by William Poe
A few days later, Lyle and I moved into the apartment that Scott had suggested. The one-room lodging was situated down a narrow path behind a hedgerow of jade plants. Sandra dubbed it “the little bungalow.” I laughed when I saw the place because it reminded me of the clubhouse Ernie and I had built when we were children. We used it as a place to get naked together. At least Lyle kissed and cuddled—acts of affection I never experienced with Ernie.
“You could have gotten a real house,” Lyle grumbled when he saw the small room.
“At least it’s in Beverly Hills,” I said.
Unimpressed, his response was the all-purpose “whatever.”
The only time Lyle didn’t complain about the little bungalow was when he smoked pot, scoring it from a friend who hung out at a greasy spoon hamburger joint on Santa Monica Boulevard called Oki Dogs. The herbal smoke, blending with the aroma of mildew from the threadbare carpet, made the little bungalow smell like a cave. At least I had a sexy Homo erectus for my companion.
After sprinkling coke on a joint and shotgunning a blast into my mouth, we would have sex. Days drifted by as Lyle and I maintained a delicate balance between marijuana malaise and cocaine horniness.
We were typical among the residents of the complex. Day and night, I heard knocks on people’s doors. Looking out the window, I’d see someone delivering goods. Marijuana smoke wafted through the hedgerow. Passing by open windows, I often heard razor blades clicking on a mirror as the inhabitant laid out rails of coke.
One afternoon, I had just taken a massive hit from Lyle’s bong when a knock on our door startled me. My first reaction was to dump our drugs down the toilet, but I gathered enough courage to look out the peephole. A husky fellow with black hair puffed on the remains of a joint held tight by a hemostat that he used as a roach clip. I cautiously opened the door to see what the man wanted.
“Name’s Wayne Burrows,” the fellow said. “I, uh…I live over there.” He pointed beyond the jade plants toward another wing of the complex. “I was wondering if you might have some weed.”
Wayne eyed Lyle sitting on the couch as he took a final drag from the roach. Lyle was naked but had a towel draped over his lap.
“Yeah,” I hesitated, “I suppose we could sell you a joint or two.”
“Let the fuckin’ guy inside,” Lyle growled. “Close the damn door before someone walks by.”
Wayne leaned against the wall beside our two-grill stove. Lyle stood up, letting the towel slip for a moment to reveal his full nakedness. All the while, he kept his eyes locked on our guest. When Wayne didn’t react, Lyle wrapped the towel tightly around his waist.
“You get high on coke?” Lyle asked, pulling a mirror from beneath the couch.
Wayne’s eyes nearly left their sockets. “Yeah, man, but I don’t usually snort it.”
“Ain’t got no needles, dude,” Lyle said. “My homey here ain’t into that.”
“Snort a line anyway,” I said, beginning to worry that Wayne might be an undercover cop and that he had been puffing on fake pot. I wanted to see him do bone fide cocaine.
Wayne took the mirror from Lyle’s hand and snorted a couple of lines. It seemed to have no effect.
“Once you smoke, man, snorting don’t do nothing,” Wayne said, by way of explanation when he saw the look of amazement on my face.
“You a basehead?” Lyle asked.
“What’s that?” I questioned. For all my recent experiences, I was still a novice to drug lingo.
“Oh, man, where you been?” My ignorance embarrassed Lyle.
“Same thing as smoking rock,” Wayne explained. “People in Hollywood call it freebasing.”
Wayne reminded me of the guys who used to hang out at Jake’s, Mojo being a good example. Wayne was likeable—endearing, even—but without sophistication.
Lyle rolled two joints. Wayne paid me for them and left.
About an hour later, he returned with his own stash of cocaine. “I’ll show ya the trick about rockin’ up,” he said, standing at our stove and turning on the electric burner.
The guy was a veritable chemist, measuring out an exact portion of coke in a spoonful of water and sprinkling on just the right amount of baking soda. He held the mixture over the hot coil and jiggled the spoon. A small slab began to form. When Wayne put it on the mirror, I realized why they called it “rock.” The substance looked like a sliver of gypsum.
