The Iron Butterfly was steaming into the chorus of “I Was Taught to Ignore Evil Temptation” (I should have dedicated that one to myself!) when I spotted a large reel-to-reel tape recorder gleaming underneath one of the tacky tables from across the dance floor. Someone as fanatical as myself had carted the massive thing into the Galaxy just to capture these ecstatic, unforgettable moments for all time, and I had to find out who it was so I could congratulate him or her on having such immaculate taste. When the song was over, I watched as a small doll-girl with saucer eyes and raven ringlets planted herself in front of the tape recorder and started fiddling with the dials. She looked sort of familiar, so I flitted across the dance floor, anticipating a brand-new friendship. I still saw a lot of Beverly, but she had allowed her sad side to overpower whatever joie de vivre I was able to inspire, so I was slowly seeking a divorce. She had discovered the numbing joy of downers and I had to take second place to Seconal, and sometimes third if she found a partner willing to dabble in her coveted crime. I dabbled with her momentarily, just to be in the realm of her senses, but I made a dangerous fool out of myself in front of the Whiskey a Go Go over a dangerous fool who wasn’t worth all my weepy, downed-out dramatics.
New girls were just as exciting to me as new boys (well, almost), so I approached this adorable big-eyed girl with high hopes and asked her to dance with me to the brand-new Butterfly song, which I thought was called “In the Garden of Eden,” but which was really “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” (Eventually it would become the Iron Butterfly’s only hit.) For the next few days she and I presented our entire identities to each other, wrapped up like giant presents with big shiny bows. Her name was Sparky, and she looked familiar because we had graduated from Northridge Junior High and Cleveland High together! Even though we had walked on opposite sides of the campus, we both worshiped the same yell leader, Frank DiBiase. You remember him as the skinny little twerp who wanted the entire school to know that I wore yellow silk scarves in the top of my pink-checked two-piece.
Sparky and I called each other “Doll” because of the women’s-prison movies that we watched and mimicked together. There was one incredibly horrific B feature called Caged! where the steel-eyed ominous matron gets a twanging fork in the tit, heaved with relish by a psycho case who should have been in a straightjacket. Just as the hard-assed matron is laying down the law to our doe-eyed heroine in the cafeteria, this loon on her left leans forward and sticks it right into the old dame’s heaving bosom. A joyous riot ensues as the old dame dies a slow death.
We also enjoyed the forties moll movies and sometimes dressed
Teen atop Caddy
The necklace said “Dion 4-ever”
Twisting the night away with Daddy
Bitchen’ Bob and The Beatles
Making out with Bob Martine in front of the ever-present faces of Paul McCartney
Pre-Beefheart
Post-Beefheart
Entering unknown realms of hipness at the Lenny Bruce eulogy
Flower child
Sugar-Pie Honey-Bunch
A memorable scene from The Massage Parlor
Burrito Heaven: (from left, top row) “Sneeky” Pete Kleinow, Christine, Gram Parsons, me, Chris Hillman, Miss Mercy, Brandon de Wilde; (from left, bottom row) Chris Ethridge, Cynderella, Miss Sandra
like those stacked-heeled dolls and called each other “Butch” or “Cleo,” pretending all the boys we encountered were men. Divulging secrets constantly, we were best friends within a couple of weeks. When I daydream about Sparky and me in those early days, I conjure up Sandra Dee lying on her perfect creamy tummy, wriggling on a frilly pink-eyelet bedspread. Her demure nightie has been adeptly angled to cover strategic thigh area, and she squeals with demure delight to her giggly girlfriend about some tall, blond Troy Donahue American.
One of our earliest and most unforgettable evenings began on a brightly lit corner in the Valley, where we stood under a lamppost asking likely-looking passersby if they would please go into Thrifty’s and come out with a jug of Gallo. The first two must have been Prohibitionists, but the third prospect was kind of Dustin Hoffmanish, and he did the dirty deed for us without much coaxing. Sparky and I had never been drunk before, so we had no idea how much of the swill would do the trick. Right next to Thrifty’s was an all-girls Catholic school, so we shimmied over the fence to break the liquor law with the Lord. I kept saying I didn’t feel anything, but I could hardly get the words out, I was cracking up so hard. We must have swigged three quarters of the big green jug, and dribbled the other 25 percent down the front of our matching handmade hankie dresses, before we went out on the corner to hitch into Hollywood, stopping briefly to pee in holy bushes.
We had zero trouble getting rides, but quite often a pervert would be sitting behind the wheel. Praise be to Allah that a decent, regular guy picked us up that drunken night, because we were extremely easy targets with a disadvantage. Sparky must have ingested more booze than I did because I carried on most of the conversation with Mr. Normal. He probably thought he was being quite daring by stopping for two hopped-up, falling-down teenage girls, so I helped his fantasy along a little by telling him we were members of a witches’ coven on LSD. He took us all the way to the Strip so he could hear the whole sordid story.
Sparky had long ago succumbed to jibberish, and had already started drooling, when we pulled up in front of the Whiskey to see the stunning double bill of Steppenwolf and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers. We had been members of the audience the night before and were entranced with the bass player (his name escapes me) and baby-faced Mick Taylor, the best guitar player I had ever heard. When I reached over and opened the huge American-car door, Sparky fell into the gutter, her eyeballs spinning. I knew we were in trouble at that moment because I looked straight into the red eyes of a stern-faced Strip cop who was standing on the corner waiting for the likes of me to come along. I made drunken attempts to revive my new best friend who was happily lying in the gutter telling me she loved me, she loved me, before I made a mad-dash escape across the street and into the Union 76 ladies’ room. As I careened, bug-eyed, across the Sunset on a red light, I heard Rodney Bingenheimer cheering for me to outrun the two enraged cops. My heart was pounding but I felt safe on top of the commode, knowing that MEN would never enter a LADIES’ room, much less open the door to a stall!! I was outraged and appalled when they forcibly removed me from my secure hiding place and dared to handcuff me! I heard one of them say to the other, “We can add resisting arrest to the drunk and disorderly.” I tried tears and begging forgiveness, but they turned a typical deaf ear to my tragic pleas. By the time we got back to the squad car, quite a crowd had gathered, cheering me and jeering the cops. I felt like a celebrity and took the appropriate bows until they tossed me into the backseat, where Sparky was also handcuffed and in a fit of weepy giggles.
