What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly saying “Hooray for our side”
We’ve got to stop, hey what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s goin’ down . . .
One of L.A.’s prime bands, the Buffalo Springfield, told us all about the riot on the Sunset Strip. The funny thing is, I didn’t see a single one of them sitting cross-legged in the middle of Sunset, and believe me, I would have noticed Neil Young or Stephen Stills waving a sign to the right or left of me. What a sight it was! Traffic backed up for miles, horns blaring, high beams extending into headlight heaven.
Pandora’s Box, the ultimate rock club of the moment, was being torn down to make way for a wider road and a three-way turn signal, and WE, the patrons of the purple palace, were not going to stand for it. In fact, we sat down on Sunset Boulevard and wouldn’t budge. I found something to believe in, and was so proud of being on a mission to enlighten the world. I felt like I belonged, united with a thousand other kids, protesting what THEY were doing to US. At last I was surrounded by my own kind. I watched as Gorgeous Hollywood Boys overturned a bus, and I cheered on the offenders from my warm spot on the Sunset Boulevard blacktop. I gazed at Sonny and Cher, arms wrapped around each other, wearing matching polka-dot bell-bottoms and fake-fur vests, and realized we were all one perfect hip force with one big huge beating heart. I held hands with strangers and tried to recapture the moment before it had even passed.
The LAPD arrived in full force, clubs swinging and sirens blaring, but at least we had our moment in the moonlight. We made headlines the next morning, and I surveyed the endless pages of protesters, praying to catch a glimpse of myself among the defenders of teenage rights.
After I made that first trek into Hollywood to see Captain Beefheart at the Teen Fair, I was like a ravenous rat heading for the cheese. Everything seemed to gleam and glow and the Sunset Strip loomed in the foreground like a promise of greatness. Cleveland High became just a place to graduate from and the boys in Reseda were squalling infants, dribbling into their bibs. All the boys in Hollywood had long hair and important eyes. They walked cool and talked cool, and my brain was clamoring to grasp any eloquent morsel of information bestowed upon me by one of these amazing creatures.
December 25 . . . Hello. I’d like to say something. Dig this. You might say I’m rather lost in this big mixed-up place we call life. I try to understand the people I love, and it’s hard for me. I know they’re great and wonderful people trying to become what others call “nonconformists.” I want to be one of them. I am one of them. All we are trying to do, is become individuals, not one chaotic mess of human being. And we meet in Hollywood.
After Pandora’s Box closed down, we started hanging out at a coffee shop on the Strip called Ben Frank’s, conveniently located between Ciro’s and the Trip. The first person I met at the new inner sanctum was Rodney Bingenheimer. He had his bangs cut just like Davy Jones because he was Davy’s stand-in on The Monkees. He dangled this tidbit in the faces of ga-ga girls, thrilling them with his latest claim to Strip fame. Within ten minutes he had me in the back of a Volkswagen in the parking lot, his hands placed firmly on my tits. I felt like such an inexperienced jerk for prying his fingers off, but it didn’t seem to faze him. I’m sure he had already squeezed a few that evening.
February 12 . . . Hollywood Time! It wasn’t all too great and excellent. The best of all. So many love orgies. Everybody loves everybody! I was with Rodney and he doesn’t kiss too well. Yum for my turn. He gave me some groovy pics of Dylan. And I met this groovy guy who knows The Byrds!!
The second person I met was Kim Fowley. He towered over me with a wide, toothful grin, stick-thin, unconquered and unconquerable. He told me he would rather be married to me for forty-seven years than to fuck me for forty-seven minutes. I believed this to be the most profound statement ever uttered; my mind mattered more than my body. My head reeled with new concepts and I thanked God for leading me to the only correct spot on the planet for me: In front of the double glass doors at Ben Frank’s. What had I done until this moment?
The first local group I was dying to meet was the Byrds. I was too young to get into Ciro’s, so I hung around the blatant backstage door, which was right on Sunset, and waited for them to appear. They had just put out their first single, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and brought Bob Dylan into the minds of millions of new seekers of profundity. I had been listening to his lyrics for months like they had been spoken from the burning bush. They were scorched into my mind like a rancher’s brand . . .
To let me dance beneath the diamond sky,
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea,
Circled by the circus sands
Where all memory and fate
Are driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Back to the Byrds. I fell in love with Chris Hillman the instant I laid eyes on him. He was the bass player, very introspective, deepdeepdeep and contemplative. No matter how many questions I could come up with to plague him, he only answered with one or two words. I knew the world that he gazed out on with his light-blue eyes was fraught with much deeper meaning than the one I was forced to look at from within the confines of my sixteen-year-old brain.
I latched onto the. Byrds as I had the Beatles, only this time they were local and I could obsess in person. I asked anyone who would listen for their addresses and sat outside their houses looking and listening for signs of life. All five of them lived in Laurel Canyon, God’s golden backyard. Most of California’s rock and roll gods and goddesses lived somewhere in the glorious canyon, and I spent hours just roaming around, peeking into windows. I had to locate an ancient map to find Magnolia Street; it was at the tip-top of a high hill, at the end of a dirt pathway, with only one house overlooking the entire universe. It belonged to Chris Hillman. I started going there every day after school, sitting on the ledge, looking out over all of L.A., and on the clearest days I could see the ocean sparkling. A couple of times he roared up the hill in his Porsche, and I know he caught sight of me, perched on his rock fence, worshiping at the altar of his existence.
He lived in this fairy-tale pad right out of Walt Disney’s wildest dreams, surrounded by eucalyptus trees and wildflowers so fragrant, to breathe was ecstasy.
March 20,1966 . . . My love’s dwelling-place reeks of the seven dwarves and prancing gnomes and elves. I expect Dopey or Sleepy to peek out of the multi-colored windows, and whistle their way to work down the old cracked steps. He came out of the drive-way with some lil’ chickie. I hope he didn’t see me, what a hunk he is. I really love him you know. I know I sound like a fan, but this time it’s different, I promise.
When he went away on the road, I would sleep all night in his hammock and dream of him in his tight jeans and suede fringed moccasins, and delight in being just a stained-glass window away from his worldly possessions. I would lie there in the warm dark, all alone with the tall trees and night noises, trying to figure out a way to make him notice me. I conjured up some phony ID and was one of the many girls leaning up against the stage at the Whiskey a Go Go and the Trip while he solemnly plucked his bass.
April 6 . . . Chris messed up a song because of me, I know it. He was watching me very avidly and he made a wrong chord . . . I’m not digging his young, virile, stocky body too much . . . SLURP!
April 26 . . . Operation Chris has now gone into effect. I am preparing for the future. I must have a smaller waist and bigger hips, longer nails and prettier hair. I must grow spiritually. I must obtain Mr. Hillman.
