Killing Willis: From Diff'rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted by Bridges Todd

Author:Bridges, Todd [Bridges, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Television, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781439155899
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-04-02T13:00:00+00:00

BILLY THE KID

I WAS A CRACK ADDICT, plain and simple. I had gotten rid of almost everything and everyone from my old life. I didn’t want to be reminded of the days when I had lived my dreams. So I was killing Willis, cutting all ties to the people who remembered how full of possibility that time had been, when I was launching my career and helping to expand the idea of what black people could do on TV and in our culture. I wasn’t that person anymore. I didn’t want to run the risk of coming into contact with anyone who might remember him or remind me of how far I had fallen. That was the good thing about addicts. They had all fallen, too. They couldn’t care less about who I was or where I’d been before. All they cared about was crack.

It was right before Christmas. Even in South Central LA, where I was holed up at this real low-rent place, the Star Motel, there were signs of the season. One house had “peace and joy” scrawled on the window in white spray paint. Another had multicolored Christmas lights strung up in the eaves. This used to be my favorite season. It was the only time of the year when everyone was nice to each other. Even my dad didn’t seem so mean around the holidays. I had always loved it as a kid when we would get together with my mom’s big family, all of those aunts and uncles and cousins crowded into the house, laughing and singing and eating good food. I wouldn’t be going home for Christmas this year. I hadn’t spoken to my mom or Jimmy and Verda in I didn’t even know how long.

As a matter of fact, I wasn’t going anywhere just then. I had locked myself out of my motel room again. But I was too far gone to do anything about it. I had lost my shoes, or maybe they were in my motel room. I didn’t know. Either way, I was barefoot. That was an all-night binge for you. I was dirty. The T-shirt I was wearing was torn up. I didn’t care. I sat there outside, smoking a cigarette and thinking.

“Hey, Todd, my man, what’s happening?”

I looked up. It was Lewis and his girlfriend Melody. He was a postal worker, or a UPS deliveryman, or something. He was wearing some kind of a uniform. I didn’t care enough to ask what kind. Crack addicts were all the same to me.

“Hey, I want to introduce you to this guy,” he said, his voice excited, hustling me, as all addicts were always trying to get something out of someone.

I shrugged him off. I was not exactly feeling social.

“Billy’s the man,” he said. “They call him Billy the Kid. He’ll hook you up. He runs all of these places around here.”

That meant a connection to crack. Now I was interested. Lewis took me over to another room at the same motel where I was staying, which was ghetto fabulous all the way.

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