The Sunset Strip Diaries (32 page)

I decided to call him and try to extort money from him, just for my own entertainment. I had done many things, but I hadn’t yet blackmailed someone, and I was itching to do so. I laid in my bed in a hot pink nightgown with bright purple trim and called Andre. When he answered, I told him he had to give me fifty dollars or I would tell Jimmy we hooked up and ruin his fucking life. He thought I was pathetic, because it was such a measly amount. He was like, “
Fifty
dollars
? I mean, if you need money
that bad
, I will just let you borrow it or
give
it to you. You are going to
blackmail
me?” I really just wanted to humiliate him for telling me he didn’t think I was pretty and I was a huge floozy who seduced him. I was like,
Yes motherfucker, you heard me, fifty dollars. Now pay up.
He said that he was going to call Jimmy himself and explain things. I was like,
Oh yeah? Well that’s not going to go over so well you dumb fuck.
We played chicken with each other, both threatening to tell Jimmy. I wasn’t prepared to have Andre call my bluff like he did. He must’ve smelled fear, or been able to tell that I hadn’t thought my plan through very well.

I immediately hung up the phone, called Jimmy, and told on myself. I thought it would be better if he heard
my
version than whatever Andre would say.  Since I was already toast, I took the Frenchman right down with me. Jimmy went ballistic and told Andre that he had to leave their band, or Jimmy would. Jimmy was the key player in the group; he had founded it and he had the connections. Andre was only the drummer, in the background with no connections, so it was clear what would happen to the rest of the band if Jimmy left. They would fold.

Lo and behold, the band broke up. They had been receiving attention from record labels, were touring with L.A. Guns, and appeared to be on their way to stardom. The other band members were
furious
with me. They had worked very hard and were shocked that Jimmy would let it go because of well,
me.
I guess it was my fault. Oh, okay, fine, it
was
my fault. I didn’t have to tell on the guy. I felt bad afterward. I tried telling myself,
Hey, Jimmy cheated on me and betrayed me countless times- why should I spare
his
feelings?
But the truth was, I was just being a jerk.

Andre was going down and he didn’t want to go down alone. He decided to try to take the attention off himself, by bringing up something that I had admitted to in my drunken stupor at Red Light District: I had been seeing Robbi earlier in the year. Jimmy had recently become close with Robbi because he was painting his drums and doing tattoos for the rest of Alleycat Scratch.  I hadn’t been connected with Robbi for several months by that time. I remembered Michael warning me that if I told Jimmy about Robbi and me, they would all be very angry with me for screwing everything up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I thought.

The next day I found many nervous answering machine messages from Robbi. The first message said, “This is Robbi. If you talk to Jimmy, DENY EVERYTHING. If you don’t, you’ll be really sorry and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” I should have thought,
Bitch please. What are you gonna do? Kill me over some hair band?
But I was all scared, biting my fingernails like a typewriter. Jimmy called me at three in the morning, freshly upset about the Andre scandal. He screamed “ROBBI?!” Then he started yelling at me and calling me a slut. The next day he barged down the door to Alleycat’s apartment, started to strangle Robbi, and tried to kill him. I know, I know, it all sounds so foolishly melodramatic.

I knew I had caused the whole chain of events and it could have all been prevented. But at that age, I liked to do crazy things and try out social experiments- I didn't care who got hurt or what trouble it caused. Things weren't shiny and new and exciting anymore. I had conquered the things I wanted to, and I was looking for some other form of excitement, I guess. I had become careless. And I paid for it, socially. That crowd didn’t want to deal with me much after that. I was too much of a pain in the ass.

Journal Entry 10/1/92

Well, I can do nothing but continue the horrible saga of my present life. What could possibly happen to me next, I do wonder. I am sitting in a practically empty Cinema class and two other people are talking and deliberately leaving me out of the conversation but I keep adding my two cents, regardless. Well, I know never to blackmail anyone ever again, even though it looks fun and all. So nobody ever speaks to me again. So Jimmy’s terribly hurt and extremely angry…maybe he will feel an ounce of what I felt, hearing that he slept with ten different women while dating me. So people will want to kill me. So I won’t go out for a while.

