When I was about six months sober I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard and I saw Furry George walking along. I pulled up next to him and said, “Hey, man, want a ride?” He jumped in with a big smile. He always had a story and a big smile. He was like a street poet, painter, musician, con man and southern gentleman – all rolled into one – AND he was on crack.

He was the kind of guy you couldn’t help but like, but eventually he always ended up pissing everyone off and then he’d disappear for a while and then everyone would miss his fun and games and he’d pop back in for another round of mayhem.

So, I picked him up and asked him where he was going. He said he was going over to Cajun Jimmy’s house to stay with him for a while until he got his shit together.

Furry used to drive a cab and he always ended up picking up drug addicts and going on late-night drug runs downtown. He told me that he’d pick up businessmen in nice suits and in about five minutes they’d be off and running to the seedy parts of downtown L.A., copping crack and hookers and all the rest of what the seedy life has to offer. He’d work for a while doing the taxi thing, and then quit or get fired for one reason or another and hit bottom and become a bum and then somehow would weasel his way back into being a partly normal, sane human being for a short while.

I guess this was one of those times when he was trying to weasel his way back in with Jimmy to get back on his feet. Only thing now was, I was sober and wasn’t going to just go along with the status quo and let Jimmy get his meat hooks into Furry and get him all drunk and who knows what else.

I thought about it for a nanosecond and then I said, “Guess what, buddy, I’m kidnapping you.”

At first, George looked scared, and for a second, he must’ve thought about jumping out of my moving car. Then, he sat back and laughed and said, “All right, I guess I’m kidnapped.”

I think George used to pull tricks down on Santa Monica Boulevard for crack. He’d do nasty things with men, and he told me that he wasn’t even gay, that it was just something he had to do to get his drugs.

I knew he wasn’t hitting on me, but I also knew that somewhere in the back of his mind he figured he was going to get a free ride for a little while and probably needed the rest. I told him that he had to get sober like me, and that he had to go to AA meetings with me everyday. I told him there were hot chicks there and that he could get free coffee and bum cigarettes and get free donuts sometimes.

He said he would go just for the free stuff and the chance to meet some sober chicks. George wasn’t really a good- looking guy, but he did have a sort of charm and semi- charisma that made him pretty darn interesting. Plus, he could write catchy, funny songs. One of them goes like this:

It was amazing, it was a story,
about a boy, his search for glory,
and when he finds it, he’s gonna bring it,
home to you, to you, to you ah hoo, to you hoo.

A lot of George’s song structures referred to the subject as “it.” It was this, it was that, but there never really were any actual subjects. Just a lot of general stories about “it.” We used to get into fights about Bob Dylan and I would say how he had a bad voice, and then George would defend him, saying that he was a genius. Furry George was really something.

Anyway, I’ve now kidnapped Furry George and I’m taking him to AA meetings. He’s going along with it all for a short while and gets about 30 days clean and sober. Then he starts wigging out. He starts getting really angry, and all the crap that he drank over and did drugs over starts to surface. It always does, and it isn’t easy to deal with or be around. Even though he was having a tough time, George still made a lot of progress and it looked like there was a chance that he might make it. He got a job in a flower store and he started delivering gift baskets and flowers to rich people.

He always got jobs, but they never lasted. Nothing George did ever lasted. He was a good starter, but not a good finisher. I got him a job one time as an extra in a movie and we both showed up bright and early and he got all the free coffee and free breakfast stuff. He started out looking like he was going to be able to hang, but by around 10 a.m. he disappeared and no one knows why he split or where he went. I guess he just couldn’t handle being in a crowd, or being sober out in the world. Who knows?

After that, George just started slipping. He told me years later that during this time he would bring hookers back to my apartment when I wasn’t there and do crack with them, fuck them, and record them on a cassette machine. He usually made them pay for the crack and either stiffed them on the bill or talked them out of it, or maybe he would pay them once in a while.

Anyway, George called me up one morning, sounding kinda funny. His voice was sort of muffled and he asked me if I could bring over a Batman mask. I asked him why he wanted that, and he said that he got beat up the night before and that his face was so swollen that he couldn’t go out in public. He wanted the Batman mask so he could go out and buy cigarettes.

