by Amy Asbury
One of the first bands Cristabelle and I saw passing out flyers was named Drop Dead Gorgeous. Two of them were really handsome, but wearing red lipstick. They had really long black hair and wore all-black clothing, but were still masculine somehow. Their theme appeared to be glamorous vampires. One of the guys was named Loren. He looked right past me and was instantly taken with Cristabelle. I thought he was drop dead gorgeous and was immediately jealous. Painfully jealous. She got into flirt mode and snagged him, straight away. I felt kind of down and defeated the rest of the night. Was I pretty enough for this place?
Cristabelle ended up dating Loren in the coming weeks. One night we went to their show at the Coconut Teaszer, which was on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard. I believe it was painted purple at the time, in honor of The Zeros (an all purple-haired band) playing there. Even though it wasn’t close to the other clubs, it was one of the spots that all of the bands played (same thing with the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard). The Teaszer had a big flight of stairs that you had to climb to get into the front door. It was super dark inside and there was a tiny little stage that was really close to the ground. It felt like someone was just doing karaoke in your living room. There were all sorts of nooks and crannies in the place, kind of like the Rainbow. There was an outside patio overlooking the huge intersection, a dance floor off in another room and a few different bars. I was less nervous than I would have been in The Roxy or a place with a bigger stage and more people in the audience, but I was still kind of scared. Scared that I looked like a geek, scared that I wasn’t acting cool, all of that.
Drop Dead Gorgeous played their show and we tried to show support without looking like morons. I was thinking, Should I bop my head to the beat? Should I smile? Not smile? Lean against something? Not even watch? We ended up standing there looking like bitches. We thought we looked older if we didn’t talk or smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I tried to look around the room to see if I was dressed like any of the other people. I guessed I was in a way- but I was playing it too safe. I was in black again and went unnoticed. I couldn’t seem to strike a good balance- I was either way overdressed or invisible.
I was secretly mesmerized by the guys in DDG and very interested in seeing how they operated in the daytime. How did they live? Did they have regular jobs? Did they hang upside down like bats to sleep? I found out soon enough. Cristabelle and I started to go over to their place so she could see Loren. They all lived in a one-bedroom scumbag apartment on De Longpre in Hollywood. It was in a bad area- total crack central, not to mention a major pick up place for male hustlers. Anyway, I used to sit on their couch and just stare at all of them getting ready to go play a gig. They’d all get around the one mirror in the place and get real serious while they applied their makeup.
They had pictures of The Munsters, El Vira, and Traci Lords all over the place. I guess those were their inspirations, and fine ones at that. In the daytime, they all laid around in shorts with their stringy hair sticking to their bony backs. Well, they all had bony backs except for the singer, who was rather chubby, bless his heart. He must have been able to sing somewhat, I don’t remember. He wore vests over white frilly shirts and had long, frizzy hair.
I used to love the rush of excitement before Cristabelle and I got to their door. Kevin, the cute bassist who loved the red-headed 1980’s teen singer Tiffany, lit up when I came in. He would look at me and say “GOOD GOD.” He always bluntly flattered me. I started to wear skimpier clothing to try to elicit more compliments from him. Once I got a reaction from him, I would then feel guilty and cover up with a black jacket in case word got back to Jimmy that I was some wild woman about town. I didn’t want to publicly disrespect him.
Cristabelle and I started going to The Strip every weekend. While we were getting ready we listened to Slaughter’s Stick it to Ya album, namely the song “Fly to the Angels,” and Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood album. There was a band called Nelson, who had a hit called “After the Rain” (I didn’t like them), that always played on the new station Pirate Radio (100.3). The song “Epic” by Faith No More was big and so was “What it Takes” by Aerosmith. We lounged by Cristabelle’s pool during the day, me in a zebra print bikini and a pink scrunchie in my dark hair, and she in a neon orange bikini and her blond hair piled into a bun. Sometimes we listened to the regular mainstream music, like Madonna’s “Vogue” or Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love,” which Cristabelle belted so loud that it shriveled the goddamn plants. Laying there in the California sunshine, daydreaming about The Strip and eating sugared raspberries from a cut crystal bowl, I felt that my life was as good as it could get.
