Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing (25 page)

How long did it actually hurt?

Seventeen days.

Could this pain be blocked with Advil and Tylenol?

Absolutely not.

How far into this did I get overwhelmed and smoke a cigarette?

Three days.

I simply could not handle that degree of pain and not smoke at the same time. I felt like a miracle had been handed to me, and I gently tossed it back and said “No thanks, not for me.”

I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words to the dental surgeon who was in charge of all of this: “Fuck off, you big piece of nothing fuck. Fuck asshole loser fucking fuck face.”

Now I feel better.

After that, I basically began stalking Kerry Gaynor. I would meet with him any chance I could, and then buy a pack of cigarettes and have one, and then wet the rest of the pack under the faucet. I never lied to Kerry—I would tell him what went on, and thank goodness he would not shoot the wounded. I said all the mantras and developed a pretty severe fear of smoking—a little bit of fear with every puff.

But I was still smoking.

The not-wanting-a-cigarette did not return. I was going to have to come out swinging, which consisted of frozen grapes and twenty minutes on the treadmill every time I wanted a cigarette. I pictured a man who weighed a hundred pounds from all this treadmill walking saying in a very high-pitched tone, “God, I wish I had a cigarette!”

Vaping was not an option. The patch was not an option. Lying was not an option. (What good would that do?) I would get through four days and I would smoke and have to start all over again.

But I would not give up—I could not give up.
My life has been so
difficult, I deserve to smoke. I wrote a screenplay, I deserve to smoke.
These thoughts had to be dispelled immediately because they gave the addict hope.

And then I had the wise idea to book Kerry two mornings in a row—surely, I couldn't smoke knowing I was going to see him the very next morning. It was a rough night, but I had had my share of those, and the next day I was able to saunter into his weird-looking office having made it and ready to have our brief conversation and get hypnotized again.

I could have played his role by now—we could have switched seats. I would be the one who would offer him a very weird-looking blue children's plastic cup of lukewarm water. But this was day two (it's the little wins). He hypnotized me, scared the shit out of me again, and sent me away with an appointment with him a week hence. Back at home I kept a very busy schedule because I could not let boredom in, it being the devil's playground and all.

Well, boredom, and that girl who broke my heart when I was thirty.

I used to take fifty-five Vicodin a day and I quit that, so I was not going to let this disgusting, smelly, absolutely calming and wonderful habit get me down. Would I rather smoke, or breathe? Breath—what a wonderful thing that we all take for granted.

Cigarettes had already made me very sick. Also, they are bad for you. It sounds like I'm joking, but these are the things you have to remember. I had my comeback as an actor to think of (I had not acted since my accident); I had a book to write and promote, and I couldn't very well promote it holding a cigarette in my hand. I also could not just eat my way out of this situation. “Quit drinking, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes! Here's how: just eat six chocolate cakes every night!” This wasn't exactly the message I wanted to convey.

I had a record I had to break: fifteen days. And with that would
come the cooling comfort of not wanting to smoke. I've been there before, and I could do it again: the complete rebuilding of a man. I didn't know this man, but he seemed to be a nice guy, and it looked like he had stopped beating the shit out of himself with a baseball bat finally.

I was very eager to see who this man was!

I never imagined I'd be fifty-two and single and not playing fun, dumb games with very short, cute kids running around repeating nonsense words that I had taught them all just to make my beautiful wife laugh.

For years I thought I wasn't enough, but I don't feel that way anymore. I think I'm just the right amount. But still, each morning, when I wake up, there are a few brief moments when I am hazy, lost to dreams and sleep, and don't exactly know where I am, I remember my stomach and the scar tissue that comes with it. (I finally have rock-hard abs, but they aren't from sit-ups.) And then I swing my legs off the bed and tiptoe to the bathroom, so that I don't wake … um, no one. Yessiree, I am as single as can be. I look in the bathroom mirror, hoping to see something there that would explain everything. I try not to think too hard about the incredible women I had passed over because of a fear it took me too long to understand. I try not to dwell on this too much—if you spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror, you will crash your car. Still, I do find myself longing for a companion, a romantic one. I'm not picky—about five
foot two, brunette, smart as a whip, funny, mostly sane will do. Loves kids. Tolerates hockey. Willing to learn pickleball.

That's all I ask.

A teammate.

Eventually, if I stare long enough, I watch as my face starts to disappear, and I know it's time to head out to my patio and my view.

Out there, below the bluffs and the freeways and the meditation center where I read my list to my sponsor, out there where the California gulls swirl and swoop, I watch the ocean ripple, slate gray with edgings of blue. I have always thought that the ocean mirrors the subconscious mind. There's beauty—coral reefs, brightly colored fish, spume, and refracted sunlight—but there's something darker, sharks and tiger fish and endless deeps just ready to swallow rickety fishing boats.

Its size is what most calms me; its size, and its power. Big enough to get lost in forever; strong enough to hold up great oil tankers. We are as naught compared to its vastness. And have you ever stood on the water's edge and tried to stop a wave? It goes on, regardless of what we do; regardless of how hard we try, the ocean reminds us that we are powerless in comparison.

