Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (22 page)

 

After a few moments, Kim dismounted and grabbed Marcie’s knees, spreading her legs apart for us all to see. He looked at us, perfectly serious, and said, “Anybody want to join in?” Marcie just lay there, giggling like a lobotomized fool.

 

“No . . . fucking . . . WAY!” yelled Rick.

 

“That’s IT, Kim,” I yelled. “I’ve had enough!”

 

With that, I turned and went to storm out of the room.

 

“Down, DOG!” Kim commanded. I turned, and he was standing, with his finger pointed right at me. I tried not to look, but I caught a glimpse of his erect penis pointing at me, waving around in the musty air like a cobra ready to strike.

 

“No, Kim,” I yelled. “You’re SICK. I’m leaving! This is SO fucking SICK!” I stormed off, pulling the chain loose, wrenching open the door, and finally making it out into the corridor. Sandy and Rick followed me. Scott closed the door after us, but stayed in the room.

 

Sandy was still laughing, nervously. “That was fucking CRAZY!” she said, and giggled.

 

Rick tried to make light of it. “That was gross!” he said. “And anyway . . . as if you guys don’t know the right way to fuck already!”

 

I punched him in the arm, but even this little bit of comic relief wasn’t helping to dispense the weirdness.“Hey, you gonna eat that?” Sandy asked, referring to the uneaten hamburger I’d been carrying around with me. “I’m still hungry.” I handed it over to her, my appetite totally gone. She took a bite of my burger and announced, “I’m going back in. This shit is educational!” And with that, she walked back into the room and closed the door behind her.

 

Rick and I walked out to get some fresh air and smoke a cigarette. Nobody said anything at first.

 

Rick pulled out a cigarette, and lit it off mine.

 

“Relax, Cherie,” he said. “That was fucked up, man, but it’ll be all right.”

 

I just made a face, and took another drag.

 

“I don’t know what the fuck was going on in there tonight,” Rick said quietly, “but that was MESSED UP.”

 

We stood there for a while, smoking and contemplating what had just happened.

 

“Hey!”

 

We turned, and it was Sandy. She was walking toward us with a big grin on her face.

 

“Come on guys! We gotta go to sound check. It’s gonna be showtime soon!”

 

I put my arm around her as we walked back to the room. Nothing fazed Sandy; she took everything in stride. Seeing her like this, seeing her act as if what happened was really no big deal . . . it was comforting. It didn’t change what happened, but somehow it made it easier to deal with. Sandy was the rock in the band, and I knew I could always depend on her when the going got strange. I loved Sandy, and I didn’t know what I’d have done if she hadn’t been there that afternoon. In a weird way, I felt like I’d awakened from some strange, fevered nightmare. When we walked back into the room, I felt better equipped to pretend that nothing was wrong.

 

Inside, Marcie was still on the bed. She was dressed now, and she was sitting up, looking slightly more sober. She was eating a hamburger with a queasy smile on her face. I watched her as she clumsily wiped her mouth with a dirty napkin. I didn’t say anything to her, none of us did. After all, what could we say?

 

Kim was standing in the corner of the room, still wearing that ripped T-shirt and his grimy, dingy underwear. He didn’t look at me, and I was glad about that. I’d probably have puked if he did. Of all the nasty, degenerate scum on earth, he was the last scum I’d want laying a crooked finger on me. Scott gave us a nasty smile and I did my best not to make eye contact with him.

 

Pushing what had just happened out of my mind, I started applying makeup and getting ready for the show. The sickly smell of sex still hung in the air. I felt my stomach lurch again. I could hear the others talking, and laughing, the usual preshow banter. I concentrated on this, on how normal it all seemed . . .

 

There was a knock on the door, and Stinky told us it was time to leave for sound check. As we headed out to the van, I looked behind me, and caught a final glimpse of Kim in his underwear, looking out after us like some kind of evil old troll, before he closed the door without a word. On the drive over to the club, nobody said much. We didn’t even tell the others what happened once we got to the venue.

