AUTHOR'S EPILOGUE
I knew Jeff Vickers for nearly 10 years, all of which were marred by serious problems of chemical dependency.
The last five were defined by his struggle against heroin addiction.
During the first half of the new millennium, he and I worked closely on the manuscript which became A Thousand and One Night Stands — a project conceived and begun in the late summer of 1998.
Jeff intended A Thousand and One Night Stands to be more than merely the story of his life, more than the chronicling of the career of the porn star known as Jon Vincent.
It was his intention, indeed his dream, that this account of the events of his life — both public and private — would stand as both a powerful anti-drug polemic, and as a warning, particularly to young people of both genders and all sexual orientations, about the intrinsically insidious nature of the porno industry with its "easy" money, spurious glamour and, most of all, what Jeff considered its direct causal connection to hard drugs use and its links to big-city illegal drug-culture.
Jeff wanted, ultimately, to become a drug counselor, using the often tragic experiences of his lifelong battle against chemical dependency to help others with the same affliction.
Just as he was able to tell many people the story of his life and career through this book, he hoped to be able to reach out to other troubled individuals on a wider yet more personal level by lecturing to young people about the evils of drugs in general and about the dangers of drugs and alcohol when combined with the pressures of the porno and "escort" businesses in particular.
Tragically, Jeff was fated never to accomplish his ambitions.
In early April, 2000, he decided — in his typically precipitous fashion — to take a trip to New York to visit his friend, Y.
It was a hasty decision to say the least.
I remember going to the gym late one afternoon.
I returned less than two hours later to find Jeff packing his bags and confirming his plane reservations.
He said he wanted to return temporarily to escort-work in Manhattan to earn money for a new car.
Y., now clean and sober, would be a perfect role model.
Through Y. and his friends, Jeff assured me, he would have a ready-made clean and sober support group.
He would continue going to meetings in New York, and he would return with an additional month's sobriety under his belt.
I was to continue working on the book in his absence.
He would be in daily contact with me and with his recovering friend, G., by phone.
What could go wrong?
The answer was, unfortunately, everything.
I remember an intense feeling of dismay as he waved to me from the window of his taxi bound for L. A. International Airport.
Dismay coupled with a vague yet unshakable uneasiness.
It was hardly anything as morbid or as concrete as fearing that I would never see him again.
Even after almost 10 years of dealing with Jeff and his multiple chemical addictions (the last five of them spent watching him fight his losing battle against heroin), I was as yet incapable of wrapping my consciousness around that horrifically probable possibility.
Yet, we all felt it.
All of us who cared about him felt uneasy about that trip.
It was unnecessary.
Jeff needed a new car much like the proverbial fish needed a bicycle.
It was illogical.
Jeff constantly proclaimed to almost anyone who would listen that escort work exacerbated his drug use.
The trip to New York was simply more "drug-addict thinking:" the Geographical Theory of Sobriety, denial done up to look like greener pastures 3,000 miles away.
In New York, earning hundreds of dollars per day through hustling, he would undoubtedly slip — immediately and often.
To preserve his own sobriety, Y. would be forced to send him packing.
At best, he would continue his present pattern of slipping, chipping and temporarily "sobering up."
At worst, he would return to California with a more expensive, even more voracious habit than he had before.
Either way, he would have to endure the physical pain and psychological torment of detoxing all over again.
The vicious cycle would continue.
Only his friend G. dared voice the fear that lurked at the back of all our minds.
"Jeff can't bullshit me," G. said grimly when he heard of Jeff's departure.
"I've been a junkie for 32 years. You can't bullshit a bullshitter. He's not going to stay sober in New York. He's going there to use. And he'll keep on using until he dies."
On May 3, 2000, I got The Call.
It was The Call I had been expecting for many years, but when it finally came, I could only stammer in disbelief.
Jeff was dead.
Poor Y. had returned to his apartment earlier that evening to find his lifeless body on the floor.
It was apparent to Y. — a physician — that Jeff had been dead for several hours.
He was 37 years old.
Thus, what Jeff originally conceived of as a "moral inventory of his life, told to the whole world," turned out to be his epitaph.
He often joked, grimly and — as it turned out — prophetically that if he failed to sober up, someone else would have to write his story's ending.
Sadly, he was right.
And sadly, that task has fallen to me.
There has been a great deal of speculation about the circumstances of his death.
Apparently, it struck many people as unlikely that a man who had used drugs intravenously for more than a decade, a man who had survived 18 overdoses, would succumb accidentally to an dose of heroin "inappropriately administered."
The traces of Valium in his system at the time of his death led many people to assume the worst.
From internet chatrooms to headlines in the gay press, the question was: "Did Jon Vincent commit suicide?"
Those of us who knew him knew better.
Those who read this book can only come to the same, logical conclusion.
Jeff Vickers a.k.a. Jon Vincent died at a time when he wanted very much to live.
He died at a time when he was trying not only to break free of his addiction but also to reconnect with the sense of spirituality that he felt he had experienced, albeit all too briefly, in his youth.
Although he lived what may have seemed in many ways a suicidal life, I do not believe that his death was in any way deliberate.
The Valium in his bloodstream and the needle in his neck notwithstanding, I believe his death was accidental.
Jeff ran out of veins; then he ran out of luck; the end.
His hopes, his regrets, his life speak to readers from the pages of this book just as his work as a gay-porn icon speaks to filmgoers from the screen.
We can only hope that he is, at last, at peace.
Goodbye, Jeffie.
Rest well.
Hope A Carson, age 75, North Las Vegas, NV
Locations: Las Vegas NV, Venice CA, Santa Monica CA
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