Watching the ocean, I find myself most days filled with not just longing, but also peace and gratitude and a deeper understanding of just what I've been through, and where I am now.

For a start, I've surrendered, but to the winning side, not the losing. I'm no longer mired in an impossible battle with drugs and alcohol. I no longer feel the need to automatically light up a cigarette to go with my morning coffee. I notice that I feel cleaner. Fresher. My friends and family have all mentioned it—there is a brightness about me that none of them had seen before.

In the appendix, “The Spiritual Experience,” at the end of AA's Big Book, I read this:

Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself.

This morning, and every morning out there on the patio, I am as the newcomer. I am filled with, energized by, the “differences”—no drink, no drugs, no cigarettes.… As I stand there, coffee in one hand and nothing in the other, and watch the distant waves in the ocean, I realize that I am feeling a wave of my own, inside me.

Gratitude.

As the light of the day deepened, and the ocean changed from silver to the palest aqua, the wave of gratitude grew until within the wave I saw faces and events and little bits of flotsam that had been moments in my eventful life.

I was so grateful to be alive, to have a loving family—this was not the least of it, and perhaps the best thing of all, in fact. There, in the water's thin spray, I saw my mother's face, and thought about her ineffable ability to step up in a crisis, to take charge and make things better. (Keith Morrison once said to me, “During all the four decades I have been with your mom, her incredible attachment to you has been the central part of her life. She thinks about you all the time. Way back in 1980, when things got serious between us, she said something I've never forgotten: ‘No man will ever come between Matthew and me—he'll always be the most important person in my life. You'll have to accept that.'” And it's true—there was never a moment I didn't feel that love. Even in our darkest moments. If something is really wrong, she is still my first call.) I saw my father's ridiculously handsome face, too, and it seemed appropriate that I saw him both as my father, and as the Old Spice sailor guy, though that last image had long faded to a distant point on the horizon. I think about them withstanding being
in the same room together when I was really sick, and what kind of love that betrays. They didn't belong together. I get that now. So, I'd like back all the coins I've dropped into wells, wishing that they were together. They both got lucky and married the people they were supposed to be married to.

My sisters' faces shadow my parents', as does my brother's, each of them beaming at me, not just at a hospital bedside, but also in Canada and Los Angeles as I tried to crack them up with my patter. They never dropped the ball once, any of them, never turned their backs on me, ever. Imagine such love if you can.

Less profound, but no less thrilling, images gurgled up from the roiling waters: the LA Kings winning the Stanley Cup in 2012, me in row seven screaming at the second line to keep up the pressure on the boards. And my rather selfish thought that God made them wind through the playoffs in a year when they only made the playoffs in the last days. I had just ended a very long relationship, and I'm quite sure the Kings went all the way because God said, “Hey, Matty, I know this is going to be a hard time for you, so here's something that will last three months and give you a tremendous amount of fun and distraction to make it better.” Boom, it did—after charging through the playoffs like revenging angels of death, it was the Kings over the Devils in six in the finals, and that last game at the Staples Center, a blowout in a Stanley Cup game unlike any in two decades, LA up four–zip just a minute into the second period. I was at every game, even flying myself and some pals to the games on the road, too.

As the ice rink of my sports fandom slips back under the water, more faces appear: the Murray brothers, my dearest oldest friends, with whom I created a funny way of talking that eventually touched the hearts of millions. Craig Bierko, Hank Azaria, David Pressman … how their laughter was once the only drug I needed. But I would never have met them, or gotten anywhere, perhaps, without Greg Simpson casting me
in my very first play. You never know where one thing will lead.… I guess the lesson is, take every opportunity, because something might come of it.

Something huge came of it for me. I closed my eyes, then, and inhaled deeply, and as I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by my
Friends
friends (without whom I would have starred in something called
No Friends
): Schwimmer, for making us stick together when he could have gone it alone and profited more than all the rest, and deciding we should be a team and getting us a million bucks a week. Lisa Kudrow—no woman has ever made me laugh that much. Courteney Cox, for making America think that someone so beautiful would marry a guy like me. Jenny, for letting me look at that face an extra two seconds every single day. Matt LeBlanc, who took the only sort of stock character and turned him into the funniest character on the show. Each of them was still just a phone call away. At the reunion, I was the one who cried more than anyone because I knew what I'd had, and the gratitude I felt then matches the gratitude I feel today. Beyond those principles there was all the crew, the producers, the writers, the actors, the audience members, so many faces churning into one face of joy. Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and Kevin Bright, without whom
Friends
would have been a silent movie. (“Could this
be
more of a silent movie?”) The fans, so many fans who stuck with it and still watch—their faces peer back at me now, mute as God, as though I'm still on stage 24 in Burbank. Their laughter, which for so long gave me purpose, echoes still up these canyon sides, almost reaching me all these years later.…

I think about all the sponsors, and sober companions, and doctors who had helped me to not screw up the greatest job in the world.

