The Sunset Strip Diaries (22 page)

The band Jimmy formed with Pierre started to garner interest. They recruited a French friend of Pierre’s as the drummer (Tricia thought he was the hottest thing she had ever seen), named Andre, and a few other guys to complete the lineup. Jimmy and his band felt they were “this close” to getting a record deal. I secretly didn’t want them to make it. I was such a hater. I sat around thinking,
Who would buy his records?
I felt that the only two Hollywood bands that weren’t a fad were Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses. Oh...and Van Halen…and Ratt… and Poison…

Jimmy flew to New York with his band to accompany L.A. Guns at some show, and they met with Polygram records. He said he was riding around Manhattan in limos and was put up in an expensive hotel. While he was doing all of that, I started hanging around a friend of Bobby Berry’s, named Harmony. He was tall with teased, platinum blond hair, a great square jaw, rounded white teeth, and light baby blue eyes. He was a truly beautiful human being, and had no attitude whatsoever- he was almost like a Golden Retriever puppy or something. Coolest guy ever.

Harmony talked about art galleries, beauty products, Thai food, and Catalina Island at midnight. He liked Ragtime and the ballet, Madonna and lobster at Gladstone’s. He worked in a sex shop selling dick stretchers and dildos, and he used to wear false lashes, garter belts and teddies in his old band. He idolized Morgan Fairchild; he thought she was a goddess.  He wanted his jaw to look just like hers.  I was like,
Dude, it already
does.
Morgan Fairchild wishes she could look like
you
.

In hindsight, I can see that he may have been gay and not out of the closet. His wearing garter belts and teddies didn’t faze me, even though he was taking it to another level than the rest of the guys I knew. Most of the guys were completely normal (well, s
omewhat
) once they were away from The Strip and had their “costumes” off. My gay-dar was completely screwed up from dating these glam guys. How was I to know?
Garter belts? Sure, why not?
His fondness of the ballet should’ve tipped me off, yes. But again, I was in an eccentric, batty scene that was so much like the Mad Hatter’s tea party on acid, that I didn’t see what was right in front of me. Still, Harmony was one of the nicest, sweetest, and most interesting people I met out there.

In November of 1991, I went to a new underground club called “The Church,” which was off Cahuenga or something, toward the Valley. A bunch of girls who worked for Heidi Fleiss were there and so were all the Hollywood usuals. It was a real church if I am not mistaken. Inside it was all glowing with neon gravesites under black lighting. It was really cool; a mix of the Cathouse crowd and the Sunset crowd. That ended up screwing me because someone in Jimmy’s crowd saw me walk in with Harmony, and Jimmy dumped me the next day.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I single-handedly brought down that place. It was a secret “underground” club, which I guess means operating without license and permits. One night, I was speeding around trying to find the damn place, and I couldn’t locate it (hence it being an underground club). I had the New York Dolls turned up so loud that I didn’t hear the cops behind me with a bullhorn, telling me to slow down and pull over. They thought I was running from them. I finally looked in the rear view mirror and saw flashing lights. I pulled over and played very, very dumb and bimbo-y to the male cops. When I got out of the car, I said I couldn’t find where I was going and I needed help. I mindlessly gave them the address and they tried to help me find it. Needless to say, the place was busted that night and was shut down soon thereafter. Guess I wasn’t playing dumb. I
was
dumb!

Around that time, Michael decided to get legitimate and join a band as a singer. After all, what the hell were these people doing on The Strip if they weren’t promoting a music career? Well,
partying
of course, but there had to be a front. And Michael wasn’t about to go learn how to play an instrument; that would be too time consuming and take away from his social life. So he joined a little-known band called Alleycat Scratch. All of them had long black hair, white skin and wore lots of makeup. They wore mostly Lip Service stuff in black and purple. I don't remember if they were talented or they sucked, because I was usually pretty wasted at their shows. I just know they went from zero to sixty in a week because of Michael’s popularity; they really lucked out. Michael was one of the most popular guys on The Strip; he knew
everyone.
Alleycat Scratch had a full house at every show and built-in friends to party with every weekend.

Let’s see…Alleycat Scratch. Devin Lovelace was the guitarist and he seemed pissed off whenever I saw him. He rarely spoke around me and never smiled- but that could be because he found me annoying. He had shoulder-length hair that appeared to be relaxed or straightened in some way.  Boa (formerly Bobby) was the bassist and was a little intimidating because he was quick and witty- clearly intelligent. He had long, stringy black hair and huge features. He wore a Charlie Chaplin hat and was pretty social; people liked him a lot. He appeared to be the brains behind the operation. Robbi Black was their drummer; girls went ballistic for him. He was very cute, with puffy lips, pretty cat eyes, and kind of feminine features. He had very long, dyed black hair, almost to his ass. He got along well with everyone and was generally a nice guy.

With Alleycat Scratch as a front for many, many more parties and much more craziness, we were wasted non-stop. The three other guys in the band were serious about making music, but Michael didn’t really care, he just wanted to party. He moved in with them in a building on the corner of Yucca and Whitley, in a very bad area of Hollywood. I forgot his apartment number at first and stupidly asked the security guard, “Have you seen a skinny guy with long black hair?” He said, “You just described half this building.”

***

Jimmy and I still really loved each other, but neither of us would leave our social lives. They were like families we
had created for ourselves and they were more powerful than what we were to each other, I guess. We both got something from our scenes that fulfilled us. Mostly ego boosts and confidence, I think. I don’t even know why I wanted to
have
a boyfriend. It was absurd. I never
saw
Jimmy that year! If he would’ve just let me hang out with him as I originally wanted to, I would’ve never ventured off on my own. That really came back and bit him in the ass.

