by James Ellroy
The women seemed real. I borrowed cars, cruised the Strip and scanned faces. I read their eyes, sensed what brought them there and what would convince them to stop. The women clogged the sidewalk from 8:00 p.m. on. I made dozens of recon circuits. I scanned for wholesome faces and evidence of cracking facades. I detoured then. I drove Sunset east to Bunker Hill. I staked out the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Symphony concerts ended around 10:00 p.m. Women with violins and cellos scooted out rear exits. I was a tongue-tied stage-door Johnny. Most of the women met their husbands and boyfriends. They wore tight black orchestra gowns with cinched waists and plunging necklines. They looked anxious to shuck their work duds, belt a few and talk music. Single women walked out, lugging heavy instruments. I offered to help several of them. They all said no.
Back to the Strip. Back to reading faces. Back to the honing of my Let’s-buy-sex aesthetic.
I liked the women older than I. I thought they might be more grateful for my biz and be more responsive. I liked the women with glasses. I liked the women with creased brows that said, Hooking might not be kosher.
It took two dozen drive-bys and blow-offs with the L.A. Philharmonic. I saved up some coin, borrowed a car and pounced.
It was midweek. It was cold. Rainstorms had blown through L.A. The Strip was packed. The women wore puffy windbreakers and buckskin dusters. I noticed a solitary pro upside Hollywood High. She wore granny glasses. She was rangy and fair-haired. She wore a slinky skirt under a toggle coat. It was affectless and sweet. It was a geek’s idea of sexy attire. She was seven or eight years older than I and appeared to be nervous. I extrapolated her life story instantly—and to my mind, adroitly. College prof on the skids. A history of weak men. A disengaged notion of prostitution as a lab experiment.
I pulled to the curb. She walked to the car and leaned in the passenger-side window. I said, Hello. She asked me if I was a cop. I asked her why she thought that.
She mentioned my short hair. I justified the close-cropped style and told her I worked at a golf course. She said, You just want to be different.
The perception delighted me. She had a flat, midwestern voice. She said it was twenty for French and thirty for half-and-half. I said I had a C-note and just wanted a decent stretch of her time. She looked at her watch and asked me if I wanted something special. I said, Just some time with you. Her look said, Oh—you’re one of those.
She directed me to a motel, four blocks away on La Brea. The room was twice the size of my room and still small. She locked us in and pointed to the dresser. I laid five twenties down.
The room was warm. My legs fluttered and dripped sweat. She took off her coat and tossed it on a chair. She had soft arms for such a slender woman. An image hit me: Vera Miles as a cocktail-lounge artiste in The Fugitive. She scooped the money into her purse. I said, We don’t have to do it. She said, I’ll kick you out if you cry.
I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes. She told me not to make it into such a big deal. I opened my eyes. She unbuttoned her blouse. I asked her where she was from. She said, Fullerton.
An Orange County college town. My theory validated. I started to say some—
She unhooked her bra. I saw her breasts and smiled. She said, That’s better. I took her right hand and kissed her arm above the elbow. She jiggled my hand and said, Lighten up. Okay?
Deep breaths tamped my rev down. She kicked off her shoes and kept her socks on. She pulled off her skirt and underwear and stood there.
She said, Okay?
The room tumbled.
It was rushed after that. It was rushed because she wanted it to be over and I didn’t want to embarrass or displease her.
She didn’t want to talk.
She dodged my questions.
She wouldn’t let me hold her.
I don’t know how long it all lasted. It felt like the world revealed.
So I did it repeatedly—with weirdo intuition and horny pastor’s kid intent.
The count was high, overpayment kept me broke, my criteria was unique. The swirl of available faces kept on coming.
Borrowed pervmobiles got me to the Strip and home again, laid and unsated. Runs by the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion counterbalanced and ratched up my rev. I aroused suspicion at both locations. The Hillside Strangler was a fresh local horror. I cruised the same turf. Why are you offering me extra money? No, I don’t need you to carry my cello.
