The Sunset Strip Diaries (28 page)

Sunny backed off from me after that night. He stopped calling. I was a wreck. A very long week passed, where I cried in my blankies and blew my nose on my Hanoi Rocks T-shirt sleeve. Then he called again. He wanted to know what I was doing that night. I launched out of my bed and jumped straight into the shower. We agreed to hang out over at Natalie’s, which was down the street from him. Do you think I rectified everything? Of course not! This is
me
we are talking about. I got really nervous and (long drum roll) started drinking.

Journal Entry 8/1/92

Natalie said I told Sunny off at the top of my lungs for a half hour last night. I was over there drinking a bottle of Night Train and I
completely
blacked out. Again! I remember none of it! She said I kept going into the bathroom and she was
sure
I did a line of speed! I said, “No! I
couldn’t
have! I have never done any drugs!” I still don’t know if I did it, if she gave it to me to sober me up from the Night Train or if nothing happened at all.

Sunny told me later that I was talking about my father! And my family! I wonder what I said? Why did my mind go there? Worse than that, I do feel like I am on something! I have never done drugs so I don’t know what to compare it to, but when I wet my face to wash it this morning, it felt like someone punched me in the nose. I haven’t eaten or slept and I couldn’t drink last night, but felt buzzed on something anyway. And I was as paranoid as Natalie, who IS on it. We went to Denny’s at 9:00 in the morning and she doesn’t even remember it. We went to the store later on and the only things in our basket were milk, gum, and Jim Beam. Neither of us wanted to hold the basket! We were trying to make each other hold it.

Natalie had to drink half the bottle of whiskey and do a line just to go on a date the next night. She kept saying things like, “Am I talking too much? I need a drink to get a little mellower” or “Am I acting drunk? Am I babbling? I need to do a line to be more normal” or “Do you think I am acting paranoid? Should I have a drink?” Sometimes she gets paranoid that something else is in the drugs: “I hope there wasn’t any heroin in that stuff, because I am allergic to it.”

Natalie says she is studying medicine. She says she wants to go back to college for it, but all she really does is sit around and look up pills in her pill book, which I have seen at Sav-On right next to the romance novels. She is always sick, bruised up, depressed, and whining. I have stayed there for days at a time, drunk, just laying on her floor. Never anything in that fridge but butter and wine. She is so paranoid about her health that she is on antibiotics for her ears being plugged, painkillers for her hurting back and Valium to sleep, amongst all the other shit. She is always making doctors’ appointments and claims everyone from her landlord to the clerk at the music store is on drugs.

“Look at that guy banging the soda machine! He is on drugs! Look at him!” Today she called and said she had been up for twelve hours throwing up from bad tuna salad. She exaggerates like crazy (
twelve
hours?) and really cares what everyone else thinks of her, which is not common for most dancers I know. I can’t picture her in her sequined neon green bikini (or not in it) on a stage, stripping. I can’t picture her giving table dances and asking for tips, but she does. She is the only stripper I know without a bubbly, confident nature. She is pale and wears red lipstick- looks very different from the other girls. Guess it’s proof that guys like all different types.

You know what? This might sound naïve, but…I didn’t realize that many of the people I have been hanging out with have turned into drug addicts. I thought we were all just drinking. Now it is hitting me. They don’t eat, but they always make conversation about some big meal they just had. They have all been cutting back on the booze and are just holding the same drink all night. That is why Michael, Strange, and I stand out as being belligerent. We are probably the only ones not on drugs right now! Natalie couldn’t sleep because of the speed and had to do shots of Jim Beam. And I just found out Collette is a heroin addict. I didn’t even put two and two together when she was falling asleep in mid-conversation. I remember one night she was trying to show me how to get to a party and she kept falling asleep and I passed the place. She woke up and said, “Oh, sorry! Make a U-turn. It was right back there.” I turned around, started driving, and then looked over at her, asleep again! I must have passed the place three different times.

I guess I should tell you how I was picked out of the crowd at Bar One the second I walked up, and how I immediately bypassed all of the people who were not good-looking enough to get in. Then when I got up to the front, I was on a guest list, waltzed right in, and sat with some big shot named Rich Ross. He gave my friend Sarah (a girl I met in summer school a few years ago) and me free drinks. I danced with Brian Austin Green from 90210. Sarah was feeling left out because Rich was telling me what an asset I was, and that I should come every week. She felt better when she met Rick James later that night. She was flirting with him and gave him her number- I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Anyway, none of it matters because I was an idiot and spoiled my chance with Sunny.

Journal Entry 8/5/92

I am coming off whatever I did. Feeling all psycho over Sunny. Can’t stop crying; depressed and obsessive. Can’t get out of bed. I lost five pounds from not eating for five days (note to self: don’t eat for ten more days). I don’t even know what to say. I have been lying in this bed since I woke up and it is ten at night now. I tried eating dinner with my mother and sister but I started crying when I saw my potato. It got so bad that I had to excuse myself. They just kept eating and ignored me. He hasn’t called and it is entirely my fault for acting so idiotic around him. And to top it off, I saw Jimmy and Robbi hanging out at a Cathouse party! I don’t even care. Tweety and I got into an argument about who was more stuck up than who (I act like I should be playing polo in The Hamptons, apparently). But I didn’t care about that either. I just want Sunny to call. I can’t believe I blew it.

