You Can Get There From Here:
Part 10

Barry Buss

Summertime, after my last talk with Coach about my future at UCLA. I'm about to head over to a new job, teaching tennis in my old hometown of Torrance on cracked public park courts with metal nets to a bunch of beginners, all for 6 bucks an hour when the phone rang.

It was Coach. He had a job for me, teaching members of the Saudi Arabian royal family who were staying in Beverly Hills for the summer. They wanted to learn tennis and would I be interested?

Hell to the yes, I said. I called the number immediately.

It was the estate of Prince Khalid Mohammed bin Saad, who was looking for a tennis pro and could I come to his house that afternoon. I said absolutely I could. Hanging up the phone, I instantly called my other job, quitting it before I ever started.

That afternoon, I rolled up to the Prince's house in my 65 VW Bug. The property was called the Foothill Estate. I could tell you all about it, but just look it up.

With remodeling going on all around and the tennis court still under construction, the Prince and I hopped in a limo, taking it to a friend's court to play. And at that court, I met another Prince and he wanted to learn tennis too. First day on the job, and now I had two Princes.

And we all hit it off. They started inviting me to join them out at night. Rolls Royces, Limousines, the finest French restaurants in Beverly Hills, private nightclubs with after hours parties. And I'm all of 18 years old and no one bats an eye.

My Prince insisted I bring friends with me. As many as I like. And we soon became good friends, with him giving me full reign of his property.

I could bring my fraternity brothers up for lunch, full table spreads of meat and fish and lobster and after lunch, we could sun away the afternoon by the waterfall fed pool. And we played a little tennis too, with him catching the fever.

He eventually wants to play doubles, asking me to grab two other professionals to join us. And I did. And the Prince and the three of us played doubles every afternoon, paying us all in stacks of crisp hundred dollar bills.

Culture shock on steroids. My summer of living dangerously. Private parties at his house. Heidi Fleiss' high-priced escorts on the property. I was way out of my league here, but somehow they enjoyed having me around.

For the Saudis took a liking to me. I became part of their crew. One afternoon, I get a call from the Prince. They were going to Lake Tahoe for the week and would I like to join them, and of course, bring a friend. And I did.

We all met up at his house, taking limos to the airport, entering a secured area. And there stood the Caesar's Palace Grummond G-2 Private jet to transport us. And people soon began to arrive. Sonny Bono and his wife. Barry Goldwater Jr and friend. I was now part of the Prince's entourage.

Arriving at Caesar's Tahoe, I'm escorted to my suite. It's on the top floor. The whole top floor. It was ours for the week. And the Prince liked to gamble. Ten thousand a hand at Baccarat. But right from the outset, he's getting crushed. He thinks I'm bad luck, so he gives me money to go away. Alright, alright, may his bad luck continue.

It was all so extreme. Watching him play blackjack, three thousand a hand. Being part of the Prince's posse, I became a marked man. A friend of the Prince. A beautiful young woman with an exotic name soon approached me. Laleina Sarelle.

She would join our party for the evening. Upon returning to Los Angeles, I would take her to a fraternity party the following week. A couple of years later at the movies, I would see her on the big screen as Sharon Stone's lover Trixie in Basic Instinct. Life in the fast lane. The people you'll meet.

Summer continued like this with no real tennis getting played. And I mean none. It was West Los Angeles of the year 1983. An epidemic descended upon our community. Powder cocaine.

It was everywhere all the time and I had too much money now. A couple of close friends soon got in on the business side of affairs. My growing insatiable demand met an emerging endless supply, locking me into a death spiral well beyond my control.

Access and money, neither could outpace the other. With 24/7 service and unlimited credit available, staying up all night became my new norm. For I was discovering, once I started doing coke, I couldn't stop.

I soon became woefully out of shape from happy hours and after-parties with nary a break to be found. The drinking and drugging life.

I used to have a drug problem. Then I started making a lot of money. Now drugs were no problem. An accelerating habit born from unlimited access.

But my Saudi summer soon ended, it was time for them to head back to the homeland, but they told me to stay in touch, that they'd be back for Christmas and another week in Lake Tahoe.

With only a week to go before school and team practice, I began plotting my return to peak tennis conditioning. The plan was simple, cut the partying back, start getting some sleep, and hit some balls.

Shouldn't have been hard to execute, to not do something. Addition by subtraction again. But one day in of trying to pull myself together, there I was, back out on the town again doing all the same stupid shit.

Come sunrise, I'd stagger my way home. Lying awake in bed, trying to relax my mind while my body came down, always the fiercest of battles. Unable to sleep, with drugs still coursing through my system, the committee would come to order and really let me have it.

What was I doing? WTF was wrong with me? You gotta settle the fuck down. And on and on and on…

And those long sessions would always end the same, with me vowing to do better. The plan would be to get some rest, set up a late afternoon practice, and under no circumstances would I go out. I had to do better. I had to.

And the phone would ring. And I wouldn't answer it. But then evening would come. And I'd start feeling better. And the friends I hadn't seen all summer were back in town and they wanted to get together. And the bargaining would begin.

Haven't seen them all summer, maybe stop by for just one. You still have a week. Plenty of time. Just wrap it up early. And no matter what, absolutely no blow.

And the night would begin innocently and with the best of intentions. Yet my have only one grew to two. And then I'd have a third. And there was fun and there was laughter.

And a fourth drink arrived. Then a shot. And another shot. And I'd like to blame the shots, but it's the first drink that gets you drunk, for I never had just one.

And my friend would give me the look. And no words need be spoken as I would dart to the payphone to call my connection. And within that phone call, every iota of resolve and strength and determination to do better evaporated.

