Rock and Roll High School: Growing Up in Hollywood During the Decade of Decadence

by Marisa Tellez

  duration of the trial, tension was high about the outcome.

  Everyone was worried another riot would break out across Los Angeles. Commercials were popping up on every TV station with celebrities and police officers repeating the same slogan. “Residents of L.A., Keep the Peace.” When the verdict finally came down, two officers were acquitted of the charges, and the other two were sentenced to serve jail time. Luckily, the latter conviction was enough to keep people from starting another

  riot.

  Boring weekend after boring weekend passed as Kennedy

  and I continued to hang out at the Burbank house while the

  boys were on tour. We’d drink cocktails and make dinners. We’d

  talk about how Kennedy and I had no one to swoon over with

  Kenny and Brent being gone. We also kicked around the idea of

  traveling out to one of their shows. I had always wanted to go to

  New York, and they had a show booked at a popular club called

  The Limelight. The three of us talked about taking a crosscountry adventure on Amtrak to see the show, but when we

  realized how long it would take and how much money it would

  cost, that idea lasted all of a few minutes.

  I continued to pass the time by writing. Kennedy and

  Ramie passed their time by reading my writing. I would come up

  with these random scenarios on how Brent would fall in love

  with me, and Kenny with her. I made up funny code names for

  everyone, so god forbid her or Ramie left one of my stories lying

  around the house.

  The tour only lasted a few weeks, but to us it felt like

  months. When the guys finally came home, we welcomed them

  and our social life back by going to a Blackboard show at the

  Troubadour.

  BRITT (Blackboard Jungle): The Burbank house is where we wouldgorecoupafter blowingit out inHollywoodor wherever else.It waslikegoing hometo yourmom’shouse.You’d get clean there and just mellow out. I remember there was a big stump in the middle of the backyard,andthat’swhereIwrote,“Right Down Herewith Me” whenwecamehomefrom thePussycattour.

  Kennedy, Ramie, and I were at the Troubadour, sipping on drinks by the bar when they both decided they needed to go to the bathroom. I didn’t have to go, so I said I would stay put and wait for them. As they walked off, I casually looked around the club to see who was there. When my eyes glanced over to the entrance, I saw Sunny and Chris walk in. I was about to walk over and say hi when I noticed Ronan walk in a few people behind them. Just my fucking luck, Ronan made eye contact with me right away despite the crowd. He smiled as he waved at me and started making his way towards me. I immediately turned away and started shoving my way through the crowd in the opposite direction.

  How could he smile as if everything was fine between us? Did he not remember the last time we saw each other? When he was getting his ass kicked by Alan and Sheldon because he tried to choke me? If he expected me to greet him with open arms after everything he did to me, then he was crazier than I thought. As I bumped and weaved through people to get away from Ronan, I noticed Jamie Scrap walking down the backstage stairs that lead onto the stage. I ran over to him and begged him to get me backstage and away from my psycho ex. He didn’t know the history between Ronan and I. But the panic on my face was enough to convince him it was a serious situation, and he quickly led me up the stairs.

  Part of the backstage area on the 2nd floor included a wall of glass that overlooked the entire club. I spent the remainder of my night there. Not only to watch the Blackboard show but to keep an eye on Ronan as well.

  After Blackboard finished their set, people started to pile out of the club. I noticed Ronan walk over to the exit and wait. Five minutes passed, then ten. I hoped he was just waiting for whomever it was he might have come with. But after twenty minutes had passed, the club was almost empty, and I knew he was waiting for me. Luckily, I was able to weasel my way down the stairs and sneak out of the band loading entrance without him seeing me.

  Aside from the Ronan mishap at the Troubadour and an occasional claw from Selena, things were going great in my world. I had an awesome set of new friends to hang out with, and Brent was there for me to drool over. I enjoyed my routine of hanging out in the Blackboard circle every weekend, and that’s when Ramie dropped the bomb that the Burbank house would be no more. Her, Greg, and John were moving to Simi Valley.

