Destination (11 page)

Pinup next door: Kaya Christian, in the November 1967 issue of
Playboy. (Reproduced by Special
Permission of
Playboy
Magazine © 1967 by
Playboy
)

2.

I stole the November
Playboy.
The Playmate pulverized me.

Her name was Kaya Christian. Her name fit. Her lithe loins lashed my Lutheran libido. She was the blonde that redefined all blondes and rendered all other blondes obsolescent. She vibed divine intervention.

Her smile mocked the magazine she posed for.
Playboy
was a stroke rag for horny dipshits. This dipshit knew that at 19. I was a longstanding
Playboy
plebeian. Nothing prepared me for Kaya.

She floored me. I stole six more issues and spread her all over my walls. She followed me to bed and the bathroom.

Standard jackoffs undermined our love. I wanted MORE. I broke into Julie's house and hit the medicine chest. I wanted ups. I got Band-Aids and bullshit.

Lloyd had dope pals in Hollywood. I tagged along on some runs. We tapped out on uppers. I quaffed T-Bird and Seconal cocktails as a consolation prize. I blacked out and woke up in Christmas-tree lots. I brushed off sawdust and pine needles and kept going.

I went on a bender. I blew my rent roll and got kicked out of my pad. I stole some blankets from a Goodwill box and moved into Robert Burns Park.

The ground was hard. The grass tickled. The automatic sprinklers doused me at odd times.

I got some job referrals. A racist psychic hired me to pass out handbills. She preyed on blacks and Mexicans and “healed” them. I dispensed flyers all over East and South-Central L.A. I put a wad together and reclaimed my pad.

Sex fate knocked on my door. It was divine
and
demonic intervention.

I ran into a high-school buddy. He had a woman in tow. She was 29. She had a free-spirit rap down. She had wild charm and a hard-ass nature. She needed a place to stay. She sized me up as a virgin doormat and said she'd fuck me for a roof.

I agreed. She moved in and fucked me four times. It was bad.
I
was bad. She informed me four times. She informed me during and after the acts.

I dug her anyway. I let her stay. I lived in hope of fuck #5.

It never occurred. She lived with me for three months and announced that she was a dyke. She moved in with a hot young woman.

I went on a bender. I blew my rent roll. My landlord kicked me out. I moved back to Robert Burns Park and found a dry spot by the toolshed.

I developed a routine. I stashed my clothes at Lloyd's place and bathed there twice a week. I shaved in public restrooms. I shoplifted cold cuts and liquor. I prowled Hancock Park and B&E'd at whim.

I frequented the Hollywood Library. They stocked the Irving Wallace oeuvre.
The Chapman Report
featured a nympho named Naomi Shields. Claire Bloom played her in the movie. I synced her face to Wallace's prose and slammed the ham in the stacks.

It was exhilarating and scary. Risk City all the way. I recalled the best Naomi parts and got off in .08 minutes.

Riffraff passed through the library. Hippies lugged smelly sleeping bags and grimed up the washrooms. I met a freak named Harvey. We discussed drugs. I described my frustration. I loved amphetamines—but lacked the social skills to procure them. Harvey told me about Benzedrex Inhalers.

They were nasal decongestants lodged in plastic tubes. Cotton wads were soaked in a chemical substance. You broke the tube and swallowed the wad. You got a righteous speed high.

Benzedrex Inhalers were legal. Drugstores sold them over-the-counter.

I bopped straight to a drugstore. I stole three inhalers and broke the plastic. The wads were two inches long. They were cigarette circumference. They smelled putrid. I gagged them down with a root beer.

They worked. They brought me Kaya and June. They sent me home to Burns Park. They gave me twelve hours of love under a blanket.

I LOVED WILLFULLY. I stole inhalers and flew every third or fourth day. I loved, crashed, boozed, and slept.

Rains disrupted me. I prowled for dry shelter. I found an empty house two miles southeast.

No inside lights and no running water. One piece of furniture.

A moldy couch. My launch pad and bed.

I moved in. I stashed my blankets and spare clothes in a closet. I loved, crashed, boozed, and slept for two weeks. I came and went by night. I thought I was coooool.

11/30/68:

Four cops kicked my door in. They packed shotguns. They proned me out and cuffed me and popped me for Burglary.

THEY BROKE IT DOWN to Trespassing. I saw a judge and pled guilty. She thought I was a draft dodger. She ordered a probation report and imposed a no-bail decree. I spent three weeks at the Hall of Justice Jail.

It was spooky and instructive. I picked up B&E tips. I learned about Romilar CF—the cough syrup supreme. The other inmates laughed at me and called me “the Nutty Professor.” I jived with some renaissance lowlifes. Armed robbers and career junkies. I said I shacked up with June Harding. Kaya Christian craved my ass.

