The Sunset Strip Diaries

by Amy Asbury

  I was quickly seeing that Hollywood was not at all glamorous, but I pushed that to the back of my mind and trudged forward. Things started to take an awkward turn once I moved in with Willa- I got the feeling I was going to have to pay the piper. She began to try to pressure me into having a relationship with her. Ha ha, sure, let’s be girlfriends! I said, trying to keep it light and cute. No, she wasn’t talking light and cute, or little pecks on the lips. She was talking the real deal. Doing it. She started dropping hints, walking around naked. It probably seemed like I was game for it, the way I was clinging to her. My problem was that I didn’t know how to let someone down and still remain friends with them. I thought, Okay, I do hate guys right now and want to destroy every male I see. But do I like women in their place? It would have been totally acceptable in Hollywood. But the answer was no. I didn’t like chicks. She became offended when I finally rebuffed her and things started to change between us.

  We went to a party that spring with a guy named Bang, who was friends with the Glamour Punks. He was super-duper tall, incredibly thin, and had a dark green Mohawk that wasn’t styled- it hung down on one side, showing the shaved sides of his head. He wore purple striped tights under his baggy shorts, big T-shirts, purple Doc Marten boots and a Sid Vicious bondage chain around his neck. He was always yelling in a New York accent and everyone was too scared to tell him to shut the fuck up. I felt like clocking him in the head with a shovel. Anyway, that particular night in April of 1992, I drove Bang and some other guys to Rock n’ Roll Ralphs on Sunset to buy some Jim Beam. Some crack whore tried to solicit him in the parking lot and he started yelling at her and calling her Toothy McSnuggle, which we found hilarious because it made no sense. She got really pissed at him and decided to kick a huge dent in my car. I was in mid-swig of the bottle of whiskey and my eyes bugged out when I saw the commotion. The whole night was violent, even at the party we went to afterwards. Everyone was pushing each other, socking each other, and being rowdy- the mood of the crowd was really shifting from the bubblegum nights that Michael and I shared a year or two prior. The guys were being far too rough around me and I saw that Strange was the one egging them on. I dove for him and we got in a huge fight, rolling around, and wrestling. He pushed me into a stove and tore a huge hole in my daisy print hot pants.

  Bang started to take over as the new party leader, introducing his musical tastes to us outdated folk. He brought a Cypress Hill cassette tape to play in my car, rewinding the song “Hand on the Pump” repeatedly, and screaming the “Duke of Earl” sampling portions loud enough to break the glass on the goddamn Empire State Building back in New York. The rest of the guys got into the music too, seeming to like the new sound. The glam scene was dying before my eyes, but I was determined to continue on in Hollywood. What would become of us? Where were we headed?

  I saw Tweety a few days later and he said, “I’ll be your boyfriend,” as if I had been begging him. I replied that I couldn’t afford him, remembering he said he needed at least $200 a week from a girlfriend. He said we could work on it and then suggested I start dancing. I told him I didn’t want to do something slutty like that, and he said it wouldn’t be slutty, because I would be coming home to him. My heart sped up at the thought of coming home to him. But I couldn’t be a stripper. No way. It would be too embarrassing to be naked in front of a crowd of people. Knowing me, I would trip and fall off the stage or break the damn pole off the ceiling with my fat ass.

  He came up to me a few days later and lowered his price while dragging on a cigarette. He didn't take his eyes off me.

  “One hundred dollars a week- final offer.”

  I looked at him and just walked away. But inside I thought, Shit, I would do it if I had that money to spare.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Will She be Chopped to Bits in There?

  The spring continued. Willa was still supporting me by providing a place to live and booze, the only two things I was convinced I needed in life. She left her apartment on Cherokee and got new a place down the street in Alleycat Scratch's building on Yucca and Whitley. I was only working a few days a week at the beauty supply store back in the Valley- my meager paychecks went straight to my mother for rent. Even though I only came back to her house to do laundry, pluck my eyebrows, and Nair my upper lip, I still had a room full of stuff there. I saw how quick she could be with the garbage bags and I knew my things would be straight out on the street if I didn’t pay up. Basically, I had a job, but not a cent to spare. Being the total user that I was, I fully expected Willa to pay for me like my past dancer friends did. The fact that I was not contributing a penny was unfair, but I thought nothing of it. I know, I was so rude.

  A year prior, a black dude on drugs named Rodney King was running from the cops. As you probably recall, some cops caught him and beat the shit out of him. Someone videotaped it and showed it to the media, and it sparked a huge controversy that implied the cops were abusing their power by using excessive force. People assumed it was due to racism because most of the cops were white. The cops went on trial during 1992 and at the end of April, the verdict was going to be announced as to whether or not the cops were guilty. The night before the announcement, Willa and I saw that cops were staked out around the area. We asked two of them why they were all out and they said that the verdict was being announced in the morning and they were all called out in case some shit went down. We were like, Huh? Like what could go down? They were cool cops and started chatting about it- they didn’t think anything was going to happen, they were just following orders, bored and eating fast food in the car.