Journal Entry 10/2/92

I am sitting here watching a show on the media’s influence on beauty and how teenage girls are obsessed with their looks and how unrealistic it is. I guess I am a little obsessed with beauty. But I have to be. It’s my bread and butter. It’s my way to eat. I can’t survive just being the person who loves books and old movies. I have to project something that appeals to people who will help me to like, survive. I can’t truly depend on my own family.

There are lots of little rules and assumptions just being a part of this Hollywood crowd. For instance, if you are walking alone on Sunset in the day, there is no doubt you are wacked on speed. There is absolutely no other reason for you to be out there in the daytime. If you are hanging anywhere near this guy named Anton, you are either on or are buying drugs. If you are anywhere on East Las Palmas you are without a doubt buying drugs- speed, most likely. Same goes for Detroit Street. If you are on Cherokee, you are specifically buying crack. If you are at Ralphs on Sunset, you are a drunk. If you are in Rock n’ Roll Denny’s on Sunset on any morning, dammit you are on
something
because you’re still awake from the night before. Everyone will throw that at you. That, and the wandering around Sunset in the afternoon are two big giveaways. Natalie goes as far as the Mayfair Market now to avoid being seen at Ralphs, so people won’t think she is a drunk, and Ralphs is right on her corner. But then again she is paranoid because she is on speed.

Oh, and don’t ever eat in public in Hollywood. Christian got jumped for his hamburger one day. And the Wendy’s drive-thru is not a good idea since Collette got mugged there. It is on the corner of Detroit Street, no wonder. Yucca is the street on which to score heroin, if you are a true loser. If you are around Gazzarri’s, the Cathouse or FM Station you’re a hesher (not good). If you’re a dancer you want to try to work your way out of the Seventh Veil or the Star Strip on La Cienega and on to better places.

I had a hellish day at Natalie’s apartment yesterday. I must’ve heard the word Xanax two billion times. She was on coke last night and wouldn’t shut up. First we went to the Rainbow and apparently I bumped straight into Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses by the restroom; I smacked right into his chest and didn’t even realize it or say excuse me. After that, she invited that grody drug dealer guy Anton over to her place. He was doped up on heroin, the prick. He wouldn’t stop touching me and I had to sit on the bastard’s lap for a good half an hour to LAX in her two-seater car. I told Natalie he was trying to feel me up and she didn’t believe me! She said he would never do something like that. Never do something like that? What, is this guy a pillar of morality? I didn’t care if she believed me or not, I scooted back into her trunk and laid there the whole way home, pouting.

Once we were back to her place, he went into the bathroom for like, a half an hour and when he came out there was blood on her towels and a Band-Aid wrapper on the floor. His face was so white and bloodless that it scared me. He came and laid on the ground and said he wanted to take a nap, just like the typical heroin addict (Collette, Teddy, Casey). What a junkie bastard, and a slob to top it off.

Journal Entry 10/12/92

I took a bus to Birdie’s this weekend and we got a ride to Hollywood. She bought speed from some guy for 25 bucks. Before that, we went to the Rainbow and asked if they would let us in because we were bored. I had just finished chewing a hot dog from AM/PM and had a bored look on my face and Birdie slurped away at soft serve ice cream in a cup. We didn’t care if we got in or not, but it was worth a try. A man behind us heard and said, “I’ll pay her way in” to me. A big man in a suit came up behind him and said, “They need ID, this isn’t fun and games,” and since Birdie didn’t have ID they didn’t let us in. Mind you, they used to let me in all the time when I was her age. There must’ve been a crackdown.

