by Bif Naked
“Beer,” I said, too stressed to return the smile. He introduced himself, and I recognized his name. I had seen many of the Hollywood movies he’d directed.
“What happened to your friends?” he asked, handing me a Corona with a lime wedge.
I explained that they had ditched me the way brothers ditch little sisters—and that I knew I would recognize the street we were staying on if I saw it. He was amused by my tale, and bought me another beer, which I happily drank.
“Want to get out of here? I can give you a lift,” he offered.
Since I had given up on the guys coming back to get me, it seemed like the only option, so I agreed and split with him, climbing into his shiny white Jeep parked out front. I didn’t know where we were headed, but I had nowhere to go anyway. I would show the guys that I could take care of myself.
We drove through the winding Hollywood streets until we came to an apartment building near the Beverly Hills police station. “I have an apartment here for when I don’t feel like driving all the way home,” he announced as we pulled into the parking garage. “Great,” I thought, “he’s married and here I am again making another genius decision.”
I followed him into the elevator and then into his apartment, which was plastered with posters of movies he had directed. I wasn’t familiar with too many of the movies but knew the actors featured on the posters, who were quite famous.
He was looking through a pile of mail on the coffee table. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said.
“A shower? You’re taking a shower?” I squeaked. I really thought this was just a short stop and that he was going to, miraculously, drive me to that Naomi girl’s place.
“Yes,” he said, walking toward the bathroom. “Make yourself at home. Want a drink or something to eat?”
I heard the water turn on. This was surreal. A shower?
“Do you want a sandwich or a beer or anything?” he shouted from the bathroom. He sounded naked to me.
“No. I’m okay.”
“What? Did you answer me?”
I walked over to the door and spoke through it. “I’m okay.”
The door opened, causing me to nearly fall forward. He was naked.
“I couldn’t hear you,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. He grabbed my face and kissed my mouth and chin with his open mouth. Instinctively, I kissed him back, wondering if I could eventually ask him about getting a ride to West Hollywood. Before I knew it, I was being undressed and we were enveloped in each other, leaning against the bathroom door. I completely forgot all about my band.
Although I was courteous enough to be prepared to go all the way, he simply wanted to give me a bath. “Sit in the tub,” he said and, without saying another word, just washed me. And washed me. I said nothing, hoping he wouldn’t drown me. I was often astounded by men’s behaviour. I didn’t know if I should be getting paid for this or if I should be paying him. After my silent bath, he towel-dried me and kissed me on the forehead before leading me to his bedroom with white walls and white sheets, like a hotel. He slipped into the middle of the bed, still naked.
“I am happy to sleep out there.” I pointed to the door to the living room. I was just trying to give him space, as the evening’s events had taken a bit of a strange twist. I didn’t know how to act. I was trying to respect whatever it was he was into. Or not into. Basically, the sun was coming up, and I figured I’d made it this far, I might as well try to keep the peace.
“Sleep here with me. Come lie down,” he said, patting the bed. I did exactly that, shinnying up next to him, still in a fluffy white bathrobe. He pulled the blankets over us and hugged me, nuzzling my wet hair. I was just bracing myself, scarcely breathing, waiting for what would happen next. But the only thing happening was sleep. He was snoring within minutes. I too was soon asleep, relieved and grateful. I was so squeaky clean, after all.
TWENTY-THREE
Lola, the Hells Angels, and Me
LOLA SHOWED ME MY FIRST COCKROACH IN VANCOUVER in 1989, and was she ever proud. “That’s a cockroach, Bif!” she announced, pointing to the creepy bug. I squinted at it.
“Looks like a brown grasshopper to me, or a cricket.” We were in a hotel in some stripper’s dressing room, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from stubbies. I inhaled deeply on my cigarette and mumbled, “I don’t think it is.”
Lola laughed. “It’s a real cockroach, Bif! A real one. Your first cockroach!” And she laughed and shook her hips, doing that Spanish rrrrr trill that she did, and I laughed back. She was right, it was my first. I felt pretty good about it too. Lola had a way of making me feel good about everything.
