The Sunset Strip Diaries

by Amy Asbury

I idolized Missy the most and immediately formed a girl crush on her. She looked like Brigitte Bardot: lots of long blond hair, dark eyes lined in black 1960’s eyeliner and pale pink lipstick. She was very tall and thin with big boobs and a huge movie star smile. I think the best thing about Missy, besides the fact that she was totally friendly and sweet to me, was that she took no shit from guys. My jaw dropped as Razz chased and chased her while she remained nonchalant and aloof. I sometimes saw him a blubbering mess, crying over her in the corner with his hankie. He couldn’t have her to himself and he couldn’t stand it. She was dating Stephen Pearcy of Ratt and it pissed Razz off to no end. He was so plucked! He tried to get her to be exclusive and she refused.

  Missy was also a bit of a daredevil, which I found interesting. Razz told us that she was driving him through Laurel Canyon one night and she was speeding so fast that her car spun out, bounced off the side of a mountain, and flipped upside down. They were wearing seatbelts, luckily, so when they looked at each other, all they saw was hair hanging down. We were like, Oh my gosh, Razz! Were you okay? He said, and I quote; “Honey, my makeup wasn’t even smudged.” Other times Missy sped along the shoulder of the freeway if there was a traffic jam, or purposely ran red lights if she was in a hurry. She basically didn’t give a fuck about cops, tickets, or getting in trouble, because she so easily got out of trouble by being so pretty.

  Missy’s friend Sabrina was also very wild, but in a different way. She was this tiny thing and had the same basic look as the others (tan, pale blond hair). Her stage name was ‘Summer’ and she was bisexual; something that came out after she got wasted. She appeared to be an instigator and was always making out with her friends, who went along with it if they were wasted enough. It wasn’t a big deal to them, it was all laughable. I was intrigued by their nonchalance.

  One night Sabrina tried hitting on me. I thought: This is Hollywood. This shit can’t be uncommon. We were all drunk and happy in a dark VIP room, weaving in and out of people I had seen on MTV. Sabrina started to grind on one of the other girls on the dance floor. She was wearing a skintight, neon pink dress with long sleeves. Her bright blond hair was glowing. I thought she looked neat. Then the next thing I knew, she started trying to grab me, telling me she wanted to dance. Shit, I thought. I thought she and her friends were really cool, but I didn’t know how to dance and even if I did, I didn’t want to grind with her. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to insult her but I also didn’t want to look like a dork. She was hinting that she wanted to “get together” and asked for my number. I stalled and acted as if I had to pee, remaining friendly. I hoped she would be too drunk to remember what she was saying and wouldn’t be mad at me the next day. Luckily, that is exactly what happened. She ended up getting in the car and making out with her friend, Rachel, the entire way home.

  I started to observe Missy and her friends closely. They were always having masses of roses sent to them and had lots of guys following them like puppies. They chased no one. Guys chased them, even in Hollywood, where the roles were switched. I had kind of just accepted that the guys were on a pedestal, but after meeting Missy and her friends, I saw it didn’t have to be true. They didn’t sit around waiting for guys to call. They didn’t get heartbroken. Guys were all over them while they were just bouncing around town, happy as could be. They didn’t want to be tied down. I thought…Wait…THAT is what I need to be doing. They couldn’t be bothered unless they were with the most popular people and were going the coolest places and having the best time. Somehow, they pulled this off without looking bitchy.

  Things and people were very quickly deemed “out” if it wasn’t to their liking. That club is out, that drink is so out, and that color is out. I watched them in their tight Barbie dresses and long bleached hair, tripping on the new drug Ecstasy. They were dating stars like Vanilla Ice and David Lee Roth. I was not in their league. I was a regular high school student by day, trying to lead a normal life of writing commentaries for the school paper, making lopsided pots in ceramics and playing tennis in sweat shorts. I felt like a spy. It was hard to make conversation with the school girls my age who were going to the movies on Saturday nights in their high-waisted paper bag pants and teased bangs. I had no idea what a normal girl’s life was supposed to be like. And even stranger than that: I was terrified of the normal kids. I wouldn’t have known what to say or do on a date or what to do at a typical teenage house party.