The charming police officers ignored us all the way to the Beverly Hills police station, and Sparky was too far gone to realize what was really happening. She had a stupefied goony look on her face that belied any semblance of rational brain activity, and I’m sure she thought she was in the middle of one of her wacko dreams. When we arrived at the station and a police woman removed the gold-plated cross from around my neck, I called them all blasphemous motherfuckers who would burn in hell for wrenching Jesus away from me in my time of need. It took them a long time to fingerprint us, and I’d love to have a framed eight-by-ten of my mug shot, but when I realized they weren’t going to let me call my mother, I pounded the walls of my cell and called them the most heinous things I could conjure up in my condition. I told them that if my mother died with worry and grief, thinking I was dead in a Mulholland ravine, it would be all their fault. They were invisibly unimpressed.
As the night wore on, Sparky threw up on the prickly gray blanket, where she lay mewling in a comatose state, and I slowly regained my sanity, hoping and praying we would be shown mercy. When we reached the same wavelength, we had mammoth hangovers and were scared to death of being jailbirds. After they condescended to let us call our worried moms, we were led to a kindly old judge who put us on three years’ probation and gave us a curfew of eleven o’clock for six months. This was unthinkable! Our lives on the street were just beginning, and nothing happened before eleven o’clock!!
After we had been dismissed from the courtroom, we begged for a private audience with His Honor to plead for the right to our nights. I was surprised that he allowed us into his chambers, maybe he was having a particularly boring day, but we played the mortified, chagrined good girls to the hilt. Poor Sparky, reeking of regurgitated Gallo, tried dismally to hide her soiled hankies from His Honor, while I brought forth poignant spurting tears. After several threats and warnings, he lowered the sentence to six months’ probation and a two-week curfew. After kissing his kind old ass for a few minutes, we were back out in the sunlight on our knees, kissing the green, green grass of Beverly Hills, our heads splitting open and spewing out cheapo rosé.
I took Sparky to Vito’s very next outing at the Shrine Auditorium to see L. A.’s local soul band, the Chambers Brothers, and their forty-five-minute rendition of their only hit, “Time.” She adored the concept of Vito, but kept her distance from his lascivious, dribbling old tongue, and was very diplomatic about fending off Captain Fuck’s proposals. Szou took a fancy to Sparky as well (it was so cool to be bisexual!), but Sparky hung on to me like we did it all the time, so Szou assumed we were a true-blue item and laid off. The dancing was always fun. Vito and Karl brought out the lurking lunacy in everyone, so nothing was too weird or too freaky, and we all tried to outdo each other on the dance floor. People would stand and gawk as Vito went into his usual routine of picking one of us up and slinging us across the room, preferably with our dresses up over our heads. I realized that it was no fun to wind up across the room in a heap with several hippies peering at my pubic hair, so I astutely avoided Vito when he came at me with outstretched arms. (He thought we should be thrilled at the prospect.) I preferred to roll all over the floor with the girls, tits and panties flying. Vito’s private part was Hollywood-famous, and he made sure he prodded anyone who dared to come close enough for inspection. He would beckon pretty girls to come join the troupe, making promises of madness that would surely come true.
After the Shrine, Vito invited a select few to come home with him to observe a tender fondling session. I had never witnessed two women in the heat of passion, so I dragged Sparky along to check it out. When we arrived at the pungent palace, the moans had already started and we pressed through the oglers to Szou and Vito’s tiny bedroom, which consisted of a doily-laden four-poster on which two tenderly young girls were tonguing each other to shriek city. It was such an odd occurrence; no one seemed to be getting off sexually by watching the pubescent girls, but everyone was silently observing the scene as if it were part of their necessary training by the headmaster, Vito. (Except for Karl, who was making no attempt to control his ecstasy.) One of the girls on the four-poster was only twelve years old, and a few months later Vito was deported to Tahiti for this very situation, and many more just like it.
Miss Lucy, a Puerto Rican bombshell who was a regular around Vito’s, didn’t seem to be enjoying this particular festivity, and was in the living room trying on Szou’s wall hangings. She had a sway-back, so her bottom stuck out like she was asking for it, and she was in the process of swaddling it with a long red-fringe scarf, wrapping it around and around, when Sparky and I emerged from the den of iniquity, having seen quite enough, thank you. “Good evening!” she said with disgust as we found a spot to sit down amid piles of rags and lace pieces that Szou had been combining to create a new garment for some lucky customer. Now, “good evening” didn’t really mean good evening, it meant get lost with this lame-o situation, or how disgusting, or forget this shit, but Sparky and I knew just what she meant concerning the porno display and sighed in agreement. I admired Lucy from a distance before this incident; she was a couple of years older and had been on the scene longer, and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind right out loud at all times. I felt closer to her after the astute “good evening,” and from that night on she teamed up with Sparky and me whenever we went dancing.
I loved being with Lucy; she had no inhibitions and helped me to squelch any that I was hanging on to (she thought my virginity was hilarious). She loved both sexes, though she hung out most of the time with very, very sweet boys. The love of her life was a half-Indian multisexual called Mr. Bernardo, who was currently residing in county jail. She bestowed upon me a lock of his very long black hair, forcibly removed from his head in prison, and I carried it around in my wallet long before I met him. “Miss Thing,” as she was lovingly called on the streets, came from Puerto Rico via New York City, and was a hot tamale with a blazing temper; although she usually got along with everyone, watch out if anybody got in her way. Sparky and I felt secure holding her hand.
I met a guy with several cameras around his neck at a love-in, and as he recorded history, he took lots of shots of me prancing around half naked, preening for the sun. His name was Allen Daviau, and he wanted to take pictures for my acting portfolio for free!! He hovered around, tagging along behind me for days, capturing my teen essence for eternity. We spent hours in my backyard while I emoted intensely on the patio and cuddled my cat for the camera in a very cutsie way. I wanted to attract many moguls and become the next SOMEBODY.
One morning, Allen called and told me to put on my freakiest ensemble and rush downtown to dance in a film with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. When I arrived, wearing a teensy blue-velvet item, I could hear “Foxy Lady” pouring out the windows of this huge circular hippie pad, painted neon green and hot pink. Three frizz heads were the center of attention, and as I entered, the frizz in the middle said, “What’re you doing later?” I smiled and started shaking, because Jimi Hendrix was a formidable-looking gentleman. He had a big psychedelic glaring eyeball on his wacky jacket and his hair kinked out blatantly in every direction. I could smell sex all over him; even his pockmarks sizzled. He was black and I was extremely pink (or was it yellow?) and not ready for an encounter with this formidable man on fire. I tossed my hair in a pretense of savoir-faire and went off to find Allen. He put me on a tall white pedestal and I wiggled my ass for hours while “Foxy Lady” played repeatedly and the cameras rolled. Jimi’s rake-thin sidemen were right up my back alley, and I made sleepy eyes with the bass player, Noel Redding, until the end of the day when he asked me to go back to the hotel with him. I thought Jimi and his jacket would give me the evil eye, but he just laughed, knowing he was too much for the likes of little me. Longer, taller blondes loomed large in his legend.
