“We’re going to do one more song for you guys,” Glenn Danzig rasps, and Eerie thumps out the “da-duh-duh-duh-da” bass line that leads into “Hoochie-Coochie Man.” I bob my head to the beat and sing along with the lyrics, lyrics that I’ve sung along with a million times before in my room, in my car, in my head.
I got a black cat bone
I got a mojo too
The sign of a great show is that you can’t decide if you want it to last forever or if you want it to hurry up and end so you can go call everybody you know and tell them how great it was. The sign of a truly great show is when you forget everybody you know exists outside of you and the band. That is how I feel at this show tonight. It’s only me, Danzig, and Riki Rachtman in a Ninja Turtle outfit—and maybe not even Riki, especially when Glenn Danzig turns around on his stool and points at me.
I got a John the Conqueror Root
I’m gonna mess with you
So now, for the record, I’m onstage with Danzig, and Glenn Danzig is singing directly to me. I just want to make sure we have that all on record or I might not believe it myself. And that’s the way it was, October 31, 1991.
Q: So I take it this was the greatest concert you’ve ever been to in your life.
A: Actually, it’s a close race. There was this one, which is obviously right up there, and then there was my first ever Rolling Stones concert in 1981, when I was fourteen. Nobody sang to me and I didn’t get to sit on the stage, but I was in the front row, and I did manage a sip from Bill Wyman’s cup of birthday champagne before one of the older, stronger screaming girls wrested it away from me.
My new authority at Around the World may get me access to Vinnie Vincent, Riki Rachtman, and some of the better swag, but unfortunately it doesn’t get me into the Foundations Forum, the heavy metal industry convention put on by Concrete Marketing that is happening at the end of the summer. Those passes are a couple of hundred dollars apiece and available only to those with ironclad credentials—like Heather and Morgan. It’s cold comfort that Renee doesn’t get to go either. This is without a doubt the one event where I might actually get access to editors with clout, with potential, with magazines that actually cost something on the newsstand, and I can’t get in. At least not through Around the World. Even though I know it’s a long shot since he has so far proven himself to have no conscience whatsoever, I drop a little coin and give The Idol a call in New York. I’ve finally accepted that I am never going to see any of the money I was promised or any kind of actual writing assistance, but as well connected as he is, it would only take one phone call for him to get me into this convention, and damn it, the least he could do is make one call.
“You know, you didn’t pay me, you didn’t reimburse me, and you left me holding the bag on that whole screenplay thing,” I remind him. I don’t mention the wife, figuring it might take him screeching past penitent and right on into defensive. “The least you could do is get me a pass to this stupid conference.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he whines. “I’m not promising anything.”
“Good, because I already know what your promises are worth.”
“Be nice, Anne.”
“I’ve been nice,” I remind him. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I’ll try,” he says unconvincingly.
I don’t expect anything to come of our conversation, which makes it seem almost like Christmas when I receive a registration packet from Foundations Forum containing a laminated badge identifying me as a writer for Spin magazine. Like people cherish their first baby shoes or first dollar earned or first field-goal football, I now have my first laminated pass, something I’ve aspired to since I was a wee girl reading CREEM in my green vinyl beanbag chair in my bedroom back in Richmond. I shall cherish it forever and ever.
Q: So do you still have it?
A: Of course. It’s hanging up on my bulletin board between my laminated belly dancer pass and my laminated sex offender facility pass. I can only imagine what will be next.
The Foundations Forum is, itself, surprisingly not rocking. I do meet authors and publishers and the occasional rock star, and I do collect stacks and stacks of business cards and useful names. Like any other business convention, though, it is crowded and overwhelming, mainly insincere glad-handing and frantic attempts at networking that ultimately lead nowhere. How cool can you be, really, in an airport hotel convention room? I try to make the most of the opportunity, sitting in on seminars, gathering names, and handing out resumes, but honestly, I just can’t wait to get home at the end of each day.
