The Sunset Strip Diaries

by Amy Asbury

  Tweety had huge eyes that were made up like Twiggy, with tons of eyeliner way outside the rim of the eye to create an even bigger eye. He sometimes wore a bandana tied around his head with the knot on the top like Aunt Jemima and always had a cigarette in his hand. He never had an expression on his face whatsoever; he was always very calm and restrained. He was never crazy, yelling, or fighting like the other people in our crowd.

  One time I took Tweety to The Strip and I opened my trunk so he could throw his stacks of flyers inside. He saw my school books and looked up at me with a puzzled face. I stood there staring back at him, shivering in my little gold dress, wondering what the problem was.

  He said, “You are like…smart? You’re in school?” He took a long drag of his cigarette and blew smoke from his lungs. “How old are you?”

  I felt nervous for some reason. Was this going to ruin my image? Was this not a good thing? I was convinced I should have hidden my books and thrown a couple of gallons of Jim Beam in the back with a dead body.

  I told him how old I was and he said, “Eighteen? What are you doing hanging around guys like us?”

  I scrunched up my eyes and said, “Well, how old do you have to be?” and slammed the trunk.

  I went to a party with all of the popular guys one night. At one point, I was holding court- they were all around me in a circle, sipping drinks and talking. Tweety, Robbi, Freddie and a few others were there. I was flirting and being coquettish and feeling all great. Without realizing it, I backed into a candelabra. I saw a few of their eyes widen and I smelled something burning. My hair was starting to go up in flames. Everyone at the party stopped what they were doing and watched me scream, shriek, and try to stamp out the flames on my head. Michael helped me to slap myself in the head; he enjoyed it far too much. Luckily, the fire was eating up my hair spray before really getting down to business with my actual hair, so the damage was nothing a little teasing couldn’t cover.

  In the coming winter months, my crowd hit party after party and went to lots of shows. We all seemed to be paying attention only to each other. There was a band we saw all the time called the Shrinky Dinx. They got a record deal and changed their name to Sugar Ray, because Milton Bradley was going to sue them for using the name of one of their toys. We were like “Sugar who?” Then there were our buddies that were in a band called Slamhound. We must have partied at their place on Orange five thousand times. They became a band called Buckcherry, and went on to fame and fortune, while we were all chugging beers in the dirt somewhere.

  I still hung out with Harmony on some nights. We laid under his covers, giggled, and talked about skiing, Palm Springs and other girly shit. We should’ve done our toes and watched Molly Ringwald movies. Harmony would have made a great best friend, but I couldn’t get past how attractive he was. I kept hoping for more, even though he clearly was not interested in me in that way.

  I was also still hanging around Tricia, who didn’t mind that I had pounded her face in only six months prior. We took my sister and her Middleton friend Lainie to El Compadre one night. Strange from the Glamour Punks and Michael went with us, and it was raining. Michael and Tricia started making fun of each other and bantering. It started when he looked at her with all seriousness and said, “Nice ‘stache.” She put her hand to her upper lip and her eyes got big. She called him an asshole and it went on from there. I wrote:

  Michael threw a handful of lettuce at Tricia, then all of the sugar packets and then some of the beer cans we smuggled in. Then he threw the salt and the pepper shakers, the tortilla chips, and even a butter knife at her forehead (she moved and it hit the picture on the wall). Stacy Star came in with his bandmate Dazzle, and ordered a bunch of food and drinks for us. I thought he was so generous and even started liking him after twelve drinks. Next thing I knew, he jumped up from the table and ran. Dazzle followed. I was like, “Wait...what the-” Before I could get the red straw out of my mouth, I realized, “Oh shit. They just ditched us with the bill.” And you know me- I don’t even carry any money. So anyway, they jumped into a van, reversed at top speed and slammed into the car parked behind them. Then they slammed into whatever was in front of them. Stacy kept reversing and then accelerating, reversing and accelerating- he was literally smashing his van on both ends, as hard as he could. He finally compacted the car behind him enough to get out of the space. Then he swerved out, reversed into a wall, and smashed yet another car. We were screaming, “Stacy! Stop!” He was making the biggest, loudest scene and everyone from the restaurant was yelling, “Get the police!” El Compadre tried holding us, but we jumped in my car and left because both Michael and Strange have warrants.