There I was, in what was about to become my favorite position in the world, hanging on to the hand of an English rock star. We swam in the pool and kissed each other from head to toe. Noel was a country boy from Kent, and a very good introduction to English-ness. He was freshly famous, and very happy to be in America where girls were ripe for the sticking. He approved of my virginity, but wanted to be the one to lead me down the porno path to the glories beyond, and insisted that I save the moment of explosion for him. He took me to the Hollywood Bowl the next night, where I reveled in being by his side. I was with the band.
August 17, 1967 . . . We swam and laughed and had a beautiful time, he made exquisite love to me and I to him and he soon fell asleep.
August 18 . . . I went to Devan’s for a Jimi Hendrix party, Noel didn’t show up so I went to the hotel where I bumped into Mitch Mitchell (the drummer) and he dragged me into Noel’s room, much to my liking! And there I remained until 5 A.M. He is a lovely man, thick dark hair, pretty, thin, delicate body, dimples, fine hands and a VERY British accent! He gave me his address and I am to “look him up” when I get to London. I really grooved with him.
I somehow held on to my heart when he left town, but couldn’t wait for him to come back, and I treasured the naughty notes he sent me from swinging London, carrying them around with me until they were in tatters. One of them said, “I can’t wait to taste you again,” and it burned a hole through the lining of my pink-velvet purse.
Besides my delicious, insane Hollywood girlfriends, I made some Valley girlfriends who were a couple years younger than me so I could show off some of my newfound incredible hipness. I taught them how to give head on an Oscar Mayer weenie, and turned them on to Love, the Byrds, and the Doors. I told them what it was like to be backstage at the Hollywood Bowl, on a bass player’s arm.
I met Donovan’s conga player, Candy, at the Whiskey, and he invited me out to Malibu Colony to meet Donovan, so I, in turn, invited my teeny teens to come along so they could see firsthand just how hip I really was! We were all grooving in front of the fireplace with Donovan in his long white robes, watching the smoke caress his porcelain skin and curl around his curls, when Wendy, one of the teens, decided to make a call to her mother to tell her how great the movie was. Trembling and crying she returned to the serene scene, busting apart the holy moment between Donovan and his guitar. She must have blown her alibi because she sobbed, “They know everything!! They’re sending the POLICE to come get us!!!” She had been beaten down by her mother and had blabbed to beat the band!! We had to get out of there fast, to spare Donovan an intrusion by the boys in blue. The baby girls were sobbing and I was humiliated beyond recognition as we scuttled from the premises amid chaotic, unpeaceful vibrations. I turned around on my way out the door to bid adieu to the prince of pop poetry, but he was running toward the ocean, his white robes flapping in the wind, his arms outstretched, hurling his pot into the salty waters of the sea.
January 1, 1968 . . . Before I know it, I’ll be a complete adult. I never liked that word, so maybe I’ll never consider myself an adult . . . per say . . . and I must always remember:
Don’t count the stars
Or you’ll stumble
If someone drops a star
Down you’ll tumble . . .
Still desperate to be famous, I scoured the town for an agent, any agent who could get me in the right elevators. I took the perky shots that Allen Daviau had turned into glossy eight-by-tens and traipsed up and down the Hollywood streets, calling attention to myself. I left two dozen photos with two dozen agents, and sat home by the phone, waiting for twenty-four calls. I got one. I went in to read a commercial for the agent, and I couldn’t act!! What a horrendous discovery! One of the lines in the ad was, “You can twirl in a double-belted kiltie!” I thought I would make it look real, and I twirled into her desk, stammering and blushing. She signed me anyway, and I vowed to take acting lessons and become brilliant. I decided to devote my life to my art, and stop making the Sunset Strip my reason for drawing breath.
February 28 . . . I made a fantastic resolution that I am definitely going to keep. NO MORE STRIP! It’s ruining me. Groups aren’t important, hippies are just as phony and screwed as execs. I need something to sustain me other than cavorting up and down the dirty streets, begging and dying for a smile and a kind word.
Sparky and I got a job at a big, ugly cheapo discount store, selling candy from a little glass cubicle, and promised each other to keep our lives in order.
1. Stop forever taking any kind of drug, including grass and Trimar.
2. Don’t rob from the cash register and customers (even a few cents). Don’t take candy for ourselves and friends, and don’t eat extensively.
3. Stop swearing.
4. Don’t depress so easily.
5. Keep no secrets from each other.
6. Keep the Strip pact.
Signed with love, Linda Sue Parker and Pamela Ann Miller
We sewed our hearts together and tried to put them in the right place.
I was mad for the lead guitar player in a local group called Love, and during a rash moment of weakness in the back of Vito’s blue VW van, I let my unrequited crush lead me to the evils of marijuana. All of us girls, Beverly, Sparky, Lucy, and a fabulous earth-mom newcomer, Sandra, and I, were on our way to the Cheetah to see Traffic, featuring the angelic presence of Stevie Winwood. I was raving on to the girls about Bryan MacLean, the redheaded, freckle-faced wonder who decided that he just wanted to “be my friend.” Pot often circulated the van, but this time, when Karl passed me the reefer, I said, “Why not!!” and indulged deeply.
Saturday, March 1 . . . Oh, such fun tonight! We went with Vito, dancing to Traffic and rolled all over the auditorium. Beverly, Spark and I ran into John Densmore of The Doors, and for Bev it was sad; he wasn’t too nice to her, and she takes these things so hard. All of us girls had a slight orgy in Vito’s bus. We have such pretty “bailies” (our secret word for tits.) Stevie Winwood is like a porcelain doll, he’s so pretty. I told him so too, and I got a heavenly smile in return. I sobbed over Bryan again. He’s so nice to me, but we’re just pals. If he only knew what he caused me to do tonight!!
