by Dave Navarro
“I had a premonition since I was a little girl,” Hope blurts after an awkward silence. “My biggest fear was that my mother would commit suicide. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. But even if you know that, how do you prepare for it? After my mom died, a porn star whose makeup I did killed herself, then a friend jumped off a bridge in New York, and an ex-boyfriend overdosed intentionally. Another guy I’d known since I was a kid also overdosed, but it was accidental. He never did drugs, but I kept telling him how much he and my boyfriend had in common. Eventually, I introduced them, and my boyfriend got him hooked on heroin. So I feel guilt there also.”
“I had premonitions too,” Dave says. “I kept having them for a whole month. I knew things were shit in the house.”
“Do you still have your father to talk to?” Hope asks.
“I’m in a fight right now with my dad,” Dave answers, wistfully. “I’m not even sure what it’s about. But I know how important he is to me. I said something scary to my friend Tori the other day. I said, ‘When my dad checks out, there’s no more being careful.’ It’s the same way for him too; if anything happened to me, it would destroy him.”
“At least there’s correspondence between you and your dad,” Hope says, uncrossing her legs and stroking them with her hands. “I met my dad once, and never saw any photos of him. I knew nothing about him. One day when I was a teenager I was waiting for a bus, and this guy standing a few feet away started approaching me. Even though I had no idea what my father looked like, I knew it was him. He walked right up to me and said my name and said he was my father. I said, ‘No, you’re not. I don’t have a father.’ The only thing I remember him saying are seven words: ‘Fuck you, you’re just like your mother.’ And then he walked away.
“I know his history now,” Hope continues. “He tried to kill my mother when she was pregnant with me. He kept kicking her in the stomach. She was smaller than me, and my dad was 6'2". My dad kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant, threw her down a flight of stairs, and pushed her out of a car. And she still didn’t have a miscarriage. All this stuff he did to her because he didn’t want to have a kid. My mother had to leave town to give birth to me, and to retaliate my dad beat up her brother, who was in the process of becoming a cop. So he got back at my dad, broke his ribs and everything. My dad, who came from a prominent family, pressed charges, so my uncle never got to be a cop. He was finished.
“He never contacted me, even after my mother killed herself. For my high school graduation he sent a friend to give me an envelope filled with three hundred dollars as a present. I just ripped it up and threw it in his face.”
“That is why I don’t want to have a kid,” Dave says. “I don’t want to be that guy.”
Dave walks into the bathroom to shoot up, then returns and tells Hope he has work to do. She walks upstairs to the photo booth to document her visit and then hesitantly approaches the front door, as if there is something she has forgotten to do. As Dave hugs Hope goodbye, she wraps her arms around his head and tries to navigate his lips toward hers. He turns his head to the side and holds the door open for her.
part II TEN WAYS TO TIE OFF
1. A GUITAR CABLE OR STRAP. (“You leave the guitar plugged in, of course.”)
2. ELECTRICAL CORDS FROM KITCHEN APPLIANCES. (“Going to the kitchen creates the illusion that you’re not hiding, especially if you’ve already gone to the bathroom twice that night. If you leave the fridge open and tie off with a nearby electrical cord, it just looks like you’re trying to get a drink.”)
3. IN PARTICULAR, CORDS FROM TOASTERS. (“The toaster weighs the cord down perfectly around your arm so you don’t have to use two hands.”)
4. THE CORD CONNECTING A TELEPHONE HANDSET TO THE RECEIVER. (“You can be paging your dealer while doing your last hit.”)
5. THE SLEEVE OF A SHIRT OR THE LEG OF A PAIR OF PANTS. (“Usually I’m wearing the shirt or pants. I’ll just take off one leg or arm.”)
6. TWIGGY RAMIREZ’S DREADLOCKS. (“That’s the only live animal I’ve ever used.”)
7. THE SASH ON A ROBE. (“It’s the breakfast of champions.”)
8. A COMPUTER MOUSE CORD. (“You can always email 911 if there’s a problem.”)
9. A CONDOM. (“Just make sure it’s not lubricated, it’s not your last one, and you take it off your arm before going back in the room or restaurant.”)
