Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (43 page)

Back home I gave Melanie her baby shower, my house full of elite, wealthy females who brought Melanie so much incredible baby stuff it was almost embarrassing. I found an old thirties baby book at a swap meet and planned some superdumb games, the best of which
was called Draw the Baby. I went around the room, blindfolding all the dames, having them scribble their rendition of a baby on a big white piece of paper. I took a photo of her mom, Tippi, her head all wrapped up in a flowered scarf, the pencil in midflight. It’s really hysterical, but I guess you’d have to see it to get the full zany benefit. The drawings were so goofy and outrageous, we all became One with laughter. Melanie was the judge, awarding the richest woman in the room (I’m talking approaching ten figures) a fabulous prize I purchased at Pic ‘N’ Save. I’ve got to hand it to her; she was gracious as pie, as if she’d received a precious jewel from Tiffany. I brought out a ball of yarn and everybody had to guess the size of Melanie’s stomach. Tatum O’Neal won. Most of the girls’ yarn strands were two or three feet too long. Melanie said, “I’m not
that
fat!!” And all the women went ha-ha-ha. We ate cake and drank punch. A lot of fun was had by all, and then it took Melanie almost an hour to cart all the exquisite baby loot out to her car. Even with some of the girls helping her.

Right on cosmic cue, the gigantic century cactus was putting forth a massive phallus, shooting high into the Santa Monica sky like King Kong in heat. Supposedly it’s a rare occurrence that only takes place every one hundred years, but the unfortunate thing is, the poor plant drops dead after consummating with the atmosphere. Sort of like when the female black widow puts the make on her male counterpart.
Adios
, arachnid. Anyway, it was a truly remarkable sight, and the least I could do was to share it with a few dozen of my closest friends by honoring it with a barbecue. Turkey dogs for everyone!

One of the people I called to invite was Jaid Barrymore, and since we hadn’t spoken in awhile I asked all about life with daughter Drew. She told me that a miracle had taken place in their lives, their relationship was turning around, Drew was totally off abusive substances, and things were on a major upswing. All because of a program she had checked Drew into called ASAP, a live-in situation for adolescents with all types of drug/alcohol abuse and/or family problems. Since she had been so open with me, I blathered my momangst to her concerning Nick. She told me all about how lax she had been with Drew in the name of love, overly accepting about her way-too-early grown-up behavior. She admitted she had been floundering rampantly when she discovered ASAP, and told me to call
my insurance company
right now
to see if we were covered for the program. “It’ll change your lives, baby,” Jaid assured me. She’s definitely a hep chick, and I trusted her, but the thought of sending my so-young son somewhere,
any
where, away from me could not even be considered. No siree Bob. We would work it out. I thanked her for the info, told her I would ponder it hard. “See you at the barbecue, doll.”

I bought a poppy-strewn, sheer antique dress for the occasion, because I had recently lost that nightmarish ten pounds that creeps up on all of us while we pretend not to notice. I was tending to the baked beans as Miss Mercy regaled me once again with her spectacular Stax stories and bawdy tales of hanging out with Al Green in Memphis long before he took sides with the Lord. Mercy hasn’t changed much since the GTO days. All the drugs she ingested have left little tiny holes in her mind that the sixties poke through. Her synapses are shot, so once she gets stuck on a subject, your mind spins, your mind spins, your mind spins. The soft spot I have in my heart for her, however, has remained entirely intact. In between chopping vegetables, she punctuated her anecdotes with sharp, bellowing snatches of song.

Nick had invited two friends to the bash, and I was keeping an eye on him while whipping up onion dip and concocting Mom’s famous coleslaw. He was agitated and lethargic all at once and seemed ready to blow at the least little slight. I cast my eyes heavenward. Keep him happy today, you guys. I’m beggin’ this time.

As each new guest arrived, I introduced them to my magnificent century cactus and they were appropriately awestruck. Danny Sugerman arrived with his new love, Fawn Hall, which I thought was a curious combo. He told me she never attended dinners with him and Oliver Stone (he was directing
The Doors
, and Danny had written the definitive Jim book) because she was so dedicated to Oliver North, who thought Ollie S. was a left-wing maniac. Personally, I would love to be a bug on the wall if the two Ollies ever met up. Fawn and Danny are still very much together, so I try to never judge a romantic relationship, just let it alone. Ariana drove in from Las Vegas, Chuck Wein was there, Moon and Dweezil, who brought his hug of the moment, Winona Ryder, Hunt and Tony Sales, Patti, Sheena Easton, Gene Simmons, who brought Paul Stanley, new friend Christina Applegate and old friend Katey Sagal, who were both flying high on
Married with Children
, and dear Michael, who tended to the sizzling dogs all day long. Oh, all kinds of fabulous
people were scattered around the century plant, oohing and aahing, eating all-American health (sort of) food and swilling gallons of sparkling water in the S.M. sunshine.