We went and hid on the top of a bank building so Birdie could do her drugs. It was really dark up there except for the lights of the Rainbow’s sign. She was trying to bite a straw in half to snort with. These two random hesher guys came up to us and had a six-pack. They gave me a beer. I felt all right around them, they were harmless. No style, no makeup, no done hair. I even told them my real name. Birdie took out her calling card to chop lines and then excused herself to go into a corner and snort speed. The guys asked me if I had older brothers. I said “Why?” they wanted to know how I had learned to party so much. I was drinking a Budweiser for Pete’s sake, if they only could’ve seen me on a regular night!

We went down onto The Strip and Birdie found that guy Stevie from the Seattle crowd and they snorted a bunch more drugs. He seems like a sociopath to me. He has these dead eyes, void of all feeling. Maybe it’s the drugs. Anyway, he has this horrible bleached and greasy platinum white hair to his shoulders with really long black roots showing. He has sort of dark skin, full lips, and a round, button nose. He never smiles or talks. I guess he has a cute face, but he just looks like such a serial killer, it gets in the way. By 3 a.m., we realized everyone was leaving so we squeezed in a car with some of our guy friends and got dropped off at this lady’s house. She let everyone in but Birdie and me. She locked the tall, spiked gates and our “friends” left us out there. Birdie started getting dizzy and I took her behind a van, jammed my finger down her throat, and made her vomit, which didn’t help whatsoever. As she was laying there all fucked up, she announced that she snorted three LINES of speed with Stevie. According to Natalie, speed is not like coke. You can’t do lines of it if you are not used to it- it would be way too much.

I spent quite a while trying to hold her up and she eventually fainted. She fell out of my arms and smacked her head on the sidewalk. It was dark and cold and I didn’t even know where we were. Stevie came outside to check on her and we were arguing about who should be taking care of her. She woke up and clung to me and he was mad. He wouldn’t go into the house to get me a phone to call for help- he said the lady inside hated Birdie and me, and she would never allow it. I said, “Screw it; I am scaling this fence myself- I will get that fucking phone myself.” He didn’t think I could do it because of the spikes, but I did. Lesli was walking outside and saw me coming toward the door- he put his arms across it so I wouldn’t go in. He said the lady would be really mad if I went in, but I didn’t care. I was like, “What is she going to do? There is a girl OD’ing on her fucking sidewalk.” He decided to bring a phone out because he knew he couldn’t stop me. The phone didn’t work! The bitch probably unplugged it. I climbed back over the fence and slit one of my wrists on a spike by accident. Finally, after a bunch of screaming and yelling, Stevie called Birdie’s mom for me and she came and got us, completely unaware of anything. I was wrestling with myself, trying to figure out if Birdie needed to go to the hospital or she was going to be okay. When I saw her talking and acting normal, I decided to say nothing.

The next night we went out again. There were eleven or twelve people crowded in a Jeep with no doors and we were driving around partying. People were throwing things at us from the windows of buildings. One of our friends picked up a brick, threw it back at one of the windows, and shattered it. We took off because a bunch of cop cars pulled up. We raided Natalie’s apartment and partied there while she slept. Then we fell asleep ourselves and when we woke up, we were still clutching beers.

Although I have done my fair share of partying, I don’t like the road Birdie is starting to go down. She has done heroin with the Seattle girls and now she is doing speed all the time. It was okay for other Hollywood girls to do, like dancers and hookers- that didn’t surprise or bother me so much. But Birdie isn’t like them. She is a sweet girl inside. I know she has a lot of pain in her heart like I do. I don’t want her to get into something she won’t be able to get out of.

I met a guy around then that seemed like he would be the answer to all of my problems. His name was Presley. He had the look, and wasn’t part of my crowd, so rumors couldn’t fly. He told me his hair was naturally dark black because he was Persian. I thought…
Okay…Persian...nothing wrong with that I guess.
He had “heard about me” and made a comment that I was breaking up bands left and right and causing fights on The Strip. I rolled my eyes but I was secretly intrigued that he thought I had that much power. I gave him my number.