The Sunset Strip Diaries

by Amy Asbury

  When I asked my dad if I could live with him and his girlfriend, Debra, it seemed promising for a whole minute. I was happy to be able to spend some time with him, maybe repair our relationship- after all, it had been three or four years since he lived with us. Maybe he had cleaned up his act a little. He agreed to assist me in paying for school, and I was relieved, until he dumped an entire handful of quarters in my hand for school books. Back then, the cheap little paperback companions were $20.00 maybe, but the rest of the school books ran up to $75.00. I looked at the five dollars in quarters and thought, Uh oh. This is gonna suck.

  I tried to make myself at home at their apartment in Sherman Oaks, surrounded by dream catchers and Native American paintings. It was a one-bedroom apartment and I was to stay on the living room couch. They slept in the room, which was fine by me, except that the bathroom was off their room. They kept their door shut at night and sometimes I really had to pee. I didn’t want to knock on the door in the middle of the night in case they were doing it or something. I would have rather pissed outside in a bowl on the little patio.

  The first night I cried myself to sleep. They kept the sliding glass door open for some cat or something, so I was freezing and my nose was running. I felt myself getting sick. The blanket they gave me had blood on it, like from someone’s period or something. I was disgusted and longed for my own blankets and crocheted afghans at my mother’s place. I stored my one box of belongings under the coffee table. As I lay there on the itchy couch, I thought about what a mistake it was to move there. I didn’t realize what misery I would be in. When I woke in the morning, I had spider bites all over me. I went to call Birdie and the phone didn’t work. I sat there and stared at the view of a stucco wall- it was the least of my worries, but it depressed me further.

  I went to dinner with my dad the next night. He took me to a dark steakhouse where he seemed to know the staff. I told him stories of the latest guys I was dating, and how they were not getting the best of me, how I was in control. I thought he would be impressed, but he told me not to be a ball buster. After a few drinks, he started to tell me things I wished he hadn’t. He admitted he had had numerous affairs while married to my mother, some of them with girls only a few years older than I was at the time. He later bragged of a waitress somewhere, who was sixteen and in love with him. Then he told me about lot of gross sexual conquests he had, some of them with people I knew as a child. It was really disturbing and I felt that he had crossed a boundary by telling me such explicit things. I felt horribly and disgustingly violated, but I was frozen. I wrapped my brain in some sort of protective coating and tried to pretend I didn’t hear it. No…no...I am not hearing this. Strangely, or maybe not, I was sick most of the time I stayed with him. Not only that, but I drank more than I ever had.

  A few guys from a popular hair band lived in the same building as my father. He said he was friends with them and told me to go down to the Jacuzzi to meet them. I found it strange, but tried to play it cool and went and said hi. I did have their album after all, and I knew all of their songs. It would be cool to brag about it, I supposed. One night soon thereafter, one of them saw me coming into the lobby from my night out. He wanted to come back to the apartment with me! He was very bold about it and didn’t seem to be deterred by the fact that I lived with my father, an acquaintance of his. I turned him down flat. He wouldn’t take no for an answer and literally chased me through the halls until I got to my dad’s place and shut the door in his face while he tried to invite himself inside (my dad and Debra were out somewhere). As I locked the door, I realized something: my dad had given him the okay to try to screw me. I was really hurt and tremendously disturbed. It tore a bigger hole in my soul. I had come a long way, but still, a part of me always thought, Is this all I am? Is this my value? It was so confusing. Afterward I thought, Well, maybe the guy was just ballsy…maybe my dad didn’t give him the okay…

  But then, a few days later, I got kind of a weird lecture from Debra. She thought I should go out and try to meet rich men. I knit my eyebrows together and sat down on the stool in the kitchen to listen to her as she boiled some water for tea. What was up with this lady? She wanted me to go to the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills and order a Brandy Alexander at the bar. She said if I sat there and just sipped my drink, I would meet wealthy movie executives and the like. I remember thinking…Uh…okay. A Brandy Alexander is gonna be the clincher, huh? She then explained to me that a woman is bought dinner and gifts as compensation for giving her body in the bedroom, and that it was perfectly acceptable. I felt uncomfortable with that statement. It ruined the thought of courtship and romance. Both of those things were very far from my life, but I always imagined that they were at least out there somewhere. Between Debra advising me to trade my body for riches and my mother telling me never to marry and never have children because it wasn’t worth it, I was pretty messed up in the head. I never followed Debra’s advice because I didn’t want rich guys- I liked broke musicians!

