Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City: A True Story of Faking It in Hair Metal L.A.

by Anne Thomas Soffee

  “Helloooo, Anne. Did you bring my cigarettes? Ah, good. Make sure you’re saving the receipts on all this stuff. Lemme look at you. Yeah, that’s it, turn around. Again. Hold it. You know who you look like?”

  “PJ Soles?” I’m hopeful, but realistic. He shakes his head.

  “Bailey Quarters. You know, from WKRP. I always liked Bailey better than Jennifer, the whore.”

  I sigh. “I’ve always wanted to look like Patti Smith.” I know from our phone conversations that he has trysted with Patti Smith, which adds all the more to my idolatry of him.

  He waves his hand. “Yeah, and all the girls who look like Patti Smith wish they looked like you.” I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s a nice thought, anyway. He lights a cigarette and reaches for the orange juice. “So we have a lot to do. We can’t waste any time. I’m working on a screenplay and I’m going to need you to type it for me. Also, there’s an article for SPIN that’s sort of on the same page—I’m multi-tasking—and I’ll need you to type that up too. I’m going to give you tapes. Can you work with that?” I nod. I’m glad he talks a lot because it’s still too early, and I am still too hung over, for coherent sentences. “Also, I’ll need you to do some driving for me while I’m here. Not all of it; I’ll be meeting up with people a lot and they’ll drive. But for errands, food, smokes, all that, I need your wheels.” I nod again. “And another thing. Do you know any black girls?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Black girls. Maybe from South Central. Or Latina girls, they’d be good too. I need to interview them for the screenplay.” He goes on, describing a screenplay that sounds like Dirty Dancing to a hip-hop beat, about a poor but earnest girl who wants nothing more than to be a featured dancer on a Soul Train—esque show and finds that the path to featured dancerdom ain’t no crystal stair. I listen numbly. Where are the junkies, the combat boots? Where is CBGBs and Joey Ramone? I’d even accept big hair and leather—hell, I already have. But booty shorts and disco heels? Is this guy an impostor?

  I don’t have too much time to wallow in my disappointment, because The Idol has a lunch date and I need to drive him there. He runs up to his room and apparently takes a bath in cheap cologne, then we’re off to Johnny Rockett’s on Melrose, where he introduces me to his lunch date, an ex-wife of one of his punk rock contemporaries who I remember seeing in the pages of CREEM more than once in an advanced state of dishabille. All of my doubts disappear, followed quickly by my hopes of actually getting to hang out with her as The Idol tells me to meet him back at his room at seven to start working on his tapes. I leave the two of them to their twelve-dollar cheeseburgers and head home, where I lunch on ramen noodles and humble pie, set to a soundtrack of the lunch date’s ex.

  “He dictates his typing from the bathtub?” Stacey is horrified and delighted.

  “I don’t know if he always does. He told me to come over at seven and when I got there the door was open and he yelled for me to bring the tape recorder to him. And he was in the bathtub.”

  “Just naked?”

  “Well, yeah.” Those skinny rocker guys look an awful lot better with clothes on; toothpick legs in black jeans and boots look cavalier and dangerous. Toothpick legs in murky bathwater look terminal.

  “So then what?”

  “So then he dictated a bunch of stuff about some girl who works in an office and wants to be a dancer on some show called Fresh Moves while I sat on the toilet and held the tape recorder.”

  “And then?”

  “And then he got out of the tub and smoked a bunch of cigarettes while he talked on the phone and I typed, and then he looked at the articles I brought over and said I was wasting my talent and I ought to write screenplays because that’s where the money is, and then we fucked.”

  “Oh my God. You are my hero, you know that?”

