The End of the Tour Page #12

69.

DAVID:

Tour’s over.

LIPSKY:

Just hit you?

DAVID:

Yeah. I’m gonna have to feel all this

now, instead of just sleepwalk through

it.

LIPSKY:

What do you mean by “sleepwalk?”

DAVID:

I’ve kind of unplugged myself for the

last three weeks. Meeting a whole lot

of new people, having to do things,

you’re in a constant low-level state

of anxiety. And sort of deep,

existential, you know: fear, that you

feel kind of all the way down to your

butthole.

LIPSKY:

What are you afraid of? I mean,

what’s the worst thing that could

possibly happen?

DAVID:

The worst? That I’ll really get to

like it. That’s the worst.

LIPSKY:

The attention?

DAVID:

Uh huh.

LIPSKY:

(nods, then)

And what would be so wrong about that?

DAVID:

Become one of these hideous: “Yet

another publication party, and Hey,

there’s Dave sticking his head in the

back of the photo.” I’d rather be

dead.

LIPSKY:

Why?

70.

DAVID:

I don’t want to be seen that way.

Why, would you?

LIPSKY:

Well, if you’re deriving your

satisfaction from talking about your

work, as opposed to writing, then,

yeah, I guess you’d get a lot less

done.

DAVID:

Exactly. And there’s nothing more

grotesque than somebody who’s going

around, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer,

I’m a writer.”

Is that a dig at Lipsky? Lipsky thinks so.

DAVID:

I don’t mind appearing in Rolling

Stone, but I don’t want to appear in

Rolling Stone as somebody who wants to

be in Rolling Stone. If you see me

like, you know, a guest on a game show

in a couple of years...

Lipsky laughs. Pause. David is pensive again.

DAVID:

To have written a book about how

seductive image is, and how many ways

there are to get seduced off any kind

of meaningful path, because of the way

the culture is now...? What if I

become this parody of that very thing?

Lipsky looks at David, who stares straight ahead, his eyes

maybe filling with tears.

DAVID:

Tomorrow, you drive away, get on a

plane, this is over. And I’m back to

knowing like twenty people. Then I’m

going to have to like decompress from

getting all this attention. Because

it’s like getting heroin injected into

your cortex.

That registers with Lipsky.

71.

DAVID (CONTD)

And where I’m going to need real balls

is to be able to sit and go through

that. And try to remind myself that

what the reality is: that I’m thirty-

four years old, and I’m alone in a

room with a piece of paper.

They drive in silence.

97 EXT./INT. DAVID'S HOUSE - 1996 - NIGHT 97

The Grand Am pulls up, its headlights the only artificial

light. The Davids get out and remove their bags. Inside,

the dogs are barking in anticipation.

David unlocks the door and the dogs greet him and Lipsky

exuberantly. David kneels so that the dogs lick his face.

DAVID:

(in an Elvis voice)

I’m never leavin’ you again, I swear.

David looks around the carpet.

DAVID:

Sh*t Check.

(discovers some)

Ah! Look what you did.

The dogs sheepishly watch David clean up their sh*t.

DAVID:

Happens to the best of us, eh, boy?

Never fails. Wait to do your thing

after the dog-sitter leaves.

(to Lipsky)

Be sure your Rolling Stone readers

learn about that.

David prepares to put on some music. Tape recorder in hand,

Lipsky approaches.

LIPSKY:

Uh. Hey. So, I’m leaving tomorrow

and, I’ve got to ask you about this

rumor...

DAVID:

Is this the heroin thing? The heroin

thing again?

LIPSKY:

Yeah.

72.

DAVID:

It isn’t true. What is so hard for

you to believe?

LIPSKY:

The reason it is so hard to believe is

because there is so much about drugs

and addiction in the book...

DAVID:

That doesn’t mean it’s

autobiographical, the drug stuff in

the book is basically a metaphor.

Look at you. You don’t f***ing

believe a word I’m saying, do you.

LIPSKY:

I didn’t say that.

DAVID:

I was not, I never was a heroin

addict.

LIPSKY:

Okay. The rumor I heard... was that

in the late ‘80s, when you were at

Harvard, you'd gotten involved with

drugs and had some kind of

breakdown...

DAVID:

I don't know if I had a breakdown, I

got really really depressed. I told

you that. It had nothing to do with

drugs. I mean, I'm somebody who spent

most of his life in libraries. I never

lived that kind of dangerous life. I

wouldn't even stick a needle into my

arm.

LIPSKY:

Okay, so how do you think that rumor

got started?

DAVID:

I have no idea! I have no idea.

LIPSKY:

Alright... Calm down...

73.

DAVID:

To tell you truly, if you structured

this as some “and then he spiraled

into some terrible addiction thing,”

it would be inaccurate. It was more

like, I got more and more unhappy. The

more unhappy I would get, the more I

would drink. There was no joy in the

drinking. I used it for anesthesia.

Okay?

LIPSKY:

Okay. What kind of drinker were you?

Were you a falling-down drinker? A

waking-up-in-the-curb drinker?

DAVID:

No, I was not! Okay? Part of my

reticence about this whole thing is

that it won't make very good copy for

you. Because, no, I was not like that

at all!

LIPSKY:

You did agree to this interview.

DAVID:

I know that I did.

LIPSKY:

Alright, I'm not gonna push much

further.

DAVID:

I'm also aware that some addictions

are sexier than others. My primary

addiction my entire life has been to

television. I told you that. Now,

television addiction is of far less

interest to your readers than

something like heroin, that confirms

the mythos of the writer

LIPSKY:

A myth I do not believe, okay?

DAVID:

I know you don't believe that. I’m

also aware that one of the things

swirling around here is you want the

best f***ing article you can have!

74.

Why don’t you write whatever the f***

you want, but the fact of the matter

is, it was not a Lost Weekend sort of

thing. Nor was it some lurid, romantic

writer-as-alcoholic-sort-of-thing.

What it was, was a 28-year-old person

who exhausted a couple other ways to

live, really taken them to their

conclusion. Which for me was a pink

room, with a drain in the center of

the floor. Which is where they put me

for an entire day when they thought I

was going to kill myself. Where you

don’t have anything on, and somebody’s

observing you through a slot in the

wall. And when that happens to you,

you become tremendously...

unprecedentedly willing to examine

some other alternatives for how to

live.

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