Surely this is a ghastly joke
Seems I was born but never awoke
Years have passed so the calendars say
It’s hard to remember a given day
Did I really have my turn?
Did I really watch it burn?
Was that my only ride?
Did I sleep through it?
Did I lose my guide?
Before I knew it?
Was that my very best?
Did I just blow it?
Did I live in jest and never know it?
I can’t believe it’s been a waste
Can’t I have just one more taste?
Will anybody cheer for more?
All I need is one encore
—“Was That My Only Ride?” (Thornton/Andrew)
AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, WHEN TOM EPPERSON AND I WERE FIRST IN L.A., we didn’t have anything nice to wear. We had one jacket that we shared. It came from the only suit I ever owned.
When I was in my late teens, a friend of my mom’s gave me her son’s suit. I didn’t have any money, my mom didn’t have any money, and my dad was dead. It was a three-piece suit, green tweed, and it had a vest. I didn’t bring the vest or the pants to California with us, I just brought the jacket, and when Tom and I had meetings, we would take turns wearing the jacket. Seriously, it was like, “I get to wear the jacket today.”
There was one guy from my hometown who had ever been on-screen—movies or TV. He was on a pretty popular sitcom. This guy was a lot older than us, but I had gone to school with his sisters and got his number through them. Somehow we had managed to get an old answering machine that had a tape in it. You just had to push the button to listen to messages. Remember those? Anyway, one day we came home from some miserable shit, because every day was fucking horrible, and we had a message. It was this guy returning a bunch of messages we had left for him. Now, he wasn’t like a big famous guy, but he was on a TV show, and to us he was, like, a big deal. “Sure, hometown boys,” he said on his message, “I’ll meet with you.”
So we called him back and he was friendly. He said he wanted to meet us at Dan Tana’s. At that time we didn’t have a clue what Dan Tana’s was. But we asked around a bit and learned that it was one of those places where a toothpick is $25. It was Tom’s turn to wear the jacket.
We had to park down the road two blocks away because we couldn’t just pull into the parking lot in Tom’s shitty old Mustang that he never washed. It was light blue, but it had a coat of whatever the fuck he parked under on it, for years. You couldn’t wash it because the paint would come right off—it was just glued onto it. Of course, it also had crap piled up in the backseat and was torn up everywhere.
Anyway, we went into Dan Tana’s and stood at the bar—Tom wearing that lime-green tweed jacket and God knows what I had on—and ordered a beer or two. Spent all our money. That’s the thing when you’re broke. If somebody wants to meet with you, it’s like, I hope this son-of-a-bitch pays for it because otherwise I’m fucked. We stayed at the bar for an hour or two waiting on this guy, and the staff kept getting on our asses at the bar for not doing anything.
“We’re waiting on this guy, you know?” I said, trying to appeal to their better nature.
“Oh, okay, would you guys mind having a seat on the chairs we have right when you come in the door and quit hanging around at the bar?”
We waited on this guy forever, and he never showed up. This guy was, like, the seventh lead in a sitcom, but as I said, to us, in those days, if you had any connection with anybody, it was a huge fucking deal. This guy was the ticket. Because of this guy, we were going to make it. So, of course, we were devastated, just devastated. We trudged back to that piece-of-shit car with no fucking money, no ticket.
We got back to the house, and I don’t know if it was the same day or the next day, but we got a message on the answering machine. “Hey, guys, I’m really sorry, I forgot I was supposed to meet with you guys, and I had to run down to San Diego.” We just lit into his ass … cussing the answering machine at least. “Fuck you, cocksucker!” That kind of stuff. This guy was from our hometown, and we didn’t understand how he could do this to us.
A little while later I remembered that the guy’s sister sat in front of me in science class when we were in junior high and got her period right in front of me. It was, like, the first time she got her period, and she got shit all over the chair. Now, I didn’t do this, but I wanted to call and leave him a little message: “By the way, I fucked your sister.” Which I didn’t, but I was going to say I did.