What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  David says he didn’t know Marilyn was Catholic.

  “Of course she was,” Tim says. “The Kennedys were really strict about it, they only went for Catholic girls.”

  “You don’t have to be Catholic,” Siouxsie says. “Darby Crash wasn’t.”

  “He’s buried here,” Blitzer says, and there’s something in his voice, something lost, maybe he’s remembering the funeral, dirt clods drumming down on the coffin and the screaming screaming screaming, Darby’s mom, she’s this big scary lady who cleans planes at night at LAX and sleeps all day and everyone says she looks like Divine.

  “Too, I mean.”

  Nobody says anything. It’s really quiet here. Really really really quiet. It hardly seems like LA with all the car alarms missing in action. And the air’s so damp from the sprinklers and the goddamn grass I’m shivering in my ripped Sid Sings. Finally Tim asks about Darby. They’ve never heard of the Germs. But they both get excited when Blitzer says he overdosed.

  Just like Marilyn.

  All I know about her is the name. But Siouxsie’s all, Wasn’t she in a movie with Montgomery Clift? And I know him, he’s the dude in that Clash song “The Right Profile,” begging for another roll of pills. When London Calling came out and we first heard it I asked Darby what a roll of pills was, and he wasn’t sure, so he drug-checked with a pharmacist at the Walgreen’s on Vine, who said it’s a thousand. That means Montgomery Clift gulped a thousand pills at a time, according to the Clash. So make it the fright profile, and call it a trap.

  “The Misfits !”

  Tim and David belt it out together and we all think they’re talking about the band and mixing up Danzig with Darby. But it’s some fuckin movie, not only are they clueless on the Germs, they know less than zero about punk rock period, except they love the sound of the Sex Pistols.

  The sound of the name, I mean.

  Blitzer asks what kind of boonie tunes they thrive on keep alive on out in Mickey and Minniesota, and Tim screams it loud enough to wake the you know who.

  “Judy!”

  And that’s all it takes, the creepy-Crowley quiet since we got here is gone, the days change at night, change in an instant, just like the X song, though “Los Angeles” itself isn’t gone at all, more like the exact flip-flopposite, it’s been like number one on my brainframe grit parade ever since I said yeah yeah yeah to Idaho, back at the Jell-O factory. Though right this moment at the tomb the tune will be gabba gabba hey hey we’re the homos, with Squid and Siouxsie joining in left channel right channel on the goodbye yellow brick road action.

  Some of the Oz that refreshes stuff I get, like lions and tigers and Tim’s to-die-for favorite, bears, but the rest I don’t follow at all, except that Judy overdosed too. And it just goes on and on from here to fuckin infirmity till finally Blitzer steers me over to the fence and we stand hugging the cold iron bars with the night wind blowing in our faces off the graves.

  “What hey, girls talk.”

  “Squid and Siouxsie really like these guys.”

  “Repeat after me, girls talk.”

  And I guess the girlie thing is part of it, but even though I just met Tim and David I can tell they’re like Siouxsie and Squid, foreground one, background one, I bet the whole popcorn pilgrimage was Tim’s idea but it took David to get the freak show on the road, he did the driving for example, I’m not the only one who can’t see Tim out there in Mudville, Mississippi, pumping gas in his hot pants, now am I. So it’s like team-work, really, and they’re the same kinds of teams, maybe that’s why they’re hitting it off, because the list of what they’ve got in common otherwise is shorter than a name check of the honest cops in Hollywood Division.

  I ask if he thinks they’ve got much money.

  “I don’t know how much cash. But making movies isn’t cheap. They’ve for sure got plastic.”

  He reaches over and rubs the back of my neck.

  “And they’ve got a room.”

  With those fingers, with the ones I.

  Yeah.

  Blitzer says, “I want to finish what we started.”

  I just nod.

  “Tonight.”

  “Cool.”

  “In a bed.”

  I tell him I’ll do whatever he wants. And then I wonder if he thinks I mean whatever to help get us into that bed, or whatever he wants once we’re in it.

  Both, I hope.

  He asks if Squid and Siouxsie have any drugs.

