The Sunset Strip Diaries (34 page)

We heard through the grapevine shortly thereafter that Sabrina had gotten her hands on Ashley.  I thought to myself,
Isn’t that, like, child abuse
? But before I could think too much about anything, a smear campaign was started on Birdie and me. Rumors started going around that we were lesbians. I didn’t think lesbians were such a horrible thing to be, but I didn’t want to be labeled a man-hater. That was so un-sexy and I was all about being sexy. I thought about dumping Birdie as a friend to quell the rumors but then I thought,
Wait, she is a pretty good friend.
That, and she had too much on me. Had Ashley started the rumor? Nah, she had just slept with Sabrina. Was it Jimmy? The Seattle clique?  It could’ve been anyone. Nonetheless, it was going to ruin the remainder of my image if I didn’t fix it immediately.

With our popularity on shaky ground, Birdie and I started to turn our efforts to the L.A. celebrity crowd at Bar One; a place where we were considered new and fresh. We pushed our way through the crowds standing outside of the red velvet ropes and waited an entire second for the bouncer to check our names off the guest list. I loudly sighed and said, “I can’t be
bothered
with this.” We then glided through the door like princesses, to the crowd’s dismay. We sat with Rich Ross and he said we could order whatever we wanted. I should have ordered some filet mignon and lobster or some foie gras and Dom Perignon, but I was a girl of simple taste and ordered up the classiest of drinks for us: Midori Sours. They were the Cosmopolitans of the early nineties.

Rich Ross said he wanted to set us up with two twin models, but I said I needed to see them first and he was offended that I didn’t trust his judgment. The man wore running shorts every night of the year. How could I trust his judgment? Anyway, Birdie ended up in the men’s room, snorting a bunch of coke with a businessman in a suit. I ran into a few blonds from my high school, who used to snub me back then. They were on
my
turf now. I relished the attention and the paying of homage.

That New Year’s Eve, we were supposed to go to a party hosted by that crazy magician, Fig. He always had a huge rager up in the hills, with ice sculptures, dancing, and a huge lit-up pool overlooking Hollywood. I recall seeing some plastic dog poo at one of his parties- it was so random. Anyway, the town’s other New Year’s Eve option was a rich girl throwing a party at her parent’s mansion in Pasadena, but there was no way I could go because of the Seattle crowd of girls she hung with. Again, they didn’t care for me and they cared even less for Birdie. They were still very territorial over Stevie, whom Birdie was still dating on and off. They also loved Lesli, but they knew better than to try to fight
me
; I would tear a bitch up.

We ended up going to Shandy Becker’s, as a last resort. Of course some drug addicts would have us. Michelle and Dusty were there; Razz, Missy (she was back), Razz’s friend Jay Jay, Teddy, and of course The Becker. We were all supposed to pile into a limo and go to a party at KNAC DJ Tawn Mastery’s house. At the last minute, Teddy wouldn’t come out of the room because he was too strung out.  Shandy shut herself in her room with him and they both stayed home on New Year’s Eve. Whatever, none of my business.

Here is what I wrote about the night:

I missed Missy so much. We hugged to death when I saw her and caught up on gossip. I introduced her to Birdie, who fell in love with her too. Missy looked like a model in a black sparkly dress and her long hair back to blond. Her baby face looked especially pretty with pale pink lips and black, fringed eyelashes. She was telling us how she hitchhiked across the United States with a bunch of her friends when she was fifteen. Her parents were trying to tear her between them and she said, ‘Fuck this.’ She imitated her teenaged self, leaning back with her pelvic bone out toward us, sticking her thumb far out in front of her with a sneer on her face.

Everyone snorted a bunch of coke except for Michelle and me. We all piled into a cab and went to the Rainbow, which was jam-packed, and squeezed into a shiny red booth.  Jay Jay bought everyone a bunch of drinks and food. When it turned 1993, he popped a bottle of champagne high in the air. It started overflowing and everyone put their glasses under it and caught it. We all kissed and hugged one another in our gold and silver sparkly outfits, laughing and feeling jovial. It was all fine and dandy until Jay Jay left with some chick and left us with the check, which no one had the money to pay.

