by James Ellroy
It was great to have friends. I blew my thousand-dollar roll taking them out to steak dinners and movies. We bombed around in Fritz’s ’64 Fairlane. Bicycle jaunts were behind us.
I stole most of my food. I was on an all-steak diet and filched T-bones and rib-eyes at nearby supermarkets. Two clerks jumped me outside the Liquor & Food Mart early in August. They held me down, plucked a steak out of my pants and called the fuzz.
The LAPD arrived. Two cops drove me to the Hollywood Station, booked me for shoplifting and turned me over to a juvenile officer. The guy wanted to contact my parents. I told him they were dead. He said kids weren’t allowed to live alone prior to age eighteen.
A cop drove me down to the Georgia Street Juvenile Facility. I called Lloyd and told him where I was. The cop processed my arrest papers and dumped me in a dormitory filled with hardcased juvies.
I was scared. I was the biggest kid in the dorm—and recognizably the most defenseless. I was seven months shy of legal age. I figured I’d be stuck here all that time.
Tough Negro and Mexican kids sized me up. They asked me about my “beef” and laughed at my answers. They talked gang-sterese and ridiculed me for not speaking their language.
I stayed calm until lights-out. Darkness jump-started my imagination. I put myself through a string of jail horrors and cried myself to sleep.
Rudy got me out the next day. He cooked up a deal to get me six months probation and “emancipated juvenile” status. I could live solo—with Rudy as my informal guardian.
It was one sweet deal. I needed a ticket out of jail and Rudy needed an audience for his tirades. Lloyd, Fritz and Daryl heard him out reluctantly. I soaked up his shit with abandon.
Rudy was tight with a bunch of crazy cop ideologues. They passed around mimeographed copies of “The Nigger’s 23rd Psalm” and “Martin Luther Coon’s Welfare Handbook.” Rudy and I yukked it up for a string of consecutive nights. The Watts riot interrupted us.
L.A. was burning. I wanted to kill all the rioters and turn L.A. into Cinder City myself. The riot thrilled me. This was crime writ large—crime on a big plot-extrapolatable scale.
Rudy was called to duty. Lloyd, Fritz and I skirted the periphery of the riot zone. We carried BB pistols. We mouthed racist jive and cruised south until some cops made us go home.
We did it again the next night. Live history was groovy. We watched the riot from the Griffith Park telescopes and saw strips of Los Angeles sizzling. We drove out to the valley and saw some rednecks burn a cross in a Christmas-tree lot.
The riot fizzled out. It reconflagrated in my head and ruled my thoughts for weeks.
I ran stories from diverse perspectives. I became both riot cop and riot provocateur. I lived lives fucked over by history.
I spread my empathy around. I distributed moral shading equitably. I didn’t analyze the cause of the riot or prophesy its ramifications. My public stance was “Fuck the niggers.” My concurrent narrative fantasies stressed culpable white cops.
I never questioned the contradiction. I didn’t know that storytelling was my only true voice.
Narrative was my moral language. I didn’t know it in the summer of 1965.
Rudy didn’t care what I did. My probation officer ignored me. I continued to steal and dodge work.
I craved free time. Free time meant time to dream and cultivate my sense of potent destiny. Free time meant time to fall prey to impulse.
It was a hot day in mid-September. I got an urge to get drunk.
I walked down to the Liquor & Food Mart and stole a bottle of champagne. I took it over to Robert Burns Park, popped the top and guzzled the whole thing.
I went ecstatic. I went hyper-effusive. I crashed a group of Hancock Park girls and told them crazy lies. I blacked out and woke up on my bed drenched in vomit.
I knew I’dfound something.
The discovery thrilled me. I started stealing booze and experimenting with it.
Heublein premixed cocktails were good. I dug sweet Manhattans and tart and tangy whisky sours. Beer quenched your thirst—but lacked the blastoff potential of hard liquor. Straight scotch was too strong—it burned going down and brought up bile in its wake. I avoided straight bourbon and bourbon highballs. Bourbon reminded me of the redhead.
Vodka and fruit juice was great. You got a fast push out of the gate with minimum gag action. Gin, brandy and liqueurs induced dry heaves.
I drank for stimulation. Booze sent me stratospheric.
