SOBER NOT SOBER
After I left Hazelden, I was sober for eight years. I was what they call a “dry drunk.” I didn’t go to meetings—I only went to a few of the men’s groups I had been urged to attend. I was still suffering “king baby syndrome.”1 I was going to show them I didn’t need to drink. I was still arrogant.
Sometime in 1999, someone asked me if I wanted a beer and I said, “Yes.” That was it. Those years—from the age of forty until I walked into a recovery room at age forty-seven—were the worst of my life.
I was drinking all the time, which meant I was taking my HIV meds with hard alcohol and beer. To fall asleep at night I would down a Budweiser, a Klonopin, and some Nyquil. When I got up in the morning, I was so thick-headed, so groggy, I wasn’t able to think straight for hours.
Then very late one night, around 3 a.m., I was walking along Christopher Street and I saw this gorgeous blond man standing there. I edged up close to him.
“I have crack in my pocket,” I whispered. “Would you like to come home with me?”
“No thanks, he said. “I’m a police officer and you’re under arrest.”
I was furious!
“What the hell!” I screamed. Then I pulled my dick out and pissed all over his leg. I was so angry. He grabbed me by my collar, whipped me around, threw me up against an unmarked van, handcuffed me, and brought me to a holding pen on 10th Street. They fingerprinted me and everything.
I had to call Danny Fields in the morning to get me out. But when I was released, it just started all over again.
There were times when I wound up in St. Vincent’s Hospital because I had gone into a cocaine psychosis. When that happened, my mind always raced to the fear that I would jump off my terrace, or that I was simply going to die some other way. Many times I was hooked up to IVs and monitors in the hospital to make sure I hadn’t damaged my heart.
There was one time when I ended up in New Orleans, and I have no idea how that happened. I don’t remember getting on an airplane or in a taxi. I don’t how or why the airline authorities even allowed me on the plane, but the next thing I knew, I was in the worst neighborhood of New Orleans. I wound up in the back of a dilapidated house, smoking crack with some girl.
When the other addicts in the crack house realized I had no more money, they literally kicked my ass out onto the street. I did have some extra cash, but because I knew I was wandering in a very bad area, I hid it in my sock.
I was so fucked up that moments after they threw me out, I spotted a cute couple on the street and immediately tried to pick them up. They invited me to some flea-bitten motel and the next thing I knew, they were robbing me of everything, including the money in my sock. They left me with just my boxer shorts on and my sneakers.
Enraged, I stormed out of the motel and started marching down the street, trying to get back to somewhere. A cop car suddenly pulled up next to me and one of the policemen opened the window:
“Sir, do you have I.D.?” he asked.
I looked at them incredulously, and because I was so high and full of myself, I said: “Do I look like I have fucking I.D.? I just got robbed!”
They literally laughed in my face.
“You’re not from this neighborhood, are you?”
“No, I’m from New York City!”
“Get in the car and we’ll drive you to where you’re staying.”
Except I heard it as they were going to drive me home to New York.
“Oh, Officer, you’re going to drive me home?
“Sir,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Do you have an address here in New Orleans or not?”
“Oh, okay, yes—um . . . Felicity Street.”
They drove me to my friend’s house on Felicity Street and, apparently, there was a party going on. As the cop car approached, everyone at the party got real quiet because they thought the cops were there to shut them down. I fell out of the back seat of the police car with just my underwear and my sneakers on and when they all saw me, somebody shouted: “Wait a minute! Is that Alago?”
I waved and laughed. I was so high. The police pulled away and everyone was laughing their heads off. Then, I passed out, right on the ground.
Those were the kinds of things that were happening all the time during those years from forty to forty-seven. It felt like it was okay, that it was the norm. I was a walking zombie.
When you’re in the throes of heavy addiction you just do what you want, when you want, and you don’t consider the consequences.
I first met Linda Stein when I was in my early twenties. We became close and stayed connected over the years. She was Danny Fields’ business partner and best friend for nearly four decades. In the late seventies and early eighties, she and Danny managed the Ramones.
[Linda] stormed her way up from middle-class Riverdale to become something of a star herself. In 1975, she’d taken one look at the Ramones, decided they were the future of rock, and helped launch their incendiary ascent. A fixture at CBGB, the Mudd Club, and Studio 54, she leveraged her friendships in the eighties to become the first and greatest celebrity real-estate broker, selling to Madonna, Sting, Donna Karan, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, and Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley.2
Linda made a fortune in real estate. She was known as the “realtor to the stars” and had been married to Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records.
Danny and I would often go to her home for Sunday dinner. It was always warm and celebratory with lots of laughs. It was like family.
[It] was 1973 and [Danny] was the editor of 16 magazine—“a teenybopper fan mag”—and he was desperate to get Elton John in its pages. Mr. Fields knew the Steins were friends with the musician, so he printed an agency photo of Linda Stein and Mr. John, captioning Ms. Stein as a “glamorous New York socialite.” “That got me on her party list and we became good friends,” Mr. Fields says.3
In early October of 2007, I went up to a friend’s place in Woodstock with some music business people for the weekend. It was a beautiful day and there were a lot of families and children—all jumping in and out of the pool.
But my two crazy friends and I, we ended up staying in the kitchen snorting coke, snorting coke, and snorting more coke. At one point, we needed more liquor so we drove to the store, got another case of champagne and continued drinking and snorting all day long.
Later, in the evening, everybody was heading off to bed—all the kids and their parents. The house quieted down as everyone feel asleep, but I found I couldn’t. I kept tossing and turning, and it infuriated me. I started knocking on everyone’s bedroom doors to see if anyone had Valium. No one did, and I started to freak out. That was Friday, October 19.
