The Sunset Strip Diaries (24 page)

“I call this the do room,” said Tweety, giving us a tour of the place, “Because I don’t know what to do with it.” He gave a wave of his hand over the room and inhaled on his cigarette. I peeked into a bathroom that had an old fashioned, footed tub. A winding staircase led down to more rooms, most of which were empty. Once we got back upstairs, Tweety announced that he was going to make the living room into a haunted house, just to freak people out. He pointed to a little bat hanging from the ceiling. “See? I already started.”

Tipsy, in bare feet and a long 1930’s evening gown, stepped over a low lacquered table and invited us to sit down. We sat on pillows on the black and white checked floor as a bunny hopped by on soft paws. Tweety brought out a deli platter that he had arranged with little sword toothpicks. Tipsy sipped a cocktail and held up the glass to show a straw that changed colors from purple to pink.

“He buys such
necessary
things when he goes shopping.”

Kit Ashley, Tweety’s bandmate from Big Bang Babies, showed up with a petite platinum blond girl with crystal blue eyes. He dropped her hand and came straight to me.

“Strange, is this your action?”

“No, she is my really good friend.”

“Who
are
you?” he said, staring into my eyes. “Oh my
God.
Marry me. Are those your real eyes?”

He kept trying to paw me and I removed his hands.

I was drunk, but I do remember Tweety saying, “Someday, I would like to eventually learn how to
play
the bass,” no matter that he already played his bass to unsuspecting screaming crowds on the weekends who thought he was a god.

“It is good enough how it is right now. I don’t really want to be a musician. I just want everything that comes with it.”

Journal Entry 3/29/92

Willa’s apartment is a mess and Collette’s is thrashed. Spending all of that time at their places makes me appreciate the clean, palace of luxury I live in now. Okay, so it is a little house in the Valley- so what. My mom cleans and there is food in the fridge. I can
never
move to Hollywood; I would lose it and become like all of them. They don’t have plates. They don’t have food to
put
on plates. They live in pigsties. People come in and out of their apartments, sleeping on floors or on furniture- if there is any. Being at these girls’ places makes me ill. So trashy and dirty with bugs and backed up garbage disposals and bathrooms full of hair.

I was partying a lot, but I still had something in my life that made me feel secure, no matter what happened. Jimmy. I still loved him and still knew in my heart that I would always have him there. I felt comforted to know he loved me, in the midst of all of the chaos. We were very on again, off again. We had so many breakups, I didn’t even mention them all here. We always got back together, until one day in April of 1992.

Willa was old enough to get into the Cathouse. One day she told me that she saw Jimmy there while he was still dating me, ferociously making out with a girl who he had pinned to the wall. I was stunned. I felt a stab in my heart. I was so guilty all of the time about my own flirtations, that I never considered that
he
would do
such a thing. I felt like an idiot. It never occurred to me that it would happen to me. I always thought he was so in love with me that he would never look at another woman. I was a fool!

Although I had no business even being mad at him considering all of the guys I hung around and the fact that I did have an affair with Roxy, I was still shattered. I was also very grateful to hear the truth and did not shoot the messenger. Willa told me it wasn’t just Jimmy who was a cheater; Pierre had cheated on Tricia. With
her
. She said she had slept with him in the laundry room of the apartments. That made me feel queasy. I thought Pierre was totally in love with Tricia. Was this what all men were like? Just like my dad? I knew that men were wired to want to be with a lot of women, but it still seemed shocking. Was I that naïve?  It was at that point that I truly ended my two-year relationship with Jimmy. I was very heart broken, believe it or not. Even though my life was completely different than it was in the beginning of our relationship, I was very sad to hear he cheated while we were together. I confronted him and he admitted to not just cheating that time at the Cathouse, but cheating all along. Even when I was in the psych ward. Something inside me broke at that point-  It was such a deep pain to hear that nothing we had was ever real. Even though I had moved on to my own scene and life, I still held him close to my heart. He had given me love when I most needed it, when no one else around me gave a shit about me. I tried my best to not to disrespect him, but I had. I was publicly disrespecting him every night just by being in the company of so many other guys and flirting with them.

Journal Entry 4/11/92

I went over the deep end. I am a lush. I feel like crying every morning when I wake up drunk. It is degrading. Supposedly, I am the major hot item right now. But I can’t enjoy it. I found out Jimmy was cheating on me the whole time we were together. I am so humiliated. I have been getting drunk every night and throwing away any money I have. I fooled around with Kit Ashley. Don’t worry, I didn’t do it. I might as well though.

I was
completely game to sleep with Kit, I didn’t care. I was so hurt and angry with Jimmy, I was willing to do anything. Earlier that night, I spritzed myself with perfume, threw on a lime green dress and went to a party in the hills where I randomly ate some ice cream out of some stripper’s mouth (I know, I know. But I was in Hollywood and that was just a normal occurrence I guess). She was friends with Kit, and asked me what my story was (this was
after
we were already sharing germs, but that was the way it went). I told her I hadn’t had sex with a guy other than my boyfriend for two years. She asked me how old I was and I told her I was eighteen. She was concerned, for some reason. Most people in Hollywood had no conscience; I didn’t understand why
she
did. She pulled Kit over and sternly told him how old I was and that I had just broken up with someone and not to do anything stupid. I couldn’t believe it, but he listened to her! I was annoyed.