 

Once we were onstage running through the songs, the lingering sense of disgust started to fade. I made a vow not to think about what had happened—it was just too much. It was one of the sleaziest, most low-rent experiences I had ever witnessed. Nobody brought it up again. I made a vow that day that if Kim ever tried to lay a finger on me, he would have a goddamn stump by the time I was finished with him.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 13

 

The Road

 

 

 

 

The road is a strange place. We’d drive from city to city in our RV, and see the country town by town, city by city. At first, touring was a blast. Everything was new to us, and the freedom of being away from our school, our families, and any kind of rules or discipline was exhilarating. When Kim was away—which was most of the time, thank goodness—life on the road was fun. Kim referred to traveling with the band as “babysitting” and preferred to leave that side of things to Scott Anderson, Kent Smythe, and the other roadies. But when we’d hear that Kim was flying in to attend one of our shows, we’d know that it wasn’t good news. Usually he would rip us apart afterward, criticizing our every move and making all of us feel like shit. Whenever it seemed like things were getting a little too happy, too relaxed, too much fun, Kim would magically appear and brings us all back down to earth by calling us “dog cunts” and screaming at us for screwing up a note or missing a beat on one of the songs.

 

One particular evening we were sailing through the shadowy night in the motor home, and I was upset because Kim had really whaled into us after the last show. He’d said that my voice wasn’t powerful enough. He made me feel small and insignificant. I was talking to the girls about it, on the verge of tears.

 

“When I first met Kim,” Lita said, “he started off calling me dog meat. You know, I just took it as a term of endearment. You know? Dog meat, dog piss, dog puke . . . He just has a thing about dogs. You can’t take his shit personally!”

 

I had to laugh. It was hard to think that anybody in this world—even Kim Fowley—could get away with calling Lita Ford “dog piss” without getting their face ripped clean off. I’ll give Kim one thing—that motherfucker had balls.

 

“The point,” Sandy said to me, “is that Kim is KIM, man. That’s never gonna change. I don’t think that he really means anything by it—it’s just his way, and you gotta get used to it.”

 

I shrugged. Of course, this made perfect sense when we were all together on the tour bus, and Kim wasn’t around . . . but it was a different matter when he was screaming in my face, calling me names, telling me that I was useless, that I couldn’t sing, that I was dog shit. “I dunno”—I sniffed—“I think he expects too much of me.”

 

Jackie had been listening from across the bus. She put down her book and yelled, “He expects too much from all of us! It’s what got us this far! He’s like an Olympic coach, Cherie—that’s his attitude. He’s pushing you—he’s pushing all of us. What I’d like to know is where all of the goddamn money is going . . .”

 

Lita groaned at this. The money thing was Jackie’s obsession. She saw all of the packed houses that we were playing to, and was constantly complaining about how, at the most, Kim would give us ten dollars here, or twenty dollars there.

 

“Kim says that we are still paying off Mercury for the album, and the promotion . . . ,” I said a little uncertainly, parroting Kim’s standard defense.

 

“Oh yeah? So where does Kim get the money to fly into Pittsburgh or Atlanta so he can bitch us out? Where does he get the money to pay the road crew? He sure as hell isn’t turning up at the venue in a fucking motor home. Kim will be flying first class all the way, I bet . . .”

 

The way Kim paid the band was prevalent at the time, where the artists were overworked and rarely saw their share of the money because of tour expenses and label costs. I never knew where the money went, but I felt we were being ripped off.

 

We had learned one thing from Kim: when a subject becomes uncomfortable, you change it quickly. Whenever Jackie asked him about money, Kim would immediately switch things around, telling us that we needed to change our hairstyles or work on our stage moves. Anything but ask too many questions. Now that Jackie had a bug up her ass about the money, we were all a little scared that she might ruin everything by rocking the boat too much. Kim seemed unbalanced enough to actually drop the band altogether, as he constantly threatened to do, and sue us all for breach of contract. So Lita quickly switched the conversation back to Kim’s temper tantrums.

 

“Anyway, Cherie . . . when Kim gets out of hand, just keep your mouth shut. Nod, and say okay, and do the best you can. Seriously, you need to stop arguing with him. It doesn’t do any good.”

