I Drink for a Reason (20 page)

N
EWSFLASH
! “C
IGAR
C
ORNER
”
NAMED ONE OF THE TOP
100
CIGAR
columns by
Cigar Column Weekly
!!

Hello, Pumpkin Pies! It’s your humble cigar reporter, with the latest dispatch from the front lines of the cigar-smoking war,
though it’s not really a war.

Yours truly just got back from La La Land, and you’re never gonna believe what happened. As you may or may not know, I am
trying to secure the film rights to the video game
Madden 2002 Football.
I think it would make an excellent movie (I see John Goodman as the all-knowing voice of Madden), and since all the kids
love movies based on video games, I figure this is like an idea made of gold and then covered in diamonds!

I met up with my agent, Ms. Delphine Santiso, an ex–child star from the View-Master series “Yellowstone Vacation” at that
fun-time burger place ThumpWumpers. We were having dinner (when at ThumpWumpers, you simply must try the Onion Squealers!)
when who walks in but… you guessed it… the Belush! “Oh shit!” I choked out. “It’s the B-Dog hisself!”

I excused myself from my table, walked over to “Da Man,” and pulled up a chair. I think he might have been embarrassed because
he had just farted (I think), and that’s probably why he told me to get the hell away from him, but I told him that I didn’t
care about his farting. He looked at me with that patented “I’m a miserable human being” look of his. “Uh-oh,” I thought.
“He’s in one of his moods.” That’s when I produced from my portable humidor a Torquemada #4 and sparked that baby up for him.
Well, that changed his tune. If there’s anything the Belush can’t resist, it’s a cigar, or a passed-out babysitter! And since
I didn’t have the latter…

I started to tell him about how I want him to play the voice of Madden in my movie, and he stared at me like I had a couple
of “Santiago Numbnuts” hanging out of my ears.

I reminded him of how he knows me, and just as he was about to grab the maître d’… Don Johnson walks in! He was with a teenage
girl who, I guess, was his daughter, although she was Asian, but she kept calling him “Daddy,” so who knows. Wow! The Belush
and
Don Johnson! If this is Heaven, then don’t wake me up from my dream where this is Heaven!

After presenting Don with one of my prized Cuban Piffles, I asked if I could sit with them to discuss some “bidness.” Don
dismissed his daughter from the table and leaned in close.

“What is it, man? I’m hurting bad. I’ll take anything.”

The Belush started laughing at Don, and then the laughing became a wheeze, and then the wheeze became a little bloody, and
some of it got in Don’s good eye. So while Don went to the bathroom to wash up, Belulu took the opportunity to remind me that
I had promised him the role of the voice of Madden.

“No problemo, mon amore,” I said. “I was thinking Don could be the voice of ‘The Guy Who Tells You That It’s Halftime.’ He’d
be perfect!”

Beluminator thought about this for a second, and then a big grin crept onto his face. He pulled a hundred-dollar bill from
his wallet, waved it in front of Don’s daughter (who I later learned was named “Miss Saigon”), and said, “Well, looks like
Daddy’s been gone awhile. Maybe he doesn’t know how to treat his little girl.” Then the Belush accidentally dropped the hundred-dollar
bill in Miss Saigon’s lap. And I guess she was allergic to the money because when Belush went to get it back, she stiffened
suddenly and gasped before looking down and softly weeping. I guess the Belushman felt bad for her allergies, even though
he was smirking, because he then took her hand and pulled her up and away from the table and was nice enough to tell her about
a job he had for her.

As they were walking out I yelled out to him that I would send him the information about the project. He couldn’t hear me
and just left. After the maître d’ gave me the bill and informed me that Mr. Johnson had to go to the hospital for skin abrasions,
I paid up and rejoined my agent at our table. I gave Ms. Santiso her diabetes shot and went into the kitchen to start washing
dishes, as neither one of us had any money to pay for Mr. Belushi’s meal.

