Spalderman

I may not have had AIDS, but I looked and felt like I had something bad. I had no energy, and could barely get myself together each morning to get my dose of methadone and sit through an hour of therapy. I’d crash as soon as I got home and sleep most of the day. I slowly started to feel stronger, and started going to movies during the day.

I completed my two weeks in the Breakthrough Program, which was an accomplishment in itself; I hadn’t actually finished anything in years. I spent some more time with Roger, and became more comfortable around him.

I stayed clean for almost 90 days after I left the hospital, purely out of spite. I went to NA meetings every day and avoided all the places that might make me use again. I think Laverne felt guilty about what had happened with Vinnie, because he offered to act as my temporary sponsor and put me under his wing.

I needed time to figure out my next move, but a dope habit doesn’t afford a junkie the luxury of time. I couldn’t handle working at another club, or going out on the road, and I felt unmotivated and unmoored.

I was disillusioned and wasted when I got back from Europe. I hadn’t felt that burned out since my American University days, and I had had enough Lionel Hampton to last a lifetime. As soon as I got back, Mel from Fat Tuesday’s continued the discussion about buying the club, which I still found ridiculous. I had no money to buy a club, but he said he could put me in touch with some investors who might be interested.

Sitting in an office with Pete and a secretary every day was dull and repetitive, and I started to feel like an order taker. I moved further into the suburbs of Virginia, started playing golf, and spent less and less time in Georgetown. I enjoyed the stability for a while—the novelty of it, I guess—and being perceived as a success. But there was no action, or danger, and I was antsy; it all started to feel too normal.

A new jazz club had just opened across the street from the Bayou, and Stan, a bartender who left the Bayou when I did, was working there. It was a supper club called Charlie's Georgetown and was co-owned by the guitarist, Charlie Byrd.

Right before I left American I had been to a concert at a rock club in Georgetown called the Bayou, and I’d thought about applying for a part-time job there even before everything went south and I actually needed a job. I walked into the club one afternoon, and up to a guy that was standing in the middle of the dance floor facing the stage.

One morning, having just fallen asleep after a multi-day coke binge, I answered a knock on the door of my dorm room at American University to find three plainclothes detectives shoving their badges in my face. This is it, I thought, I’m finally fucked.

Thurston Hall had changed. Some in our original crew bottomed out and withdrew from school; some made vows to change and pulled back from all the partying, and some just moved out of the dorm.

It was with this discipline and commitment to my future that I was heading off to George Washington University in the fall. And, believe me, I did not want to go.

June 1978

Plans changed when T.J. dropped acid with two girls he met at a mixer at his military academy. We had planned to hang out and chill, but instead he and the girls wanted to go see a midnight movie at the Uniondale Mini-Cinema.

Get Off: The Sordid Youth and Unlikely Survival of A Queer Junkie Wonder Boy

Set against a backdrop of New York City in the grungy, glittering 1980s, Get Off is a memoir about desperate living, hidden promise, double lives, and the danger of getting too much too soon.

“It was sad to see his tall figure as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans; they stand uncertainly underneath immense skies, and everything about them is drowned.”

– Jack Kerouac, On the Road