The Sunset Strip Diaries (15 page)

One night, Cristabelle and I ran into a guy I used to know through the Casey crowd named Michael Michelle (he was called ‘Mikey’ at the time, but for all intents and purposes, I will use the name Michael, because that is what it changed to). He told us that everyone was going to the Swingin’ Thing show at The Roxy that weekend. They were the new “it” band and all of the cool people would be there. Cristabelle and I agreed that we had to go. I was secretly thrilled that I could finally watch the main players in the cliques first hand. I could stand among them myself.
This was it!

We showed up at The Roxy, trying to act all cool and unimpressed. I was terribly excited to be there, but I was sure I had to hide such foolishness.  We went inside and it was super loud and very dark. The people I could see appeared to be smiling and colorfully dressed. Beach balls were being passed around in the crowd by tan girls with long blond hair and chalky pink, almost white lips that kind of glowed in the dark. They were in little Marcia Brady outfits of peach, yellow, and rose. They didn’t look as sleazy as most of the other girls I saw. I later found out they were all from a beach town in Orange County called Huntington Beach. I looked around at the rest of the audience. It seemed as if every big band was there networking. Michael and his friends were walking around talking to people, not really watching the show. No one who was cool would go to the front of the stage; they stood back by the bar and socialized.

Swingin’ Thing’s songs were about surfing and doing it with the lights on. They even sampled the Beastie Boys’ “The New Style.” I gathered that I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to the band so I tried not to stand there staring, but inside, I thought they were really talented and different. I actually liked them. They didn’t sound like suicidal Scandinavians or angry bikers. They were cute, happy, and sexy. I looked out into the crowd. Everyone was drinking, laughing, and tossing the beach balls. I was
sold.
I don’t think I have ever been so sold. I definitely felt they were more my cup of tea than what Jimmy was doing.  He could go ahead and go out without me. I had found
my
place, my very own scene. I wanted to be nowhere else.

Jimmy was still going to his own spots, and after a while Cristabelle stopped wanting to go out as much as I did, so I started hanging with Michael. Now I don’t know if this is because I was unintentionally visualizing what I wanted until it came into being or what, but very shortly after running into Michael on The Strip, he moved into a condo only a few blocks from where I lived with my grandmother. A guy named Dusty owned the place and needed roommates, so Michael moved in along with a guy named Razz.

Razz was a big part of my Hollywood life. I met him through the Casey crowd as well, and had even hooked up with him prior. He had the look of a musician: very, very thin and very tall, with (let’s all say it together now) long, black hair. How do I put this…His hair was not exactly luxurious looking and his skin was not the smoothest I’ve seen. And, I am sure he wouldn’t disagree with me in saying, he had a big fuckin’ nose. He was not your typical Adonis. In spite of all of that, he somehow thought he was fabulous and hot. He was
so
confident with his looks that everyone else believed him and treated him as such. He carried himself as if he was a god, often looking down on others for
their
looks. He had no problem getting girls and was dating some of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. It was fun to be around him when I looked good and it was hell when I was not up to par.

If I looked good, he fawned over me and praised me and paraded me in front of everyone saying, “Isn’t she
hot
?” But if I had gained weight or I had split ends, he would let me know immediately. I felt like I was having a sit-down with my boss when I was told these things about my looks. It made me nervous. Razz couldn’t be bothered with anyone who didn’t have “the look,” whatever that was in his head. He called everyone ‘honey,’ as in “You just don’t have the look, honey” (said with raised eyebrows) and he wore women’s perfume. One of the greatest nights ever was when he pissed out of a fourth story window at the palm-tree-lined Studio Club on Wilcox, right over the entrance to the building. We were all shocked, and he responded by saying, “That’s Hollywood, babe,”
in his drawn out, bored voice. When he walked out of the doors later that night, he slipped, literally catching air, and then landed straight on his back in a puddle of his own urine. Everyone said, “That’s Hollywood, babe!” between guffaws and cackles.

