Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (36 page)

 

I started forging my father’s checks and raiding his tip jar for drug money.

 

Being high from the moment I staggered out of bed until the moment I collapsed back into it (if I even made it to my bed; sometimes I’d wake up on the floor of the bathroom or in the bedroom, face still smeared with last night’s makeup, wondering how in the hell I got there) was a total necessity for me. I was not an addict, I’d tell myself, I just liked drugs a hell of a lot. They became a part of who I was—Cherie Currie, the neon blur in the fast lane, the Cherry Bomb. I needed to be that person to cope with the pressure, because the pressure was everywhere. There was the pressure from myself, to bounce back from the Runaways and not just become another rock-and-roll casualty. After all, wouldn’t Lita have loved it if I just faded away quietly? There was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction! Sometimes the pressure came from places that even I didn’t expect. Like my father.

 

When I told him that I was going to regroup, find new management, and start working on another record, his face clouded over.

 

“What about your sister?” he asked.

 

What about her? I wasn’t even sure what he meant. Sensing my confusion, my father pressed on.

 

“You know, Kitten, this . . . this fame, this success . . . it’s been very hard on her. Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine if you were working at the Pup ’n’ Taco while your twin sister was on the front cover of every music magazine in the country. When she went to Japan with you . . . she really got a taste of what it’s like to be in your shoes. You said it yourself, she was really good on that track you did together.”

 

“Yeah, that’s true. I know Marie can sing.”

 

“But what does she do now? Do you just expect her to go back to her old life? To give up on her dream? How would that make you feel?”

 

Ugh. Conversations like this were another reason I needed the drugs. Why would my father even say things like this to me? Why should I be made to feel guilty for the success I’d experienced? I earned it. I went through hell with the Runaways, and walked away from it all not with money, but with fame. If I used this fame wisely, I figured I could turn it into a career. But that would take a lot of work, and a lot of dedication. Sure, it was shitty luck that Marie was where she was right now, but why should I be made to feel responsible for that?

 

I started to feel angry about the way this conversation was going, the anger even cutting through the Tuinals and the cocaine in my system. “So?” I said. “What am I supposed to do? I said right at the beginning that doing the song with her was going to be a one-time thing. All I can do is try to make a go of it myself. Use the opportunities I have and then . . . maybe—”

 

“I think there’s more you can do than just that, Kitten. I think there’s a lot more that you can do. People really reacted to the song that you did with Marie. I think that’s the direction you need to be heading in.”

 

I laughed. “It was a novelty, Dad! What could we do together after that? There’s nowhere else we can take this . . . Not now!”

 

“You could cut a whole album with her.”

 

“An album? Dad . . .”

 

“You know that Marie can sing, Kitten. She wants to sing. She wants to act. I think you’re in a position to help her. And I mean really help her.”

 

“Come on, Dad! What can I do? I don’t own a record label!”

 

“You could work as a duo. If you told the labels and your new management that this is what you wanted to do, they’d have to say yes. They’d have to.”

 

I thought for a moment that he was kidding. But then the look on his face told me otherwise.

 

It all made a terrible, sick kind of sense. Full circle, right back to those days at the Kiwanis Club singing Dean Martin songs with Dad. The idea was utterly ridiculous: I knew in my gut that no label was going to agree to anything except a solo Cherie Currie record. Plus, in the past two years, I felt that I had finally crawled out from under my twin sister’s shadow. Now my father was asking me to share the spotlight with her again. I shook my head.

 

“It’s a nice idea, Dad,” I said gently, “and I could maybe make that happen down the road after I prove myself . . . but now? It’s impossible! The record labels won’t go for it. I need time to breathe. I can’t just jump into something like that. Please be realistic . . . Kim only suggested it because it was a novelty and yes, I wanted her to feel proud of herself but now . . . I have to find out who I am. I deserve that much, don’t I? Even Kim didn’t expect me to do a whole album with her.”

 

At the mention of Kim’s name, Dad’s face darkened. My father was not a man who showed anger often, but this time he shook a little and spat out, “Kim? What does that creep know? He’s made his living exploiting you girls!”

