People tell me I oughta slow down, on the chemicals and booze
But I’ve put everybody under the table, it seems I just can’t lose
I don’t take shit from a livin’ soul, I sleep with a butcher knife
I’ve pissed on Mother Nature’s shoes, but I’ve never been dead in my life
My friends all warn me
But luck adorns me
You see
Never been dead in my life
Never been dead in my life
Death has called me to his door
But I’ve never been dead in my life
—“Never Been Dead in My Life”
(Thornton/Andrew)
I NEARLY STARVED TO DEATH IN 1984. I WAS LIVING IN A SHITTY APARTMENT in Glendale. I hadn’t been there too long, it had just been painted, and I woke up on a Sunday morning with a pain in my right side—a pain in me that I can’t even describe to you. It felt like a toothache in my chest—a real bad toothache where you can’t sleep at night, right in my chest.
It lasted for three or four hours, and then it finally went away. I thought, Goddamn, that wasn’t fun. I mean, it was bad. I didn’t have a job, I had no money … The last thing I ate was a loaf of ground beef—they used to sell ground beef in plastic, like a loaf—and a bag of potatoes I bought from Lucky’s Supermarket. I just drank tap water. I couldn’t get any help from my mom because she didn’t have any money and the guy she was married to wouldn’t allow her to send me any of his. But in all fairness, I was never able to ask for shit. I just never wanted anybody to know. I had read a story about how when Errol Flynn was at his lowest point, that’s when he wore his best suit and acted like he had money. Tom didn’t have any money either, but he had more than I did, so he gave me a jar of pennies, nickels, and dimes before he went on a train to visit his mom back in Arkansas. He also left me his shitty old Mustang because I didn’t have a car, and if it hadn’t been for that car, I would never have made it to the hospital.
It was on a Sunday when the pain came on the first time. That following Wednesday night I got the same pain, only this time it was on my left side. This time it got so bad I didn’t even know who I was. It was a pain that’s indescribable, and it spread all the way to both arms, my shoulder blades, my whole back, my chest, everywhere.
For some reason, I thought if I could maintain contact with myself, I wouldn’t die. If I keep looking at myself in the mirror I won’t die, I thought to myself. But I was as white as a sheet and in a cold sweat, so I ended up getting in the car and going to the hospital.
It was a real busy night around the hospital, and the girl at the desk wouldn’t admit me to the emergency room there because I didn’t have any insurance, I didn’t have a credit card, and I didn’t have any money. But this intern, a woman—I’ll never forget her face, though I can’t tell you her name—came up to the girl at the desk, which was a setup like a little booth, kind of like paying two dollars to go to the movies, and said, “What’s the problem here?” I started something that resembled talking, but I could barely speak. This thing took my breath away. I felt solid, like the inside of me was full of modeling clay, and I couldn’t breathe the pain was so intense. You know when you hear a kid crying and it’s kind of broken up? That’s the way I was talking.
The intern chewed the girl out for a second or two because when somebody has chest pains, you’re supposed to let them in. She brought me in and put me behind a curtain. They had me lie down and gave me morphine. The curtain was probably a foot or two open—they didn’t shut it all the way—and I saw some things that were not cool. The guy next to me—I saw his face for a second because his curtain wasn’t shut all the way either, and I heard people talking. I later learned that the guy was in his twenties and a steering wheel had crushed him in a car wreck. He died within the first half an hour that I was there. They also brought in a black guy on a gurney who had been shot in the stomach.
They were going to ship me over to County because I didn’t have insurance, but the doctor on duty that night—I’ll never forget this guy as long as I live—looked at my medical records, saw that I was from Arkansas, and made them admit me to a room. Turned out he was a gastroenterologist from the Ozarks. It was just one of those connections.
They gave me so much morphine and Demerol it knocked me out, and I woke up the next afternoon. When I woke up, the pain was exactly like it was when I went in. But I remember a big fat dude that was a nurse on the floor—he was real funny, like John Candy. “You’ve been through quite a thing, huh?” he said.
They never determined what I had, but they put “probable viral myocarditis” on my records. That’s when you get an inflammation of the heart muscle. Bob Dylan had something called pericarditis, which is different—myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, whereas pericarditis is an inflammation of the sac around the heart—but they feel very similar, supposedly, so when Dylan had his heart problem, I felt I knew exactly what the fuck he was going through. Really not good.
My mom told me they thought I had a heart attack, but I didn’t have a heart attack. I wasn’t any kind of candidate for a heart attack. I’ve never had any cholesterol or plaque issues. What it was was I was starving to death. Same thing that happens to anybody who doesn’t eat. I had no potassium, no electrolytes, I had none of that shit.
I’d sit in my hospital room watching TV at two o’clock in the morning because I’m an insomniac and the fat guy who looked like John Candy would come and sit and talk to me. We were talking one night about food, and I told him my favorite thing in the world is butterscotch milkshakes. After that, while all these other patients got their three meals a day or whatever it was, he would bring me a butterscotch milkshake and a turkey and Swiss sandwich at one or two in the morning. He’d say, “Now don’t tell anybody I’m bringing you shit because I’m not the dietitian.” But he knew what was wrong with me, how I hadn’t eaten in a really long time. He was a big dude, and he understood things like wanting to eat.
There was this cardiologist who was a real prick. Seemed that all he could think about was getting me the fuck out of there and over to the county hospital where all the other street people were. One day I’m sitting up, eating hospital Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes like a fucking crow because I’m starving, and this doctor comes in and says, “Well, I guess you’re pretty happy. You must be pretty happy. You got free room and board and a nice meal.” I knew right then that this was the wrong cat to put in charge of me. But then this doctor that admitted me, Dr. Dwyer—the Ozark guy—came around to see me. He was a really cool cat. He wanted me to stay until I was okay. I saw him over the years but lost touch with him. I wish I knew where some of these fucking people who helped me were because I would give them a television set or something.
They ultimately did ship me over to the county hospital, where I got to stay because our buddy Coby put his credit card down. It looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, all these people in one room. There were probably ten or twelve people in that room with me, and there were all these intern doctors talking about what an amazing case I was because I was so young and it was a cardio-far-whatever they called it. These motherfuckers are going to experiment on me, I thought. I’m going to become a fucking laboratory rat here. So after two or three nights there I found my pants and my shoes, but I couldn’t find my shirt—and called Coby collect from a pay phone.
Coby came to pick me up in his truck, and I never went back. I was fine for all those years until I starved myself on purpose in 2000 and went back in the hospital for the same thing.