Q: So does the convention revive any of your dashed dreams of becoming a rock journalist?
A: Can you see Lester Bangs schmoozing at the Airport Marriott? Me neither. While it does feel good to have a laminated pass with my name on it, the Foundations Forum turns out to be one more nail in the coffin of my CREEM dream—after all, it’s four days of paid advertising for marginally talented bands with major label expense accounts.
On the final day of the convention, I come dragging home at ten o’clock, lugging an overflowing tote bag of giveaway swag. By my estimation of what I remember throwing in over the course of the day, I have about a dozen CDs, twenty-some tapes, a handful of pens, six videotapes, a couple of T-shirts, and countless stickers and decals for bands I’ve never heard of. As I’m jockeying the bag to get the front door open, I manage to tip it sideways and spill half of my swag onto the front porch.
“Here, lemme get that.” The guy who lives below me, a tall, blond stoner dude who’s perpetually carrying a skateboard and a beer, bends down and gathers up a couple of handfuls of swag.
“Hey, sweet, Metallica! Where did you get all this stuff?”
“I was at the Foundations Forum.” I hold up my laminate pass, hopefully long enough for him to read the “Spin magazine” beneath my name.
“You need a hand getting this stuff upstairs?”
“Yeah, that would be great. Tell you what, you can have the Metallica if you help me carry it up.”
“Deal!”
I actually don’t need any help, but my downstairs neighbor is by far not the least attractive guy in the building and I’ve been trying to find an excuse to get to know him. That and I don’t really care too much for Metallica. Upstairs he tells me that his name is Tommy and he’s a key grip. I’ve always wondered what it is exactly that key grips do, but talking to Tommy doesn’t help much. Between his Spicoli drawl and his obvious inebriation, I’m getting very little information out of him that makes sense. He does offer to go to Mister Kim’s and get us a twelve-pack, which I accept, and we spend the rest of the night drinking, looking through the bag of swag, and trading increasingly unintelligible comments. By the time he heads downstairs at three A.M., we have plans to get together the next evening and I have a warm neighborly feeling in my heart and in my panties. California blond isn’t usually my style, but there’s something charming, compelling, and familiar about Tommy that lets me overlook his very un-rock ‘n’ roll short blond hair, muscular arms, and surfer tan.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for me to figure out that the familiar charm Tommy has that makes me feel so at home is, in fact, the one thing that seems to mystically draw me to men time after time—a heroin habit. When Tommy shows up the next night, his eyes are pinned and he immediately goes into a nod sitting on my futon in the thirty seconds it takes me to get him a beer. I do believe that if I picked up a Manhattan phone book and flipped it open to a page and pointed, I’d manage to point to a junkie; that’s how strong my junkie magnet is. From my first high school boyfriend in tenth grade, fresh out of juvenile hall, to The Idol last month, it seems every guy I ever get in my grasp is either a current junkie or a recovering one. So far I’ve had about equal luck with both types. It probably doesn’t help that I grew up with Keith Richards as my Prince Charming, but it seems like even when I pick someone without the trappings, the monkey jumps out and grabs me around the neck like an old friend. Look at Exhibit
A here, passed out on my futon looking for all the world like an ad for Pacific Sun and just as strung out as you please.
Oh, well. Don’t know when to cut my losses, you know the drill by now. I kick him in the flip-flop and hand him his beer. Might as well make the most of it.
Tommy and I spend the next four nights hitting the dive bars around Hollywood together—the Frolic Room, the Gaslight, the Spotlight, and, of course, Boardner’s. When we’re not out drinking, we’re in drinking, picking up twelve-packs at Mister Kim’s and holing up in my apartment watching Barfly over and over, because Tommy idolizes Charles Bukowski. Raelynn is unimpressed.
“Can we go out tonight, or are you going to be drinking with that nasty boy downstairs?”
“His name is Tommy,” I remind her, not that she is going to use his name. It’s a matter of principle.
