Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper. Art Pepper

and got another shot, and after that I said, “I still don’t feel comfortable.” He said, “Well, I don’t understand it, but alright, we’ll give you one more shot.” By this time I was just wasted. I was sailing. So I finally told them that I felt okay. I could make it. Hahahaha! I could stand the pain.

      The next day they put me in a whirlpool bath and a guy gave me a massage, the most beautiful massage I’ve ever had—he was an artist. Here I was in this gorgeous room, comparable to any hotel I’d ever stayed in; I had my own private patio with flowers and lawn and birds chirping; and every four hours this pretty nurse would come in and give me an enormous shot of morphine. And I was just blind: I tripped out and sang to myself and made funny noises and looked at myself in the mirror. I stood in the bathroom for hours looking at myself and giggling, saying, “Boy, what a handsome devil you are!” I had a beautiful body. I’d get in the shower and bathe and get out and take the hand mirror and put it on the floor and look at my body from the floor. I’d look at my rear end and the bottom of my balls and the bottom of my joint, and I would play with myself until I got a hard-on and then gaze into this mirror and say, “What a gorgeous thing you are!”

      I mentioned that as a child I used to play a lot alone. I loved sports and I made up a baseball game that I played with dice, and I never played it with anybody. I’d choose the names of the best players and roll the dice to make up fantasy teams, six or eight teams in the league. I would make up names like the New York Bombers, the Philadelphia Penguins. I had a typewriter that my mother’s husband, Whit, had bought me, and I’d type up a sheet for each team listing all the players including pinch hitters and relief pitchers. I’d set up a page with the team standings and I kept batting averages, home runs, runs batted in, the whole thing. I had meetings for the managers, and I would talk. Sometimes I’d have trades. If a team was really losing I’d have them buy somebody that had a good batting average. And when I played the game, I was the radio broadcaster; I was the manager; I was the ball player; I was everything. I’d roll the dice. Each roll of the dice meant something. I’d say, “Ted Williams is up. Warren Spahn is pitching. It’s the first pitch. Strike one!” I’d keep the standings and the percentages, and then I’d have my own all-star game with the leading batters. I even rolled the dice to get attendance.

      I hardly ever cheated. Naturally I’d form favorites, and there would be certain players that I’d like better than others, or somebody would get close to a record legitimately and then it would be very hard not to cheat a little. A pitcher might have a shutout, two outs in the ninth inning, and somebody would hit a single, Then I might get angry and re-roll, but the few times I did that I felt bad about it. It spoiled the record, and I swore that I wouldn’t do it anymore.

      And so, when I was twenty-seven years old, I still had a baseball league going, if you can imagine that. It was something Patti could never understand. I’d be loaded and be up all night in the kitchen playing games. And when I went into the sanitarium, I took my notebook with my schedule, my dice, erasers, pencils, ruler and the whole thing, and I’m playing my league in my room. The nurse came in a couple of times and I explained it to her and she couldn’t believe it.

      There were some women and a couple of men who had rooms in this place. It was like a hotel. After a few days I started getting out and talking to the people. I met one lady who was about forty-five. She had diamond rings on and just reeked of money. Her pupils were pinpoints. She said, ‘Oh, hello! Are you the new boy in number seven?” She said, I’m Mrs. So-and-so.” We started talking. She said, “What’s your trouble?’ I said, ‘I’m a dope fiend.” She said, “Tsk, tsk, tsk! Oh, what a shame!” I said, “What’s your trouble?” She said, “Well, I have this condition—my veins don’t function correctly—and I have to have morphine. It opens up the veins into my brain. And I have trouble sleeping: they give me morphine to help me sleep. And I need the massage—I have muscle problems, you know—I have pains in my back, in my legs, in my lower legs.” She showed me her legs.