“Oh well. C’est la vie,” I said as I sucked on a “Clownish Brown” and scrubbed a saucepot. “C’est la vie.”

Oldies but Goodies: Delicious Chestnuts Dusted Off and Collected Here for Your Reading Pleasure

Some of these are things I posted on
bobanddavid.com
, and some are reprints from different magazines (and one very particular website). I am going to pretend that these have
all been requested by different folks representing eleven different

countries in three continents! Here you go.

Hey everyone,

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of James Frey’s newest book. It’s a soul-searching and no-holds-barred
look at his life since appearing on the
Oprah
show. This shit is crazy! What a tough life this guy has had.

From Chapter 1:

I left the Harpo studios in Chicago in a state of shock. When I accepted Oprah’s invitation to go back on her show and tell
my side of the story, I didn’t think that I would be treated so unfairly. I felt as if a couple of angry skate punks who “didn’t
like my attitude” ambushed me. It reminded me of the time I was ambushed by a bunch of angry skate punks who “didn’t like
my attitude.” I had awoken from a nineteen-day bender to find myself floating facedown in a canal in Amsterdam. I came to
with a knife in my chest and a tattoo on my left nipple which mysteriously read: “100% Goth!!” I blurbled something in Arabic
to a passing man on his bike, and he was decent enough to stop and fish me out. After drying myself off, I raped him and stole
his bike. I regret this behavior now, of course. I knew it was wrong then, too, but that’s what makes me such a monster. Or
rather
made
me such a monster. That and all the drugs and alcohol I was addicted to. I’m better now, thanks to rehab. But that’s an entirely
different true story, which has already appeared in my last book,
An Unverifiable True Remembering.

Anyway, after getting myself a breakfast (consisting of a fifth of Popovitch grain alcohol and some dirty socks I found in
a garbage can), I set about looking for an explanation as to why I was in Amsterdam and where I could get my next “fix man.”
I lurched forward toward the Leidseplein to see if I could find Bruno Ganz, who always did right by me when I was in town.
I made sure to catch all the projectile vomit I could into an empty Burger King bag that I carried around with me for that
express purpose, for I knew I would be hungry later and would spend every coin I had on my “next fix.” I had perfectly lurched
no more than ten feet… or thirteen miles? Maybe it was thirteen miles. I can’t remember exactly. This is a memoir, and that’s
French I believe for “memory,” which, let’s admit, is a little clouded by all the “drugs” and “alcohol” that I was totally
addicted to. Anyway, I was walking along the plaza with my now useless leg. Wait, did I mention that I was so fucked up that
I accidentally (?) let a transit bus run over my foot and didn’t realize it until later that day when a young Amsterdamian
child pointed to it and started to cry? Well, that did happen. I just remembered it just now, so… yeah.

Because of my now missing foot (I had it amputated without any anesthesia. I did this so that I could save $50, which I could
then spend on getting a “fix” for my latest “high.”) I was having a difficult time keeping my balance. Despite my best efforts
I found myself bumping into a group of five gutter punks sitting on a curb. One of them got up and threw a kettle of boiling
water in my face. They were making tea, as I recall it. I said, “Hey now, what was that all about?” Which was difficult because
the top layer of my face skin was peeling off. One of them mentioned not liking my attitude and I remember that setting off
some crazy interior switch deep, deep inside me. Maybe it was because of my shitty worthless life or maybe it was all my self-loathing
at not being able to make something out of myself despite graduating
summa cum laude
from the Sorbonne and almost being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for my work in the Congo, but when that switch switched
it was as if my veins were drained of blood and filled with super-strong adrenalized juicy juice. I got an odd and calm look
in my remaining face, stared the ten of them straight in the eyes, and said, “I’m bad, you motherfuckers. I’m a really bad
man. I am so jacked up on alcohol and various speeds, like crystal meth, cocaine, ice, snowcaps, bobbyrocks, po-pos, jaggersticks,
glass monkeys, and even two grams of pure Canadian sizzledots, that I can barely see straight. If you’re not careful I just
may eat your eyeballs with my rotting teeth (I had “meth mouth” from all the alcohol I had been drinking). Now if you don’t
mind, I’ve got a date with a bottle of 100 proof Bukowski.”

