The Sunset Strip Diaries (21 page)

And that came into play one night when we all went out. I had come straight from work and hadn’t even showered, so I cringe to think of the state of my lady parts. They were the furthest thing from fresh and clean that you could possibly imagine. You know where this is going (laughs). Roxy and I ended up at a party somewhere and out of nowhere, I started totally making out with him in a kitchen, next to some hanging baskets of vegetables. We went into a bathroom and hooked up- we didn’t have sex and I didn’t do anything to
him
, thankfully, but he went to town on me. All I could think was
I should have showered!

After that night, I saw him one more time. He walked right by me with a girl on either side of him, one blond and one brunette. He glanced at me and then kept on walking, as if he didn’t even know me.

I never saw him again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Big Bang Glamour Cat Scratch Punk Alley Babies

With the exception of that, uh,
indiscretion
in a random bathroom, I appeared to be playing the game correctly. I was one of the popular girls, one of the cool people. I had the look, I knew everyone, and I was confident. I had achieved my goal, no matter how lame it was. Partying with the right people for a summer increased my social value even more. It no longer mattered to me that my family was broken apart and my mother couldn’t stand me. I had a new family who worshipped me. I was on top. I got a ride to The Strip every weekend, jumped out of the car, and ran off into the crowds to find my friends. I had a toothbrush in my boot and nothing else. I was nuts.

Journal Entry 6/6/1991

I only had four dollars to last me the whole week, and I pitched in two of it for a twelve pack. Michael and I were walking down The Strip drinking those beers, when a fight broke out between Johnny Valentine from the Brats and some shorthaired guys. Johnny was socked in the back of the head, and then it got broken up. Some black girls looked at me and said I looked like I was twelve years old and should be at home watching the Gummi Bears. I was hurt for a second, but quickly got over it when dark haired, blue-eyed Sunny from none other than
Swingin’ Thing
asked me to go to a party with them! I was thrilled! They were trying to pull me into their car and it was starting to drive away when he yelled, “Come on! Come on! Jump in!” I was flattered, but I knew if I got in that car I would end up God knows where. I grabbed my camera (the ONE time I ever brought it to Hollywood) and pointed it toward them. They were motioning for me and hanging out of the car. I thought, ‘This will be the ego boost of the year if I can get this shot! The glory!’ But my camera didn’t work and I looked like an idiot taking a picture of them instead of either going or saying no.

After coming down from my temporary high, I realized that I had no ride home. I was just standing there in the dust with a camera and two dollars.  I found Michael and we got in some girl’s car to go to a party. The girl made out with Michael and before the night was through, she gave him money! That little snake has all the luck. After the party, we laid on the ground and looked up at the sky for UFOs- then we started slapping each other in the forehead. Eventually, I had to call Jimmy to come and get me. He was pissed.

Journal Entry 6/16/91

The band that Jimmy put together had their first gig at Riki Rachtman’s Birthday Bash at Madame Wong’s West. It was a twenty-one and over club with a line around the block. Cristabelle and I got in through the side door and were on a guest list. One of the men at the door asked for my ID and I started to say I didn’t have it but another doorman said, “No one asked if you had ID.” And I said, “
He
just asked me,” and the man looked at his partner and said, “Ahhh, what does
he
know?”

I had a lot of beer. Razz was there with his good-looking friend, Darren Tyler, and they were sticking their strong margaritas in my face. Darren is hot and tall with olive skin and long, burgundy-tinted hair pushed over to the side. He is currently dating the wife of someone pretty famous. She used to be a bikini-clad mud wrestler from the Hollywood Tropicana, and now she stays home while the famous husband is on tour. Darren thinks he is the shit and has the personality of a bored debutante. He had the nerve to say, “Not to be mean, but your boyfriend is ugly. Does he have some really great perso
nality
or something?” I wasn’t shaken because I had heard it many times before by bigger names than his high-school-going ass. I responded in a more bored manner than even he could muster, “I can’t deal with your attitude. I won’t tolerate it,” and then walked away with my eyebrows up. I didn’t want to stand in the long line for the bathroom so I walked right in front of every single girl in line and went right into a stall and peed. They were mad. I did that twice.

