After high school, I managed to take a few night classes at Rutgers University Extension in Paterson, and had the added good fortune to have Louis Ginsberg, the father of Allen Ginsberg, as my English Lit professor. Learning that Allan Ginsberg came out of Paterson gave me hope. Louis Ginsburg was a sweet older poet who had been published in the New York Times, and he was very proud of his son’s accomplishments. From Luis Ginsburg I learned that William S. Burroughs had co-written a novel with Jack Kerouac in 1945 while they were living with Allen in Paterson. Learning that these Beat pioneers had a connection to Paterson—and had gotten the hell out—gave me more courage to break free. New York City was the option that most of Jersey’s cool cats took when they left home, but I knew that Manhattan would not be far enough to escape my father’s eyes. I needed more than a bridge and tunnel; I needed a whole continent between us.
9. TUNE in TURN on DROP out!
In the winter of 1965, The Mamas and the Papas’ lyrics called to me: “All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey, I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day. I’d be safe and warm if I was in LA, California Dreamin’ on such a winter’s day.”
I would have followed the flower children to San Francisco, but I got waylaid by an offer to stay in L.A. with Elizabeth, my older Cousin Lucille’s maid of honor. Elizabeth was a tall, beautiful, blond German immigrant in her mid-twenties. When she met my parents at my cousin’s wedding, she promised them she would look after me like a big sister if I came to California.
It was a chilling, bone-aching Jersey winter when I boarded my first flight ever to Los Angeles, but I was without fear or trepidation. Although the tarmac was icy at the Newark Airport, I was all sunshine, wearing a pink and orange mini skirt with matching fruit-loop earrings and my pink plastic go-go boots, all shoplifted from Gimbels Department Store in the Paramus Mall. It hadn’t been easy saying goodbye to my sobbing mother and teary father and sister as they watched me hug my little brother Richie goodbye.
It was January, just a few days past my nineteenth birthday, when my plane landed at LAX, and as I stepped out onto the shaky ground of Southern California, I knew that the promise of free love and peace along with the California surf was about to wipe out the guilt I carried for committing the crime of the century. The crime being that I was the first and only, out of all my thirty-three cousins, to commit the sin of leaving their parents’ home before getting married.
Elizabeth resembled a neat and trim Pan Am stewardess when she picked me up at LAX with her German boyfriend Walter. They brought me straightaway to my new home: one of many identical apartment compounds located on Roscoe Boulevard, in the heart of the East San Fernando Valley and down the road from Budweiser, at the Anheuser Bush Brewery.
Walter helped carry my luggage while Elizabeth, in her thick German accent, gave me a mini tour of my new surroundings. We passed through the courtyard that looked like a Howard Johnson Motel with a medium-size swimming pool and entered a 1950s-style two-bedroom apartment with cottage-cheese ceilings. Then Elizabeth introduced me to her roommates, Gertrude and Elkie, also German immigrants and in their mid-twenties. All three women were blonds and towered over me by at least a foot. They told me they had met one another at the German Club in the Valley, where they also met their German boyfriends, and gave me a standing invitation to join them there on the weekends.
Elizabeth and Gertrude were engaged to Walter and Hans, and the two couples were exceptionally kind to me. They would take me along on road trips to see parts of California European tourists lived for. We went to the Hearst Castle, and to Solvang, the Danish Village near Santa Barbara. I felt like their mascot as I attempted to keep pace with the two pair of six footers as they goose stepped through the Danish Village on a pastry-tasting expedition.
“Yah, the creampuffs are good,” Gertrude said, “but nothing like the ones we get back home.” So that I would not feel left out, they insisted I attend Saturday-night dances at the German Club, where I sat like a bump on a log as they and their boyfriends socialized with other Aryans in their native tongue, drinking beer and eating sausages. The only difference between my weekends in Paterson and in L.A. on the Rhine was the menu. I went from overeating Italian sausage and cannoli to bratwurst and seven-layer German chocolate cake. After a few of these social outings I began to get restless and knew that if I kept hanging with them, I’d never fit into my “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” also shoplifted from Gimbels.
