Mood:
brightTopic: Entertainment
In the May 30th issue of The New York Times, I came across an article about a man in publishing—Bill Clegg. The article, "Tale of a Life, Unabridged,"; is the story of a "literary meltdown," involving Clegg at the forefront as a recovering crack user and possible sex addict.
Clegg had turned his meltdown, including a four day crack, sex, and vodka binge at the Gavensport Hotel, into a memoir which also serves as his first book.
"In early 2005, after a fitful spasm of vodka, a crack dealer named Happy and an emptied bottle of sleeping pills, his life imploded," the article reads. "The literary agency dissolved. Rival agents swooped in and snatched his writers. And the boyfriend of eight years was gone and, with him, the Fifth Avenue party pad."
I knew I had to read this book—unfortunately, I had to wait a month for it to be release. Amazingly, my mom bought it for me for my birthday and I couldn't wait to get my grubby paws on it.
I have read, and thoroughly enjoyed reading books about rehab and drug addiction (A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard, Prozac Nation, Girl Interrupted, Wasted), but I have never read a book about the actual act of doing drugs.
Clegg's book put me right in the center of the action—on the couch with him in paragraphs such as these:
"Mark finds no gold. He puts down the scraper, the bits of glass, and his movements come to a halt. He collapses back into the couch, where I can practically see the strings that held him aloft now glide down around him. The bag is empty and it's six a.m. We've been at it for six days and five nights and all the other stems are destroyed (6)...I don't know yet that I will keep this going—here and in other places like it—for over a month. That I will lose almost forty pounds, so that, at thirty-four, I will weigh less than I did in the eighth grade (7)."
The chapters move back and forth through Clegg's life; his rough childhood, the current relationship with his boyfriend Noah, his new career in publishing, and his secret life as an addict.
One of the more riveting parts in the book is Clegg's attempted efforts at meeting Noah overseas to see his premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. On his first try, Clegg gets in a cab knowing he won't make the flight. He goes to the airport anyway, his pockets full of crack, and simply books a new flight—happy to spend the night in a nearby hotel. On his cab ride from the airport to the hotel, he shows the driver his rocks, wants to know if he parties? He does. Clegg and a line of cab drivers will spend the next few days bingeing on drugs and sex, with no care in the world.
When Clegg eventually makes it to the airport, it is the beginning of a month-long episode of extreme paranoia involving men in suits, chasing him and a fear of being arrested.
While many of the sections in this book shocked me, a single paragraph had my jaw hanging wide open as a read:
"He arrives around one. I'd smoked down what I had left from the bag at Rosie's an hour ago, and my stem is now less than two inches long, caked with burnt, unsmokable residue. When I called hours earlier I asked for $2,000 worth. More than I've ever ordered. I can only give him $1,500 in cash—what was left of my limit when I went to the ATM before midnight and a new grand after. I ask him, this one time, to sport me the difference. He pauses, briefly, and starts counting out the bags and new stems...
Looking at the forty bags of crack on my bedspread, the most I have ever seen in one place, makes me feel safer than I have felt all day. The bags look fuller, more jammed packed than usual, and the abundance, the dancing light outside the window, and the awareness that I will never leave this room sends a high throughout my system before I even light up. I lie down on the bed and drop the bags on my chest and face, one by one, and then all at once. It feels like an arrival. The end of a journey. Not just the panicked one of days and nights and weeks after relapsing, but the long one, the whole useless struggle (197-198)."
It is obvious I loved this book—it was very different from any of the other substance-related memoirs I've read. But still intriguing. I'm so glad Clegg decided to share his story.
Today, Clegg is back in publishing as a literary agent for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. Some of his previous writers such as Heather Clay, Salvatore Scibona and Nick Flynn followed him to the new agency, praising him for his ability to handle their work.
He has already signed for a second book deal, rumored to be about his days post-rehab. At 39 years old, Clegg is now five years sober.