I was held there until someone coughed up money. Birdie, in a metallic bronze dress and long ponytail, opened her big mouth to tell the waitress that working while intoxicated was against the law. The manager came over and cussed Birdie out in the worst way- she had tears in her eyes when he was through with her. Anyway, we all went directly back to Jay Jay’s afterwards to yell at him for ditching us with the bill. When we got there, we saw that he had brought home some tweaked-out chick in a purple sequined dress. I took one look at her Adam’s apple, grabbed Jay Jay, and dragged him to the kitchen immediately to tell him he had brought home a transsexual. It was a guy. Maybe it was my experience in the beauty supply store dealing with many transgendered “ladies,” or maybe it was because I was the only one not on drugs, but I knew Lisa was a man.

Jay Jay freaked out. Poor Lisa was indeed a man in drag, with tits and makeup. I got drunker and was being mean to her, as per Razz, who was thrilled someone was being mean. He said I took after him (“She takes after me! I am her uncle!”) Then Lisa proceeded to read Birdie’s palm. She told her future, and said she would die young.

To change the subject for a minute, I drove past my old neighborhood the other day, after visiting my friend Amelia, who I am supposed to move out with. It was so weird. I looked at each house and remembered who used to live in them when I was a kid. Some of them are still there. It felt so weird to see my old house, and the windows that I used to climb through. I drove by Jeff Hunter’s. That was a sacred place to me for years, before I reintroduced myself to him. I drove by all the spots on the sidewalk that were uprooted by tree trunks, pushed up into bumps that we used to “pop wheelies” on with our bikes. I drove slowly by the front of my high school. I was going “boom!” in my head to each spot that changed my life. I saw the spot where scummy Casey stopped his truck and rolled down the window to talk to me. Boom! Just like that, my whole life changed.  I never turned back from that day, when I was in my concert T-shirt and bare feet right on the sidewalk. I was instantly in deep trouble. I can’t believe he was cruising the high school looking for young girls, and that I was the one who was troubled enough to take his bait.

I saw all the spots where I sat and cried and all of the places I walked with Abby when we were ditching classes. I saw The Wall, where all of the stoners sat in the morning smoking Marlboros and Camels. I was short of breath thinking of all of the memories I had there. It is really amazing to me that I didn’t know how big the world was. It only consisted of that little neighborhood for so many years, just me and my sister and our parents. I had that school counselor who tried to help me. Now there is no one to take care of me. I have to do things for myself now. I have absolutely no idea where I am going in life.

Sadly, my sister was completely strung out on drugs by that time. She wasn’t just doing it here and there; she had a serious problem. No one tried getting her help, including me. She was dating a guy named Jared, who was a drug addict and came from a family of dealers. He got her hooked even worse. She looked like a skeleton. Her beautiful, shiny hair was broken, brittle, and orange; her caramel skin was pale and ghostly. Her bones were showing and her eyes were sunken. She was really moody and often flew into a rage over nothing. But I was used to that- it was the way I operated myself. Everyone around me was on drugs as well, so nothing stood out to me. I just felt it was a shame she was hooked, too. First dad, and then her. Was I next?

Journal Entry 1/24/93

Presley just called here and asked me if I had been on any dates lately. I figured that since I don’t really see him out that maybe he wouldn’t know who I was talking about if I named someone. So I admitted to a date with Kit Ashley on Wednesday night. He knew exactly who he was, and was pissed. He said, “Did you kiss him? Did you fuck him? Do you like him better than you like me?” I said no to all of it although some of it was a lie. Then he got angry and started calling me a hussy and saying that bands all over the place were scrapping because of me. The conversation wasn’t going too well at that point. He tried telling me I was whipped on him, again. I literally didn’t even know who he
was
when he first called. He was telling me that if he snapped his fingers, I would sleep with him. I said, “You have already snapped them a few times and it hasn’t worked.” He was livid. He needs to lose that double chin before he starts talking like that.