Michael was also very confident, but in a more friendly way. He didn’t make me nervous or scare me like Razz often did. He was a tiny little guy with super long, black hair and lots of makeup and colorful clothes. He was always laughing and joking and hanging out with whomever was up and coming, or whoever was deemed “in.” He was very social and outgoing but excluded anyone who wasn’t cool. He always dictated the in crowd. Razz would not be seen with a girl who didn’t look like a supermodel, and he had to have some sort of respect for a guy to befriend him, even if it was just his look, so he wasn’t as easy-going about things. Regardless, they pulled together an in-crowd for the Sunset Strip, linking different people from different bands together and hand picking pretty girls to join. And most important of all, they were more than willing to pick me up and let me tag along with them to Hollywood on the weekends.

It would usually be early evening, the sun still out. After getting ready, I laid there on my messy bed, listening to Hanoi Rocks or Faster Pussycat, arms propped up, waiting to see Razz’s little red Mazda RX7 slow down in front of my house. Once I saw that bright red car, I ran outside, excited for the night to begin. Razz was usually wearing sweats and a scrunchie around his wrist. He always started out the evening going over how cool he was, reminding himself of his status as if to pump himself up for the night. It would go something like this:

“Honey, let me tell you something. I can’t be
bothered
with someone who doesn’t have the look, you know? I mean,
I
have the look. I look like a rock star. I’m tall, I have great hair, I have the clothes, I have the connections. It’s only a matter of time before I am doing something big.”

When we got to the condo, I took a seat on the couch. Dusty had a fluffy white Persian cat that looked like it should be eating Fancy Feast out of a Baccarat goblet. She chased shadows while the guys chatted about their love lives. Razz would reiterate how beautiful his chicks were (and strangely, I would find that he was not exaggerating), and how he dated nothing but the best. I nodded. Michael would tell me about girls he had crushes on, asking if he should call or not call or why they were ignoring him. His voice was a pinched, nasally, Valley Girl voice- it sounded like this:

“Like, whot should I deewww? I like,
like
her. I think she goes out with a lot of other guys. Should I tell her I like her? Or maybe I should try to make her jealous…thot would be kewl…”

Then it was on to a beauty discussion. Michael and I discussed the plucking of brows and if it were normal to see a lot of hair in the drain when you took a shower. Sometimes Razz would cook dinner and yell in a shrill voice, “
Michael honey! Dinner!”
I would then wait for them to get ready for the night out. They drank their beers in the shower and blasted Yaz or Dead or Alive (Michael’s two favorite bands). I loved the getting ready time. They sat around with their hair wrapped in petal pink towels, drinking more beer and gossiping. Then they applied their makeup with a steady hand, lining their eyes and applying lipstick, beauty spots, and mascara. Their hair took a while because it had to be teased and hair-sprayed.

We all drank until we had a buzz, piled into a car that was blasting music and got on the 101 freeway heading south. It took about twenty minutes to get to Hollywood, so we continued drinking beers in the car. It was very exciting, all smashed together on each other’s laps, laughing, singing, and smacking each other. We zipped around traffic- Franklin to La Brea, La Brea to Fountain, Fountain to La Cienega, La Cienega to Holloway, Holloway to Sunset Boulevard. Once we got there, we parked on a side street off The Strip. We drank more beers in the car then got out in the dark and walked through the crowds, saying hi to (their) friends, stopping to drink with different people. We went in and out of the Whisky, The Roxy, the Rainbow, and Gazzarri’s, not to mention the sushi bar across the street from the Rainbow, Ten Masa. Every one of those places was always filled past capacity and we could barely move. We continued through the night, getting increasingly drunk and doing reckless things like crawling over fences, getting in fights, peeing in bushes or being thrown out of bars. I felt like I was going to the biggest and best rager of the century every single weekend. It was non-stop. The vibe never died down.

