JIMMY CAMP
Sick Boy. Angel. Bobby Two-Tone. Baby Crazy. Johnny Tri-Hawk. Cutter. Not their real names. Most everyone had a nickname. No last names.
I was just Jimmy.
Still am.
Most everyone had someone looking for them. Good or bad. Parents. Pimps. Cops. Brothers. Dealers they fucked. No one wanted to be found. Most everyone wanted to be anonymous. Invisible. Lifeless. Disposable. Most of us lived in Hell at some point: 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.
People were looking for me too. I didn’t care. Good luck. Try to find me here. Wouldn’t matter anyway. Just turned eighteen. My older brother came looking for me once. Just after Thanksgiving. In his topsiders and Lacoste shirt. I’m sure. He ran into Charles somewhere on the boulevard. Charles went to high school with us. He was adopted. His mom was crazy. She took in strays for money. Foster kids. Retards. Cripples.
No one was looking for him.
Charles took my brother down to Oki Dog. Told him I might be there. Oki Dog was on Santa Monica Boulevard. We went to Santa Monica Boulevard to roll fags. I was at Oki Dog a lot. I’m sure he got my brother to buy him a forty, or a pastrami burrito. I wasn’t there. A few days later I saw Charles on the front steps of the El Nido, a hotel on Wilcox. Off Santa Monica Boulevard. Down from the police station. He lived there with a skinny, blonde tweaker chick named Polly. He told me he took my brother to Oki Dog looking for me. We thought that was funny. Usually there were bums drinking Thunderbird on the steps at the El Nido. There weren’t any that day.
I called the house on Christmas Eve. Outside the dollar movie theatre. I wanted to go home. My brother answered the phone. My parents were at church. My dad was the pastor. I wondered why my brother wasn’t with them. He told me I was ruining their lives. I probably was. He hung up. I didn’t call back. I went and saw two movies for a buck with Maria. She was a German. Seventeen. A whore. No one was looking for her. The cops were all over Hell that night. Couldn’t go there. Children of the Night had a big Christmas party for runaways with runaway advocates. The cops came and popped them all. A lot of them were staying in Hell. They narc’d out a bunch of other kids that were crashing there. The cops were looking for them. Most of them came from the Valley or the OC. People in the Valley and the OC want their kids home at Christmas.
We crashed in an underground parking garage that night. The Garden Court Apartments, an apartment complex on Sycamore, under the stairs by a bunch of hot-water heaters. That became our place. Maria and I sort of lived together. Not anywhere. Together.
It was warm.
For Christmas Eve.
Tom Mix, John Barrymore, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Marilyn Monroe, Louis B. Mayer. Not their real names either. But they all wanted to be found. Visible. Full of life. Dead now. They all lived at The Garden Court Apartments at some point, 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. It was next to the Chinese theatre. If you hung around the bus benches in front of the Chinese theatre, Japanese people would scurry off their buses and give you a dollar to take your picture with them. Especially if you had a Mohawk in 1983. I did.
The Garden Court Apartments had gargoyles and a big fountain out front. It was the place back in the day. Grand pianos in all the rooms. The cat’s pajamas. The bee’s knees. Tinsel Town. Before Hollywood became a shit-hole. Before they boarded it up.
We called it Hotel Hell.
Hell for short.
I started doing drugs by accident. I was twelve. I got an electric guitar for Christmas that year. I got some brown corduroy overalls and cowboy boots that year too. I got a small amplifier. A chord. Strap. Finger Ease.
Finger Ease was a spray you sprayed on your guitar strings. Like string lube. I would lie in bed at night playing my guitar under the covers. I would spray the Finger Ease on the strings. I would hear helicopters. I figured out that if I sprayed the finger ease on part of my pillowcase and inhaled it I could hear more helicopters. I figured out if I covered the spray tip with a sheet and inhaled it directly I would hear cooler helicopters. I figured out it worked with any aerosol can. I didn’t learn it from anyone. Didn’t see it on an ABC after-school special.
Hairspray tasted really bad. It was sticky. Pam cooking spray was greasy. My mom used to spray stuff on her fingernails to make them dry quicker. It didn’t taste that bad. Don’t remember what it was called. Pink can. Wasn’t sticky. Wasn’t greasy. It became my spray of choice.
