Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Michael made me fall in love with him. He insisted. He demanded no less than instant total commitment, which I was absolutely ready for. Long distance I found out that he was already married, but even though I almost fainted with stunned grief, it was too late for either one of us to back off. We moaned and loved into the crackling phone wires, pledged foreverness, played with ourselves until it hurt. As soon as he could dig up the required loot, he would leave behind the first wife, his record company, his parents; give up his entire former existence and come straight to me.

  IV

  When that day of all days finally arrived, I waited anxiously at LAX, wearing a skimpy, defiant ensemble, watching all the normal folks saunter out of the plane, my yammering heart gift-wrapped, ripe, and ready to be handed over to the final man in my life. Take it!!! Michael arrived forever with his hair dryer in a paper bag and a five-dollar bill wadded up in one of his patent-leather baby-doll shoes. Staggering out last, he was so far behind the others that I had started to shake and shiver like a bad-tempered snowman was standing behind me, sliding his icy finger down my feverish spine. In those long few seconds my mind churned. Had he missed the plane? Bumped into his wife? Changed his mind? Passed out on someone’s floor in London? Then we saw each other, our eyes rapt with relief, desire, adoration, fear. We grabbed on and held tight, locked together at last in a keyless knot. We stopped for a drink at the first bar we bumped into, and he cast his full fate to the Santa Ana winds, spending all the money he had in the world on a couple of cocktails. We murmured to each other in the darkened airport bar, swearing eternal and profound true love, full of sweet-eyed, honey-dripping, sticky-faced tears, and promises, promises. Big Important Promises. He tossed the hair dryer into the trash on the way to the car because I pointed out that it had a European plug and wouldn’t have worked in our little Hollywood love lair. He was a man without a country or a hair dryer, and even though his hands were empty, they were all over me. This man had surpassed many hard-core, sweaty, and serious odds to get to me, had left a wacky, mortified wife, a set of loony, mismatched, busted-up parents, a glitter-glam career, and a super-trendy record company. I was bound and determined to show him my unceasing, undying affection and appreciation, starting right now! Put yourself in my hands, honey bun. Leave it all up to me. You know you’ve got it if it makes you feel good.

  We got into my little Volkswagen and drove, all touchy-feely, to my Hollywood fairy-tale pad on Maryland Drive—a do-it-yourself thirties charmer over somebody’s garage, hidden by leafy apricot trees—the perfect passion haven for pent-up lovers. The walls were full of Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Elvis and James Dean, along with a devilish shot of Robert Plant, which Michael promptly removed and replaced with a shot of himself, grinning devilishly, both hands on his cock. We settled down in front of the black-and-white TV and watched happy, ancient half hours, rolled around in the sheets, screaming with nasty glee, shutting out the entire big, bad world. I made American cheese sandwiches on white Weber’s bread, long before they had fake whole wheat, turned Michael onto Dr. Pepper, and the combo became our constant meal of choice.

  Housekeeping came second to racy frolicking, and a delicious onion dip I made a few days earlier had started to odor up our little amore area, but we couldn’t seem to locate the offending bowl of goop. After sniffing around, Michael finally discovered it on top of the fridge, but as I grabbed it to toss down the cluttered sink, I noticed the dip was moving! Infested with wriggling white maggots, the onion dip was alive!! Hurling it to the ground below, I shrieked so loud and made such a silly-billy racket that Michael was rolling on the floor with glee. Nothing is more gross than a bowl full of maggots. Absolutely nothing. Michael had missed the gruesome sight, so I imitated the writhing bowl with my face and fingers, and I thought he would pass out from laughing. He made me imitate the seething onion dip many, many times. Just the other day he said, “Let’s see what those maggots looked like, Pam-pam.”

