The Sunset Strip Diaries (16 page)

Riki knew
everyone
, naturally, so if Jimmy and I went to a barbecue at his place, we were always graced with the presence of at
least
one rock star. Riki’s huge cat, Baby, sometimes wore a little cat-sized leather Cathouse jacket when I was there. I think Jimmy painted it for him if I am not mistaken; he made it look like the others. With the exception of possibly staring at that big-ass cat, I am pleased to say that I never did anything inappropriate during that time. I somehow managed not to screw it up and embarrass myself. I was never caught even
looking
at any of his famous guests or acting as if I were impressed in any sort of way. Again, it was imperative that I remain unimpressed, and I was determined to stay in character. I couldn’t let on that I was only seventeen, or, more importantly, act like I
gave
a shit. I stayed quiet and calm all of the time so as not to reveal my age or lack of coolness. But I wanted to scream from the motherfuckin’ rooftops and twirl on the hills like Maria from
The Sound of Music
.

One night I was walking to a club on The Strip with my friends and I heard some guys yelling from the traffic jam in the street. I looked over to see a big car full of jocks from my high school. I heard one guy yell, “So THIS is what you do on the weekends!” To them, anyone on Sunset was a prostitute. I thought they were such pussies for just staying in their car and being too afraid to get out and join the chaos like I did, but admittedly, it wasn’t for everyone. They would not have been embraced without “the look,” of course. They were jocks. Jocks looking to heckle some freaks. I worried that they would go back to school and announce that all of the rumors about me were true: I was a drug addict/hooker/stripper/porn star. Saying I was going into nightclubs would be too cool, they would have to make up something horrible. And my outfit didn’t help matters: I was wearing a tight, low cut dress with cut-outs on the sides.

That New Year’s Eve was fun. Cristabelle and I went to a historical Hollywood theater called The Palace, off Vine Street. It was a big old Spanish-Revival style building that had been there since the 20’s. It had operated under several different names, but the building itself was used for radio broadcasts in the 40’s, and television broadcasts in the 50’s and 60’s. In the 70’s and early 80’s it was the West Coast version of Studio 54. By the beginning of the 90’s, it was still a magnificent venue and it was about to host my favorite band: L.A. Guns. I remember having the night of my life watching them play- it was awesome. Razz snuck me into the dimly lit and crowded VIP room (by dragging me straight through without stopping). He was hanging with Kristy Majors of Pretty Boy Floyd most of the night, chatting, laughing, and boozing. Billy Idol even came over to chat with them for a minute, I noted through my buzz.

Razz started dating a new girl named Missy around that time. His roommate, Dusty, was dating her co-worker, Sabrina. The girls were strippers- but one thing I learned in Hollywood was not to call strippers
strippers.
They called themselves exotic dancers, or just plain
dancers
for everyday use
.
I was
fascinated
by these particular dancers and their friends. I honestly could not stop staring at these chicks. They had very long blond hair ranging from sun-streaked highlights to platinum white. They were suntanned, like the beach girls from the Swingin’ Thing show, and they wore very bright colors- mostly pinks (neon pink, taffy pink, hot pink, fuchsia), and metallic gold or silver. They were very bubbly and friendly- I didn’t expect such pretty girls to be nice to me. They called everyone “babe” and didn’t appear to have a negative bone in their bodies.

I idolized Missy the most and immediately formed a girl crush on her. She looked like Brigitte Bardot: lots of long blond hair, dark eyes lined in black 1960’s eyeliner and pale pink lipstick.
She was very tall and thin with big boobs and a huge movie star smile. I think the best thing about Missy, besides the fact that she was totally friendly and sweet to me, was that she took no shit from guys. My jaw dropped as Razz chased and chased her while she remained nonchalant and aloof. I sometimes saw him a blubbering mess, crying over her in the corner with his hankie. He couldn’t have her to himself and he couldn’t stand it. She was dating Stephen Pearcy of Ratt and it pissed Razz off to no end. He was so plucked! He tried to get her to be exclusive and she refused.

Missy was also a bit of a daredevil, which I found interesting. Razz told us that she was driving him through Laurel Canyon one night and she was speeding so fast that her car spun out, bounced off the side of a mountain, and flipped upside down. They were wearing seatbelts, luckily, so when they looked at each other, all they saw was hair hanging down. We were like,
Oh my gosh, Razz! Were you okay?
He said, and I quote; “Honey, my makeup wasn’t even
smudged.”
Other times Missy sped along the shoulder of the freeway if there was a traffic jam, or purposely ran red lights if she was in a hurry. She basically didn’t give a fuck about cops, tickets, or getting in trouble, because she so easily got
out
of trouble by being so pretty.

Missy’s friend Sabrina was also very wild, but in a different way. She was this tiny thing and had the same basic look as the others (tan, pale blond hair). Her stage name was ‘Summer’ and she was bisexual; something that came out after she got wasted. She appeared to be an instigator and was always making out with her friends, who went along with it if they were wasted enough. It wasn’t a big deal to them, it was all laughable. I was intrigued by their nonchalance.

One night Sabrina tried hitting on me. I thought:
This is Hollywood. This shit can’t be uncommon
. We were all drunk and happy in a dark VIP room, weaving in and out of people I had seen on MTV. Sabrina started to grind on one of the other girls on the dance floor. She was wearing a skintight, neon pink dress with long sleeves. Her bright blond hair was glowing. I thought she looked neat. Then the next thing I knew, she started trying to grab me, telling me she wanted to dance.
Shit,
I thought. I thought she and her friends were really cool, but I didn’t know how to dance and even if I did, I didn’t want to grind with her. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to insult her but I also didn’t want to look like a dork. She was hinting that she wanted to “get together” and asked for my number. I stalled and acted as if I had to pee, remaining friendly. I hoped she would be too drunk to remember what she was saying and wouldn’t be mad at me the next day. Luckily, that is exactly what happened. She ended up getting in the car and making out with her friend, Rachel, the entire way home.