Anyway, I went out with Natalie again last night and we went to The Roxy and the Rainbow. I saw Lesli in the Rainbow and decided I would be rude. He had some girl on him but was still yelling for me to come to his table. I passed by him, raised my eyebrows in a rude Valley Girl sort of way, and just looked away. He kept yelling and yelling above the crowds. I never came back. He has been hanging out with Kim Fowley a lot, and I don’t know what that is about. Kim asks a lot of questions about what kind of music we are into- he is interested in what the kids like these days. I think he used to be the manager for The Runaways. He looks like he is wearing powder on his face, even though he is an old man with a cane.

After that, we went to Ten Masa and then to some underground club on Cahuenga at 3:30 in the morning. I was very uncomfortable there. Natalie’s drug dealer, Anton, was there with sores all over his face and a huge bandage on his nose. He was so gross. He had a bottle of beer spiked with this new drug they call liquid Ecstasy
[later called GHB].
He was so repulsive and so on heroin. He tried to kiss my hand. Oh, the irony. I didn’t fit in at the club because I wasn’t dressed in black, I was too young and I wasn’t tweaking on drugs. Something exploded in there and a bunch of white smoke filled the room- I was choking so badly. I wanted to get the hell out of there, but I had to wait for Natalie to score her drugs. People and their drugs…man…they will withstand anything to get those drugs.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

How it All Died

Journal Entry 1/26/93

Went to the No Bozo Jam at the Whisky with Birdie. Some guy bought our way in and bought us drinks. He said, “You gotta
buy
friends in Hollywood.” I didn’t argue with that. There was a long line for the women’s restrooms and no line at all for the men’s restrooms, of course. We barged into the men’s room and went into a stall. Birdie got out her compact and put a bunch of speed on the mirror. I noticed there were chunks of brown stuff in it. I was like, “Birdie…. there is heroin in there.” She didn’t care and went ahead and snorted all of it. The drugs made her sit in a corner with her eyes bugged out all night. A bunch of our friends “jammed” on stage. True to form, Lesli tried to do something cool and it backfired. The idiot tried to do a stage dive and everyone moved out of the way instead of catching him. He hit the ground so hard he shattered his hip. He had to be carried out and put into an ambulance.

I went to visit Lesli in the hospital, where he was in traction- his legs were strapped into bars that were hanging from above him. He couldn’t move. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I started to fall for him. I thought maybe I could really be with him and actually started to open my heart up to him a little bit. I thought that maybe I had been wrong about him. Maybe he was the one, the one I had been ignoring. He started telling me he loved me and that we should be in a relationship. I finally agreed.

I was walking into a party one night soon thereafter and looked up to see him walking across the street with a young, pretty girl. I had a bottle of Jim Beam with me and I went over to him and tried to break the bottle over his head, but he caught my arm in mid-swing and held it. I felt like such an idiot. I had been played- not a good feeling.

Journal Entry 1/27/93

Razz’s dream has finally come true after all of this time: he is now in a relationship with Missy and is living with her. The other night, she and I went out because he had to work for Prince’s club, Glam Slam, driving someone somewhere in a Rolls Royce. When we were leaving, she wanted to stop by a liquor store but it was closed. She knocked on the window and they got a look at her and opened up the store for her. We drank beers in the car on the way to Hollywood, then we stopped in a parking lot behind a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard and made these gnarly drinks out of Seagram’s and Diet Pepsi. Once we were sufficiently drunk, we walked down the street to the Troubadour and finagled in for free. Then we went to the Rainbow with a bunch of drink tickets she stole from Razz’s pocket. My kinda girl. We got even more wasted and went to Del Taco afterward. There was a huge line of people, so we tried cutting in front of as many people who would agree to it. When we got to this sassy queen wearing no shirt, we were stopped. He wouldn’t let us cut, but we started disco dancing with him right there in Del Taco. He stuck his tongue in Missy’s ear and then licked his finger and removed some flakes of boogers out of my nostrils! He said, “No one else will do this for you, but I will.” It was out of control. When it was finally my turn to order, I couldn’t even speak English and they took full advantage of it because when I got my tray, there appeared to be one of everything on the menu, things I didn’t even order. Then I went and put my mouth under the ice machine while Missy pushed the button. This one guy tasted his soda and didn’t like it, so he chucked it all the way across the restaurant and it exploded like a bomb on his friend. I took my tray of food outside and gave a burrito to a bum, who said, “God bless you” and then I gave some tacos to some of my friends who were outside.