  In 1974 I was consumed with love, I was alight with it, drugged, dewy, and damp with it. This was what I had waited for since the first time I saw Snow White open her eyes and gaze adoringly at Mr. Charming. Michael firmly held my hand in his own, like it had always been there. “You are the woman for me,” he stated in his delicious British accent, and I blithely overlooked the fact that my prince who came several times daily had a lethal attraction to the dark side, while I liked to live smack dab in the sunlight. He was a combination of exotic, aristocratic, angular royalty and debauched, street-rat, riotous self-indulgence. He used big, scary words, knocking them off carelessly while I scribbled them down to look up in my Webster’s, which I kept sequestered under the bed right next to my almost forgotten diary. Since finding my One and Only, I didn’t need to rant and moan as copiously. My old diaries lined the bookshelves like yesterday’s desperate hours.

  October 10, 1974—It’s amazo how one’s life totally changes when love flies in the window and there’s another person next to you all the time. You just give up your old trips, except for family ties and career, but sometimes I find I’m letting them both slip, along with everything else!

  One cheery, blasé afternoon, as I wandered back from our local Ralph’s market, ready to stick a couple Stouffer’s in the oven, I could hear unusual crashing noises inside the pad and dashed up the stairs to find Michael, naked and enraged, throwing my porcelain doodads against the wall. Surrounding him were all my diaries, one of which was open to a page I assumed he had taken particular offense with. He glared at me, and I retaliated with a phony grin-shrug. “Oh well, perhaps someday??” Michael spat the words at me. “SOMEday, eh?” What had he read in my diary, and why? “Why are you looking at my diaries?” I dared to peep. “WHAT do you mean, ‘Oh well, perhaps someday,’ Pamela, darling?” He picked up the offending book, shoved it in my red face, pointed to the incriminating passage, and I remembered a couple months earlier, meeting Jeff Bridges at my friend Bud Cort’s party and thinking he was sexy stuff. He had checked me out all evening, and I had written of my blasphemous hopeful response. Oh well, perhaps someday. But I didn’t mean it! I hadn’t meant anything by it. It was meaningless! I humbled myself before my darling, so afraid of losing him to the ghost of Lloyd Bridges’s youngest son. The tempest swirled around me, but Michael finally calmed down as I ate the last bite of crow and licked the plate clean. At least there were no maggots around and he hadn’t destroyed the diaries. The next day I took all the little black books and tucked them safely in Mom’s garage. I had gotten an eerie early glimpse of Michael’s temper potential, and even though the typhoon tizzy abated, it was a long, long time before we could enjoy a Jeff Bridges movie together.

  I was engaged to marry a married man, but things could have been worse. He promised to expedite a transatlantic divorce just as soon as he could afford it, and I floated on thin air. One lusty evening while Michael soaked in the tub after a bewitching romp in the hay, I was poking around for a couple of dollars and found a photo of the first Mrs. Des Barres in his wallet and lost my entire mind. Isn’t jealousy like a fucking disease? I studied her pale face and red curls like they held the answers to every question ever asked by anybody in the entire meta-galaxy. I started to burn. The searing heat started in my toes and moved rapidly, rabidly through my shaky thighs, up my spine, into my cheeks, and burst into a bonfire trapped raging inside my skull. Why did he carry this picture of her around? Did he miss this bitch? She looked like she needed rescuing, so plaintive and delicate, wearing a pretty flowered dress. I can still see that damn photograph in full and living color. Calming myself, deep breaths, counting to ten . . . “Look what I found, honey,” trying for blase so-what, sounding more like a petulant bleat. He, of course, was incredibly casual, “Oh. I thought I threw that away,” he said, yawning. Very convincing. So what could I say? I gnawed on it for a while, my brain membranes eating themselves, then crumpled the blasted photo, tossed it in the trash, and climbed into the tub to have a small discussion about his shredded wedlock.
He said they had really broken up before he met me. But hadn’t they been married only three weeks before that fateful day we got together on the Manhattan movie set? Yes, but it was one of those last-ditch attempts on her part, to save the crumbling relationship. They had to have lots of three- and four-way sex-ins, obliterating themselves on any available substance to drown out their waning passion. They fought all the time, broke things over each other’s heads, and threatened to kill each other more than once. They met at drama school when he was only eighteen, and seven years later they were still wallowing around in yesterday’s teen dreams. It was over. Over. OVER. I scrubbed his back with a loofah; he told me he loved me. He said that I was the one he had waited for all his life. It was destiny, fate, kismet that brought us together. Part of the divine plan. Of course he had forgotten all about that antique picture in his wallet. Absolutely. We were just two jealous fools in love.