May 12 . . . I’m in love with a 21 year old man who loves others. Is that a joke? I’ll be seeing him tomorrow with my youth glaring up at him. Is that a joke? Pretending to care less about him as I watch Mike or David, painfully hoping that perhaps HE will take notice. Is that a joke? Pain and anguish. It’s all a joke. It is painful to the point of lonesome glistening tears making their way down my pink and flushed cheeks. Who will have the last name “Hillman”?
I made one attempt to take him a huge bag of grapes that my dad brought back from Mexico, but the plan collapsed when the bag ripped open and I skidded halfway down the hill on seedless green grapes from Ensenada, landing on my face. I scrambled back up, leaving the squashed grapes behind, rolling in profusion toward his front porch. When I arrived home, my mom thought I was having a nervous breakdown. Collapsing in the doorway, I sat in a shivering heap without the strength to stand up and walk, tears and snot mingling with sticky grape juice on my cheeks. I had to think of another way to enter his life.
I pretended my car broke down and went to the house next door to Chris’s and asked an ancient old crone if I could use her phone. I struck up an unlikely friendship with the old dame, Mrs. Motzo, and she was thrilled with my frequent visits: I was equally thrilled with her garden, which gave me a splendid view of Mr. Hillman’s living-room window. I became so adoring of her garden that she gave me dozens of seedlings and cuttings, which I passed on to my unsuspecting mother. Mrs. Motzo’s Siamese cat had a litter of perfect seal-point babies, and I cajoled her into giving me the cutest one, with the far-fetched idea that I would lay it on Chris. The little purring thing lived in my car for a couple of days while I worked up the courage to make the presentation. I waited until dusk, and clutched the kitty like it could help me overcome the mad pitter-pounding in my head. I was rabid with nerves, but I had thought so many times about this moment, blind determination led me up the dirt pathway.
May 1 . . . He was sitting with his knees bunched up to his chin, engrossed in the yee-ha music, and when he saw me, he got up and let me in. He took the kitten in his arms, I wished it could have been me. He had on a T-shirt, jeans and bare feet, but he put on his funny wrap-around shoes because he was going to a session, which he said was going to be “a drag.” He offered me some pot, but I said no thanks. He probably thinks I’m a twerp. He couldn’t take the kitty because he’s about to go on tour, so he took me and the kitty back to my car in his Porsche . . . I was in his Porsche!! It was the most perfect time in my entire life. . . . There must be a couple pages of silence . . .
I left two blank pages and continued on with my life. Chris went off to many small cities in the U.S.A. and I kept going to Hollywood, making all kinds of instant friends and spending the occasional night in the hammock on his front porch.
Rodney Bingenheimer invited me to a birthday party for a fifty-four-year-old artist named Vito, and I jumped at the chance to attend. I had heard a lot of tainted stories about Vito and his band of merry maniacs, and had seen them around town, dancing with total abandon, adorning clubs and concert halls, blowing minds before the phrase existed.
My heart was beating madly as we ascended his steep, shadowy stairs, rickety and promising. I was fascinated by the paraphernalia on the stairwell walls: tatty old doilies, fading pornographic photos tacked up with bits of lace and yarn, tattered silk flowers and curling antique postcards, all kinds of old hats, puppets hanging upside down with lopsided grins and scary faces. Amid all this zaniness were several bright and shining photographs of the most angelic blond child ever born. When we reached the top and peeked through the glinting glass beads, we saw Vito reclining on a rose-colored velvet couch, surrounded by lavishly decorated people of all ages and races who seemed to be paying him homage. He had long, graying, uncombed hair and a ragtag beard that looked like it had been dipped in a bottle of glitter; he was wearing only a lace loincloth, and his chest had been painted like a peacock feather. He appeared to be directing a singular puppet show on top of the coffee table. A nude cherub was magically prancing around the tabletop, laughing and bowing and delighting in being the center of attention as Vito tapped out the rhythm for his dance. It was only when the little puppet turned around to face me that I realized he was a little boy, the same little angel boy in the heavenly pictures I saw on my way up the stairs.
As the dance came to an end, while everyone was cheering and applauding, Rodney led me by the hand and presented me to Vito like a prize. I couldn’t help but like him on the spot; he had an obvious hint of the devil in his twinkly eyes and his face crinkled into a sexy old grin as he said, “Welcome, my little turkey pie.” The little boy jumped off the table right on top of a festive cat-eyed lady next to Vito, dug his little fist into her handmade doily blouse, pulled out her right tit, and began to nurse. I had never seen a baby nursing, let alone a three-year-old boy who could walk and talk and sing and dance!!! I was amazed.
My tongue was tied in knots as I gazed around the room at the colorful clutter that Vito, his wife, Szou (pronounced Sue), and their son, Godot, called home. The ethereal lighting made everything look pink; all the wild-eyed people looked flushed and rouged and ready to wreak havoc. The walls were alive and about to topple down, they were so laden down with outrageous items. Old dolls’ heads with unblinking eyes tacked up alongside antique undergarments gave the place a little character. Cockeyed caricatures painted in brilliant colors stared down at me from all four walls. On closer inspection, I realized they resembled most of the people in the room and were signed “Karl Franzoni.” I noticed an intensely unappealing guy in hand-painted red tights tweaking all the girls’ bottoms, and when he turned around to get his fingers on yet another, I saw that his tacky satin cape had a huge F emblazoned on the back. I figured the F was for Franzoni; I was wrong. When he saw me looking at him, he stuck out this incredibly long tongue that seemed to unroll across the room, and he called out, “Come meet Captain Fuck!” I didn’t make a mad dash to greet him, so he came toward me, grinning hugely, with a tooth missing in front and a wild kink of frizzed-out hair around a gleaming bald spot, like a halo of used Brillo pads. His lizard’s tongue leaped out at my right cheek and licked off my blush-on. From that moment on, he pursued me like a rabid dog, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing every other female within sniffing distance.
Szou and Vito’s charming pad was directly above their very own antiquey-type store where they sold whatever they felt like selling. Szou was the forerunner of thrift-store fashion, and there were always plenty of falling-apart velvet dresses and forties teddies available for a pittance. Whatever she got tired of wearing, she put a price tag on. She also concocted her own creations out of doilies and rags, which cost a bit more but were the ultimate in antique chic.
In the back of the store, behind the pre-post-trendy garments, Vito had stashed a single mattress inside a man-sized mousehole. If a girl didn’t watch out, he would reach through those musty rustling taffeta drapes, grab a slim ankle, and let her in on his secret. A few of the girls I knew wound up behind those dusty drapes and described in detail his enormous proportions. By a miracle I escaped this fate.
