SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2008

(part 93) FINAL CHOICE


The sheriff's department knew I was overly agitated at this point and decided they had to do something before I jumped or fell by accident, because I was moving around so much on the very edge of the ledge. One officer was talking to me from behind the retaining wall at my back, assuring me that they had taken care of the asshole in the window who had gotten me so fired up. I was trying to answer him and looking over my left shoulder at his face, which was white and concerned. He kept trying to get me to give it up and reconsider my options and I told him there were none, that's why I was out there. He asked me why, exactly, I was out there and I told him it was because I'd been ripped off over and over by the record business and that I'd had enough of lying assholes who claimed to be my friend, until it involved money I was owed, then, no more friend. He said there had to be a better way of dealing with the problem than the one I'd chosen, so I told him I'd chosen this way as a last resort after 7 years of getting fucked over. I told him I didn't want to keep getting ripped off so I'd made up my mind to kill myself. He asked me if I didn't have some friends who would help me, I told him I didn't have any friends. I said I didn't know if I'd ever had any real friends in my whole life.

As this back and forth continued between this sheriff's officer and me two other officers had made there way up to the retaining wall at my back, but on the opposite side of where the officer talking to me was. I did not see these two other officers as they'd crawled up to the wall behind me on their stomachs. As I continued focusing my attention on the first officer in back of my left shoulder the other two popped up in back of my opposite shoulder and lunged out over the retaining wall and grabbed hold of me in a split second. They were not going to let go and I felt myself being drug over the wall to the concrete landing where they all were. It happened so fast that there was no way for me to escape from the grip they had on me. I never knew and still don't if I would have jumped in the end because the intervention was completed before that final choice could be made.

I don't remember a lot after that except that I ended up in the psychiatric ward of a place called Edgemont Hospital, way out on the eastern end of Hollywood Blvd. out toward Glendale, where I'd once gone to high school in 1962. I spent nearly 3 hours out on that ledge of the Continental Hyatt House and still remember to this day what it looked and felt like.