I look out at the water, and I say, very quietly, “Maybe I'm not so bad after all.” And then I head back in for more coffee.

In the house, I find Erin—she's always there when I need her. I don't tell her what I've been thinking about out there, but I can see in her eyes she has an idea, maybe. She doesn't say anything because that's what best friends do. Erin, Erin, Erin … She saved my life at the rehab when my insides exploded, and she saves it every day still. Who knows what I'd do without her; I intend to never find out. I can tell she's itching for a cigarette, but she doesn't break. Find a friend who'll quit something with you—you'll be amazed what that does for a friendship.

Now, the sun is higher, the perfect Southern California day almost at its prime. Way off in the distance I can see boats, and if I squint, I swear I see surfers lounging in the calm waters. Still this gratitude swirls about me, even stronger now as more faces appear: characters from the Woody Allen movies I love, the TV show
Lost,
Peter Gabriel, Michael Keaton, John Grisham, Steve Martin, Sting, Dave Letterman for having me on for the first time, Barack Obama, the smartest man I have ever spoken to. On the breeze I hear the piano version of “New York, New York,” by Ryan Adams, recorded at Carnegie Hall on November 17, 2014. I realize all over again that I'm so lucky to have been in this business, to have had not just access to extraordinary people, but to have also been able to affect people the same way something like “Don't Give Up” by Peter Gabriel affects me (let's not discuss the video with him hugging Kate Bush; it's almost too much to bear). When I think about all the actors who take chances I get a flash, then, of Earl H.'s face, the good version, not the bad, and quickly it's replaced by the face of my current sponsor, Clay, who has talked me down so often. I think about all the doctors and nurses at the UCLA Medical Center for saving my life. I am no longer welcome in that hospital for getting caught smoking in there one last time. To Kerry Gaynor for making sure there was never going to be a one last time. And behind them all, the specter of Bill Wilson, whose establishment of AA has saved millions upon millions of lives one day at a time, and
whose organization still refuses to shoot the wounded and always let the light in for me.

I was grateful for dentists.… No wait—I hate dentists.

Somewhere behind me, farther up the hill, I catch the hint of the sound of children laughing, my favorite sound of all. I pick the pickleball paddle up off the patio table and do a few practice swings. Until recently I'd never heard of pickleball, never thought I'd be well enough to play any kind of sport again. I'd long since stopped swinging a tennis racket, but this new Matty now actually looks forward to afternoons at the Riviera, hitting the bright yellow plastic pickleball.

My reverie is interrupted by Erin.

“Hey, Matty,” she says from the kitchen door, “it's Doug on the phone.” Doug Chapin has been my manager since 1992, and like many people in the business, he has often waited patiently as I dug myself out of whichever hole I was in. To finally be able to work again? To be able to write? Who knew such things were possible.

My eyes filled with tears now, the sea seemed farther away, like a dream. So, I close my eyes and feel such gratitude for all that I have learned in this lifetime; for the scars on my stomach, which just proved I'd lived a life worth fighting for. I was grateful that I was able to help my fellow man in times of strife and struggle, and what a gift that was.

The beautiful faces of women flash across my retina, the wonderful women who have been in my life, and I am thankful again for them animating me and pushing me to be the best man I can be. My first girlfriend, Gabrielle Bober, was the one who pointed out that something was wrong with me and sent me to rehab for the first time. The beautiful, magical Jamie Tarses, for not letting me disappear.

Tricia Fisher, for starting it all; for Rachel's face; for the nurse in New York who was a bright shining light during one of my darkest times. I am even grateful to the woman who dumped me after I'd opened myself up. And I am so grateful for all the wonderful women
whom I had broken up with simply because I was afraid—I am grateful, and sorry.

Oh, and available.

I would not bring fear-based mistakes into my next relationship, whenever that may be.… I know that much.

The sun at its highest, it's time to head back inside to the shade. I hate leaving that view; I'm not sure anyone could quite ever know what a view like that means to me, an unaccompanied minor no more when I float above the world like that, about to be parented once again.

Life keeps moving; each day is an opportunity, now, a chance for wonder and hope and work and forward motion. I wonder if the A-list actress who has expressed strong interest in my new screenplay has said yes yet.…

As I step inside, I pause on the threshold. My life has been a series of these portals, between Canada and LA, Mom and Dad,
L.A.X. 2194
and
Friends,
between sobriety and addiction, despair and gratitude, love and losing love. But I'm learning patience, slowly acquiring the taste for reality. Sitting back down at the kitchen table, I dig into my phone to see who has called. Not the A-list actress, but there's time.

This is how life is now, and it's good.

I look over at Erin, and she smiles at me.

Being in a kitchen always brings to mind God. He showed up to me in a kitchen, of course, and in doing so, saved my life. God is always there for me now, whenever I clear my channel to feel his awesomeness. It's hard to believe, given everything, that he still shows up for us mortals, but he does, and that's the point: love always wins.