 

“Oh yeah,” Jackie snorted. “Don’t rock the boat! That’s your fucking mantra these days . . .”

 

“Shut up, Jackie!”

 

“Make me!”

 

“I will make you, bitch!”

 

Lita walked over to Jackie, and they started screaming at each other. Sandy rolled her eyes and put her headphones on.

 

Sometimes on the road life seemed really slow—especially on those long, late-night drives from city to city. It was like being in suspended animation. You aren’t anywhere in particular—you are in between places. Quaaludes helped with the boredom. So did Tuinals. Tuinals were these great little blue-and-red pills that helped your body and your mind to adjust to the tortoiselike pace of the road, the minutes and hours dragging by painfully . . . slowly . . . interminably. It was like taking a vacation inside your head. When we were not stoned and drooling on ourselves, we’d pull stupid pranks to pass the time.

 

One night we were driving down the main drag of some city. I don’t know which city—they’d all started to look the same. Some city that wasn’t home. Kent, one of our roadies, was driving. He didn’t say much, but sometimes he’d chuckle to himself when we’d bitch, complain, and argue with each other. The five of us were sprawled out over the seats of the bus with seltzer bottles in our hands, searching for the perfect victim.

 

We were in a seedy part of town . . . the kind of place populated almost entirely by check-cashing places, pawnshops, liquor stores, and shady-looking bodegas. Looking out of the window, Sandy spotted them standing on the corner in a group . . . young girls, with too much makeup and bright, flashy clothes that revealed an unseasonable amount of bare skin. Whenever a lone male approached, they’d start hollering over to him, “Hey, honey! Looking for a date! Buy me a drink?”

 

“Victims!” Sandy screamed, and we all piled over to her window. “KEEENNT!”

 

On Sandy’s cue, Kent did a one-eighty across traffic. We headed toward the unsuspecting street girls, pulling up to the curb alongside them. Sandy spotted them, so they were Sandy’s catch. The window was down halfway. As we all looked on, giggling with anticipation, she leaned out and said, “Hey, ladies!”

 

The hookers looked up to the RV suspiciously. Sandy smiled and waved, and then asked, “Do you have a license for this sort of thing?”

 

Realizing that she was being laughed at, one of the hookers started screaming, “Bitch, I don’t need no motherfuckin’ license—”

 

That’s all she got the chance to say.

 

Suddenly, Sandy depressed the lever, and a jet of seltzer water hit the prostitute full in the face. Sandy started waving the bottle like crazy, soaking her minidress until it became even more see-through.

 

“OH, YOU CUNT!” the girl screamed as Kent hit the gas and we peeled out, leaving the streetwalkers standing there, cursing us out and shaking angry fists in our direction. I saw the wet streetwalker throw her shoe at the bus, but it fell short, landing in the middle of the road. I was laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. When we were done cracking up, Joan went to the back of the bus and marked another notch in the ceiling. Our count of victims for this tour was up to twenty already.

 

When we’d pull into a new city so we could play our music, everything changed. Then, suddenly, you were thrown into the fast lane. You became a neon blur, and when you’re a neon blur, time becomes an elastic concept. Troubles pass you by. Hours pass like seconds, and all you can see are the dazzling lights shining in your face. All you can hear is the roar of the crowd.

 

On the road, I saw thousands of teenagers, lining up outside filled-to-capacity concert halls and auditoriums. They carried our posters, magazines with our faces on the cover, copies of our records. The shows were incredible. The time that we spent up there onstage made all of the rest of the bullshit that came along with touring worthwhile. As the tour went on, the audiences got bigger, the venues got bigger—the Runaways got bigger.

 

Sometimes the kids who called out for autographs and photographs when we were heading into the venue for sound check would tell us that their parents didn’t know they were there. “Oh, my mom HATES you guys,” one kid told me. “She says you’re a bad influence! You know my mom tore your posters down off of my walls . . .” I found that stuff hysterical. I told Lita about it and she sneered. “Fuck ’em! You can do anything you want to do. You’re sixteen—no one can tell you what you should and shouldn’t do; we’re here doin’ a job! You know? We’re becoming fuckin’ rock stars, so they can stick it!”