The Sunset Strip Diaries

by Amy Asbury

  That December, my social nightmare continued. Jimmy joined one of the bands I had been friends with, and was instantly part of my crowd for better or for worse. The fights he had with some of the main players in Hollywood had been forgiven, and they all ended up accepting him. His perseverance paid off. I was painted as the shit-starting tramp, and to a certain extent, it was true.

  I remember walking up to a club with my friends behind me and looking up to see Jimmy in a full face of make-up and glammy clothes, with a crowd of converts behind him. It was as if we were going to have a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We didn’t look at each other until we were about to pass one another. We locked eyes and kept walking our separate ways. I felt he was a total hypocrite for wearing makeup- he had always talked shit on the glam guys on The Strip. Now he was one of them.

  It was sad to ignore someone who I once loved and who had given me so much love. We were strangers now. We had hurt each other so much, the damage could never be undone. But as sad as I was, I was also irritated that he had the nerve to break into my circle. Who did he think he was? I thought, I didn’t pound five million liters of Jim Beam in the dirt at Errol Flynn’s for this shit. I had worked hard! But I was the one who bowed out in the end. Hollywood wasn’t what it once was for me. It meant more to him- he was determined to be in a band, and I wasn’t as determined to stay and fight him.

  Journal Entry 12/30/92

  I don’t have time to write because I am going to work at my telemarketing job. I might go out with my co-worker Tammy to see male strippers afterward. I am sure I will be embarrassed rather than like it. I am only stopping to write because I have to tell you about Dusty. He was the one with the condo who was nice, had a good job, was respectful and housed Razz and Michael for a summer or so. I thought he had morals and though he was not my particular type (tall, black hair, dickish), any girl he ended up with would surely be lucky.

  But then I got a peek into his life. His seventeen-year-old girlfriend Michelle, who could pass for twelve at best, was giggling to me on the phone last night that she was going to look into stripping. Okay, they all do, at some point. But then she said that Dusty suggested the Seventh Veil to her. I nearly dropped the phone. Not only was someone who supposedly loves her telling her to bend over in guys’ faces for cash but he had the nerve to suggest the absolute scummiest, lowest hellhole in Hollywood for her to work. It is about one iota better than the Star Strip on La Cienega, but only by a peroxided hair. I was pissed that Dusty would pimp her out like that and I am convinced she doesn’t know better. She is very young and not even from here! She is from Utah! He was the only nice guy left. Now he is going to have his seventeen-year-old girlfriend bring home the bacon? Maybe he was like that all along and I just didn’t know. Anyway, she said Shandy Becker was going to show her some moves. I nearly spit out my cranberry juice. Shandy Becker, the drug dealer? She looked like an old oak tree, all knobby and gnarly. When was she a dancer? In the Roaring Twenties? She is like, old. She has to be in her thirties already, unless those drugs have aged her that bad. And where did she dance? An old folks’ home? Michelle was naively giggling about how much money she could make and that she didn’t mind nudity and she just wanted money. She wanted me to go with her and I told her it wasn’t my thing- I wanted money too, but not that bad. I wished her my sincere luck.

  Little naïve Michelle went on to become a stripper at the Seventh Veil. Not only that, but she dumped Dusty and moved in with the guy who owned the club. Over the years, she completely transformed from the fresh-faced, coltish brunette wearing a Venice Beach T-shirt with beaded fringe. I saw her about six or seven years later. Her dark long hair was bleached platinum blond, she had breast implants and she was done up with a lot of thick stage makeup. She was very beautiful but no longer smiling. I could hardly recognize her. She was with a much older man and two young children. We looked each other right in the eyes and knew who each other were, but neither of us said anything.