Wayne broke off a chunk no bigger than a pinhead and placed it on a glass pipe he had brought with him. When he touched his lighter to the drug and inhaled, a milky white vapor formed in the bowl and swirled through the glass stem.
No sooner had he exhaled than Wayne set down the pipe and ran to the peephole.
“He thinks there’s cops outside,” Lyle said, explaining Wayne’s behavior. “Happens to baseheads who use for a long time.”
The effect wore off, and Wayne returned to smoke another pinhead as if nothing strange had just occurred. When the smoke hit his lungs, he was back at the peephole.
“Remarkable,” I said to Lyle. My momentary brush with paranoia at Cyrano’s couldn’t compare to what Wayne was experiencing.
“Are you going to try that?” I asked Lyle, hoping he wouldn’t.
“Nah. Snortin’ lines and smokin’ pot does me fine.”
I was afraid of Wayne’s pipe. That thick white smoke reminded me of ectoplasm, as if it were a substance with its own consciousness. I passed up Wayne’s offer when he tried to hand me the pipe.
Wayne played drums for a rockabilly band called the Whirligigs, who performed regularly at two clubs on Sunset Boulevard—the Roxxy and the Whiskey A-Go-Go. They never made top billing, always serving as a warm-up group. I had learned all of this because Wayne began purchasing his cocaine from me instead of his former supplier, coming by nearly every day. He praised what I had as some of the best in town.
Sandra reluctantly scored the drugs for me from a client she’d met through the law firm. Wayne started out buying gram papers. Before long, he progressed to eight balls. We reached a milestone when I sold him a full ounce.
The transition from participant in Reverend Moon’s holy marriage ceremony at Madison Square Garden to Hollywood drug dealer was so effortless that I hardly realized it had happened, until one night when I heard Lyle bragging about me to one of his friends at Oki Dogs. Living with someone who sold cocaine gave him prestige.
Sandra understood the risks, but kept supplying me anyway. “Honey, I’ll keep doing this for you,” she said one afternoon, “but please don’t say anything to Scott. If he gets drunk and blabs to Maury, it’ll be the end for us all. Okay, sweetie?”
“Our secret,” I said.
Lyle took a hit off his bong as we spoke. Sandra looked in his direction.
“He’ll never tell anyone,” I said. “Anyway, I hardly see Scott these days.”
Sandra kissed me on the cheek. “Be careful, sweetheart.”
Before she rushed off, I remembered, “Wayne gave me guest passes for tonight’s show at the Roxxy. Lyle doesn’t want to go. Want to be my date?”
“To the Roxxy? No, baby, that’s not my scene. Just give me Dan Tana’s and I’m happy.”
“Love ya,” I said.
Sandra sauntered down the path toward her Trans Am and threw me a kiss before she got inside.
Lyle was content to hole up in the little bungalow doing drugs and occasionally hanging out at Oki Dogs. But I was sick of being cooped up in the smelly place. I decided to use one of the tickets Wayne had given me.
“You know, Lyle,” I said, after Wayne came by to get the drugs Sandra had dropped off, “I have more stamina at twenty-eight than you’ve got at eighteen.”
Lyle took a hit off his bong. His eyes squinted. After a bout of coughing, he said, “Who’s Stamina? You seein’ a woman?”
“I’m talking about energy,” I said with a laugh. “You don’t have any.”
Lyle struggled to piece together a reply, settling on “Whatever.”
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That night, the Whirligigs warmed up for the Vinyleras, a group whose signature song had been playing on the radio every day for the last month. Wayne’s manager had scored a major success getting them the deal. It could have been their big break. It wasn’t.
Whatever the manager thought he was doing when he placed a rockabilly band like the Whirligigs in front of a techno-pop group, it was a fatal misreading of the audience. Before the Whirligigs could complete their first song, the crowd booed them offstage. The ruckus didn’t die down until Ute Boccaccio, lead singer for the Vinyleras, appeared onstage in her trademark brassiere fashioned from clear plastic bowls held up by leather straps, with goldfish swimming around her nipples.
