Crash and Burn Read Free Page A

he got home.
    Dana and I left Caroline’s at about two a.m. and took a cab to the Ritz-Carlton, and by the time we got there we were in a cage match–style fight. She was mad, and she had every right to be, and there was no talking us into making up. I kept at it anyway, half fighting, half apologizing, until finally, she couldn’t take any more and wanted to go home. I had gotten us this incredible suite to celebrate and hopefully begin again, but at that point I didn’t care.
    “Fuck it,” I said. “Fine. Let’s go.”
    I drove her home, completely high on dope, which is something I did a lot, I’m ashamed to say. After I dropped her off in Jersey, I drove back to the Ritz and sat alone in my gorgeous twelve-hundred-dollar-a-night room, looking out on Central Park, sipping champagne, and snorting heroin all by myself until the sun came up. If that isn’t a cover story worthy of Loser magazine, I don’t know what is. Eventually I nodded off but awoke at nine a.m., depressed and still high. I couldn’t look at those four walls anymore, so I hitthe streets and wandered aimlessly around midtown Manhattan. I ate breakfast at the Astro Restaurant on Sixth Avenue: two eggs over easy, home fries, and a side of pancakes, plus a big fat glass of chocolate milk, because I love chocolate milk when it’s served in a diner. I loved the food, and I hated myself. I walked out of there and bought the New York Post and the Daily News , then I went down to the subway and rode around on the C and A trains, like Charlie Parker used to, only without the genius talent. I spent about two hours hopping trains, just reading the papers. I didn’t shower before leaving the hotel, and I’d been up all night so I probably looked broke and homeless, when in reality the night before I’d earned fifty grand playing Carnegie Hall.
    When I couldn’t ignore life anymore I went home, and when I got there and looked in the mirror I realized that my relationship with Dana was truly over. And I knew why. I knew exactly why: motherfucking drugs. Drugs are the cheapest kind of magic. They make life amazing for about three hours a day, and for that miracle, they make the other twenty-one a complete living hell. Drugs ain’t worth it, because they may be a motorboat to some kind of paradise island, but their wake creates a tidal wave of shit. I was starting to smell that tide rolling in, but I was still dead set on surfing it. Who the fuck am I kidding? In November 2006, I was like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now , screaming at the top of my lungs to put the goddamned helicopter down so I could surf that shit tide myself.

CHAPTER 1
MY LIFE AS A PRIZEFIGHTER
    By the end of my eleven-year career on the Howard Stern Show , by my count I had gotten into a fight with literally every single person that worked for the show. These weren’t one-round back-and-forth sparring matches: these were heavyweight insult slugfests with low blows, no rules, and blood on the canvas by the end of them. They went way beyond the acceptable level of shit giving and taking that defines the Stern universe because I drove them there directly. I could get under the skin of the most good-natured member of the crew on their happiest day because that’s just what I do. If I decided that they were out to get me somehow or just decided that I didn’t like them (probably because they seemed happy and I was a miserable drug addict who got a perverse thrill from destroying everything good in his life) I would lock on to my victim like a pit bull, keep at it until I found their soft spot, and force them to lose their temper in a very uncharacteristic way. I could make people become someone they didn’t like, which suited me fine because I didn’t like myself either.
    During my descent, I may not have been the best cohost, but I was one hell of a fighter: a slouching tiger, sleeping dragon, if you will. I might spend half a show sleeping, in other words nodding off on heroin, but