  It rained a lot that winter. I drove completely drunk in the rain to hang with Harmony and Bobby Berry a few times a week. They seemed to appreciate my style, but neither appeared to be attracted to me otherwise. I was convinced I needed to be just a little more cool, but I was always doing clumsy or dorky things when I was around them. I dropped Harmony off in the street one night and as I was pulling away, he yelled something. Maybe he wants to kiss me. Finally! I was so thrilled. This is it! I carefully reversed and drove backwards to him and pressed the brake, fluttering my eyelashes and trying to give him sexy eyes. I talked to him for about five minutes, long enough to where I forgot my car was in reverse. There was no kiss. Bummer. We said goodbye to each other and I was going to step on the gas and peel out, to be cool. Thank God he was no longer behind me when I hit the gas- I would have ran that bitch over. I just remember shooting backward really fast and almost slamming into a tree.

  Another time I was outside of his apartment in the daytime, looking for a parking space (he lived on Hollywood Boulevard, just past La Brea). There was no one on the streets; they were completely dead. It was very quiet; all I could hear were birds chirping. I was a new driver, so I was a little nervous. A stoplight for one of the little teeny side streets was yellow and instead of going through it, I hit the brakes so hard that I skidded through the light with the loudest screech you ever heard in your life- it brought people out to their balconies to see what the commotion was. That screech was so loud; it was as if I had avoided a semi or a deer or something really crazy. I left black marks in the street.

  Journal Entry 1/13/92

  I am in a gray sweatshirt and cut off sweat pants. I haven’t showered or gotten off my ass all day. Get me out of this rut. Drinking, staying on couches, throwing up. I am stuck on these drag queen guys and I am secretly hoping something will interest me more. I am sick of this lifestyle even though Tricia and I are going for test shoots for bikini modeling on Sunday. I am going to end up backing out of it, but she needs the money.

  Tricia went to the shoot without me and the guy tried sleeping with her when she got there. I had been in situations that were similar. Once I called an ad for a “figure modeling” agency called World Models. I didn’t know that they started girls like Traci Lords and a slew of other women in porn. They acted as if it was bikini modeling, and I thought it would be the perfect thing for me. They had someone call me for a pre-interview and he asked me how my private parts were shaved. Whoa Nellie. I flaked on my appointment. Another time I met with a photographer that said he shot for Ziganne’s Bikinis and needed a model. I met him in the Valley and had a margarita with him and he showed me his book. It was the Ziganne’s catalog. He said, “I shoot pictures like these.” I said, “Wait…’like’ these? Did you take these pictures we are looking at?” and the moron said no. He didn’t even have any pictures that he took, because he had probably never taken a picture in his life. He was surely too busy raping and killing dumb girls like me and burying their remains in the desert.

  Another time, I answered an ad for lingerie modeling (I was pretty dense; it took a lot for me to learn my lesson). I showed up at this office building on Ventura Boulevard in a nice part of Encino. I went up some stairs to an empty office with little dressing rooms in it. It was just some pervy man and me. Here was how his business worked: He h
ad some crappy lingerie line that was a front for prostitution. Clients paid him to see a girl “model” the lingerie. If the girl wanted to take anything off for tips or take it further, well, then that was her prerogative. The man said he needed to see me dance naked before he could think about hiring me. I was like, Say what? It was just us two and I was afraid he would rape me or something so I tried to remain cool and just get out of there. I played dumb and said I would come back when I had a bikini to dance in, or something awkward like that. I burned rubber out of that joint. In my car on the way home, I thought about the poor girls that actually had to do such things for a living. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would be meeting one very soon.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dodging Bullets

