The Sunset Strip Diaries (27 page)

Journal Entry 7/4/92

I went to a party and ended up throwing an open beer at Strange and it nailed him. He tackled me in front of everybody and put me in a headlock. I pulled a phone out of the wall by tripping over the wire. Michael and Strange moved and are now living with a dancer named Gypsy who lives in a dreadful part of town. She has spiky, honey-colored hair; pale skin and a friendly demeanor. She wears really crazy hooker clothes, like, things she should not be wearing in public. Especially in the daytime! But she seems like a nice girl. When we got back to her place after partying the other night, Michael was passed out in my car and I couldn’t lift him out of it. The neighborhood was so bad that I was getting scared. But then I saw a gay hustler on the corner wearing a neon pink spandex bodybuilding suit that went straight up his ass and showed both buns. When car headlights hit the corner, he turned his ass toward the car, advertising. That was amusing. Michael finally woke up when I was dragging his lifeless girl body out of my car. His Cover Girl powder compact fell and broke in the street. Razz would’ve looked down on that shit because he wears Shiseido. We got upstairs and opened the door and Gypsy’s beloved Dalmatians ran out of the apartment. We were so tired and they wanted to play with us. Michael just slammed the door and left the poor things out there.

Journal Entry 7/8/92

It is 8:15 at night and I am
still
not over my hangover. I got so wasted that I blacked out. Apparently, I went to a party at Chris Holmes of WASP’s house- but I don’t remember going there or anything about the party. In the beginning of the night, I went over to Gypsy’s to get Michael and Strange to go to Red Light District. We scrounged up some change and bought a bottle of Night Train and it got me drunk within five minutes. Gypsy is one of the sequined bikini dancers on the pole at Red Light. She kept bringing me drinks between songs. I saw one of the most handsome guys I ever saw in my life that night. His name is Joey and Michael just happens to know him. I started talking to him by the bar and out of nowhere, Jimmy flew up and grabbed my arm and yanked me away! Then he got in the guy’s face and said, “Do you have a
death wish
?” The guy got scared and took off and Jimmy was thrown out of the club shortly thereafter. I got even drunker. I couldn’t stand, let alone drive.  The next thing I remember, I was in the backseat of my own car making out with Andre, Jimmy’s egotistical asshole drummer who is very hot, but who I have always hated. He is always such a dick around me. I don’t even know how we got to that point because I just remember we were talking shit to each other at the beginning of the night. I guess we just started making out. Don’t get me wrong- I really do still hate him, I can’t stand him. He is so arrogant. He asked me about hooking up with Robbi earlier in the year and I admitted to it. I blacked out after making out with him in my car. I think it was that Night Train. That shit is evil. I just remember sleeping on the floor with Strange and those Dalmatians, after puking my guts up.

Andre panicked the next day and tried calling me with a very rehearsed speech to do some damage control, but his idea of damage control was to piss me off, I guess. In a nutshell, he told me a) I was a slut, b)
I
was all over
him
and
he didn’t even find me attractive in the least, c) he was innocent; he had only made out with me because he was drunk, and d) Jimmy would
kill
me, and would only be mad at him.

I didn’t fall for that shit. I knew he would be thrown out of his band immediately. He had a lot more to lose than I did. But I did nothing. We both kept quiet and tried to forget the whole thing.

Journal Entry 7/9/1992

My sister was saying that Hollywood is such a hard place to be a part of because it is all based on looks and image. She says she feels like shit for weeks every time she gets back from there. It is true. A lot of people come from all over the country to try to be in this scene; to make it in Hollywood. Most fail. As for me, I guess I am kind of a fly on the wall, a spy almost. I am in the middle of it, but I also see it from an outside point of view. My friends in bands have sort of a cult-like following, so the same crowds of people show up at their shows. The “usuals,” such as me, arrive late- just in time for the headliner, with whom they are usually buddies. Some of us go there to party, some go to see someone they have a crush on (not a good idea) and some actually go to see the band. The actual performance is very loud and it gets very hot in the club and sometimes too smoky. You can’t hear anyone talk and sometimes you can hardly move. The sluttier bands have the biggest audiences, filled with girls. The girls won’t smile at anyone except the two friends they brought along. Slutty bands know that the girls they bang will show up and bring friends, so they bang away. They also flirt with every single girl they pass out flyers to. Very average girls get all excited and feel pretty and come to the show to see the guy on the stage who was talking to them. The band hopes that on the night of the show there will be someone from a record company or someone from one of the magazines writing a good review and taking pictures of how many people were there. All of the unknown miscellaneous guys just stand around hoping some of the girls will sleep with them.

