit-down. Then he died. So, no meeting.
Norman Mailer? He and I got into a fight over money for, curiously enough, the FIGHT book. Then he died. Before any kind of meeting.
This is no woe-is-me-the-wanna-be celebrity reporter. Booked, to my credit and the world’s delight, everyone from Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton, Chris Rock, and Allen Ginsberg to Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Anton LaVey from the Church of Satan and Lydia Lunch.
But no Gonzo. No Thompson and the reasons were singular, critical and ultimately, cruel. With all due respect, I tried to stay away from interviewing clowns. And when the circus shows up, you know there are going to be clowns.
In one of the last conversations I’d ever have with Rollins, he recounted for me a time when Sean Penn, who had been married to Madonna at the time, had come to one of his book shows and post-show had been trying for a meet up. Rollins, according to Rollins, refused it. Which confused me at the time. Me, whose nose for cash at the very least, would have had this meet in a New York minute.
“Striving to be funny kills everyone who dares do it.” — Timothy Leary, forehead to forehead with me at Hustler’s 20th Anniversary Party
It seemed, in a weird way, kind of noble to say and do the one thing to celebrities that most confuses celebrities (See: Starsky + Samuel L. Jackson: Celebrities I Loved But Should Never Have Met). But Rollins was on to something. Something that would have been immeasurably valuable to Mr. Thompson when he saw Johnny Depp making his way up to Thompson’s front door in Aspen.
I submit that the circus turns everyone into clowns and that was Thompson’s cry for help and we should have saved him, if only we cared enough to do so. But we didn’t so we didn’t and what we were left with, has resulted in this kind of Charlie Parkerification of Thompson where it is comfortably safe to assume that writing while HIGH will yield the greatest results, liberating you from the hoary strictures of old.
Which is a lie. I canceled last week’s Substack, for the first time ever, on account of being stewed to the gills on a wide variety of pharmaceutical grade painkillers. The ones that make the edges of all of your realities yield to the cotton-y goodness of fentanyl-free opioids. I could see, in my past and present state, that I might end up being especially susceptible to the blandishments of those who were mightily full of shit.
I could see, if a retinue rolled in here, that I might, indeed, feel obliged to give people who came to see a monkey, a monkey show. That’s a lifestyle choice I could actually see making. But here’s where we part ways: I could never see writing in that state.
And yet, here I am, doing exactly that.
But as Timothy Leary once told me at Hustler’s 20th anniversary party, well before he “accidentally” fellated a friend of mine, “Striving to be funny kills everyone who dares do it.” So, reporting the truth? Always the goal. Amusing you while doing so? That can never be the goal.
Besides which there’s been a harmonic convergence of difficult. If everything had worked according to hoyle, realtors would have been able to sell my house a week before the surgery I just had to repair a ruptured quadricep tendon that I tore back in October. But since that first tear, I played 20 some-odd shows with BUNUEL in Europe, duct taping my leg while injecting my knee with BPC-157.
And I’d have gotten away with it too if not for those meddling kids at CrossFit where in the midst of a jump three days after the CrossFit open, and after the Italian portion of the tour, I heard the pop, fell to the floor and knew, at that point that I had fucked up. Off-market pharma notwithstanding.
STILL I toured on this knee and after the MRI report came in, emblazoned with words like “crippled for life” did I decide on the surgery. But on account of the aforementioned home sale, I couldn’t convalesce there since that not what sales folks would call a “value add”. In a sick bed with a jug of piss next to me since making it to the toilet in time is a fantasy, sweating from the pain, and eating Oxys like Chiclets, I had to go. I also, at this point, have not the nickels needed to stay someplace tony.
And I can tell you this: staying in a sleazy hotel for a few hours is a world of difference from moving in there.
“This is FANCY Dad!” My youngest, who book toured with me last summer, had already seen the worst of the worst. So yeah, fancy by comparison.
After four days though things were cracking around the seams at The Glass Slipper. The kid had some weird undiagnosed skin thing going, the whole hotel smelled like a quarter movie booth, redolent with Clorox and the suggestion of semen, the upstairs neighbor was “fucking legal, man”…, discovered in his nightly screaming arguments with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, and the anxiety crazed cat, yowling under my bed, hadn’t shit the entire time we were there.
Two of the podcasts I do, I did there though. If The Shoes Fit…as well as The Bad Boss Brief.
But Friday was the big day, it’s the day, eight days after surgery, that I get to meet with the youngster who Steve Austin’d me. Dr Roth seemed to be a fine surgeon, but I trust no one. So his second was my brother-in-arms, Whipping Boy co-founder Steve Ballinger who, for at least four decades made his bones as an orthopedic sawbones.
Whatever Roth would tell me, I’d tell Ballinger. Then I’d show Roth what Ballinger had said. I needed Roth sharp and the best way to keep him sharp was for him to know he was being judged by a jury of peers. Peers that would also, highly likely at least, avenge my death were it to come to that.
Eight days after surgery, hitting one deadline for my monthly column in Decibel magazine, and holding off of pain pills for at least three of the last few days, I was ready to hear, for good or ill whether, Holy Mother of Mercy, this was the end of poor Rico, or this would be one of those close-to-defeat-we-rose-to-our feet things.
“You look fine,” said Roth.
“I feel like Satan lives in my leg.”
Dr. Roth massaged the incision site. No pain. No pain in the foot, the ankle, the knee. His hand trailed up my thigh to right where my pocket would have been if I had been wearing pants.
“AGGGHHHHHHH!”
Turns out that the kevlar brace had bruised the muscle so deeply that I was weak from the wonder of it all.
What a time we live in. I used to date a school teacher. A special ed school teacher. When calling around to parents to invite them to some award ceremony for kids sorely in need of awards, one of the moms when told that it was the school calling, asked: “what’s that little asshole done now?!?!”
In America, these are how our mornings roll out since Trump has decided he absolutely can’t live without our constant and adoring gaze. And now, on top of this a new ailment in my thigh, chainlinked to the other one, the jungle giving voice to a reality: it’s a really, really, really long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. The US dates for BUNUEL came through and this is how I’ll be spending the end of June, all while braced and moving to Spain.
John Henry comes to mind. But John Henry didn’t have what I have: an aversion to the circus, a hunger to continually best circumstance, and a pocket full of painkillers. When this year ends, presuming we’re all alive to see it, everything will be OK. No Thompson shrug to the gray terminus happening here.
It’s just…life. Dull and daily and without the sheen constantly demanded by social media. It’s where we are. It’s where I am. In the warm embrace of it being the time to end this writing here.
And if you’re tempted to ask, How are you doing, Eugene?
Know this: Great. I mean Tony the Tiger great. But now? Sleeeeeeeeep….
And if books are still your thing and you still do books, please do this one…the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
And if you’d like to book a book show? Please DM.
Truth bomb wrapped up in perfect prose, dusted with black & blue levity sprinkles. Sending love and well-wishes for a speedy recovery dear ER.
And to think, I thought you were avoiding me...Just a friendly reminder your Fedex Palo Alto concierge packing experience still awaits you when you're willing and able. And to answer a previous question of yours - and also to prove I've been paying attention - the answer is no. If your pants are still on it's not a Bunuel show. Feel better Eugene, the world needs you. And thank you for kicking my ass. I've been busy since you've been gone. Gordon