It jacked up my narrative powers. It gave my thoughts a physical dimension.
Booze made me talk to myself. Booze made me spritz my fantasies aloud. Booze made me address scores of imaginary women.
Booze altered my fantasy world—but did not change the basic subject matter. Crime remained my dominant obsession.
I had a big crime backlog to embellish.
The Watts riot was recent and hot. The Ma Duncan case was a slick golden oldie. I walked Ma to the gas chamber a hundred fantasy times.
Doc Finch and Carole Tregoff were rotting in prison. I saved Carole from jailhouse dykes and made her my woman. I snuck into Chino and snuffed Spade Cooley. Ella Mae got her vengeance at last. I committed Stephen Nash’s murders and pulled B&Es with Donald Keith Bashor.
Booze gave me prime verisimilitude. Details blipped off my brain pan in vivid new colors. Narrative twists emerged unexpectedly.
Booze gave me crime hyperbolized and rendered more subtle. It gave me the Black Dahlia on a broad historical scale.
I drank by myself and screened crime and crime-sex fantasies for hours. I drank with Lloyd and got him hooked on the Dahlia. We discussed the case at great length. My occasional Dahlia nightmares ceased altogether.
I stole most of my liquor and found an adult to purchase some for me legally. He was a Negro wino living under a freeway embankment. He called himself Flame-O. He said the cops dubbed him that because he tended to torch himself when he got drunk.
Flame-O bought me bottles. I paid him in short dog jugs of Thunderbird wine. He told me I was wino bait myself. I didn’t believe him.
Lloyd and Fritz reintroduced me to weed. I dug it ferociously. It added a surreal edge to my fantasies and made food a rich sensual pleasure. I knew it wouldn’t turn me into a junkie. That was strictly a 1958 illusion.
1965 faded out. It was one motherfucker of a year.
Rudy kissed me off. He figured out I was worthless and not a sincere right-winger. I turned 18 in March ’66. I was now a street-legal adult.
And an unemployed petty thief about to lose his government handout.
I unkenneled the dog and brought her home. She went to work on the floors immediately. I pondered my future. I concluded that I couldn’t live without my survivor’s dole.
I had to go back to school to keep the dough coming. Lloyd was going to a freako Christian high school. The freight was $50 a month. My dole came to $130. I could attend a few classes and retain a net profit of 80 bucks monthly.
Lloyd and I discussed the matter. He told me I’d have to take a convincing dive for Jesus. I memorized some Bible verses and went in to see the principal of Culter Christian Academy.
I put on a good show. I strutted my new faith in high histrionic style. I believed what I was saying for the length of time I was saying it. I possessed a chameleon soul.
I enrolled at Culter Academy. The place was packed with born-again psychos and doper malcontents. I attended secular classes and Bible study groups. It was brain-deadening rebop straight down the line. I knew I couldn’t take this shit five days a week.
I attended school sporadically. The Culter staff cut me some slack—I was a tormented but sincere young Christian. I stiffed them for two months’ tuition and dropped out completely. My brief conversion netted me $260.
My government benefits stopped. My income dropped to a C-note a month. My rent was $60. I could stretch the remaining $40—if I stole all my food and liquor and scrounged dope off my friends.
I did it. I e
xtended my shoplifting range and hit markets and liquor stores way north and way west. I was bone-skinny. I jammed steaks and bottles under my pants and did not display telltale bulges. I wore my shirttails out. I bought small items to justify my presence in stores.
I was a pro.
Lloyd, Fritz and Daryl could score dope. I couldn’t. I had an adult-free pad they could kick back in. They supplied me with grass and pills.
I didn’t like Seconal and Nembutal. They made you goofy and near-catatonic. LSD was okay—but the attendant transcendental message left me cold. Lloyd and Fritz popped acid and went to see epics like Spartacus and The Greatest Story Ever Told. I went with them a few times and ditched the movies midway through. Sandals and resurrection—Snoresville. I sat in the lobby and hallucinated on candy-counter girls.
Fritz knew some Dr. Feelgoods who dispensed amphetamines. The stuff kept him hyper-focused during long study sessions. USC was tough going. Fritz said the uppers gave him an edge.