  Razz, Michael, Missy and her blond dancer friends became the new in-crowd on The Strip. I was the youngster in the crowd. They loved me. The girls were maternal toward me and kind of coddled me. One of the things I really liked about dancers is that they liked to hang around other pretty girls. Most girls I knew wanted to be the most pretty, so they wouldn’t hang with another girl who would take attention away from them. That was kind of standard. But dancers were one big happy family of really gorgeous girls who were not threatened by anyone. They thought I was cute and treated me like a little sister. Being around them was like wearing a big, fluffy, warm fur coat; I felt protected and comforted in their presence. I sensed they were very tough people underneath their beautiful doll faces and candy colored dresses; I knew they could take care of themselves.

  I decided to revamp my image at that time. I stopped wearing black and cut back on the purple because it was too dark in a crowd. Once I realized that I had to use color to bring attention to my image, things started to fall into place. I started to wear a lot of bright pink. I had a long-sleeved hot pink top that stopped just under the boobs and showed my flat stomach, which I wore with some matching little shorts. I also had the outfit in white. I bought a tight, bright green shirt and black hot pants. I wore swirly, Pucci-like tops in bright colors and sixties headbands. The shit was crazy. In a sea of blonds, I was the hot new brunette girl in pink with the blue eyes, long hair, big boobs and bare midriff. I darkened the beauty spot above my lip. I changed my lipstick color from a dark berry color to a cartoon pink. I was getting the hang of it. Was it tacky? Of course! I was amongst walking Barbie dolls of both genders. I had to get in on the craziness or be left in the glittery dust.

  The place to get these over-the-top outfits was a store on Hollywood Boulevard called Playmates of Hollywood. I went there on a sunny spring morning with Jimmy, walking over the stars on the Walk of Fame. We turned in toward the two floor-length shop windows that always had really crazy displays. They were like Bergdorf window displays on acid, with a ‘shrooms chaser. The mannequins weren’t like the regular mannequins you see; they were more curvy and busty. One month it would be an Alice and Wonderland theme with tiny blue skirts and Queen of Hearts bikinis. There would be a Mad Hatter tea party full of various colorful lingerie and stage costumes, with some huge playing cards and trimmed hedges behind them. Another month the theme would be hell, or an S & M dungeon full of red leather bikinis and bondage costumes, complete with tasseled whips. Or they would do a Wizard of Oz theme with glittery red platform heels, tiny blue and white gingham bikinis, and a yellow brick road. One bikini would be silver for the tin man; one would be a deep, shiny emerald, and another would be black leather, worn with a witch hat. There were displays of summer barbecues featuring teensy, cut-off shorts, red checkered bikinis and little polka dot outfits. Sometimes it was a Parisian boudoir setting, full of pale pink lace lingerie and black satin ribbons.

  I was inside the bright pink dressing room at Playmates that particular day, when I heard Missy’s voice on the other side of me, telling whoever she was with that she loved the gold bikini. We both came out of the dressing rooms at the same time.

  “Babe!” she squealed, and hugged me. Her hair was wet, she wasn’t wearing makeup, and she smelled like chocolate cupcakes. She was with another pretty dancer who had her light blond hair up in a messy bun, wearing no makeup and pastel pink sweats. They were trying on “work” costumes. My excitement in seeing Missy quickly turned to horror when I realized I was with Jimmy, and I would have to introduce them. I didn�
�t want him seeing the girls I hung with, and I was afraid Missy would find him uncool. I went ahead and made the introductions; Jimmy stiffly shook her hand and she was polite. She didn’t seem to care either way, but I could tell he was pissed off. He later said that he could see me getting into trouble with her. He was right. I wanted nothing more than to get in some trouble with her. I wanted some of her sunny, blond sunshine; some of her power.

  So there I was. I had my new look, a new attitude and new friends. The next thing I knew, the unimaginable happened: people started to know my name. I started getting lots of invitations to go to even more cool places. I was on the VIP lists and was invited to be a guest at the shows. I saw my own face in Rock City News, the magazine I had once combed through to find out who the cool people were. My picture was added to the collage of photos on the wall at the Rainbow.