But once I was faced with cockroaches in my own apartment, the apartment for which I worked hard at my day job in order to pay rent in, the humour was lost on me. I did not like those fucking cockroaches, not one bit. Every time I turned the light on in the kitchen, the chipped, yellow-stained, hash-knife-burned white stovetop moved like a wave. People say cockroaches are smart, but honestly, how could they be that smart if they don’t notice you coming down the hall? You flip on the light and bam! They freak and scatter. It’s like they all drop their miniature sandwiches and run back into the cracks and crevices they crawled out of, or back behind the stove. Eventually, you begin to understand their deal, and you just co-exist. If you have roaches in your apartment, everybody on your floor or your side of the building has them too; it’s simply a law of the universe.
My apartment on Harwood Street, in Vancouver’s West End, was sweet. I walked to Granville Street and took the bus to the print shop, over on Broadway, every workday morning without fail. On a clear day I could look up to see the majestic Mount Baker, many miles away in Washington State. Seeing it made me feel good; it made me smile. It was like a secret ritual.
I had moved out from the place I had been living with two friends, and had left the heroin flirtation behind. I was in rehearsals every night, even after working my day job. I liked being busy, I liked playing in both of my bands, and I liked my life; it was uncomplicated.
One day, Lola returned from her trip on the Hells Angels’ world run, in Europe. She called me from Spain crying and wanting to ditch the guy she was on the ride with. I told her to come to Vancouver to live with me. She did, and I was so happy that she was back and safe with me. I loved to lie around with her, smoking cigarettes and hearing all her stories about the European ride, about the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, and about Amsterdam and Barcelona and Madrid. I used to hang on every word of her stories, and I wished that someday I would go to these places too, but in a different way. My dream was to tour with my band in Europe, like SNFU and DOA did. I daydreamed about it the way Neneh Cherry sang about dreams, like it was impossible.
I loved to hear about Europe, about Paris and Berlin. I romanticized about being a painter, or a writer like my beloved Irving Layton, or in a band, living and playing over there. Lola was such a good storyteller, every night she kept me laughing until I cried. We lived together for a few months in my one-bedroom apartment—she slept on the foldout couch in the living room, and I slept in the bed. And she didn’t seem to mind the bathroom being filled with my Little Mermaid bath accessories.
Lola was also obsessed, not with touring in a band in Europe, but with a couple of boys she was sweet on—I think they were twins—even though she had several boyfriends already. She landed a job waitressing at the famous Vancouver strip bar, No. 5 Orange. Lola was the most articulate person I knew. She came off like a genius, a genius who was also a great exotic dancer. What a combination. To me, it seemed that she knew everything about anything, including a lot about human rights issues. And she taught me Spanish. Her mom had lived in Colombia for several years, and Lola had gone down to see her a couple times, enjoying Cartagena a great deal. She had stories about bad men there. I loved to listen to those too, asking to hear the same stories over and over again. Lola was a beautiful girl, built for swiftness, for sex, and for master’s degrees. But we were young and all the
fun got in the way of her reaching her educational potential. But it was her fun as well as mine.
I didn’t generally go out to clubs, partly because of my day job but also out of fear of the disapproval of my manager, Peter. He was protective and wanted artistic success for me, so he was not about to approve of some of my and Lola’s behaviour, like our public drunkenness and various shenanigans. As well, I was starting to consider other ways of living, starting to dislike the scene and the drinking and the partying. My manager took me seriously, so I thought I should take myself seriously as well.
Peter had advised me against attending any of the underground Bhangra parties frequently held in the suburbs, lest I fall in with gangsters or some bad boy of my dreams—he knew I had a thing for bad boys. I heeded that advice but did, however, accompany Lola for drinks on one of her nights off. Since this was not an everyday occurrence, I went along enthusiastically. She wanted to go to the Drake Hotel, another local peeler bar: a guy she was hot for—one of the twins—was rumoured to be going there that night. So we went—how naughty can one Corona with lime be? We stayed there for a while drinking with a co-worker friend of hers and with a small collection of young and boisterous men they knew and apparently liked. I got the impression that these men might be on the wrong side of the law. Maybe it had something to do with the full-on Hells Angels accessories they were wearing?