 

Then my dad fell silent. He didn’t look so good. His eyes were watery, bloodshot. Over the past few months, his face had been filling out, his skin getting puffy and red. The booze was eating him up from the inside. I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there watching this once proud man trying desperately to pull his broken family together. I needed a pill, I decided. I needed to end this conversation now, and get some chemically induced peace into my brain. Some calm.

 

Dad looked up to me. “I’m not asking you, Kitten. I’m telling you. Family has to come first. If you can’t put your family first this one time . . . then I’m sorry, I’ll have to cut you loose. Do you understand me, Kitten?”

 

“Yes, Dad,” I said quietly.

 

“Marie is your sister. I want you to help her. Otherwise, I’ll have to wash my hands of you.”

 

I stood there nodding, dumbstruck. I wondered if he knew what he was saying. Maybe he knew about the checks. If he did, he was too proud to say anything. Too proud to admit that his own daughter was stealing his money to buy drugs. Maybe this was his way of making it right. Maybe he could forgive me so long as I helped Marie. Maybe then he could pretend that I wasn’t a thief.

 

“Okay, Dad,” I said again. I walked away, confused and disoriented.

 

“Kitten,” my father said, “not a word of this. To Marie, I mean. Marie would never accept this if she felt that I . . . got involved. It has to come from you. She’s too proud, too stubborn.”

 

I nodded. Proud. Stubborn. I guess that was a Currie-family trait.

 

At three o’clock the next morning, I staggered out of Daddy’s car. I had borrowed it for the evening to hit a party in Malibu that turned out to be really wild. I couldn’t stop laughing. The world was spinning around me, and I felt just about as wasted as a human being could get. When I hit the fresh air, I noticed deep scrape marks along the side, which exposed the raw metal underneath. I guess I’d sideswiped some cars. Maybe. I couldn’t remember much about the drive home. Some strange kind of autopilot must have kicked in, steering me over the freeway and back to the house somewhat intact. There were other deep holes in my recollection of the evening, and if I’d considered them too long, I might have fallen into one and never came out again. I remembered being in the bathroom, and people pounding on the door to be let in. I had fallen asleep on the toilet. That’s when I’d staggered out to the car. Still, despite having totally trashed my father’s car, I couldn’t stop giggling. The whole situation felt so unreal, so completely absurd.

 

Inside the house, the living room was rotating. “Stop it,” I slurred, grabbing hold of the couch to try and make everything stay still. “Don’t move!”

 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone standing there. She was very unsteady and she was rail thin. I jumped, and then realized that it was my own reflection staring back at me from the big ornate mirror. I straightened up and tried to take a good look at myself, but the floor suddenly shifted under me and I staggered off toward the kitchen instead. I made it to the sink, and grasped hold of it, unsure if I was going to vomit or not. I groaned, but the puke didn’t come.

 

I heard a familiar voice floating up from the darkness. It sounded like Marie. Marie in her typical overbearing way saying, “What the hell is happening to you, Cherie?” I heard that voice a lot these days, lecturing me, judging me. The only way to shut it up was to drown it out with more pills. I turned, and nearly fell over when I realized that it really was Marie.

 

“Oh shit,” I slurred. “I thought you were in my head.” Then I burst into laughter again, and the laughter had a weird hysterical edge to it.

 

“What the hell is so funny?” Marie spat, looking completely disgusted. I couldn’t answer. I kept right on laughing. Roaring, doubled over, the tears streaming down my cheeks.

 

“Stop it!” she hissed. “You’re going to wake up the whole house!”

 

I put a hand over my mouth, and tried to stifle my laughter. Marie looked so funny standing there in her stupid, plain nightgown. The whole scene was so stupid, so suburban, so dull! This isn’t what the Cherry Bomb should be doing! Standing around in a kitchen getting a lecture from her sister! Marie shook her head. “You’re going to kill yourself, Cherie. You drove home like this? You’re gonna kill someone else while you’re at it!”

 

“Oh, stop it.” I laughed. “You’re so fucking square sometimes. You sound like Grandma!”

