The Book of Drugs by Mike Doughty Read Free Book Online

doing poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s Friday night slams. I was a desperate and ambitious kid; at twenty-one, I felt like I was almost too late for stardom. I slogged through my notebooks of club bookers’ numbers and record companies’ addresses, sending demo cassettes, repeatedly calling the gatekeepers of New York nightlife.
    The most feared booker was Louise from CBGB. CBGB let unknown bands play on Sunday and Monday nights; the sound guys, who could be relied upon to not give a fuck, would write down what they thought of the band—and if the band had brought a significant number of beer-buying friends—and maybe you’d get a real gig after that.

    I played a Monday night, then anxiously waited. The call never came. I called up Louise, nearly hyperventilating.
    â€œCall me next Wednesday at 3 o’clock,” she said, and hung up the phone.
    Next Wednesday I called promptly at three.
    â€œCall me next Wednesday at five.” Click.
    Next Wednesday: Hi, is this Louise, this is M. Doughty, I . . .
    â€œCall me on Tuesday at noon, on this number.” She gave me a number different from the one I called on. I fumbled madly for a pen and took it down.
    Tuesday: “Call me next Tuesday at one.”
    Next Tuesday: “Call me on Friday at this number:———.”
    I called dutifully on Friday. An unfamiliar voice answered. “CB’s.”
    Hi, uh, I’m looking for Louise . . .
    â€œShe’s not here right now,” he said, “but you’re calling the right number. ”
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    Louise wouldn’t book a solo guy in the main room—massively disappointing—but she gave me a gig at the space next door, CB’s Gallery. I lugged an amp all the way up the Bowery—I was skinny as hell, it took forever. A car pulled up—a bunch of drunk girls from out of town looking for Bleecker Street. I told them I’d show them the way if they gave me a ride. I put my amp in the trunk, and they drove me—just a few blocks—to CB’s. They were incredibly impressed that I was a musician, in New York, no less, who wrote his own songs, no less, and actually had a real show to play.
    There were two guys at the bar. I played some songs. Another guy showed up. Another guy left. Then the other guy left. It was just me, playing to the bartender. What do you do? I had a meticulously
conceived set list at my feet, and I couldn’t figure out anything to do but stick with it.
    The bartender went out front and brought down the steel grate over the big window. She came and stood in the center of the empty room. “I think I’m gonna close down now,” she said.
    Years later, she was the manager of a big band on the hippie circuit. I bump into her at music festivals and tell everybody near us the story of her shutting down the club on me. I’m trying to be good-naturedly funny, but she winces.
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    We took acid and went to a dance club. It was me, a couple of friends, Wind-Him-Up-and-Watch-Him-Go Joe, and another, a cute blonde girl who had played the ingenue in this cult movie that everyone had seen.
    We spent the night jiggling and wobbling wildly in front of a speaker. We knew we looked like idiots.
    We left as the sun came up, and sat on the curb. Wind-Him-Up-and-Watch-Him-Go Joe ate a piece of pizza; the slice devolved into an indistinct mass of cheese that he held in both hands and gnawed at like a dog. We went back to another friend’s place. Everybody went up to his roof, and I lay in bed with the blonde ingenue. She started telling me intimate things about her life, how she’d fucked a creative-writing teacher and read the stories she wrote about it aloud in class, how she gave a lighting guy on the cult movie a hand job every night after shooting ended. I kept waiting for the moment that I would kiss her, but she bolted up and went to the bathroom. I heard her puking, and crying.
    Wind-Him-Up-and-Watch-Him-Go