Nobody believed me.

The judge released me two days before Christmas. My sentence: three years formal probation.

I walked back to Burns Park. I stole inhalers en route. Jail taught me jackshit. I was the Energizer Battery Bunny writ tall. I kept banging that drum. You couldn't touch my ruthless and impotent heart.

3.

The Versailles Apartments. A 6th floor room for 80 a month. Women abundant.

Lloyd got me the pad. My aunt shot me the coin. She warned me: My insurance dole was dwindling.

I liked the pad. Chipped moulding and a north view. My new PO liked me. Short hair and a wholesome demeanor.

He told me to avoid drugs and keep my snout clean. I said I would. He pegged me as low-maintenance and cut me a long lead. I signed up with a temp agency. They got me some office gigs.

The Versailles was a block off Wilshire and due east of Hancock Park. Wilshire was white-collar central. I walked to my gigs. I killed a half-pint of scotch for breakfast and tailed women from the Versailles.

They walked to work. I bird-dogged them. I screened impromptu fantasies and expanded them on inhaler trips. I honed my sex aesthetic.

I grooved on solitary women. Solitary meant lonely. Lonely meant hungry. Hungry meant horny and estranged and thus accessible. I grooved on outdated hairstyles and clothes. Stylelessness meant psychic weight. Heedlessness to current trends meant spirit. Their fashion statement enhanced my creed: Fuck the mass-market revolt of this era.

I stole a supply of Romilar CF. I drank whole bottles on consecutive nights and went on a B&E run.

The shit turned things psychedelic. I hit Kathy's house, Kay's house, and Missy's house. I hit the bathrooms and popped pills with abandon. I blacked out and came to on my bed two shots out of three.

Shot #3 was killer. I hit Missy's pad
boooold.

I entered just after dusk. I picked the latch on the service-porch door and crawled through the kitchen window. Romilar made things surreal. The house looked all new. Missy's bedroom was wild. Weird colors blipped out of the darkness.

I found a soiled bra in the upstairs hamper. It was sweated up from tennis or badminton. I brain-screened some pictures. Missy and her freckles. Freckled breasts and chafed nipples.

I stole some speckled capsules. I didn't know how they'd mix with the Romilar. I popped them anyway.

Goodnight, Sweet Prince.

I hit a work slump. I rented a cheap flop in Hollywood and got a gig at KCOP-TV. The mailroom was a gold mine.

The station advertised record albums. Stupes sent cash in. I slit incoming envelopes and stole it. I raked in lots of extra bread and moved to a better crib.

6th and Cloverdale. Wilshire meets Kosher Kanyon. Old Jews and office slaves. Women abundant.

My insurance dole ran out. My mailroom scam covered the loss. I smashed up the company van and got fired. I got some short-term gigs and lived cheap. I broke into Missy's house and stole all the cash in a purse.

The act blew my shot at reentry. I burned that bridge deliberately. I felt the odds narrowing down. Some night I'd get caught. They caught me in the empty house. They broke the charge down. That wouldn't happen again. All my instincts said STOP IT.

August '69.

The Tate-LaBianca snuffs rock L.A. They ramify in Hancock Park. Magnetic window tape. Rent-a-cop patrols.

I stopped it. I never did it again. I held my memories close and sniffed the winds of change.

Porno bookstores were popping up citywide. I figured some law was struck down. Smut was street-legal.

Fuck-suck books. Beaver books. Glossy color pix. Unretouched detail. Low-rent backdrops. Less-than-perfect women with their legs spread wide.

Hippie girls sans hippie trappings. No tie-dye threads to mark fatuous statements. No love beads or peace signs. Guileless smiles. This is not degrading.

I understood the aesthetic. It dovetailed with my own. I understood the bottom line.

Exploitation sold as freedom. Inclusion for desperate men.

The books were pricey and hard to steal. I sidestepped the dilemma and got a job at a bookstore. I worked midnight to 8:00 a.m.

I worked alone. I rang up sales and stocked merchandise. You paid to browse. Fifty-cent tokens applied to your purchase. Horndogs browsed all night. It was cheap entertainment.

The store sold beaver books, fuck-suck books, homo books, novels, films, slides, playing cards, dildoes, cock rings, S&M gear, and French ticklers. Strategically placed mirrors deterred same-sex assignations. The clientele was all male and all loser. Bombed-out hippies, drag queens, and the great male unwashed.