  Hell, I thought commuting to Burbank was far, but Simi Valley? That was in the middle of nowhere, almost a good hour outside of L.A. Regardless, it was a done deal, and they ended up moving to Simi a few weeks later.

  Shortly after Ramie, Greg, and John got settled into the new house, they decided to throw a barbecue. Poor Kennedy ended up being stranded in Norco because her car broke down, so I ended up going to the barbecue by myself.

  When I arrived at the Simi house, all the Burbank house regulars were hanging out in the backyard. Everyone was drinking beer and picking food off the grill, including Brent and Selena. Although I still had a mad crush on Brent, the flirty tension that was once between us was now long gone. I don’t know how or when the hell it happened, but somewhere along the line we ended up being platonic friends. I knew it was for the best anyway and hoped it would ease the tension between Selena and I, but of course it didn’t. She was still a bitch on wheels every time I saw her.

  I said my hello’s to everyone and made my way into the house to see Ramie. I found her in her bedroom, watching TV with a friend of hers that had just come to visit from Japan. I kept telling her to come outside and enjoy some delicious barbecue because it was such a nice day out, but she wasn’t feeling particularly social. I on the other hand was starving my brains out, so I told her I was going to grab some food and come back in.

  When I went back outside, Brent was manning the grill and asked me if I was hungry. I told him I was starving and ready to chew my face off. He said the chicken he had on the grill wasn’t done yet, but that he had just finished a batch right before I got there. He led me over to a table where Selena happened to be sitting and chatting with a few people. Just great, I thought.

  The moment she saw me walking up with Brent, she tensed up. Sitting on a table in front of her, was a large corning ware dish with one piece of chicken all by it’s lonesome.

  Brent pointed at the chicken breast and said, “Hey you’re not going to eat that are you?”

  She paused for a moment and said, “Well, no probably not.”

  “Ok great, I’m giving it to Marisa then,” he said.

  He stabbed the chicken breast with a cooking fork, put it on my plate, and ran back to the grill to flip some meat. I couldn’t believe he just left me there holding the bag. Or holding the chicken I should say.

  She glared at me like she had just caught me having sex with Brent. It was the longest, most uncomfortable five seconds of my life. If she had shown some signs of warmth I would’ve tried to engage her in some bullshit “great weather we’re having” conversation. But judging by the frostbite she was blowing onto my innocent piece of chicken, I knew she wanted nothing to do with me. I shot her a dirty look right back and walked off.

  I don’t know why Ramie was in such a funk, but I couldn’t get her to leave her bedroom that entire day. So I spent my time bouncing back and forth between the barbecue outside and hanging out with her in her bedroom.

  Over the next few weeks, I saw less and less of Ramie and Kennedy. Ramie became a recluse in Simi Valley, and Kennedy was still trapped in Norco. I was literally caught in the middle, with both living a good hour away from me in opposite directions.

  Faced yet again with a deteriorating social life, not to mention being so broke I couldn’t afford to pay attention, I spent the next few weekends at home gathering my thoughts and figuring out a game plan on how to get my life back on track.

  During that time, I signed up with a few more employment agencies and fina
lly landed my first, full time job as a receptionist for a company named Arlen. I was so excited to have a steady gig. That meant I could finally start saving up to get my own car. The only drag about the job was, well the actual job. I hated answering phones and greeting people. But I was nineteen with no other job qualifications, so it would have to do for the time being. It wasn’t long before I saved up enough money to buy my first car; a used 1990 blue Ford Tempo.

  Arlen was located in the industrial city of Vernon. It was just outside downtown L.A. with a well-known slaughterhouse right around the corner. The murals surrounding the slaughterhouse showed happy pigs grazing in plush, green fields on a spacious farm. My stomach would turn from the stench of dead carcass as I drove down Soto Street every morning to get to work. Not long after I started at Arlen, the company relocated to a nice area of Chino. Driving to Chino would tack on an extra 15 minutes to my commute, but it was worth escaping the stench of dead animals everyday.