Even though there was chaos coming from all sides of me, I felt in my element within all of this craziness. I felt so happy to be around people who weren’t staring at me because they thought/heard some horrible thing about me. I felt happy to be in a group of guys who laughed and partied with me like I was one of them. When I went back to school, I walked with my head held up high. I was in a crowd that those kids could never penetrate. They would be laughed right out of the clubs. It eased my nervousness at school and even made me friendlier, because I felt
happy.

Little did I know, I was about to get even happier.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Valley of the Dancers

Jimmy was peeved by my weekends with the guys, but I convinced him they were old friends and it was platonic. I told him I looked at them like brothers (brothers that wore makeup and pink). Although it annoyed him, there was nothing he could do if he didn’t want to take me with him when he went out to his hangouts. The guy had worked hard to get to where he was socially; it took him a long time to create a name for himself and gain credibility. He had endured who knows how many days of rejection before being accepted into the personal lives of these cool people who were featured in magazines and on television. If taking
me
along with him was going to get in the way of that standing, then there was no question in his mind: I was simply not going with him. It wasn’t up for negotiation. I wrote in my journal that summer:

Jimmy is painting this huge mural on the wall at the Cathouse and they say they are making him ‘alumni’ next. I guess I am happy for him, but it seems like they are stringing him along sometimes. It is a really big deal for him to be in that group along with Axl Rose, Taime Downe, Riki, etc. They get to wear a special leather vest and be studs I guess. It seems similar to rushing a fraternity. I guess to be initiated, you have to sneak into the Universal Studios lot, climb up to the window of the house used in the movie
Psycho
, slap a Cathouse bumper sticker on the wall inside the window, and then take a Polaroid picture of it. Apparently they have all gotten away with it, but I know he is gonna get caught. He will do anything for them. He would probably even dump me if they asked him to.

I don’t know if it is because I finally stopped asking him to go to his hangouts and it worried him, or he knew it was going to be a great show, but Jimmy finally invited me to the Cathouse one night. He said I could bring Cristabelle. There was some special, secret performance that was going to occur, during which some of the guys from Guns N’ Roses were going to jam with some other famous guys. I was finally going to the friggin’ Cathouse. I could check it off my mental checklist. The thing that sucks is that I was always drunk for these great performances of world famous bands, so I can’t even tell you if they were great or horrible. I just remember keeping my eyes straight ahead and not looking at anyone, trying very hard not to let on that I was a sixteen-year-old that had no business being there. Inside, I felt really lucky and special, and was delighted that Jimmy took me.

Jimmy moved from his condo into a house with one of his buddies, who lived only fifteen minutes from my grandmother’s place.  I saw him after school sometimes, and in the daytime during the weekend. We left our separate social lives out of the equation and spent our time being lovey-dovey and romantic.  He was a great guy, but he had his issues, like most of the people in Hollywood. For one, he drank entirely too much and did stupidly dangerous things like running across the freeway in the middle of the night, dodging cars. And, like I mentioned previously, he was
always
fighting. One time he knocked on my window in the middle of the night with his pale face full of blood. He was shitfaced drunk with his head kicked in. His blue eyes were dazed looking, his black hair caked with dirt and blood. He said he got knocked out by some guy and while he was on the ground, a girl kicked his head with her boot.

While Jimmy went out with his buddies and got into trouble, I continued to frequent The Strip with Razz and Michael on the weekend nights. We went to see bands like Jailhouse, The Zeros and Blackboard Jungle. I started to go there every single weekend, each weekend being more exciting than the last. I didn’t seem to notice that I never paid a dime for a cocktail or an entrance fee. I just thought everything was free. Now that I look back, I see that other people were paying for me. While Razz and Michael were relatively popular with the doormen and often
did
get me in places for free, I am sure that Razz opened up his wallet more times than I realized.

It didn’t take me long to realize that it irked Razz and Michael t
hat I had a boyfriend. If a guy they were impressed with thought I was cute and asked them about me, they had to tell him I was taken. They always rolled their eyes when I said that I wouldn’t cheat on my boyfriend. I knew I would be a much bigger asset to them if I were single. I was sort of hurt knowing that they would offer me up like a sacrificial lamb if it would increase their social standing, but I also knew that it was all I had to bring to the table. I couldn’t chip in for the twelve packs we drank before we went out, I couldn’t drive and I wasn’t putting out to any of them. There was no other way for me to pay my dues.