I neglected to document my pot experience in case my journal fell into the wrong hands, but I didn’t stop there; it became part of my life to tie one on once in a while, mainly in Vito’s bus where it was all one big, silly fantasy sequence anyway. I had deep, dramatic thoughts like everyone else when I smoked, and I wrote my share of poetry, which I hoped might change someone’s life someday:
I wonder how many grains of sand
Are on every shore of every land
I’d like to count them one by one
Yet I know that cannot be done
I’d like to run on every beach
Yet almost all are out of reach
I’d like to swim in every sea
But only one is close to me
So I’ll be content to stay right here
On the shore so very near
And wonder how many grains of sand
Are resting here, within my hand.
The mind boggles.
The “slight orgy” we had in the bus involved all of us girls taking off our see-through blouses and kissing each other’s bailies. Vito kept his eyes glued to the rearview mirror and encouraged the proceedings with gusto. We spotted a couple of marines in uniform at a bus stop and all pressed our tantalizing titties against the windows and watched their faces change color and their eyes bulge out like horny toads. I’m sure it will be something they’ll tell in the old folks’ home in the year 2010:
We were minding our own business, waiting for a bus to Fort Dix, when an old blue van pulled up at the light, and a dozen wild hippie women were kissing each other and pressing their bare breasts up to the glass, and calling out, “I bet you’d like to touch us!!” Me and Harry got instant hard-ons inside our uniforms, and had to put our hats over our you-know-whats! No sir, no decade can hold a candle to the sixties.
Sandra was Italian and thought it was great. She should have lived in an exotic villa where she could have had lots of babies, lots of candles at the table, laden down with pasta, and some dashing Zorro to burst through the door at dusk, bringing home the Italian bacon. She was a small, lusty, olive-skinned little hunk, and was the first one of us to get pregnant. When she did, her stomach was proudly displayed, always bare, embellished with painted-on eyes and lips, and with dangly earrings glued to the sides of her nonwaist. Sometimes she would paint a big black star coming out of her navel that matched the one on Lucy’s cheekbone. She added a down-to-earth touch that our ever-growing gaggle of wonderful girls needed to keep our toes touching the ground.
Lucy and Sandra shared the vault in the basement of the log cabin that Tom Mix built on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain Drive, across the street from Houdini’s crumbling mansion. I guess the log cabin could have been called a commune, because crazy Karl Franzoni lived in back of Tom Mix’s personal bowling alley (under which his beloved horse was buried), behind long black drapes, like the phantom of the porno opera. I only went back there in a dire emergency, like the time he painted my portrait, but I was sure to have two chaperones by my side at all times. The first time I happened upon him down in the tomb, he was naked-nakednaked except for plastic clip-on curlers in his pubic hair and a big pair of pointy stomping boots. He was practicing with the tenpins, and looked like a nuthouse escapee from someone’s wildest nightmare.
The girls and I spent a lot of time locked up in the vault, making lists of all the gorgeous boys in bands that we wouldn’t kick out of bed. Lucy and Sandra wrote their lists on the wall and crossed them off one by one as they encountered the lucky lads. I kept my list in a little gold loose-leaf notebook in my purse: None of the names had been crossed off yet, and Mick Jagger was number one, written in flaming red.
Directly across from the vault was a large closet where Christine Frka privately resided. She had immigrated from San Pedro with Sandra but preferred to seclude herself from the sex-crazed goings-on, insisting she was frigid. She was immaculate, tall and extremely thin, with a twisted spine which made her look slightly off-center. I’m sure she had a complex about it, which was why she insisted on a sexless existence. (The only time she told me about sleeping with a certain pop star, she said, “I laid under him for a while and then asked him if he was finished.”) She made all her clothes by hand, stitch, stitch, stitch, on speed. She created one full-length patchwork coat with fur of dubious descent on the cuffs and collar that people tried to buy right off her back. She wouldn’t sell. She had blinding big green eyes, and would peer at us from behind huge stacks of fabric remnants, her face thick with Merle Norman’s lightest light-face goop, as we frolicked around the bowling alley. One day she wanted to come out with us to our favorite thrift store, the Glass Farmhouse where we got all our special effects. It was all the way across town in Silverlake, and all five of us hitchhiked holding hands, even Christine. Well, she wouldn’t really hold your hand, but she would let you hold hers, always remaining aloof and slightly suspicious.
We became a fivesome, attending all events, parties, concerts, love-ins, clubs, any kind of festivity, as a unit. The local girls started to copy our thrilling ensembles, complete with fifty-cent special effects: ribbons around wrists and ankles, tatty silk flowers, pieces of lace in strategic spots, antique panties worn over other garments, piano shawls, slinky teddies, hand-embroidered tablecloths, and the occasional silk umbrella. We were causing such a commotion that within weeks we had our very own camp crawlers, but it was always the five of us at the center, holding on to each other, hoping to inspire or annoy onlookers.
Frank Zappa wanted to live in the log cabin, and I guess he had clout with the mad-as-a-hatter landlady, because Karl and the girls were ousted from the basement and forced to seek accommodations elsewhere. It was easy to dig up a pad around town in a day or two for seventy-five a month, no first and last, no cleaning fee, and no questions asked, but it was no fun to leave the log cabin. It was a real and true log cabin, built with actual logs on a ton of acreage, complete with a stream and minilake, caves, hideaways, blossoms of every scent and shape, creating vines to swing on from end to end. There was supposed to be a secret passageway that led to Houdini’s castle across the street, and we were still searching. It was truly Disney time, and we had no intention of staying away for very long. Lucy knew Frank from New York; how intimately we never found out because she did nothing but allude. She kept her big red mouth shut about that one, because Frank had a divine wife, Gail (who later became my mentor), and a brand-new baby daughter, Moon Unit.
The Mothers of Invention was a motley assortment of ageless wonders concocted by Frank to spin his perverse yarns into memorable pieces of music. I was in the audience the night Frank introduced virtuosity-rock to a bunch of unsuspecting bozo brains and called it a freak-out. I gazed, amazed, as this goofy-looking goateed genius led his team of Quasimodos through their brilliant paces, punctuated by the hurling of severed baby-doll heads into the crowd of gaping groovers. You either adored him or abhorred him, and I adored him beyond the breaking point. After the show, he wandered around among us in all his motley splendor, and I couldn’t resist putting my hands into his long, tangled black hair (after following him around the auditorium for twenty minutes, working up the nerve for this very spontaneous act), and he responded by rolling around the scrungy floor with me, to my joyous amazement. Frank Zappa epitomized all that I believed I was starting to stand for, and I knew he must have spotted me among those struggling to be hip and realized I was teetering on that very verge. Of course, I craved more than a roll on the floor with him; I wanted to have a CONVERSATION with him. I tried to pierce his soft, warm brown eyes with my begging-for-a-crumb baby blues, but it was too dark in there and the tumble on the floor was over much too soon for my liking.
