THENASTYBITS (23 page)

new project. We've heard it all before. Some people live. Others die. Who survives and who doesn't seems most often to have been determined long before the subject enters treatment—when the junkie in question looks in the mirror one morning and decides that he really, truly wants to live. If there's any question in your mind, before you even walk through the doors of the methadone clinic or rehab facility, about
how
badly you want to turn things around, and
what you're willing to do to accomplish that,
then lose my number.

The memory of the bitter taste of heroin in the back of my throat, the smell of burning candles, the taste of paint chips mistaken for a pebble of dropped crack, a whiff of urine and stale air from long-ago tenement drug superstores on the Lower East Side all came back when I watched Robert Downey Jr. being hauled off again in handcuffs. And this time, I actually cared a little. "This guy must
really
hate himself," I thought, reading of cocaine and speed allegedly found in his room. That he is, to my mind, one of the finest actors working in Hollywood, matters not at all. That he's spent some time in jail was, if anything, a recommendation. I'd hoped he'd be cast in one of the film versions of my books, as he seemed to have the perfect resume for the job. My first thought, though, was, "Cocaine and
speedll}"
That's not comfortable oblivion! That's pedal to the metal, headed straight into the wall. If there are two faster routes to the dung heap I don't know of them. They can't even be
fun
anymore. After years of having as much cocaine as you want, you find yourself just chasing that first pleasurable hit, looking to recapture that first pleasant rush.

Ally McBeal
can't have helped. If I were an actor of Downey's caliber, I can't say I'd be too happy with myself, mugging and lip-locking on that silly, faux-heart-warming exercise in cynicism. I wondered immediately: "The guy's right out of the joint! Who let him work a job where he's going to have damn
good
reason to hate himself?"

People are fragile, very fragile, when they leave rehab. For the first year, it seems like the pleasure centers of the brain have shut down for good, like one's oldest and best love has died. This is not a time to acquire new reasons for shame, fear, regret; you've had plenty of that already. It's time to get away. Far away from old friends, old haunts, old temptations.

In the jargon of rehab, "bottoming out" is mentioned frequently and annoyingly—often as a prerequisite to treatment. When life is at least as unbearable with drugs as without, when the thought of a fat stack of glassine envelopes or an eight-ball promises only more misery, some people make that hard choice to tally up the betrayals and the wreckage and keep living. It's not easy. Many—if not most—fail. Most times, you really have to do something terribly shameful, experience awfulness in previously unimagined degrees, before you see a life without drugs as a preferred, even necessary option. Jail, in Mr. Downey's case, doesn't seem to have been enough. Maybe
Ally McBeal
will be.

FOOD
TERRORISTS

right now, in the
streets of Phnom Penh, in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, in scores of Caribbean shantytowns, wherever people are poor and struggling and living with little hope of better lives, you'll also find stray dogs, starved, spavined, limping, and covered with mange. In Southeast Asia, sun bears are hooked up to kidney drips, like living ketchup dispensers, and their bile is drained and collected for traditional Eastern medicine. Rhino horn, bear claw, shark fin—the still living parts of every variety of creature are sought after for their supposedly restorative powers, or as holistic alternatives to Viagra. Thousands upon thousands of unwanted cats and dogs are exterminated every month in American cities, victims of the laziness, irresponsibility, and caprice of a wealthy nation.

Yet in San Francisco, our heroic eco-warriors have found a more compelling front line in the struggle against animal cruelty. A supposedly underground group of fanatical animal rights activists has apparently decided that Chef Laurent Manrique's pint-size specialty store, Sonoma Saveurs, must be restrained— by any means necessary—from selling foie gras. To this end, they broke in to the historical adobe structure, spray-painted walls and equipment, destroyed the plumbing with cement, pumped water throughout—thereby damaging two neighboring businesses as well—vandalized Manrique's home, doused his car with acid, and threatened him in phone calls and letters.

Most unforgivably, they have sent Manrique a videotape, surreptitiously filmed from his yard, of his wife and two-year-old child in their home, with a letter warning that they were being watched.

This is a tactic unworthy of the Mafia. Even the Gambino crime family, to my knowledge, rarely if ever stooped to this. This is the kind of activity favored by Central American death squads and Colombian drug gangs, and it's surprising—no, it's goddamn horrifying—to see it in the touchy-feely heartland of political correctness.

But on the other hand, it's illustrative of the utter gutlessness and self-delusion of these yuppified, trustafarian true believers. Arguably complicit—as we all are—in their comfortable T-shirts and leather-free footwear (surely subsidized by the underpaid labor of some faraway dictatorship) they toodle over in their sensibly fuel-efficient cars to Sonoma (not too far from their expensive homes) and destroy the small businesses of victims completely uninvolved in their argument. They terrorize a mother and infant child.

I have always felt a strange mix of revulsion and gratitude toward the folks at PETA (who insist that while they support the aims of the supposed splinter faction responsible, they are not comfortable with the means). Personally, I would never buy or wear fur—while other material is available. I choose not to hunt for sport. I find it ugly and pointless. While I have shot rabbits for food, it was not an experience I enjoyed, and I would not do it again. The idea of testing cosmetics on animals seems appallingly, extravagantly cruel and unnecessary. (As opposed to medical testing, which I reluctantly, very reluctantly, accept.) I own and utterly adore a mean, six-pound runt of a cat who I adopted from a shelter, and who essentially runs my household. However annoying or offensive or tone-deaf or silly the PETA folks look at times, I've always been glad they're there, to remind all of us the cost in life and in pain of the luxuries we enjoy. If they choose to picket, to advertise, to educate, to harangue, to use every interpretation of the first amendment to embarrass fashion designers, alter public perception, and change behavior,

then God bless them. This is, presumably, a free country. And if they want to put up posters and billboards mocking Rudy Giuliani's cancer (
got cancer
?), however grotesque that might be, he's a big boy. And it makes them look far worse than even the most uncharitable view of our former mayor.