I turned seventeen that September and entered the twelfth grade. I was finally a senior. I signed up for journalism, the stock market club, and the literary magazine. I still had my long hair dyed bright purple and I took to wearing Jimmy’s Cathouse shirts to school with Lip Service shorts and purple suede cowboy boots. I
loved
my style; I finally felt comfortable in my own skin.

There was a girl in my journalism class named Tricia Griffith. I had seen her around school and remembered that she was not liked by many people for one reason or another. She was rather obnoxious and had been beaten up by girls at school just for having a big mouth. She was half Iranian and half British, the Iranian appearing to be dominant. She had large, dark eyes with black eyebrows; smooth, dark skin, and a prominent nose. Her hair was peroxided orange, the color that appears when someone with dark black hair tries to go blond. It was quite frizzy and damaged looking, with ragged, fried ends.  None of that mattered to the guys though, because her body was slammin’. She was tall and thin, with long legs and big boobs.

I was minding my own business one day, writing some stories in my journalism class, when she came through the door cracking gum and crowing about her life in Hollywood. My spine stiffened and I straightened my Cathouse shirt.
Whoa, whoa, whoa
(cue the sound of horses being pulled by their reins) …
Slow down there tiger,
I thought. I knew for a fact that she
had
no Hollywood life, or I would have seen her. I was the only one at school in the Hollywood crowd at the time, and I didn’t want some loud bitch walking around squawking about how
she
was part of the scene. It was
me
who owned it, not her. Please.

I was torn between arguing with her and befriending her in order to keep my enemy close and snuff out any competition. She spoke of her French glam rocker boyfriend named Pierre.
Pierre
? I thought that name was ridiculous. No popular Hollywood guy would give himself a name that didn’t end in Y or IE or at least have some Z’s in it somewhere.  It wasn’t cutesy enough. Even Jimmy’s name walked a fine line, but at least it ended in the “ie” sound, which was a literal requirement.

Journal Entry 12/1990

That BITCH named Tricia is talking about glam bands and Hollywood again, the things that are MY domain! It makes me feel faint and gives me a lump in my throat to hear someone I despise so much talk about something I completely love! I saw her “glam” boyfriend drop her off at school the other day. He was so ugly. He had a shoulder length ‘fro and wasn’t even skinny! Some Glammie. She would
die
if she knew what I did this weekend. I was with Jimmy over at Riki Rachtman’s apartment with Taime Downe and the rest. I have to hide that I am any sort of fan though; I have to be very unimpressed. Dammit, I want her to know how great my life is! I
have
to brag to her! No one else could appreciate what I get to do and who I get to meet!

One day Tricia saw the bright strawberry red Swingin’ Thing flyer inserted in the cover of my clear notebook and asked to see it. We started talking about the band and then about our boyfriends and what clubs they frequented. I found out that although she was still in high school, she lived by herself in an apartment.  I was impressed. Her parents were in England, where she resided previously. She talked a lot about the Hippodrome, a hot nightclub in London. She also talked about Carnaby Street or some street that was similar to Melrose. I secretly rolled my eyes. I thought,
Europe? Please!
That was no Hollywood! Who would want to be in
London
when they could be kicking beer cans and stepping over bums and trash in Hollywood? There was NO comparison as far as me or my in-crowd friends were concerned. I had quickly forgotten how much I worshipped London as a young teenager because I was so caught up in my scene.

She then said she had never been inside an actual Hollywood club. I perked up.
I can show off!
I quickly invited her to the Swingin’ Thing show at Gazzarri’s that weekend. She wanted to bring her boyfriend, which I thought was a no-no, but I couldn’t change her mind so I invited Jimmy. I thought,
She and her dumb boyfriend will realize how cool I am and how outdated and ridiculous they are, and I will be queen of the world; residing on a throne of leopard skin and crushed velvet.
It was all a ploy for me to pump my own ego and nothing further.