  While things were going well with my job, there wasn’t anything happening in my social life to be excited about. The vibe at the Simi house was completely different from Burbank. Nobody really hung out there because it was so far away. I couldn’t break Ramie out of her hermit cycle, and while I loved hanging out with Kennedy, the nightlife in Norco wasn’t exactly booming. That’s when I decided to reach out to Spencer.

  I’d spoken with her a handful of times since running into her at the Burbank house. Considering she lived just fifteen minutes up the street from me, that made her the perfect partner in crime to start running around with.

  I’m not quite sure how it happened, but Spencer and I ended up on several mailing lists to go to “mansion parties”. “Mansion parties” were basically a promoter who would throw a huge event at some random mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Girls would get in for free, and guys were charged a stupid amount of money to get in, which they paid because they wanted to be where all the girls were. All the food and drinks were on the house too, so Spencer and I would partake in all the complimentary goodies we could put our grubby little hands on.

  That was fun for a little while, but it wasn’t long before we started burning out on the mansion parties too. There were rarely any cute guys there, so we’d only go when we didn’t have anything better to do. After all, who were we to turn down free drinks?

  With my social life once again turning into a snooze fest, I suddenly found myself with a whole lot of time on my hands to think. Unfortunately, one of the first people that popped into my mind was Dresden.

  We hadn’t spoken since that day at Bleeker Bobs, and he never responded to the brutal letter I sent him about sleeping with Cassidy either. I was thinking about him way more than I should have and was so angry with myself that I still loved and missed him as much as I did.

  14 LET ME CLUB YOUR HEART LIKE A SEAL

  It was early Friday evening, and I had just gotten home from work. With no plans in sight for the weekend, I decided to take on the painstaking challenge of organizing my journals. It took me well over an hour to find all of them, which were scattered in various boxes and drawers around my bedroom. I pulled pages out at random, both laughing and cringing at all the past memories from the last seven years of my life.

  Around midnight, I had finally gotten into my organizing groove when my neon phone lit up and scared the shit out of me. I answered without hesitation, figuring it was Kennedy or Spencer calling for a late night cackle.

  “Hello?” I said.

  No one responded back.

  “HELL LOW!” I barked.

  “Hi,” the male voice said shyly.

  “Who is this? I can barely hear you,” I said annoyed. “It’s me,” he said a little louder.

  I immediately knew it was Dresden. I didn’t know whether

  I should tell him I loved him, hated him, or simply say nothing and hang up on him. Not being able to make a decision, I just sat there frozen.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  “I’m here. Why are you calling me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been wanting to call you for months.” For the first few minutes, we walked on eggshells, not really

  knowing how to react to each other. We made small talk about our families and how our jobs were going. But after a few minutes of bullshit formalities, I had enough. I didn’t give a rat’s ass how the weather was in New York. I wanted to know WHY he hadn’t called me since moving back home. WHY he slept with Cassidy before he left, and WHY didn’t he answer the letter I wrote to him months ago? I decided to start with the latter question.

  “I did write you back, I just never mailed the letter,” he said.

  “It only works if you drop it in the big blue box,” I said sarcastically.

  “I got pissed and decided last minute not to mail it because I felt you didn’t deserve a response.”

  “YOU were pissed at ME? You’re the one who cut me off and ran away to New York like a big pussy without saying goodbye,” I said bluntly.

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  “You were supposed to stand by the words you told me when you said you loved me.”

  “And then what? Have a long distance relationship? That shit never works.”

  Being so young, I was still very optimistic about the power of true love. I saw the world through rose-colored glasses and believed that love could conquer anything, including three thousand miles of distance between us.

  One by one, we asked and answered the questions that had been plaguing us over the past few months about our breakup. Then I asked the question that I didn’t want to ask but needed to know the answer to.