  I regained my initial teenage confidence through the attention I received. I became very bold, very brave; I wasn’t so broken. The only bad thing about that time was that I had to be completely wasted to live the life I was living. I had to be buzzed just to walk out the door in the outfits I wore. I had to drink to calm my nerves when hanging around rock stars and other cool, older people. I basically had to be drunk in order to walk into the rooms I was entering. It wasn’t as if I was walking into high school dances on the weekends. I had made it into the exclusive, obscure crowd for which I was pining. I was constantly beaming. I felt like kissing babies, shaking the hands of the common folk and cutting ribbons at the opening of new towns. I was on cloud nine.

  Could it last?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Cat Fight

  One night, Brent Muscat of Faster Pussycat started hanging around our crowd. He was a friend of Razz’s, so he was always kind of around in the background. He confided in Razz about his songwriting and his life and what not. His band was bigger by that time; he was more famous in my scene than he was when I was younger and had only seen him in The Metal Years. He came to the condo to have beers while everyone got ready and I stupidly called Jimmy from Razz’s room to tell him I was leaving for Hollywood. Brent saw that I was all nervous talking to my boyfriend and wanted to cause trouble amongst us laypeople. He started playing around with me while I was trying to talk on the phone, grabbing one of my legs and trying to lift it up into the air until I screamed. I was trying to remain composed to talk to Jimmy, but Brent was determined to distract me from the call. I remember saying, “Can you hold on just a minute, Jimmy?” and then slamming Brent in the head five times with the phone receiver, as he laughed and tried to block me, the coiled cord becoming tangled around us. When I got back on the phone, Jimmy was furious. He didn’t know who was in the background, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he found out.

  The next weekend I was back with my friends in the hot tub at Dusty’s condo. I sat there in my zebra print bikini from Marshall’s, cursing myself for not being prepared with something cooler to wear. Through the rising steam, I looked at the tags on some of the dancer’s bright string bikinis; they were all from a place called Ziganne’s of Hollywood. Ooooh, another place I need to check out! I saved up weeks of lunch money and got a ride there one day. It was on Hollywood Boulevard, not far from the huge Art Deco Frederick’s of Hollywood building that housed a small museum of movie stars’ lingerie. Once again, the Walk of Fame was on the sidewalk I was using to get there. I looked down as my feet walked over the coral pink granite stars laid inside a dark gray background. They each had a little symbol to show the honoree’s field: music, TV, film, etc. Some stars had bouquets of fresh flowers on them, and others I had to go around because tourists were taking pictures next to them. I got a little heartsick when I walked over James Cagney’s star. I loved Yankee Doodle Dandy when I was a young teenager. I smiled and looked at the other names over which I was walking: Alfred Hitchcock...Count Basie…Alan Hale…

  I stopped at a glass storefront full of headless mannequins wearing brightly colored string bikinis. This had to be it. Wow! It was so cool looking. It was clearly the place for stage bikinis- I recognized the styles from pictures of the mud wrestlers from the Hollywood Tropicana and dancers at The Body Shop. I went inside and looked through racks of brightly colored string. Many were sequined or day-glo and they were all in really teensy tiny styles that barely covered your private parts. Some were breakaway, so they could be torn off. My boobs were real and not perfect hard balls, so the little spider web bikini tops in glowing violet didn’t look good on me. All of the bikinis were unlined and would be completely see-through if they got wet, but they weren’t for swimming; they were for working the pole on a stage. Why I thought that was so glamorous I do not know. I looked through clear drawers of sequined pasties out of curiosity: they were in every color from bright magenta to rainbow sparkles. Boxes of glue sticks were next to the drawers; for keeping things in place. They were regular kindergarten glue sticks; I was surprised that the girls used that on their skin. There were huge, puffy feather boas hanging in colorful bunches on the wall. There were purple chandelle boas with hot pink tips, baby blue ostrich feathers, and dense black swan feathers. Some of the boas were so thick that they looked heavy. I felt like I was backstage in a Vegas showgirl’s dressing room.

  All of the crazy bikinis intimidated me; I wasn’t quite that confident. I looked and looked through the racks and ended up picking an all-white bikini. It was pretty standard: Brazilian cut bottom, triangle top. I looked decent in the thing, so I bought it. It was so tiny that the bag they gave me was only big enough to hold earrings. I was happy to be ready for the next hot tub night; at least I would fit in with the girls.

