The Sunset Strip Diaries (17 page)

I regained my initial teenage confidence through the attention I received. I became very bold, very brave; I wasn’t so broken. The only bad thing about that time was that I had to be completely wasted to live the life I was living. I had to be buzzed just to walk out the door in the outfits I wore. I had to drink to calm my nerves when hanging around rock stars and other cool, older people. I basically had to be drunk in order to walk into the rooms I was entering. It wasn’t as if I was walking into high school dances on the weekends. I had made it into the exclusive, obscure crowd for which I was pining. I was constantly beaming. I felt like kissing babies, shaking the hands of the common folk and cutting ribbons at the opening of new towns. I was on cloud nine.

Could it last?

CHAPTER NINE

Cat Fight

One night, Brent Muscat of Faster Pussycat started hanging around our crowd. He was a friend of Razz’s, so he was always kind of around in the background. He confided in Razz about his songwriting and his life and what not. His band was bigger by that time; he was more famous in my scene than he was when I was younger and had only seen him in
The Metal Years
. He came to the condo to have beers while everyone got ready and I stupidly called Jimmy from Razz’s room to tell him I was leaving for Hollywood. Brent saw that I was all nervous talking to my boyfriend and wanted to cause trouble amongst us laypeople. He started playing around with me while I was trying to talk on the phone, grabbing one of my legs and trying to lift it up into the air until I screamed. I was trying to remain composed to talk to Jimmy, but Brent was determined to distract me from the call. I remember saying, “Can you hold on just a minute, Jimmy?” and then slamming Brent in the head five times with the phone receiver, as he laughed and tried to block me, the coiled cord becoming tangled around us. When I got back on the phone, Jimmy was furious. He didn’t know who was in the background, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he found out.

The next weekend I was back with my friends in the hot tub at Dusty’s condo. I sat there in my zebra print bikini from Marshall’s, cursing myself for not being prepared with something cooler to wear. Through the rising steam, I looked at the tags on some of the dancer’s bright string bikinis; they were all from a place called Ziganne’s of Hollywood.
Ooooh, another place I need to check out!
I saved up weeks of lunch money and got a ride there one day. It was on Hollywood Boulevard, not far from the huge Art Deco Frederick’s of Hollywood building that housed a small museum of movie stars’ lingerie.  Once again, the Walk of Fame was on the sidewalk I was using to get there. I looked down as my feet walked over the coral pink granite stars laid inside a dark gray background. They each had a little symbol to show the honoree’s field: music, TV, film, etc. Some stars had bouquets of fresh flowers on them, and others I had to go around because tourists were taking pictures next to them. I got a little heartsick when I walked over James Cagney’s star. I loved
Yankee Doodle Dandy
when I was a young teenager. I smiled and looked at the other names over which I was walking:
Alfred Hitchcock...Count Basie…Alan Hale…

I stopped at a glass storefront full of headless mannequins wearing brightly colored string bikinis. This had to be it.
Wow!
It was so cool looking. It was clearly the place for stage bikinis- I recognized the styles from pictures of the mud wrestlers from the Hollywood Tropicana and dancers at The Body Shop. I went inside and looked through racks of brightly colored string. Many were sequined or day-glo and they were all in really teensy tiny styles that barely covered your private parts. Some were breakaway, so they could be torn off. My boobs were real and not perfect hard balls, so the little spider web bikini tops in glowing violet didn’t look good on me. All of the bikinis were unlined and would be completely see-through if they got wet, but they weren’t for swimming; they were for working the pole on a stage. Why I thought that was so glamorous I do not know. I looked through clear drawers of sequined pasties out of curiosity: they were in every color from bright magenta to rainbow sparkles. Boxes of glue sticks were next to the drawers; for keeping things in place. They were regular kindergarten glue sticks; I was surprised that the girls used that on their skin. There were huge, puffy feather boas hanging in colorful bunches on the wall. There were purple chandelle boas with hot pink tips, baby blue ostrich feathers, and dense black swan feathers. Some of the boas were so thick that they looked heavy. I felt like I was backstage in a Vegas showgirl’s dressing room.