  “It actually sounds a lot more exciting than it was.” I am more than a little bit ashamed of myself. Raelynn and I had talked while he was at lunch with the former Mrs. Punk Rock about what to do in the inevitable event that he made a pass at me. We both decided that I would sleep with him, in spite of his incontrovertible skeevitude, just so that I could say that I had. Raelynn’s logic was that he was obviously using me, so it was not unethical of me to use him back. My logic was nonexistent. All I knew was that here was one of my punk rock idols and I had the opportunity to not just meet him, but, well, you know. You overlook a lot of skeevi-ness when you revert to starstruck teenybopper. The actual event itself was nothing if not completely overlookable, notable only for The Idol’s steady commentary in the lewdest possible terms, all delivered in the skeevy what-are-you-wearing voice. He did write for Screw and Oui, a bit of trivia I remember in the middle of the act after one particularly clichéd pronouncement. Fortunately, most of the positions he prefers don’t allow him to see my constantly rolling eyes. I leave these gory details out when I tell Stacey the story.

  “Yeah, but now you’ve slept with Patti Smith by proxy.” I hadn’t thought of that. Of itself, it makes any amount of skeeviness worth enduring.

  “That’s right,” I say, my back a little straighter and my self-esteem a little higher at the thought. “Anyway, I have to go back over in an hour, because the people from the studio are coming over to see how the screenplay is coming and I need to finish typing the new scene.”

  “I am going to touch you when you come home for Christmas,” Stacey sighs contentedly. “You are so cool.”

  I know she is being halfway ironic, but it still confirms that I am halfway cool, and that’s all I ever really wanted, anyway.

  Q: So would we be correct in assuming this would be your highest-profile tryst?

  A: Actually, while not on par with The Idol as far as my starry-eyed girlhood days went, I did manage a brief, disastrous affair in my thirties with one of the fixtures in all of the local bands when I was a teenybopper—one of the few who had parlayed local Richmond success into big-time notoriety in a theatrical schock rock band and a major label deal. (Much as with The Idol, if it would impress you, you’ve probably figured it out already, and if it wouldn’t, it’s not worth the lawsuit.) Anyway, we went on a couple of dates, all very proper, nice guy, cleaned up well, and then he took me to his place. His dad’s place. Where he was still living in his childhood bedroom, complete with cowboy curtains and a pirate flag on the wall.

  Because I still don’t know when to give up, we went on a few more dates before he inexplicably vanished for three days, then turned up at four in the morning on a workday, admitting to a nagging crack problem that manifested itself in regular binges during which he sold everything that wasn’t nailed down and hosted all-night smoking parties for dealers and prostitutes as his hapless father begged him to stop.

  “I can still be your boyfriend,” he reassured me. “Just don’t leave your purse out around me and stuff.” Just another example of cool not turning out as cool as you think it will.

  For the next two weeks, my nights are spent ferrying The Idol to script meetings, dinner dates, and interviews with would-be featured dancers, and my days are spent surreptitiously typing The Idol’s screenplay in between workers’ compensation reports. Andrew is onto what I’m doing, but in exchange for thirdhand Sex Pistols stories and semi-juicy gossip, he’s willing to pretend he doesn’t see me. I honestly hope he doesn’t, because the more of the screenplay I see, the more embarrassed I am for The Idol and myself. It’s a patchwork of hackneyed slang and slightly outdated pop culture references, strung together with the barest thread of a plot. The paper-thin characters address each other in catchphrases: “Yo, baby! You are so def and fly!” It sounds like it was written by somebody’s dad, trying too hard to sound “with it.” I am literally wincing as I type. I take liberties, editing out and updating as I go, hoping he won’t notice. Try as I might, there is no silk purse to be made from this tripe. After a while, I just type.

  In addition, I’m beginning to bristle at the “mutually beneficial” arrangement The Idol an
d I have. It benefits him in that I am available twenty-four hours a day for on-call typing, cigarette-and-burger-fetching, tea brewing, chauf-feuring, and, how do you say, companionship. It benefits me in that I have the privilege of telling people that it exists and little else. I’ve received no further writing advice or publishing help since the first night, and when I ask when we might be able to discuss it, he snaps that I’m “asking too many tedious questions” and banishes me for the night. Raelynn urges me not to go back the next day, as it seems I have little to gain by continuing our association.