  I continued to work at my telemarketing job. The job started at 4 p.m. and ended at 8 p.m. We all sat in a room staring at a wall. It was so dull. I remember driving over there in the rain, listening to The Cure and daydreaming. I had to call people and ask them if they would take a survey, which was really a disguise to make them listen to my pitch. I asked them what they hated most about going to the supermarket. The lines? The prices? The one cart with the messed up wheel? (That was my favorite one to say). After they answered, I said, What if you didn’t have to go to the supermarket anymore? I explained to them that if they ordered their meat from our company, it would be delivered to them, fresh and vacuum packed. I had a sheet to tell me what to say to any of their objections, including if they said they were vegetarian. I think we had some fresh vegetables that we would also deliver. If they had no room, that was no problem: We sold a freezer. We would deliver that bitch and put it straight into their dirty garage. They could fill it with beer if they didn’t want to keep buying meat.

  I got a few leads at first. When you got a lead, you had to pass it to the boss, Kenneth, in the other room. He was watching us through a glass partition. He was a young guy, real salesman-ish. He had a huge shnozz and dark, feathered hair- pretty unfortunate looking, but he had personality. One day Kenneth gave us each a garbage bag of frozen meat, and I was shocked to find after cooking it that it was really very good. My sister used to beg me to make a sandwich with one of the chicken breasts.

  I don’t remember many of the people from the job except for Tammy. She was a petite 27- or 28-year-old whose father owned a bunch of adult bookstores and porn shops on Van Nuys Boulevard. She confided in me that she found Kenneth hot, and started dating him shortly thereafter. She often came to pick me up in her aqua blue Corvette. I went to her huge house in Studio City where she still lived with her father, and we laid out by her pool. Tammy talked about wanting to be a stripper as we laid there on the Hawaiian print beach towels. Shit, who was I to stop her? I went with her to a bikini bar in Tarzana and watched her do amateur night. I was there for support but I soon felt embarrassed for her because she was so not sexy. She had long, brown, permed hair, which was really out of fashion by then. She also had big caterpillar eyebrows and didn’t know how to apply makeup properly. But none of that mattered in the dark under a neon light when Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” was blasting. She ended up winning the contest and was hired. I was not surprised after I watched the next featured dancer. She was wearing glasses and rolling around the floor to Def Leppard.

  ***

  Birdie and I were out one night feeling all pretty and popular and having a good time. Things immediately skidded to a halt when we saw Ashley Allesandro. Everything turned slow motion: She was in a fluffy, white fur coat, with her long blond hair and round angel face, getting out of Kit Ashley’s white Jaguar in front of the crowds of people at the Rainbow. Both of our jaws dropped, because we had both dated him. The slow motion continued as Birdie scoffed and my eyes narrowed. Birdie tried stepping forward and I put my hand on her arm to warn her not to act like she cared. Her curls bounced as she teetered on her Frederick's of Hollywood heels. We were on our way out.

  We heard through the grapevine shortly thereafter that Sabrina had gotten her hands on Ashley. I thought to myself, Isn’t that, like, child abuse? But before I could think too much about anything, a smear campaign was started on Birdie and me. Rumors started going around that we were lesbians. I didn’t think lesbians were such a horrible thing to be, but I didn’t want to be labeled a man-hater. That was so un-sexy and I was all about being sexy. I thought about dumping Birdie as a friend to quell the rumors but then I thought, Wait, she is a pretty good friend. That, and she had too much on me. Had Ashley started the rumor? Nah, she had just slept with Sabrina. Was it Jimmy? The Seattle clique? It could’ve been anyone. Nonetheless, it was going to ruin the remainder of my image if I didn’t fix it immediately.

  With our popularity on shaky ground, Birdie and I started to turn our efforts t
o the L.A. celebrity crowd at Bar One; a place where we were considered new and fresh. We pushed our way through the crowds standing outside of the red velvet ropes and waited an entire second for the bouncer to check our names off the guest list. I loudly sighed and said, “I can’t be bothered with this.” We then glided through the door like princesses, to the crowd’s dismay. We sat with Rich Ross and he said we could order whatever we wanted. I should have ordered some filet mignon and lobster or some foie gras and Dom Perignon, but I was a girl of simple taste and ordered up the classiest of drinks for us: Midori Sours. They were the Cosmopolitans of the early nineties.

