It was in 1984 when I was working for NBC as a writer for the affiliate news. I had been doing cocaine all night. I
needed to get ready for work. By this time I was divorced
from Dale and I was living in New York again, at my mother’s
place at the Dakota.
This particular morning, after the all-night session,
I was a wreck. I knew I couldn’t go to work, but with the in
sane optimism of the coke fiend, I figured maybe later in the day I’d feel just great and I could go in to work. So I called
NBC and told them that I was in Connecticut.
“My car stalled out,” I said. “I don’t know how long it will take to have it towed and fixed.”
I said I was calling from a pay phone. I felt guilty as hell,
lying to them, but I figured I’d get in to the studio later and
everything would be fine.
Of course, the way to take the edge off a cocaine high is
to drink alcohol when you’re coming down. That was no
pleasure for me, because I don’t like alcohol. But I drank it, anyhow. I’d done it before. I drank half a fifth of vodka. I’d
pass out for a while, wake up and think I was getting a grip on things, then pass out again and wake up later. I figured if
I could last for an hour then I knew I’d be okay. Around mid
day I began to believe that I was pretty straight, so I got
dressed and started walking to NBC. When I got close to
Rockefeller Center I started to think, “Shit, they’ll smell the
vodka I’ve been drinking.” So I called NBC from a pay phone
right outside of the building. I told my supervisor that I was
still in Connecticut having the car fixed. “I know you are,” he said, meaning, of course, that he knew I was what we affec
tionately called a lying sack of shit.
Before I hung up, he said, “Watch out or you’re going in
the shitter,” or something like that.
I guess that’s when it hit me. I already was in the shitter,
whatever a shitter was. It was the first time I actually missed work because of my habit. I was spending all kinds of money on
cocaine, I was allowing it to interfere with my life, and now
I was in danger of losing my job because I had turned into a
lying, scheming cocaine addict. I sensed suddenly that I was
not cool, that I was one of these guys who had a problem and
that everybody in the world could see it.
Shortly after that I went into therapy. I went to therapy
alone. And I went to therapy with my mother. And I went to
couples therapy with Barbara, who was then my new
girlfriend.
I give most of the credit for my sobriety to Barbara. It
was she, more than anybody else, who helped me to give up
drugs. Barbara had been two years sober after a serious sub
stance abuse problem of her own. Alcohol and drugs. She
had gone through a long and difficult time, and as I fell
more deeply in love with her I came to admire her greatly for
overcoming her addiction. She took me to her AA meetings.
She loved me and supported me and told me I could kick
the habit.
“Steve,” she said, “it’s easier to stay straight than to keep
up the addiction. And you have more fun.”
Being with Barbara was important because she was a win
ner, a person who had become sober. If you are going to get
rid of a substance abuse problem you must associate with win
ners. You can’t hang out with drug addicts.
In therapy I came to see what need cocaine was filling in
my life. I could see that I had become a very lonely person.
I had gotten into cocaine at a time when I was lonely in my
marriage because Dale and I had become practically strang
ers. After my divorce from Dale I had gotten even lonelier because I no longer had a daily relationship with my son, Jamie.
And I was lonely because, even though I had some friends, I
didn’t feel truly intimate with them. Cocaine had somehow taken the edge off that loneliness. Did I take cocaine because
I am Humphrey Bogart’s son? No. But I think the loneliness
that led to cocaine began when my father died and I began
to build a wall around me.
Not surprisingly, my father’s name came up from time to
time during therapy. In those dark, introspective days, I felt
a real bond with Dad. We both had a substance abuse prob
lem. I talked a lot about him, or about his absence, I guess.
I learned that I was full of regret for the fact that I never had a father in my life to teach me male things, to show me exactl
y what it meant to be a man. I began to think that he and
I were similar. It seemed to me that he had been lonely, too.
Now, having talked to many people about my father, I
am more sure than ever that Humphrey Bogart was tightly
wrapped around an inner core of loneliness.
“There was something very sad about Mr. Bogart,” Rod
Steiger told me. “You could see it in his eyes.”
“He seemed to be a sad man,” Jess Morgan said.
I heard similar comments from others.
My father, I have learned, was a very guarded man.
Though he was famous for speaking his mind, I don’t think
he let his true feelings out to anybody, at least not often.
Maybe this had something to do with the fact that his mother
didn’t really give him the attention that he needed. Some
times I think of him as a kid pulling pranks at Andover, and
the image of him melts into the image of myself doing the
same things at Milton. For me, all that mischief was a kind of
mask. I bet it was for him, too.
And at the other end of his life, when Bogie supposedly
had close friends, maybe he didn’t feel truly intimate with
them. We know that he did not feel close enough to any of
them, including Mother, to really talk about the fact that he
was dying. There was no last conversation with his wife or his
kids. You would think he would want to talk about death. But
he didn’t. He just wanted people to ignore his illness until he died, and then he wouldn’t have to deal with it. Maybe, de
spite the surprise birthday party and all the many get-
togethers with pals, Bogie still never really believed that he
was loved. After all, there were things to dislike about Bogie, and maybe in the privacy of his thoughts, those are the things
that he focused on. Maybe there was a reason why he drank.