  “MDA. They turned a two-bill trick. Siouxsie gave me some.”

  “We need some fry. Feed those fairies acid and leave ’em somewhere. Buy ourselves some alone time.”

  “Leave them on their own?”

  There’s the hissing and click click clicking of the sprinklers and the laugh track of the four of them over by the van, busting up over not being in Kansas anymore. Finally Blitzer says, “With the lezzie-byrds, I guess.”

  He reaches between us and hooks two fingers down the front of my jeans inside my shorts and pulls the waistband away from my skin.

  And fuck, do I shiver, and fuck, does he sing to me, and fuck, do his fingers, and fuck, which song, “The Slave.”

  It starts in your head and moves to your hands

  Your body starts shakin’ cuz you’re in demand.

  “We could take that van to Idaho,” Blitzer says. “We could live in that fuckin van in Idaho.”

  13

  Moving right along like a song to you’ll never guess which theater, Judy’s handprints, Judy’s footprints, Marilyn’s, Joan’s, Bette’s, Jayne’s, plus some hoof-prints for anatomic relief, not Mr. Ed’s though, Trigger’s, this rad horse that ended up stuffed in some cowboy star’s living room, according to David.

  Who’s a big animal lover, it turns out. Which is cool because I am too. And for some reason when Squid and Siouxsie and Blitzer and Tim head over to the Movieland Wax Museum to check on admission prices while I kick it with him on Hollywood Boulevard it makes it easier to ask what the fuckety-fuck is up with all the glamour girls, I thought they liked guys.

  His laugh has some bass in it, it’s not all girlie like the way he talks.

  “It’s not sexual. Glamour’s different.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s style. A certain kind of style. Romantic. Expensive romantic. Furs and Champagne. Jewels. Silk stockings.”

  “I’m against all that shit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a punk rocker.”

  “That’s a style, too.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s a way of life. And we live it. We can live it. You’re not all decked out in furs and silk, are you?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Are you ever?”

  “Well . . .”

  The way he draws it out cracks me up, I can’t help liking the dude, and besides I haven’t been on Hollywood Boulevard at night for a while, and I forgot how cool the vibe can be, all the mingling milling people and if-you-don’t-drink-don’t-drive traffic and the commotion on the corners with the bellowing preachers and jiving pimps and deep-voiced she-male whores trying to drown out one another and the sirens in the background, always sirens somewhere, sirens and alarms and bullhorns from helicopters, it reminds me of the Masque days.

  “So you dress up as a woman?”

  “Now and then.”

  “And you go out and—”

  “Pass?”

  “What’s pass?”

  “Having people think you are a woman.”

  “No way! You do that?”

  “Not really.”

  “So they know. That you’re a man.”

  “Unless they’re, well—”

  “Blind?”

  He gets a chorus line’s worth of kicks out of that one, and puts his arm around my shoulders.

  “Or really, really drunk.”

  While I’m laughing I kind of hug him back, with one arm I mean, not full-body or anything, and he’s actually pretty hard and muscled to t
he touch, not feminine at all. He’s wearing some rank perfume though.

  “But what’s the point, then?”

  “How to explain it, why am I a queen? I grew up in a horrible place, a mill town, nothing was beautiful there, nothing was graceful, and everyone hated me because I was different, and, well, the more different the better. You know?”

  I just nod. I guess I do know. I mean, why am I a punk? Because I wasn’t anything before, except different. And now it’s like I’m different, but with a vengeance.

  Yeah.

  And then I met Darby, and I was more than just different. I was somebody. To other people. One of Darby’s boys. I had like an identity. Only now he’s gone, so it’s gone too.

  “What about Tim? When did you meet him?”

  “When I was eighteen. He was twenty.”

  “And he helped you? Be even more different?”

  “He wouldn’t have me any other way.”

  “That’s cool, then.”

  “No, it’s hot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The same thing you mean. But we call it the opposite.”

  And I’m all, Not really, the opposite’s warm, and then he says it’s my turn, who’s helped me be more different, and I tell him how Darby taught me to question everything, to refuse to accept anything, to always act in unexpected ways, he did it for everyone he came in contact with, even cops.

