The Sunset Strip Diaries (14 page)

There were other types too. There were black-haired guys with a punk vibe who wore bondage pants and torn T-shirts. Many of them had tattooed arms like the Cathouse guys, but the difference was that their tats were not skulls, flames, and devils. They were cartoons like Bugs Bunny or Betty Boop. They were about as hard core as a unicorn.

I heard some of their names through the crowd. There was a definite theme going on with the names. Lots of Jamies, Billys, Bobbys, Rikkis and Johnnys.  I thought,
Damn, I haven’t heard these names since “Cool it Now” by New Edition…
I also heard some other girly names like Candy, Holly, and Ginger. I could have sworn they were names of guys, but I wasn’t sure. There was sort of a scale of gayness, for me at least. Some of the guys looked
way
too much like women. They were too close to being transsexuals. I would have felt gay if I had hooked up with them.  Many of them were walking a fine line, but still man enough to want to screw as many girls as possible.

Guns N’ Roses and Poison had recently made it big by first playing The Strip, along with Ratt, Van Halen and several others. Bands from all around the country came to L.A. to play the same club circuit in hopes of drawing attention from record labels. There were bands from Detroit, New York, Boston- everywhere. Many musicians moved to L.A. alone and created their own bands once they got there. They went through the want ads in
Rock City News
and
Bam
, and auditioned potential bandmates. Some bands were looking for serious musicians, but many were looking for guys who had the right look. Once they got something together and named their band, they got to work on practicing for shows and promoting.

It felt like Halloween on The Strip when the bands
passed out their flyers, because they each had their own little theme. I felt like we were all trick-or-treating. There were bands with a beachy theme, some with a gypsy theme, and others with a kids’ cartoon theme. I saw variations of punk and glam, vampire and glam, and plain old beauty school dropout glam. They each had their own vision, their own brand, and their own marketing and publicity ideas. I was a big fan of candy and toy packaging, so I really appreciated the work the bands put into their themes. I loved the bubble letters, stars, glitter, candy, kiss marks, lightning bolts, and leopard skin. I felt like it was what my teenaged life had been missing, this creativity, this imaginativeness. This scene was not just music to me, and it wasn’t just about cute guys- it was about people who were into their art, into their creations, into making something out of nothing. People who not only loved music, but who recreated themselves, who deconstructed clothes to make a new look, who made their own rules and their own scene. It was wild, it was shocking, and it was adventurous. The creativity level was at such a high that it was electric. I had a deep respect for these interesting people (not to mention fire in my underwear for a few of them), because they had left their hometowns, come to Hollywood, and were convinced they would survive. There was only a small percent of the population who actually thought they could get away with something that risky- it was a certain personality type, the type that left their comfort zones and marched straight into the unknown, completely exposed. And it was that spark that rose from the crowds of people on Sunset.

One of the first bands Cristabelle and I saw passing out flyers was named Drop Dead Gorgeous. Two of them were really handsome, but wearing red lipstick. They had really long black hair and wore all-black clothing, but were still masculine somehow. Their theme appeared to be glamorous vampires. One of the guys was named Loren. He looked right past me and was instantly taken with Cristabelle. I thought
he
was drop dead gorgeous and was immediately jealous.
Painfully
jealous. She got into flirt mode and snagged him, straight away. I felt kind of down and defeated the rest of the night. Was I pretty enough for this place?

Cristabelle ended up dating Loren in the coming weeks. One night we went to their show at the Coconut Teaszer, which was on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard. I believe it was painted purple at the time, in honor of The Zeros (an all purple-haired band) playing there. Even though it wasn’t close to the other clubs, it was one of the spots that all of the bands played (same thing with the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard). The Teaszer had a big flight of stairs that you had to climb to get into the front door. It was super dark inside and there was a tiny little stage that was really close to the ground. It felt like someone was just doing karaoke in your living room. There were all sorts of nooks and crannies in the place, kind of like the Rainbow. There was an outside patio overlooking the huge intersection, a dance floor off in another room and a few different bars. I was less nervous than I would have been in The Roxy or a place with a bigger stage and more people in the audience, but I was still kind of scared. Scared that I looked like a geek, scared that I wasn’t acting cool, all of that.

Drop Dead Gorgeous played their show and we tried to show support without looking like morons. I was thinking,
Should I bop my head to the beat? Should I smile? Not smile? Lean against something? Not even watch?
We ended up standing there looking like bitches. We thought we looked older if we didn’t talk or smile.  Out of the corner of my eye, I tried to look around the room to see if I was dressed like any of the other people. I guessed I was in a way- but I was playing it too safe. I was in black again and went unnoticed. I couldn’t seem to strike a good balance- I was either way overdressed or invisible.

I was secretly mesmerized by the guys in DDG and very interested in seeing how they operated in the daytime. How did they live? Did they have regular jobs? Did they hang upside down like bats to sleep? I found out soon enough. Cristabelle and I started to go over to their place so she could see Loren. They all lived in a one-bedroom scumbag apartment on De Longpre in Hollywood. It was in a bad area- total crack central, not to mention a major pick up place for male hustlers. Anyway, I used to sit on their couch and just stare at all of them getting ready to go play a gig. They’d all get around the one mirror in the place and get real serious while they applied their makeup.

They had pictures of The Munsters, El Vira, and Traci Lords all over the place. I guess those were their inspirations, and fine ones at that. In the daytime, they all laid around in shorts with their stringy hair sticking to their bony backs. Well, they all had bony backs except for the singer, who was rather chubby, bless his heart. He must have been able to sing somewhat, I don’t remember. He wore vests over white frilly shirts and had long, frizzy hair.