I had left home to get away from watchful eyes, but Elizabeth felt obligated to keep me on a short leash since she had promised my cousin Lucille and my parents to look after me. So here at little Deutschland in Panorama City, the good German women with strong work ethics made sure I wasted no time in finding a job. Elkie, with whom I shared a bedroom, would make sure I was up and out of bed at the crack of dawn when she left for work. Each morning she would hand me the want ads and ask, “Do you have any interviews today?”
I enrolled at Valley Junior College in Van Nuys, and took night classes in Philosophy and History of World Religions, and in a week I found my first job working at a laundry. I buried my nose in my books, ignoring the endless blocks of strip malls and low-rise apartments along Roscoe Boulevard on the dreary pre-dawn bus ride from Panorama City. It took almost an hour to reach my destination in Sun Valley where, by 6 a.m., I began opening bundles of men’s dirty, smelly work and dress shirts. You can take the girl out of Jersey, but it took awhile to take Jersey out of this girl. At least at the laundry in Sun Valley, I was out of the freezer and out of New Jersey. After two months of this routine I was reaching my breaking point, so I decided one day to play hooky.
10. SURF, SAND & SINS
I couldn’t believe I had been in California for four months and had yet to see the beach. I took several buses from Panorama City to downtown L.A., and then one more bus that ran all the way along Wilshire Boulevard to the ocean in Santa Monica. My first stop was Pacific Ocean Park, the gateway into Venice. I was immediately attracted to the funky twin piers with their colorful head shops, melodic wind chimes, and pungent incense wafting through the fresh sea air. It was a welcome change from the strip-mall Valley scenery.
I kicked off my shoes and walked south on the sand, imagining that I could run into Gidget, or Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in a Beach Blanket movie, but the atmosphere reminded me more of Atlantic City mixed with Greenwich Village. There were some leftover remnants from the days when this funky beach Bohemia was once a hot spot. Electric cars still ran along the boardwalk—which wasn’t made of wood, but was a wide, cement sidewalk. There were no tourists so only the old Jewish folks who sat on benches outside the senior center at Navy Street used these cars. Later, I learned that poor blacks and Mexicans lived a few blocks inland in a section of Venice white people referred to as Ghost Town.
It was 1965 and this was the Venice of Jim Morrison of The Doors, but I was still naive about the massive cultural earthquake that was shaking all around me. As I wandered along the Boardwalk, I met Mark Anthony, a tall, dark, handsome gypsy who looked just like El Guyio from The Fantasticks. He was hanging with some hippies panhandling for beers under one of the Asian-style pagodas. Mark Anthony told me he’d just been released from jail and was homeless. Without giving me any details about his crime other than saying he was innocent, his unfortunate incarceration inspired compassion in me and it wasn’t long before I was under a blanket in the sand, giving him what every released convict prays for. As he put me on the bus back to the Valley, he made me promise to return for the weekend.
When I showed up on Good Friday with my cashed paycheck, he asked for money, and took what I offered to rent us a room at the St. Charles Hotel. The place had been fancy in its glory days, but by then it was a Venice flea trap on the corner of Windward and Speedway, renting rooms for $3 a night to hookers and transients. With the rest of my cash, Mark Anthony bought a bag of weed. I had smoked pot only once, with college friends back home, yet after just two hi
ts I opened my eyes and saw this guy on top of me for what he truly was, a loser.
Since it was Easter weekend, I opted to stay at the beach with him, since I’d already paid for our room and it would spare me having to join my roommates at the German dance again, and church on Sunday morning. By Sunday afternoon, we were almost out of dope, and I had run completely out of my money—except for my bus fare back to the Valley. When I mentioned I was hungry, Mark Anthony said he would take me out for Easter dinner. An hour later we were at the Bible Way Mission, a storefront on Main Street just north of Rose Ave., sharing a holiday feast with the homeless and alcoholic members of the beach community. Still stoned, and, starving, we got in line at the buffet table with the less fortunate and filled our plates. It wasn’t my mom’s manicotti, but the fried chicken backs, wings and sliced white bread slathered with margarine weren’t so bad. The only cost for the meal was that I had to sit among the ill-smelling drunks and listen to a short Easter sermon given by a young pastor who reminded me that Christ died for my sins.