  Darby said.

  (To the cop who pulled us over going seventy in a thirtyfive zone in Amber’s car on the way back to Hollywood from the Middle Class gig at the Fleetwood.)

  We’re sorry, officer, but we’re late for our NA meeting, you know, Narcotics Anonymous, and there’s nothing more important in our lives right now, we’re fuck-ups and it’s all we’ve got, I know you understand.

  And he let us go.

  He didn’t ask where the meeting was or whose car it was or who we were or why we had a stolen Fender bass amp in the backseat beside me.

  He didn’t ask anything, just let us go.

  Mind control.

  Hellin Killer hypnotizes people into letting her pierce them with safety pins, and it won’t bleed or leave a scar.

  I think Darby must have taught her.

  David asks what’s the most different thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t know, I don’t have that much a clue on what exactly’s regular. So I just tell him about the night I drove, somewheres down in HB after a gig at the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I sort of made a name for myself in the scene because of it, I guess I do have an identity, there’s youth of today I don’t know from Adam Bomb who know me from hearing the story.

  Which started isn’t that amazing with all of us being extremely fucked up, but especially the Crash Trash chick whose car it was, she was frying on a six-way hit of that windowpane that was going around really hard then, and she just lost it on one of those main streets down there, out of the blue navy blue she screamed that everything was too fuckin bright and the only way she could see to keep driving was with her eyes closed.

  And there were four of us sardined in the back of this little two-door, Hellin and me and Gerber in Rory Dolores’s lap, Darby riding shotgun, fully wasted, and we all yelled back at her, no no no, keep ’em open, keep ’em open, and then she slammed on the brakes, screaming it was even brighter with her eyes closed and she couldn’t take it anymore.

  But it was like three in the morning and there was no other traffic, so we fishtailed over enough pavement to cover Road Island till finally we skidded to a stop in the name of push comes to shove and Darby said, “All right, who’s gonna fuckin drive this thing?”

  And one by one everyone said there was no way they could deal till Hellin finally said, “Let Rockets drive!” and they all took it up like one of those hairy Krishna chants.

  And I’m all, Hell fuckin na, I’ll drive this thing, and next thing you know I’m behind the wheel, completely zoned on Tuinals, with everyone in back frying and Darby next to me on Quaaludes washed down by a twelve-pack, faced as a plumber after a disloyal flush, swigging from a bottle of Jack in his hand and giving me a driving lesson.

  But not the best one, obviously. And the car’s like a fivespeed I guess it’s called, with that extra one to shred in, and Darby’s got his hand around mine on the shifter to show me where the gears are and that’s where he tells me to gas it instead of in first or whatever, so I end up laying a gnarly patch and then sideswiping three parked cars and knocking down a sign before Darby grabs the wheel and we hit a utility pole and the windshield smashes into a million tiny pieces that pelt us like hail and even get inside our clothes, Rory said he was picking glass out of his pubic hair like two weeks later.

  So there was this creepy silence afterwards when we all sobered up a little, before we conned the dot dot dots to find no one wounded in traction, and then we just roared, even the chick whose car it was, we staggered down the middle of the street laughing like hyenas from the hot place, yelling, “Let Rockets drive!” all the way back to the Cuckoo’s Nest, where the bored boys with nothing to do still kicking it on the tiles outside started yelling it too once they heard the story, “Let Rockets drive, let Rockets drive, let Rockets drive.”

  While I’m talking I catch myself doing a bruise check, and I remember Siouxsie asking if I have to touch them to know if they still hurt, and the answer’s yes, otherwise they don’t.

  So why do I keep doing it then, that’s what she really asked.

  If I don’t like the feeling.

  If I don’t like the hurt.

  And I don’t know.

  All I really know is bang bang the gang’s all queer again, but it’s a mystery to me, the method as in how in their acting as in now, till I realize we’ve still got our arms around each other, David and me. So Blitzer’s all, What’s up with you two fairies, and I wish he didn’t sound so harsh, I wish he’d laugh like Squid and Siouxsie, or wolf-whistle like Tim, and I wish it made no difference to me, one way or another, but it does.

