Straight Life (50 page)

I realized the hate that I had, and it scared me. I was a madman. I wanted to kill people. Richard felt the same. And we were so violent these guys were actually afraid of us. Richard said, "Come on, man." We left North Beach and went downtown to the Tenderloin. That wasn't as bad. At least there were some people there that dressed like human beings. I didn't want to have anything to do with the young people. They were so corny.

We ate and got a cab, and Richard took me to the airport. He told me, "Man, you gotta be careful. You're out in this world now. You could have killed somebody in there and be right back in that prison." And I was close to it. I started fantasizing forming a white vigilante committee. People who'd stick up for the white race and not lay down and take all this hate that's coming from the blacks. Who'd be men. Who'd be proud of our heritage. The blacks were proud of their heritage. I envied them that. The whites were like little babies. They couldn't do anything. I was ashamed of being white. The blacks stuck together and did what they preached. I saw what they were talking about in the joint. They preach separatism and the formation of their own state, but then they turn around and preach the destruction of the white race by balling all the white women so the children will be black. And I saw that that was happening in North Beach, and the white chicks were all for it.

These chicks were rebelling against their parents. Their parents are weaklings who care only about money and anything to stay out of trouble. Who never stand up for any ideals. Who have no morals. Who don't make their children respect them. Who set such bad examples that the young white girls from Brentwood and Beverly Hills think that it's hep and right to go out with black people to show that they aren't like their parents. Their basic premise is commendable, but it's taken advantage of by these black guys that are full of hate. These guys have been oppressed for years. Now they're just using these white chicks for their own ends. They ball them not because they love them or want them but to satisfy their hatred against the white people, against the girls' parents.

I saw that I had to some way get rid of my hatred or it was going to kill me. For the blacks, it's beautiful to hate because everywhere they turn they've got people to support it and to join with them. And they can talk about it. It's a badge of honor, a badge of courage they can wear on their sleeves, and I admire them for it. But there was no one to join in with me. No one. The people that had the nerve and would be freethinkers were on this other kick of trying to undo the injustices they felt their parents had done. I was alone.

Before I left San Quentin, I became friends with a guy there, Joe, who had a sister living in Hollywood. She was a singer. Joe had written her thinking she could help me out and I could help her professionally. He gave me her number and wrote and told her I was coming out. I came in on the plane and got a bus to the parole department in West L.A. I got a parole officer and some money to get a place to live. I walked from the parole department down to Olympic and La Cienega. I was still debating whether to call Christine or not. I wanted everything to be completely new and open. Diane was in CRC. I thought, "Maybe I'll call. She can help me find a place." And I wanted to get laid, too. It had been a long time. I called her, and she said she'd pick me up. She told me she had a little yellow Anglia with a red stripe on it. I waited, and she drove up, and I looked down into this little car. Her skirt was almost to her pants line. I noticed that she was tall; she had red hair; and she looked pretty sexy to me-especially after doing all that time. She said, "Hi." And I said, "Hi." And she said, "Well, get in." She said she'd been hoping I'd call. She said, "What do you want to do?" I told her I had to get a place, and she said, "Why don't we go to my place? You probably want to relax."

We're driving and I'm glancing at her and she doesn't make any attempt to pull her dress down. She has long legs. They seem pretty nice. I looked at her face. She had a little black thing above her upper lip. It looked like a mole at first, but it was a tattoo. She had a hard, cold look about her, a bluesy, floozy kind of look, and when she talked and I looked in her eyes I could see that she'd been through a lot and was kind of bitter. But then I also felt compassion for her. She was like a whipped dog that still had a lot of guts left.

She lived in Hollywood in a teeny wooden house in back of another house on Gordon Street. We went in and she said, "Would you like a drink?" I said, "Well, I'd like to have some brandy." She said, "I've just got wine. I'll go to the store. You take your coat off, take your tie off. I'll be right back." She went out and while she was gone I looked around the pad. I saw that she had a hi-fi set and a piano and a lot of records and a lot of music. When she came back I drank the brandy, and she asked me if I wanted to smoke some pot. She got some out and rolled it, and I noticed that she rolled it better than any guy I'd ever seen. Everything she did ... A couple of times the phone rang, and the way she talked on the phone was real undercover, underworld. I found out she was dealing pot to support herself, and it was kind of exciting to me. I was going back into that same life, but she was so unlike Diane, who couldn't do anything at all. This one seemed strong, as if she could really take care of business.