I started to notice the ins and outs of Hollywood pretty quickly, as I was always sort of a spy wherever I went. I was good at spotting details and trends. The Sunset Strip scene was nothing like hanging around Jeff Hunter in the Valley. There was a definite set of rules to follow. First off, very few Hollywood guys would ever have a name like Jeff. If they did, they would change it to “J.J.” or something ‘cuter.’ They rarely had natural blond or brown hair. That was the kiss of death. Their hair had to be platinum white blond or dyed jet-black and at least past their shoulders. The colors could not be natural, only unnatural colors, which included streaks of pink, purple, or blue. If you had any sort of curl in your hair, you were “out.” It had to be straight. Many ads for musicians looking for bandmates said straight out, “no ‘brown hairs’.”
Most guys on The Strip that year were considered “Glam Rock.” They wore eyeliner at the very least and at most a full face of makeup, including the beauty spot and lipstick. Glam guys were very skinny and not muscular in any way. Their bodies were almost all the same: very long stick legs in tight black pants and lanky, slouching torsos in colorful, glittery shirts. They rarely had chest hair and no one ever had facial hair. If you are thinking…wait…they sound like girls, you would be correct. They looked exactly like women. I don’t know what that says about me and all of the other girls mesmerized by them, but think what you will.
If you were a guy with curly hair, you were fucked. If you were not skinny, you were fucked. If you were hairy, you were fucked. I realized at that point that Drop Dead Gorgeous, who I thought were so great, were on the ‘not cool’ list for having a singer who was plump with brown, wavy hair. You had to look like a supermodel, just to be a GUY on The Strip. So you can imagine how difficult it was to be a girl.
Anyone could go to The Strip. It was public property. But to get in with the in-crowd? You had to have something they wanted. And that was either: 1) beauty, 2) status, or 3) money. Usually, the face was most important, followed by youth and a hot body. There was no reason for anyone fat or unattractive to be present. If there ever was a fat person hanging in that crowd, you can bet your left ball that they had money. I know, I know. I sound like a jerk, but it’s true. A few fat chicks were wealthy enough to buy their way in. The guys were always poor and were very money grubbing, so if a girl was three hundred pounds, and was willing to shell out money for the musician’s expenses, she was allowed to hang out. It would be low profile, of course, so as not to upset their image, but they would not turn down money. It was not just buying drinks. Oh hell no. It was literally paying the guys’ rent, or getting an apartment and letting guys live in it for free and keeping the fridge filled. One fat chick in particular was named Esmeralda and had very wealthy parents. She bought one platinum-haired glam rocker a Corvette. I am serious.
Most musicians lived with some sort of boring girl who wouldn’t give them too much trouble and was generally just happy to be in their presence. Those girls would always fall in love with them and that made it difficult for the guys to date any one, or even hang out with girls like me.
The girls that became actual girlfriends to the guys on The Strip were usually beautiful and rich. Just being beautiful was not enough. I had it pointed out to me very bluntly, by a popular guy about a year later who had just discovered me in his crowd at a party.
He walked up to me and said, “I like your lips. I like how the top one protrudes like that. You’re beautiful. You want a boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” I said, seeing where it went, because he was such a sought-after person.
“Where do you work?”
“A beauty supply store.”
“How much do you make?”
“$5.50 an hour.” (I added on fifty cents, like that would make a difference.)
“Never mind,” he said, and walked away, leaving me standing there.
In most crowds, men are chasing after females and the females are picking and choosing who they want. In this crowd, it was a very high ratio of women competing for a tiny ratio of men. The men were pursued; they had women throwing themselves at them. I saw how disposable the women were and I didn’t want to be like that. I already felt bad enough about myself for my earlier mistakes with men and I knew it could be a landmine of even worse situations if I didn’t watch out. I luckily had a boyfriend, so I didn’t have to get into any situations with guys at that point. Regardless, I could tell it would be very hard to be a respected woman in the Sunset crowd. It seemed pretty impossible, laughable even. I was nervous about how I would carry out my plan.