  Tricia introduced me to a dancer named Willa, who had once lived in her apartment building but had since moved to Hollywood. She was fair-skinned with long, wavy, platinum blond hair and bright red lipstick. She had big, sparkly blue eyes and a gorgeous smile. My next ‘friend crush’ formed instantly. I joined her and Tricia on a few nights out, and then I started going out with Willa on my own. She loved to go to the Rainbow and dance- something I had never done. I was a horrible dancer, so in order to loosen up, I needed twenty-five Long Island iced teas. The dance floor at the Rainbow was sunken down five stairs and was dark, so that made it a little easier. It had a railing that I could hang onto while flipping my hair around, trying not to fall. Willa propped me up half of the time. We always requested the Prince song “Erotic City,” and at some point, they started playing it when we walked in the room. I felt all cool. Other than that song, I heard a lot of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new album Blood Sugar Sex Magik; the songs “Give it Away” and “Under the Bridge” were big around that time. I also remember that one night the bouncers made everyone leave the Rainbow so Guns N’ Roses could film a portion of their “November Rain” video in the red booths (It didn’t come out until that summer). We were totally irritated to have to cut our night short. We stumbled outside and saw that a portion of Sunset Boulevard was also shut down for the shoot. We had to move the party elsewhere.

  Willa taught me some social etiquette: For one, she taught me to tip the cocktail waitresses when they brought my drinks. I had never even heard of such a thing. I knew nothing about tipping, probably because I rarely bought my own drinks, but it was good to know. Willa was also a pro at scamming drinks off strangers, which was part two of her etiquette lesson. One must be able to secure herself a certain amount of cocktails for the pleasure of her company. I watched her work the older men; her face lit up and she looked like she was really interested in them, while they forked over drinks. When she had had enough cocktails, her face dropped and her eyes went dead and she moved on. It was kind of frightening really, like an evil robot or a Stepford Wife. I had never seen a face change so drastically. But that was what was called ‘survival mode’ in the world of dancers: They will do whatever it takes. If they don’t learn that charm, another girl will take their customer, i.e. their money. It was the work of a true hustler.

  She was blond and paid for everything, two things I required in a friend at that time. She got us cabs to clubs, bought or swindled us drinks and paid for my food if I ever needed any. She originally said she was in public relations, which I knew wasn’t true because of Tricia, but I didn’t say anything. Who was I to make her uncomfortable? After hanging out with her a bit, she admitted to being a dancer. I had hung out with other girls who had ‘danced’ so I didn’t question it any further. I was a little thrown off by her figure though. If you looked past her beauty, she was not in great shape. She had no chest, a kind of a big, shapeless butt and no waist. She hid it well by wearing a lot of black. I was puzzled as to how she made good money. It didn’t add up. There was a lot of competition out there, especially in Hollywood where the prettiest girls in the world danced.

  As we got closer, she confided in me a little bit more, admitting that she made $1,100 in one night by letting some old guy spank her. She said the first thing she did was buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of groceries and fill up her cupboards and fridge. She had been living on Top Ramen for months and was so delighted to go and buy beautiful jams and jellies, French pastries, Italian sparkling waters, gorgeous cuts of steak and fresh berries. I didn’t judge her. I remembered that some of the other dancers I knew had a “regular” from whom they would make side money. They always painted a picture of something harmless that had nothing to do with sex. Oh, I just walked over him in high heels or he just wanted to be yelled at, things like that. I figured Willa was just doing the same thing and I didn’t ask her any more about it. I never asked any of the girls about what they did for money. I knew that would make them uneasy and unable to trust me. I handled Willa in the same way. We were to have fun. We were to laugh, dance, drink, flirt with guys and forget our troubles.

  Tricia’s French boyfriend, Pierre, hated Willa. We were both over at Tricia’s apartment one day and I overheard Pierre threatening Willa with something. My ears perked up. In a low, quiet voice, she turned very vicious toward him and he shut up real quick. She threatened to tell Tricia all about him. All about him? What did she know? I wasn’t sure what she had on him, but I was impressed at the way she had him shaking in his boots. I had never seen a woman pull that off in real life. Only on Dynasty or Dallas, of course.