I didn’t bat an eyelash at checking out another guy at Jimmy’s show because I had just recently done worse: I had cheated on him with Roxy. I kept trying to tell myself that maybe it wasn’t cheating because I didn’t so much as touch Roxy’s private parts…but he had touched mine. And I had made out with him! I couldn’t believe myself.

Cristabelle was truly ready to change scenes at that point. She was completely exhausted. She started to take interest in the rave scene and wanted to start going to underground clubs, but I wasn’t ready to leave Hollywood. I had only just begun. I had found a place where I felt comfortable and happy and I wasn’t about to give it up to start dancing in abandoned warehouses with a pacifier in my mouth. I didn’t blame her for leaving the Hollywood scene and me along with it. I was totally using her to drive me around, which was horrible. I wasn’t even hiding it.

The guys dared me to kiss beautiful Missy one night on the way to Hollywood. She turned around from the front seat of the car and I leaned up toward her, heart beating fast, wanting to be cool in front of my older friends. All the guys woo-hooed and we laughed after kissing. I felt initiated, cool. I also felt even further away from my peers in high school and realized I had no one to tell my story to. I couldn’t tell Abby; she would think I was gay and be uncomfortable around me. I would have to keep things to myself. I continued my double life of high school student by day and cool rock chick by night.

Next thing I knew, it was time for me to graduate high school. I looked around me as if to say
What? Really? It’s…over?
I was actually enjoying my senior year and kind of wished I had paid more attention to it.  I was presented with two awards in journalism at a special luncheon- I was stunned going up to accept the plaques. I was thinking,
Me?
Really?
I felt proud to have written for the school paper, in which I had pushed my way into the title of Sports Editor (though I knew nothing about sports whatsoever), and the literary arts magazine (where they pulled my story on heroin addicts and featured a story of a black bear on a hunting trip instead). I had improved my tennis game and somehow scored A’s in economics and government, of all things. I had become proficient in the stock market club, investing my fake money in stocks each week. I rolled into the class, hung over, and bought and sold stocks like a champ. I was like Gordon Gekko, ready to start corporate raiding up in that bitch. We didn’t have the Internet then, so I had to sit there and scan the
Wall Street Journal
every day, but I chomped on an apple and made my picks- I was a born risk taker, so my portfolio beat the pants off of the others.

I couldn’t believe I had made it after how hard it was for me in tenth grade and how I had missed most of eleventh grade for being in the mental hospital. I had somehow thrived in twelfth grade; it was a miracle. Jimmy came to my graduation with loads of red roses and my dad even showed up in a bad suit. We had one last family picture taken, my mother looking thin and frail and my father looking rather tanked. My sister’s eyes were watering in the picture. She was totally uncomfortable, surprised by my father’s attendance. I had a regular smile on my face and looked completely normal. I could bluff better than anyone I knew, and it was no different that day. I looked out at the sunset over the mountains and thought to myself,
I will never come to this school again.
I will never see these kids again. It’s over.
I felt melancholy.

I spent that summer learning to drive. It was about time! I had finally saved up enough money to buy a car: a pale blue Honda Accord. My mother took me for driving lessons after she got off work each day. She was scared teaching me because I was always blasting music, speeding and making left turns on the tail of other cars without looking to see if it were safe, all during rush hour traffic. It was hectic, but she stuck with it because I would need no further rides from her once I learned to drive. I could take myself to work and community college in the fall. Once I learned to drive, I was
never
home. I went to Hollywood every second I got, driving back home shit-faced drunk, thinking nothing of it.

Missy left the scene at that time, and her girlfriends disappeared with her. She ran off with some guy and got hooked on some of the bad shit. I ran into her one time and she was almost skeletal, with dyed brown hair and black clothes. She was not at all bouncy and happy; she was even a little mean. The dazzle was gone, the smiles were gone. She was robbed of her sparkle. Razz wasn’t around as much either because some guy had pulled a gun on the teller who was helping him at his bank and it scared the hell out of him. He was so shaken up that he didn’t go out for a while. That left me with Michael, and he was curating a new crowd of his own.