Under the store was Vito’s studio, a huge basement where his incredible statues lined the walls with stunned expressions on their faces. He gave sculpting lessons on Tuesday nights, and dance lessons to free your spirit on Thursday nights. I knew I was on the threshold of freeing my spirit, so I took my place among the maniacs and joined forces with the freaks. My mom thought she had made some humongous error in bringing me up; in a few short months I had become an embarrassing bohemian, exposing wantonly the tits that had been kept so ridiculously under wraps. I was freefreefree, loosening any phony ties that might bind.
The next time I saw Vito was at the eulogy for the pagan saint of the postbop, prepop culture, Lenny Bruce, who had obliterated himself one shiny, startling day up Sunset Plaza Drive. Me and my friend Sherri donned our most daring velvet frocks and hitchhiked out past many, many spanking-new shopping malls to the West Valley. We were on our way to celebrate the short life of a guy we didn’t know too much about, except for the indisputable fact that he’d been very, very HIP.
Two or three hundred people turned up at his grave site, and we all paraded to a KDAY DJ’s patio to listen while Phil Spector recalled Lenny’s greatness. Sitting cross-legged on the grass, my black velvet skirt slit all the way up, I solemnly paid silent attention, occasionally stealing a glance at the swing set, where Frank Zappa sat on the slide, wearing short flowered bell-bottoms and big flowered sneakers. A few other people spoke of Lenny’s greatness, one of whom was Dennis Hopper, who was staring a searing hole right through me. I recognized him as one of Buzz’s hostile bunch, puncturing Jim Stark’s whitewalls in Rebel Without a Cause. He said that Lenny wouldn’t have wanted us to be miserable, so we started dancing and having fun, and I didn’t get home until after dark.
I had some profound revelation that death shouldn’t be mourned as I bounced down the street carrying balloons, but I didn’t know the extent of Lenny’s greatness, so maybe I was feeling overly idealistic. Something got into me that day, some kind of stand-up-straight pride about being a blond American girl, so ripe, I was about to pop off the tree.
I was listening to KDAY a few days later, hoping to hear the new Stones single, when the DJ, Tom Clay, made a startling announcement: “For five days I’ve been trying to locate a blond, blue-eyed girl who attended Lenny Bruce’s eulogy at my house last Saturday. She was wearing a long black skirt, slit up the side, and a red-velvet blouse. If anyone out there knows how to get in touch with this girl, have her call the station. I have some great news for her concerning a movie project . . .” I sat there in my rock and roll room, trying to figure out if what I had just heard was in my imagination, or had it come across the airwaves through my funky teenage speakers? When I phoned KDAY, Tom Clay was so thrilled to hear from me that we had our conversation right on the air! He told me this fairytale news: Terry Southern, the tall, disheveled British gentleman who was with Dennis Hopper at the eulogy, was dying to meet me. His new book was going to be made into a movie, and he thought I was the spitting image of his title character, Candy.
I had never read the book, but I knew it was soft-core, sex-ridden stuff, and I was delighted to be thought of in those terms by the author. It made me realize that I was really coming of sexual age, even though I still had not participated in the ACT itself. (Bob Martine and I had certainly discovered the thrills of oral ardor, however, and under his Italian tutelage I had become a truly proficient pupil.)
I met with Mr. Southern at MGM Studios on another bright and shiny day, clutching my recently read copy of Candy, wearing a short frilly item acquired for the occasion, feeling totally like a tantalizing Hollywood starlet. I was alive and alert, and on edge with excitement as I met him on the gigantic steps of the gigantic studio. He was the epitome of elegant debauchery as he elegantly kissed my hand and said, “Hello, Candy.” I tried to demonstrate my innocent allure as he ushered me through the majestic golden gates by asking him what the letters MGM stood for. “Mystery, Golden Mystery, my dear girl . . .” I believed it for a long time. As we walked through the lot, I tried to imagine where they caged that glorious lion that could roar on cue, and I wondered if I might run into a major motion-picture star, and if I could contain my excitement enough to continue to be alluring.
We went into a massive sound stage, and right in front of my already wide eyes stood Tony Curtis, in all his gooey, black-haired splendor. He had been one of my drive-in movie idols from pre-pubescence, when chlorine sparkled in my ponytail and the whole world was in Taras Bulba Technicolor, so, needless to say, I was a goner. Mr. Southern introduced me as his new star and Tony Curtis made small talk with me in his “Yonda lies da castle of my fodda” accent. I was a double-goner. We watched for a while as he made a fool out of himself with Anna Maria Alberghetti, romping through a B-feature light comedy/romance. We left between takes, and as he waved good-bye to me, his hair-goo gleamed in the spotlight.
My fifteen minutes of fleeting fame came to an end when Terry Southern’s funds fell through and I was brought down to earth with a thud. The only thing I got out of the experience (besides a heavy acting bug) was several calls from Dennis Hopper begging for a tryst, but he scared me with his devilish demeanor and those pop-eyes that seemed to poke at me across the expanse of lawn at Lenny Bruce’s eulogy that sunny Saturday.
I graduated high school in a white-lace drop-waist dress and candy-apple-red flats alongside two Miss Americas wearing fabric pumps that were dyed to match their handbags. Bob Martine was one of the onlookers as I grabbed my diploma and split the scene. I was now free to go to Hollywood any night of the week, and I did. My mom and dad wanted to know what I was going to do with my life. Didn’t they know I was among those in the throes of a revolution? Couldn’t they see the invisible peace sign tattooed on my forehead?
I needed some information that couldn’t be found in an encyclopedia, so I turned to the Ouija board. When Iva and I put our fingers on the pointer, it went wild. Our first encounter was with a fellow named G.S. He told me he was my personal guide, and loved me dearly and forever. He reeled off the people who were “the chosen ones,” “the special ones,” and “the evil ones.” I, of course, along with a few people like Chris Hillman and Mick Jagger, was “above chosen.” Good old G.S. got “inside” people, and he spent a good deal of time hanging around inside Chris.
August 14, 1966 . . . We have a mission to accomplish, as G.S. puts it, “Tear down the gates of hate.” People hate too much, and we are living in a world of plastic. Until now, we weren’t even noticed, but NOW (as the spirits predicted) the riots on the Sunset Strip have started. I marched with Randy during the peace demonstration yesterday. Unbelievable! I just listened to Randy, Rat and Animal on CBS radio tonight. It’s great, we’re being heard!! The revolution has begun.
I had a constant ball in Hollywood in the guise of the Great Mission. I met Rickaewy (prounounced “Ricky”) Applebaum at Vito’s dance class, and saw right away that G.S. had entered the body and mind of this frizzy-haired, angelic, poetic, wild boy; I could see it in his eyes, which penetrated my ego and hurtled it into space. He passed me a note that said, “You possess my soul, and all I’m asking from you is a leaf.”