Journal Entry 8/10/92

Was supposed to hang out with Sunny the other night, but he flaked. He ended up leaving a message on my mom’s answering machine at 4 a.m., which is of course too late to be answering a call from a guy. I saw him out the next night and did a great job of hiding my obsession. He asked what happened the other night and I coolly said, “Well, I went my way and you went your way and we lost each other,” and smiled. We were all sitting in the dark, by the empty swimming pool of Errol Flynn’s burned down estate in Runyon Canyon, passing around the usual bottle of Jim Beam (I don’t even know why we call it Errol Flynn’s-  I think Errol Flynn only stayed in the pool house at the damn place). Jamie Scrap, Mandie, Boa, and a bunch of others were there. I looked over toward the gate at the top of Fuller Street and a bunch of girls I knew were climbing up over the fence via a winding tree (that I can expertly climb in tiny outfits)- Chrissy, Emi, Stephanie, Dina, Amy, Sandy, Nicole and Chantelle. Some gang showed up, said that we were on their turf, and told us to leave. None of us wanted to get shot, so we took off, stumbling over elderberry bushes. As we were leaving, the cops showed up and busted Natalie for carrying a bottle of booze. They eventually let her go, then she and I went back to her place and danced to the Geto Boys in our underwear. She said, “You had Sunny hooked, before you started yelling at him.”

I haven’t been with a guy this entire summer. I have to be careful who I let near me because everyone knows each other. I really have to watch out and play this thing right.

Journal Entry 8/16/92

I shouldn’t have written that shit! Bang raped me last night! Yes, raped me! I woke up in the middle of the act. He was on top of me. We were on the floor of some room, next to a pile of dirty laundry. He is not someone who I am attracted to, so I don’t see how I could have even been in that situation. I was clearly too drunk to make any decisions and he was fine with that. I was puking up blood on the way home, from drinking too much. In the beginning of the night he was kind of forcefully pulling me around with him, and I just let him- not good. Then I remember he wanted to drive in my car with me- I felt cool that he singled me out, so I let him. The rest? My own fault for being so dumb. I have to wipe it out of my mind. I am not gonna think about it.

The Next Day

Bang called here today. He apologized. Instead of just accepting it, or maybe even telling him off, I said I shouldn’t have been that drunk around him. I added that I didn’t sleep with the guys in Hollywood. He said, “I know. That’s why I’m calling.” He didn’t try to blame me or anything, like I thought he would. He was all quiet and said he wasn’t drinking the rest of the week. Oh wow, a whole week. I was happy not to have been roughed up, though. He has knocked out two girls I know personally. Knocked them out cold, just for being annoying. I am glad he feels like shit.

There is nothing I can do now, except move on.

I woke up at about 2:30 or three this afternoon. I was dreaming about tripping on stairs, being in a nightclub, and stealing a big box of bright pink Hubba Bubba gum.  I was in some spacey store with my dad and he was borrowing all of my money and then buying me all of this fun stuff with it, like cherry Slurpees. He was buying other people presents with my money. One time he did do something similar. He took my sister and me on a huge shopping spree at like, Sears, or somewhere where the stuff basically sucked, but we were allowed to buy whatever we wanted. I remember buying a red bra, some perfume, and a few other things. We thought it was strange, but who were we to question a free shopping trip? Well, it turned out that he stole the card from someone he knew, charged all of that shit on it, and left them with the bill!

Another time he brought Karen and me to this huge mansion and said we could stay there and do whatever we wanted: eat the stuff in the fridge, watch TV, whatever. So we made ourselves at home. We turned on Yo! MTV Raps, started baking something in the oven, and basically trashed the place. Then we heard a key in the door and some women’s voices. We looked at each other, jumped up, and ran. Karen hid in a closet or something and I ran into a bathroom and locked the door. I stripped off all my clothes in a panic. Don’t ask me why I thought that would be a good idea. I think I was going to pretend I was taking a shower, but then I decided to wrap myself in a towel (I know, I was an idiot) and face the music. Karen and I eventually came out because they were about to call the cops. A nicely dressed woman and her adult daughter were standing there staring at us and had no idea who we were. I think one of them knew my dad in some way, she may have been sleeping with him or something. Regardless, they sure as hell didn’t know who
we
were. And worse, they did not authorize us to stay in their house.

I probably had that dream because I visited my dad last night. I asked for some money for school and he gave me a dollar and six quarters. He owes a few years of child support for my sister and me and the law is after him for various other reasons like tax evasion and some warrants. He is living with a lady named Debra who is a former disc jockey for KHJ.

Journal Entry 8/19/92

I visited Natalie last night. She had all of her medical books spread around her. It looked like she set them up as props. We watched a little bit of Miss Nude USA and she commented on each girl. “This can’t be in L.A. The stage is way too nice. These girls can’t be from Hollywood…Oh...
this
girl could. She has got the L.A. attitude and stuff, the way she dances and her face.” She laughed and talked about how quiet she was and how no one wanted her because of it. Then the building caught fire and we had to go.

In a half an hour, I have to get ready to go to Bar One. A lot of stars hang out there when they are in L.A. This company called W.C. Productions always puts me on a guest list and asks me to bring really pretty girls. Once I am there, I usually go sit with that guy Rich Ross, who owns the company or something. He looks like Andy Gibb in running shorts and a tank top, no matter the weather. That is an L.A. thing. He examines the girls I bring, nods, and then tells us to order whatever we want. His secretary calls me sometimes and puts him through. He says things like “You are fan
TAB
ulous” or “You are a
bomb
shell.”

Tonight I am bringing Birdie, even though she is only newly sixteen. They will let her in because of her looks. Her age won’t matter. She has been wearing fake eyelashes like me and the same type of clothes. She is stealing my look, but oh well. The only thing I can do is go with it. She looks very exotic and smells like some sort of spice or cinnamon. It is some Chanel perfume that she spritzes all over herself until we are both choking. She is super spoiled and has a ton of nice clothes and calls her dad “Daddy.” To watch her is kind of like looking at a rare species of some sort of animal. She is so pretty that people drop things when she walks by.