  “He’s not helping you with your writing and he’s not paying you for your work,” she says bluntly. “All you’re getting out of this is bad sex and carpal tunnel. Ditch him now.” It’s tempting. He is getting moodier by the day, snapping at me if I am not fast enough bringing him his tea or his cigarettes and sometimes refusing to speak for hours on end, just smoking and scowling on the balcony of his room. If I suggest that I leave and come back later, he flies into a snarling rage, accusing me of not being serious about this very important position and threatening to replace me with one of the Latino girls he’s been interviewing for the screenplay. More than once I’ve considered just not answering the phone anymore when he calls.

  Even Stacey agrees. “You slept with him already,” she points out by way of explanation. “Now whenever anybody mentions him, I can say, ‘you know, my friend Anne slept with him!’ It’s the same whether you did it once or a hundred times. Why do it any more than you have to?”

  If I were looking at him merely as a conquest, that much would be true. I already have the Figgy Fizz bottle cap in my collection now, so I don’t need to drink any more soda. But—and I think we all saw this one coming— knowing when to quit is not my forte. So even when he flies another writer in from New York to help him on the screenplay and she turns out to be pretty, French, and brooding, I keep on typing, fetching, and driving. I actually like the new writer, Therese, and am glad to have someone around to keep me company when he goes into one of his sulking fits (which happen more and more often as his deadline draws closer). One night, when he is so deep into a fit that he won’t speak to either one of us, I decide that Therese could benefit from the same therapy that has been aiding Raelynn and me for months. We leave The Idol pouting in the bathtub and head to Boardner’s, armed with Valium and the hopes of using Therese’s exotic charm to cadge many free drinks from hair gods.

  “So how long have you known the Skeevster?” Raelynn dislikes The Idol so much that she refuses to even use his name in conversation. I think Therese chalks it up to the language barrier and takes it in stride.

  “I’ve worked with him on many projects, for about five years,” she says, squeezing a lime into her beer, “but we actually met through his wife—she is an old friend of mine.”

  “His wife?” I figure this is a language thing too, and maybe she means ex-wife. Raelynn is not going to leave it up to chance.

  “Is he married now?”

  “Oh, yes,” Therese says innocently. “His wife is very sweet. She drove me to the airport to come here. I hope you can meet her someday.”

  “Me too,” says Raelynn with a shit-eating grin, and I kick her under the table. This is not funny to me. There is a code, a girl code, which not all girls respect but that I do without reserve. That code is that married men are off-limits. I might not be Sandra Dee, but even I draw the line somewhere, and for me that somewhere is at other women’s husbands. Or so I thought.

  I excuse myself and leave Raelynn and Therese chatting up two Canadian rocker-tourists. Screeching around corners and flying through yellow lights, I am at the Highland Gardens within minutes . . . and I am pissed.

  “So why didn’t you tell me you were married,” I glower at the still-soaking Skeevster. He does not seem to be the least bit surprised that Therese ratted him out, nor is he the least bit apologetic or ashamed.

  “Come on, Aaaaaaaanne,” he whines. “What did you think? That I was going to marry you? Take you away from all this?” I roll my eyes. That’s not what I thought at all ... at least, not after I got to know him. Maybe in the week leading up to his arrival I wove some fantasies, but his reality left little room for doubt.

  “I didn’t ask you for anything,” I spit, “and the only thing I expected was that you would help me with my writing, because you offered. I guess I was stupid enough to assume you’d be up front with me about anything, since you’re obviously not a man of your word. I don’t know why I even . . .”

  At this point I stop talking, because The Idol begins sinking slowly under the murky bathwater until he is completely submerged. After about half a minute, his head slowly breaks the surface, brows beetled, hair plastered down around his ears. He reaches out of the tub for the most recent pack of Marlboros I brought him, shakes one out and lights it, then looks at me scornfully and blows smoke through his nostrils in my direction.

  “A man of my word? Look at who you’re talking to here.”

  Touché. Expecting the original punk to be a man of honor is like expecting intelligence and wit to get me far in Hollywood. I turn on the heel of my silver-trimmed cowboy boots and walk out of the Highland Gardens, a little older, a little wiser, and not as much cooler as I thought I’d be.