I was feeling free, festive, and flirtatious. You know how sometimes the cloak of cool descends and nothing can get in your way? Maybe it was because I was packing ten fewer pounds and wearing that see-through dress. And a new friend, Lynn, had offered to invite some “cute boys” to the bash. Now, I have nothing against cute boys, and I never will, but having been pretty much alone since Michael and I shattered apart, I figured the one thing I didn’t need in my new, successful, grown-up life was a cute boy. What I needed was a fortyish, established but hip, well-heeled, well-rounded, well-read, spiritually elevated Mr. Somebody With His Head On Straight. Actually he would have to be beyond hip to deal with the “former-groupie” crap that would inevitably flail around his ears. Still, I considered Lynn’s proposal. She is a video stylist, constantly inundated with young, newly signed rock boys. Why not have my yard dotted with them like pretty flowers? What could it hurt? Sure, Lynn, bring on the cute boys.

By the time Lynn arrived I was a little tipsy on the delightful spiked fruit punch, and true to her word, she had dragged along some
very
cute boys. When she introduced me to the sweet, longhaired blond with the big lips, I was nice and polite but tried not to pay too much attention because I thought he was too young. Dusk brought us all into the house, where I propped my bare feet up on the bamboo coffee table and railed against Mark David Chapman, Dr. Nichopoulos, Donald Turnipseed, and all the various and sundry drugs that had ripped off my heroes, snatching them from the planet in their prime. Ariana said they had done what they came to do and got out when they were supposed to. Mercy said it was all one big political conspiracy. Or maybe it had something to do with Warner Bros.? I was deep into the story about how James Dean plowed into Mr. Turnipseed’s flatbed and the slimy rumor that his mechanic (who was in the car at the time and escaped injury) had been giving him head at the time of impact, when I looked up to see the beautiful blond boy watching me through his streaked hair. His eyes were this dusty, opaque hazel, kind of endless and clean. Mysterious and wild. Come-hither but shy. Uh-oh.

Nick chose that moment to roar at his two pals over a supposed slight, the wrong kind of glance from one boy to the other. He accused them of complicity, ganging up on him. He was yelling,
cursing, tears spurting, his face red. One boy went home and left Nick and T.J. alone, and it got a little better, but not before Jaid Barrymore caught a glimpse of the edgy situation. She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and jotted down a number. “Call these ASAP guys, I’m telling you.” I saw Ariana out of the corner of my eye, watching, listening. Smiling.

The very next night Lynn took me to a sixties throwback club called English Acid. It had been awhile since I penciled in red lips to wade through a steamy, sweaty rock-and-roll jungle. The thick atmosphere was exhilarating; I felt skin-prickling alive and verging on dangerous. We were there, Lynn had told me, to see “Jimmy.” “Jimmy?” I asked. “Who’s Jimmy?” Lynn sighed, exasperated by my obvious ignorance. “Jimmy Thrill, the lead singer in Rattlesnake Shake. The cute blond boy I brought yesterday.” Oh, him! The gaze I was getting when Nick erupted into flames. In a flash I remembered those dusty, come-hither hazel eyes.

Walking into English Acid was sort of like a ride Nicky and I went on at Knott’s Berry Farm—Timothy E. Leery’s Time Tunnel—all black light and trippy-hippie. The kid and I had gone to see our friend Elvira strut her scary, sexy stuff on Halloween, and we wandered into the Time Tunnel, a psycho-delic maze, complete with David Crosby almost cutting his hair and Grace Slick begging us to “go ask Alice.” I was dumbfounded. “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” I mumbled while Nick laughed his ass off at the slogans:
FLOWER POWER, DROP OUT, TUNE IN
, and a giant WHY? hot-pinked across a fake brick wall. I had scrawled a huge “WHY?” over my entire poetry book in 1966. It had been the question of the decade. I felt like my eyeballs were spinning one way, then the other on uncontrollable stems, like that time I had smoked way too much pot in Captain Beefheart’s backyard. They even spelled Jimi Hendrix wrong—Jimmy Hendrix—a simulated sacrilege. Is this Owsley’s purple
or Memorex? The experience left me gasping for air. Nick ran off to get a glow necklace and a funnel cake while I stood there in a stupor remembering the real thing. Peace and love, brother, sister.