I was so happy I wept.
October 8 . . . He sat down next to me and asked why I was sad.
R. Did you lose the one you love?
P. (smiles)
R. Can’t you find him?
P. No, I can’t.
R. Well, I love you, and you don’t even need a road-map.
I took Rickaewy to Reseda to spend the weekend in the spare room, and when my mom saw that he had half a beard on one side and half a moustache on the other, the evaporated milk curdled in her coffee. She tried so hard to be nice because he was a human being, but her eyes pleaded with me in agony. I told her he was a misunderstood poet and we were in love, but two weeks later it was all over, even though Vito had sanctioned the relationship as “very groovy.” My mom heaved one of many major sighs of relief.
I made a bunch of new girlfriends by just gliding down the Strip, smiling overtly at all passersby, most of whom would smile back at me with that knowing “sixties” look. Some would walk with me down the crowded boulevard, spewing their newfound wisdom into my newly opened ears, and I would expound to them, and we would nod in perfect agreement. It was such a relief to know you weren’t alone with those humongous unprecedented ideas.
One of the girls who wound up right beside me was Beverly, the most ravishing beauty ever born. She had everything that I longed for in the way of stunningness; her breasts were the perfect size and shape and they swayed with her every step, her eyelashes were long, her eyes were round and green, her honey-colored hair was thick and hung like gold to the middle of her back: She was the first girl I was ever attracted to and the concept was astonishing. I imagined kissing her and tasting the honey that was surely in her mouth, just about ready to dribble down her perfectly pointed chin, down between her perfectly pointed titties. She was gaspingly gorgeous, a combination of baby-doll innocence and hard-core tragedy, and she fluctuated between the two with uncertain irregularity. She was haunted by some sorrowful thing that followed her around like the Grim Reaper, and I tried desperately to keep the thing at bay.
We dared to do things together that we wouldn’t have done alone, and we stood back defiantly, waiting for a reaction. One night, after a baby-powder session, which was a ritual we performed at least once a week, we decided to surprise one of the cute guys we met on the Strip. We sat naked in the middle of her feather bed and proceeded to cover each other from head to toe with an entire can of Johnson’s baby powder, administered with oversized powder puffs with joyous aplomb and shrieks of delight. It was like a pillow fight with powder puffs at a pajama party for two. We usually cuddled up and fell asleep after this ritual, or sometimes we’d get all dolled up and go dancing, but we had one of those harebrained “I Love Lucy” schemes in mind on this particular warm night at two A.M.
White as sheets, we ran to the gray VW that she called “Friths-bottom” and started driving out to this guy’s house in North Hollywood. Halfway through Laurel Canyon, we realized that we were being followed by half a dozen men, who were probably jacking off under their steering wheels. I felt like titillating them literally, so I pressed my powdered tits against the window as one car pulled up alongside us. When I realized this guy was half crazed and about to climb out of his moving car, I shouted for Beverly to turn up one of the tiny twisting streets to escape from all these guys who thought they were riding in a porno parade. We hid in a rustic garage, imagining horny men cruising the canyon until dawn, looking for the naked ghost girls, and laughed our asses off. When we arrived at our destination, we woke Mr. Adorable from a deep sleep, and the look on his face when he opened the door was worth ten thousand words. Our barks were infinitely more blatant than our bites, so all he got besides a few powdery kisses was a very large eyeful.
Beverly and I became a team—we even got married; she was the groom because she was tougher than me, and she looked better in pants. She wore a baggy suit, drew on a little moustache, stuffed her goldilocks into a fedora, and we walked down an imaginary aisle. I wore a white satin teddy and satin spikes, and cried when she put her grandmother’s wedding band on my finger. We never consummated our marriage. I, for one, was too shy to bring it up, and I never knew if she felt intimate toward me, although we were very romantic on a Romeo-Juliet level of adoration. I was in awe of her beauty and the graceful way she could go from one extreme to another and back again before I managed to make it to the second extreme. When I gathered up the courage to make an attempt to enter her gaping pit of grief, she slammed the door so hard it gave me a stomachache. Because she wanted to spare me the details of her despair, I often felt left out in the cold, hard daylight, while she floated around in a warm, gray agony that I could never comprehend. She wrote in gray ink and had tattered black lace covering her windows, and she collected frogs, mostly those horrible stuffed little guys from Mexico that played poker or pool with their little frog lips pulled back in a grimace of fraudulent humanity.
Her Valley mother gave up on Beverly long before I met her, but Beverly sat in her candlelit room burning human hairs and fingernails to provoke the one she loved into giving her the time of day. Yet there was a little streak of joy in her that gravitated to me, and her perfect dimples pierced her alabaster cheeks, giving me chill-bumps whenever we had powder parties and whenever we went dancing, and the time we walked down the aisle together in our antique wedding attire.
Vito’s exquisite little puppet child, Godot, fell through a skylight during a wacky photo session on the roof and died at age three and a half. I was beside myself with sorrow, but Vito and Szou insisted on continuing with our plans for the evening. We went out dancing, and when people asked where little Godot was, Vito said, “He died today.” It was weird, really weird, but I tried to feel like I did at Lenny Bruce’s eulogy as I danced the night away, stealing glances at Vito and Szou while they screamed and sweated, hurling their grief into the four corners of the room. Szou found out she was pregnant a week later. We all waited for Godot to come back, but Szou had a girl and named her Groovee Nipple.
Vito’s troupe danced all over town and were never asked to pay a cover charge. We ran into other girls we liked and carried on flamboyant fellowships that lasted as long as we let them. One night at the Galaxy, a little club next to the Whiskey a Go Go, they announced a new house band, the Iron Butterfly, and I merged with their music like it was beating through my bloodstream. I eventually merged with all the members of the group except the bass player—he just wasn’t my type.
I showed my affection for the opposite sex in those days by giving them head, and I was very popular indeed. I tried not to think of myself as being cheap or easy or any of those other terms that were used to describe loose, free, peace-loving girls; I just wanted to show my appreciation for their music, for their taste in clothes, for their heads, hands, and hearts. I found myself in many broom closets and backseats with my head buried in many pairs of satin trousers, but I held on to my virginity like it contained the secrets of Tutankhamen. I kept the padlock on until I was nearing twenty, and the guy I finally chose to do the breaking and entering was, unfortunately, Mr. Wrong.
The main miracle in the Iron Butterfly was Daryl, the lead singer. He wore shiny pink and white with his scrawny chest exposed under the bright lights where he saturated his satin with sweat, which was a major part of his damp appeal. He loved being adored and he adored himself above all; there was a mirror directly opposite the stage, across the dance floor, and it was difficult to attract his attention away from his own splendid reflection. “Look at me, Daryl, give me a sign that you know I’m right under you, my flushed cheeks upturned, waiting to catch your highly prized beads of sweat. . . .” On occasion I would give him a tweak in the crotch area and his gaze would settle on me like I was being christened.