I told him I didn’t have a Batman mask and that I wanted to know what had really happened to him. He said his roommate beat him up with a coffee mug. His roommate was a bass player in a band called Green Jello. They had eight bass players, four drummers, six guitar players, and a singer who looked like an accountant. It was a big mess, but in the middle of the show they would have giant, six-foot paper-mache puppets throw lunch meat into the audience. I guess it was more of a performance art piece than a real rock ‘n’ roll band.

I went over to George’s apartment to see how badly he had gotten beat up this time. It had happened before. George isn’t a good fighter. He likes to start fights with people who are better fighters than he is.

When I got there, he was so fucked up and destroyed that I couldn’t even stomach looking directly at his mangled face. I didn’t want to turn to stone, like he was Medusa or something. There was blood all over the place – on the walls, on the coffee table, in every room on the floor, and all over his guitar.

George’s roommate was sitting there all calmly, without a scratch. I asked him what had happened, and he said he and George were drinking and that George went into another black out and got all violent and crazy, and started attacking him, and so he defended himself. But George kept on coming, so his roommate had to bash him in the mouth with a coffee mug, and George just kept coming back like a fucked up pit bull.

The whole situation was pretty gruesome. I felt sorry for George, and took him to the local 7-11 store and got him some cigarettes. Then, we went over to Cajun Jimmy’s house to show him how fucked up George’s face was. Cajun Jimmy was George’s mechanic, that is, when George had a car. Jimmy was always interested in hearing about a good fight. If he missed it, he at least wanted to see the carnage afterwards.

So, George walks in and Jimmy’s basic response was, who the fuck did this to you? George was noble enough to cop to the fact that it wasn’t his roommate’s fault but that he had just gone berserk and that now it was over.

Jimmy paused, and considered the situation. He got all serious and concerned. Looking George in what was left of his eye, he told him that whenever he gets into a fight again, he should stop leading with his face.

George probably stayed at my place for a couple months and he stayed sober for a little while and it seemed like he was getting it together. At the time, I was going out with this girl named Wednesday. Her real name was Wednesday Knight. Her father was a famous songwriter from the 50′s and thought it would be funny to name his daughter Wednesday. She told me that her dad used to write songs for Elvis and that one time he called her and she picked up the phone and somebody said, “This is E. Is your daddy home?” She thought that was pretty cool. I did too. We were both HUGE Elvis fans.

Wednesday had this little “issue” where at first I thought it was funny, but it got old FAST. We would leave her apartment and then she’d ask me if the stove was on. I’d say I didn’t know and we would take a look. No stove on, lets go. Then we’d leave and she’d ask if the cat had water. We’d check and low and behold: the cat had water! Then we’d leave and she’d ask if the stove, the cat and the refridgerator, the microwave, the tv…etc. was on or off or had water. It was a vicious OCD cycle. Not fun, when I was always in a hurry! It took at least a half hour for her to leave her apartment. Poor little, crazy Wednesday.

I was going out with Wednesday for a short while and she had this hot older friend, Cindy, who had about five kids from three different dads. Cindy was a massage therapist and did the “full release” kind of massage where you get the happy ending for an extra 100 bucks.

Somehow, George got to meet Cindy and we all double dated a couple times. At this point, George seemed like he was getting his act together. He was sober a few weeks, had a new girlfriend and worked in a flower store and was going to meetings. The world was his oyster.

Then, I kicked him out of my place because he told me that he was fucking hookers on crack while I was gone and tape recording them. He played me the tape and laughed while I listened, semi-amused by the whole thing.

George didn’t care. He just moved in with Cindy the next day. She didn’t know what she was doing and George was a pro at this sort of thing. He had to be. They probably lasted a few months.

I just gave up on the guy at this point. I had done the best I could: I’d kidnapped him, made him go to AA meetings, bought him food and let him crash on my couch. George was no random Hollywood schmuck; he was amazing in his own rite, but there was only so much I could do.

I heard through mutual friends that George had put a personals ad in the L.A. Weekly that went sort of like this:

“Genius painter/musician who looks like Lou Reed in search of rich, older woman for fun and adventures.”

I think some TV producer lady snatched him up and he lives up in the Hollywood Hills in some mansion.

Furry George was a survivor and always found a way to land on his feet. I always liked George and had a soft spot for him in my heart. I’m glad he’s okay now.

Or is he?