  My father and Debra were cooking small dinners at first, but then they got on some sort of drug and starting keeping little to no food in the house. I was constantly starving. I longed to be able to go through a fast food drive-thru. I started dropping a lot of weight just because there was nothing to eat. But even worse than that was the fact that they did not buy toothpaste or laundry soap. I am not kidding. I smelled so gross. My hygiene embarrassed me at school. I was so ashamed! My dad used baking soda to brush his teeth. I thought, Okay, fine. But they used cheap shampoo as laundry soap and it did not get odor or stains out of my clothes. There were no sharp razors in the shower so I had hairy legs and armpits unless I went somewhere else to shower. One day I left school because I smelled so badly. I had no job at this time, so I knew I was in real trouble if I thought my dad would feed me and take care of me properly.

  I quickly found out why my father and Debra were eager to have me stay with them. I had a car and they didn’t. My car was not running, but that would soon change. They were very secretive and talked amongst themselves for a few days, coming up with some sort of plan. The next thing I knew, my car was towed somewhere, a credit card was "borrowed" and my radiator was fixed on someone else's dime. Once the car was running, I could never use it. They considered it theirs because they had it fixed. I had to take the public bus to school, all the way on the other side of the Valley.

  I managed to take my car to school once and found that my dad had left beer cans on the floor and a pot pipe in the ashtray. There were ashes all over the floor of the car. I was very angry that he didn’t think of the trouble I could get into for driving with that shit in my car. Not only that, but he broke my gearshift off and left the car out of gas. Couldn’t the guy drive somewhere without having to get fucked up in some way? Couldn’t he wait to get home to have beers and smoke pot? I thought, Whatever, he is going to help me pay for school next semester. I decided to try to spend as much time away from him as I could.

  On the weekends, I took the bus to a place that felt like heaven: Birdie’s house. I had to take two buses across town and then walk from a bus stop to her parent’s townhouse up a hill somewhere. They lived in a modest place although it was clear that they could have easily been more extravagant.

  I would have walked through rain, sleet, and flying monkeys to get to her house because it was there that I could take a luxurious shower. I stood under steaming hot water and lathered up with lemon grapefruit soap from the South of France. I scrubbed myself with almond scrubs and sea sponges, used her coconut-scented shampoo and a vanilla-scented deep conditioner. I was never so grateful as when I was over there showering in the hot water. I got to use her thick, baby blue towels and actual hair products: shine serums, glosses, sprays, mousses, sets of large rollers- a whole salon’s worth of supplies. Round brushes, curling irons, barrettes and ribbon. It was divine. I borrowed her Estee Lauder foundations in thick matte glass bottles, powders in deep cobalt blue compacts and lipsticks in heavy gold tubes. It was so m
uch better than using a clothes iron to do my hair and a Sharpie marker for eyeliner. I was using a left-over bottle of Aziza foundation from 1986, I had been so broke. She had a closet of beautiful, expensive, and showy clothing, and shoes stacked in boxes to the ceiling. Her room was a painted a pale, cotton candy pink with white shelves containing stacks of fashion magazines and perfume bottles. Pages of French and Italian Vogue were plastered on the walls amongst stuffed animals and a few random childhood trinkets. She was still part child, really. It felt comforting to me. I used to sit in her pink recliner and read her beat-up copies of Sweet Valley High while she spent hours on her makeup and hair.