So it looked like I was going to get a second chance to prove to Frank that I was worthy of recognition. When Lucy suggested that we all drop in on Frank at the cabin, I was beside myself with anticipation. When we arrived, he was sitting at the piano in the cavernous living room made of actual logs; there was a fire crackling in the huge rock fireplace, and little baby Moon was crawling around the floor, gurgling. I heard clattering in the kitchen and figured Gail must be in there, churning out a fantastic dinner for her brilliant husband. It was beyond idyllic, right out of an ersatz version of House Beautiful. He was genuinely thrilled to see Lucy, and picked her up off the ground and hugged her until her back cracked; when he came over to meet her new best friends, we all curtsied for him as though he were a reigning monarch. I got all tongue-tied and cross-eyed when we met, but he didn’t seem to notice; actually, he seemed quite enchanted with us. I was secretly depressed that he didn’t remember me from our eye-piercing roll on the scuzzy Shrine floor.
Gail came out of the kitchen and I tried not to stare. She asked all of us if we would like a cup of tea; oh, it was so civilized. The whole setup instantly changed my mind about domesticity: You could be a rebel, a profound thinker, and a rock and roll maniac and still eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, have a baby, and drink a nice cup of tea with your friends. I never liked tea until I met Gail; she was the teapot queen. In fact, she was so queenly that I was afraid to speak to her at first. Being THE WIFE of one of my idols put her in a category that I hadn’t yet encountered. She was exactly what I aspired to be, and I was in awe of her for the next several months.
Even though I wanted to do and say the wildest things possible and look totally mind-boggling, I still looked up to, and felt lesser than, an awful lot of people. I would kill and murder to get myself into a certain enviable situation, and then feel like I was the only person in the room who should throw in the tattered towel and go home. I’ve got to hand it to myself, though; I waded through those feelings of complete and utter inadequacy and gritted my teeth, waiting for the most celebrated celebrity in the room to bust my butt and tell me I was out of my element: “Go back to Reseda, NOW!!” But it never happened and slowly my fraudulent composure started breathing by itself. I acted “as if,” until I was.
While Frank probed our brains for interesting info, Christine busied herself tidying the enormous pad. Moon crawled up to her and she slung the baby girl on her scrawny hip and kept tidying. This must have impressed Gail because she offered Christine a full-time live-in position, taking care of Moon, complete with household tasks. This was a very enviable position for an eighteen-year-old wack-job from San Pedro in 1968. This wonderful occurrence, of course, clinched our friendship with the Zappas and we started spending a lot more time at the log cabin, our home sweet home away from home.
I soon realized that the first quiet evening we spent there was a rarity; the house always had a Mother or two in residence, and Frank’s manager, Herbie, was in and out all day and night. They were forming their own record label, Bizarre, and floods of secretaries and assorted business types came and went. Many freaks and hopeful happeners appeared at the infamous doorstep and were sometimes invited in for tea. Frank’s in-house artist, Calvin, a buzz-haired beauty, sat in different locations in and around the house, sketching outlandish interpretations of each Mother, while my darling Sandra made goo-goo eyes at him one time too many. The result eventually became a protruding hand-painted tummy, which turned out to be a ravingly beautiful baby girl she called Raven.
One evening we appeared at the cabin in full matching regalia: plastic baby bibs and oversized diapers with yellow-duck safety pins, our hair up in pigtails, sucking giant lollipops. Frank flipped and invited us to dance ONSTAGE with the Mothers that night in Orange County, California Suburbanland. I was about to enter show business and I had visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. We had been calling ourselves the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, but Frank suggested we change our “professional” name to Girls Together Only, or the GTO’s. We adored the idea and expanded on it, deciding that the O could stand for anything we wanted it to: Outrageously, Overtly, Outlandishly, Openly, Organically. The potential was obviously endless.
That particular night turned into fiasco city. Before we could even get up onstage, some matronly box-shaped matron dragged me into a little office and pointed to the pink edge of nipple that peeked out from under my bib. She was so appalled she sputtered, her matronly spittle landing on the little duckies parading across the bib. Thank heavens I had it on! She was not about to allow half-naked girls onstage in Orange County, and for the rest of the night we were surrounded by gray guards who were told to make sure we didn’t set foot on the stage; all they did was ogle us, salivating. We didn’t entertain the audience that night, but the door had been opened and we were about to pour in.
My heart was wide open with ecstasy and madness and I was ready for a real love affair. I fell in true love with Nick St. Nicholas, a fluffy, blond German lunatic with his own language and a delirious way of looking at the world. I met him at the Galaxy, and he took me out a couple of times before it hit me that this could be the guy who could have anything he wanted from me. ANYTHING. I can still smell the thick, gooey incense that floated around his room, following him out into the street, where he attained regal status wearing his creamy satin shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, the top two carefully undone. I would sit in his twenty-five-watt red-bulb living room while he decked himself out in front of the bathroom mirror, the door slightly ajar so I could admire him admiring himself. My knees trembled when he dabbed himself with Aramis, long before it had its own counter at the May Company. The way the scent blended with the gooey incense made me dizzy with the onslaught of love. He was eight years older than I was, and the years stretched into an eternity when I pondered how much more he knew of the world than I did. I worshiped the blacktop on which he drove his brand-new cream-colored, wildly hip Jaguar XKE. There were times when I would stand in the space where he parked it, gazing at his name plate, damp-eyed and agonized because he hadn’t called me for three weeks. I had imagined what “the real thing” felt like, but here it was, poking me in the heart with razor-sharp vengeance, demanding total attention, which is what it got. I ate his name for breakfast, and I couldn’t eat lunch or dinner because my stomach ached from wanting him so bad.
The first night I realized what I was in for was after a wildly romantic dinner at Stephanino’s, a trendy fish joint at the elegant end of Sunset. Nick took me back to his bachelor pad and took my clothes off, and I plunged right ahead with what I did best. I was fainting inside to get a look at him beneath his finery, to touch him and press my nose against the dabs of Aramis, but I still made sure to stroke the right spots that cause instant ecstasy. I had come up against insistent men before, but my desire to remain uninvaded always won out and I was able to delight them in many other ways. Nick wouldn’t stop pleading for entry. He wanted to see the light at the end of the damp tunnel, and the pressure had never been sweeter and more full of sticky endearments.
