I Don't Have Your Money

Based on a true story

Twenty-five years had passed, but Benny’s ghost never left me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had unfinished business.

Some friends stay for the long haul, others are quick and gone. Even the lifelong ones drift away, then come back again. Some, like Benny, are hard to forget. He thrived on being outrageous. People like that, always stirring up trouble, are the ones you remember.

Benny owed me two grand. At the time, I thought it would help him get back on his feet. But that money was like a wedge, slowly driving us apart—each day as I waited for him to pay me back, I realized he never would.

We shared a dorm room in the late '60s. Benny was a wrecking ball of a man who lived as though the world owed him something. For a while, I found his chaos endearing. Then, it became exhausting.

The first time we met, he opened the door to our NYU dorm room at the Brittany—a converted hotel on East Tenth Street just off Broadway: “If you help me lug my refrigerator up the stairs, I’ll let you use it.” From the looks of Benny, it was clear he’d been using it plenty. He was big enough that I worried he might crush me if he stumbled during his nightly pre-dawn trips to the cramped closet where the fridge was tucked away. The first time I was jolted awake by his grunts and groans, it was three in the morning. He sounded like a wild animal, tearing into a chunk of raw meat he’d been marinating for twelve hours.

Benny was about five foot seven and weighed in at a solid two hundred and seventy pounds. He was studying in the NYU Acting Program, which was top-notch, and I was in the Film School, where Martin Scorsese inspired us.   I guess that’s why they matched us as roommates.

After class, he had a routine: strip down to his underwear, lie on his bed, eat copious amounts of junk food, and watch TV. That was Benny’s rhythm.  We became friends but even then, I knew I didn’t want to endure his bizarre but entertaining rituals on a daily basis.

After he graduated, he married a woman he met on the scales at a weight reduction farm in North Carolina and eventually moved to LA so he could make it big in show biz.  But he didn’t. In truth, very few do, especially actors.  It was a tough racket then and still is. He floundered because of his outrageous temperament, and size; roles for the very large were few and fair between. After a couple of decades, marriage number one was history. And then, in quick succession, two other wives.

Finally, divorced and stuck in perpetual poverty, he began living off women. He’d find them on Adult Friend Finder, posting under the headline "Chubby Chasers Wanted" with the nickname "talented tongue." The options were plentiful, and for some reason, a lot of them were Filipino women. Maybe it was a cultural thing.

To fortify himself, after leading a life of physical excess and poor nutrition, he consumed massive quantities of DMSO and other performance enhancers to supercharge his libido. As if he needed that.

He engaged in long-term sexual relationships with these women, recounting every sordid detail with a mix of fascination and repulsion. If things went smoothly, they’d move in together until he eventually grew bored and moved on. He roamed all over Orange County in those days—this was his routine for a couple of decades.

Just before the new millennium, we stopped communicating.

Twenty five years passed, and I recently found myself stuck in San Diego. My flight home to Guanajuato, Mexico, was unexpectedly canceled and I had nothing to do.

For some reason, Benny was on my mind once again. I had a dream about him a few days before that. I wondered what had happened to him and finally, curiosity got the best of me.  Why not contact him? We hadn’t spoken in a quarter century. Scant information on the web seemed to indicate he was still basically an out of work actor.  A mutual friend had mentioned that a decade before he was considering the cheesecake business but I guess that never materialized.  He certainly knew his way around a cheesecake.

When Facebook appeared, it was much easier to get an answer to the age-old question, whatever happened to…?  Benny had a Facebook page that I would check from time to time, but there was still scant information about his present activities.  Nothing about his girlfriends, his three wives, his daughter, nada, bupkis, zero.

Lately, maybe because I’m seventy five, I have the opportunity to see what has happened to the various people I’ve known in different stages of my life.

I have friends from elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and from various projects, jobs, and neighborhoods over the years. We’ve all had our ups and downs; everyone’s life has its share of joy and pain. But when I thought about reaching out to Benny, I recognized the possibility that he might be a deeply troubled guy, someone at the end of his hopes and dreams. I felt a bit reluctant to confront that.

He resided in a plain Orange County suburb, probably a ninety-minute drive—depending on traffic—from the glittering world of big-time show business, a realm driven by power and greed that he’d never managed to crack.

Rather than call him, I decided to just show up at his front door, which would certainly blow his mind.  An unexpected blast from the past.

If he was home, fine and if not, I tried. The neighborhood was a wasteland of half-dilapidated mobile homes and payday loan shops, the kind of place where dreams came to die slowly. Benny’s house fit right in—a hollow shell filled with the remnants of a life that never took off.

As I knocked on his door, I realized that the beat up jalopy in the driveway was a Ford Pinto.  Benny liked to live on the edge.  He opened the door, and for a second, I didn’t recognize him. His bloated frame sagged under stained sweatpants, eyes bloodshot, skin like worn-out leather. The years had worn him down, but that glint of defiance was still there, buried under layers of failure.

“Bret, what the fuck are you doing here?”

I can’t say he was glad to see me.

“I was in the neighborhood and figured I’d stop by and check in on my old pal. It’s only been like……twenty five years.”

“That long?”

“Yup.”

An uncomfortable pause, and then “Why don’t you invite me to come in?”

“Oh, sorry man.  I wasn’t expecting anyone so the place is a mess.”

He was right about that.  Benny pulled what looked to be a year of bills and other business off a chair and put it on the floor.