All of the crazy bikinis intimidated me; I wasn’t quite that confident. I looked and looked through the racks and ended up picking an all-white bikini. It was pretty standard: Brazilian cut bottom, triangle top. I looked decent in the thing, so I bought it. It was so tiny that the bag they gave me was only big enough to hold earrings. I was happy to be ready for the next hot tub night; at least I would fit in with the girls.

Lo and behold, I was invited to Dusty’s to drink and go in the hot tub again on another night. Brent Muscat joined us that night and took to teasing me about having a boyfriend. Any sort of attention flattered me of course, but I could see he was just doing it because it was bothering me so much. When the night was over, I changed out of my bikini and back into my normal clothes. I wasn’t carrying a purse, so I had nowhere to put my bikini. I stuffed it in a pair of black socks, and when Brent drove me home later, the ball rolled out into his car. Razz told me later that Brent thought I did it on purpose and was convinced I liked him. I certainly did not do it on purpose- I was dying, hoping there was no yucky crust in my bikini bottom.

Jimmy came over the next day. We were washing his car in the driveway when my mom came out the screen door, a little too delighted. Right in front of Jimmy, she said, “Some guy named
Brent Muskrat
called? And said you, uh,
left
something in his
car
? He said he will come by and drop it off.” Jimmy looked at me and said, “You
left
something in
Brent Muscat’s
CAR? What were you
doing
with
him
in the first place?!”  I scrambled to try to explain myself.

On a weekend soon after that, Razz called me and invited me to a party at their place. I said I couldn’t come because Jimmy was over and he told me to bring him along. I really didn’t want to bring Jimmy into my private little world. I was nervous the guys would rat me out for doing something flirty or risqué or inappropriate; probably the same reasons he kept me from his crowd.  But on the other hand, I kind of wanted to get the tension out of the way. If Jimmy finally met them and saw that they were ‘harmless,’ he wouldn’t get so mad at me for going out with them every weekend. I finally realized that they would have to meet, so I could put the whole thing to rest. 

Jimmy and I walked up to the door and Razz answered. I held my breath. When he first saw Jimmy, he made a horror-stricken face to me when Jimmy looked away, as if to say
THIS is your boyfriend? The guy who you are choosing over all of the prime cuts of meat we are presenting you with?!
I was very uncomfortable and wanted to turn around and leave. Razz then said, “Come over here, you bitch, and gimme a hug!” Jimmy appeared annoyed that he was taking such an informal tone with me. I went over to Razz and he whispered under his breath, “I do
not
approve.” He made so many faces of disgust, that I was sure Jimmy would catch him. He didn’t.  It crushed me that Razz was critiquing the person I loved so much. After about five minutes of Razz snickering, I told Jimmy we should go. On the way home, he commented that Michael seemed like a dick and Razz seemed pretty cool. He had no clue.

Jimmy did something out of left field that winter. He somehow ran into the vampire bats of Drop Dead Gorgeous, the band Cristabelle and I hung out with over the summer. He said that they had parted ways with their singer and were looking for a replacement, and that he thought he might give it a shot.
Wait…what!?
I didn’t know Jimmy was interested joining a band- I didn’t even know he could sing. He had been content with being an artist and a scenester, but it seemed that he was now entertaining the thought of being a musician. I was pissed. Why did he have to pick
that
band of all bands to join? The offer fell through after a few weeks; the fit wasn’t right in one way or another, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But my relief was premature: Jimmy decided
he
was going to start a band. When he told me, I immediately choked on my Rice-A-Roni. My eyes were watering as I tried to dislodge a piece of vermicelli from my windpipe. Did he ask his own buddies from his own scene to be in his band? No. He asked Tricia’s overgrown ape of a boyfriend to be his bass player! My jaw was hanging open for so long that ten flies must have flown into my mouth. Couldn’t this guy pick people other than the ones
I
knew?