Saturday night I went to a party that I barely remember; I just remember Jimmy’s hands around Michael’s neck and having Michael jump into my car. Jimmy threw a beer at him, and it splattered all over my car.

That night was the beginning of my ritual of going to Del Taco after drinking all night. Eating fast food all the time started to ruin my figure very quickly. And that was really what I was riding on, in that town. 

I was officially a has-been, washed up at nineteen years old.

I started hanging around bubbly Missy every weekend. I still idolized her and I always had the best time with her. I also felt safe with her, which was a quality that made me cling to certain girls. I started to hang out with her so much that she told me she was going to kick Razz out of her place so I could move in. At first I thought,
Cool! I would love to move in!
Then I thought,
Oh…Razz would be crushed! He has been chasing her for
years
! He finally got to move in with her and she is going to throw him out for
me
? He will be so pissed!
And that is when it hit me:

Screw
him!

In March of 1993, I told Missy I would move in. She booted Razz out on his ass. He was so mad at me; he couldn’t believe I moved in. He asked me how could I do such a thing.

I said, “Easy. The same way you became friends with MY ex-boyfriend and betrayed ME.”

He asked, “Is that what this is about?!  Jimmy?”

I said, “Why the hell should I be loyal to you?”

He couldn’t believe I was as cold as ice about it.

Missy was really comforting to me. I felt at home in her house because it was messy and lived-in. And not only that but she was truly generous with me. Clothes, shoes, food, anything. She really did take care of me. She was like a mother and a big sister. I really looked up to her.

Missy’s little duplex was well shaded and cool, because it was blocked on one side by a huge bank building and the other side was full of trees. There was a little courtyard between the cottages, with tons of potted plants and lots of house cats lounging around. It was fun living with her. I loved it. I didn’t bring much with me, so I only had one shelf in the linen closet for my things. She had posters of Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction in her bedroom and a Missing Persons album cover tacked up next to the toilet in the bathroom. The bathroom walls were a huge collage of models from
Vogue
in different fashions, mostly Calvin Klein and Versace. She also had a lot of Georges Marciano Guess? advertisements on the walls. There were tons of hair extensions lying around the place and bras hanging on the doorknobs. The floors were wooden and the place echoed.

We had barbecues with all of her dancer friends, where we filled the bathtub with ice and then bottles of booze. We played disco songs and danced on the couches and tables. Her co-worker and friend, Lisel, ended up moving in next door at some point.  She started to go out with us a lot. She was always really fun and wild when she drank, but was a mother figure in the day, telling us to wear sun block and be safe. We all went to Raging Waters that year, hopping on inner tubes in the big wave pool and crashing into people all day. We had such a great time in our unlined Ziganne’s stage bikinis that weren’t made to get wet, eating “Dippin' Dots” and taking pictures in the photo booth.

One night, Missy and I were leaving Canter’s Deli on Fairfax with some of our friends. It was about two in the morning. Some guys said something rude to Missy, and the guys we were with started fighting with them. We all finally jumped into our friend Dave’s car and left, but the other guys jumped in their car and started following us down Fairfax. They were driving really fast on our tail and we couldn’t shake them. Dave said, “Everybody hold on!” and slammed on his brakes.  The guys behind us smashed straight into us, totaling their clunker car. We were in a Nissan Pathfinder, so all that happened to us is that we got whiplash. Their hood was up like a tent and steam was coming out of it. Dave yelled, “Everybody out!” and the guys in our car each grabbed something to fight with and jumped out into the street. I had been in that sort of situation before, so I stayed put. But not Missy. She grabbed a skateboard, jumped out of the car, and started smashing the rude guy’s windshield. It was so late that barely any cars were coming by. The ones that did drive by just went around us. The guys jumped out of their totaled car and everyone proceeded to brawl in the middle of the street. Missy was fighting with a guy and he ripped some of her hair extensions out. I got out of the car and was collecting her hair off the ground! Once the guys were laying there with X’s over their eyes and little chirping birds flying in a circle around their heads, we all took off to get Slurpees from 7-11. I will never forget looking at Missy with blood on her shirt and a Slurpee straw in her mouth.