  V

  While Michael and his big-shot manager decided what to do with his magnificent set of lungs and blatant star power, I resumed my acting career and got myself a new agent, a hefty chunk of a gal called Freda Granite. Her miniature office was stuck way out in the Valley, and she specialized in kids. Rodney Allen Rippy, the happy black child who cutely hyped Jack-In-the-Box burgers was her super claim to fame. The second interview she sent me out on was for a new character on the soap Search for Tomorrow, Amy Kaslo, a post-hippie chick pre-med student, a warm and funny girl who was secretly in love with her best friend’s fiancé. And I got it! My mom and dad were oh-so-proud of me and couldn’t wait to tune me in daily. All those acting classes and two-bit plays were finally going to pay off.

  But what a tortured, mixed blessing it turned out to be. I would have to relocate to New York and leave Michael languishing in the city of angels, way too soon—I had just gotten him back! The dear boy had no money and I couldn’t afford two pads, so we had to let go of the Dr. Pepper palace on Maryland Drive. Through a friend of Chuck Wein’s, I had already found an apartment in the West Village, on the corner of Seventh and Bleecker above a French bakery. I was going to be roommates with a cute little airline stewardess appropriately named Debbie. The plan was for Michael to move in with his new manager, who happened to be the biggest coke dealer on earth. Oops.

  This mighty man was putting together a supergroup after having seen Michael perform a solo at the Hollywood Revival and Trash Dance, where many shrieking females ripped his pants half off. His nuts were actually in the spotlight momentarily because, as usual, he had no use for underwear. I happened to be right on stage with him because my ex-group, the GTO’s, re-formed for the big night to sing “Mr. Sandman” totally off-key but spilling over with soul. Mercy and Cynderella had gone missing, so Sparkie and I had rounded up some last-minute replacements, and we sounded pretty good. Just as the curtain rose, there was a crash, boom, wallop, and here they came—Mercy, heading for the microphone, wearing a lopsided rainbow afro, and Cynderella tilting in all the wrong directions—rarin’ and ready to belt it out. What could I do? They were the true Girls Together Outrageously and belonged onstage. After a screeching rendition of “Sandman,” we were ready to back up Michael on his Elvis medley. You never caught a rabbit, you ain’t no friend of mine. The doo-wops were out of sync, but I was up on stage again—only this time my love-man was out front. Seeing the sweaty, swooning faces of the fans as they grabbed for Michael’s crotch made me more gaga than ever. Mine mine MINE!!! Iggy Pop, Ray Manzarek of the Doors, and the New York Dolls were also on the bill, and the night sort of made history as the final, phantasmagoric glitter event. Despite the hallucinatory hyped-up name tag, it was all a bit sad and tawdry. How could I, at age twenty-five, be part of a revival already? Michael hadn’t even hit his rock stride. And Iggy Pop was in his prime, wasn’t he? I doubt if he even remembers the event, he was so far gone. Younger kids who thought they had missed something were hanging onto the coattails of the sixties, trying to go back in time, as Ray Manzarek and his spooky Doors organ attempted to jolt them back to the splendour of ’67. Jim Morrison had been dead a mere four years.

  I was ready to call it a day, but Creem magazine wrote the whole thing up glowingly: “Representing the first generation of the whole thing were the GTO’s, reunited for the show, filling things out with a dash of nostalgia. They were, of course, charming. They, and especially Miss Pamela, have never really stopped performing, the only difference this time being the fact that they were up on a stage. They sang ‘Mr. Sandman,’ and then, in best Sandra Dee-Bobby Darin tradition, they were joined by Michael Des Barres, one of the period’s hottest British imports and Miss Pamela’s husband-to-be.” A tired-looking teenager wearing an old fur coat over her mini-skirt approached me as I lovingly mopped Michael down after his set. Eyeing the scene she got a sour look on her face. “Haven’t you given up yet, Miss Pamela? That’s real funny. You’re about as much of a ‘miss’ as my fucking mother.” Michael took a swipe at her and just missed. I ignored her—she should have kissed my pioneering groupie butt.

