Chapter Thirty-five
Now a Phone Guy

In 1983, toward the end of John Fante’s life, I made twice-weekly visits to him at the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. I always entered his room with a cup of coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. I was struggling at car sales and a dozen other come-and-go jobs. Pop knew my footsteps and would smile and say, “Hi, Danny. Got a smoke?”

I’d stick the cigarette in his mouth and put the coffee cup in his hand. “Howya doin’, Pop?” I’d ask.

“Ah, you know, kid, some days are good and some days . . . well, some days it’s all I can do to keep my head clear and not wreck the joint out of meanness. But they treat me okay. I guess you could say I’m breaking even. Life’s a poosh.”

My father didn’t know that my life had been out of control. When he’d ask how I was doing, I would always make something up, some lie, some new opportunity, some new job that was about to happen. Both my parents were too involved with my father’s declining health to take notice. Pop, of course, was blind and could not see my face. My mother, on the other hand, chose to ignore my behavior and, I assume for her own reasons, never questioned me.

I began drinking more heavily in the early 1980s and managed to get myself arrested a few times. I had gone from job to job, borrowing family money, but still could not rescue myself from the depression and self-hate that dogged my life. After a dental surgery I was put on painkillers that triggered an evil drinking binge. It was my worst bottom in years: sleeping in cars, stealing food from convenience stores, and staying drunk as much as possible for days at a time.

My sexual conduct at the time was stranger than ever. All my life I’d had a crazy overriding need for women and sex. Infidelity often ruined my relationships.

When drinking I was never done sexually, often going from hooker to hooker in New York and L.A., sometimes several a night. When I was in the limo business and had money, the quality of the women I pursued improved significantly. After I was broke again, I reverted to the street hookers on Sunset Boulevard.

When women weren’t available and I was near broke, I had no problem letting men give me blow jobs. Although it’s rarely talked about, there are many practicing bisexual men in America, most of them in the closet or, as it’s now sometimes called, on the down-low. Of course in prison it is common practice, but in the closeted straight world, you’re a faggot if you let another man help you get off. For me porno movie theaters and peep-show arcades were the next best thing to women. I made the rounds often to satisfy my needs.

For a few months I got clean again and took several more jobs, winding up selling used cars for the second time. My own car, an aging Pontiac, had blown its engine, so I was forced to stay in the auto sales business because car dealers at that time in Southern California provided a “demo” vehicle as part of the employment agreement with their sales staff.

My romantic partner at the time was Katya Kokoff, an ambitious country-western singer. Kat was brilliant as a songwriter and performer, and great in bed, but a loose cannon behind apartment walls in a relationship. Like me she had radical mood swings, and our time together finally ended after a blowup one night and the arrival of the Santa Monica SWAT Team.

I stopped showing up for my car job and once again was broke and homeless, living on the couches of whoever would take me in.

The good thing that came from my relationship with Kat was a boiler room job: phone sales. We were still on speaking terms and Kat had briefly worked for Universal Computer Supply as a secretary. She managed to get me a job interview.

UCS was located in a converted motel in Culver City, and when I first interviewed, there were six guys in a windowless double room pounding the phones and peddling computer supplies: printer ribbons and magnetic tape.

The owner was Barry “Duke” Chakaris. Duke had “turned his life around” as a phone-room salesman. After years of street flimflamming and hustling to support his needle habit, Chakaris hit the skids and eventually went into rehab.

He luckily stumbled into the right phone sales job and got cleaned up, then discovered the exploding market in America for computer supplies. It changed his life overnight. He began going to work and twelve-step meetings, stopped shooting dope, and started making money. Telemarketing became Duke’s field of dreams.

The man Chakaris first worked for was a phone-room scumbag, and Duke quit the gig after a few months. On his own Duke had seen what was possible in the supplies business and became inspired. He began reading how-to sales books. Then he started pestering his last few friends and their parents for financial backing to open his own boiler room. Duke eventually got bankrolled with a few thousand dollars. All Chakaris’s recovering-addict energy went into slamming data processing managers eight hours a day over the phone. He became a virtuoso phone guy, desperate and brilliant and in possession of the personality of a bulldozer at full speed.