He fell asleep after a futile struggle, and my left arm was securely fastened under his perfect golden back. I couldn’t bear to disturb his peaceful, elegant oblivion just because my arm was full of pins and needles, my hand a numbing lump. I lay there, imagining my life as a one-armed GTO, until he let out a sigh and rolled onto his perfect golden side and I got the chance to scurry away into the dawn like a bereft squirrel. I hitched through the canyon, berating myself for being the ultimate chicken-shit and not measuring up to the supreme test of womanhood. The sun came up on my angst and my perfectly applied eyeliner, which had spread across my cheeks like big blue veins during the heat of halted passion. I was a tortured teenage virgin.
March 13, 1968 . . . I can’t believe I saw him. So near me. I touched him and felt his nearness to me and saw the green greenness of his fantastic eyes. Oh, I hope that’s not all. I must have him. I must I must. I must admit, I acted in my most obnoxious and possessive manner around him. It always seems to happen. I become outrageously demanding and overly attentive, phony and conspicuous. I gave him everything, except for the one thing he wanted . . . my virginity. And why didn’t I? Perhaps I was thinking of today and the many tomorrows that follow. I loved him so much when he slept. I got to touch him everywhere, listen to his heart beating, kiss his hair. I pulled back the covers to look at the curve of his body, the way he folded his hands at his chest. Oh my Nicky! How can he exist without everyone noticing him? Why don’t they stop dead in their tracks when he walks by?
Keeping the “Strip pact” proved to be difficult, but I found different things to occupy my nights as I pined over the perfect image of Nick St. Nicholas. I saw a lot of Captain Beefheart and Victor, who had become a member of Don’s Magic Band, calling himself “the Mascara Snake.” Beverly had a crush on Drumbo, Don’s drummer (obviously), so she and I traipsed out to Canoga Park, where Don and the band lived on a run-down ranch. We smoked a lot of pot and Don put on a record called “Come Out So They Can See It.” We lounged around the living room while a guy with a really deep voice repeated this phrase overandoverandover until it turned into many different ideas: Come out and expose yourself, come out and slit your wrists, come out and show me your soul, come out and come into a bucket, come out and then go back in again. When the record was over, the needle skipped and skipped, so we listened to that for a while too. I, personally, could find no meaning in it, but I tried. We went outside and stood around in a circle, in a semblance of meditation. I rolled my eyeballs in one direction and then the other, trying to stop them in midspin. It was almost impossible.
I went to see the Byrds play whenever they were local, and my crush on Chris deepened, but he always treated me with a sweet detachment, and besides, he was already on his second wife and I hadn’t even had my first affair yet. He probably saw me as a baby who needed burping. I danced with the GTO’s and my self-esteem burgeoned, because we created miniriots wherever we went. We saw less and less of Vito because he was pissed off that his fledglings had fled the flock and were doing well without him. I missed the idea of him more than the reality of having to avoid his large, rechargeable Everready.
Sparky and I still worked at “the section,” the candy counter at Whitefront where we sat for hours with our toes in the generic M & M’s, writing in our journals, peering through marshmallow bunnies at overweight customers aching for a sugar rush.
April 2 . . . I found a nest of weevils in the toffee peanuts and a nest of ants cowering in the corner. . . . Some franchises!
The Whitefront was a big, dismal white elephant, selling mass quantities of various discount items to the very middle of Middle America. They plodded around aimlessly, gathering up handfuls of polyester, dragging their snotty children behind, almost pulling little arms out of sockets. Every fifteen minutes the hideous voice of Jules Shear permeated the atmosphere: “Attention shappah’s, we have a fantastic baagan for you in aisle three of the undergaament section!!” Sparky and I tacked up pictures of pop stars all over the section, and in between selling rubbery fruit-flavored Mexican hats and stale rocky-road squares, we gazed raptly at Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
Once in a while the owners of this unnecessary establishment would bring in a celebrity of sorts to enhance business, and one Sunday morning, the tallest man in the world bent double to set foot on hallowed Whitefront linoleum. We were mesmerized. Little children followed him into the store, and he gave each one of them a huge plastic ring the size of his salami-shaped fingers to wear as a bracelet. He lumbered through the store with his Colonel Tom Parker-Barnum and Bailey-type manager, who began putting him through his paces the instant he reached his designated spot for the day. He placed his foot next to a normal guy’s foot, he placed his hand next to a normal guy’s hand, he posed for pictures with people who didn’t dare let him touch them (just in case he was wearing some Alice-in-Wonderland potion on his skin), and as he did all his tricks, his long, somber face looked as if he were constantly weeping subconscious tears. Sparky and I saw the entire world in this tragic tall man and wanted to show him some tenderness, so we picked out several of our best bonbons and presented them to him with little curtsies, showing him some respect. We shook his hand, did a soft-shoe with him, and had a little laugh. On his way out of the store, he stopped, towering over the candy counter, casting monster shadows across the glass. Handing us two of his plastic ring-cum-bracelets, he said in his big, booming voice, “You were the only people who treated me like a human.”
I consumed many cups of English Breakfast tea with Gail Zappa, marveling at her expertise in every subject. She would listen attentively while I expounded about Nicky, Chris, and Noel, and then tell me they should be so lucky to be near me.
I got a postcard from Mr. Redding that needed five cents’ postage: “We’ll be in L.A. in July. Don’t forget, you asked me to give you something.” That was his way of being romantic and discreet, but I had no such notion of Noel being the first guy to enter my sacred vessel. I swore to myself that if Nick St. Nicholas called me again, I would humbly offer myself to him with grace and dignity, wearing my most lethal black-lace panties.
April 7 . . . I am in such internal agony. I never knew what it was like to love someone so fully, and have them so unconcerned and out of touch with me. In fact, I’m so miserable that the complete impact of it has not yet found me. I’m in a type of void; between agony and ecstasy. My great loss, I’m overwhelmed by it! He’s resting in the sand now, right next to me as I write this, overcome by sleep and so peaceful and unaware of my presence. Even if he woke up and looked at me, he would still be unaware of my presence. My God, tears won’t even come. I suppose this intensity of misery goes beyond tears. Alas, my “protection,” “excuse,” the thing I clung to is gone and Nicky has it and doesn’t care. Oh, Nicky, where are you??