Within 15 minutes, I'd be leaning over a mirror with a razor blade in one hand and a rolled-up hundred dollar bill in the other, my brain laser focused on getting as much cocaine into my bloodstream as rapidly as possible, where it would circulate for time indefinite.

The night now begun in earnest, we started zipping about town, catching last call for alcohol and after-hours parties somewhere somehow, always the same, music, drugs, girls, all night long... until the first break of day where the birds began singing, the paper hit the door, and the city streets slowly came to life.

And as the first glow of dawn began to seep through the drawn drapes, I would be snapped back to reality. For it was morning and I was still going. And I'd done it again.

With my time to straighten up running out, the final weekend of summer approached, with team practice looming ominously the following Monday. I needed to chill.

But there was the first UCLA football game of the season, and rush at the Sigma Nu house was on, and now all my newfound party friends were back in Westwood and raring to go. This was no time to be stopping anything. But could I keep it in check, or was I always fated to party out of control?

I was in college. Everyone partied hard, but they could all stop when they wanted. Why couldn't I? What was different about me? And it wasn't through lack of effort.

Every morning after, I'd have the same conversation, that tonight would be different, that I'd exhibit some degree of self-control. But then tonight would come. And it always ended the same, with me having zero control over my life choices when drugs and alcohol were present.

And on the final weekend of summer, Friday night in Westwood began and before long it was Monday morning and no balls had been hit nor books bought nor classes enrolled. Nothing. All that remained was a completely out of control 19 year old, knowing he had practice in a couple of hours and it was going to be hell.

In no condition to practice, I called in busy, saying I had classes to add and other assorted bullshit. Coach gave me a one-day reprieve, but that would be it.

I'd hardly slept a wink the whole weekend bender, yet as I laid my head down to rest, I would have another chat with myself, again vowing to do better, that tomorrow would be different, that I'd straighten out, get my act together, and get back to balling like I did last year.

And that next day I went to practice and it was the most hellish tennis experience of my life. In full survival mode, I hobbled back to my dorm to pass out and recover. Yet the committee had other ideas. I had to stop drinking, I had to stop drugging. I had to stay home. But how?

My only solution was to hide. Don't answer the phone. Don't answer the door. Just sit perfectly still and ride it out.

Sounded simple, do absolutely nothing. Shouldn't have been a hard thing to do. Except it was. I lay there alone in bed, shaky, nervous, anxious, my body cramping from practice while withdrawing from a long hard intoxicating summer.

I made it through the evening but woke up the next morning in a terrible way. I once again called Coach to ask out of practice. This time it didn't go so well, with Coach saying that was it. No more days off. No more reprieves.

Later that night. My mind was afire. Anxious, edgy, racy. I lay in bed contemplating my future. How was I going to pull this off? I needed to quit drinking, but I obviously couldn't stop. And the drinking always led to drugging, making practicing impossible.

Something had to give. And this shouldn't have been a hard decision. Quit partying or quit playing tennis for UCLA, for the two were no longer compatible.

Not thinking clearly and with nobody to turn to, I started talking crazy to myself. I started bullshitting myself, saying I didn't need UCLA to play good tennis. I got good on my own. Who needed a coach? I got good on my own without one.

Who needed a scholarship? I had money now. I'll just turn pro and go play the tour, get my Saudi Princes to sponsor me. Yeah, this was way better.

I could live a normal college life, take classes in the afternoon, the classes I should have been taking all along. Hell, maybe I'll even double major now. Yeah, that's it. I'll show them.

Fuck this college tennis stuff. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe it was too much to do both. I could play on my own and make it work. That's it. And I'll tell Coach tomorrow before practice that UCLA tennis just wasn't for me anymore.

And with my mind made up, I made the short walk down to my fraternity to get myself a beer and tell everybody about my bold new plan of quitting UCLA tennis to turn pro.

Yet once again, that beer turned into beers, and then shots, and drugs, and more drugs and complete and total annihilation again. And morning came. And morning passed. And I was too coked out to even call Coach and quit the team.

Instead, I sat in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, a large mirror before me, with piles of cocaine upon it. I was in a group, but I'd never felt more alone, adrift from my home, my family, my life, and myself.

The tennis professional I'd dreamed my whole life of becoming now hung by a thread, my life, now lost in a haze of drugs and alcohol in a body and mind I felt little control over and even less understanding.

And as day turned to night, I lay alone in this strange house. The drugs were all gone, the strangers too. I began to walk the halls, looking room to room for a phone. Eventually finding one, I called Coach to tell him my decision. It was already late in the evening, I may have woken him up.

But Coach didn't need to hear much from me. He knew I was no longer interested in playing tennis for UCLA. The conversation was short and tense, lacking any sense of concern or closure. He simply didn't sign on for this, whatever this had become.

And as I hung up the phone, a sadness and emptiness enveloped me. I started scouring the strange house, looking for something, anything, to make me feel better, or different, or just not feel at all. And I stood there in the kitchen, all alone, quiet, vulnerable, raw. Nineteen years old and completely out of control, with a serious drug habit, now saddled with the guilt that beneath all my bravado, I knew deep down in my heart that I'd just blown a huge opportunity. That everything I had worked so hard for my whole life, to be able to play tennis for UCLA.

I'd just thrown it all away...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Barry had more than thrown his tennis career away. The next chapters in the book detail his continued horrible slide into more drugs, psychiatry, psychiatric stays, psychiatric drugs, and near death experiences. Get the book and read about them if you wish, but in the next article we will outline the start of his miraculous recovery and new life.