Ute strutted to the microphone as the Whirligigs picked up and left. She swung her pink-and-white hair to a riot of hoots and hollers. With the crowd fired up, she rifted into the band’s hit song “Kiss My Cheeks.” She bowed, ass toward the audience. Holes cut in her black leather slacks highlighted bright-red lips stamped on her buttocks.
After the performance, I waved my backstage pass and fought through the crowd to Wayne’s dressing room. He wasn’t as devastated by the audience reaction as I had expected.
“These posters are good promotion when we travel to towns that like our music.” Wayne pointed to a colorful poster hanging on the wall that advertised the Whirligigs in letters as large as the Vinyleras.
The Whirligigs’ manager came into the dressing room just then. Tufts of thick hair, intertwined with a knot of gold chains, protruded from his half-buttoned polyester shirt. He looked both ways down the hall, then closed and bolted the door.
“Wayne says you got blow,” the brutish man said.
“Uh, well, maybe,” I stammered.
“It’s okay,” Wayne said. “Giorgio’s cool.”
“Well, if you think…uh, probably.” I felt terribly uncomfortable confirming that I sold drugs. A felonious act among friends was one thing; this was admitting to a profession.
When the man pulled a wad of hundreds from the leather purse secured on his belt, I felt less hesitant, supposing that I best own up to my new life and make a profit.
Wayne had his own clientele, separate from the managers, so he continued to appear at the little bungalow in the evenings. I arranged with Giorgio to come by around sunrise when he was on his way home—he always partied late. Giorgio used his inroads as a band manager to approach the movers and shakers of the Hollywood club scene. Wayne supplied roadies and band members.
Sandra grew increasingly concerned about the quantities I asked her to provide. Even so, she loyally came by each day. The profits poured in so rapidly that I considered buying a condominium in the Beverly Hills as a way to invest the cash. Supplying my two customers, I surpassed in one day the weekly total of all the fundraising teams in Texas.
Several times, I picked up the phone to call Maury, planning to announce that I was officially leaving the church. I would ask him to arrange an annulment of my marriage to Masako. But as I would press the buttons, I’d recall the faces of the many brothers and sisters with whom I had struggled and triumphed. I’d consider how news of my leaving the church would demoralize them. Could I betray members such as Gloria, who had endured rape in the service of the church, or Dorrit, permanently crippled while faithfully living up to her convictions? What about Randall and Mary, Kawasaki and Norman? Could I put at risk the faith of my spiritual sons, Bruce and Foster, and the dozens of other members brought into the church through my witnessing center in San Francisco? Was I willing to go down the same road of betrayal as Stanley and Joseph? The church was my life and the people in it my family.
In the midst of the high-rolling life with Lyle, and while still living in the little bungalow, Scott came by one evening to tell me that the circuit court had denied Reverend Moon’s appeal.
Father and Mitsui would soon begin serving their sentences, pending final legal maneuvers. Maury’s office learned of the decision from the ACLU lawyer in New York who had managed to get Maury’s brief filed. Even so, the appellate court didn’t address the issues that Maury had raised. As he had feared, First Amendment arguments were considered waived since the lawyers hired by Bozeman hadn’t introduced them at trial.
I needed to contact Mitsui and Kawasaki, yet I couldn’t bring myself to do it, knowing that, as soon as I talked to them, I would have to make some serious decisions. It was easier to just sit and do drugs.
For another couple of weeks, I hardly strayed from the little bungalow except to buy food or drive Lyle to Oki Dogs. If Sandra hadn’t mentioned Scott’s upcoming Halloween party, Lyle and I might have just withered away.
“You’re coming to Scott’s party, and that’s final,” Sandra insisted when I balked at the idea of going. “You need to get out and meet people. Scott and I were your best friends, and now you act like a hermit. If it hadn’t been for me bringing you coke, we would never have seen each other the last few months.”
I wondered if the reason Sandra had taken the risk of transporting drugs was that she wanted to keep an open lifeline. Crazy as she and Scott might be, they had good jobs and led fun lives. Though we had met because of the church, we enjoyed each other’s company, and I considered them my friends.
What finally convinced me to agree to attend Scott’s party, though, wasn’t Sandra’s insistence; it was the prospect of new clients. I had started to contemplate the insane notion that I would increase my client base and remain a drug dealer.