Now, I always put on my best tomboy when in the company of possible criminals. I learned enough as a kid to know not to draw any sexual attention to myself in these situations. Instead, I would play the goofy sidekick. This was likely taking things to an extreme, but nevertheless it was a well-honed self-protection technique. I pulled out the tomboy card whenever I needed to avoid any misinterpretation (like at rock festivals when I was the only chick backstage and wanted to make sure the other bands knew that I was actually not there to have sex with them). So, given my impression of the men we were chumming around with at the Drake, I decided to play that card.
For some reason, I was not at all alarmed when we all jumped into the men’s Suburbans and Yukon trucks and headed for their favourite hangout: the Hells Angels clubhouse. This was at the suggestion of Lola: “Bif, we are just gonna go for one drink, okay, honey?” She knew it was a work night for me and that I had to be at the print shop by seven or eight the next morning.
As we walked up to the clubhouse’s gate after the short drive, I noticed that the street consisted of twenty or so houses in a row, each looking like the house we were about to enter. A cookie-cutter neighbourhood. Very normal, very modest. But with cameras on every street corner. I still had no feelings of trepidation, though I began checking my watch, knowing that I had to get up early. But I felt too self-conscious to ask if we could go home, and besides, I didn’t want to spoil Lola’s fun. It was her night off and I didn’t want to be the bummer friend.
I didn’t like any of these (by now very drunk) men. They were more like grown-ups than the guys I knew, the band guys and the skaters at the China Creek skate park. They had probably never even heard of GWAR, never rode a skateboard or snowboard. What did I want with these men? Besides, I had a crush on the drummer of the band that jammed across the hall from Chrome Dog. I resigned myself to just having to hang out, waiting until Lola was ready to go home. Only one problem: I never saw her again that night.
Like a good sport, I played pool in the clubhouse basement, me and two of the men. (Where Lola’s co-worker had got to, I don’t know.) The walls of the basement room were a dark wood, and the light above the pool table had a ceiling fan, the kind in Gone with the Wind and the other movies my mother watched. There was also a bar with bar stools, and a man behind it serving drinks to the other men and women in the room.
The two men were very good at pool and I was completely inexperienced, so I just goofed around and told jokes. They were pretty competitive with each other, and I made extra sure not to put out any flirty or girly energy.
After the game finished, we bellied up to the bar. By now it was just me and these two men in the basement room, plus the bartender. I was pretty tired and more than ready to go home.
“Another beer,” one of the men said to the bartender, who looked remarkably like Steve Perry from the band Journey, only more Italian than Portuguese.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked me, wiping down the bar and placing a glass mug in front of me. At least he was friendly; in fact, they all were.
“Aw, fellas, that’s okay,” I said and smiled, trying to bow. “I’m just waiting for Lola.”
“Who’s Lola?”
I was startled, and tried not to panic. “The girl I came here with—Lola, my friend.”
“Oh, she left,” one of the pool players said.
My eyeballs nearly popped out of my face. What the fuck did he mean?
“Yeah, she left to go meet some guy,” his friend piped in. I wasn’t sure how they knew this—I guess word must have got around.
Suddenly, I was no longer tired. “Well, I’ve got to call a cab then,” I announced, standing up. I had no money, but I wasn’t about to tell these guys that. I figured I could grab the ten bucks I had stashed at home once the cab got me there.
The man closest to me put his big arm around my shoulders. “No, you don’t,” he said jovially. “You want another beer, don’t you?” And they all chuckled.
I chuckled too, fully aware that I was the only woman in the room. I steadied my breath. “No, I’m cool, I really need a cab.” I leaned over the bar, looking for a telephone. “Can you call me a cab?”