The next day, everyone was up and rested, but I was completely wiped out. I hadn’t been able to sleep at all and I was so wired, my hands were shaking and sweating.
I decided to walk to the Greyhound bus station. When I got back home to my apartment in Chelsea, I was still hyper and couldn’t come down from all the drugs. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I had no idea what to do, so I paced back and forth, back and forth in my living room. Then I passed out on the sofa.
When I woke up the following morning, on Sunday, the 21st and looked around, I decided to take a shower. I have no clear idea about the next few moments—I have no memory of speaking to anyone that morning. Was it a moment of grace? Was it a white light experience? I have no idea. But after I got out of the shower, I got dressed and walked downtown to a twelve-step meeting in the Village. I’d heard about the place but had never been there before. Somehow I knew there was a meeting beginning at 2:30 that afternoon.
When I arrived, I sat down in one of the chairs in the main room. There was a lovely man who took the seat next to me. I learned during the course of the meeting, that he had twenty-five years clean and sober. He was very comforting and said to me, “Everything will be okay as long as you keep coming back, one day at a time.”
I paid attention to his kind words, which began to resonate with me. This was the beginning of a major turning point in my life. I started going to meetings every morning.
About eight days later, on October 29, I called Linda Stein.
“Linda!”
“Hello, dear!” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m sure you’re going to be very happy when I tell you, I’m finally serious about getting sober.”
“Tatala!” she cried. “This is the best news I ever heard! Are you hitting the Village meeting?”
“I am!”
“Wonderful! Tomorrow I want to take you out for a meal and we’ll talk.” We made plans to meet the following evening.
Early the next morning, I was in the shower when I heard the telephone ringing off the hook. I jumped out, grabbed a towel, and picked up the phone. It was Mandy Stein, Linda’s daughter, and she was screaming and crying.
“Mom is dead!” she cried. “I think Mom was killed! I don’t have any details! But she’s dead! Michael! Michael! How are we going to tell Danny?!”
I went into a state of shock. My brain was going numb; I didn’t know what to think. I was supposed to have had dinner with Linda that night.
I pulled myself together as fast as I could.
“Are you okay, Mandy?
“I don’t know!” she screamed back. “But we have to tell Danny!
“Okay,” I said. “Give me your number. I need to go over to Danny’s and tell him this in person.”
Mandy hung up. She was heading to the police station.
A woman who helped pioneer the punk music scene, influenced the careers of Madonna and the Ramones and went on to become known as a real estate agent to the stars was found bludgeoned to death Tuesday night in her apartment at 965 Fifth Avenue, the police said.4
I called Danny. He was very groggy when he picked up the phone.
“I need to come over to your place immediately,” I said. “There’s something important I have to tell you.”
He was really upset at me for waking him up so early in the morning.
“What?”
I could tell he hadn’t slept much. He told me a trick was there.
“Danny—get rid of the trick right now!” I said.
“Can’t you just call me later?”
“Danny!” I shouted. “This is very important! Please get up now!”
He was still really annoyed with me.
“Okay, Danny, I’m coming to your house now—I have the keys. And I’m really sorry to have to tell you this on the phone—Linda is dead.”
“What? What do you mean?!”
“I think she was killed.”
He started getting hysterical. I told him that I would be there in fifteen minutes. I hung up the phone, threw on some clothes, grabbed the keys, ran over to his apartment, and let myself in. I saw the trick was still there. I picked up his jeans from the floor and threw them at him.
“Get the fuck out!”
Then I turned to Danny.
“Get in the shower and clean yourself up.”
The phone started ringing like mad. I picked it up.
“Hi, is this Danny Fields’ residence?” the voice on the line said.
“Yes. Who am I speaking to?”
“This is Sandy Kenyon from Eyewitness News. May I speak with Mr. Fields?”
“No, actually. But I’m taking down names and numbers and we will be happy to get back to you. We just got this news.”
I must’ve taken tons of calls that day but it was awhile before we could handle them. We were still in shock and waiting to hear what happened. Finally, Danny called Mandy.
Mrs. Stein, who lived alone in Manhattan, was beaten to death but police say there were no signs of a break-in or robbery and cannot find any motive for the killing . . . [h]er body was found on Tuesday by her daughter but the cause of death was not confirmed until an autopsy yesterday.5
Later in the afternoon, I ended up going to one of my meetings when a very strange thing happened. When the meeting ended, and I walked out to head back to Danny’s, a person from the New York Post suddenly approached me. Granted I was still in a daze—between what had happened to Linda and that I had only been sober for eight days—but it seemed very odd to me that the press knew where I was.
The day before Stein was found bludgeoned to death in her Fifth Avenue living room, she made plans by phone to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with Michael Alago, a former record executive she knew from her days as co- manager of the Ramones.6
About two days later, the police called me. They wanted to talk to me about Linda’s murder, and they gave me two choices: “You can either come meet with us up here at the precinct, or we can meet with you at your home. Pick one.”
Apparently, my name was one of the last ones on Linda’s phone—which makes sense because we had made plans for dinner the following night, although the police had no knowledge of that.
They showed up within the hour at my apartment. They wanted to know how long I had known Linda, when was the last time I actually saw her, when was the last time I was at her home, and mostly, why was my name one of the last names on her phone.
I explained that we had been friends for a long time, that we had met at CBGB’s in the late seventies, and that she had planned to take me out to dinner to celebrate my new sobriety.
The personal assistant of Linda S. Stein, who had managed the Ramones and was a real estate agent for celebrities, was convicted on Tuesday of second-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of Ms. Stein in October 2007.7