  Lo and behold, when the verdict was announced that the accused cops were acquitted, much of the black population went ballistic in South Central Los Angeles and called it racism. Huge riots started to occur by the next evening, the largest at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. There were so many people that they outnumbered the cops. They started burning buildings, attacking storeowners, throwing bricks through windows, and torching cars. There was plenty of looting and fires going on in Hollywood as well. We all took that opportunity to watch from the apartment roofs, which overlooked Hollywood Boulevard. We barbecued from the rooftop and watched people roll huge TV’s out of an electronic store. Michael and Strange went and looted Melrose and got some clothes from The Gap, of all places.

  There was a curfew put in place by the police department, so I drove back to my mother’s house in the Valley, a place I hadn’t seen in weeks or maybe months. Jimmy called to check on me. I screamed, “If you were so concerned about me, you wouldn’t have screwed a bunch of chicks without protection and then come back to me!” and slammed the phone down. I went to Tricia’s and watched downtown L.A. on the news. It was in flames. We were stunned that the verdict of the police beating caused such an uproar in the community. But things were contained after a week or so and I drove back out to Hollywood to continue torturing myself.

  Willa needed to make some money so we could continue partying, so I took her to the Holiday Inn on Highland, where she was to “dance” for some guy. She told me to come with her to knock on the door and collect the cash. She was annoyed and wanted to get it over with. I shuddered at being so close to the transaction. I knocked at the guy’s door, carrying a portable stereo with one of my cassette tapes inside. It was stuff I had recorded off the radio, and it was all cued up and ready to go. We stepped in and saw an old fat guy in his underwear. I tried to act cool and not look down at his tighty whities and fat gut. He said, “Which one of you is it?” She piped up and said it was she, and that I was there to collect the money. I took his cash, a few hundred dollars, and went back to the car in the underground parking garage and waited. Before I left, she whispered to me that if she didn’t come out in a half an hour exactly, I was to come back up and knock on the door and get her. Whoa...what if she didn’t come out? Was it possible he would like…kill her in there? And what the hell could I do to save her? Wouldn’t he just…pull me in the door and kill me to
o? I realized that I was playing the role of the “muscle” and I didn’t feel I could do an adequate job in providing her protection.

  I waited, listening to Right Said Fred in the car. I was nervous, hoping she would be okay and come out of the room on her own. Thirty minutes passed. She didn’t come out. My heart was beating like a loud bass drum. How did I get tangled up in some shit like this? Now I have to go and try to save a strangled dancer from some fat guy’s hotel room? What was I going to do, exactly? Beat him with my brush? I went back up and knocked on the door. She answered the door and looked fine, but she was no longer wearing her red lipstick. She quickly pushed her way out the door and closed it behind her. We walked down the halls to the elevator in silence for a few minutes, and then she said she wanted to go out that night for some drinks. When I listened to the tape later, it had not been played. It was still cued up. I knew at that moment she had not danced at all. My friend was not a stripper. She was a hooker.

  I guess I kind of knew inside, because she wasn’t a dancer at a club and didn’t even do bachelor parties (which can get pretty sketchy in and of themselves). When I actually let myself think about it, I was taken aback at how ugly and dirty it was. That was her reality. She had no family and no friends other than Tricia and me. She had no skills and she didn’t have enough money to pay rent on an apartment by herself. She sold her body. My glamorous picture of her had disappeared. It was not dazzling. It was not powerful or glamorous. It was nothing to look up to. She had to sleep with a big fat man for money. She lived a life of shame and degradation.

  Willa told me that she was from Georgia, or somewhere in the South, and she used to get beat up every single day at school. She was incredibly angry; very, very angry and just trying to survive. And there I was, mooching off her! I could’ve lived with my mother and I was mooching off this poor girl who had to do that for money. She was so lonely that she gladly supported me along with her.

  Most of the time she tried to scam things for free. There was a liquor store on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee. We walked over there, took Ramen noodles and other food, and she sweet talked and made promises to the poor little Hindu guy who owned the store. He let us have the food without paying. Some nights Willa and I ditched our cab without paying. We would take a cab home from the Rainbow, tell the driver to hold on and that we would be right back. Willa would let the cab driver hold her purse (that had nothing of value in it) and we would get out, go inside, and never return. We did that a few times, until the cab companies would no longer even come to pick us up because they were warned of our address.

  She stopped paying the rent at the apartment, and they couldn’t legally evict her for thirty days or something. So we stayed that thirty days, living it up and having parties. If the parties got too big, we left and let everyone stay and party without us. She didn’t care, because she only had a mattress and a broken down TV. There wasn’t even any toilet paper. Her room had condoms all over the floor and old dried up slices of pizza in open pizza boxes. It was sickening.

  The night before they changed the locks on the doors, we packed up the few items she did have into my car. She then set up shop at the Howard Hotel, which was about two blocks away, in the same neighborhood. We both had fun at first- we jumped on the beds and played the radio (I remember hearing “Tennessee” by Arrested Development specifically while jumping on the bed). We partied and brought back whoever wanted to hang out. Lesli and Pepper (who had left their previous bands and started a new band together called Queeny Blast Pop) came over once and we robbed them and then threw them out. We took their toothpaste and other belongings from their fanny -yes, fanny- packs.