I understood the distinctions between the two professions and treated both sets of women the same. I looked for a cultural component in the hookers and a brusque wantonness in the string players. I got action from the former and zilch from the latter. My extreme acuity was delusional and acutely self-serving. I read faces for signs of the worthiness of love and demanded reciprocated love instantly. It was all crude male barter—money and mock-impromptu favors. I came in with prepared text and crumbled at the first sign of improvisation. Prostitutes did not want to hear my rationale for buying their body. Violinists did not want my loser ass—they wanted a straight Sviatoslav Richter. Both groups saw me as a zealot with a smoke-screened agenda.
The prostitutes put faith in the banality of sex and trusted fuck me–pay me men on that basis. I could not accept the implied dictum. The musicians viewed sex as an intergrated aspect of their lives in search of refinement. That idea was just as restrictive. The proper answer is sex is everything—so show me the faces and I’ll write the story.
My agenda was women as muse. I ran the entire gender through an obstacle course. The few and the proud cleared the last hurdle. Selected prostitutes survived a run of drive-by sightings and were deemed fit to be with me once and reside in me forever. The musicians survived chastely. I never lugged their instruments. I got a few smiles that sent me through to next week.
The Strip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and back again. My selection process. A C-note offered for this: Can we get naked and talk a bit?
I logged three refusals. It worked four times. It depressurized the girls. It got me softness, taxed sighs and conversation. The thrill was the undressing and the staged tableaux. I heard stories of bad dads, cheating hubbies at Camp Pendleton and freaky Uncle Harold. I snagged my prey later in the evening. They were tired and pleased to find a low-exertion john. I studied them as I pressed close. They were saving bread to open a boutique. They needed coin for a retarded kid’s schooling. They were post-sex or above sex. They were feminist pragmatists hopped up on some paperback doctrine. They pooh-poohed the idea of sex as the biggest deal on earth. They gave me a pinpoint moment of their lives and were grateful that I granted it importance.
I learned to chat a little. I learned a few sensual tricks. Do this or this—you might have a girlfriend one day. You’re a sweet guy, get your teeth fixed, don’t stare so much. What’s going on in that weird head?
I told two of them. I said I wanted to write novels. I loved crime fiction and classical music. My brain was overamped. I walked to my golf-course job and dawdled to look at women. Drama was a man meets a woman. Violent events intercede. The man and woman are swept away by catastrophic corruption. They confront a series of morally unhinged people who need to be interdicted and quashed. The man and woman cannot run from this malfeasance.
The moral point of struggle is to overcome it and change. It scares me to think that real love/sex flatlines and dies over time. I want real love and will find real love and will not let it numb my imagination. You’re drawing me little pictures. We’re here to tell each other special things. I don’t care if you’re just trying to be nice and I’m paying you for it. Women take me someplace thunderous and hang me out to dry. I want to write from that romantic perspective. You rewire my heart and show me how shit works. You talk to me and listen to me. It’s the world in a pop-up book I can understand.
Yeah, but I’m naked.
Well, I’m naked, too.
You’re not going to ask for something creepy.
No, I’m not.
I had that conve
rsation four times. Stunned looks and soft looks followed. The last woman and I talked until 2:00 a.m. She was a ranch worker from Kern County. She kept her hands laced behind her head. I kissed her underarms at pause points in my monologues. It seemed to delight her. We didn’t have sex. We faded out and slept together. She leaned into me and held my left wrist.
The mojo built that way. The faces cohered over my watcher’s lifetime. Faux pillow talk and real talk at hot-sheet motels. Spirits revised at the expense of their probable truth.
The story sprang from a grab at the women I couldn’t have and loomed as big as their mythic construction. I was easily transmogrified to a music-mad private eye. He came from the poor edge of Hancock Park. He was recently sober. His mother hadn’t been murdered. He didn’t stalk rich girls and rip off their pads. I deleted the pathos of near-fatal masturbation. This fucker had more dignity.
The woman played the cello. She looked like the wish-named Joan. The real Joan turned 14 that year.
The fictive woman’s body language derived from hookers in assessment. Her contours were those of AA women I had brain-screened in the nude. Her temperament was that of Jean Hilliker. Her gaze prophesied the real Joan and my married lover Karen. There were brief glimpses of the conjuress Erika.