  I also loved the feeling of being safe under her parents’ roof. I went there as often as I could, listening to her father yell at people in his deep green office, or her mother speaking French or Italian to her friends on the phone. We could eat things in the kitchen! Brie and crackers, strawberries, fresh squeezed orange juice, cold chicken, slices of baguettes, chocolate chip cookies with cold milk. I wished so badly that I could move in with her, amongst the comforts of her home and her family and her old, little dog.

  We went out every weekend, most of the time wearing coordinated outfits for maximum free stuff. Our favorite outfits were the sheer, short baby doll dresses that the dancers wore in Prince’s “Gett Off” video. Birdie had the black with white polka dots and I had the white with black polka dots. We got them at different points in time at Playmates on Hollywood Boulevard. With those dresses, we wore our hair slicked back into high ponytails, big hoop earrings, and false eyelashes. We also did a beach bunny theme: we tanned very dark and wore baby pink lipstick, dark smoky eye makeup, and very tiny half shirts in pale colors, with our hair half up and half down. We had a disco theme with lots of silver glitter eye makeup and our hair in big, bouncy disco curls. Whatever we did, it always caused a lot of commotion. While that was the point, and it was fun, it was also a little embarrassing. I felt sort of childish dressing alike with another girl. It felt very silly- it wasn’t me. I also felt it was making a pretty bold statement as to how close we were to each other. Birdie was not well-liked among the girls in Hollywood, and I knew that I would soon have more enemies by pairing up with her in such an extreme way. It didn’t deter me though; being around Birdie was too comforting. Her warm home, her girliness, the security of her parents- it was all too delicious for me to give up.

  We paid for nothing when we went out. She was exceptionally beautiful and I had an exceptional figure. Combined, we partied for free every single time we went out. I had already been enjoying that sort of treatment for a few years by then, but it was taken to another level once I paired up with her. People looked at her face and let her talk them into going to the ATM and taking out money to hand over to her. I am not kidding you. A guy handed over his wallet once and she opened it and took out as many bills as she wanted and went and partied with the money. I couldn’t believe it. I am sure these people were drunk off their asses, but still. When we walked up to a club, the crowds parted and we were pulled to the front of the lines. We sat down at tables and ordered huge dinners and strangers picked up the tab. Cindy Crawford was the big supermodel of the time and everywhere we went, people thought Birdie looked like a young Cindy Crawford: the hair, the mole, the face, the height.

  But there is always something that puts you in your place when you get to that point. In this case, it was the night I realized that there is a little private club above The Roxy. David Faustino, the guy that played Bud Bundy on Married…with Children stuck his head out of the door and we laughed about how short he was. He heard us, walked over to us with a bottle of water, and dumped it over both of our heads in front of a huge crowd of people. We were soaked! As we walked away with frizzy hair and smeared make-up, we couldn’t even look at each other. People were laughing hysterically and pointing at us, snapping pictures. We were brought down to earth momentarily.

  One night we couldn’t find anything to do. We went to a party with the dirty Seattle crowd, much to my dismay. Three or four of the black-haired girls went into a dimly lit bathroom at the top of a stairway. They said they were going to do heroin and asked us if we wanted some. I said no. I was too scared. Birdie paused. Then she looked at me and said she wanted to try it. I said, “Are you crazy?” But she wanted to experience it. The girls had tried to kick her ass only six months prior and they appeared to be making peace. Maybe that is why she went. Maybe she was trying to prove something. I don’t know. But she went in the bathroom with them and did it. I was totally upset by the whole thing, sitting on the stairway, waiting. I felt disturbed, worried for her. This wasn’t some worldly dancer. This was a young teenager. I sat there trying to think of how I was going to make sure she never did it again. Would it be too late after the first time? Would she be hooked already? What could I do? What could I say? I knew she really cared about what I thought, so I decided to use that.