“Well, he’s nasty,” she says bluntly, and then adds some incentive. “I’ll buy if you come out with me. You know he’s not buying.”
She has a point. Except for that first night, Tommy has never bought the drinks. When he told me he was a key grip, he didn’t explain that he was an out-of-work key grip, on disability due to his drug addiction. When we go out, it’s always either Dutch or my treat. The fact that Tommy is the only friend I have aside from Raelynn who likes to drink as much as I do makes him worth the expense. The added convenience of having him in the apartment below me nudges him into the lead. There are other sterling qual ities too that I won’t go into here; suffice to say he wins on points when compared to Raelynn. There are certain things that your girlfriends just don’t do for you, and those are the things that Tommy does really well. Plus I am tired of the bar scene, tired of dating, tired of not nearly measuring up to the off-duty centerfolds and pole dancers who populate the metal clubs where Raelynn and I hang out. Tommy may not be my real boyfriend, but he quacks like a duck, and that’s good enough for me at this point.
Unfortunately, my ditching Raelynn for Tommy limits the places that Tommy and I can go, because I don’t want to run into Raelynn out at a bar on a night when she’s called and I’ve told her I’ve got other plans. It’s just bad manners. Tommy suggests that we stay in, but I’m bored with my own four walls, and besides, this is Los Angeles for Christ’s sake— you’d think there would be enough dives in a city this size for two tiny girls to avoid each other for a day or two.
“Well,” Tommy says. “I’ve got a place that’s kind of like my secret spot. I guess I could take you there. I don’t know if you’ll like it, though. It’s kind of . . . different.”
“Good different or bad different?”
“Different different. You’d have to see it to understand.” With a pitch like that, how can I resist? I grab my purse and we’re off to Tommy’s secret place.
From the outside, the Blacklite looks remarkably like the Spotlight and the Gaslight. A main drag dive, across from the famous Tropicana Mud Wrestling bar, the Black-lite is small and unassuming with the front windows painted black and a thick curtain hanging over the front door. I wonder to myself what is so “different different” about this place. It looks just the same as everywhere else we go on any other drinking night. Tommy winks and motions for me to step back, then he sweeps the curtain aside and ushers me in.
Through the curtain lurks an altogether foreign world from what was outside, what is at the usual dives, or anything I’ve ever seen in my life. When we step into our other haunts, we see hair gods and hussies and the occasional B-list actor. Junkies, rockers, scenesters, and stiffs. Cigarettes and cheap perfume cloud the air, along with the occasional sweet whiff of marijuana smoke or brown liquor. The soundtrack is Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe (though that’s been giving way lately to Nirvana, Soundgarden, and the rest of their flannel-shirted ilk). But, there are no flannel shirts on the soundtrack at the Blacklite, and the only wannabe scenester here is me. Behind this curtain is Tommy’s world, which smells of stale beer and urine and is populated by geriatric barflies, aging queens, and drag queen hookers. A statuesque tranny in a Patti LaBelle chiffon concoction hangs on the arm of an Archie Bunker look-alike, chucking him under the chin and giggling. By the light of the jukebox, a barely legal lady boy in short shorts and a haltertop touches up a chipped bit of polish on his inch-long pink fingernails while Patsy Cline wails that she falls to pieces. I immediately understand what Tommy meant by “different different.”
Tommy comes over and hands me a beer. “They’re on the house,” he says, and sticks a dollar in the jukebox. I pick a schizophrenic mix—Tammy Wynette, Heart, Blood Sweat and Tears—that somehow seems perfect for this place. Tommy points around the bar, spouting a list of names I will forget after a couple more beers. “That’s Brandi . . . and Carmella . . . and Candy . . . and Desiree. The bartender’s Billy and over there, that’s Aunt Titty. And in the wheelchair, Miss Bunny.” I peer around the darkened bar, taking in the made-up faces, their jaws angular and their lips pouting and red. I feel relaxed and I haven’t even taken a Valium. It’s like I’m not really here. I guess it’s because I just don’t figure into the dynamic here in any logical way—as a straight girl, I’m effectively invisible. Nobody looks at me, talks to me, or even seems to notice that I’m here. It gives me a strange feeling of relief. I like it.