Needless to say, the bed I had slept in the night before was no bed of roses. Sparky’s parents had gone on a little holiday and I invited Nicky over, eager to show him how much pent-up love I had saved for him alone. He always put me on edge to the point of sheer exhaustion. I tried so hard to measure up to my idea of what his idea of a groovy chick might be that I was constantly out of breath. Since he was somewhere on Pluto, it was up to me to create paltry conversation and invite response, drawing it out of him bit by bit, like my daddy digging for gold. When he finally realized that I was ready to take the big step, he led me into the bedroom and entered the sacred vessel without much fanfare. I lay there beside him all night, like billions of girls before me, wondering, “Is that all there is?” And the next day he took me to the beach with a bunch of friends like nothing had happened. I could hear the sound of my heart breaking with the waves. He didn’t call me for six weeks.
Losing my “well-contained” virginity (that’s what Noel Redding called it) sent my pea brain whirling, and I wrote a letter to Sparky about the feelings burbling within me, I created another pact to be broken:
Dear Doll, So much heroin, so much diseases, scum, filth, crabs, clap, needles, fucking, boys not caring, methedrine, people existing only for their penises and needles. God, where are they? With us, and I’m splitting!! God must be trembling and nervous waiting, watching us, wondering if we’re going to stumble into something inescapable. We’ve been so lucky, so blessed not to have fallen into the traps. Ah, I feel relieved already. I’ll probably do this several times in my life; step back, observe and evaluate myself . . . sort out faults with NO excuses. I wonder what did it this time? Nicky? No, I think it was last night in that house with Lucy. Seeing my friend surrounded by such continuous scum! Those people hooked on heroin . . . crabs crawling on me. I can be so crude and obnoxious, I know it at last and I will be able to conquer it. The moon is in Virgo for the next few days. Amazing evaluation period. I’m in the middle of my most favorable days; 5-9, and today is the seventh. Right in the middle. My main fault is dishonesty. That’s how I lost my Nicky. Lately when I think of him, it’s gotten so painful, like I’m drowning or sinking in quicksand (or something just as terrible). Why have we found it so urgent lately to parade our bodies in front of ogling spectators? I’d love to be psycho-analyzed. I have a grand idea! Why don’t we both go to group therapy?! It’s a thought. My mom confessed to me last night that she was worried about my pervertedness. How sad that a sweet and loving mother should have to worry about such a thing. I Love You, Pammie.
I just couldn’t seem to make up my mind. All the ideas I had about how to live my life were knocking heads with Bob Dylan’s “You know something’s happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?,” free love, flower power, and long-haired weirdos who seemed to have the secret of the universe tucked into the back pockets of their bell-bottom jeans. My former self would have been married to Bobby Martine before he grew his hair out, twiddling my thumbs until he came home for his TV dinner, after he slaved at some normal-formal menial job. I would be fixing up the baby’s room with Disney drapes, and I wouldn’t be worrying about some blond German bass player who spoke in a heathen language, or if I should trim my pubic hair so it wouldn’t show under the shortest skirt ever worn on earth.
May 16 . . . I am so confused with my life. Where am I? In between a girl and a boy, in between sane and insane. I scare, offend, shock and dismay most everyone living, but Spark says you can’t live to please others, and I know that’s right. I’m so rude to the “other breed,” but they have a right to their perversions, as do we. How can I become enlightened? I don’t want to remain on this level. I’d like to meet Bob Dylan or John Lennon or some other prophet I really admire, and have a conversation.
Half of me was thrilled to be helping to pull in the new era, and the other half wanted to be wrapped in swaddling clothes, sucking my thumb in a safe, predictable place, dribbling tears into my Pop Tart.
I thought I would get some peace and serenity by attending the beautiful Renaissance Pleasure Faire out in Calabasas. In order to get in, you had to deck yourself out in Elizabethan dress or arrive on horseback. It was magic time, way out in some semblance of woods where you could pretend you were a member of the queen’s court, eat a dripping-to-the-elbows butter-drenched artichoke under the trees, or stand by the entrance wearing a see-through piece of Elizabethan lace and wait for the inevitable pop star to enter the gates grandly, draped in velvet. The previous spring, I casually leaned against the tarot-card booth, hoping for a glimpse of the Byrds. (They all arrived, dazzling me one by one. David Crosby, wearing his famous green-suede cape, graced me with an impish grin before passing among the crowd like a pop pope. Chris Hillman acknowledged me with a nod and I was a puddle of artichoke butter seeping into the ground.) This year I was propped up against the satin-jester’s-head-on-a-stick booth, complete with jingle bells, waiting for Nick St. Nicholas. “And he arrived, totally regal and above it all, like he was looking down on the peons from a great height, only with compassion. When his sea-green eyes settled upon me, he smiled briefly, enveloped me in his arms, and was gone.”
Alone, with the sun beating down on my truetruetrue love for one who didn’t love me, I agreed to the first invitation that came my way, which happened to be from Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (the two guys who wrote the Monkees’ songs and even had a couple of hits of their own). Bobby had a movie camera and wanted me to straddle a big white horse, completely nude, while he filmed me galloping through the flowered fields with my hair flying and my teenage tits bouncing up and down (probably in slow motion). They plied me with handmade trinkets from the fair and plenty of pot until I agreed to the escapade. It was then that they introduced me to my pony partner, an eleven-year-old boy. The GTOs hung around with an eleven-year-old beauty, Bart Baker, and though I had never been intimate with him, a couple of the girls confessed to heavy petting with the beautiful blond prepubescent. We took Bart shopping with us and dressed him up and loved having him around, so I didn’t mind having this gorgeous little boy, Sean, hanging on to my waist as we trotted through the daisy-filled field. The air was warm and sweet and I was high as a kite, so when Bobby instructed us to get down off the horse and frolic as the camera rolled, I was happy to accommodate him. I always considered the camera my friend, and as I said, I was floating on air and thrilled to be alive. Sean and I played ring-around-the-rosy and collapsed into the flowers. He was a frail beauty, who in three years would be a Romeo; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were shining. Bobby, playing director, told Sean to kiss me, so he gave me a light kiss on the mouth and pulled away, blushing. Bobby then instructed me to teach Sean to kiss. Cradling him in my arms, I opened his sweet lips with my tongue and everything around us disappeared. After the kiss, Sean stood up, stammering; I pulled my little piece of lace back on and the game was over. As we walked back to the fair, Sean was watching me with wonder, and when he asked for my phone number, I gave it to him, never dreaming that he would call me every night for the next six weeks. Bobby took me aside and told me that Sean’s mom was a famous blond actress and would flip if she suspected me of any hanky-panky, and one night as Sean and I discussed his history homework, his mom got on the phone and told me I wouldn’t be hearing from Sean again. And I didn’t.