Half of us usually get thrown out of a club on a regular weekend night. Someone will steal a bottle from the bar, smash a fire extinguisher’s glass, won’t pay for something, or the most common, get into a fight. Sometimes we are thrown out just for being too drunk (like I was at The Roxy one night- they threw me out on my ass). The people who are not our friends usually stare at us because the girls are so pretty and the guys are so weird or maybe because of how loaded everybody is. We will hardly speak to anyone we don’t know (except when the guys are “promoting,” then they try to be friendly). After the shows, there is either a party somewhere (from which we will all be thrown out by cops with flashlights) or we make our own party up at Errol Flynn’s burned down and haunted estate at the top of Fuller (in which we will also be thrown out by cops with flashlights).  We migrate a lot in a typical night. For a few years now, it has been the same thing. Go to show. Go to Rock n’ Roll Ralphs and get Jim Beam and see all of our friends buying the same thing. Go to parties and leave because of cops; go to Errol Flynn’s and leave because of cops; go pass out, anywhere. Wake up and be miserable.

At the parties, something pathetic will usually happen. Someone will fall into a glass table. Strange will try to do a beer bong and it will come out his nose. Michael will go outside and try to reason with the cops while staggering drunk. Bang will go around trying to bite people. Boy Mandie will grab you by the hair. We leave the clubs with glasses still in our hands. I’ve been burned by countless cigarettes, thrown up in every place known to man, had beer cans thrown at me, drinks dumped on me by strangers, and have been left places, stranded. Guys ask you to marry them in a slur, you hear rumors about yourself, you try to walk straight in front of the cops so they don’t notice you getting into your car and driving off. You help your wasted friends off the lawn or out of the hallway; you go looking for toilet paper after pissing in a bush and use a leaf instead.  We have all come across the very rich and the very poor. We have partied in Malibu amongst stars and in parking lots alongside homeless people and junkies.

That, my friends, is what I had worked so hard to accomplish. To be a part of that ritual of totally reckless behavior.  I don’t know why it felt so much like home to me, but it did. That is all I knew and it’s all I wanted to know. I didn’t want to be different. I only knew how to deal with my friends when drunk, and that was fine by me.  I rarely saw them in the day, and I never saw them when I was sober. Their life became my life. They were my family, people who accepted me. They didn’t care how I lived my life. They didn’t ask each other what they did for a living. They didn’t want to know your background. You could have killed someone (one of the guys actually did) and you wouldn’t be judged for it (but having brown hair would get you tossed out of the crowd. Priorities!). They never called girls ‘sluts’ or ‘whores’, because many of them really
were.
While there were several things one needed to do to cement status there, the people were non-judgmental when it came to morals and ethics. Nobody had any and they held you to no standard.

Okay, so there I was, trying to figure out how to get my status back. Jimmy had made a bold social move and started hanging out with my friends, the ones who had made fun of him the year prior. They started to turn away from me, and I was not going to take it lying down. Just when I was running out of ideas, some good luck came my way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Embarrassingly Drunken Spectacle

I had been cruising with the ‘in’ crowd for a year or so, when I ran into a snaggle. Snaggle? I mean snafu. I had let my guard down, thinking that I would always have that spot with the cool kids. But as anyone who has attended junior high knows, the kids at the top of the ladder are on a very
shaky
ladder, and in this particular instance, a stroke of luck saved me from losing all of my friends to my ex-boyfriend of another scene.

Out of nowhere, I heard that Sunny from Swingin’ Thing was interested in me. I started jumping around my house in my old shredded up Maui and Sons T-shirt and men’s boxers. I’m pretty sure I did the Maniac dance from
Flashdance,
and possibly The Robot. I was happy for two reasons. One, his band was the most popular of our crowd and his social standing would improve
my
social status. I thought,
Try going against me now, bitches!
Two, Sunny was another one of the guys I had drooled over in magazines before I got to Hollywood. By that time, I was partying alongside him nearly every weekend, but I never let on to anyone that I had a huge crush on him. I had to keep it cool, not be a groupie and shit. Those girls weren’t invited into the inner circle and that is where I was determined to stay.

Sunny had blue eyes; long, dyed black hair, and sometimes wore a red hat. He was of average height and build, but on the skinny side, of course. We started talking on the phone and he was actually a genuinely nice guy; upbeat and happy, no attitude or ego whatsoever. He was always laughing and joking around, no game playing, no sneakiness, just a solid guy. We dated a little bit and started getting to know each other. I was like,
Shoot…this guy is actually really cool.
Things were going great and I was stunned at my good luck. I would have dated him even if he was a jerk, but he was awesome.