If I were to fall so low, I might as well make the best of it.
In terms of gay events in Hollywood, Halloween ranked as high as Thanksgiving did in the religious heartland. Scott, having passed the California bar exam and progressing from paralegal to lawyer, had become known within the West Hollywood community as the lead attorney for a gay film producers organization, new clients who retained Maury to defend their copyrighted films against piracy. Scott wanted to impress by hosting a party. Between Scott’s contacts and the friends of his roommate, he expected over a hundred guests.
I wore an oblique costume, which I told people represented the color green. Once I had donned a green T-shirt and jeans, covered my skin in green body paint, and applied red lipstick, I looked like a cross between Béla Lugosi and a pond leech.
Lyle grumbled about having to dress up at all.
“I’m going as a cocaine addict,” he said flatly. “That’s what you can tell people. ’Cause I ain’t wearin’ no fuckin’ costume.”
I gave Lyle a gram of powder and loaded my own pockets with folded papers, ready to sell.
A few minutes after I had arrived at Scott’s, Wayne showed up with the AK-47s, a band that often played the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. I had been with Wayne when he sold drugs to the lead singer, Anna Kalashnikov, whom he was dating. It turned out that Scott and Anna had been college classmates. I marveled at what a small town Hollywood could be.
The AK-47s parodied sixties fashions, but with a punk twist. Anna nearly toppled her purple beehive wig as she pounced on me. Wayne had run out of drugs on the way to the party, and she was sure I would have some. That sale started the evening’s transactions.
Anna raved about the quality of my product, and as word got around, people lined up to do business. Even if I had stopped with the profits made from Yoda, Vampira, and a Boris Karloff Frankenstein, I could have paid two months’ rent, but the cash kept flowing.
When I ran out of goods, I tried to slip away unnoticed to get more from the little bungalow. Lyle was nowhere to be found. Two young men in cop outfits, who had starred in flicks produced by one of the porn clients assigned to Scott, followed me to the Mustang and invited themselves along. When we reached the bottom of the hill and turned onto Hollywood Boulevard, the one sitting closest unfastened my jeans and placed his head in my lap. He was so wasted that he passed out. The other guy leaned his forehead against the passenger-side window and began to snore. They were still asleep when I ran inside my place, and had not stirred by the time we
arrived back at Scott’s. I hauled the two Deputy Dogs out of the car and dragged them onto the grass.
The partygoers had begun dancing to a strobe light in the front room connected to some kind of device that synchronized with the music. “Kiss My Cheeks” blared loudly enough from the speakers to rattle the patio doors. Everyone was drunk, stoned, or both. I made a few more sales and figured I had better find Lyle. He wasn’t in the pile of naked bodies on Scott’s bed, and I didn’t see him among the bobbing heads in the hot tub. I eventually found him in the laundry room, the last place I looked. A bong smoldered at his side.
“Pull up your pants!” I said, suspecting that someone had abandoned him in the middle of a blow job, probably because he’d passed out.
Lyle stood woozily, knocking over the bong and spilling its brown water on a stack of white towels. “What the fuck, dude?” he muttered.
I marched Lyle to the Mustang, imagining all kinds of scenarios that might have accounted for his being half-naked, getting madder as I considered each one. But when I saw the two porn stars still passed out on the lawn, I realized that whatever Lyle had done, I, too, had behaved badly.
We stopped at the foot of the hill to snort some coke. It was the first that I had done all evening and sparked a bout of paranoia. I parked the car and sat in darkness until I stopped worrying that the police had spotted us. Thirty minutes later, with a calmer head, we proceeded to the little bungalow.
CHAPTER 40
One evening, Sandra brought a message with her usual delivery.
“Maury wants you to call him,” she said, adding, “and try to get some sleep.” She took my face in her hands and rubbed sand from the corner of my eyes. “Sweetie, you look like a brainwashed zombie.”
“Ha-ha. Haven’t heard that in a long time.”
Lyle and I had snorted a lot of coke since the Halloween party. No doubt, she was right about my appearance.
“Do you mind if I change?” Sandra asked. “Maury kept me late, and I wanted to get away before he gave me more work.”