The Sunset Strip Diaries (29 page)

The other night we went to the Rainbow to eat mozzarella sticks and pizza. That is one thing I really like about Birdie- she loves to eat. She orders extra cheese on everything! Anyway, Axl Rose was there eating by himself in the booth next to us with two huge body guards standing in front of him. No one was even trying to talk to him; he was a little over-zealous with those guards.

Journal Entry 8/22/92

I bleached Natalie’s roots at two in the morning while we watched Goodfellas. She made me turn it off because the violence was giving her an anxiety attack. She now works at some place called Venus Faire, off Lankershim. She dances in this booth while guys put money through slots. She says there is a lot of flashing lights and mirrors so she doesn’t even know who is looking at her. She can’t see them, they can only see her. Speaking of jobs, I got a job on Melrose today. I met some old guy at Bar One and he wanted me to work at his clothing store. School starts tomorrow, it is two in the morning, and I can’t sleep.

Now it is three in the morning. I am laying here listening to Van Halen. My boobs are swollen and they hurt. It is hard to be around the people and places I am. I am starting to sweat. I need to have a normal life. I need to try to be normal: study, do homework, go on diets, go to keg parties, tan at Zuma 6, dance at Florentine Gardens... I need to try to be normal so I can live in this society. I am starting to get obsessed with the past. All night I have been listening to these tapes we recorded as kids; tapes of Karen, Becky and me messing around. They’re kind of like time capsules. I used to hold my tape recorder up to the TV and record commercials, and theme songs from TV shows like The Cosby Show. I recorded music off the radio, complete with the DJ, Rick Dees, talking over the beginning of the songs. I recorded a lot of shit. I wish it were more. I am so glad I have all the music from those days on these tapes, but they are making me obsessed. Was that really me? I feel like I am a completely different person from that girl. Where did she go? I want to be normal. I want to fall asleep at night, I don’t want to be afraid to die, and I want to hang around regular people. I don’t want to be so calculated and always try to be in the right place at the right time. I don’t want to be so attracted to such losers.

Journal Entry 8/27/92

I haven’t been to sleep yet and I have class at 9:00. I am going to have to go straight to school without sleeping. Jimmy tried to hang himself from his chandelier last night and it smashed to the ground. Then he tried to hang himself with a phone cord and it broke, dropping him into the smashed glass. I haven’t slept since Tuesday night and now it is Thursday evening. I am not tired. You would think I was on drugs, but no. My sister is, though. She is doing speed. I heard her whispering about it to her druggie friend last night. I heard the whole thing. I was steaming mad. She is a closet case. I heard her say how cool it was and that she was putting money aside for it every week, and that she liked the fact that you didn’t come off it hard. Natalie is right. Everyone IS on drugs.

Journal Entry 8/30/92

My job at the clothing store is really cool. It is next door to Johnny Rockets and Warbabies and across from Bleeker Bob’s. Melrose is hot right now- there is even a new show after 90210 called Melrose Place. Yesterday I sold jeans to one of the girls from Wilson Phillips (daughter of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, more importantly) and she was wearing this loose crocheted top with no bra and her tit fell out! Everyone was looking and I couldn’t keep talking to her with her entire nipple showing so I told her. It was so embarrassing. The manager, Rico, is a female impersonator who impersonates Cher on the weekends. He is always checking out guys and is really funny. He sits on my lap and plays with my hair. He saw these mannequins across the street that he wanted and he wiggled over there to try to get one to ‘bring home and screw.’ What is he gonna do? Drill a hole in the thing? The guy next door likes him and Rico isn’t interested because the guy ‘doesn’t know how to dress and is clumsy.’ 

Last night, Birdie and I went to see The Zeros. We showed up in platform shoes, pale pink lipstick, little clothes, and long straight hair. Right when Birdie got to the very top of the stairs at the Coconut Teaszer, the top of her shoe (strapped to her ankle) separated from the bottom of its four-inch platform. She rolled down the stairs screaming and everything flew out of her purse and all over the place. After the show, everyone went to party at the Hyatt on Sunset (Led Zeppelin used to party there) that was being thrown by a rich, fat girl. It lasted about ten minutes. I managed to have one screwdriver with Strange and we all were thrown out. So we ended up crowded around the outside of the Hyatt. Someone was trying to dance with me, Strange spilled his drink on me, and we tried jaywalking across Sunset in platform shoes. Some guy I never met from the Seattle crowd tried to grab my bottle of Jim Beam and I clamped onto it.  I actually paid for the bottle myself for once, so I told him to ask first. He nearly threw me halfway across the road. Some girl said, “Watch out- he is really mean, he’ll hit you.” I let go of the bottle after my finger started bleeding because he pinched it so hard. He said in an angry voice: “How does it feel to know everyone wants to
fuck
you?” I just looked at him and said, “I don’t know.”