Middle-aged closet queens with wedding rings and sheepish expressions. Devotees of
Cock It to Me
and
For Those Who Think
Hung.
The underhung devotees of the Donkey Dan Dick Extender. The Beaver Patrol—USC frat boys fresh from late keggers.

The store was a waste spill. I belonged there.

I unpacked beaver books. I excised the most compelling women. We shared inhaler trips. I prayed for them. I played both ends against the moral middle.

Their debasement and potential redemption. No center ground. A faulty dilemma. My brief prayers and extended exploitation.

You thrill me. I love you. Don't do this anymore. I'm sure glad you went this far.

I tore out pictures and stole books. I tapped the till. I went to a beaver bar and watched beaver flicks. I zorched out on 50-cent drinks.

The bar sold beaver T-shirts and beaver caps with mock-beaver tails. I demurred. I had my mock-Christian agenda. I beaver-patrolled the bar and the store. A revelation hit: You're looking for one special woman.

I found her. She adorned a page of
Beaveroo
or
Beaverama.

She was thirty-one or -two. She had pale skin and brown eyes. Long hair—straight and center-parted. Early gray throughout.

A long nose. A bump on the bridge. A pointed chin and underarm stubble. Long legs. Wide hips. A starkly untoned stomach. The biggest hands and feet I'd ever seen on a woman.

She claimed me. She felt like something wondrous and all new. I pledged monogamy. I sustained it. My inhaler trips followed that line.

She did not look cheap, shallow, or in any way worthy of pity or censure. She didn't smile. She didn't mock her blunt pose. Her intent baffled me. I ruled out titillation and financial poverty. She looked forthright and altogether kind.

I prayed for insight and answers. I talked to her at the store. Customers heard me. They rolled their eyes and snickered.

The owner wised up to my thefts. He canned me and withheld my last paycheck. I got some temp gigs and built up a roll. I went on a two-month bender.

It was epic. I stockpiled food, booze, and inhalers and went at it hard. I holed up for two weeks at a clip. I popped inhalers and stared at her picture and jacked off monogamously. I drank and puked up cotton wads. I lost weight. I gorged on steaks and gained it back. I slept and woke up dry-mouthed and dizzy. I lost track of time.

I blew my rent allotment. The landlord started talking eviction. I had the coin to nail a cheap pad outside Kosher Kanyon. I knew a place by the Paramount Studios. The Green Gables Apartments—flats for $60 a month.

Lloyd moved me out and in. We pulled the dodge on the Q.T. The bender left me weak and frazzled. I slept for two days.

The Green Gables sucked. It was full of hypes and elderly rumdums. I squared myself away and looked for a job.

I was fried. I was cumulatively exhausted. I wanted to find a cushy gig and decompress. I wanted to stabilize during the week and FLY on weekends.

I tanked. The no-skill market was soft. I gave up and went on a mission.

Beaver Patrol as redemption.

I hit a dozen bookstores and prowled the beaver racks. I had to find more pics of that woman. She eluded me. I made do with my mind and one photo.

I went on a run. Inhalers and her picture. I started hearing Voices.

They hissed outside my window. They said “Ellroy” and “Pervert.” They raged commensurate with the dope in my system.

I diagnosed the Voices. They had to be a dope side effect. It was a fleeting assessment. I popped wads and more wads and diagnosed them as real.

Police sirens hissed at me. The Voices hid in the
wheeeee.
I heard them. The man next door heard them. He smirked at me in the hallway. He knew my sex dreams. He screened them on his TV set. He knew I killed my mother. He totaled up my thefts. He read my mind. I blared my radio and jacked off in the dark to deceive him.

I popped wads and heard the Voices. I drank and banished them. I laughed them off and sucked down more cotton. They returned. They cut through all the sweet words I told Her.

I ran.

The Voices evicted me. It was mid-trip and peremptory. I stuffed cotton in my ears and left my things behind. I walked three miles east in record time. I saw a For Rent sign in Silver Lake.

A convenience room. $39 a month. A bed, a sink, and one communal shower.

I moved in. The building was full of rowdy wetbacks. My room was half the size of a jail cell. It felt like jail. The wetbacks scared me. The pad vibed Hideout or Psych Ward. I drank myself to sleep and popped inhalers the next morning.

The Voices returned. I covered my ears and hid on the bed. The heat coils in my blanket felt like microphones. I ripped them out and threw them at the wall.

The floor was mined and covered with bear traps. I hid on the bed and pissed all over the sheets. The Voices persisted. I ripped up my pillow and stuffed foam rubber in my ears.

I ran.

Straight to Robert Burns Park. Straight to my spot by the toolshed.

I passed out on wet grass. Water seeped through my pants and wiped out Her picture.