“You want something to drink? I got booze, beer, and purified water.”

“No, I’m cool.”

Another brief silence of discomfort and then he looked me in the eye, “The money,” he laughed, shaking his head, “I knew you’d ask. I don’t have it, man. Never did. But you knew that, didn’t you?”*

“I didn’t come here for the money, Benny.  So how you doing these days?"

“Not great.”

The evidence of that was everywhere.  It wasn’t even noon and Benny had a fifth of Jack Daniels open and a glass with ice, ready for more.

His phone rang, Benny stared at the number, got up and went into another room. ‘Sorry, I got to take this. Be right back.”

Benny closed the door behind him and I heard him raising his voice. “Not today, but I’ll get it.”

I looked around.

“I told you’ll have it tomorrow.” Benny sounded very very uptight.

As I scanned the room, beneath a stack of old newspapers, something metallic caught my eye—the dull, unmistakable glint of a gun barrel. Suddenly, the casual conversation took on a darker edge.

“There won’t be any fuck ups this time.”

I had to wonder, what kind of shit was Benny involved in now.

He emerged from his bedroom, tension radiating off him. I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on, but I had no intention of asking about his activities—that would make me an accessory.

He took a minute to calm down, then took a deep breath. “What have you been doing? You look great.”

“Life is good.  How’s the acting?”

“I was in a showcase last year and got a great review in the Orange County Register.  They said I was straight out of Broadway. I’m looking for a new agent.”

How many times had I heard that?  Nothing’s harder than finding work as an actor in LA.  All the more difficult when you’re seventy eight with your own zip code.  Age happens, but Benny made all the wrong choices when it came to his body and now he was paying the price. He was just an older version of the out of control fellow I once found so entertaining.  What did I expect?

As we sat together in the dim light of his tiny apartment, a converted garage, the mood was tense yet familiar. Benny pulled out a dusty photo album from a shelf. He opened it, revealing black-and-white headshots from his younger days, playbills from off-Broadway productions.  And then, a photo of the two of us from NYU. He handed it to me. What a difference fifty years can make. A shocking contrast to say the least.

“I keep thinking about the past,” Benny said, eyes lingering on a yellowed photo of his younger self, “back when we thought we could be anything. Hell, maybe I could’ve been someone if I hadn’t screwed it all up.” The silence that followed was heavy. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to disagree or make a joke.

Rather than talk, Benny kept going through his scrapbook and marinating in his memories. 

“You want something to eat?”

“We could go out.”

“No, I got a refrigerator.”

He walked over to the kitchen and opened his fridge; it was packed. Benny was still trapped in a vicious cycle of gluttony and binge dieting. He found a turkey leg and couldn’t resist. Nothing had changed.

Part of me wanted to get the hell out of there, but at the same time, maybe I could help.  When you reconnect with old friends, sometimes there’s a sense of obligation.  However, I was reluctant, for fear of getting dragged into the sad spiral of his life. Seeing the barrel of a gun under some newspapers only made matters worse.

“Let me make you an omelette?”

“That would be good.”

As he cooked, he opened up about his failed marriages, his regular attempts to get his acting career back on track, and, somewhat shockingly, about all the women who’d been in this life and some of their sexual quirks. He loved to talk about his sex life, in graphic detail. Like Shirley, who had a speciality, the “hum job.” After his orgasm during oral sex, she would hum the Star Spangled Banner. The woman was obviously a patriot.

My life had taken an entirely different direction.  I’d had ups and downs but overall, I was in a good place, doing what I enjoyed, and surviving. Poor Benny had never been able to escape his demons and obviously, they still haunted him. Perhaps Benny didn’t choose this life; it chose him.

“It’s different in Mexico.  Why don’t you come down and check it out?”

“I don’t speak Spanish.”

“You can get by initially just speaking English”

“Could I?”

“I might be able to help.”

“I already owe you money.”

“There’s no shortage of attractive women there. Probably some chubby chasers.”

“Really?” He took a minute to process that possibility, then “I can’t just leave, man. This is all I’ve got. No savings, no prospects, no… anything.”

I hadn’t planned on casting myself as his savior, but seeing the poor guy, something told me I should at least try.  But I certainly didn’t want to become his enabler.

His omelette was delicious. No surprise.

“I can buy you a plane ticket. It’s easy to find a place to stay.  Mexican people are wonderful.  Think about it.  I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Allright.”

Another phone call and into the bedroom again.

I scanned the room, looking for clues. The floor was a grotesque display of excess and neglect, strewn with greasy wrappers and half-eaten fast food, the stench of stale fries and spilled soda thick in the air. I also noted a few empty vials. Probably prescription medicine.

From the bedroom, even with the door closed, I heard him say “Don’t come over here now. I told you. Tomorrow.”

Benny returned. “I hate to do this to you, man, but I got run an errand and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“OK, I understand. I’ll stop by tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

“I should be here.”

I tossed and turned that night. Should I go back? The next morning, I decided I had to go back to Benny’s.

On the drive up the coast, something gnawed at me—a sense that our reunion wasn’t over. Or was it? When I pulled up to Benny’s place, his parking space was empty. Inside, a stranger was sweeping up what was left of Benny’s life.

“He’s gone,” the man muttered. “Skipped out. Three months late on rent. You knew him?”

“Once,” I replied, staring at the empty room. But even then, I wasn’t sure if I ever really did.