There was a big-ass party going on one night, and I brought my sister and her friend Lainie. The whole Hollywood crowd was there around a big, lit-up, blue pool. Toward the end of the party, Razz showed up with Jimmy. I rolled my eyes and wanted to get the hell out of there. When I was leaving, I went to hug Sunny goodbye and the following events occurred:

Journal Entry 7/12/92

I hugged Sunny goodbye at the party this past weekend and all hell broke loose. Jimmy tried to swing at him! Sunny dropped his beer, put out his hands, and said, “Let’s go!” (which was hot, because half the guys in that crowd are wimps). Swingin’ Thing has a roadie named Ronnie who kind of doubles as their bodyguard. He is a total badass. He could easily take on two or three guys, no problem.  He removed Sunny from the situation, stepped in himself, and beat the living shit
out of Jimmy. It was terrible. I didn’t know what to do- I couldn’t watch. I didn’t try to stop him; maybe I should have. I grabbed my sister and her friend and told them we had to leave right away. On the way out, I heard someone say, “Someone tried to fuck with Sunny!” and a bunch of guys started to run toward him. Jimmy got jumped by at least ten guys. It was horrible! It was just a big mess of bodies in the dark.

Cops arrived shortly thereafter with lights flashing, trying to find out what was going on, talking to the wrong people. There were probably two hundred people at that party- it was crazy. It was pitch black and a warm breeze was blowing. I saw Johnny Valentine from the Brats holding Jimmy’s neck. He had him pinned against a car. He wasn’t hitting him, he was just talking to him and trying to calm him down and he kept pushing Jimmy’s head back down to the car each time he got loud. There were people yelling and running back to their cars in front of the blue and red flashes of lights.

I turned to my sister and said, “Did all of that happen because of me?”

“Yep.”

I heard Razz’s voice in the dark. He told me to come over to his car. When I did, he started scolding me.

“If you wouldn’t have talked to Sunny, none of that would’ve happened. You were egging Jimmy on.”

“Are you kidding me? That was not my fault! And by the way, I have known you WAY longer than Jimmy and I can’t believe you’re defending him! I was just
hugging
the guy-”

“So what. You know how he is. You didn’t have to throw it in his face.”

Then Jimmy yelled my name. I turned around and saw that his face was dripping with blood. He said, “Are you
happy
now?” and started screaming at me and telling me he would kill those guys. He said he had a gun and he would use it, blah blah blah. 

After he got beat up in front of everybody who was anybody, things started happening just as I thought they would. I sat back like J.R. Ewing and put my feet up on a proverbial desk, filed my nails and drank a scotch. All the guys started making fun of Michael for hanging out with Jimmy. They were like, “This Jimmy guy, he’s
your
friend, isn’t he?” and Michael started to make excuses. He knew better than to risk his social standing. He said, “Jimmy’s my friend and everything, but bros are bros and I am down with them.” I was not surprised. Michael only cared about popularity and dropped Jimmy quickly.

I laid down on my bed under my Marilyn Monroe poster at my mother’s and knew that Razz would be calling.
Three, two, one...
and the phone rang just as I thought it would. Razz was on the other end, telling me that I took it wrong when he was defending Jimmy and that he was just drunk. I let him talk for a minute and painted my nails with gold glitter. When he was done, I started yelling at him and told him I was never going to speak to him again and that he was lucky he had called. He said it was a misunderstanding. I thought he was full of shit, but I let it go. I slammed down the phone, put on a 1940’s kimono and some marabou slippers, and made my way into the kitchen to eat some Fruity Pebbles.

It was about that time that I started hanging around another dancer named Natalie, who was a co-worker of Collette’s. They both worked at a strip club called Fritz. Natalie hung out with our crowd from time to time, and after seeing each other around for a few years, we became friends. Natalie was impressed I was dating Sunny. I wasn’t sure if that was why she was hanging around me more than before, but I didn’t care. I needed her place to crash when I was in Hollywood- she lived on Poinsettia, near Rock n’ Roll Ralphs. She could use me if she wanted. I considered the trade a fair one. She very often pumped my ego when I was with her, by saying things like “Sunny
calls
you? You are on his personal
guest list
?”  I could tell she liked him herself; she didn’t hide it very well.

She was originally from Indiana and had shoulder length blond hair. I could tell she was a brunette underneath, because she always had roots. She was one of the most unlikely candidates for a dancer that I had ever seen. Her clothes were pretty conservative; she was not at all flashy. She was also really self-conscious, and sometimes a little shy. She was always worried about something, or complaining. Dancers never worried about shit, in my experience, so this was a first. Regardless, I liked her and she amused me. One night, Swingin’ Thing played a show with Big Bang Babies. I wrote the following:

Journal Entry 7/18/92

They stamped my hand to go inside the club and Natalie said, “There must be some mistake, I must be on the list too,” but she wasn’t. Then some backer for Big Bang Babies named Jennifer paid for every single person outside to get in. Birdie Montgomery was in the bathroom sobbing because a bunch of the Seattle girls jumped her. I knew that would happen eventually. I saw Lesli and I let him drive my car to a party. He was running red lights so I punched him in the mouth. Everyone was smashing the windows out of the house at the party.