The whole sixties culture has been chewed up, eaten, and assimilated into the nineties, where it assumes mythical proportions. Almost like it never happened at all, like maybe George Orwell or Aldous Huxley wrote the entire decade into a blockbuster best-seller that has stayed on the list for twenty-five years. So many of the heroes are dead, the music is considered “classic,” and my friends from the love-ins have gone the way of the saber-toothed tiger. ’Scuse me while I kiss the sky. Have the hippies merged into the society they spurned and spat upon? A whole lot of them have. I see them peering out of tinted office building windows, mutilated mouths stretched wide. The silent screamers. But that night at English Acid a sixties rehash was very much alive and flowering. It’s fascinating to see the rock boys and girls attempting to resemble me and mine when we were peaking and freaking out on the Sunset Strip. I don’t know whether to feel proud, haughty, or petrified. At least I never became a silent screamer.

Lynn and I squished into a booth next to a throwback couple who probably live in their VW van and gaze daily at a Peter Max calendar from 1969. When I apologized for the tight fit, the bearded guy with the beaded headband said, “Cool, man.” I can dig it. I ordered a seabreeze from a pissed-off, chunky frizz-pot when two young girls bathed in black giggled up to the table to tell me that I had validated their existence. I’ve looked at people the way those girls looked at me that night—sort of through the eyelashes, head down, breathless, and ecstatic. Gee, thanks, dolls!

I had been sweating next to the mellow couple for about forty-five minutes when through the smoky haze I saw Jimmy Thrill walking toward me. The lust-adrenaline snapped right out of hibernation and did a little dance of joy up and down my spine. He was wearing a black fedora, a jacket full of studs, skin-super-tight flared black jeans, and a lazy, totally unself-conscious, shining bright smile. His walk was a cross between a slink, a strut, and a swagger. I saw stars. I saw the rings around Saturn. That God-sent sensation is always unexpected and profound, shattering the serenity like a starry-stellar hacksaw. When matchmaker Lynn jumped up so Jimmy could sidle in next to me, I didn’t know what to expect. He looked at me from under his hat through streaky, shiny blond hair. “I had a dream about you last night,” he said, which was an age-old yet bewitching line.
”You were leading a meeting, telling a whole crowd of people that all the answers they were looking for were inside themselves.”

Wow. Did he have my number, or what? Then a booming voice announced Rattlesnake Shake, and he was writhing around onstage—sweating, dripping, wailing—stripping off most of his clothes within minutes and swan-leaping into the audience with no caution, no fear, no shame. Unabashed, unapologetic, and
totally
uninhibited, he was so refreshing in this uptight, sheathed, just-so George-Michael (no offense) MTV world. We
need
more wild boys and girls. During the encore I tore out a check stub with my number on it, handed it to Jimmy’s friend, Spidey, and left without good-byes.

The next day, after Nick had been dreadful all morning and had gone grumpily off to school, I was sitting around with Ariana, having one of our soul-to-soul digathons, when she very casually said, “I think I’ll stay an extra day so I can go with you to see what that ASAP program is all about.” Oh no. Everything stopped. All I could hear was somebody’s lawn mower whirring in the distance. Ariana must have had a flash. She had previously agreed with me that Nick needed to be home, so what was up? I had been attending “Tough Love” meetings like she suggested—but she had seen a lot in the few days surrounding the barbecue. She had witnessed the frantic outburst with his friends, and the evening before I had asked Nick to do something and he said a simple “No.” Without any excuses, whining, conniving, he just refused me. I told him there would be a consequence, and he said, “I don’t care.” He was nonplussed, unmoved, his face a blank mask—and it had sent a dark squiggle of fear through me.

But I still couldn’t face what needed to be looked at until Ariana took the moo-cow by the udders. “How about calling ASAP today?” she asked sweetly. Grasping at straws, I decided to call Nick’s teacher first, to see if she thought he might need a live-in program. Please say no. Very quickly she conceded that it was a good idea. “Someone has to get through to Nick, and I can’t seem to do it. He’s begging for help.” I put down the phone and stared across the room, feeling my face droop. I had been living with Nick’s behavior for so long I didn’t realize—I didn’t
want
to realize—that his troubles had surpassed my ability to make them all better. Could he really need to get away from me for awhile? No. Please. I felt like running into
the ocean, jumping off the highest mountain. I couldn’t look at it, didn’t want to see. Wasn’t love enough?