Someone else in the Seattle crowd told me my nose was so far in the air, they could ski down it. Then Strange started jumping on these chain link fences laid over huge ditches in the ground and he nearly fell in. I went over there to stop him and we ended up wrestling on the hood of a car. Then we got in Birdie’s car. She had just learned to drive and was swerving everywhere. She has a major crush on this guy named Frankie from Boston, and she got him into her car to bring him to go hang out with her at her parents’ place, even though he insisted he just wanted to go home. “You don’t
have
a home, Frankie!” she reminded him. He kept trying to open the car doors and jump out. She was yelling, “You should be happy that you are in the car with us!”

(Sighs.) Okay. As far as the drugs I may or may not have done while blacked out on Night Train. I am not trying to be a goody-goody here. I did plenty of drugs later on in my life, but at that time, I had not willingly ingested any. Things were getting very dark in Hollywood at that point, darker than before. Heroin was becoming more prominent, creeping in and seducing people who were depressed about their lives for one reason or another. The party was pretty much over- we all knew it. Even my days were numbered. The countdown was on.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Enter Heroin,
Stage Left

Journal Entry 9/4/92

Went over to Razz’s place. I know, I know, he is a traitor. But I was bored and needed a break from the others. He started a band with Teddy St. John, Frankie (Birdie’s crush), Dusty, and this new stuck-up blond guy named Bradley who is dating Sabrina. Sabrina looks like a completely different person- she got her boobs, nose, and lips done. She even changed her eye color- now they are green. Her hair is much longer and even lighter blond, almost white. She told me that she and Bradley were secretly married. Who knows why that has to be a secret, probably for his “image.”

When I walked through the front door, Razz led me by the shoulders to meet Bradley, who said he was happy to meet me, and that they all talked about me all the time (great). We all got hammered and went to the shithole that is FM Station, where Razz and I started pissing everyone off again. We were girl-hitting each other, snorting with laughter, and rolling around the booth. Teddy was mad and calling us pricks and assholes. Razz started calling him Damone (from Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and I think we were calling him fat and making fun of his toes for some reason. Whenever Razz and I hang around each other too long, everyone hates us and we end up with no friends. This night was no exception.

Journal Entry 9/5/92

I sprained my foot last night on Sunset and I can’t walk. I heard my name being called from the cars in the traffic jam and when I turned back to look, I tripped right in front of Gazzarri’s. I was loaded, but I think I would’ve tripped anyway. Naturally, it had to be Sunny in the car yelling my name. And I just
had
to trip and fall on my face in front of him! My sister had to take me to the hospital later that night and they were pushing me around in a wheelchair.

Before that, I went over to Razz’s and Teddy was over there. They were bored and stretching their faces in the mirror and trying to chase me with fireplace tools. We finally got up and drank a fifth of Jim Beam between the three of us. Teddy and I were singing the Beastie Boys all loud (“So What’cha Want?”) and he was going to pour me another shot. I didn’t see him and I pulled my glass off the table to drink it and he dumped the shot on the table. We went to Sunset really late and Teddy was picking me up and swinging me in circles and we were falling all over the place. Right after that was when I fell down and hurt my foot. Teddy called me a training-wheel-needin,’ limpin’ motherfucker. We went to a party after that. Razz and Teddy were being overprotective and it was pissing off Lesli, who thought he was with me, I guess. On the way to the party, Razz and Teddy were singing Dramarama’s “Tiny Candles” at the top of their lungs and banging the dashboard of Teddy’s Jeep to play the air drums. Teddy tried to slam the windshield for effect, no big deal. Then Razz tried to do it and the whole windshield cracked! We went to Jack in the Box and Teddy laid all of his food out on the hood and stood there eating in the dark; he wouldn’t speak to either of us, he was so mad.

Razz showed me a bunch of pictures of himself at fifteen and sixteen. He was shirtless, tan, and lanky, wearing this frosty pink/violet lipstick. He was pouting and striking a feminine pose. In the background were all these pink blankets, a hot pink comforter, and Poison posters on the wall. I asked him what his mother did when he started wearing lipstick and all that. He said she just had to deal with it.