 

“Daddy knows about the checks, you know,” Marie said, folding her arms. “You were using Daddy’s money to buy your cocaine!”

 

I shook my head. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that if I’d been sober, this revelation would have really upset me. I should have felt awful, like I was the lowest of the low, but all I could think about was how absurd it all seemed. Thank God for drugs, that’s all I can say. I dismissed Marie’s concerns with a wave of my unsteady hand.

 

“How could you not expect him to find out!” she demanded. “You spent almost a thousand dollars on coke! You cleaned him out! All of his money!”

 

“Oh, phooey,” I slurred. “You do coke, too, Marie. So don’t gimme the Mother fuckin’ Teresa routine.”

 

“I pay for my own drugs, Cherie. I’m not a thief!”

 

“Oh, blah, blah, blah!” I screamed. As I did this, I gave a drunken wave of my arm, and my purse slipped out of my hand and hit the floor. It yawned open, and my little blue-and-red Tuinal capsules spilled out all over the floor. This started me laughing again, especially when I saw the look on Marie’s face. Oh God, my sister had become such a huge downer these days!

 

Marie’s face darkened further. “Did you hear me?” she growled. “Daddy’s broke! Because of YOU! Stop laughing!”

 

But I couldn’t stop. I was about to get down on my knees to start retrieving my pills when suddenly I heard a loud crack. It came from nowhere and I suddenly found myself flying through the air, my face slamming into the refrigerator. I didn’t feel any pain. I was on too many pills for that. Instead it was a purely disoriented sensation: the world had suddenly shifted around me without warning. It was only after I sank to the floor that I realized what had happened. Marie had slapped me! My face started feeling numb and puffy where it had collided with the refrigerator.

 

Suddenly, out of the fog of booze and Tuinals, I felt the anger rise in me. I leaped to my feet, ready to kill. Terrified, Marie grabbed a chair and actually held it up to fend me off like a fucking lion tamer. I wasn’t laughing anymore. My face was contorted in rage, and suddenly I had a diamond-sharp clarity.

 

“YOU FUCKING BITCH!” I screamed. “HOW DARE YOU!” I lunged at her clumsily, and hit my face on the leg of the chair. I tasted copper, but tried to lunge again anyway. Marie’s face had a look of total and utter horror on it.

 

“You’re bleeding!” she screamed. “You’re BLEEDING!”

 

Marie had never hit me before. When she saw the blood, she dropped the chair and burst into tears. Suddenly the tension was defused, and I staggered back holding on to the sink for dear life, trying to avoid falling flat on my face. The world was spinning faster, faster. I looked up, feeling the hot blood dripping down my chin. I saw my sister sobbing hysterically. I saw the lights on behind her. In the doorway was my father, Grandma, and Aunt Evie. They were standing there, watching this ugly scene play out with looks of disbelief on their faces.

 

“Aw, Cherie . . .” my dad muttered. Grandma looked like she was about to faint. I saw my aunt Evie turn her back, unable to even watch anymore.

 

Just looking at my father, I could see that he’d been drinking. It was in the way that he stood, in the way that he held himself. Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time he didn’t look like this. My father wasn’t so good at holding his booze these days. Once upon a time he could hide it so well . . . nowadays he was beginning to look like an old man to me, shaky and unsteady. I closed my eyes, and felt the unsteady ground lurch underneath my feet. From somewhere I could hear Marie sobbing, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Nobody else said a word. They just stood there, mortified, too ashamed of me, to say anything.

 

The next morning, nobody said a word about what had happened. They were too embarrassed. I started to avoid my family as much as I could, spending more and more time with my new boyfriend, Tommy.

 

I’d met Tommy at the Sugar Shack, where he worked as a bouncer. I thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. As well as possessing chiseled good looks, Tommy had a temper and could be as jealous as hell. I liked that about him. It showed he cared. Another thing I liked about Tommy was that he didn’t judge me when I got high. In fact, Tommy took almost as many drugs as I did. But he could hold his drugs well, and that was good, because most of the time I needed someone to look after me.