I finish my beer and get us two more. The bartender, Billy, is genial, a red-cheeked chubby caricature of a bartender, complete with a rag over his shoulder. He gives me a shot of something sweet and syrupy, on the house, before he gets my beers. It tastes like cough syrup and makes me feel warm and happy. Maybe it is cough syrup. I don’t care, I’m just glad to be here. I wander around the bar, looking at the dusty photos on the walls, the ancient Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling, and, from the corner of my eye, the patrons as they interact. I pass the Archie Bunker guy, now locked in an embrace with a gray-haired man in a faded work shirt. “You may be a fat old queen, but you’re my fat old queen,” the man in the work shirt says in a gravelly Brooklyn brogue. I smile at him and he winks at me, a fatherly wink, not a lecherous one. I decide that this is going to be my new hangout.
Tommy is playing darts with a couple of the senior citizens, and I have to pee anyway, so I excuse myself to the ladies’ room. I note that the seat is up and figure that’s usual; mine aren’t the only tits in the bar—or even the nicest—but I think I’m the only one here who sits down to pee. Well, except for Miss Bunny, who is the topic of discussion at the sink when I come out.
“Did you hear what she said to Aunt Titty? She said . . .”
“Honey, don’t repeat anything she says. Don’t even waste your breath. I swear somebody ought to push that bitch out in traffic.”
“Somebody might if she don’t watch herself. Look out, baby, Tommy’s girlfriend needs to use the sink.” For some reason, this makes me feel all tingly, although it might just be delayed effects from the syrup drink. I think it over as I’m washing my hands and realize that it’s not the drink, I really do feel tingly, and I realize that I’ve just been afforded more courtesy and acceptance in this drag queen hooker bar in forty minutes than I’ve gotten at Boardner’s the entire time I’ve been hanging out there. Night after night, dollar after dollar, beer after beer, at Boardner’s I’m just another pair of tits in a bustier that the girls see as competition and the guys see as not quite up to Hollywood par. But here I feel welcome, even liked. That part might actually be the syrup. But it feels good anyway.
I dry my hands and touch up my face, making sure to exchange pleasantries with the “girls”—I figure I’d better stay on their good side—and come out to find that Tommy’s already gotten us another round. “I won ’em,” he says, and I down mine while punching up another set of Patsy Cline on the jukebox. It occurs to me that I am getting more free drinks here than I get at Boardner’s, and nobody is trying to sleep with me—well, nobody except Tommy, and he isn’t trying that hard.
On any given night, he’s as likely to choose dope as he is to choose me. Those are the
nights that Raelynn and I creep around our old haunts, trolling for hair gods and wondering what we’ll do when the workers’ comp place finally closes down. I decide that I’ll bring Raelynn here with me next time, then think better of it. I know myself well enough to know that a lot of the things that make me feel happy and cozy tend to make other people feel squeamish and uncomfortable. This is probably one of those things.
Speaking of feeling strange, between the free beers and the mystery shot, I’m starting to feel a little odd myself. I round Tommy up and we head back to our building, stumbling up the stairs together for the usual foggy post-bar sex and pass out. Tonight, instead of rolling over and passing out, Tommy props himself up on a pillow and says, in a remarkably lucid tone, “There’s something I probably ought to tell you.”
I brace myself for the inevitable horrible news. Nobody has ever started off any good news with that line. He’s already told me he’s a junkie, so that’s out; and I know he doesn’t have a job, so that’s out too. I guess most logical people would assume that he was about to admit to having some dreaded disease, which needless to say has entered my mind more than once since our association began, but because the evening’s scenes are still flashing fresh in my mind, there’s only one thing I can think of, and I immediately assume it to be true.
Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City: A True Story of Faking It in Hair Metal L.A. Page 14