  So here I am after all, wishing on the stars on Hollywood Boulevard.

  14

  Fabulous Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Do you all actually live here?” Tim asks. “In Hollywood?”

  And we’re all, Yeah, and they don’t believe it. People living in Hollywood is like this alien concept. I guess all the apartments and houses everywhere haven’t registered yet. So they want to know where. They want proof.

  Well.

  All four of us snake-dance around it talking about staying with friends and stuff, I say I’ve got a key to Paul and Hellin’s on Genesee, they hold my things and I shower there and wash my clothes, and that’s the whole and nothing but, in fact they’re always telling me to sleep on their couch, but they’ve got a baby and it’s noisy and besides I won’t take advantage. And too I can stay with Stickboy, or Pleasant at Disgraceland. But with Stickboy you end up hustling, more than you want to, how fun. And with Pleasant you end up partying, harder than you want to. So I just hang by myself mostly, at the Jell-O factory. But anyways Tim and David are unionized as in Western and get the message pronto like Tonto.

  We’re homeless.

  This is something they’ve heard about, on the news I guess, it sounds like the on-fire topic if you follow what they’re up to these days in Washington, D.C., which I don’t, oh most defiantly, I didn’t even find out those hostages came home till just the other day. So now they want to flow us food. Now they’re saying we can stay with THEM.

  “I could use a shower,” Blitzer says, and elbows me to back him up.

  “Me too.”

  “But it’s still so early,” Siouxsie says. “First let’s go to the wax museum.”

  I just say Sorry, some dudes don’t do windows, I don’t do wax, and Blitzer says he doesn’t either, he’ll kick it with me while they do the horrors. Then he says, “Maybe we can wait . . .” and trails off his voice, pretty obviously on purpose, as in maybe in their van?

  Maybe in their room?

&n
bsp; Only it stays all quiet on the good turn front so finally he says, “Around here someplace. But if you don’t see us here afterwards we’ll meet in like an hour. In front of Frederick’s.”

  Tim wants to know why can’t we meet inside Frederick’s, and I wouldn’t be betting the rent-boy money he means in the men’s department. If they even have one. But Siouxsie says it’s already closed.

  After they bail Blitzer says if those fairies think Hollywood’s fabulous now, wait till they’ve got L-tickets to the wonderful world of color, so we jam to Wilcox then down to Selma, trying to find a travel agent for frying the friendly skies. And who’s that calling our names as soon as we turn left on south-side Selma, from the steps of the meat-market-I-mean-church there?

  Radar. The dealer formerly known as David Consumer. Who’s got what we’re looking for. Blue microdot, premium fry. But he’ll only sell a sheet. A hundred tabs. Two hundred bucks.

  “I ain’t small-timin’ anymore. Cops catch you with goods and a pocketful of ones and the D.A. calls it sales. Sales to kids. And you’re kids. Take it or leave it.”

  “What hey, front me.”

  Radar laughs.

  “In your wet dreams. Work the Spotlite. Go get your huevos poached. I’ll be around.”

  I know the Spotlite, but I’ve never been inside. It’s an old hustler bar on the corner of Selma and Cahuenga, with a back bar where older punks would kick it sometimes after LAPD shut down the Masque, and the jukebox supposedly has an X song.

  Not “Los Angeles,” though.

  Maybe “The World’s a Mess, It’s in My Kiss.”

  Maybe “Sex and Dying in High Society.”

  I ask Blitzer what it’s like.

  He says it’s so dark that when you first walk in you can’t see anything at all. It’s long and narrow and there’s booths on one side and the bar on the other and you open the door and everyone can see you but you can’t see them. Kind of like walking out on stage, into the.

  Got it.

  Only the bartender’s front and center in the audience too, so he proofs you on autopilot.

  “The only way to last inside is to work it with an older dude going in to raise the roll-up door from the back bar just enough for you to crawl under. There’s never anyone back there. Just a pool table. And then you just drift out front all casual and sit in a booth with your back to the bartender.”