10. CAR SAFETY BELTS. (“I’ve actually gone so far as to reach in the back of the car, grab an empty Coke can, rip it in half, turn it upside down so the little indentation on the bottom becomes its own spoon, and cook the heroin in it. Then I suck it up with a syringe and tie myself off with my shoulder strap, all while driving. I’ve even gotten my cousin, who’s a terrible shot, off while driving.”)
part III ON DAVE’S DICK
The phone rings. It is Bobbie Brown, known for her appearances in art films like the Warrant “Cherry Pie” video, an episode of Married with Children in which she plays a sexy supermarket dweller, and a CD infomercial that features her talking about the rock stars she’s met backstage.
“I’m at Jack in the Box,” she says.
“So?” Dave asks.
“I’m with two blond friends.”
“Do you want to come over?” Dave suddenly changes his mind. “Just for a little while. A very little while.”
One friend is Kelly, a tan blond with shoulder-length hair, a soft figure, and a sweet, almost childish face. She seems like just another one of the many women who come to Los Angeles because in the small towns in which they grew up, everyone told them that they were so beautiful and popular they should move to Hollywood to become a star. But they arrive in Los Angeles only to discover that there are thousands of other special small-town girls just like them, all competing for the exact same jobs, all getting seduced by the same rich, older men, and all convinced that anytime they want to they can quit taking the drugs they are fed night after night.
This month, Kelly is going out with a guy named Richard. “He’s on Studio A and I’m on Studio B,” she explains.
“On what?”
“Oh, a little show called Baywatch.” The funny thing is that no one who has ever seen Kelly’s photo can recognize her from Baywatch. Even Pamela Anderson has never heard her name before. Maybe she plays the role of Sunbather #6. “When I met Richard, I loved the way he moved. And when we talked, it was real. We were just two people who felt real.”
She keeps saying real, as if without each other Kelly and Richard would discover their true fakeness. Their relationship seems to be built less on love and more on being a good conversation piece. Many people in (or trying to be in) the entertainment business in Hollywood have a very narcissistic view of friendships and relationships: a true friend or lover, they say, is someone who makes them feel good about themselves, someone who helps them in their fight to hold on to the self-esteem that every day is being chipped and frayed in the competitive, status-seeking world around them. Other human beings are simply ornaments to their own vanity.
Kelly, Dave, and Bobbie pile into the photo booth. Dave suggests a committed three-way relationship.
After Kelly walks out of the photo booth, the other blond, a tall, collagen-lipped woman who, through the miracle of modern surgery appears to be in her late twenties, steps in with Dave. She has remained in the background all evening, not speaking a word or displaying any evidence of a personality, but evidently she has other talents: as the camera snaps away, she performs caricatures of famous rock duos—Page and Plant, Lennon and McCartney, Anthony and Flea—with her breasts. Despite the impressive variety show, which also includes her requesting a black sock to use as a Van Dyke for a Dave and Perry imitation, Bobbie is soon snoring away on the couch. Dave disappears downstairs immediately afterward, mumbling something about taking care of business.
Kelly, in the meantime, can’t stand the loss of attention. She keeps knocking on the door downstairs, whining that she is ready to go home, complaining that
her friend is never going to leave because she is tweaked out on glass (a killer amphetamine that cuts your nose to shreds on the way up). Between lamentations, she vamps in the photo booth, removing her clothing one item at a time and asking with each disrobing how she looks naked.
I walk downstairs to find Dave with his dick in his hand, masturbating. It is a pose I’m familiar with because a picture of it is on his website. He’s very happy with the penis God gave him. “I’ll be upstairs in two minutes,” he says, not bothering to stop.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the breast puppeteer is getting restless. “I have to bring my daughter to school,” she says, still running on glass, “then I’ll be back over.”
By the time Dave returns to the room, the women are gone. “You should have seen how much I came,” Dave tells me. “I came all over myself.”