  Willa always seemed to be putting men in their place in a shocking fashion. Once again, her deep blue eyes would be happy and smiley one minute, until someone tried to scam her. Her eyes snapped into this piercing stare and she would say crazy things like, “Do you want to fuck with me? Because I don’t think you want to fuck with me, so and so. I will fucking destroy you. So you need to shut the fuck up.” I thought I had fallen in love! I wanted to be like that! She was beautiful and fun, but would cold fuck you up if you crossed her. I craved protection, so I clung to her. I wished I had known her earlier in my life, so I could have let her loose on my old gynecologist and a half dozen other guys- she would have torn them to shreds and had a cocktail afterwards.

  I noticed that a new crowd was starting to spread on The Strip at that time. They were from Seattle. They were still considered glam guys at that point, but they were different. They were…angry. And they were into drugs, mainly heroin. They were a dirty crowd. The girls were not blond California girls; they were pasty with black hair. Some of them were still pretty, but they were more Goth or Punk-tinged. I didn’t like that crowd; they were not glamorous enough for me. I preferred to keep company with the most beautiful, most popular people I could find, so I avoided those misfits. I had probably spent a year or so glossing them over and not giving them the time of day, because around 1992 I noticed that there was a group of people who knew who I was and didn’t like me. They said I was a snob and that I thought I was hot. I was like, “And you are?”

  ***

  A few months passed. My grandmother started dating a new man, and she wanted her space. It had been three years that we had lived with her in the tiny Canoga Park house, and she told my mom it was time for us to go. It really was time. There were still roaches scattering in the house when you turned on a light. My room was still full of smelly clothes that needed to be laundered, stale pretzels that I had thrown in the ceiling fan to watch them break, stacks of magazines and records and God knows what else. And my sister’s feet always smelled like cheese popcorn, so that scent was not helping the ambience in the house when my grandmother was trying to date. Both my sister and I blasted music very loud and I got phone calls at all hours of the night- I would have booted us out too. We moved from my grandmother’s house to a house in Northridge. It was a good-sized house and my mother received some sort of a smoking deal. I think she only paid $700 a month and we all got our own rooms. Because I had turned eighteen, I had to start paying my mother rent. I chose the smallest of the rooms, for $200 a month. My mom had her eye on me, letting me stay only as long as I behaved.

  I started hanging with Ra
zz again. He was no longer friends with Darren Tyler. Darren had stopped dating the rock star's wife and took up with another dancer. We had never seen him so sprung on anyone- he was totally in love with this chick, a green-eyed brunette. Razz was dating the girl's friend and they had all spent a lot of time together holed up in the house, rolling on Ecstasy. There was some point where Darren's girl and Razz hooked up- Razz blamed the drugs and felt terrible afterward- but Darren never forgave him. (The chick, incidentally, was one of the girls on the inside cover of Poison’s Open Up and Say… Ahh album).Razz’s new partner in crime was his old friend Teddy St. John, who was there at the beach on the night I lost my virginity. I would have not even remembered it was him if he hadn’t reminded me. Anyhow, he was really funny and had a very low voice like a DJ. He was Greek, with very wide set eyes; black, spiky hair like Nikki Sixx; very nice, smooth, pale skin and huge lips. He was really tall but I wouldn’t say he was thin. He wasn’t fat, he just looked regular. Oh, okay, sometimes he could get a little chubby if he wasn’t watching it. He had known all of the guys I knew since they were teenagers.

  Teddy and Razz were a little more upscale than to the Glamour Punks or Alleycat Scratch. They had jobs, cars, and nice clothing; they bought me all of my drinks, and made sure the doormen took care of me wherever we went. The Glamour Punks and Alleycat Scratch passed me the community bottle of Jim Beam at trashy parties in random apartment buildings, wearing the same clothes they wore the night before. Cars? Yeah, right. Jobs? Please.