Later that afternoon, Mark Anthony and I smoked the last of the weed at some party where we crashed for awhile; when I awoke, my knight in dirty armor was gone, and along with him my new twenty-four carat gold cross with a diamond-chip, which Mom had sent me for my first Easter away from home. Just like El Guyio in The Fantasticks, this grifter Mark Anthony stole my naivety. That Easter Sunday marked the day of early seed planting that would sprout into the Mary saga yet to be played out in my life. It wasn’t the suffering Virgin Mary, Mother of Sorrow—my namesake—that was budding, but Mary Magdalene in her pre-conversion days.
11. HIGH RISK
I gave up the long, slow bus rides for high-speed adventurous travel by thumb. Some of the men who picked me up between the valley and the beach were as dangerous as the ones I was en route to see. My casual sexcapades were escalating and I began to indulge in men like a compulsive eater at a free buffet. After a fast and furious fuck under the pier at Pacific Ocean Park, Bill, a Vietnam Vet, introduced himself. He told me he was a Gemini. In California I learned that your astrological sign was more important than your name. Gemini meant twin or two personalities, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the complexity of this Gemini’s character.
Bill took me to a party on the beach where we got high and then took me back to his room at the St. Charles Hotel. After an hour of gazing into his deep blue pools—a roadmap to trouble that had witnessed horror—we fucked gently to the hotel’s clock radio playing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” While cradled in his arms, I suggested we return to the party—and suddenly Bill pulled out a knife and started wielding it wildly in my face.
Bill said, “This is the party, sister. Don’t you know who I am? With the shining blade inches from my face, I sat quietly and let Bill rant.
“You don’t fuck the son of God and then think there’s a party more important than I am,” he said. “I expect nothing but devotion from my disciples and I’m prepared to keep you here forever.”
Then he momentarily became distracted and put down the knife and moved away from the bed. With his back toward me, I scooped my underwear off the floor and slipped on my panties and bra under the covers. With Bill then peeing in the sink just a few feet away, I ran out of the room. I didn’t turn to look back to see if he was following. I just ran as fast as I could down the three flights of stairs in my underwear. All my belongings including my purse remained in the room. With a pounding heart I ran barefoot for ten blocks along the Speedway back to the party, where I had met some friendly hippies. In the doorway I ran smack dab into another Bill, also a Gemini I had met earlier that evening. I told him of my ordeal and he took pity on me. Bill covered me with the shirt off his back and offered to escort me back to the St. Charles where he would confront Bill #1 and rescue my purse and clothes.
Within less than four hours, I replaced Bill #1 with Bill #2. Bill #2 was mild-mannered, clean-cut and lean, and lived in a small, charming apartment on Marine Street, a half a block off the Ocean Front. This was a huge leap from the St. Charles lodging. If you stepped out on his fire escape, you could see the sailboats off the shore and smell the ocean air and incense burning from the head shops on the pier. I spent several weekends hanging out with Bill in his apartment, enjoying the tranquility of beach life. He was intellectual and kept his nose in a book whenever we weren’t fucking. During the few weekends we spent together, I never learned anything more about Bill #2 then I did on the first night of our meeting. He seemed indifferent to whether I came or left. He was the antithesis of high drama. He didn’t appear to have other friends and never mentioned work, family or past relationships. We rarely even discussed the books he read. Eventually I grew bored.
