Читать книгу My Appetite for Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns ‘N’ Roses - Steven Adler - Страница 52

In December ’82, I found a room to rent in the home of my friend Brad Server. He was one of those surfer dudes who love Southern California, the epitome of the Jeff Spicoli character from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He lived with his mother down the street from my mom. She owned a big three-bedroom home. I would stay there a lot in the spare bedroom for only $125 a month. Brad’s mother was the daughter of Curly, my favorite of the Three Stooges. It was just the two of them there and I was allowed to set up my drums and jam. During the day, Brad would go to school, his mother would go to work, and I had the house to myself.

So I would just practice all the time. I remember I would play to Journey’s Escape. I loved that record. They had the greatest drum sound and Steve Smith was damn good. I had Ozzy’s “Over the Mountain” down by then too. This was the time that I made some of my greatest strides on drums. I stayed there for a few months and I appreciate Brad and his mom’s hospitality to this day. A rocker never forgets the people who help him out when he’s a nobody.

In January ’83, I took Lisa with me to the Rainbow. The Rainbow was to become our second home. It did not discriminate between big hair, short hair, rich, poor, famous, infamous, rock stars, roadies, drug dealers, record execs, wannabes, and hangers-on. The “Bow” welcomed us all.

Lisa was the closest thing I had to a steady girlfriend, but of course, I was fucking around a lot too. I had been going to the Rainbow for years, but never once had I brought a girl there. The Rainbow was a place to get girls, not bring girls. Lisa and I had the small booth in the back right corner. At one point I got up to go to the bathroom and I got stopped at every table. Chicks I knew and didn’t know all had me sit with them.

I was having a great time, just swinging from one table to the next. I literally made out with a different girl at every booth. So I didn’t get back to Lisa for a while. When I finally returned, Lisa was freaking out on me: “Where the fuck did you go? I’ve been sitting here for an hour.” Like I explained, I’d never once brought a girl to the Rainbow with me and now I realized why. It really cramped my style.

I’m thinking, “What? I was with some chicks.” I didn’t understand or even comprehend the idea of being in a serious relationship. She was upset and wanted to go right away. As we were leaving, she’s yelling at the top of her lungs. We’re walking out, and she’s screaming that I’m an asshole. I was pretty drunk, and I suddenly became very aggravated. I turned around and yelled, “Shut the fuck up.”

We were right at the main entrance by the cash register when all of a sudden some big-ass guy grabs me, turns me back around, and punches me right in the face. I don’t remember anything after that. But when I came to again, I had evidently gotten into my car and driven to Mom’s house.

Canoga Park is over twenty miles from the Rainbow and I had absolutely no recollection of the drive. The next morning, when I woke up, I was still in my car, which was parked in front of Mom’s place. As my mom was leaving for work that morning, she was shocked at the sight of me and started banging on the windows of the car, where I had passed out in the front seat.

There was blood all over the seat, my face, and my clothes. It was the first time I had had my nose broken and the feeling was terrible. I couldn’t breathe and at first I had difficulty focusing my eyes on anything close up. I looked like Marcia Brady in the Brady Bunch episode where she got hit square in the nose by a football.

My mother knew just what to do. She muttered something about needing to fix it right away, and I was damned lucky I was under eighteen years old, because her health insurance policy still covered me. She rushed me to the hospital and got the doctors to look at it right away. Within twenty-four hours they had operated, and somewhere there’s a photo of me smiling from my hospital bed with my nose all taped up. Mom should have gotten a two-for-one rate, because it wouldn’t be long before I’d whack my schnoz again and need another nose job. That was just one part of my body that would be mangled and fixed repeatedly over the next twenty years. I’d like to thank all of the doctors, nurses, family, and friends who have carried me off the battlefield and treated me a lot better than I ever treated myself. It’s a miracle that I’m alive, but in my early teens I believed I was indestructible and probably didn’t even notice the self-abuse until my first overdose.