  In the bright blue mornings, Willa walked outside of the grimy hotel in her white robe and picked up an L.A. Xpress. It was a sex industry newspaper that advertised porn stores and strip clubs, but was most known for escort services. She opened its inky pages and called a random service to pick her up on the spot and send her straight out on call. It literally kept her off the street corner. One day she called a service and a black guy pulled up to the hotel in an old, crappy brown car. I’m not shitting you, he looked exactly like J.J. Walker from Good Times- clothes and all. She told me to come with her and I was scared inside, but I went. Soon we were on a freeway going to Culver City. I looked over at Willa’s blond head looking out the window. Surely, she would have some plan if he tried to kill us. She would protect me, wouldn’t she?

  The guy soon pulled off into some run down area, toward a dingy motel. She told him, “Thirty minutes,” and off she went, in a black velvet top and black pants. I then had to sit and wait in the car with him. I felt like I was going to shit my pants. He said he needed to get gas. Wait...I can’t let this guy drive away with me! No one but Willa knows where I am and neither of us know who he is. I was terrified that it was the end of my life. He drove to a gas station and as he pumped gas, I considered getting out of the car and running…but I didn’t. What if he were really only going to get gas, and I hastily jumped out like a maniac, stranding myself in Culver City? I pictured him driving back to get Willa and telling her I was gone. Shit. I guess I will stay in this car and take my chances… I tried to hold in my diarrhea. Luckily, he drove back to the motel parking lot after getting gas. I exhaled in the backseat, counting the seconds until she would walk back out of the motel. J.J. had a beeper or two, and she was supposed to page him if there was a problem. I thought, How is she going to page you if she is being cut to bits in there? But lo and behold, she came out twenty minutes later. It was the longest twenty minutes of my damn life. She got in the car without making eye contact with either of us, blond hair falling over her shoulders. She had cash in her hand and started counting it, her bright red fingernails flipping the bills. I tried not to stare. She kept a portion of the money and then gave J.J. his cut for driving. Drivers always got a cut because they also counted as the muscle- they were insurance. They were the one who would go and save the girl if she didn’t come out within the allotted time slot; the person who could save the girl from danger, maybe even death. It was worth it to the girls to have this back up and they gladly paid their drivers. Willa then counted out a separate cut that was to be paid to the actual escort service for bringing her the “client.” After receiving payment, J.J. brought us back home. As we were driving back past palm trees and spray-painted buildings, I thought about Willa. I couldn’t believe that was her life. She was only a few years older than I was, maybe twenty-two. It was no way for a young woman to live.

  Willa took some of her money to pay the rent on the next week of the hotel, and the rest I believe she was using for pills. She bought them from some European dude with poufy hair that she used to hook up with in the Yucca building. She got in terrible moods on those pills. She also took diet pills, which made her a cold bitch, as well. One night she was screwing some guy in the bed we slept in, so I went and slept in the bathroom. I got into the empty bathtub with my clothes on and curled up as best I could. The guy’s friend was there waiting for him and had nowhere to go, so he tried to sleep in the bathroom as well. He got into the bathtub with me. I was so tired and he looked like such a wimp, that I thought, Ah, who cares. I could probably beat him up if I really tried. But when I tried to sleep, he kept putting his hands on me. He wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times I yelled at him. For a minute I thought, Am I going to get raped? But then I got so mad that I wasn’t scared any more. I got up, kicked open the bathroom door as hard as I could, grabbed my keys, walked out the front door, and drove to my mother’s.

  Another morning I woke up at the Howard Hotel and I was sleeping outside of the door on the dirty floor in the hallway. I remember thinking that I had to stop going to Hollywood. I had to stop drinking so much. I was ashamed of myself for not putting that energy into college. I never wanted to drive back to the Valley, so I rarely showed up to any of my classes. I didn’t turn in assignments, I had dropped off the college newspaper staff and I was usually either drunk,
getting drunk, or hung over. I felt myself kind of tipping. Tipping over to a place that I didn’t want to be. I went from having this social circle on the weekends, to entering the actual lifestyle, day to day.

  I went to a party with Willa a few days later and some homely fat guy in glasses offered me a sip from his bottle of wine. I remember drinking from it and then just total blackness. I had been roofied.

  I could hear, but couldn’t move my body. I heard Willa laughing at me and talking behind my back, making fun of me. Someone brought out a snake and was letting it crawl all over me. I couldn’t get it off me, let alone move at all. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even open my eyes because I was completely shut down except for my hearing. It was so scary. Then I woke up in a room on a bed. The weird fat guy was sitting in the corner, staring straight ahead. I rubbed my eyes and immediately looked down to see if I were naked- I wasn’t. I was fully clothed and so was he. But what if he had raped me and put everything back on me? I didn’t know. I had no recollection of anything. Nothing hurt, so I didn’t think I had been raped, but I wondered if he peeked at me, lifted up my shirt or something, felt me up maybe. I asked him where I was and he said I was in the Yucca building. I got the fuck out of there, running a block or so to Willa's hotel room without shoes. I jumped over glass on the sidewalks, crying and sweating.