  Rich Ross said he wanted to set us up with two twin models, but I said I needed to see them first and he was offended that I didn’t trust his judgment. The man wore running shorts every night of the year. How could I trust his judgment? Anyway, Birdie ended up in the men’s room, snorting a bunch of coke with a businessman in a suit. I ran into a few blonds from my high school, who used to snub me back then. They were on my turf now. I relished the attention and the paying of homage.

  That New Year’s Eve, we were supposed to go to a party hosted by that crazy magician, Fig. He always had a huge rager up in the hills, with ice sculptures, dancing, and a huge lit-up pool overlooking Hollywood. I recall seeing some plastic dog poo at one of his parties- it was so random. Anyway, the town’s other New Year’s Eve option was a rich girl throwing a party at her parent’s mansion in Pasadena, but there was no way I could go because of the Seattle crowd of girls she hung with. Again, they didn’t care for me and they cared even less for Birdie. They were still very territorial over Stevie, whom Birdie was still dating on and off. They also loved Lesli, but they knew better than to try to fight me; I would tear a bitch up.

  We ended up going to Shandy Becker’s, as a last resort. Of course some drug addicts would have us. Michelle and Dusty were there; Razz, Missy (she was back), Razz’s friend Jay Jay, Teddy, and of course The Becker. We were all supposed to pile into a limo and go to a party at KNAC DJ Tawn Mastery’s house. At the last minute, Teddy wouldn’t come out of the room because he was too strung out. Shandy shut herself in her room with him and they both stayed home on New Year’s Eve. Whatever, none of my business.

  Here is what I wrote about the night:

  I missed Missy so much. We hugged to death when I saw her and caught up on gossip. I introduced her to Birdie, who fell in love with her too. Missy looked like a model in a black sparkly dress and her long hair back to blond. Her baby face looked especially pretty with pale pink lips and black, fringed eyelashes. She was telling us how she hitchhiked across the United States with a bunch of her friends when she was fifteen. Her parents were trying to tear her between them and she said, ‘Fuck this.’ She imitated her teenaged self, leaning back with her pelvic bone out toward us, sticking her thumb far out in front of her with a sneer on her face.

  Everyone snorted a bunch of coke except for Michelle and me. We all piled into a cab and went to the Rainbow, which was jam-packed, and squeezed into a shiny red booth. Jay Jay bought everyone a bunch of drinks and food. When it turned 1993, he popped a bottle of champagne high in the air. It started overflowing and everyone put their glasses under it and caught it. We all kissed and hugged one another in our gold and silver sparkly outfits, laughing and feeling jovial. It was all fine and dandy until Jay Jay left with some chick and left us with the check, which no one had the money to pay.

  I was held there until someone coughed up money. Birdie, in a metallic bronze dress and long ponytail, opened her big mouth to tell the waitress that working while intoxicated was against the law. The manager came over and cussed Birdie out in the worst way- she had tears in her eyes when he was through with her. Anyway, we all went directly back to Jay Jay’s afterwards to yell at him for ditching us with the bill. When we got there, we saw that he had brought home some tweaked-out chick in a purple sequined dress. I took one look at her Adam’s apple, grabbed Jay Jay, and dragged him to the kitchen immediately to tell him he had brought home a transsexual. It was a guy. Maybe it was my experience in the beauty supply store dealing with many transgendered “ladies,” or maybe it was because I was the only one not on drugs, but I knew Lisa was a man.

  Jay Jay freaked out. Poor Lisa was indeed a man in drag, with tits and makeup. I got drunker and was being mean to her, as per Razz, who was thrilled someone was being mean. He said I took after him (“She takes after me! I am her uncle!”) Then Lisa proceeded to read Birdie’s palm. She told her future, and said she would die young.