I was of two minds about my behavior, but I could not, would not, stop myself.
November 6, 1967 . . . Does God disagree with the things I am doing? If he will put up with me, I’ll straighten myself out. Perhaps if I had been born in Idaho none of these things would be burdening my head . . . but I’m in L.A. and here I’ll stay. Too late now. What makes me walk up to the stage and boldly touch Daryl’s private parts? What am I trying to prove to whom?
I had an insane crush on Daryl, but he had a batty beauty that he dedicated songs to named Della. She looked like Olivia Hussey as Juliet, and together she and Daryl stuck out like a throbbing thumb. He wore his hair in a dark, shiny pageboy, and she tended to it with care and devotion.
As an entertainer, Daryl had no competition; he was in constant motion and would rub his dick against the microphone pole when he got excited, which was most of the time, and we all swooned like we had as preteens when Bobby Vee winked at the camera on American Bandstand. (Of course, we were safe in our black-and-white living rooms then; now we were teetering on the brink of psychedelic madness.) Darling Daryl’s stage outfits were grandly outlandish, kind of a cross between Charo and Tom Jones with a tinge of Mick Jagger thrown in for credibility: hot-pink crop-top, belly button hanging out, and the widest, shiniest pleated bell-bottoms ever seen on a man; or a skin-tight one-piece turquoise jumpsuit, which he would unzip, taunting his public with his pubic hair. He paraded around the stage, teasing the adoring Daryl devotees as he humped the air, all the while admiring himself flagrantly. He was in ecstasy up there and he just asked for it (begged and pleaded for it!).
I had a desperate need to show him how much I appreciated his stage persona and songwriting abilities, although I didn’t want to interfere in his relationship with the divine Della. Since I requested nothing from him, he gladly placed himself in my hands on many different occasions in many different locations. I loved feeling his forbidden flesh and smelling his sweet skin; I could close my eyes and imagine him shimmering onstage, and for those few moments I gave him back some of the intense pleasure he had given me so many times. And I still felt like he was doing me a favor.
Haight-Ashbury wafted south and I longed to stand on that very corner, breathe the unwashed hippie air, see all the dirty bare feet, and even if it was only for a weekend, I wanted to live in a commune and eat brown rice off communal dishes, maybe meet some pretty hippie boy and discover the true meaning of life.
I didn’t want to go alone, especially since my ’59 Chevy convertible bit the dust, so I invited my one remaining Beatle friend, Linda, to make the trip with me. I was hoping she might want to expand her horizons about four hundred miles and accompany me to San Francisco. As it turned out, she moved into the first commune we entered and became “housemother,” which means she did all the cooking and cleaning. Very communal.
We got a ride up there with a few other L.A. explorers and went directly to Haight-Ashbury to see what was going on. As excited as I was about being in a new environment and being where the concept of peace and love had reoriginated, I was dismayed with the hippie look. The girls had straight stringy hair with lots of split ends, and had their bodies covered up with long sacky peasant dresses and shawls. Makeup was a no-no, but the natural look was much too natural for me; I had my lipstick tube on my person at all times. The boys looked a little better; they all wore jeans so at least you could see the shape of their bottoms. The girls got away with murder, hiding a multitude of sins under a multitude of yardage, but the feeling of “we are one” pervaded and I blended in with the mass consciousness as though I had been born at the Free Clinic.
Linda and I walked back and forth and up and down the streets and let it be known that we were looking for a commune. Everyone seemed to panhandle from everyone else, so we asked a bespectacled, pimply blond guy for some spare change just to see how it felt. It was our cosmic luck that we chose this particular guy, because he asked us to come to his commune, Kerista House, and share dinner with “the family.” The way I imagined communal living was a far cry from what greeted me after our journey across the bridge into Oakland. In the living room were about six or seven funky sheetless mattresses and a couple of ripped-up chairs, and people were lolling around, dressed in those hand-painted Indian bedspreads that should have been on the bare beds. Tacked up on the peeling walls were numerous curling posters for the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore, announcing such major acts as the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. The girls gave us serene know-it-all smiles and the guys looked us up and down just like regular guys in L.A. always did, which was disconcerting; I thought there might be another level of communication in the land of peace and love. The towels in the bathroom looked like Salvation Army rejects and had obviously been the target for all the Kerista House feet. I tried to avoid looking at the little piles of pubic hair adorning the once-white sink, and concentrated on the true meaning of communal living. These people had deeper things on their minds than Mr. Clean and Spic and Span.
After our meal of sticky brown rice and smelly old vegetables, which I consumed with a joyous show of good vibes, I itched to get back to Haight-Ashbury to enjoy the night life. Linda chose to stay behind and become one with the pimply guy and the rest of the family. She had recently been traumatized when her air-force father burst out of the closet, where he had been lurking for many years behind his collegiate crew cut. He totally shattered his large family’s foregone conclusion that Daddy would love Mommy forever. Linda wanted to believe that it was OK for him to be gay, since we were all one anyway, but she was having trouble convincing herself. At this moment, all she wanted was to feel like she belonged somewhere, and to create another family to merge with. By staying at Kerista House, she was flipping her father the big bird.
Haight-Ashbury smelled like a redwood-sized incense stick as I made my way through the wild conglomeration of peaceful humanity. The air was so sticky-sweet that I knew if I happened to touch anyone or anything, I would stick to it like bubble gum on the bottom of my high-heeled sandal. There was lots of pot going around, but I still believed it led to heroin, so I declined as if I were high enough already. I probably got high on the air anyway—I felt like I was walking on it.
When I reached the Psychedelic Supermarket, which was blaring the Grateful Dead into unwashed ears and sending out a spectrum of colors for dilated eyes, a perfectly stunning specimen asked me for some spare change. I didn’t have any, but I made a show of looking for some, hoping he would linger long enough to become entranced by me. As I dug around in the bottom of my hand-embroidered purse, made by Szou, I noticed he was wearing a top hat and had one of those big white Eskimo dogs on a homemade paisley leash. He was kind to me even though I couldn’t accommodate him, and I watched as he scored a few coins from another girl. I didn’t act surprised when he came back to ask me if I would like to get a doughnut.