A woman named Shandy Becker started supplying Teddy with drugs. And I’m not talking some pot or a few pills, I am talking straight-up heroin. He started spending a lot of time with her. Razz and I were concerned. He was no longer funny or cool when he was under the influence. Teddy was another person who I actually liked, because he was smart and very witty. I clicked with him and had chemistry with him, although nothing ever happened between us. For some reason, I saved the process of hooking up for people I
didn’t
really like, but who were sought after by others. I couldn’t get hurt that way.

Journal Entry 9/7/92

I drank another bottle with Teddy and Razz last night and it was no fun because Teddy was insulting me and Razz was crying and depressed over Missy, who he is in love with. Teddy came up with this bright idea to call Shandy Becker; he said it was because she would take us all out and buy us drinks. Razz and I just looked at each other. We knew he shouldn’t be around her. She is always stocked with coke and heroin and Teddy is highly addicted to it all. She is completely fatal for him- she tattooed a picture of his face on her back! It seems as if she uses the drugs to keep him around, and it always works. There is not a time when he will go out with her and come back sober. We told him we didn’t think it was a good idea and he said, “Fuck
you
guys! Do you have anything
better
planned? Becker will treat all
three
of us! I was just making a sug
ges
tion! I’m not gonna touch
shit.
”

So what happens? We find Shandy Becker at FM Station, go back to her place, and Teddy goes and does lines. We try to leave for hours and he keeps saying, “Just one more shot,” and trying to get her into the bedroom or bathroom for more drugs. She came over to Razz and me with a sad look on her weathered face. “I want to go to sleep,” she said. She wanted him out.

I always thought she was the one who was cornering him and trying to keep him around. But we saw what was really going on. I found his car keys and stood up with Razz.

“Teddy, we’re leaving. Are you coming?”

His back was to us and Shandy’s profile was staring at his face.

He looked at her and said, “We’re having a barbecue tomorrow. A barbecue…are you coming? They’ll be food there, and...”

“Sure,” she said.

“Well, then I’ll just sleep
here
. It doesn’t matter where I
sleep
, does it?”

She looked at him and shook her head ‘no,’ even though it was clear she wanted him to stay with her.

“I’m not partying tonight, Teddy,” she said softly. I looked at her messy, damaged, wild blond hair and bulbous nose. He wouldn’t turn toward her; we still only saw the back of him.

“So, I’ll just sleep here,” he said.

Razz had enough. He isn’t one to stand around and wait for someone or put up with much bullshit, unless of course it is being doled out by Missy.

“LATER,” he said in a loud voice. We walked out and left Teddy there.

Later that day

The barbecue was cancelled. Dusty said he didn’t want a bunch of drug addicts at his house. Teddy is still at Shandy Becker’s and will be for days, as usual. Razz is depressed to tears about Missy, again. He is so in love with her that he is going to get an ulcer. He showed up to her place unannounced and thought it would be a good idea to try to crawl through her bedroom window to leave her a “message.” She happened to be home as he was trying to get in and she threw a full Coke can at his head.  I told him not to ever invade a girl’s privacy and that I would’ve done the same thing.

“But I love her. I just want to be with her. How can one person turn my life into a living hell? She is probably not even thinking about me right now.”

Michael used to be like that over some chick. I remember he begged me to call her up and pretend I found him dead on the floor next to a bottle of pills.

Journal Entry
9/12/92

Razz and I went to FM Station on Thursday night and got into a huge fight. I told him to get the FUCK out of my car. He was stunned. He couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t fucking around though and he knew it. I pulled over and said, “Get the fuck out.” He said, “But we are in the middle of nowhere!” and I said, “I don’t
give
a fuck.” He shut his mouth pretty quickly.

Word on the street is that Teddy started smoking heroin one of those nights that he was with Shandy Becker. I don't see how smoking it can be worse than injecting it, but it is a definite indicator to the people in this crowd that you’re going street- hard core street- when you start smoking a drug. I feel like these people party because they are sick and hurting.