One night, Cristabelle and I ran into a guy I used to know through the Casey crowd named Michael Michelle (he was called ‘Mikey’ at the time, but for all intents and purposes, I will use the name Michael, because that is what it changed to). He told us that everyone was going to the Swingin’ Thing show at The Roxy that weekend. They were the new “it” band and all of the cool people would be there. Cristabelle and I agreed that we had to go. I was secretly thrilled that I could finally watch the main players in the cliques first hand. I could stand among them myself. This was it!
We showed up at The Roxy, trying to act all cool and unimpressed. I was terribly excited to be there, but I was sure I had to hide such foolishness. We went inside and it was super loud and very dark. The people I could see appeared to be smiling and colorfully dressed. Beach balls were being passed around in the crowd by tan girls with long blond hair and chalky pink, almost white lips that kind of glowed in the dark. They were in little Marcia Brady outfits of peach, yellow, and rose. They didn’t look as sleazy as most of the other girls I saw. I later found out they were all from a beach town in Orange County called Huntington Beach. I looked around at the rest of the audience. It seemed as if every big band was there networking. Michael and his friends were walking around talking to people, not really watching the show. No one who was cool would go to the front of the stage; they stood back by the bar and socialized.
Swingin’ Thing’s songs were about surfing and doing it with the lights on. They even sampled the Beastie Boys’ “The New Style.” I gathered that I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to the band so I tried not to stand there staring, but inside, I thought they were really talented and different. I actually liked them. They didn’t sound like suicidal Scandinavians or angry bikers. They were cute, happy, and sexy. I looked out into the crowd. Everyone was drinking, laughing, and tossing the beach balls. I was sold. I don’t think I have ever been so sold. I definitely felt they were more my cup of tea than what Jimmy was doing. He could go ahead and go out without me. I had found my place, my very own scene. I wanted to be nowhere else.
Jimmy was still going to his own spots, and after a while Cristabelle stopped wanting to go out as much as I did, so I started hanging with Michael. Now I don’t know if this is because I was unintentionally visualizing what I wanted until it came into being or what, but very shortly after running into Michael on The Strip, he moved into a condo only a few blocks from where I lived with my grandmother. A guy named Dusty owned the place and needed roommates, so Michael moved in along with a guy named Razz.
Razz was a big part of my Hollywood life. I met him through the Casey crowd as well, and had even hooked up with him prior. He had the look of a musician: very, very thin and very tall, with (let’s all say it together now) long, black hair. How do I put this…His hair was not exactly luxurious looking and his skin was not the smoothest I’ve seen. And, I am sure he wouldn’t disagree with me in saying, he had a big fuckin’ nose. He was not your typical Adonis. In spite of all of that, he somehow thought he was fabulous and hot. He was so confident with his looks that everyone else believed him and treated him as such. He carried himself as if he was a god, often looking down on others for their looks. He had no problem getting girls and was dating some of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. It was fun to be around him when I looked good and it was hell when I was not up to par.
If I looked good, he fawned over me and praised me and paraded me in front of everyone saying, “Isn’t she hot?” But if I had gained weight or I had split ends, he would let me know immediately. I felt like I was having a sit-down with my boss when I was told these things about my looks. It made me nervous. Razz couldn’t be bothered with anyone who didn’t have “the look,” whatever that was in his head. He called everyone ‘honey,’ as in “You just don’t have the look, honey” (said with raised eyebrows) and he wore women’s perfume. One of the greatest nights ever was when he pissed out of a fourth story window at the palm-tree-lined Studio Club on Wilcox, right over the entrance to the building. We were all shocked, and he responded by saying, “That’s Hollywood, babe,” in his drawn out, bored voice. When he walked out of the doors later that night, he slipped, literally catching air, and then landed straight on his back in a puddle of his own urine. Everyone said, “That’s Hollywood, babe!” between guffaws and cackles.