  The Trash Dance was a symbolic flash-crash ending for me, even as Michael’s future manager yelled hot-air promises in my ear while Michael disarmed and glad-handed record-business types, trying to keep his balls tucked into his tattered trousers. My husband-to-be had been a glitter-glam innovator back in Britain, and it was only a matter of time before America gave him his due, and I would always stand by him. Give him two arms to cling to—and something warm to come to—when nights are cold and lonely. But secretly I felt like giving the whole dilapidated, shoddy rock scene a big, juicy raspberry. Engaged to a hot British import, on my way to gigantic TV stardom in New York City, they could all just kiss my tight trailblazing ass adios.

  I had proven to the street dogs that I had gotten my rock-and-roll man, and we went out once in awhile so I could smear it in, but I had lost interest in being part of a fading scene. You couldn’t trust the new L.A. groupies, who were desperate, discouraged, groveling ego seekers. The love of music had become secondary to preening in Star magazine, standing next to Anybody In A Band. It was scary out there. It was fictitious and haunted. The magic dust on the Sunset Strip had turned into sticky wads of filthy goop that stuck to the bottom of my platforms. I worried about Michael diving into those shark-infested, murky waters, but singing and posing were the things he did best. Those pre-Pistols, post-Zeppelin days were a vast musical wasteland for me; so little originality was allowed to leak through those towering big-business giants who made the music industry what it is today. In the middle seventies rock and roll was in a state of flux, changing from intimate love and guts to arena power and packaging. And now, in 1991, one measly singer can get a billion-dollar advance. Backstage doors are wrapped with barbed wire equipped to electrocute. It’s frightening.

  V

  The cocaine manager with the false grin bought Michael and me tickets to London so we could have a seductive little holiday before I started my soap, and we stayed up in his mom’s attic, a cozy, rosy mush-den of delights. I cooked his meals, rubbed his back, brought him Melody Maker, hung on his every witty, loving word. We made love to the red hissing of an aging electric heater, and one night after a blissful handing-over of throbbing body parts, I sniffed a scorch in the air. Was it me? No, the red nightie my mom had worn on her wedding night had caught on the heater during our pumped-up frenzy and was being eaten by mini-flames. Michael wrestled the singed rayon from my sweaty body and stomped on it with his bare feet. So brave! The treasured nightie-heirloom was partially blackened, but I decided to save it forever anyway.

  I had been trepidatious about meeting Michael’s bohemian, jazz-loving mother, having spoken to her on the phone several times about her treasured only son. She had despised the first wife, Wendy. Would I measure up? Irene Gladys Des Barres, with the dark flashing eyes, seemed at first to be the doting, adoring British mom. She invited me into her home, made toast in the morning and cocoa at night, and spoke constantly about the inestimable value of her only child, Michael
, and how good she thought I was going to be for him. I was starting to get comfortable on the fat, feather-stuffed sofa when Michael reminded me to watch out. He had warned me to expect anything because his mom was a true eccentric, having been a burlesque queen who hung out with jazz musicians and smoked hash joints as far back as he could remember. But I wasn’t prepared for the overnight transformation. One morning after a perfectly charming evening with her watching telly, she woke up silent and scary, giving me hollow, accusing looks, snickering under her breath, and rolling her eyes at everything I said. I had put the bread into the bread bin the night before, and she was outraged. “Doesn’t she know the bread will die if it’s locked up like that?” she hissed at Michael. No toast slathered with sweet butter and currant jam for me. Michael shook his head woefully and told me not to take it seriously. Any idea I had about becoming chummy with my future mother-in-law vanished into the chilly London air, and when we left town, she wasn’t even around to say good-bye. It was deep-down eerie, and I thought about the little boy Michael had been, having to put up with that schizo lunacy and those twisted, haunting, dark blue eyes, so much like his own. Michael had told me that his parents had sex only once, and he was the product of that bent and futile union. He would have lots of tragic, buried stuff to weed out one day, and it scared me, but I knew I could handle it. I could probably even fix it. Yes, indeed.