Inhaling fingernail-polish dryer was fun when you’re twelve. At first you would lay back and hear the helicopters. After a while you would start hallucinating. If you did enough, you would pass out. There were no real side effects. Except for the brain damage. Or the seizures. Or Death. I never experienced seizures or death.
Nor did I care.
I did it mostly after school in my room. Often at night in my bed. I would go in the bathroom. Lock the door. Pretend I was going to the bathroom. One time I was sitting on the toilet seat, tripping, and these ratty-looking Charles Dickens orphan-type characters were sitting on my shoulders. Three of them. Smoking cigarettes. Laughing. Dropping ashes on my head. I was worried my mom was going to smell the smoke. I walked out. Left the fan on. Shut the door. The stairs were right by the bathroom door. I looked down the stairs. Mrs. Tagan, the principal of my school, was standing at the bottom. It was like a hologram, like Princess Leia. She put her finger on her chin and shook her head at me. The Charles Dickens guys ran to my room. Laughing.
I had to steal money from my parents so I could replace the fingernail-polish-drying spray. I was kind of a stealer early on. Not sure why. The cans weren’t that big. I would go through two or three a week. I started to just steal them directly from the drugstore. Save a step. I was kind of smart.
One day I was getting lit in the bathroom. My mom yelled at me to come downstairs. I was in trouble. For something. Don’t remember. I stumbled down the stairs. She saw my eyes. She smelled the fingernail spray. She went up to the bathroom. Found the washcloth and the can. She flipped out. She called Pastor Tannenberg. He came right over. He sat on my bed. Took off his shoes. Put his feet up. Tried to talk to me. It was a little weird. The Pastor with his shoes off, on my bed.
Real drugs are expensive. Heroin. Speed. Coke. Hard to get. Homeless runaway street kids don’t have money for real drugs. In order for street rats to get enough money for real drugs, they had to do things. Rob People. Steal stuff. Turn tricks. Bad things. Bad kids.
A noose around the neck.
Gun in the mouth.
Fake drugs are cheap. Easy to get. Spray cans. Liquid paper. Airplane glue. Robitussin. Kids could panhandle enough money in about an hour to get fake drugs. Hopeless. Fucked-up kids. They would mostly get liquid paper. Empty it in to a paper sack. Inhale. Hear the helicopters. You would see them walking around Hollywood Boulevard with dried liquid paper all over their faces. I didn’t do that shit anymore. Hardly. It was for twelve-year-olds. The last thing I wanted was to be in an abandoned apartment building in the middle of the night full of runaways, junkies, whores, rapists, thieves, trash, hearing helicopters and seeing crazy shit that wasn’t really there. It was bad enough seeing what was really there.
Sometimes I would play guitar on the Boulevard.
Enough money to buy a forty.
Some food.
Food was easy to get. You could listen to a greasy-haired, Ike Turner-look-a-like mother fucker dressed like a priest yell at you for forty-five minutes and get a free English muffin topped with chili and cheese. You could go to McDonalds just after it closed and wait by the dumpster. They would come out and throw away the fish filets and Big Macs they didn’t sell. Sometimes the guy would just give them to you. Sometimes they would set them on top of the dumpster. Sometimes they would make an effort to mix them in to the trash just to fuck with you. Depended on who was working.
I don’t remember the first time I did heroin. I was in Hotel Hell. There were three or four of us. I can’t remember if speed or heroin was first. It was the first time I shot up. There wasn’t any water in Hell. We needed water to shoot up. We didn’t want to risk leaving Hell in the daylight and coming back in. Risk. You could get busted if the cops saw you. If one person got busted, it would get real tight and nobody could get in and out at night. People would get pissed if you brought the heat on them. We found an old half-filled bottle of Canada Dry club soda lying around. Made sure it was flat. Made sure no one pissed in it. We used it to cook our drugs. Three or four of us on the same spike.
This was when AIDS was still gay cancer.
We weren’t gay.
No worries.
You had to do bad things to get real drugs. I had a conscience. I only did bad things to bad people. Bad people don’t call the cops. Justified it. Didn’t want to go back to jail. Or hell, the real hell, when it all crashed down. And you always knew it would.