The plot was a crime-book patchwork. The locale was a rigorously de-slime-zoned L.A. There was no El Monte. I didn’t have the balls. There was no Hancock Park, with all its attendant perversion.
I avoided Hancock Park. I stayed north of 1st Street, south of 6th Street, west of Highland and east of Western. I zoomed by that Laundromat once a month to look for Marcia Sidwell. She was never there. They were quick-search missions. I swooped by and got out.
Verboten! Don’t do it! You’re a new man! Barbed-wire noose, poisoned well, danger ahead!
The houses were still beacons. Remnants of the girls still raged there. I could not let myself go back.
6
Women fall asleep first. Penny taught me that. Lover’s insomnia—a primer.
She’s right beside you, she’s naked, you’ve already made love. She’s insensate. You’re wired. You’re talking to her. She’s oblivious. You didn’t pay her to listen. She’s not talking back.
Penny’s bed was short and narrow. I was long-limbed and love-looped and liked to sprawl. Penny had perfected her sleep-with-men posture. She always rolled away on her side and created a gap. It was symbolic. She reposed within inches. It was somewhere off Planet Earth.
I scooted closer. I let my foot brush her leg. I had reinstigated contact. Then I started talking to her in the dark.
About her, about me, about Us. About her law-school studies and my book in progress. I spent occasional weekend nights at her whim. Penny would sleep in. I got up predawn and zoomed to the golf course.
The bed was a minefield. I never slept.
I craved more contact. I ran breathlessly anxious. She never said she loved me. The relationship was tenuous and unpredictable. I lay there and anticipated movement. A knee tucked my way marked confirmation. I clenched my bladder until 5:00 a.m. I fantasy-talked to Penny. I fantasy-talked to other women and felt guilty about it. Turnovers filled me with gratitude. Pull-aways filled me with dread. She’s your first sober love and she won’t say the words. It’s not supposed to be this way. You had it all planned out.
We met in June ’79. I was six months off of the whore patrol and five months into my first book. I oozed self-confidence. It was fully justified. I was certifiably hot shit. I rocked with a sense of destiny and exuded a raucous panache. My clergymen ancestors streaked through my soul and anointed me with their calling. They had pulpits. I had my book and AA lecterns. I now had two stories to tell.
I told my life story to a captive audience. I became a dazzling public speaker at the get-go. Years of mental rehearsal had prepared me. A conscious resolve shaped my testimony. I turned my sex urge to death’s door into comedy. I omitted certain details.
No murdered mother. No bloody coughing fits. The jack-off man and his loony lust—that’s picaresque.
It got me laughs from the AA folks. The book gave me that life’s composite woman with the cello.
My hero meets her in a park I used to sleep in. She’s poised on a bench with her Stradivarius. My hero hears strains of Dvořák and goes batshit. I meet Penny in a supermarket checkout line. She’s buying her nephew a Hula-hoop.
I got her phone number and called her. I blathered and tried to make a groovy impression. I mentioned classical music in due haste. Penny’s reaction was, Fuck that shit—I dig rock and roll.
She was 26 years old and from Brooklyn, New York. She had an East Coast accent and a slight lisp. She was Jewish. That appealed to me. It would force me to atone for prior anti-Semitism. She was a big, knock-kneed woman with auburn hair and brown eyes. She was wary and warm at oddly equal intervals. She’d been through a string of boyfriends in a ’70s manner and seemed amused by me. She had a married lover stashed someplace. He was a heavyweight lawyer. Don’t be bummed by this. Don’t be so intense. You can be my main squeeze.
Equivocation, mitigation, compromise at the gate. The suggestion of inimical values. A thorny personality. Better socialized than I. Respectful of my wild-ass path and in no way floored by it. Offering communion on her terms—take it or leave it.
Well …
We kissed on our first date. We were in Penny’s car. It was a classic mutual lean-in. That part conformed to my script. Then Penny said, No—like this.
I almost ran. The correction racked me. She had a car. I didn’t. She would become a lawyer. I might write an unpublished book.