  To change the subject for a minute, I drove past my old neighborhood the other day, after visiting my friend Amelia, who I am supposed to move out with. It was so weird. I looked at each house and remembered who used to live in them when I was a kid. Some of them are still there. It felt so weird to see my old house, and the windows that I used to climb through. I drove by Jeff Hunter’s. That was a sacred place to me for years, before I reintroduced myself to him. I drove by all the spots on the sidewalk that were uprooted by tree trunks, pushed up into bumps that we used to “pop wheelies” on with our bikes. I drove slowly by the front of my high school. I was going “boom!” in my head to each spot that changed my life. I saw the spot where scummy Casey stopped his truck and rolled down the window to talk to me. Boom! Just like that, my whole life changed. I never turned back from that day, when I was in my concert T-shirt and bare feet right on the sidewalk. I was instantly in deep trouble. I can’t believe he was cruising the high school looking for young girls, and that I was the one who was troubled enough to take his bait.

  I saw all the spots where I sat and cried and all of the places I walked with Abby when we were ditching classes. I saw The Wall, where all of the stoners sat in the morning smoking Marlboros and Camels. I was short of breath thinking of all of the memories I had there. It is really amazing to me that I didn’t know how big the world was. It only consisted of that little neighborhood for so many years, just me and my sister and our parents. I had that school counselor who tried to help me. Now there is no one to take care of me. I have to do things for myself now. I have absolutely no idea where I am going in life.

  Sadly, my sister was completely strung out on drugs by that time. She wasn’t just doing it here and there; she had a serious problem. No one tried getting her help, including me. She was dating a guy named Jared, who was a drug addict and came from a family of dealers. He got her hooked even worse. She looked like a skeleton. Her beautiful, shiny hair was broken, brittle, and orange; her caramel skin was pale and ghostly. Her bones were showing and her eyes were sunken. She was really moody and often flew into a rage over nothing. But I was used to that- it was the way I operated myself. Everyone around me was on drugs as well, so nothing stood out to me. I just felt it was a shame she was hooked, too. First dad, and then her. Was I next?

  Journal Entry 1/24/93

  Presley just called here and asked me if I had been on any dates lately. I figured that since I don’t really see him out that maybe he wouldn’t know who I was talking about if I named someone. So I admitted to a date with Kit Ashley on Wednesday night. He knew exactly who he was, and was pissed. He said, “Did you kiss him? Did you fuck him? Do you like him better than you like me?” I said no to all of it although some of it was a lie. Then he got angry and started calling me a hussy and saying that bands all over the place were scrapping because of me. The conversation wasn’t going too well at that point. He tried telling me I was whipped on him, again. I literally didn’t even know who he was when he first called. He was telling me that if he snapped his fingers, I would sleep with him. I said, “You have already snapped them a few times and it hasn’t worked.” He was livid. He needs to lose that double chin before he starts talking like that.

  Anyway, I went out with Natalie again last night and we went to The Roxy and the Rainbow. I saw Lesli in the Rainbow and decided I would be rude. He had some girl on him but was still yelling for me to come to his table. I passed by him, raised my eyebrow
s in a rude Valley Girl sort of way, and just looked away. He kept yelling and yelling above the crowds. I never came back. He has been hanging out with Kim Fowley a lot, and I don’t know what that is about. Kim asks a lot of questions about what kind of music we are into- he is interested in what the kids like these days. I think he used to be the manager for The Runaways. He looks like he is wearing powder on his face, even though he is an old man with a cane.

  After that, we went to Ten Masa and then to some underground club on Cahuenga at 3:30 in the morning. I was very uncomfortable there. Natalie’s drug dealer, Anton, was there with sores all over his face and a huge bandage on his nose. He was so gross. He had a bottle of beer spiked with this new drug they call liquid Ecstasy [later called GHB]. He was so repulsive and so on heroin. He tried to kiss my hand. Oh, the irony. I didn’t fit in at the club because I wasn’t dressed in black, I was too young and I wasn’t tweaking on drugs. Something exploded in there and a bunch of white smoke filled the room- I was choking so badly. I wanted to get the hell out of there, but I had to wait for Natalie to score her drugs. People and their drugs…man…they will withstand anything to get those drugs.