I turned eighteen that September. It wasn’t some joyous occasion for me, I barely noticed. I was already living as an adult. An irresponsible, crazy adult maybe, but an adult nonetheless. I came and went as I pleased; I was never home. I didn’t have an established family structure because my mother was working two jobs and my sister spent as much time as possible away from the house. I hadn’t seen my father around, which was good.  I was still working at the beauty supply store and I started to attend the local community college that fall. I was signed up for film and media classes, which were interests of mine before I turned to the dark side and depended solely on my looks for an identity. It cracked open the hard pod that was my soul. Just a tiny crack. I was so interested in the film class that my heart hurt. It was a class that focused on film noir, mainly Hitchcock. Watching Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart in
Rear Window
made me forget about my life. I thought the films were so beautifully put together, so gloriously scored, and so perfectly costumed- it was just painfully wonderful. I longed to do storyboards and direct a beautiful movie.

The media class (Social Values in Mass Communication) was so interesting to me that I read the book in my free time, highlighting passages that I liked. My journalism class also compelled me. I felt a stirring in my gut, swishing around with all of the alcohol. It made me feel like more of a person just to be
learning
something. My mind craved it. But there was a crazy party going on, and not everyone was invited. I foolishly told myself that books would be there when the party was over.

There were some hot new faces in town that fall. They wore lots of glittered pale pink, white, and lavender, and had the perfect shade of expensively highlighted hair, which was the color of baby chicks. Despite all of that, they still had beer bottles in their hands and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. They were always with beautiful, bitchy blond girls. My crowd took them in on the spot; they got the part without having to audition. Their names were Kit Ashley, Freddie Ferrin, Tweety Boyd, and Keri Kelli and they called themselves the Big Bang Babies.

These guys appeared to have more money backing them than the others. I realized not too much later that Kit Ashley somehow had two different Jaguars and lived in a penthouse apartment on the corner of Franklin and La Brea. I believe he also had a job writing for a magazine of some sort, but that couldn’t have paid shit. Kit was a Bret Michaels/David Lee Roth knock off with a face like one of the Olsen twins, very cute. Keri was a very serious musician and did not go out partying with the other three as much. He was super beautiful, looked like a model. He had one side of his hair dyed black and the other side bleached white and had it up in puppy-dog ear ponytails a lot of the time. He thought I was ridiculous and ignored me.

All of the guys in my crowd became best buddies with Big Bang Babies, especially Freddie and Tweety. It was the smart thing to do. They would’ve lost if they would’ve tried to compete with them. I latched onto Freddie first; he was the most approachable. He seemed surprised that I was interested in befriending him and latched right back on to me. Freddie had the same bleached hair, deep blue eyes and a great smile. He amused me for some reason- he was kind of a sad sap, lacking confidence compared to the other three. I hung with him a lot. Tweety was living with an heiress called Tipsy LaFabula in a house in Laurel Canyon. She supported him, naturally. She wore feather boas, huge Audrey Hepburn hats, and elbow length gloves. He was the one who walked up to me before he knew me, asked if I wanted a boyfriend, and then walked away once he heard how little money I made. I love that.

Tweety had huge eyes that were made up like Twiggy, with tons of eyeliner way outside the rim of the eye to create an even bigger eye. He sometimes wore a bandana tied around his head with the knot on the top like Aunt Jemima and always had a cigarette in his hand. He never had an expression on his face whatsoever; he was always very calm and restrained. He was never crazy, yelling, or fighting like the other people in our crowd.

One time I took Tweety to The Strip and I opened my trunk so he could throw his stacks of flyers inside. He saw my school books and looked up at me with a puzzled face. I stood there staring back at him, shivering in my little gold dress, wondering what the problem was.

He said, “You are like…
smart
? You’re in
school
?” He took a long drag of his cigarette and blew smoke from his lungs. “How old are you?”

I felt nervous for some reason. Was this going to ruin my image?  Was this not a good thing?  I was convinced I should have hidden my books and thrown a couple of gallons of Jim Beam in the back with a dead body.

I told him how old I was and he said, “Eigh
teen
? What are you doing hanging around guys like
us
?”

I scrunched up my eyes and said, “Well, how old do you have to
be
?” and slammed the trunk.

I went to a party with all of the popular guys one night. At one point, I was holding court- they were all around me in a circle, sipping drinks and talking. Tweety, Robbi, Freddie and a few others were there.  I was flirting and being coquettish and feeling all great. Without realizing it, I backed into a candelabra. I saw a few of their eyes widen and I smelled something burning. My hair was starting to go up in flames. Everyone at the party stopped what they were doing and watched me scream, shriek, and try to stamp out the flames on my head. Michael helped me to slap myself in the head; he enjoyed it far too much. Luckily, the fire was eating up my hair spray before really getting down to business with my actual hair, so the damage was nothing a little teasing couldn’t cover.

In the coming winter months, my crowd hit party after party and went to lots of shows. We all seemed to be paying attention only to each other. There was a band we saw all the time called the Shrinky Dinx. They got a record deal and changed their name to Sugar Ray, because Milton Bradley was going to sue them for using the name of one of their toys. We were like “Sugar
who?”
Then there were our buddies that were in a band called Slamhound. We must have partied at their place on Orange five thousand times. They became a band called Buckcherry, and went on to fame and fortune, while we were all chugging beers in the dirt somewhere.