  “Did you sleep with Cassidy before you left?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I’ve never slept with her. Not even for the two seconds we were dating,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “If you’re not going to believe me, then why ask?”

  “Why would the girls lie?”

  “How should I know? All you broads are crazy.”

  “So you really didn’t sleep with her?”

  “Marisa, when I said I loved you, I fucking meant it. I still love you.”

  “I still love you too,” I said without hesitation.

  And just like that, the whole tide of our conversation took a radical turn. We had finally cleared the air. In a matter of minutes, we were laughing and joking as if nothing had ever happened.

  After two and a half hours of catching up on our lives from the last nine months, I was on the verge of passing out from complete exhaustion. I had already tucked myself into bed and turned off the lights. As my eyes started to close and I listened to the sound of Dresden’s voice, I couldn’t help but think of how wonderful the night had been. Not only did I finally have closure but also realized that we were still very much in love with each other. Was all of this REALLY happening?

  Over the last few months, I had numerous dreams about having that conversation with Dresden. Where we’d gotten back in touch and fell in love all over again. Every dream I had with him was so vivid and real. Everything about the way he looked and what he wore. How he smelled and the way he kissed me. All his little mannerisms were exact, right down to his New York accent. Then I’d wake up only to find it was all just a dream, and I’d be destroyed for weeks. I didn’t know if I could take another false hope, so this time around I was determined to have some proof when I woke in the morning.

  Right before we got off the phone, Dresden mentioned he had just gotten a new home number. I slowly rolled over in bed to grab a black marker and Post It note off my nightstand. With my eyes barely open and only the moonlight shining in through my bedroom window, I slapped the Post-It Note on the wall next to me and wrote down his new number. We got off the phone, and I said a little prayer before I fell asleep, hoping that Post-It would still be stuck to my wall in the morning.

  When I woke the next morning, I remembered the Post-It that I THOUGHT I had written in the wee hours of the morni
ng. Then I realized the wall I supposedly stuck it to was behind me. I was afraid to turn around, so I just lay there frozen and suddenly found myself distracted by a shirtless poster of Nikki Sixx hanging directly in front of me.

  Oh Nikki, so flawless and beautiful…

  Wait what was I just thinking about? Oh yes Dresden, true love, Post-It Note, that’s right…

  I closed my eyes, rolled over in bed, and let my fingers crawl along the wall as if I were a blind person reading Braille. After not being able to immediately find the Post-It, I panicked and my fingers began to frantically move up and down the wall. I finally took a breath as I felt the paper under my fingers and peeked one eye open to find my hands covering the bright blue Post-It.

  Right after that initial phone call, Dresden and I began talking on a regular basis, and he settled back into my life as if nothing had ever happened. Talking to him a few times a week had become part of my normal routine like getting up in the morning to go to work. It was so weird to think that we hadn’t spoken for almost a year, but we put all that behind us. I knew why he did what he did. I had forgiven him, and we were ready to start over.

  Dresden and I had been back in touch for about a month or so when he broke the news that he would be coming to L.A. for my 20th birthday. I flew off my bed, jumped up and down a few times, and started planning out things for us to do while he was in town. The only thing I had scheduled at the time was my birthday party. Cassidy’s old roommate Dexter, had recently moved into a house in Canoga Park, so Spencer and Kennedy had planned on throwing me a party there.

  SPENCER:Irememberhowexcited Marisawasleadinguptohis arrival. I was a little bit worried about her hopes and expectations becauseshehada very clearidea ofhowshewantedeverythingtogo. I wasconcernedaboutthatbecausetheyhadn’tseen each otherin so long, and Dresden hadn’t seen any of his friends for so long. I felt cautiouslyoptimistic about it all,but Iknewhowmuchit meant toher becauseitkind ofcosthera lotintermsofotherrelationships.

  After weeks of anticipation, the day finally arrived when Dresden was flying into town. I planned to leave work early that day to pick him up at the airport and made sure to wear all his favorite things, like my little plaid skirt and Red perfume.