***

In January of 1991, the United States went to war with the Middle East. The news called it “Desert Storm.” I was actually concerned, in between drinking beers. I pictured myself in black and white
film: there I was, clad in a 1940's dress and sergeant hat, singing “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” while bombs went off in the background and sailors cheered in the audience. When I was at school, it hit me harder. We were assigned commentaries in journalism class, so we sat around watching the grainy night-vision footage on an old TV as we click-clacked on our typewriters. I was afraid of things I had never considered before. What if it got much, much worse? What if we were bombed? What if there was a draft? What if we had to start rationing food? We were children of the 1980’s- we had never seen a
war.
Something that could bring hard times, something that could even bring death- those thoughts were new to us. I thought of the people who were actually fighting for our country and I was stunned at what heroes they were. I didn’t know anyone like that.  Everyone I knew was wearing more makeup than the entire cast of
Cats
and had pants so tight they had moose knuckles.

Okay
, two things happened around then that set me back. And let me please state for the record that now, twenty years later, my thought is this: You can’t blame your parents for your own bad behavior. It is up to you to control your own actions, to turn away from bad direction. You can’t go be an asshole and say, “Well, my parents were jerks, so what do you expect from
me
?” That is bullshit. A cop out. But back then, as a seventeen-year-old, it was hard for me not to hate them and blame them for every single one of my problems.

One day after school, I was sitting at a bus stop in a bad part of town. I sat there waiting for the bus, hungry and tired; wishing I could be one of the lucky people who were in cars, driving straight to their destinations without stopping for thirty other people in the same vehicle. I looked up at a truck and saw one particular man’s head looking at me. I focused on his face. It was my father. We met eyes for a split second and he saw that I noticed him. Just when I thought he would stop and give me a ride home, he turned his head and kept driving. I couldn’t believe he left me sitting there. I watched as his truck got smaller and smaller. I had dealt with a lot of crap from him through my short life, but that really got to me. It crushed me pretty hard to see that truck pass me by.

That incident set me off and put me into another bad depression. I had troubling episodes of mania and violence in the following months. I started feeling really worthless and was basically full of rage inside. Jimmy and I started arguing, but not just arguing like regular people. We argued like typical Hollywood people: violently. One of the times, I dove at him and choked him as hard as I could, and then started socking him with all of my might. I could practically kick his ass. He crouched over and let me go at it. He never hit me back. One time he shoved me against a wall, but that was it (in my crowd, that was basically standard). I felt such guilt after my violent episodes that I crawled out of the room, locked myself in a bathroom, and beat myself with anything I could find: a brush, curling iron, whatever.

The second thing that affected me was that my mother threw me out of the house for not having a job. I know that I should have definitely had a job after school, but the way she went about the whole thing really hurt me. She told me that I had, like, a
week
to get a job and if I didn’t have one by then, I had to get out. It was almost as if she knew I couldn’t get one that quickly and was just trying to get rid of me. I was surprised at the whole thing, taken aback at the suddenness of the situation. I was out partying all of the time- I wasn’t some great teenager. I am sure she had to do what she had to do, but her delivery was just so…detached. I just remember being really hurt looking at her eyes. They were dead. Flat. Black. She had no emotion whatsoever. She didn’t care where I went. I just had to get the fuck out. Bye bye. So I went and lived with Jimmy until I got a job.

I tried not thinking about my parents, but I couldn’t help it sometimes. I felt like
, Damn, the two people who are supposed to love me and care for me no matter what… don’t give two shits about me.
My mom told me to go
kill
myself and my dad not only laughed at me for being institutionalized, but he just drove by and left me sitting at a bus stop in a bad part of town.
Now mind you, I forgot all about this stuff when I was buzzed and out with my friends, but from time to time, I had to face my situation.  I had these intense feelings that I wasn’t mature enough to deal with in another way. I was so deeply hurt by these people that it stabbed at a spot really, really deep inside of me- a spot deeper than I thought my body could go.