Dave walks to the photo booth and removes Kelly’s strips from the tray. There are more than a dozen of them, and they are fantastic. In black and white, she is the hottest, most eye-catching woman who has ever set foot in Dave’s house. She made love to the photo-booth lens like no one before her (perhaps because it was a lover, in the sense of being an ornament to her vanity). Dave reconsiders her hotness and begins to devise strategies of getting her back to the house without offending Bobbie or her blond friend. Maybe he could include her on the jacket of this book as a pretext for calling her.
Dave brings the photos to his computer and starts scanning the month’s strips into his hard drive. As the night progresses, he begins to fade. He is moving slower, thinking slower, responding slower. But he refuses to stop working. Finally he calls some hookers (classed under the heading PELICANS along with drug dealers in his address book, which probably has more pelicans than the entire Florida coast).
“Just one girl, real quick.” He leaves two messages, then passes out on the couch with one hand on the phone, the other down his pants.
part I DEAR DIARY
BY ADRIA TRUE
July 17, 1996
You will never believe what happened to me yesterday. Stacy, Isobel, Tim, Howie, and I went to go see KISS yesterday at Irvine. They were playing in full makeup for the first time in like fifteen years. Okay, get to the point. Isobel and I flirted with security and got backstage, and who was the first person I ran into? None other than Mr. Dave Navarro in the flesh. And do I even need to mention that, out of all my friends, I’m the only one who has not met him, stalked him, or been crazy infatuated with him?
What happened was Isobel and I were going to the bathroom and we saw a bunch of guys hanging out, so I glanced over and almost fainted when I saw Dave staring directly in our direction. He shot all this energy at me with those big, sensitive eyes. Isobel looked at me, because she picked up on it too. At first I thought, uh-uh, but when I turned toward the bathroom (I had to go bad), he came up to me. Then I thought, uh-oh.
DAVE: Excuse me, have I met you before? Actually, I’m lying. We haven’t met before. But I did see you at a Peppers show we played at Moguls a couple months ago, didn’t I? You were wearing big sunglasses, and an orange shirt, sitting on top of the speakers, right?
ME: Doink … [I couldn’t get my lips to work.]
DAVE: Hi, I’m Dave. [Like I didn’t know!]
ME: I think I saw you at Perry’s last weekend. [Duh …]
DAVE: Well, if you saw me, why didn’t you say hi or introduce yourself? [Ouch.]
We walked together and I swear that every girl we passed gave me the evil eye. Anthony Kiedis even gave me his number! But I only had eyes for Dave. He picked up my stinky, filthy feet and gave me a foot massage under the table. Wish I’d gotten that pedicure! Isobel was watching it all, totally jealous, which is fine because she deserves it after sleeping with Todd. Dave asked me to go home with him. I said that I wanted to, but I wasn’t that kind of girl, though I really wanted to be that kind of girl. He hugged me good-bye and pressed his phone number into my sweaty palm.
At two A.M. I was knocking on Dave’s door. Silly me. I had to take a plane to Paris for a fashion show the next day. And he was about to go on tour. So I thought we’d just talk and then never see each other again. I promised myself I wouldn’t do anything with him. But I’ve never felt lips like his before in my life. (Yeah, some life!)
In a velvet room lit like a church, this gentle Pan seduced me with his pipes. He took my hand and said, “I can’t say I won’t kiss you.” (So sure of himself.) And he leaned over and our mouths locked and our tongues intertwined and every fiber of his being poured into me. I felt like I’d been there before. With his fingers, he stroked my hair from front to back, and a soft wave of chills shook through my body. I bit into his lip. “You can bite me as hard as you want,” he whispered. I already knew that.
We walked downstairs, and I found myself naked in a dark room with a mirrored wall. I wondered how many women that mirror had seen. I watched my reflection as Dave scooped me up and laid me down on the plush lavender of his bed. He placed a hand on either side of my head, and pulled it back gently but firmly. He sunk his teeth into my neck—still gently—and entered me slowly—still firmly. I opened and took him in all the way, and a feeling that I’ve never had before rushed over me and we melted into each other. When he caught me watching him watching me in the mirror, he turned his head and spit into my mouth. I wanted to freeze that moment, so that I’d never have to leave it my whole life.