  “He what?” Stacey is thrilled and disgusted at the latest turn of events in the Punk Rock Idol soap opera. Not the wife; we covered that a week ago. This is new stuff that’s affecting me a lot more directly than a cross-country spouse.

  “He skipped town! I went over to work on the screenplay and he’d checked out! Therese left me a note saying it was nice to meet me, but he didn’t leave me shit.” I had a feeling that the “save your receipts” line was bullshit all along, but of course I’d saved them just in case. I’m probably out a couple of hundred bucks’ worth of burgers and smokes, and a hell of a lot of time, but that’s nothing compared to the people who ponied up for the screenplay. It’s my understanding that, in addition to a fat advance, they’d also covered The Idol’s hotel and airfare. All they had to show for it now was the first half of an incredibly lousy screenplay—and apparently, a message from The Idol saying I was still typing the other half.

  “The movie people are ringing my phone off the hook. They’re pissed.” I’ve been afraid to answer my phone all weekend, and their messages are getting downright threatening. “You’re putting us in a very unpleasant predicament,” the last one warned ominously. “Shit, I hope they don’t know where I live.”

  “This is like a movie,” Stacey says cheerfully.

  “Says you,” I grumble. At least it’s better than the one The Idol was writing. If there is no other silver lining here, at least I know in my heart that Fresh Moves will never see the light of day.

  6

  I, Industry Weasel

  Gabba Gabba, We Accept You,

  We Accept You, One of Us

  i celebrate my first anniversary in L.A. in high style— at Boardner’s, of course, with Raelynn. It’s just another night, to be honest, and I am growing a little tired of the routine but don’t see any other way. I sense that my days at the workers’ comp firm are numbered; not that I’m not doing a good job, though I could probably stand to be at the office a little earlier and a little more clear-headed. Thank God for flex time. In fact, the wheels of workers’ comp reform are already in motion, and it seems like almost weekly another few of my fellow cube farmers are called into Andrew’s office for the bad news, followed by the desultory desk clean out and the escorted march to the elevator.

  At Around the World, I am doing more publicity and less envelope stuffing, thanks in part to the arrival of two new interns who are now lower than me on the totem pole. The bad news is that for most of my publicity assignments, I’m paired with the evil Renee, who is as thrilled about the arrangement as I am. Not only that, but we aren’t exactly getting the plum assignments, either. Anything that Heather and Morgan don’t want to do, they give to us. Like dealing with Vinnie Vincent. />
  Q: You mean Vinnie Vincent from Kiss? Vinnie Vincent Invasion Vinnie Vincent? Rock on! What’s to complain about there?

  A: Yes, that Vinnie Vincent, although in the interest of full disclosure, he was only in Kiss from late 1982 to early 1984, post-makeup—which was lucky for Vinnie, because the makeup he’d come up with for the gig was a super-cheesy silver ankh on his forehead that made him look like an Egyptian mime. Also in the interest of full disclosure, this is the same Vinnie Vincent who ghostwrote all of Joanie and Chachi’s songs on Happy Days. Rock on indeed.

  I don’t know how Renee feels about being Vinnie Vincent’s publicist, but for me even his brief association with Kiss is enough to make this exciting at the outset. I was the kid in the Kiss Destroyer T-shirt on the playground in 1976, the one who played Gene to Melissa’s Ace in the fourth-grade talent show. Lip-synching and tongue-wagging to “Rock and Roll All Night,” we didn’t win, but we were the coolest kids on the bus that day in our greasepaint makeup and Reynolds Wrap boots. I still have my Spirit of ’76 Tour poster, my Destroyer jigsaw puzzle, and all four solo albums on vinyl. He could have been a roadie for a weekend and I would still be just a little impressed to be working with him.

  I am dying to meet Vinnie in person, but alas, he lives up to Heather’s warning that he is Howard Hughes—level reclusive. He insists on conducting all of his publicity over the phone. My disappointment knows no bounds. I have been dying to see his wig.

  “That’s a wig?” Raelynn squints at his publicity photo, which I brought home to inspire me while I write up his new bio. “It looks just like everybody else in the band’s hair.”