Laura was sixteen. Darrell was her boyfriend. Skinhead. We had all come to Hollywood together. She was from the OC. We scoped out an apartment building. Light up front, dark out back. Jump two fences and bam-bam. Fuller Street. Runyon Canyon. Used to be a big mansion there. Pool. Tennis court. Errol Flynn lived there. Once it decayed along with the rest of Hollywood, it became home to the Manson family. Hobos and bums. Street scum.
We knew it well.
It’s a park now.
Laura stood on Sunset, between La Brea and Highland. With the whores. We waited in the dark lot. Laura pulled up in a car. Middle Eastern dude. Wedding Ring. Baby seat. Married. A baby. Picking up a sixteen-year-old girl. To fuck. Bad guy. Fair game. We jumped him. Gold chain around his neck. Yanked it off. Like a movie. Held a knife in his face. Wouldn’t give it up. Wallet was in the trunk. Dropped the keys. Kicked them under the car. Punched him in the face. He started screaming. “Help me! Help me!” Went through his pockets. Hundred bucks. Two fences. Chucked the keys. Storm drain. I wonder what he told his wife. We separated. Headed for Runyon Canyon. Met up at the old tennis court. Laid low. I went for a walk. Picked up some provisions. Stayed up all night. The next morning we scored a room in a shitty Chinese hotel. Took some friends along. Showered. Crashed out. Partied some more. Chinese lady came in screaming to get out or she’d call the police. There were six of us. Back to Hell. Had twelve bucks left. Laura and Darrell split the next day. I stayed. Misfire.
Santa Monica Boulevard was a gold mine.
Lots of bad people.
Lots of money for big-kid drugs.
Old queers in nice cars looking to fuck teenage boys.
If they asked, I said I was fifteen. They liked that. Made them worse. Easier to hit. My first time but not my last. Older guy. Bald. Glasses. Volvo. Nice place. Went to his bedroom. Said I needed the bathroom. He was naked on the bed. Under a sheet. I could see his boner. Sat down on the bed. I felt him gently put his hand on my back. I reached down. Pretended to untie my oxblood Doc Martin boots. Pulled a butterfly knife. Tucked him in real tight. I could see him breathe. Couldn’t see any movement. His hard on went away. Looked like a mummy. I wondered if he had a gun. Hidden. Somewhere. Turned the TV on. Taxi. Alex, Louie, Nardo. Not too loud. Loud enough. Took his money. MasterCard. Leather pants. Nice leather jacket. Gold jewelry. Car keys. Cut the phone cords. Bedroom. Kitchen. Left real quiet. Like a movie. The needle not quite full.
Our lives meant nothing.
To me.
I used to be a little boy. A baby. At first, I was the good one. My mom would come in to my room in the morning, and I would be lying there in my crib wide awake and happy as could be. Didn’t cry much. I had curly brown hair and deep chocolate eyes. I was born on my mother’s birthday. Her favorite. Sweet. Until I wasn’t. No reason. They started taking me to a child psychiatrist when I was eleven. No one really explained why. Someone for me to “talk to.” She was nice. “How was your week?” “How was school?” ”How did that make you feel?” “I don’t know.” Eventually they stopped taking me. No conclusion. Didn’t really talk about it. No deep repressed memories of abuse or neglect. No fucked-up childhood. No hopelessness.
Then.
It just was.
I put the noose around my neck.
The gun in my mouth.
The needle in my vein.
The blade on my wrist.
I tried.
The reckless lack of the value of life.
My life.
Missy—Ribs—she hated it when we called her that. Her pink hair. The ink up and down her back. Exposed and not. The optimism of adventure. Every day. The slap of my face. The kiss. Holding hands. On the railroad tracks.
I wasn’t holding Missy’s soft and kind hand as she jumped from the Colorado Street Bridge.
The full pursed lips. The deception. The institution. The wind in her hair. The sun in her face. I wasn’t there to kiss Michele’s neck one more time before she slammed the needle full of heroin into her jugular.
I wasn’t sitting there with Peter in his truck eating organic pistachios discussing prehistoric glacial activity in Yosemite when he closed the garage as the engine ran. His magical eyes bulging and his face turning blue.
Lives full of beauty. Hope. Life. Apparently.
The rope always seemed to break.
The gun misfired.
The needle just shy of enough.
The blade dull.
I stood on the bridge.
Put the needle to my neck.
Had the keys in the ignition.
Yet, here I am.