  Lo and behold, I was invited to Dusty’s to drink and go in the hot tub again on another night. Brent Muscat joined us that night and took to teasing me about having a boyfriend. Any sort of attention flattered me of course, but I could see he was just doing it because it was bothering me so much. When the night was over, I changed out of my bikini and back into my normal clothes. I wasn’t carrying a purse, so I had nowhere to put my bikini. I stuffed it in a pair of black socks, and when Brent drove me home later, the ball rolled out into his car. Razz told me later that Brent thought I did it on purpose and was convinced I liked him. I certainly did not do it on purpose- I was dying, hoping there was no yucky crust in my bikini bottom.

  Jimmy came over the next day. We were washing his car in the driveway when my mom came out the screen door, a little too delighted. Right in front of Jimmy, she said, “Some guy named Brent Muskrat called? And said you, uh, left something in his car? He said he will come by and drop it off.” Jimmy looked at me and said, “You left something in Brent Muscat’s CAR? What were you doing with him in the first place?!” I scrambled to try to explain myself.

  On a weekend soon after that, Razz called me and invited me to a party at their place. I said I couldn’t come because Jimmy was over and he told me to bring him along. I really didn’t want to bring Jimmy into my private little world. I was nervous the guys would rat me out for doing something flirty or risqué or inappropriate; probably the same reasons he kept me from his crowd. But on the other hand, I kind of wanted to get the tension out of the way. If Jimmy finally met them and saw that they were ‘harmless,’ he wouldn’t get so mad at me for going out with them every weekend. I finally realized that they would have to meet, so I could put the whole thing to rest.

  Jimmy and I walked up to the door and Razz answered. I held my breath. When he first saw Jimmy, he made a horror-stricken face to me when Jimmy looked away, as if to say THIS is your boyfriend? The guy who you are choosing over all of the prime cuts of meat we are presenting you with?! I was very uncomfortable and wanted to turn around and leave. Razz then said, “Come over here, you bitch, and gimme a hug!” Jimmy appeared annoyed that he was taking such an informal tone with me. I went over to Razz and he whispered under his breath, “I do not approve.” He made so many faces of disgust, that I was sure Jimmy would catch him. He didn’t. It crushed me that Razz was criti
quing the person I loved so much. After about five minutes of Razz snickering, I told Jimmy we should go. On the way home, he commented that Michael seemed like a dick and Razz seemed pretty cool. He had no clue.

  Jimmy did something out of left field that winter. He somehow ran into the vampire bats of Drop Dead Gorgeous, the band Cristabelle and I hung out with over the summer. He said that they had parted ways with their singer and were looking for a replacement, and that he thought he might give it a shot. Wait…what!? I didn’t know Jimmy was interested joining a band- I didn’t even know he could sing. He had been content with being an artist and a scenester, but it seemed that he was now entertaining the thought of being a musician. I was pissed. Why did he have to pick that band of all bands to join? The offer fell through after a few weeks; the fit wasn’t right in one way or another, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But my relief was premature: Jimmy decided he was going to start a band. When he told me, I immediately choked on my Rice-A-Roni. My eyes were watering as I tried to dislodge a piece of vermicelli from my windpipe. Did he ask his own buddies from his own scene to be in his band? No. He asked Tricia’s overgrown ape of a boyfriend to be his bass player! My jaw was hanging open for so long that ten flies must have flown into my mouth. Couldn’t this guy pick people other than the ones I knew?

  ***

  In January of 1991, the United States went to war with the Middle East. The news called it “Desert Storm.” I was actually concerned, in between drinking beers. I pictured myself in black and white film: there I was, clad in a 1940's dress and sergeant hat, singing “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” while bombs went off in the background and sailors cheered in the audience. When I was at school, it hit me harder. We were assigned commentaries in journalism class, so we sat around watching the grainy night-vision footage on an old TV as we click-clacked on our typewriters. I was afraid of things I had never considered before. What if it got much, much worse? What if we were bombed? What if there was a draft? What if we had to start rationing food? We were children of the 1980’s- we had never seen a war. Something that could bring hard times, something that could even bring death- those thoughts were new to us. I thought of the people who were actually fighting for our country and I was stunned at what heroes they were. I didn’t know anyone like that. Everyone I knew was wearing more makeup than the entire cast of Cats and had pants so tight they had moose knuckles.