While most of the bands on Sunset tried to be attractive, a few took the shock value route, playing up the fact that they were not “pretty.” One of those bands was called the Glamour Punks. They had been around for a few years, but were always breaking up and replacing members, so they were on hiatus at certain points. That summer they had a new lineup and were back in full force, socializing and getting themselves out there. I was interested to see what they were all about.

Journal Entry 7/21/91

As
The Strip started to fill with people this past weekend, I saw the crowds part: The sickly, infamous, overly-made-up Glamour Punks were trotting up the trashed sidewalk. Michael and I butted into their group and next thing I knew, I was shaking hands with Strange, Skitzo, Spazz, and Dizzy Damage. It’s kind of hilarious that these guys were all polite and shaking hands. The singer, Screaming Boy Mandie, ruined all of that by screaming into my ear as loud as he could (hence the name). He was smiling these wide, snarling grins to his surrounding onlookers. His hair is fire engine red with shaved sides and his eyes are thickly lined, coming to points on both sides. He could very well be Satan, or the closest thing to it. Whatever image he is trying to project for his band- it is working. People are interested in him. The guy has showmanship, he’s got something different going on.

Strange
was very sweet and didn’t seem as hard core as the others, but he had the look and fit in with them physically: skinny, long black hair, pale skin, wearing black leather bondage type pants and a ripped punk T-shirt. Dizzy had his chin and his tongue pierced and was relatively quiet with sad eyes. He sort of looked like a punk Johnny Depp. I can’t remember how the other ones behaved. They were pretty interesting though, something a little different from what I have been seeing. Their logo is “Hated by Millions, Loved by All” and they have a really big buzz right now in the magazines.

The Glamour Punks caused a general fear amongst the super-glammy bubble gum bands. To be on their bad side was not recommended because they could beat the shit out of most of the people there. Michael befriended them, in a smart social move. He was no fool. It was at that point that our crowd turned from Glam Rock to a little more edge; we were in with the Glamour Punks. While other styles of bands still hung in our set, the Glamour Punks would remain the driving force of the crowd and sit perched at the top of the party scene because there was no one to take them down.

There were not only new guys on the scene, there were new girls, too. I first saw a girl named Birdie Montgomery in August 1991, a few months after I graduated.  I was about to turn eighteen and she had just turned fifteen. The reason I knew that was because she was out one night running around in a tight red gingham dress, announcing to the world that it was her fifteenth birthday. She looked like a young Jessica Alba. She had olive skin and shiny, caramel colored hair that was all one length and curled at the ends. She had perfectly shaped brows over huge, dark Bambi eyes and thick, black eyelashes. She had a gorgeous white smile and a beauty spot above the corner of her left lip. I thought,
Oh wow, she is beautiful- but she is really ditzy and young.
I saw her another night later that year when I was hanging out with Bobby Berry. He got one look at her face and said she looked like a live Cosmo cover. He dropped my hand and went straight to her, never returning. Word on the street was that she had been dating one of the guys in Guns N’ Roses at fourteen years old- limos sent to her house and everything.

I saw another blossoming rival outside of The Roxy. I smiled at her pretty moon face and noted her very long, straight, gold hair and pink cheeks. She came over to me and asked me if I knew Birdie. Then I remembered some girl telling me about a thirteen-year-old named Ashley stealing her boyfriend and I immediately knew it was her. I stayed clear of her.

I couldn't believe that I was one of the
older
girls on The Strip. I was only eighteen! It had happened overnight- I went from being too young to borderline too old. It was shocking. And with Missy and Cristabelle gone, I was running out of girls to hang out with, so I took a chance and hoped that Tricia might be as desperate as I was. I called her one day and apologized to her for beating her up. What can I say, I was a nice person. No, not really. I needed a sidekick. And get this: She was so bored that she was more than happy to hang out with me again, despite the ass-kicking she received. We were not exactly students of civility.