He snored. It didn’t bother me, so long as he kept holding on to me. I held on to him holding on to me. In the morning, he woke me up with the most beautiful music on the piano and brought me coffee in bed. Then his driver had to come and take him to San Francisco. He grabbed me again in the doorway and kissed me passionately for all the neighbors to see. I took my grandmother’s ring off my finger and slipped it on his. I hope it makes him think about me every day. I hope it keeps him awake thinking about how very clever I am. I hope my absence makes his heart grow even fonder.
My horoscope: “Leave your past behind and make a fresh start. A new opportunity, friend, or love interest enters your life now. There is nothing to be afraid of.” (Yeah, right.)
July 18
My first day here was okay. I had to break down and get ice cream. I felt it on the runway and at the photo shoot. All day I couldn’t stop thinking about Dave. I want to call him so much, but I don’t want to scare him. Why does this stuff always happen when you least expect it or want it? I don’t want to give this guy power over my mind and heart, but he already has it and I don’t want to be hurt. Can something really be so intense after one day? Do you think he really remembered me sitting on the speaker at his show? What the fuck is going on? Help …
July 20
I told you. Now I’m pissed. The very first girl I talked to in Paris said she’d dated Dave or fucked Dave or something. And she was a trashy whore. She told me he was married a bunch of times. I saw his mother in my hotel mirror yesterday. She was a beautiful person, inside and out. She was trying to communicate with me. She saw me and she talked with me. I asked her to protect us, and she told me that I could help Dave.
July 22
Dave and I finally talked. Yay! “Is this the light of my life on the phone?” he asked. He was so sweet, but how many women did he say that to today? Even if I am the only one, I can not let another self-centered, egomaniacal rock star suck me into his fucked-up world.
He said he’d buy me plane tickets to come visit him in Prague tomorrow. I so badly wanted to say yes, but I can’t just abandon my work over some guy I’ve seen once. So I said no and now I hate myself. What if he flies someone else to Prague? What if he’s found a new light of his life by the time I get back? He promised that would never happen. Then we both admitted that no one had ever dumped us before. So basically what we’re looking at here are two totally self-confident, narcissistic, and egomaniacal people. This is not going to be easy. But that’s okay: we have his mother’s spirit to guide us. And I’m a Taurus. I can handle it.
part II ABOU
T A GIRL
This is the girl who broke Dave’s heart, one of the reasons why he remade his life into a world of parties, prostitutes, painkillers, and photo strips. And last month, she came back into that world. In her first photo strip, Adria, a willowy top-heavy brunette, can be seen flipping the bird to the camera in all four frames, as if to say that she is back in Dave’s life against her will. She was reluctant then, although the very fact that she expressed her reluctance through her participation in his photo project was a sign that these defenses would soon break down. Perhaps it served her own documentary needs: proof that she had maintained her pride as she willingly reentangled herself in a relationship she swore was behind her.
Though we’ll never know the true story, because memory provides far less reliable reproductions than photographs, Dave remembers the courtship a little differently than Adria’s diary tells it. “At first I tried to avoid her,” he says. “I assumed she wasn’t girlfriend material because I met her at that show and she went home with me that night. Then I went on tour and she went to work in Paris, and she would call me once in a while. But she was too pretty for me to like and she was only about nineteen. When I came home from the tour, I was tired and burnt out and months had gone by since I had met her. But that night she stopped by without calling, and I hate that. I hid inside with the lights off until she drove away. For weeks afterward, she called me and I wouldn’t call her back. Every now and then she’d catch me unaware: she’d walk her dog near Starbucks, where she knew I went to get coffee every morning after the gym. I felt like I was being stalked.
“We did get together a few times, but I’d always try to keep her at arm’s length—meeting in hotel rooms instead of at my house. I didn’t want her in my house and getting involved with my life. I tried everything I could to stay away from her.”