We goofed around, talked about everything, and finally she said, "It probably was pretty hard there being without sex." And so we made love, without really any feeling. I noticed that she smelled clean, and her cunt was pretty, and she made love good. Then she said, "Where do you think you should stay?" I had to find a place to live for the parole department. She took me to a hotel and I got a room and she said, "Well, what are you going to do now? Why don't you come over to my place. You won't have to eat out. It'll be cheaper." We ate, and she said, "It's no use you going home. You're welcome to stay here if you want." So I spent the night, and instead of doing anything else I ended up staying with her. She was so strong. She eventually just always seemed to keep me around. That's the way it started. I stayed there. And pretty soon I was just there.

3

1966-1978

19

Christine

1966 - 1968

WHILE I WAS in Quentin the last time I got a letter from a counselor at the women's prison at Corona. She said that Diane was there at CRC, a lightweight prison for little kids and lame little girls that I was never able to go to: I was too evil and bad, a wild monster convict. Diane wanted to write to me, so her counselor wrote first to make sure I wanted to correspond. I wrote back and said yeah, sure, because I was already formulating a -plan.

I had never been able to do all I wanted to do to Diane. I'd put her through a lot, but we'd gotten hooked again and that had stopped it. I wrote to her, and she answered. She had written Les Koenig at Contemporary Records. She'd used my name and begged him for my albums. He sent her about seven of them, and she had the albums all up in her room. That was her claim to fame at CRC. She was the Great Art Pepper's Old Lady. All the chicks would say, "Wow, is that your old man?" We corresponded, and she tried to clean up for all the things she'd done when I was in Quentin before and she was in Frisco. I wrote back, "Don't worry about a thing. I can hardly wait until we get back together again. Everything will be different." I had her completely strung out, and she thought everything was cool, but I'd never forgotten what she'd done. I'd heard millions more stories about her being used by black pimps, and balling chicks, and blowing everything I owned.

As it happened, I got out first and went to Hollywood and called Christine, and we started making it together. But I kept writing to Diane, telling her I was out and everything was great and I was going to send her money and I was going to come and visit her. Here I was for the first time with her in prison and me out, and she's dying for a visit. I'd tell her, "Don't worry. I'll be up as soon as I can. I'll send you money. I love you." And she's falling all over herself telling the girls, "He's coming to see me! He's going to send me money!" She's getting all prettied up. I wrote and told her, "I'll be up on the weekend. Get all ready for me." Which she had done to me. I had waited week after weekend all dressed up. I wouldn't even sit down because I didn't want to wrinkle my pants. I'd paid to have my clothes pressed to be as clean and handsome as I could, and I'd stand out in the yard waiting for my name to be called, and week after week passed without a word, and I never saw her, never got a penny from her, nothing but stories from people saying she was balling this cat and that chick.

I didn't visit her. I wrote her and said, "Wow, I'm sorry, but something came up and I couldn't make it. I'll be up next weekend without fail. Be all ready. I'll be there at such-andsuch a time." Again, I didn't go. I wrote her. I said the same thing and then I didn't write again. Not a word. And that was the end of it. I never saw Diane again. She got out and went back, and when she got out again she was dying, and she tried to reach me, but by the time I heard about it, it was too late. She was dead.

(Ann Christos) I think Art's fame attracted Diane. It was important to her. She liked important people, being with important people. I think Diane would have made it to a higher level if she hadn't got involved with Art and drugs. I think Diane started using because she couldn't control Art. She told me she decided to join him, maybe that would work. But they tormented one another. She attempted suicide. He did. One time Art said he was going to slash his wrists, and she went and got him a razor. Just games. And for Art, I think it was habit that kept him with Diane. Art's balled lots of women, but he's a moralist, a purist, and when he gets involved with a woman he usually sticks until something breaks it apart. They had established this niche, and they were alone. I know because I've been in those niches.

