Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

It was that night I lucked out. I came up for air about two A.M. and ran right into a San Francisco P.D. street sweep. A big, mean-looking black cop grabbed me. He was about to pat me down when he took a second look and said, Army?

I said, Yeah, and he said, You dumb piece of white shit, but instead of taking me in, he dropped me at one of those free clinics in Haight-Ashbury.

The clinic was run by a woman doctor. It took almost a week to get detoxed. Then I spent another MAGIC HOUR / 21

two weeks in bed—with the woman doctor. Her name was Sharon. “Positive reinforcement,” she called it. Sharon panted a lot; I kept feeling her hot, moist spearmint Certs breath.

She always gazed deep into my eyes the second it was over.

Aren’t I marvelous? her eyes demanded.

Marvelous? Somehow I was getting it up and, apparently, getting it off. But my dick could have been Novocained; I swear to God I felt nothing.

By the end of the second week, Sharon was after me to go back to college—in San Francisco. Hey! I could move in with her! What a fabulous idea! Together we could bang our brains out! Detox the toxed! Refinish her floors!

I did not leave my heart—or any other part of me—in San Francisco. I was back home for Christmas.

Two days of my mother and brother, and I moved out. I needed a job. One of my buddies from high school had joined the Southampton Town P.D. No degree necessary.

Decent pay. I applied, but there was a waiting list, so instead I joined the Suffolk County P.D. I became Guardian of the Suburbs, Keeper of the Peace for the lawn-tenders and split-level dwellers.

I soon began showing my true Brady (as opposed to Easton) colors, popping a few beers a day. Then a six-pack. I was an alcoholic—not that I knew it—and an armed officer of the law. But hey, I was a terrific, ambitious cop. My job meant everything to me. In the beginning, I was even snowed by the dumb stuff: the uniform, the shield, the gun, the siren.

Finally, I was part of something good. Law and order. With a little effort, I felt that my life, like Suffolk County, could be brought under control.

Mainly I worked. I spent my days off in Bridgehampton, picking up women and getting laid or watching the Yankees.

(In an ideal world, it would

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have been both.) In eighteen years, I don’t think I had a relationship that lasted longer than a month. I worked my way up to drinking two six-packs and half a fifth of booze a day.

Scotch in winter, vodka in summer.

Like every other drunk, I was absolutely positive I wasn’t a drunk. My mind was so sharp; I could give you every single stat from Thurman Munson’s entire career. And at work, when I was on a hard case, I could lay off booze completely.

Hey, I had no problem.

By 1984 I was a detective sergeant in Homicide. I was working eighteen, twenty hours a day. I’d go on the wagon and stay on for a couple of months; then I’d slide off. But I was good at hiding my drinking.

Finally, not good enough. Fourteen years after I’d been an alcoholic, someone in the department noticed that what even my friends had been calling my short fuse might be a bad drinking problem when I got into a fight with some guy from Missing Persons in the parking lot at headquarters in Yaphank. I pulled my gun, aimed and shot out his side mirror. I have absolutely no memory of it. They told me I started up because this guy had parked over the line, too close to my car, an indigo ’63 Jaguar, E-type. It could go from zero to fifty in 4.8 seconds. I loved my car.

My commanding officer, Captain Shea, suggested a vacation at South Oaks, the department’s favored drying-out spot.

Vacation: They took away my suitcase and searched it; they strip-searched me; they took away my razor.

I was so scared. No one else there was. This was the place to see and be seen. Anybody who’s anybody is drying out, all the hip guys and gals in sweatpants and slippers seemed to be saying. They all loved group; they loved to talk about their sodden

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daddies, their stinko moms. They couldn’t wait to tell about waking up caked in their own vomit. They cried. They laughed. They hugged each other. They all seemed to think they were auditioning for the lead in their own TV bio-movie: Debbie [or Marvin]: Portrait of a Long Island Alcoholic.

I remember always being cold at South Oaks, and talking as little as I could get away with. But I thought all the time.

I thought: My life is shit. All I have is work—death—my dick and TV. Listen, when you’re sitting in a therapy session at a funny farm with seven substance abusers and a psychiatric social worker and you look back and realize that the highlight of the last decade of your life was getting cable so you could watch Sports Channel, you begin to realize you might be a little deficient in the humanity department.

I dried out at South Oaks. After I left, I stayed with AA.

The department told me they wouldn’t can me, but I would have to go back into uniform.

That was terrible. No, humiliating was what it was. Forget that I’d once been thrilled to be the boy in blue. Now I was a man. So what was I doing all dressed up like Mr. Policeman for Halloween? Was I doomed to endless, mind-numbing cruising in a patrol car for the rest of my life?

I fought like hell for half a year to get back into Homicide.

Besides the Yankees, my work—putting together the puzzle—was the only thing I really cared about in the world, the only thing that made me feel alive.