But terrorizing a chef and his family? Using what is essentially racketeering and extortion to frighten chefs into changing menus—in Manrique's case, walking away from a centuries-old Gascogne tradition? This is indefensible, atrocious, and portentous of bad things to come. Already, chefs Traci Des Jardins of Jardiniere and Charlie Trotter have made the craven and all-too expedient decision to remove foie gras from their menus, not only knuckling under at the first whiff of opposition, but turning their backs on their peers and their profession when their support is needed most.

I have seen foie gras being produced, the ducks and geese fed in identical fashion to the way that Manrique's suppliers do it. The animals are
not
bolted to a board. At mealtime, they are summoned or gently prodded, by the same feeder each day, and held between his legs. Their heads are tilted back and a long funnel is introduced into their mouths and down their throats. About a handful of feed is ground in a mill and poured into their stomachs. They do not generally struggle. Often, free of any physical encouragement, they come when summoned. Certainly it is not pretty. Watching the process causes an instinctive awareness of the gag reflex. But then any number of adult film stars cheerfully inspire the same reaction. It
is,
no doubt, cruelty of a sort. If any time discomfort is inflicted on another living thing defines the word, then that's what it is. But in the full spectrum of cruelty and horror in this wide world—and even in our own neighborhoods—there is far, far worse.

There is cruelty and neglect and murder readily at hand on Bay Area streets. But it happens to people, creatures of little concern to our clandestine warriors. There is also dog fighting and cockfighting. But the people who run those businesses tend to carry guns, and one thing we can be sure of is that the perpetrators of the Manrique extortion don't want any holes shot in their comfortable clothing. They don't want to miss a shift at the health food store. They don't want to do anything that their supporters or daddy's lawyer can't bail them out of later. Rather than risk harm or inconvenience to themselves on the
real
front lines—in Burma, China, Africa, or even the streets of Oakland—they have chosen to commit the relatively easy crime of extorting a chef and his family. If these people, assured Hezbollah-like of the righteousness of their cause, were capable of shame, then they surely should be ashamed.

Burglary, destruction of property, and extortion are all felonies. Acting as a group, in concert, in an ongoing criminal enterprise—as these hateful and hating people inarguably have—amounts to racketeering. I dearly hope,
pour decourager les autres,
that when they are caught, they are tried and convicted under federal RICO conspiracy statutes and spend the rest of their lives eating prison turkey loaf. And I offer my support and my sympathy to Laurent Manrique, a great chef, a good man, and a proud Gascon.

SLEAZE GONE BY

"NEW YORK MUTHAFUCKIN' CITY."

One used to be able to say that with pride, usually in conjunction with a challenge to whatever tourist had wandered into your orbit, something welcoming and friendly like "Whaddayou lookin' at?!" or, "Gimme a dollar!" With the advent of a strong economy, however, and a crime-busting mayor, more stringent "quality of life" laws, and a number of major corporations eager to pour billions of dollars into redevelopment, New York is becoming a destination resort, offering the same nonthreatening, family entertainment districts as Southern Florida or the "new" Vegas. The way things are going, the city I love will soon present one unbroken vista of theme restaurants, chain stores, Starbucks, and merchandising outlets for the film studios—a smoke-free Disney Zone and amusement park for every flabby-assed, no-necked fanny-packer and rube who thinks waiting on line outside the Hard Rock Cafe is a thrill ride. Survival of the fittest has been replaced, judging from the docile herds waddling through our streets in search of T-shirts and theater tickets, by survival of the fattest.

Now I know how the aging gunmen of the Old West—Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, and their peers—must have felt, watching the first waves of homesteaders arrive in Tombstone: the creeping Jesuses and Temperance Leaguers, demanding schools, churches, public parks where once thrived whorehouses, gambling halls, saloons. No more whoring and boozing and eye-gouging, cried the new arrivals. An end to the unrestricted discharge of firearms! Well, look at the American West now, friends. One long strip mall.

No single structure personifies what has happened to my city more forcefully than Show World, a one-time temple of sleaze at the corner of Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue: three stories of sin, where one could shoot up in the privacy of a peep booth, watch bruised women with tattoos spread their crenulated thighs on a revolting shag-carpeted platform in the "theater," or attend the hourly Live Sex show, where dead-eyed junkie couples would bang bony hips together lifelessly, six shows a day. Now? It's a comedy club.

What happened? Times Square was, particularly for a young man with a criminal bent and a few bucks in his pocket, a wonderland of urban exotica. Not too long ago, you could buy a couple of loose joints on the street, then watch a triple bill of
Lightning Swords
of
Death, Three the Hard Way,
and
Get Carter
from the balcony/smoking section of one of a half dozen cavernous, moldering grind house movie theaters, the film's soundtrack accompanied by the hoots and shouts of the other patrons, for whom the theater was not a diversion but a place of business. All those theaters are gone, replaced by the Disney-owned New Victory and, across the street, the
Lion King
in apparent permanent residence. Where feral young men with butterfly knives tucked in their waistbands used to play video games and pinball among the chicken hawks, selling beat drugs and planning felonies, it's now stores selling Warner Brothers action figures and stuffed animals. Where Matty "The Horse" Ianello once ran an empire of clip joints and peep shows and hustler bars, it's Mickey and Bugs who are the baddest dudes on the block.

Up the street on Broadway, where a midget doorman used to escort you up the dusty plaster waterfall into the gargantuan and half-empty Hawaii Kai for flaming drinks to chill you out from all the bad cocaine, and movie marquees once sported titles like
Anal Rampage III
and
The Sperminator,
there's the All-Star