He dumped his excess stash on me. Dexedrine and Dexamyl jacked my fantasy life up six levels.
My narrative skills expanded sixfold. Speed-induced palpitations kineticized the whole process.
Speed highs went through my brain and lodged in my virgin genitalia.
Speed was sex. Speed gave my sex fantasies a new coherent logic. Speed gave me 40-ish redheads and Hancock Park girls. Speed gave me epic jackoff sessions.
I pounded my pud for 12 to 18 hours straight. It felt so gooooood. I’d lie on my bed with the dog asleep beside me. I’d slam the ham with my eyes shut and the lights out.
Amphetamine comedowns terminated my fantasies. The dope passed through my system and left me depressed and sleep-deprived. I drank myself into a nether world then. Booze ascended while speed receded. I always passed out grasping for some woman.
Fritz lost his speed connection. I lost mine by default. I got gnawingly hungry for real love and sex.
I wanted a girlfriend and unlimited poontang. Fritz’s sister set me up with her friend Cathy.
Cathy went to Marlborough—an exclusive Hancock Park girl’s school. She was plain-featured and chubby. We went to see The Sound of Music on our first date. I lied and told Cathy that I really liked the movie.
Cathy was socially dense and love-starved. I found it appealing. She disdained formal date activities. She craved park-the-car make-out action.
Which meant hugging and kissing sans tongues.
We “made out” several weekend nights running. The no-tongue/no-skin policy drove me insane. I begged for more contact. Cathy refused. I begged some more. Cathy threw a big diversion at me.
She planned a string of get-togethers with her school chums. The diversion got me inside looks at several juicy Hancock Park pads.
I liked the plush furnishings. I liked the big rooms. I liked the wood panels and oil paintings. This was my old voyeur prowl world—close-up and intimate.
Cathy introduced me to her friend Anne. Anne was 6′1″, blond and strapping. She never got dates.
I called Anne up and asked her out. We went to a movie and necked in Fern Dell Park. She shot me some tongue. It was gooooood.
I called up Cathy and broke our thing off. Anne called me and told me to stay out of her life. I called Fritz’s sister Heidi and asked her out. She told me to buzz off. I called Heidi’s friend Kay and asked her out. She told me she was a committed Christian and only went out with saved guys.
I wanted more love. I wanted sex with no schoolgirl limits. I wanted to see some more Hancock Park pads.
Fritz maintained a little room adjoining his garage. He kept his records and stereo shit there. It was his hideout. He never let his parents or sister in. Lloyd, Daryl and I had keys.
The room was 20 yards from the main house. The house tantalized me. It was my favorite sex-fantasy backdrop.
I broke in one night. It was late ’66.
Fritz and his family were out somewhere. I got down on the ground beside the kitchen door and stuck my left arm through a pet-access hole. I tripped the inside latch and let myself in to the house.
I walked around. I kept the lights off and prowled upstairs and down. I checked the medicine cabinets for dope and filched a few painkillers. I poured myself a double scotch and popped the pills right there. I washed the glass I used and put it back where I found it.
I walked through Heidi’s bedroom. I savored the smell of her pillows and went through her closet and drawers. I buried my face in a stack of lingerie and stole a pair of white panties.
I left the house quietly. I didn’t want to blow a shot at reentry. I knew I’d touched another secret world.
Kay lived directly across the street. I broke into her house a few nights later.
I called the house from Fritz’s back room and got no answer. I walked over and checked entry points.
I found an open window overlooking the driveway. It was covered by a screen secured with bent nails. I pried two bottom nails loose, removed the screen and vaulted into the house.
It was strange turf. I turned a few lights on for a second to acclimate myself.
There was no liquor cabinet. There was no good shit in the medicine chests. I hit the refrigerator and stuffed myself with cold cuts and fruit. I explored the house upstairs and down— and saved Kay’s bedroom for last.
I looked through her school papers and stretched out on her bed. I examined a clothes hamper stuffed with blouses and skirts. I opened dresser drawers and held a table lamp over them for light. I stole a matching bra and panties.
I replaced the window screen and bent the nails back to hold it in place. I walked home very7 high.
Burglary was voyeurism multiplied a thousand times.