I don’t know. But there are two things I am sure of. One
is that my father was neither a saint nor a devil. He was hu
man. And the other, learned from my own experience with
drugs, is that nobody just happens to drink constantly, day in
and day out. It is too goddamned punishing. There is always a reason.
The reason can only be guessed at. But certainly my fa
ther was troubled and insecure, and the drinking was not un
related to those things. Pat O’Moore said, “There came a
time when the pressure built up inside him and he had to
drink. I used to see him so frustrated with anger that he
would sit and quiver all over.”
And Phil Gersh says, “The insecurity of Humphrey
Bogart was amazing. He was terribly insecure.”
Gersh remembers one particular lunch at Romanoff’s.
Usually, at lunch, Gersh would tell Bogie about possible jobs,
or at least bring him a couple of scripts. This time the two
men talked about other things.
After Bogie had put away two scotches, he looked at Gersh and said, “No scripts, huh?”
Gersh said, “No, I don’t have any today, Bogie, but I will
have some.”
Bogie looked depressed. “Well,” he said, “nobody
wants me.”
“Bogie, what are you talking about?”
“I guess I’ll go down to the boat,” he said. “I’ll call Betty
and tell her to bring the kids down.”
“Listen,” Gersh said, “I’m getting a script from Hal
Wallis tomorrow. It will probably be great for you.”
“No,” Bogie said, “I’ll go down to the boat.”
Gersh says, “He really thought, then, that nobody
wanted him, that maybe his last movie was his last movie. Bo
gie had a great ego, but he had great insecurity, too. One
time we walked out of Romanoff’s and the people were there.
A bunch of kids ran over for autographs, and I said, ‘Doesn’t
that bother you?’ and he said, ‘No, it would bother me if they
didn’t come.’”
If I got a better understanding of Bogie in therapy, I also
got a better understanding of my mother during this time.
But the moment of insight didn’t come from a therapist. It
came from my sister, Leslie, who lives in California, where
she and her husband both teach Yoga.
I was talking to Leslie on the phone one night, griping about Mom.
“Why does she always have to be in control all the
time?” I said. “Why can’t she ever be just pure emotion?”
(Two weeks in therapy and I was starting to sound like
Leo Buscaglia!)
“Well,” Leslie said, “Mother never got the chance to ex
press her emotions, and maybe she came to believe that ex
pressing your emotions was not a necessary thing. Because of
this silly game she and Dad played, never talking about the
fact that he was dying, she never got to say to Father, ‘I can’t
believe you’re dying. How could you do this to me? I gave up
my career. You gave me two kids. And now you’re leaving,
damn you!’ Instead she had to say, ‘I adore you,’ and so
forth. I don’t know if this is something she would have said
if she could have, but when you are allowed to have your
grief you go through all these stages and one of them is
anger. And I know that that’s what I would have said. But
she never got a chance to say it. He didn’t leave her with
that much.”
God, I thought, Leslie’s right. And I knew that what was
true for Mom was also true for Leslie and for me. If my father had died when I was an adult I might, like so many oth
ers, regret that I hadn’t told him I loved him. But he died
when I was a kid. I had hugged him, I had told him I loved
him. I was, as they say, okay with that. But I had never gotten
a chance to say, “Damn you, Daddy, for dying on me when I
need you.” And maybe all those years of denying him were
my way of saying it.
So here I was, having insights left and right and I
breezed through therapy and never touched cocaine again,
right? No, of course not. Life is never quite that simple.
After Barbara and I were married there came a day when I slipped. She was away and I did some cocaine, even though
I had been sober for a period of time. When I told Barbara
about it, she didn’t scream and yell at me. She didn’t even
preach. She made things very simple for me. She told me she
would not be married to a cocaine addict. I could do cocaine
or I could be married to her. Not both. No contest. I have been sober since.
Like my mother with Bogie, Barbara does not take credit
for getting me sober. And in a way she is right. Nobody can
really get you off drugs. You have to get off them yourself.
But in Barbara I think I found what my father found in
Bacall, that one great love which, even if you have nothing
else, is enough. Whatever hole I’d been trying to fill with drugs has now been filled.
* * *
As we move through the house on Mapleton I am aware of my mother’s voice. I hear it now not as the famous voice of an actress, but as the voice of my mom, echoing through the house so many years ago. It mixes musically with a variety of voices, all female. There is the voice of my sister, little Leslie, giggling at times, whining at other times. I hear the laughter that rose out of her when Dad would pick her up and swing her in the air, and the shriek of delight when he would trap her in the up position on the seesaw. There is the voice of May, the cook, deep and full of authority. It always seemed she knew things that the rest of us did not. And I hear the voice of Grandma Natalie, thick and maternal, sometimes lyrically reading stories to Leslie and me, sometimes stern and exasperated at our misbehavior. I notice that the voices are all female, that in this moment I am not hearing the voice of my father, the voice of any male, and I feel that something is missing and it makes me lonely.
* * *
8
I think, when he married me, Bogie thought I would be, like his
other wives, a companion for his semibachelor existence.