“You’re a ‘cab’!” the biggest one snorted, and they fell on each other laughing.
I chuckled. “Well, that’s very funny. But I just need a cab. Can you call me one?” I asked the bartender again.
My two buddies were extremely drunk and the bartender was of no help. He just shrugged. “I work for them,” he said.
“I’ll give you a ride home. Get your coat,” said a voice from behind me. I turned around to see the biggest, tallest man I had ever seen.
“I live downtown,” I said in a voice so small it was almost a whisper.
“Get your coat. Let’s go,” he said. I hurriedly put my coat on and followed behind him. The two pool players said nothing—not to him, not to each other, and not to me. They just looked straight ahead, sipping their beer. It didn’t matter if I or anyone else was afraid of him. I just wanted a ride home.
I got into his brand-new Suburban, and he started driving toward downtown. My mind was racing, wondering if I had done the right thing accepting a ride from him. He started to make small talk, asking me about the band, which he knew about, and when and where we played, and about Lola and whether my friends always ditched me, and if I had a boyfriend and then, when I said no, why not, and all the other usual stuff guys ask. He seemed so normal and very courteous.
We pulled up to my apartment building and I was thinking that if I stayed chatting with him, he would expect me to blow him in about five minutes. But that five minutes came and went, then ten. He was still talking, asking me if he could call me sometime. I decided I’d best be polite: he was a big man, I wasn’t taking any chances. I gave him my telephone number—I was too nervous to make one up—and he told me he was going skiing for two weeks and would call me when he got back.
I thanked him for the ride.
“Anytime,” he said and stuck out his hand. I was so relieved I spontaneously leaned over and gave him a huge hug. He was so astounded he didn’t even have a chance to hug me back or press in or anything like that. I was beaming with relief that I had been treated so politely. The fucking skate-park guys, even my own band members, did not treat me with such respect. He was the politest guy I had ever met, and certainly not what I thought a Hells Angel would be like. Still, I had no intention of ever seeing him again, that was for sure.
Lola eventually turned up at the apartment, having left the clubhouse for another bar after being told that I had already left. She assum
ed I had gone home. It never occurred to her that I could be in a potentially bad situation. When I told her about my evening, she was horrified but impressed that I had caught the eye of a top-dog Hells Angel. I was indifferent about it; my focus was that drummer I liked. He had a skateboard—what did I want with a motorcycle dude? I mean, Harleys were choppers, and I was into Italian crotch rockets and vintage street bikes.
But then, two weeks later, he called me, just like he said he would. He asked if I would go for Italian food with him. “Of course,” I said. It was the least I could do, I thought. He did spare me from harm, after all. I felt like I should go; it was the right thing to do. I was still grateful that his intervention prevented what might have ended up being a very bad time for me.
I went for the Italian food, ate the meatballs, and thanked him profusely for the dinner. Later, when he dropped me off at my apartment, I explained that because I was a skater chick and he was a motorcycle dude with a “motorcycle job,” it just really was not possible to date each other. I was somewhat nervous about saying this, but it really had to be said. He was sweet, thoughtfully and quietly listening to me talk. He nodded in agreement. “I know that,” he said, “I know.”
I hugged him goodbye. “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear, squeezing him tight. I hopped out of the truck and walked into my building, feeling his eyes trained on my back, but also feeling good about our conversation. He respected the conversation and he respected me, and that was more than most guys did, and I would never forget that. I walked into my dark apartment and flicked on the light. The shiny brown cockroaches scattered, as always. I smiled, feeling like everything was right in my world. And it was.
TWENTY-FOUR
Managers
I HAVE HAD THE SAME MANAGER FOR MORE THAN twenty years.
Peter Karroll toured Canada for many years with his brothers in what he called the country’s first indie band. After the band split up, Peter managed Roadrunner Records artists, like metal icons Annihilator, which in the early days was Roadrunner’s top-selling band.