Kathy lived in a big Spanish house at 2nd and Plymouth. She was my longtime secret love.
She was tall and slender. She had dark brown hair, brown eyes and freckles. She was intelligent, sweet-natured and altogether gracious. I was afraid of her for no justifiable reason.
I broke into her house. It was a very cold night in early ’67.
I called her number and got no answer. I walked over to the house and saw no lights on and no cars in the driveway. I walked around to the back and tried to slide some windows open. The third or fourth one was unlatched.
I pulled myself inside. I stumbled around the first floor and turned lights on for a split second. I found a liquor sideboard and guzzled out of every bottle on it. I got a slam-bang-heavy booze rush and walked upstairs.
I couldn’t tell whose bedroom was whose. I lay down on all the beds and found female undergarments in an armoire and chest of drawers. The sizing on the bras and panties confused me. I stole two sets to make sure I had Kathy’s.
I found some prescription downers in a medicine chest. I stole three and chased them with a weird-ass liqueur. I went out that back window, weaved home and passed out on my bed.
I kept doing it. I went at it with uncharacteristic restraint.
I quit popping pills at the scene. I only stole fetishistic booty. I went back to Heidi’s, Kay’s and Kathy’s houses at odd intervals and stayed inside no more than 15 minutes. I aborted my mission if I found my entry points secured.
The thrill was sex and other worlds briefly captured. Burglary gave me young women and families by extension.
I burglarized my way through ’67. I never strayed outside Hancock Park. I tapped the homes of my dream girls exclusively.
Heidi, Kay and Kathy. Missy at 1st and Beachwood. Julie three doors down and across the street from Kathy. Joanne at 2nd and Irving.
Secret worlds.
Daryl moved up to Portland in early ’68. Fritz transferred to UCLA. Lloyd was attending L.A. City College. He was almost as booze-and-dope-addled as I was.
Lloyd possessed the balls that I lacked. He had a bent for tortured women hooked up with abusive men. He tried to rescue them and got into fights with dope-dealer sleazebags. He had a big heart and a big brain and a wickedly nihilistic sense of humor. He lived with his
religious-nut mother and her second husband—a produce merchant with a couple of fruit stands out in the valley.
Lloyd had a taste for Hollywood lowlife. He knew how to talk to hoodlum types and hippies. I tagged along on a few of his Hollywood excursions. I met bikers, fruit hustlers and Gene the Short Queen—a 4′10″ transvestite. I stumbled around Hollywood, took weird drug combinations and woke up in parks and Christmas-tree lots.
The peace-and-love era was booming. Lloyd had one foot in that cultural door and one foot back on the edge of Hancock Park. He had his own dual-world scheme going. He postured and copped dope in Hollywood and came home to his crazy mother.
Hollywood scared me and vexed me. Hippies were faggot shitheads. They loved degenerate music and preached specious metaphysics. Hollywood was a pus pocket.
Lloyd disagreed. He told me the real world frightened me. He said I only knew a few square miles.
He was right. He didn’t know I supplanted my knowledge with things he’d never know.
I kept burglarizing. I went at it cravenly and cautiously. I kept reading crime novels and brain-screening crime fantasies. I kept stealing and eating an all-steak diet. I lived off a C-note a month.
The dog disappeared. I came home and found my door open and Minna long gone. I suspected my dog-hater landlord.
I searched for Minna and put a lost-dog ad in the L.A. Times. Nothing came of it. I blew two months’ rent money on dope and got locked out of my pad.
Aunt Leoda refused to advance me some coin. I spent a week crashed out in Fritz’s back room and got evicted by his father. I moved into Lloyd’s bedroom and got evicted by his mother.
I moved into Robert Burns Park. I stole some blankets from a Goodwill box and slept in an ivy patch for three weeks. A nocturnal sprinkling system doused me at irregular intervals. I had to gather up my blankets and run for dry spots.
Outdoor living ate shit. I went to the California State Employment Office and got some job referrals. A Serbo-Croatian psychic hired me as a handbill distributor.
Her name was Sister Ramona. She preyed on poor blacks and Mexicans and spread her message via mimeographed flyer. She healed the sick and dispensed financial advice. Poor people flocked to her door. She soaked the stupid cocksuckers for all they were worth.