Across L.A. in the early- to mid-1980s, from West Hollywood to the ocean in Venice, there were dozens of fast-buck phone rooms selling everything from pirate videos to rare coins and tools or soliciting for charities and oil and gas leases. All an ambitious and hungry ex-addict needed was a storefront somewhere, desks and chairs, and half a dozen phone lines. Duke Chakaris had begun his phone-room empire from an apartment in Venice Beach.

After sobering up for my job interview with his company, I was hired. In my interview with Chakaris, my new boss was candid and passionate and honestly told me his own story of drug use and recovery. As a result, for the first time in memory, I didn’t lie to a prospective employer. I admitted to our similarities, and told Duke honestly about my own history and my many attempts to get sober.

Chakaris was a twelve-steps born-again zealot. He came right to the point: “If you want a shot at my company—if you’re ready to turn your life around—then you just knocked on the right door. Do what I tell you, give me five days a week on that phone, and I’ll show you how to make more money than you ever dreamed—and stay sober.”

“Deal,” I said.

“But never jerk me around. This is your last shot, Danny. Don’t fuck with me and don’t blow it. If you’re ready to make a commitment to this company and your recovery, I’ll make you a promise: You’ll never look back.”

Later that night I attended a twelve-step meeting in North Hollywood, my first full meeting—start to finish—in a long time. I didn’t want to go but I’d made a promise to Duke that I would. I’d given my word.

The meeting was in the Radford Clubhouse in North Hollywood. It was largely attended by bikers and reformed hardasses. That night’s scheduled speaker was a guy named Phil Spoon. Philly, as they called him, was tall and in his seventies, celebrating his twentieth anniversary without booze. Philly was a twelve-step hero to his many friends in the San Fernando Valley.

At the door when I walked in, one of Philly’s pals, a tattooed biker named Vince, welcomed me and asked me if I was “new.” I made the mistake of letting slip that it was my first meeting in a long time. Vince beamed. He then sat me in the front row five feet from the speaker’s podium and gave me a shiny new Big Book.

Then Philly himself came over to sit next to me and tried to strike up a conversation. He had gray hair and wore a dark suit and tie and looked like San Quentin’s version of a weathered Donald Sutherland.

According to his pal Vince at the door, Philly had done a dime at Q and been pronounced dead twice, and was a reformed armed robber. Spoon had spent most of his sobriety touring prisons in California, employed by the state, preaching the twelve-step gospel to anyone who would listen. In short, Spoon was a sobriety saint at Radford.

Phil wanted to know if I had any questions about the program. I said no, then got up and went to the back of the room for the free coffee and doughnuts.

After the meeting got rolling, Spoon took his sobriety cake at the podium to rousing cheers. Then he told his recovery story to the hundred or so worshippers, who laughed and cried and applauded enthusiastically during the forty-minute pitch.

Then Philly asked the throng if there were any newcomers in the room. Vince was sitting next to me and nudged me with his elbow. I raised my hand.

Spoon called me to the podium to say a few words. I felt trapped and angry at being put on the spot.

I stood in front of the group for several seconds without being able to open my mouth. Finally, someone in the room yelled out, “What did you think of Phil’s talk?”

I sipped some coffee and looked out at the group and cleared my throat. “I’ve never heard so much bullshit in all my life,” I said into the mic.

After the meeting, on my way out, no one spoke to me. I had publicly dissed a twelve-step hero. But tattooed Vince cornered me in the parking lot. “Look, Dan,” he said, “I know how you feel.”

Up until that night, my MO around recovery meetings and “saved do-gooder assholes” was to be aggressive. “No you don’t, pal,” I said. “You haven’t got a fucking clue.”

Then I shook him off and began walking away.

He grabbed my shoulder from behind and my new Big Book fell to the ground. Vince picked it up and put it in my hands. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Keep coming back. You’re worth it. You can make it. I know you can.”

I couldn’t get my head around the absurdity of his kindness. Then he hugged me. “Welcome back,” he said.

Vince’s few words in the parking lot that night changed my view on recovery. I felt welcome at a twelve-step meeting for the first time.