When Diane came out of CRC the second time, she got tight with her kids; her boys came to live with her. Then she found out she had cancer. Diane got all the morphine she wanted for her pain, and her son started to rob her of her pills. He was a doper. So she went to live with her mother. (Her mother was a dyke, dressed in manly clothes and things like that.) That's when she requested to see Art. He was in Synanon and they didn't give him the message: they didn't want to upset his tranquility. She wasted down to under eighty pounds. I was at CRC at the time.

Actually, Diane was the only woman I could ever talk to and discuss things and banter with without, you know, how you say something and people get offended-they take things personally. You could just talk to her and be honest and be critical, and she was the only woman that I'd ever encountered that had this open type mind.

(Marie Randall) We were both born here in L.A. Our parents were divorced, and we were much closer than sisters usually are. It was she and I against the world. Diane never felt loved as a child. Being the older sister, she said that when she was a little child, she would try and hug and kiss my mom and dad, and they really didn't go for it, and she said, "And when you were little, they'd try and hug you or something, and you'd just turn your back and walk away." She didn't admit it to me until not long before she died: "They'd be nice to you, and you'd just walk away from them." That's probably why they were nice to me-because I wanted no part of them. So this, I think, was the beginning of all her problems. I've had all these years to think about it.

I was five and Diane was seven when our parents were divorced. In our conspiracy against the world, if we were living with one parent and we didn't like what was happening there, if they didn't let us do something, we'd say, "Okay, we'll go live with our mother." Which we would do, until things cooled down, and then we'd pull the same jazz on whoever we were with: "I'll go live with my father." It was easier living with our dad. He was the stronger of the two. Our mother drank.

Neither of us had to study in school. We both got very good grades. And Diane was extraordinarily bright. Gee, on her Stanford-Binet test I think her score was a hundred thirty-five.

Diane was very wild as a teenager, very wild. Well, it was really shocking at the time, but she'd have one boyfriend at a time. She didn't go out with everybody every night. She smoked early. So did I. Things other girls didn't do at those times. She met Ted, who was her first husband, and she had a baby when she was seventeen. I guess she thought she found the love she was looking for. But he was also seventeen, and she grew, and he didn't. So even if Art hadn't come along, that would have ended. He was into motorcycles and things like that, and his parents had enough money to take care of him, and when they wouldn't, Diane would-working in an ice cream parlor, something like that, trying to keep the family together.

Diane met Art the day he got out of San Quentin in a shiny blue suit and white socks and brown shoes and ten dollars or something. She was in her early twenties. She was gonna save him. Hahahaha! She had actually led a reasonably sheltered life, and she was gonna save Art from old demon dope. Even though she'd been working in a jazz club and all that stuff was around her all the time, she didn't even know how to drink. One time I took her to Reno and she's trying to be very sophisticated. She ordered a screwdriver in a zombie glass and needed a water chaser for it. And she spent the whole night on one drink, chasing it with water.

Diane was working in a jazz club. She needed the money, and she liked the hours. Neither one of us ever liked to get up in the morning. Ever. And she could be with the kids in the daytime. I had done it first, and she saw that I made a lot of money and my hours were very short, four or five hours a night, and it was easy work that any dummy could do.

I've always thought Art looked like Marcello Mastroianni He was a very good-looking man in those days, and Diane was always attracted by good looks. She didn't care how nice someone was, they had to be handsome. Well, she was gonna straighten Art's hand. I said, "What about the kids?" She said, "That's no life for them being around ... " But she didn't mean that, because she was a very selfish person and she just wanted to be alone with Art. She didn't give a damn about the kids. Even before Art, when she was their mother, she would buy them fifty-dollar suits, which was a lot of money for a five-yearold kid in those days, or very expensive presents, with the money she made, but she didn't give them the love that she didn't get. Bought 'em things constantly.