I leaned away, leaned back in and kissed her the right way. We kissed three more times. I understood that kiss #4 might be rejected. I said good night before Penny could.
Date #2 was delirious. I showed up at Penny’s pad with flowers. She noticed my erection and rolled her eyes. She wanted to rent bicycles and ride a path at the beach. I hated all antic activities. My reaction showed. Penny mollified me and tried not to act impatient.
I blew my roll on the rentals and a burger lunch. That meant extra work at the golf course. We rode the bikes single file. We couldn’t talk. It was existential anguish and a macho-mangled loss of control. I got pulsingly paranoid. I thought I saw Penny checking out a black dude. Danger! Danger! Danger! I detoured to the Dick-Size Diaspora. Penny might be a coal burner! What if she required a hard black yard?
Lunch was torture. My stomach churned, my eyes darted. I orbed to Penny’s breasts and Penny’s eyes. Was she trawling for dark meat or measuring baskets? She caught my eyeball track. She said, Don’t be so intense. I said, Can we go someplace and talk? Penny said, Your place?
It was a first-time afternooner. It felt precipitous. My movies never equaled their coming attractions.
The move-in was synchronous. I kissed per Penny’s date #1 instructions. My bed was as too-small as her bed would be. It was over too fast. A shared desire for release pushed us through. I wanted marriage, daughters and a crib in Brentwood. Penny wanted an open-ended blast.
Okay, let’s talk now. You go first. I’m here to listen.
Penny said she couldn’t. She lisped those words and shook her head. She had to go home and study tort law.
Her slouchy scope moved me. Her clumsiness ripped me up. She chewed her nails. Her hands were as big as mine. She was both ill at ease and content in her body.
We loomed over people. She was five ten, I was six three. We were similarly awkward and bruised from bumps into fixed objects. Walking entwined was dicey. We kept tripping each other.
Late lessons unfolded. I was 31 and an unschooled zealot. I was covetous, jealous and possessive. I never questioned Penny’s honor. I lived in fear of her contentiousness and a streak of emotional absence. It was a fight I had to win. I was irrepressibly vigilant. I was always watching and assessing. I wanted Penny. She possessed significant human value and stood up to me. We were both intransigent and fearful. She was of me and th
erefore worthy of my obsessive attention. We were alternately brutally willful and sad-sackish. Her intelligence was diffuse and unimpeded by conceit. My brainpower was didactic and stupefyingly attuned to personal advancement.
Penny lived in the world. She had a family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, classmates. Her self-worth was undercut with a loopy irony. My mission was to grant her importance. The Curse carried a debt of formal acknowledgment. She should allot herself more power as a woman and assume potent destiny as her birthright. My assumptions were a lover’s perceptive gift and the shuck of a controlling maniac.
That’s what gets me. That’s how I misdiagnose female personae. That’s the twisted core of my love-starved largesse.
I recast Penny in my own image. I superimposed my drive upon her—because I was delivered from self-destructive doom, and the corollary of exalted design sure as shit worked for me. That was my grave disservice, whatever my intent.
Penny was smart, funny, honest, kind and proficient. The dumbfounding truth in retrospect: she was different from me.
And we had a groovy kid-lover time—when I eased up a little bit.
Sex was sweaty and clumsy. Long arms and legs flailed. Nightstands collapsed, bathroom fixtures caved, pictures fell off of walls. Debate was active. Topical chat was frazzled. Penny yelled and sulked more than I did. My game was to apologize and re-seduce. Penny always evinced forgiveness—because I always listened to her and always showed up.
She kept me high-wire tense. She withheld the love talk I craved. My anxiety and desire sizzzzzzled. She believed in my self-expressed and unconfirmed talent. She never lied to me. She dumped me, lured me back and put out one-night-only calls that I always jumped at. No marriage, no daughters, no possessive pronouns. Constant heartache and no narrative line.
I stayed in the fight. I fixed on Penny’s formative trauma and tried to salve her there. Her trauma was less hyperbolic than mine. She allotted her trauma a sane contemplation and not much more. She was not out to exploit her demons for public renown.