As we walked around the corner, he bent my ear as though he had been alone on a desert island for two years. His name was Bummer Bob because he was the first person in San Fransisco to call panhandling “bumming”; his dog was called Snowfox, and was the best friend a man ever had. His eyes were pale but piercing, an intense blue, and he stared hard as he spoke of his lonely life, but he liked to be alone because no one had ever understood him. He was a poet, a misunderstood poet, but that was OK too because someday they would all know his name; but he would still wind up alone, so it didn’t really matter anyway. We ate doughnuts in the darkest doughnut shop in the world, and he read his poetry from a tattered book by candlelight with such ferocity, I thought he might cry. I don’t remember what any of it was about, but I thought it was scary and beautiful. He read it like I were a huge audience, and seemed surprised when he reached the end and I was the only one applauding. We walked over to Golden Gate Park and made out fervently. I imagined he was Keats or Byron, a doomed beauty from another realm, and I was the only one on earth who understood him.
Years later I saw him on TV being interviewed by Truman Capote; he was Bobby Beausoleil, Charles Manson’s cupid-faced killer. He chopped off Gary Hinman’s ear and taunted him with it, then tortured and killed him and some other unfortunate guy. He had no remorse at all, and even said he would do it again. His eyes had turned into hard, flat, matte black buttons, like somebody had thrown darts into them, and I tried to remember what his poetry had been about. I could only recall a beautiful, strange boy who was all alone with his poems and an elegant top hat, and I wondered what happened to Snowfox, the best friend a man ever had.
The next glorious day held a monumental event, the first Human-Be-In at Golden Gate Park. (Whoever dreamed up that name for the event was a total genius and should have his or her name written somewhere to commemorate his or her moment of brilliance!) It was like an enormous picnic, only everyone was together instead of on separate blankets with separate identities. The sky was the bluest, the trees were the greenest, babies in tie-dye were toddling around with gooped-up bananas in their little fists, dogs were running loose and free, everyone was smiling and glad to be alive on the planet. It was a true resurgence of love and it must have been felt as far away as the isle of Capri. I was floating around in the Garden of Eden, thrilled to be a human being at the Human-Be-in, knowing the world could be saved if we loved one another. I was draped in flowers, bestowed upon me by my brothers and sisters. I was a laughing, loving, living, breathing Princess of Peace . . .
Saturday, January 14, 1967 . . . I loved and laughed with 15,000 people, including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Tim Leary, Michael McLure, and the wonderful San Francisco pop bands. I loved “The Quicksilver Messenger Service.” I was quite attracted to Gary, the lead singer, and was fortunate enough to tell him he was beautiful.
When it came right down to it, rock and roll groups were my life.
I slept that night on a stinky, smelly mattress at Kerista House with two other people I’d never met, and had the best sleep of my life. Linda had turned into housemom overnight, and when I asked, “Are you sure you’ll be happy here?” she staunchly defended her new station in life. We hugged and I told her I would be back soon and we could share hot apple pie at the Doggie Diner, which was directly across the street. She was beaming as I bid farewell, but in a tremendously spacy way. Maybe she had taken acid.
At home, in my warm, cozy, clean childhood bed, with all four Beatles grinning down at me from all four walls, I thought of Linda and tried to imagine her picking pubic hair from gritty tiles and poking through garbage cans for wilted green beans, and I was glad to be snug as a bourgeois bug in a rug.
I tromped around the Strip, becoming a regular with all the other regulars, getting more daring and having more fun. An elegant old man, Bob Stone, head violinist with Toscanini, who was a fixture on Sunset, proclaimed me “the Queen of the Hips and the Rocks.” He wanted to be the King, but was about fifty years too late, which he constantly regretted. He called titties “headlights,” and bottoms “bumpers,” and we called him “What’s Happening Bob,” because he always wanted to know. Whenever I was hungry, he would buy me a burger at Ben Frank’s or Canter’s and try to talk me into giving him a tumble. The horrible night I found out Chris Hillman had gotten married, I fainted into the glass doors of Canter’s and almost cracked my head open. Bob was there to console me while I sobbed into my strawberry cream pie. I got crushes on lots of different boys, but Chris had captivated a chunk of my heart for eternity.
June 8 . . . I’m in rather a serene mood, I want some excitement, something thrilling, a change—radical and swift, beautiful and new. I’m not certain whether I want it to be lasting or brief.
It turned out to be brief and lasting.
A new club called Bido Lido’s opened up at the other end of Sunset, in a basement up an alleyway under an old office building, and I was thrilled because I always loved a new club. Beverly and I dressed up as man and wife one sultry evening and decided to check out the brand new band, the Doors. Excitedly, we steered ourselves down the steep white steps, pressing against the wall in dramatic fashion when someone attempted to pass us on their way up. (I got to rub up against Sky Saxon of the Seeds on his way up the stairs for fresh air.) The club was packed to capacity, so Beverly and I connived our way to the top of the only booth to see what the big fuss was about.
A bunch of pretty ordinary guys came onstage and proceeded to go into a pretty ordinary number when a guy in black leather slithered on and filled the place so completely that everyone else might as well have been in the La Brea tar pits. I sat bolt upright and gasped at the glorious sight—someone new and local to drool and dribble over! It was a historical moment. He clutched the microphone like it was a crucial part of his body and he moaned like he really meant it. He moved with the unnatural grace of someone out of control, grounded only by the fact that his feet happened to be on the floor. On top of all this, he looked like a Greek god gone wrong, with masses of dark-brown curls and a face that sweaty dreams are made of. And he sang with a strong baritone groan, punctuated with snarls and sweetness and indecent desire. I blacked out.
From that night on, I was part of the Doors’ audience, standing in front, listening to Jim Morrison put into words all those deep, dark feelings of angst that we thought were unspeakable. The girls understood his rebel poetry and imagined all that animal magnetism under the sheets. “The men don’t know, but the little girls understand.”
May 20 . . . You surge to the stage, moving around and around like a human tide coming in, and the lights go out. You’re screaming and breathing and waiting in the warm dark, knowing that Jim Morrison is about to plant himself right above you.
That was the first night I saw him dive into the audience. It was a swan dive, the kind I was trying to do at the YWCA in the summer of ’56, only Jim Morrison didn’t hold his nose. He just let go of himself and careened into the black hole, knowing the masses would hold him up. HE came to US, like no one had done before, and no one would do again.