I think Art connected the night he got out of San Quentin. She fought it at first, but it would have happened whether Art had come along or not. You see the signs. She used to sit down and eat a whole banana cream pie sometimes or bake three dozen cookies and eat every one of them. Now, that's compulsion. And it's only a symptom. As drugs are only a symptom. And if it hadn't been drugs it would have been alcohol or some other excess because she always had a problem.

When I saw this happening, it really disturbed me. That's when Art and I would have terrible scenes. They would be broke constantly because they were shooting everything up their arms and they would come and bum on me, stay with me. If I knew Art had something, I'd threaten to call the police, and he'd have to go flush it down the toilet and want to kill me. I know he would have killed me if he thought he could have gotten away with it. And I thought it was all his fault. I blamed him for everything. But I had great feelings of ambivalence because I really liked him when things ... when bad things weren't happening. You know, we'd go to a drive-in movie, the three of us, and they'd stop off at a pharmacy first to buy a quart of Cosanyl, and we'd sit at the movie and have a ball. They'd pass it over to me: "No, thanks." Brown bagging it. They must have liked me to offer to share it. Hahahaha!

They had a great deal of affection for one another, using baby talk. He tried to please Diane. I was married to a man in Palm Springs, and they came down there, and Art went into hock for her. He bought her a beautiful diamond and sapphire ring for Christmas one time on the Friendly Credit Plan. He bought her a Lincoln convertible. My husband didn't have any money, but his mother was a millionaire, and Art wanted Diane to look as well as I was looking. And that's certainly affection and love and not just status.

Art bought her a poodle at about that time. Zsa Zsa. That was a very neurotic dog. She used to eat everything-furniture, clothes. She came with us on a crazy trip the three of us took to San Francisco, when we got all the flat tires. Diane and I could laugh at anything. We thought all these flat tires and crazy Zsa Zsa were funny, but Art saw absolutely no humor in the situation. Every time we got a flat tire, Diane and I would get the giggles and say, "How many more can you get when you only have four tires?" Things like that to us were funny, and that's how I -miss her so much. `Cause we could laugh ...

Right before we found out she was going to die, Diane bought the most beautiful bed you've ever seen, a mattress and box spring with a twenty-year guarantee. We got to giggling after she found out she was dying: "All my life I've wanted this bed. I buy it with a twenty-year guarantee, and I'm gonna use it a month or two!" One day, after they opened her up and found out how hopeless it was, she's in the hospital, we're sitting there smoking, and the doctor comes in and says, "What are you doing, smoking?" She says, "What's it gonna do to me now?"

She regretted all those wasted years with Art. They could have been productive years. When they were married, all the jobs Art got, he got because of Diane. She really pushed his career, and it was a constant frustration to her. She did everything to help him, his talent. Of course, she could shine in the glow of it, but, other than her own selfishness, she truly wanted him to be a great star because she thought he deserved it.

Art got Diane another poodle after Zsa Zsa. Bijou. Art loved Bijou so much. They paid three hundred dollars for her, I understand, and do you know, he hocked her to a connection! And Bijou never forgave him. After he got her out of hock, the very first time she saw him, she turned her back on him. He didn't even exist. She was never friendly to him again. She was the most sensitive person that there was. You know, they lied and stole from me, broke into my house, but hocking her was just beyond the realm of believability. They gave her to me, and Bijou became my whole life.

Diane's suicides-that was another very funny thing. They lived off Glendale Boulevard on Fargo, the steepest hill in Los Angeles. And I had a friend, Frank Sinatra, Jr., who was Frank Sinatra's cousin, and he was going to take us to the Mocambo for Sinatra's opening show. So, Diane, knowing she had a deadlock cinch that I was going to be there to pick her up, took fifty or sixty phenobarbital. I arrive, all gussied up for this show, and there she is. She took 'em an hour or so before I got there, knowing I was going to be there to save her. Well, called the ambulance, all of that. The hill was so steep the ambulance couldn't get up it! Hahahaha! The only way they could get up to save this dying girl-they had to back up Fargo hill!

She wasn't really trying to kill herself. These attempts were a cry for help. She never really tried to kill herself without a guarantee. I'm a very dependable person, and she would do it when she knew I would get her. And what she wanted was more attention. What does anyone want from a suicide attempt?