Journal Entry 9/13/92

Last night I hung out with Lesli. He is living with some girl who wasn’t home. He said he went to buy her tampons the other day in a full face of makeup and people were staring at him. While I have a soft spot for Lesli, he is in no way smooth. He kept grabbing my arms and pulling me roughly, saying, “Come ‘ere,” and tugging at me and poking me and stuff. I am getting sick and tired of all this rough shit with these guys. I said, “Be a gentleman! You are throwing me all over the place!” He said he knew, but he just wanted to hang out with me. As he gripped one of my wrists, the door of the apartment swung open and a guy named Spider walked in with two girls, one of whom was really into Lesli from what I recall at a No Bozo Jam show a few weeks back. She couldn’t wipe the scowl off her Seattle face. I had a strong feeling it was because I was there and Lesli verified that once she was gone. She couldn’t even look at me. I even asked her what was wrong. She was lying on the floor (the theme of the evening) with long, stringy red hair, a pale delicate face, wine-colored lips, and dark eyes. She wore a navy blue vintage sailor dress, white fishnet stockings, and white go-go boots. What a poor sport. Lesli tried making out with me but I said no because he was wearing black lipstick and I didn’t want it getting all over me. He said, “Most girls only like me because I am in some band. I don’t like that. It is convenient when I want to screw someone…I can always find a girl who will, ugly or not. I just hate hearing girls talk about all the other guys in bands they know. You don’t do that.”

Not only was it totally uncomfortable over there, but there was a ferret locked in the bathroom. I had to pee and Lesli had to wrangle the damn thing and remove him so I could go in. We drove to The Strip after that fiasco and I parked in some remote spot and was trying to be discreet about being seen with him. That was pretty hard, because he is so tall and has bright pink hair.

He noticed that I was trying to hide him and said, “You’re ashamed of me! Aren’t you?!”

“No,” I lied, looking into his apple-green eyes. “But I can’t have people thinking I’m running around with too many guys. Besides, how do they know that I really love you?” I said, smiling.

“You DO love me, don’t you?”

“Sure I do.”

Three Middle Eastern men walked around the corner as we were getting out of the car, and started yelling stuff to us.  Lesli was scared and said, “Come on, let’s go! What if they have guns or something?” I said, “I’m not going anywhere,” and took out my compact and checked my makeup, completely ignoring them.

I saw a bunch of my friends on The Strip. Lesli ran into his friends and told them about the Middle Eastern men and his story was completely different from what really happened. He was saying he got loud with them. I stepped right in front of him, cut him off mid-sentence, and called him a huge liar, telling his friends that he was scared and wanted to leave because he thought they had guns. His friend Dexter (who is wanted for manslaughter by the way), just looked at Lesli and walked away. Pepper looked at Lesli a second longer and then walked away too. Lesli said, “Why did you have to embarrass me!?” I said, “Why did you have to
lie
?!”

I went to a party and saw all of my drunken friends. Some Asian girl proceeded to take off her clothes and show everyone her crotch piercings. I felt guilty because it was completely my fault- I said, “Let us see” when she talked about having them. I didn’t think she’d be whipping it all out. She was so drunk she didn’t know what she was doing. Strange was really loaded, lying on a big white stuffed bear. He tried to kick me when I called him a drunken lug. I hit him with a big Sparkletts bottle and then he got my head under one arm and Chantelle’s under the other and rammed our heads together, which hurt. Pepper cuddled up with the Asian girl and they fell asleep. Boy, is she going to freak out when she rolls over and sees him in the morning with his neon greenish-yellow hair the color of lemon-lime Gatorade, tons of makeup and an “X” over his lip in place of a beauty spot.
[By the way? That girl became a porn star.]

Journal Entry 9/19/92

I am now nineteen, which, so far, has been uneventful. Birdie and I went to a Faster Pussycat concert in Ventura County. The night was awful. I had a bad cold and was rubbing my makeup off and blowing my nose the whole way there. Birdie was driving us in her parent’s car. She only learned to drive a month or so ago, and had never been on the freeway before. I didn’t take that into consideration and was pressuring her to drive faster and to get into the fast lane. She started swerving all over the freeway, losing control of the car. We smashed into the center divider of the 101, in Agoura. One whole side of the car was smashed in, two hubcaps were missing, and the hood was up like a tent. We had our seatbelts on, so we were okay, although my ribs hurt really badly. We looked at each other, both drenched in vanilla shakes that had been in the cup holders. Her eyes were bugging out and I saw that she was about to hyperventilate so I just hugged her. She was about to cry and I yelled, “
Don’t
cry! You will ruin your makeup!” she listened to me, in all of my wisdom. I knew she wouldn’t want to ruin it because she had it done by a makeup artist for the ‘special event.’ There are car accidents, and then there is ruining a perfect makeup job.