The Iron Butterfly’s bass player sunlighted at a hospital during the day, doing menial tasks, and one afternoon he came upon a clear liquid, used to inject into ladies in labor, commonly called a saddle-block. He had an occasion to sniff it and found that it instantly altered his consciousness to the extent that he lifted several quarts of it that very day. I happened to be at the Butterfly house that very day, hoping to find Daryl in a receptive mood, when Jerry arrived with a load of this stuff, called Trimar. At this point in my life I was a drug virgin; I hadn’t tainted my lungs or liver yet and didn’t have any imminent plans to do so. Daryl and Jerry were pouring it onto whatever piece of cloth was available, inhaling deeply, and collapsing like Jell-O in a giggling heap. A few minutes later they were seminormal and would sniff again, going into ecstatic paroxysms that dissolved into beatific grins. In between takes I wanted a description of the feeling it gave and Daryl shoved a soaked wad of cloth into my nose. I fell spinning down the rabbit hole with all the walls breathing and twenty wah-wah pedals twanging in my brain. Of course, at that point I got my own sodden wad. I believed that the clearness of the liquid denied the fact that it could possibly be a harmful drug. The going rate for Trimar on the street was ten dollars for a teensy-tinsy vial, and I had a quart bottle in my newly acquired ‘62 Olds glove compartment at all times. I had yet to smoke pot or take pills or acid, but I spent many hours in the zone with my crystal-clear killer drug. (Even when I found out that it was used in zoos to knock out gorillas and elephants, I refused to believe it could also knock out my brain cells.)
I met a girl at the Cheetah who lived above the Country Canyon Store, smack-dab in the heart of Laurel Canyon, and we became instant friends. I would sit and gaze out her huge picture window that overlooked the roof of the store and Kirkwood Avenue (where you turned to go up to Chris Hillman’s house), contemplate my future, and daydream about being someone’s rock and roll wife. Sandy worked at some straight job, so I would spend the night and wake up around noon to a quiet, empty house and pretend I lived there with Donovan (if I was in a mellow mood) or Jim Morrison (if I was feeling brilliant and daring). On nights when Beverly and I had spent many wild hours of Sunset Strip fun, we would both sleep over, then wake up the next day and gaze out the window together.
We hardly ever wore any clothes when we were alone, and a horrific incident took place at Sandy’s canyon sanctuary one afternoon. Beverly and I were stark-raving in front of the enormous picture window, dancing to “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds without a single care in the world. As we collapsed to the floor, out of breath, we heard a pounding at the door and dashed to cover ourselves with Sandy’s fake-fur couch cover. Two gruff voices demanded entrance, insisting on having a piece of what they saw being flaunted in the picture window. When we refused them, one guy tried to break down the door while the other started on the windows. I frantically chased around the house trying to shut and lock the open windows before Mr. Obnoxious got to them. When we screeched for the police at the top of our voices and grabbed for the phone to scream rape, their pig-headed commotion ceased and we assumed the goons had come to their senses and fled the canyon. After we calmed down, the whole thing seemed hilarious and we had a big laugh. I was still giggling on my way into the bathroom, and as I sat down on the pot to pee, I looked up and saw one of the lascivious old farts squinting in at me, his stubble damp with dribble. I let out another piercing squeal, Beverly ran in shouting that the police had just arrived, and with a bug-eyed grin he was gone. It seemed like I was always in the danger zone without knowing how I got there.
I had been hanging around the canyon house for a couple of weeks, when I awakened one day to the glorious sound of the Doors seeping in under the windowshade in the womb room where I was still sleeping at two in the afternoon. I knew they had recorded an album, but it hadn’t been released yet! Who had a copy? Who-who-who within a hundred yards of my presence had a copy? Preparing myself for a blast of the perpetual sunlight, I emerged from my blankets to seek out the owner of the record. I was thrilled to realize that the music was coming from the green shack-house to my left and down a few dozen precarious steps. In Laurel Canyon, that meant right next door. I threw on a little purple dress and started down the steps to make the acquaintance of the ultrahip neighbor who had a prereleased copy of the Doors’ first album.
I decided to peek in a window first so I wouldn’t catch this hip person in the middle of an act of intimacy brought on by the sensual moans of Jim Morrrison. I tiptoed onto the rickety porch, looked into the kitchen, and clapped my hand over my mouth to capture the scream that threatened to shatter the staggering moment. Jim Morrison in the FLESH, wearing nothing but his black leather pants, was digging around in the fridge, humming along with “The End”; “Mother, I want to . . .” Oh my God!!! I pinched myself, peeked again for the sheer joy of it, and scrambled back up the stairs to decide what to do next. He moves, he breathes, he lives next door!!!!
By the time Sandy got home from work, I was a puddle on her kitchen floor and had reached the place where Carlos Casteneda only dreams about. In one of my semilucid moments, I told her about her infamous, soon-to-be-famous neighbor and she suggested I knock on his door and introduce myself like a good neighbor should. In my bonzo condition, I said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” I don’t know how long it took me to get down the steps; the gongs were always bonging away in my brain, so I couldn’t hear the birds twittering or cars going by, much less the ticking of my cheap Timex.
When I came to my extremely sensual senses, I was in the middle of a perfect backbend on Jim Morrison’s tatty Oriental rug, my purple velvet minidress completely over my head, his redheaded girlfriend glaring down at me. I expected Rod Serling to appear in the doorway to narrate this ultimate in “uh-oh” moments.
Trying to regain a drop of composure, I stood up out of my backbend and offered the redhead a spot of Trimar, avoiding the lizard king who hovered in the corner whispering “Get it on” under his breath. She told me I had better leave and I didn’t even remember arriving! Bowing and scraping, I backed out the door and ran back up the stairs, berating myself profusely for being such an idiot. I should have known he didn’t live alone (not that it would have made one bit of difference in my cockeyed condition). My ears had just stopped ringing when there was a noisy commotion down in the green house; we heard a shrill voice screaming “Don’t you dare go up there!” and then Jim was at the door, smiling sheepishly, a glint in his eye. He was very interested in my quart of Trimar, accepted my handkerchief, and inhaled deeply. Social amenities were out the window for the next few hours. We sniffed the stuff, lolling around the floor, laughing at everything, until the bottle was dry. The good thing about Trimar was that you got no hangover from it, no headache or any kind of comedown, but you definitely wanted more. By this time it was the middle of the night and I was unable to obtain a second bottle, so Jim said a pleasant good-night and thanked Sandy and me for the wonderful hospitality. I was disappointed that he had made no attempt to lay a hand on me, but I had hopes for the future, the very near future as a matter of fact.
The very next night, the Doors were playing the Hullabaloo Club at Sunset and Vine (formerly the Moulin Rouge with the big forties lady’s face peeling off the front of the building, her red neon lips still flickering) and I made sure to have a bottle of Trimar for the event. I had recently learned about sound checks, and knew to be at the club between four and six o’clock, when the band checked the monitors and instruments for the evening’s entertainment. I went around to the back and perched blatantly on the steps to the backstage door, wearing a handmade black-and-white-striped bell-bottom set, carrying my precious, pathetic muskrat jacket and an orange-juice jar full of Trimar. I could hear the rest of the band tuning up inside and desperately hoped that Jim would arrive, sans redhead, scoop me up, take me BACKSTAGE, and kiss my lips off. And that’s exactly what happened.
