I Knew I Was Going To Die.
Bonnie and I watched The Firm’s tour bus drive away from the parking lot. The band members may have been in the back – we never quite knew – and our buddy Phil was long gone – no idea to where.
Decades passed before it occurred to me that I’d had no money, no food, no way to get home after Massachusetts, no plan for what came next. But at 20, I never thought beyond another backstage concert.
Bonnie and I were despondent; our dream of groupie life had been unceremoniously dumped into the crapper.
We were also wired on some very high quality cocaine, so we drank more beer to tamper the effects of the stimulant. We hung with Mack and wondered aloud about the life of a driver for a famous rock band.
Mack said he drove all night and slept all day, which was cool – to us. If Mack had been subsisting on raw potatoes, I might have never left that cab.
The little cocaine mirror went around and around and around. Eventually the sun started to rise.
And I still had my parents’ car.
My parents had no idea if I would ever be home. Probably they didn’t sleep at all, but I thought I could get home before they woke.
We thanked Mack profusely for letting us hang with him, as if we were mere peasants, then raced home. When we got to my bedroom, I opened the window wide. There was no screen and I leaned my head out.
“I can’t breathe,” I told Bonnie. “I feel like my heart’s beating out of my chest.”
I could feel the pounding – rapid-fire boomboomboomboomboom – all the way from my core to my brain. I could hear it in my ears and it was much, much too fast.
I hung the entire top half of my body out of the window, trying to suck in whatever air the morning offered. Breathing was getting harder, not easier. I was nearly hyperventilating.
“What’s going on?” Bonnie asked. She seemed fine. Of course, she was on the tour bus while I was snorting nonstop lines off that little mirror.
“Maybe I did too much coke?” I actually looked to the 18-year-old for verification.
“I don’t think you can do too much coke,” she said. “Just leave your head out the window and keep breathing, but try to breathe slower.”
Bonnie went into the bathroom.
Hanging out the window, desperate for air, desperate for an end to the pounding, my brain was screaming with boomboomboomboom. I couldn’t breathe any slower. My heart was racing; my eyes were watering; my lungs felt like they might explode.
I knew this was an overdose. I knew I needed a hospital. I knew I was going to die.
But I didn’t want to tell my parents; I didn’t want to get into more trouble.
So I just hung there, trying to breathe while my heart beat like the drum solo in Wipe Out. There was no calming it, no controlling it.
My heart was not under my control.
I pulled myself upright and sat on the window sill. I tried to breathe more slowly, but I could barely breathe at all. I sat that way for a long, long, long time.
Eventually, I rolled onto my bed and closed my eyes: boomboombooomboomboom. I just listened to the rhythm, and I breathed.
I knew closing my eyes was dangerous. I had overdosed on cocaine and I was alone.
Boomboomboomboomboom…
So fast.
I heard birds singing outside.
Breathe.
Slower.
I woke up hours later totally fine.