The twenty of them looked at me with the same curiosity that a Mexican ranch hand has when tending to the cattle, and he comes
across a great big steaming pile of bullshit. They looked silently at each other and then back to me. After a tense couple
of seconds the leader started to slowly but very deliberately clap his hands. One by one the others joined in and, picking
up the tempo, parted themselves so that I may pass through. It was such a touching gesture filled with hope that it is seared
into my memory, and I will certainly never forget it. I walked through with a newfound sense of humility and humanity. I walked
for another couple of feet when I slowly stopped and turned around to express my gratitude. However, much to my surprise,
they had all vanished. As I looked about for them, I could have sworn I heard a tiny child’s voice whisper to me: “You truly
are the baddest mofo in all of the Netherlands. Go, and spread your word. But do it in book form. And not as fiction, either.
Good luck, James Frey.” And so that night I set down this tale on paper…

Chapter 2:

…Except the papers were confiscated at the border because it was determined that I was a security risk due to the fact that
my vomit pants had blood on them. I had meant to wash either the vomit or the blood off the pants but had forgotten after
I had gotten “high” by hyperventilating and spinning around as fast as I could after eating some heroin cake I had bought
from an African. So I had to set about trying to piece the pieces of the story together. Honestly, there must have been at
least a million pieces if not maybe a half dozen or so. I can’t remember too well. I was so “high” on the fresh blood of the
Burmese child that I drank in a “highish” haze that it’s tough to get all the “facts” “straight.” I’ll do my best, though.
That’s all anyone can or should ask of me. Forever. Just to do my best.

Let’s see, what happened? I talked about the one punky guy with the leather jacket throwing his cup of iced coffee at me and
my face falling off and down on the dirty Amsterdam ground, right? (My face is deathly allergic to certain iced coffees getting
on it—it stings!) I talked about how they jumped me and made me take out my appendix without any anesthesia. Man, what a mess
I was. I desperately needed to get some help or I was gonna die. I wasn’t about to spend my last days of life rotting in some
prison in Ohio with a bunkmate named “Lefty” (serving six consecutive life sentences for raping and killing all of his cell
mates. He was originally brought in on a misdemeanor for spray painting) and a ten-pound pet rat that I nicknamed “Aeolis”
after the Greek God of the winds. No way, man.

I decided that rather than get help, I would break out of the prison that night or die trying. Much later in life I would
decide to get rich or die tryin’, but that’s another (this) story. I set about looking for my way out of this hell that was
the Ohio Maximum State Prison, officially
^*
recognized as the most brutal prison in the world. I called over the guard who had stabbed me in the chin when I tried to
beat him up for calling me a pussy the night before. He sauntered over and spit on me. I told him that he just made a grave
mistake. I told him how one day I would write a book and mention all the wrongs I had been wronged, and everyone who ever
crossed me would end up getting their shit called on in book form. Who knows? Maybe I would wind up going on the TV talk show
circuit and telling the truth about the brutality that goes on in American prisons. I’m sure Montel Williams or maybe even
Dr. Phil would be interested in my story. After that, he killed me.

More to Come Later.

Sincerely,

James Frey

A few years ago, after the release of my second humorous CD,
It’s Not Funny
, SubPop, the record label that put it out, sent me a request from the
San Francisco Weekly
to write something for them. “Sure, why not?” I said. “What do they want me to write about? My tour? The making of the CD?
My take on the upcoming elections? This whole
Arrested Development
hoo-haa?” Well, no. None of that, as it turned out. The letter below is a great example of the predictable circuitousness
of our particular form of propped-up, torn-down, disposable idea, and handling, of “fame.” Anywhoozles, here’s the request
with my response.