I had a couple of hankies in my homemade matching black-and-white bag, and during our make-out session we indulged wildly in the mind-damaging drug. I had never kissed anyone while high before and it was a revelation! I melted in his mouth like honey, my whole body became sticky liquid, and his fingers on my face pushed holes through my cheeks like they were on fire and left gaping holes where more honey gushed out. I sat very still in a gooey puddle while he went onstage to check his groans, and when he came back I was coming to my senses. He took me by the hand and we climbed a rickety ladder up to a dingy, dark loft where a bunch of old lighting equipment was rusting away, and taking my muskrat jacket, he laid it out on the wooden planks like a damsel was in distress. What a face he had! One of God’s greatest gifts to rock and roll was that guy’s face. And there he was right above me, his lips parted and his eyes closed, going in and out of focus as I inhaled my hanky. We rolled around up there for a timeless time until a familiar sound crept into our senses. Jim recognized it before I did and was making his way down the ladder as I sat up and heard the first few bars of “Light My Fire.” Was the sound check still going on? I pulled my clothes on, following Jim, and as he reached the microphone I looked down to see the place full of wriggling, squirming audience! I was ONSTAGE with the Doors, my mouth hanging wide open, dragging my tatty coat, my half-bottle of Trimar, and my soppy hankies, too shocked to move. A kind roadie put his arm around me and escorted me to the wings, where I waited for Jim to collect me after the show, which to my delight he did.
He drove my Oldsmobile all around Hollywood and I sat next to him, cuddling up like I had his ring around my neck, and we talked about Trimar. He said it might be “hurting our heads” and gave me a lecture on drug abuse, telling me the persona he put forward was an elaborate act, and he really wanted to be noticed as a poet. On our way to Tiny Naylor’s on La Brea, he pulled the car over, grabbed the bottle of Trimar, and threw it out the window into a yard full of overgrown ivy. “Now we won’t be tempted.” We had date-nut bread and fresh orange juice while the sun came up, then cruised the silent Strip to a little hotel where he was staying during his feud with the redhead.
May 31 . . . After some heavy necking, he climbed from behind the wheel and said, “I really want to see you again, darling, come here and see me or call any time.” I called and he had checked out. What a drag.
That was the only time I had my hands on Jim Morrison; he turned out to be very much a one-woman man. As far as I know, he spent the rest of his life with the redhead, whose name was also Pamela, and the relationship was of the stormy nature, but I guess he loved her madly and vice versa. I didn’t dare return to the green house after she ordered me out, so I had to be content with waking up in a hot sweat, that glorious face hovering over me in my damp dreams. He did a good deed for me without even knowing it; he helped me ditch the Trimar. I figured he had reason to toss it in the ivy; I’m sure he had a lot more experience with drugs than I did, and even though I went back to scrounge in the ivy for it, I didn’t sniff it anymore. I followed his advice, and every time I heard him sing “Light My Fire” I was certain he had changed the words to:
“The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Trimar, we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre . . .”
A little less than a year later, my newest best girlfriend, Miss Lucy, and I were desperate enough for a good time to check out Ohio’s version of the Archies, the Ohio Express, at the Whiskey a Go Go. They were gallantly attempting to entertain the jaded fun-seekers when Jim Morrison staggered in. I wrote a massive entry in my journal at three A.M. (I had changed from diary to journal by this time; it sounded more mature.)
April 27, 1968 . . . Insanity. I’ve never seen true insanity until now. I’ve never sat beside it and heard it speak in senseless empty words, trying to communicate with the outside world until now. I suppose I encountered it briefly as I stood beneath him so many times on stage as he moaned and pleaded with us. The night of the trimar, when he told me his entire scene was an act, I should have looked deeper into the words. He is the act! My God!! Now when I listen to his records, groaning and screaming, my stomach churns and I clutch at myself, imagining what he might be doing this very minute. How perfectly he has reached his insanityl Can insanity be perfect, I wonder? He took a full bottle of beer and threw it into Miss Lucy’s face tonight, and when she screamed, “That wasn’t very nice!” he looked up painfully and said “I know.” Why did he do it? What’s the reason he spits on people, beats on them, throws up on them? What can be going on in his head? I’m fascinated while others are repulsed. How wonderful to do what your body tells you to do. Animals don’t care where they pee or throw up. If it weren’t for his money and friends, he would lay in the gutter at night. They had to turn the sound and lights off at The Whiskey tonight because he climbed on stage with the very upset Ohio Express and shoved the microphone down his pants! People aren’t ready for him, but they watch because it’s him. If Joe Blow was making an ass out of himself up there, everyone would split instead of waiting patiently for him to grab his penis. (wishing they could) He’s such a one-of-a-kind freak, so beautiful . . . I’ve never seen a more exquisite face. I wish I could communicate with him again, to hear him say something other than “Get it on,” “suck my mama,” or “alright . . . yeah.”
“In the no-pop-star-is-perfect-department: Jim Morrison managed to wreck two cars in one week. He managed not to wreck himself or anyone else. Careful choice of targets?”
I just clipped this out of a magazine. They failed to mention that after he wrecked the cars he just left them in the streets and wandered into the abyss. Life would never be boring with him. It seems such a short time ago that we were running down the stairs together, and he said “I was always going to marry a virgin.” (That’s when I was one) He had some sensible moments then, even though he read all he could about incest and sadism and always fought with his girlfriend; at least he could communicate with the people around him. Captain Beef heart asked the drummer, John Densmore, why he didn’t get Jim to meditate, and he said first he would have to get him to communicate! The group seems to have given up worrying about him. What can they do?
When we were sitting at his table tonight I had my eyes closed and was listening to the music when I heard him mumble “I’m going to take over . . . out of sight,” and then he reached over and slapped my face real hard and yelled “Get it On!!!” All I wanted at that moment was for him to beat the hell out of me . . .
Did I really? I guess I was in some kind of teenage masochistic mood that night.
He prodded and provoked, tested and tormented everyone around him to see if he could get an honest reaction. At least that’s the way it appeared to me, an eighteen-year-old bystander, basking momentarily in his glamorous, tawdry glow.
The last time I saw him was right before he left for Paris. I had decided to try commercials on for size, and was walking down La Cienega after trying to pitch Adorn hair spray to Middle America when I heard someone yell, “Hey, slow down!” Jim was on the other side of the street, driving a big American convertible full of guys, and he turned left into the Benihana parking lot, stopping me dead in my tracks. He was bearded and heavy but had a twinkle in his eye and seemed on top of the world. He told me how nice it was to see me again and how pretty I looked. He took my hand and kissed it, winking at his friends like I was a real dish; then he backed into the honking traffic and careened down the street.