I started to observe Missy and her friends closely. They were always having masses of roses sent to them and had lots of guys following them like puppies. They chased
no one
. Guys chased
them
, even in Hollywood, where the roles were switched. I had kind of just accepted that the guys were on a pedestal, but after meeting Missy and her friends, I saw it didn’t have to be true. They didn’t sit around waiting for guys to call. They didn’t get heartbroken. Guys were all over them while they were just bouncing around town, happy as could be. They didn’t want to be tied down. I thought…
Wait…THAT is what
I
need to be doing.
They couldn’t be bothered unless they were with the
most
popular people and were going the
coolest
places and having the
best
time. Somehow, they pulled this off without looking bitchy.

Things and people were very quickly deemed “out” if it wasn’t to their liking. That club is out, that drink is so out, and that color is out. I watched them in their tight Barbie dresses and long bleached hair, tripping on the new drug
Ecstasy
. They were dating stars like Vanilla Ice and David Lee Roth. I was not in their league. I was a regular high school student by day, trying to lead a normal life of writing commentaries for the school paper, making lopsided pots in ceramics and playing tennis in sweat shorts. I felt like a spy. It was hard to make conversation with the school girls my age who were going to the movies on Saturday nights in their high-waisted paper bag pants and teased bangs. I had no idea what a normal girl’s life was supposed to be like. And even stranger than that: I was terrified of the normal kids. I wouldn’t have known what to say or do on a date or what to do at a typical teenage house party.

Razz, Michael, Missy and her blond dancer friends became the new in-crowd on The Strip. I was the youngster in the crowd. They loved me. The girls were maternal toward me and kind of coddled me. One of the things I really liked about dancers is that they liked to hang around other pretty girls. Most girls I knew wanted to be the
most
pretty, so they wouldn’t hang with another girl who would take attention away from them. That was kind of standard. But dancers were one big happy family of really gorgeous girls who were not threatened by anyone. They thought I was cute and treated me like a little sister. Being around them was like wearing a big, fluffy, warm fur coat; I felt protected and comforted in their presence. I sensed they were very tough people underneath their beautiful doll faces and candy colored dresses; I knew they could take care of themselves. 

I decided to revamp my image at that time.  I stopped wearing black and cut back on the purple because it was too dark in a crowd. Once I realized that I had to use color to bring attention to my image, things started to fall into place. I started to wear a lot of bright pink. I had a long-sleeved hot pink top that stopped just under the boobs and showed my flat stomach, which I wore with some matching little shorts. I also had the outfit in white. I bought a tight, bright green shirt and black hot pants. I wore swirly, Pucci-like tops in bright colors and sixties headbands. The shit was crazy. In a sea of blonds, I was the hot new brunette girl in pink with the blue eyes, long hair, big boobs and bare midriff. I darkened the beauty spot above my lip. I changed my lipstick color from a dark berry color to a cartoon pink. I was getting the hang of it. Was it tacky? Of course! I was amongst walking Barbie dolls of both genders. I had to get in on the craziness or be left in the glittery dust.

The place to get these over-the-top outfits was a store on Hollywood Boulevard called Playmates of Hollywood. I went there on a sunny spring morning with Jimmy, walking over the stars on the Walk of Fame. We turned in toward the two floor-length shop windows that always had really crazy displays. They were like Bergdorf window displays on acid, with a ‘shrooms chaser. The mannequins weren’t like the regular mannequins you see; they were more curvy and busty. One month it would be an
Alice and Wonderland
theme with tiny blue skirts and Queen of Hearts bikinis. There would be a Mad Hatter tea party full of various colorful lingerie and stage costumes, with some huge playing cards and trimmed hedges behind them. Another month the theme would be hell, or an S & M dungeon full of red leather bikinis and bondage costumes, complete with tasseled whips. Or they would do a
Wizard of Oz
theme with glittery red platform heels, tiny blue and white gingham bikinis, and a yellow brick road. One bikini would be silver for the tin man; one would be a deep, shiny emerald, and another would be black leather, worn with a witch hat. There were displays of summer barbecues featuring teensy, cut-off shorts, red checkered bikinis and little polka dot outfits. Sometimes it was a Parisian boudoir setting, full of pale pink lace lingerie and black satin ribbons.

I was inside the bright pink dressing room at Playmates that particular day, when I heard Missy’s voice on the other side of me, telling whoever she was with that she loved the gold bikini. We both came out of the dressing rooms at the same time.

“Babe!” she squealed, and hugged me. Her hair was wet, she wasn’t wearing makeup, and she smelled like chocolate cupcakes.  She was with another pretty dancer who had her light blond hair up in a messy bun, wearing no makeup and pastel pink sweats.  They were trying on “work” costumes. My excitement in seeing Missy quickly turned to horror when I realized I was with Jimmy, and I would have to introduce them. I didn’t want him seeing the girls I hung with, and I was afraid Missy would find him uncool. I went ahead and made the introductions; Jimmy stiffly shook her hand and she was polite. She didn’t seem to care either way, but I could tell he was pissed off. He later said that he could see me getting into trouble with her. He was right. I wanted nothing
more
than to get in some trouble with her. I wanted some of her sunny, blond sunshine; some of her power.

So there I was. I had my new look, a new attitude and new friends. The next thing I knew, the unimaginable happened: people started to know my name. I started getting lots of invitations to go to even more cool places. I was on the VIP lists and was invited to be a guest at the shows. I saw my own face in
Rock City News
, the magazine I had once combed through to find out who the cool people were. My picture was added to the collage of photos on the wall at the Rainbow.