Continued…

I woke up in the morning, called a cab, and ditched Kit. He was like, “Where are you going!? It is seven a.m.!” He called me the next night and told me to be careful. Not sexy. The cab brought me to my car and then I drove to Harmony’s and took him to the beach with me. He was so gentlemanly that it made me sick. We made a date for the next night and he stood me up so I went out with Willa and got drunker than ever. I ran into Razz, my loyal friend. We ran off together and told the whole world to fuck off. He looked at Willa with his eyebrows up and a scrunchie on his wrist and said, “Honey? You need to lose weight. You have
no
tits and you have
two
chins.” I cringed. She was
furious! 
I can’t believe I did this, but I burst out laughing right in front of her, because I couldn’t believe what he was saying. But that is Razz for you. She was so mad at me. She started yelling at me and said she didn’t want to meet any more of my friends ever again. Then Razz ran into Missy and told
her
off (and later he started crying because she hurt him so badly. The cab driver told him to be a man).  Then we went to the Rainbow, where Razz ran into his best friend Jay-Jay and told
him
to fuck off as well- I was standing there egging him on and I don’t even know why.  Tricia saw me on a rampage and looked scared, she avoided me. At the end of the night, Razz and I drove up to some house that he was house sitting (a 1970’s sitcom star’s place), and slept in the guy’s huge bed filled with white pillows. I woke up in the morning and started crying. Razz felt bad for me and tried to make light of the whole thing.

“Oh my God! I told Jay Jay to fuck off! Didn’t I? What did we do to Willa?! Didn’t I knock a lamp on her head? Oh shit!”

I started laughing through my tears, suddenly remembering how he jumped up and hit a fluorescent light in her apartment building and the plastic cover came down and slammed her in the head when she was already furious.

“What did we
do
?” I asked.

“We told everybody to fuck off!” He said in a high-pitched shriek.

“Well, I am going to be hanging around
you
a lot more, because nobody else
likes
me now,” I said, thinking of Tricia and Willa’s faces.

I was really affected by Jimmy; my reactions were extreme and my hurt was very deep. I started to feel an explosion of anger toward men in general, so Willa and her cold persona was just what I needed at that time to make me feel better. I felt solace in being around a woman who was an ice queen and took no prisoners (Razz was immune though; he was a rare bird). I didn’t care that she had no soul. She was afraid of no one, which is why she didn’t hesitate to tell on Jimmy. No one else who knew about him told, fearing the social repercussions, but she didn’t give a fuck and I admired that. I wanted to try out her persona, to see if I liked it better than being all sunshine, glitter, and smiles. Besides, I didn’t think I could smile even if I tried, at that point. I was too heartbroken. I clung to Willa to the point of obsession on some days; I didn’t want to be away from her, I didn’t want to lose my strength.

A bunch of guys tried getting me to be their girlfriend when the word hit the street that I was no longer connected to Jimmy. And even more tried sleeping with me. I had to choose someone to date…who would it be? I went into public relations mode and picked Robbi from Alleycat Scratch. He was safe in my mind because I didn’t feel he could break my heart. I didn’t have a true connection with him, I never got to that place with him. He was sweet, considerate and had been my friend for a while; not to mention he was physically one of the best looking guys in town.

I hooked up with Robbi eventually and I felt empty and miserable afterwards. I was cursing myself. I knew if I started fooling around with these guys, I would go down the tubes, fast. We had a talk a few weeks later. I told him I regretted hooking up with him and thought it ruined our friendship. We couldn’t even
look
at each other anymore. And I felt even more foolish, because he had acted as if we would be a couple, but then started to avoid me afterwards. I was so mad at myself for being such a chump. I hadn’t really even clicked with him and thought his personality was too nice for me. We ended up hooking up maybe two or three times after that, but nothing came of it.

I started hanging with one of the Seattle guys named Lesli Sanders. He was tall, lanky, and pale with long pink hair and green eyes. Though I normally avoided his crowd at all costs, something struck me about him. He seemed awkward- even shy sometimes. His look was cool; he was very fashionable in the way he presented himself. My crowd avoided his, even when they were at the same party. I thought if I hung out with him, it would go undetected. It did, for the most part.

I was so hurt and damaged by Jimmy’s betrayal that I tried to take it out on Lesli by humiliating him every chance I got. I guess he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I slammed doors in his face while he was talking to me, I ate in front of him and didn’t ask if he was hungry. I ditched him and left him places. I slapped him across the face when I felt like it. He kept
letting
me. He
really
liked me and I didn’t care. If he dared say something about the way I was behaving, I would say, “Are you being a jerk?” and he quickly said no. I felt like shit inside, but kept torturing him.

So anyway, I didn’t know what to do with myself around all these guys. I was in such a bad state, that things could have gotten out of control very easily. Not only that, but I couldn’t be away from Willa for even a day or I would fall into a crying heap. I decided to move in with her. No matter that she lived in an apartment in a dangerous part of Hollywood, with no food or furniture in it. It was on Cherokee, about a block from the Alleycat Scratch apartment, off Yucca Street. I don’t know what the hell was so irresistible about the situation. Most nights I heard gunshots and saw police helicopter spotlights shining right on our building. One time we weren’t allowed to leave the building, because a criminal was on the loose inside. Those were the first times I ever heard real gunshots. 18
th
Street gang ran the neighborhood- and they were no joke. One day Willa and I were walking to the store and had to fall to the ground and cover our heads because someone was firing shots at an armored bank truck. The sun was out, birds were chirping, and
bullets
were flying. It was so crazy.