When I learned that Elizabeth sent a progress report to my folks in a letter telling them about my reckless behavior, I decided to move out and found a room in Van Nuys with two college gals my age. My new roommates were both un-wed mothers-to-be and each at different degrees of knocked-up-ness. Trudy was almost eight months along and shared her house with Mary, who was just a little bit pregnant. Both gals were a welcomed relief from the judgment I left behind at the Rhine garden, and at Trudy’s house I had a room all to myself.
I would have stayed with Trudy and Mary for the long haul except that after my first night in their home, I accidentally started a fire by hanging my bras on the wall heater to dry—and almost burned down the house. They were pretty forgiving, considering that Trudy’s mom’s new shag carpet was a goner and the house smelled like smoke and burnt rubber. They gave me a month’s notice and said they thought it best to keep the room free for their coming arrivals.
12. RACE RIOT
Still without wheels in the city built by Detroit’s car lobbyist, I snapped up an opportunity to leave the Valley to move closer to Hollywood, after finding a new job as a file clerk in the Mid-Wilshire/Vermont section of L.A. At the job, I met Tony, a black gay boy who lived with his sister Max. She had recently been discharged from the Army due to her unplanned pregnancy, and they needed help paying the rent. I was excited to find a swimming pool at the Machie Apartments in a black, middle-class neighborhood on Crenshaw Boulevard, just south of Adams Boulevard. I transferred my credits from Valley College to Los Angeles City College, a two-year college with a reputation for excellence in Theatre Arts, and signed up for African American History and Acting.
My higher learning was about to accelerate the minute I met Eugene Peace that fall of 1966. My eyes were glued to the tall, cream-colored black man as he casually bopped into my African American History class, sporting a gigantic bleached blond Afro, and took the seat right next to mine. At the class break, it didn’t take him long to let me know that he was a proud native Angelino, born and raised in Watts, and an open bisexual, married to Linda, a nineteen-year-old, blond, white Valley Girl/topless dancer who supported him and their beautiful one-year-old son, Troy, while he earned his Associate Arts degree in Broadcasting. As luck would have it, Eugene lived right down the block from The Machie Apartments, and he offered me a ride home after school.
Eugene took down the top of his shiny turquoise 1965 Ford Fairlane convertible and offered to take me on what he called “The Post Watts Riot Tour.” He told me I could use the info for an extra credit report.
Over the loud bass of Sam & Dave’s “Hold On I’m Comin’“ pumping through his car radio, Eugene proudly described the sights like a TV announcer as he drove through his neighborhood with the breeze reshaping his large Afro into a six-inch-high flattop. At first glance I saw no signs of the ghetto I imagined. Watts was very different from the slums I knew back east. I saw no run-down projects, only one-story wood-framed houses with gangs of black kids jumping double Dutch rope or shooting basket ball hoops. He pointed to one home with a dried-up lawn and said it was the one he lived in as a child. To my wide eyes, the only things that looked ghetto were the winos hanging outside the liquor stores on every corner.
Eugene practiced different announcer voic
es as he described the surrounding. “Right here under the shadow of the renowned Watts Towers is the place where my cousin fat Mable stole my cherry.” I was surprised at how easily intimate he was with me. “Girl, I bet you didn’t know that one of your Pisans from Italy built this monument,” he instructed.
“Really, I didn’t know Italians lived in Watts.” I was impressed by the beauty of the steel girders that reached up into the smoggy sky with their mosaic-like patterns made of broken colored glass, pottery and tiles that gleamed in the hot Los Angeles sun. It brought to mind a poor man’s version of Cathedrals I had seen on post cards from Italy.
Eugene liked to call me by my full name. “Dee Grosso, you know you don’t even look like an I-talian. You look like one of mama’s paper sack brown children. Girl, you know you can pass for one of us?”
“When I was little everyone called me Blackie,” I said. “I thought it was my nickname until Mom told me it had nothing to do with race. She said that before I could barely walk I used to chase the neighbor’s cat calling its name, Blackie, over and over. To encourage me, Mom would repeat the word Blackie every time I’d say it, so I thought it was my name.”
My Life, a Four Letter Word Page 4