Michael was also very confident, but in a more friendly way. He didn’t make me nervous or scare me like Razz often did. He was a tiny little guy with super long, black hair and lots of makeup and colorful clothes. He was always laughing and joking and hanging out with whomever was up and coming, or whoever was deemed “in.” He was very social and outgoing but excluded anyone who wasn’t cool. He always dictated the in crowd. Razz would not be seen with a girl who didn’t look like a supermodel, and he had to have some sort of respect for a guy to befriend him, even if it was just his look, so he wasn’t as easy-going about things. Regardless, they pulled together an in-crowd for the Sunset Strip, linking different people from different bands together and hand picking pretty girls to join. And most important of all, they were more than willing to pick me up and let me tag along with them to Hollywood on the weekends.
It would usually be early evening, the sun still out. After getting ready, I laid there on my messy bed, listening to Hanoi Rocks or Faster Pussycat, arms propped up, waiting to see Razz’s little red Mazda RX7 slow down in front of my house. Once I saw that bright red car, I ran outside, excited for the night to begin. Razz was usually wearing sweats and a scrunchie around his wrist. He always started out the evening going over how cool he was, reminding himself of his status as if to pump himself up for the night. It would go something like this:
“Honey, let me tell you something. I can’t be bothered with someone who doesn’t have the look, you know? I mean, I have the look. I look like a rock star. I’m tall, I have great hair, I have the clothes, I have the connections. It’s only a matter of time before I am doing something big.”
When we got to the condo, I took a seat on the couch. Dusty had a fluffy white Persian cat that looked like it should be eating Fancy Feast out of a Baccarat goblet. She chased shadows while the guys chatted about their love lives. Razz would reiterate how beautiful his chicks were (and strangely, I would find that he was not exaggerating), and how he dated nothing but the best. I nodded. Michael would tell me about girls he had crushes on, asking if he should call or not call or why they were ignoring him. His voice was a pinched, nasally, Valley Girl voice- it sounded like this:
“Like, whot should I deewww? I like, like her. I think she goes out with a lot of other guys. Should I tell her I like her? Or maybe I should try to make her jealous…thot would be kewl…”
Then it was on to a beauty discussion.
Michael and I discussed the plucking of brows and if it were normal to see a lot of hair in the drain when you took a shower. Sometimes Razz would cook dinner and yell in a shrill voice, “Michael honey! Dinner!” I would then wait for them to get ready for the night out. They drank their beers in the shower and blasted Yaz or Dead or Alive (Michael’s two favorite bands). I loved the getting ready time. They sat around with their hair wrapped in petal pink towels, drinking more beer and gossiping. Then they applied their makeup with a steady hand, lining their eyes and applying lipstick, beauty spots, and mascara. Their hair took a while because it had to be teased and hair-sprayed.
We all drank until we had a buzz, piled into a car that was blasting music and got on the 101 freeway heading south. It took about twenty minutes to get to Hollywood, so we continued drinking beers in the car. It was very exciting, all smashed together on each other’s laps, laughing, singing, and smacking each other. We zipped around traffic- Franklin to La Brea, La Brea to Fountain, Fountain to La Cienega, La Cienega to Holloway, Holloway to Sunset Boulevard. Once we got there, we parked on a side street off The Strip. We drank more beers in the car then got out in the dark and walked through the crowds, saying hi to (their) friends, stopping to drink with different people. We went in and out of the Whisky, The Roxy, the Rainbow, and Gazzarri’s, not to mention the sushi bar across the street from the Rainbow, Ten Masa. Every one of those places was always filled past capacity and we could barely move. We continued through the night, getting increasingly drunk and doing reckless things like crawling over fences, getting in fights, peeing in bushes or being thrown out of bars. I felt like I was going to the biggest and best rager of the century every single weekend. It was non-stop. The vibe never died down.
