High On Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips Read Free Book Online

drugs. Then it was the summer of 1973, I was thirteen years old, and the movie American Graffiti was finally scheduled to be released on August 11. But at the beginning of the summer, before the film premiered, my stepmother, Genevieve, said, “Laura, I don’t want to throw you to the lions.” I think that was her way of saying she thought a young girl shouldn’t be swept up in the notoriety whirlwind of a movie release, and maybe that was right, but it’s just as likely that she was tired of having me around. I was a pain in the ass. Genevieve went on, “We’re going to send you to a boarding school in Switzerland for the summer. Pretend you’re an alien and your mission on this new planet is to learn French.” Genevieve says stuff like that.
    The boarding school, La Chatelainie, was a beautiful place. I was a crazy glitter kid, a David Bowie wannabe from Hollywood. And although I was in a foreign school where everyone spoke a foreign language, I didn’t stop being a handful, to say the least. During lunch I’d jump on tables and do imitations of Donny Osmond. I sang loudly, called teachers names, and was generally obnoxious. At night my roommates and I would sneak out the windows, go into the little town nearby, and drink beer at the local pub.
    My father’s play Space Cowboy was now being developed as a Broadway musical called Man on the Moon . Andy Warhol was producing. Perhaps to facilitate his dealings with Andy, my father had a telex machine, the precursor to the fax, connected in the library of his Bel Air mansion. This was a time when ordinary people didn’t have telex machines in their homes. But my dad was no ordinary mortal, as he proved regularly. One school day the headmaster came up to me and said, “I received this telex.” He handed me a page. It was addressed to “Max,” which was my father’s nickname for me.
    Dear Max,
    My name is Can and I am the king
    and I can do most anything
    ’cause it gives life a simple swing.
    Some may say that being a king
    Can be more fun and easier
    than being a knape or a knave.
    Who wants to be a slave?
    If King Can shall, who shan’t?
    If King Can will, who won’t?
    If King Can do, who don’t?
    And if King Can can, who can’t?
    Love, Dad.
    The headmaster looked pained. “What is this?” he asked. “It says it’s from your father. What does it mean?”
    I shrugged and said, “Oh, that’s just Dad.”
    A few days later another telex came:
    Dear Max,
    Wee funky little bats have never played out in the sunshine. Hang by your heels in a cave and you will find truth to be blinding.
    Love, Dad.
    And Genevieve had told me to pretend to be an alien. Who needed to pretend?
    When American Graffiti premiered in the States, Dad started telexing me reviews and telling me that I was a star and how proud he was of me. Nobody at school believed that I was in a movie, much less the biggest movie of the year. I had gone from anonymity to movie star overnight, but—as Genevieve had planned—for better or worse I missed the hoopla.
    So I went to my classes, mocked the house mother, who had the unfortunate combination of long armpit hair and short-sleeved shirts, and was a regular, but not exceptional, nuisance, until the day the headmaster came up to me, this time with no incomprehensible telex in hand. He said, “Your father has not paid. We can’t reach him. You have no ticket home. You can stay here, but you cannot participate in any more classes or activities.” I was upset, but not unduly shocked. This was a new manifestation of the same old Dad—a barrage of endearing nonsense, some pride, then … silence. But abandoning me in a foreign country was a new extreme. In my own country I was now famous, but I was stuck in Switzerland. I couldn’t do anything or go anywhere. If Dad was so proud of me, then why wouldn’t he pay the bill—or get me the fuck out of there? One minute I was a spoiled, newly famous Hollywood brat. The next I was stranded in