I wrote:

We have this philosophy- don’t stress about anything. We wait until the last possible minute to cough up money for bills. That way we have two months of relaxing and then two weeks of stressing over the stuff being shut off. It is not a very good philosophy, I will admit. Everything is cool, except for the phone company is shutting off our phone on Monday if we don’t pay the bill and we don’t have the money. The electricity is going to be shut off on Tuesday, same situation.

I am in the living room at Missy’s. The aquarium is making a relaxing sort of bubbling sound. We have one fish, Dre, and he is floating around by himself. It is 12:30 a.m. and I am watching a talk show about embarrassing spouses. The coffee table has my three-pound weights, a couple of bowls with soup still in them and a Michelob beer bottle. There are a bunch of nail polishes, old bills, and full ashtrays. The VCR is sitting in the middle of the floor because it is broken and Missy threw it across the room. I am eating a sour pomegranate. Missy and I are very much alike. I think the reason we don’t fight is because we never get too deep. We don’t talk about anything serious. We keep everything on a cool level that I like and that doesn’t stress me out.

It was the first time I had actually contributed to a roommate situation. I didn’t have a lot to give, and I was always late with the money, but I actually started pitching in for bills and rent. I didn’t want to use her or screw her over. We handled all of the bills in a totally irresponsible manner, but she taught me about living on your own; about the process of bills, how often they came, what the minimum payments were, how much you could get away with, what wasn’t acceptable. I went with Missy to the grocery store and saw how much food cost. I went with her to pay the rent to the landlord.  I was learning a little bit more about how to be a grown-up.

Every weekend I drove to Hollywood to pick Missy up from work. We drove straight to the 7-11 across from the Whisky and got two partially filled Big Gulps of Coke. We would then bring the huge cups back to my car in the Tower Video parking lot and fill the rest with Jim Beam from the liquor store. We sat in the dark, listening to Dr. Dre’s new album,
The Chronic
, which featured a new rapper called Snoop Doggy Dogg. We drank, laughed, and re-applied our makeup. After about a half an hour, we got out of the car and trotted down to the Rainbow and got even more trashed. There were many rock star memories that I only slightly remember because of the drunken haze in which we lived. I couldn’t do as much writing that year because I didn’t have anywhere to hide my journals. I do remember that Missy traded shirts with Slash from Guns N’ Roses one night, but the rest is a blur. Sometimes we got there so late that the Rainbow was closing and people were leaving. We would just go mingle in the crowd in the parking lot next to The Roxy. We looked for our friends and found other places to party.

But the Sunset crowds weren’t what they used to be. The new scene was called "Grunge" and I am sure VH1 could do a better job explaining that shit than I could. Even the name sounded dirty and grimy. There was no glitter and most definitely no cool colors. Even their style of partying was different. There was no silly string, confetti, or champagne being poured on your head. There were no balloons or beach balls. The Grunge guy’s idea of a party was stomping into a dirty brown room, wearing a dirty flannel shirt from a thrift store with some dirty-ass combat boots. He would have a beanie over his brown curly hair and a goatee on his face. After growling a throaty yell into the sky, he would then shoot some heroin. He would scream another powerful yell in the desert and then go and kill himself afterward. It was depressing, to say the very least.

Although Missy and I were leaning toward rap over Grunge, we started wearing little tied-up flannels, combat boots, and men’s Calvin Klein underwear peeking out from baggy jeans. We plucked our eyebrows within an inch of their lives, to try to emulate the model of the moment, Kate Moss.

The leaders of the Grunge movement were the Seattle bands: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and many more obscure ones that someone cooler than me could surely tell you about. All of the bands had albums out the year or so prior, but they started getting more popular in 1993. I started seeing Pearl Jam at more parties, and guys from Soundgarden at the Rainbow. My sister had the Nirvana CD, because they had filmed their video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” using many of the kids from her high school. Her friends were moshing in the depressing video. I listened to the CD to see what it was all about. It did strike me music-wise but I didn’t tell anyone. It made me realize all of the sadness I held in my body and it made me want to scream along with it. That was one of two or three CDs in our house, because we still had mostly cassette tapes at the time.