  On the way home, I told her that I lost a lot of respect for her. I told her I couldn’t truly be close with anyone on drugs, especially because of what it had done to my own family. I told her she was becoming a huge loser and I didn’t want to be friends with losers. I tried to say anything and everything I could think of. She felt horrible- she started crying.

  But she didn’t stop doing heroin.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Blackmail: Not So Fun After All

  I knew a little of what brought Birdie to Hollywood. Besides her love of adventure and rock music, she had a background story similar to mine: someone in her family had sexually abused her. From what she explained to me, she actually came forward and told on the person, but the whole thing was covered up and swept under a rug because it was a beloved family member. The parents didn’t want to make a big scene. From that moment on, her life was never the same. She even had the same violent episodes that I had, trying to attack her parents with knives.

  I didn’t know the details as far as the lack of protection, but as the victim, I could relate. Feeling like you weren’t protected was almost worse than the actual abuse. Abuse may have murdered your soul, but the fact that someone could have helped you, and didn’t, really fucked with you. It made you full of rage. It made you ask, “Why was I not worth saving?” It made you decide you must be a piece of shit and it made you want to destroy yourself.

  Birdie’s parents seemed to be nice people. Her mother was a tall, blond Swiss woman and her father a short, dark-haired businessman, a commodities broker formerly from Manhattan. They were cultured and polite and seemed to have it all, except when it came to Birdie. They couldn’t control her. She told them what she was going to do and they kind of bowed to her like, Yes Master. They always looked worried around her and they never said no to her when I was at her house. They always seemed so guilty, like they were afraid of her telling on them or relapsing into a violent episode. They bought her whatever she wanted, including the very expensive makeup, clothes, and shoes. They appeared to feel badly for not protecting her, even though they were not helping her by giving in to her demands, including driving her down to Hollywood when she couldn’t get a ride. Her mother would put on a bathrobe, drive us down there, and drop us off on the street!

  My own mother still hadn’t acknowledged that she let my father stay in the house with us after she suspected he might be a pedophile. It was as if it never happened. My family was quick to paint me as the dramatic problem child whose word could not be trusted, in case I decided to talk about it. All of my partying did little to fix that image. I was tired and broken down. I was bothered staying with my father and became more involved in partying to cover up my uncomfortable feeling. I became increasingly depressed when I was faced with reality each morning. I was attending college, but was barely making it. My stomach was always growling and I was constantly sick. I felt dirty. I longed for the house I grew up in, before things turned ugly in my life. I longed for the time when I felt protected and secure, back before my dad got into drugs. I longed to be in my laven
der bed full of stuffed animals, I longed to be back playing with the kids in the neighborhood, to be back on beach trips, roasting marshmallows at night. I longed to nuzzle my baby bunnies, to eat cinnamon-sprinkled toast while watching cartoons with my sister. I longed to make paper chains during Christmas time, to dye eggs for Easter with my Dudley Shake-An-Egg kit. Adulthood had been downright horrible. I didn’t know why anyone would ever want to grow up. It was the biggest bust, the biggest disappointment. I sat on the bus, looking out the windows at the shops passing me by in the Valley. Would it have been better if I had played it straight? Not looked for adventure, not had curiosity for the city that was Hollywood? Not met all of the people I had met? Not been influenced by the girls I befriended? Not seen the things I had seen?

  Journal Entry 9/28/1992

  I am in school and I’m freaking out because this desk is an asshole. Now I am freaking out because I just wrote that. There is a barrier- well, I guess it’s really a table leg- directly to the side of my leg and I don’t like it. If it were on the right side, it would be all right. I am about to get up and throw this chair and tip over this desk in front of everyone. I am really restless. I am annoyed, my nose is twitching.

  Now I am in a different class, waiting for it to start. I am realizing that my eyes are glossed over and I am tired. I took pep pills in the morning so I could pay attention, but they didn’t work. I think I missed most of the lecture because I started daydreaming. There are a lot of things in my life that I can't let myself think about. I have to stay afloat somehow.