Journal Entry 7/19/92

Natalie is a closet speed addict, and suspects everyone walking the streets of doing it too.

I went to a party with her last night and all the new Grunge bands were there- Primus, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. I am ignorant to all of them, even though they are the new thing and are doing well. We were chuckling about how out of touch we were, not even knowing who these people were and how we only hung out with outdated scumbags wearing tons of makeup. These people were talking about flying private jets
to places to do their next videos and our friends were playing the Coconut Teaszer. We thanked our stars that we didn’t bring Michael and Strange with us because they would’ve embarrassed us. Actually- the guys there were pretty juvenile, believe it or not. They were not very mature- my wacky friends have better manners than those dudes did.

Journal Entry 7/26/92

Okay. Are you ready for this? Sunny managed to make us a couple in a total of 24 hours. Word must’ve gotten out because Jimmy just called here and asked me to marry him. He said he’ll get a job and quit partying.  Lesli called ten minutes before that. He said he couldn’t talk to me anymore because he really likes me and I don’t even care about it and I never invite him anywhere and he wants to be with me all the time. He says he is going to stop talking to me completely so he won’t feel hurt anymore. What do you say to something like that?

Anyway, I went to Newport Beach with Sunny in the day, and at night, we went to a party in Hollywood. When I got there, he introduced me to his entire band and the singer said, “So
you’re
the one he has been talking about.” Sunny said he didn’t want me hitting on any guys and he wanted to let me know where he stood. I couldn’t believe it. None of these guys have made any serious move like that with me. Especially not someone as popular as him. One of his friends said, “He never goes out with anybody. You are really special.” He called me his woman and all this stuff. He totally made me his property by the end of the night. I was on top. I got where I wanted to be. In high school, I dreamed of this guy, looked at his face in my classes, dreamt of going to Hollywood just to see him from afar. And there I was, his girlfriend.

For all of one hour.

It was going so fast that I got nervous. Really nervous. I started drinking very heavily. I went into the bathroom with one of the beach bunny Barbies they hang out with. I don’t know what I said to her, I just remember her backing up against the wall with her eyeballs popping out and then she got out of the bathroom and ran. Did I say I was going to hack her to pieces? I still don’t know what I said!  If that wasn’t enough, I proceeded to do cartwheels in the street in front of everybody. There were tons of cool people standing around watching another girl who was all graceful, doing cool walkovers and slinky moves. I stumbled over, all clunky and belligerent. I tried to do a straddle roll on the front lawn, and I got stuck with my legs over my head in front of all of Swingin’ Thing. I was a total spectacle. I can’t believe I did that only hours after Sunny said I was his woman! And it didn’t stop there. I had to cement the deal. In front of everyone, I proceeded to fall backwards over a counter, crash into a sliding glass door, land on the ground and pass out. I woke up with a swollen eye, a fat lip, two skinned knees, a cigarette burn, and one of my legs popped out of my hipbone. I had to jerk my leg really hard to get it to pop back into place. I looked down at a huge crooked tooth mark on my boob and remembered that Strange
bit
me. I remembered slapping him across the face. He tackled me and tried to beat the crap out of me and Michael pleaded with him, “What are you doing!? She is our little sister, bro!” I pointed to the bathroom and made him go in. I lectured him in there and he apologized.

Anyway, I can’t believe I screwed up my chance at being Hollywood royalty. I am so embarrassed for acting like such a fool. I cried about it to Michael the next night while we sat on the curb swigging beer. He said in a nasal, Valley Girl voice, “I know you’re on Heartbreak Boulevard and everything, but at least they’re talking, you know what I mean? If they don’t talk about you, then you’re nobody. At least you got people talking.”

Michael may have been a drunken glam rocker wearing leggings and eyeliner, but he had the sense to quote friggin’ Oscar Wilde. It made me feel a teensy bit better. I tried to tell myself it was true. Yeah. I was a big name. If people were talking about me, it was because I was interesting and cool and gossip-worthy! Then I had a little flashback of seeing the room upside down when I flipped over that counter backwards in front of the whole party and I winced. I really liked Sunny. I thought he was funny, cool, and respectful, and it didn’t hurt that he had status in my crowd. He was a nice, genuine guy. Except for when he told me my perfume smelled like carpet freshener- that was sort of messed up. And that time at the beach he told me I had sand in my nostrils in front of everyone... Other than that, he was honestly a nice guy! I was so upset with myself for behaving so poorly, that I cried and cried. I listened to a tape that he and I listened to together (
Mother’s Milk
by the Red Hot Chili Peppers) repeatedly in my car. It pained my heart to hear “Subway to Venus.” I took it out of my stereo while I was driving and threw it out the window on Ventura Boulevard. It was all quite dramatic (laughs).