I knew her big boyfriend Pierre was not the most attractive thing on earth (his lack of hair styling knowledge was no help) and he drove a beat up black Trans Am. Jimmy was thin, had the right look and had recently bought a new black IROC Camaro (they were the shit back then). It was as if he was the upgraded, cool version of her boyfriend. I felt I was cooler than her from the get go. I know, lame, but I was competitive.

So anyway, off we all went to Gazzarri’s. I loved that place. It was all black inside with big paintings of all of the former “Miss Gazzarri” dancers painted on the wall like cartoons. The girl’s bathroom was a gold glittery box with a star on the door, like a little dressing room. We all ended up getting along famously. I still didn’t exactly trust Tricia, but I wanted to show off. She was no Karen- I wasn’t going to tell her my secrets or do facial masks with her. I just kept her in my little black book as a go-out friend. She was a classic
Frenemy
.

That December was the highlight of my year. Jimmy was invited to a private Ratt show at the Whisky a Go-Go on The Strip. I couldn’t believe my luck!
Ratt
! My teenage crushes! I was
so
excited. We had press passes, as we did for all shows and concerts we attended. It meant that we were in the VIP room, backstage, partying with the people on stage. I nearly shit my Fredrick’s of Hollywood G-string that night at the Whisky. Not only did I see Ratt play, but I was personally introduced to Nikki Sixx
of Mötley Crüe and his wife, Brandi Brandt. You may be thinking
so what
. But keep in mind: I had been staring into the heroin-possessed eyes of Nikki Sixx all through the ninth grade. He single-handedly threw me over the edge with desire and led me away from the teachings of my Christian school. I can pinpoint it on my lust for Nikki Sixx. Was this a good thing? No! Was I happy to be face to face with the guy whose picture was in my school locker two years prior?
Fuck yes
. Nikki Sixx was tall with perfect white teeth, green eyes and a gorgeous face; I could barely look at him. I felt like fainting straight backwards. Brandi was beautiful and doll-like, dressed in black with long dark hair and scarlet lips. They were both totally polite and said hello, shook my hand and what not, as if we were at a personal friend’s cocktail party.

So if seeing Ratt play in an intimate setting and mingling around the Sixxs wasn’t enough, Riki Rachtman brought over lanky, blond Duff McKagan
of Guns N’ Roses and a blond chick. I was like,
No, no, I
cannot
be meeting Duff Mc
Kagan
right now, in a setting of his peers at a Hollywood show. This just
can’t
be happening.
He was tall and hot and I could barely look at him either. He had a drink in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and a Sid Vicious chain around his neck. The girl had platinum blond hair, a heart shaped face, cherry colored lips and a white dress. They smiled, shook my hand, and were just as cordial as the Sixxs. I noted to myself that being introduced by someone with credibility was the ultimate way to meet these guys. I wasn’t lifting up my shirt to a roadie in an alley. I felt important; I felt part of the crowd. So I was seventeen, so what? No one knew. We were in
Hollywood
. It was such a thrill! I am pretty sure I met Warren DeMartini of Ratt and his brunette wife, but I don’t remember if I was introduced or if I just saw them. The night was so spectacular that I honestly felt like I had just taken twenty-five hits of crack. I was completely high on adrenaline. Fireworks were going off inside my head, confetti was sprinkling down in my brain. I wanted to do thirty backflips right there in my cheetah print pumps.

Jimmy and I continued to hang around Riki and his girlfriend Diane the rest of the year. Diane was very small and tan with really long, golden brown hair, green cat eyes and huge boobs. She was gorgeous. She had a gap in her teeth and a smoky voice. She did a lot of sexy posters- I often saw her picture taped up in guys’ lockers at school. She was always in a see-through football jersey or a bikini or something. She was very sweet and friendly toward me. I liked her a lot.