Читать книгу My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns ‘N’ Roses - Steven Adler - Страница 43

My first week at Chatsworth High, I met a girl named Lisa. She was a pretty hot-looking senior with long brown hair, a big smile, slender legs, and cute little teacup tits. I had to ask her out. She had a car and a job, which meant she was the perfect catch for a sophomore like myself. Of course Mom and Mel’s rules still applied, so I would sneak out of my bedroom window after dinner and meet Lisa. My heart would be pounding so hard, giving me the best pure high. I miss that more than anything else—the great buzzes I’d get from the simplest things.

Before you know it, the booze and the drugs have muscled their way in to replace the natural buzz, then they make it impossible for you to enjoy any kind of joy at all, because you’re all torn down, dead inside. You have no clue how you got so out of touch with the simple pleasures. If kids could just maintain a knack for capturing the natural highs in life, then the other crap would turn them off. Drugs would just bore them shitless when compared to a genuine high.

I’ll never know how long I would have lasted at Chatsworth because I got blindsided only six weeks after I enrolled. Well, I guess that’s my answer: six weeks. The only positive thing was that I happened to be there just long enough to get my driver’s license out of driver’s ed class. Back then, you could get your license when you were fifteen and a half.

I never saw it coming. I was in the classroom the day two police officers came into school asking for me. Some fucker had narced me out for smoking weed before class. Such a fun way to start off the day: being led away in handcuffs in front of my classmates.

You never forget your first kiss, your first car, or your first time in the slammer. I wasn’t pissed—okay, maybe a little—but I was mostly stunned. The cops were going all Joe Friday on me, making it sound like I had just been caught with forty kilos of primo bud in my locker. After spending what felt like a whole day in a holding cell, I started to get worried. Maybe these guys actually were determined to make an example out of me. With my luck, it seemed possible that whatever the maximum penalty was for getting high before school, I was going to find out. Turned out I was only locked up at Devonshire police station for three or four hours before they called my parents, but it seemed like forever.

When Mom finally came to pick me up, the police captain told her that there would be no record of the arrest, that they were just trying to give me a good scare, which I guess was their policy for first-time offenders. I, of course, didn’t know this, and when I got in the car, I went a little overboard with the “Please forgive me—it’ll never happen again—I’ve been such an idiot” routine. But it didn’t really make much difference because Mel had already issued his edict before Mom came to get me.

Mel said no way I was welcome back in the house, so I was taken to a foster home in Pasadena. There were all these crazy kids running around, screaming at the top of their lungs. I never felt sorry for myself, it was just “This sucks. I’m out of here.” So I called Lisa and said, “Woman, you gotta come rescue me.” Within an hour she was there to pick me up right outside the home. The lady running the place was freaking out, all yelling after me: “You’re not allowed to leave. Come back here. I’m calling the police!”