I used to love the rush of excitement before Cristabelle and I got to their door. Kevin, the cute bassist who loved the red-headed 1980’s teen singer Tiffany, lit up when I came in. He would look at me and say “GOOD GOD.” He always bluntly flattered me. I started to wear skimpier clothing to try to elicit more compliments from him. Once I got a reaction from him, I would then feel guilty and cover up with a black jacket in case word got back to Jimmy that I was some wild woman about town. I didn’t want to publicly disrespect him.

Cristabelle and I started going to The Strip every weekend. While we were getting ready we listened to Slaughter’s
Stick it to Ya
album, namely the song “Fly to the Angels,” and Mötley Crüe’
s
Dr. Feelgood
album. There was a band called Nelson, who had a hit called “After the Rain” (I didn’t like them), that always played on the new station
Pirate Radio
(100.3). The song “Epic” by Faith No More was big and so was “What it Takes” by Aerosmith. We lounged by Cristabelle’s pool during the day, me in a zebra print bikini and a pink scrunchie in my dark hair, and she in a neon orange bikini and her blond hair piled into a bun. Sometimes we listened to the regular mainstream music, like Madonna’s “Vogue” or Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love,” which Cristabelle belted so loud that it shriveled the goddamn plants. Laying there in the California sunshine, daydreaming about The Strip and eating sugared raspberries from a cut crystal bowl, I felt that my life was as good as it could get.

I started to notice the ins and outs of Hollywood pretty quickly, as I was always sort of a spy wherever I went. I was good at spotting details and trends. The Sunset Strip scene was nothing like hanging around Jeff Hunter in the Valley. There was a definite set of rules to follow. First off, very few Hollywood guys would ever have a name like Jeff. If they did, they would change it to “J.J.” or something ‘cuter.’ They rarely had natural blond or brown hair. That was the kiss of death. Their hair had to be
platinum
white blond or dyed jet-black and at
least
past their shoulders. The colors could
not
be natural, only unnatural colors, which included streaks of pink, purple, or blue. If you had
any
sort of curl in your hair, you were “out.” It had to be straight. Many ads for musicians looking for bandmates said straight out, “no ‘brown hairs’.”

Most guys on The Strip that year were considered “Glam Rock.” They wore eyeliner at the very least and at most a full face of makeup, including the beauty spot and lipstick. Glam guys were very skinny and not muscular in any way. Their bodies were almost all the same: very long stick legs in tight black pants and lanky, slouching torsos in colorful, glittery shirts. They rarely had chest hair and no one ever had facial hair. If you are thinking…
wait…they sound like girls
, you would be correct. They looked exactly like women. I don’t know what that says about me and all of the other girls mesmerized by them, but think what you will.

If you were a guy with curly hair, you were fucked. If you were not skinny, you were fucked. If you were hairy, you were fucked. I realized at that point that Drop Dead Gorgeous, who I thought were so great, were on the ‘not cool’ list for having a singer who was plump with brown, wavy hair. You had to look like a supermodel, just to be a GUY on The Strip.  So you can imagine how difficult it was to be a
girl.

Anyone could go to The Strip. It was public property. But to get in with the in-crowd? You had to have something they wanted. And that was either: 1) beauty, 2) status, or 3) money. Usually, the face was most important, followed by youth and a hot body. There was no reason for anyone fat or unattractive to be present. If there ever was a fat person hanging in that crowd, you can bet your left ball that they had money. I know, I know. I sound like a jerk, but it’s true. A few fat chicks were wealthy enough to buy their way in. The guys were always poor and were very money grubbing, so if a girl was three hundred pounds, and was willing to shell out money for the musician’s expenses, she was allowed to hang out. It would be low profile, of course, so as not to upset their image, but they would not turn down money. It was not just buying drinks. Oh hell no. It was literally paying the guys’ rent, or getting an apartment and letting guys live in it for free and keeping the fridge filled. One fat chick in particular was named Esmeralda and had very wealthy parents. She bought one platinum-haired glam rocker a
Corvette
. I am serious. 

Most musicians lived with some sort of boring girl who wouldn’t give them too much trouble and was generally just happy to be in their presence. Those girls would always fall in love with them and that made it difficult for the guys to date any one, or even hang out with girls like me.

The girls that became actual
girlfriends
to the guys on The Strip were usually beautiful
and
rich. Just being beautiful was not enough. I had it pointed out to me very bluntly, by a popular guy about a year later who had just discovered me in his crowd at a party.

He walked up to me and said, “I like your lips. I like how the top one protrudes like that. You’re beautiful. You want a boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” I said, seeing where it went, because he was such a sought-after person.

“Where do you work?”

“A beauty supply store.”

“How much do you make?”

“$5.50 an hour.” (I added on fifty cents, like that would make a difference.)

“Never mind,” he said, and walked away, leaving me standing there.

In most crowds, men are chasing after females and the females are picking and choosing who they want. In this crowd, it was a very high ratio of women competing for a tiny ratio of men. The men were pursued; they had women throwing themselves at them. I saw how disposable the women were and I didn’t want to be like that. I already felt bad enough about myself for my earlier mistakes with men and I knew it could be a landmine of even
worse
situations if I didn’t watch out. I luckily had a boyfriend, so I didn’t have to get into any situations with guys at that point. Regardless, I could tell it would be very hard to be a respected woman in the Sunset crowd. It seemed pretty impossible, laughable even. I was nervous about how I would carry out my plan.