Nick St. Nicholas became engaged to a little blond beauty, Randy Jo, and it was raining, raining in my heart. Even though the date had been set, he surfaced in my life every few weeks and took me to his bed. I humbly crawled in, and as time went on I started lighting up like a firecracker. I thought about sex all the time and didn’t want to seek out another lover, because the new heart that had grown between my legs was beating only for this exquisite moron.
June 1 . . . I fucked Nicky last night. It excites me to death to write the word “fuck” concerning Nicky and myself. I’ve used that word a million times without realizing its meaning. I wish people didn’t use it as a swear word. Ahhh, I climbed all over him and on him and under him, I clutched at him and moaned. I get weak and light-headed at the thought. It’s such a huge relief to lose every inhibition and lose my mind to my body. When he fell asleep, I could hardly move without choking or reaching into the air for nothing. On the way out, I stopped to kiss his bass. I’m so in love, I don’t even realize what I’m doing.
“Get your motor running . . .”
I saw him with Randy Jo one bitter night, cuddling on a street corner, and I made up my mind never to see him again. Even in the dark, I could see him look at her the way I saw him look at me in my steamy dreams every night. After collapsing into a runny pool of serious pain, I vowed to put my energy into my girlfriends, the GTO’s, and my acting classes. Through a haze of anguish I realized I was still a nineteen-year-old girl enthralled with the mystery of life. Sparky got bored in the candy section and wrote me a letter about this very sentiment at the very moment I needed reinforcement:
My Dear Doll, You and I have always had that vitality for living that so very many let drop because of self-pity, we realize we are still whole, sane, healthy, youthful chicks whom millions of deprived people would give their arms to be like! We’re so lucky that we love life and love living. Can you imagine how horrible it would be if you wanted to walk in front of a moving car just because you were sad about Nicky? Or if I committed suicide because Daryl was rude to me? I’m so glad we can laugh. God is so wonderful, he gave us the most beautiful gift ever, ourselves. I love you, Sparky.
Some dildo with a double first name shot Robert Kennedy, and any vague political interest I might have conjured up disappeared with his toothy grin. I stopped thinking about being a good citizen, and for five minutes I entertained the notion of moving to Europe. I bought a little flag and put it at half-mast in the candy section, and was dismayed that they wouldn’t close the doors on a national day of mourning.
June 4 . . . America . . . America . . . Kennedy was shot through the head after he won his primary. He’s severely critical, God knows what’s going to happen. Hugh Hefner’s party was a sad affair. Joey Bishop kissed my forehead. So What!! How can I care about that after what has happened to such a beautiful man!
June 5 . . . Well, he’s paralyzed now, and his future is extremely ominous. How odd, yesterday we had hopes for a new and better world because of this man, and now the world mourns as he dies. If he were in office, I would become a better citizen and so would everyone else. God help us in our time of need.
June 6 . . . He died DIED. Two days ago he gave the world the peace sign and now he lays dead. I’m going to carry this with me until I die. The sting of a distorted country.
June 7 . . . Nothing is fun. How dare I dance and run and jump when Bobby Kennedy will never again breathe the air? This has dug into me and put a scar on my heart.
Slowly, the planet began to spin again after I lost Nick St. Nicholas and Bobby Kennedy. I put on my dancing shoes, sequined my cheeks, and scoured the streets for some fun. Lucy took Sandra, Christine, Sparky, and me to visit Tiny Tim at the Sunset Marquis. She knew him from the streets of New York, and since this was his first trip to Hollywood, she wanted to welcome him with bells on. We arrived and heard the shower running along with his trilling falsetto, and had to wait outside the door for him to emerge while Lucy told side-splitting anecdotes about “Mr. Tim.” The water stopped and we pounded on the door. “Ooooohhhhh, who could it be at my door . . .?” We started giggling and he called out, “Who is it, who is it, whoooooo is it????” Lucy announced herself, and after a bit of shuffling behind the door, we heard the water start up again. “Just a minute, Looooocy, I have to take a shower!” He had just taken a shower!! Lucy told us that he took about ten showers a day, and couldn’t bear to be sweaty. We waited around for shower number two to end, then the door opened and a vision in white greeted us. Mr. Tim had on a white suit with face and hands to match, he reeked of baby powder, his black hair was in ringlets gone awry, and he was wearing just a touch of lip gloss and rosy-red cheeks. He held a bottle of sickly sweet perfume in his long white hand, dabbing behind his ears with alarming frequency while fluttering the free hand over his heart in an overwhelmed pitter-pat gesture, rolling his eyes wildly. It looked like he was trying to take in the scene and get a hold of himself, but might faint instead. Lucy pushed him down onto the couch and started fanning him. “This happens all the time, he’s very shy around women.” He was flabbergasted and scared out of his wits, and, drawing long, shuddering breaths, he peeked at us from between his fingers while we tried to blend into the wallpaper. After we had been there about half an hour, and he had taken another shower, Mr. Tim loosened up a little, went over to the fridge, and asked if we would like to play hockey. To our surprise, he opened the freezer and removed several hockey pucks wrapped in wax paper. Carefully, he opened each puck and set it on the tiny kitchen floor, and pulled a hockey stick from behind the counter and took aim. After he knocked them back and forth, we each took a turn with the stick and had a wonderful time. He took another shower from the exertion, and came out of the bathroom powdering his nose with a huge puff full of baby powder. “I have a secret,” he said, and led us to a small kitchen drawer where he lifted up the silverware to reveal many, many candy bars. “My manager thinks I’m getting chubby, but I’m just pleasingly plump.” We were very moved that he trusted us with his secret, and promised him we wouldn’t tell a soul. I guess enough years have passed so that I’m not betraying his confidence. We had to leave for a meeting with Mr. Zappa and he bid us adieu, kissing us ever-so-lightly on the cheek. “Good-bye Miss Lucy, Miss Sandra, Miss Sparky, Miss Christine, and Miss Pamela.” We had been titled.
Me: July 21, 1968.
Pamela Miller. Age 19 ¾. 5′4″ in height. Blonde (most of the time) Blue eyes (that don’t see very well without spectacles) 116 in weight (about 6 pounds too many) Budding actress, afraid to go on stage, too busy to study, no confidence, too lazy to acquire it.
Dreams of fame, lovely clothes. 92 exquisite men to love me, beautiful wooden houses in Laurel Canyon, Porsches, Pop-stars.
I am now in my very own group, the GTO’s, with my idol, Frank Zappa at the helm.
Weeps privately and alone quite often . . . because of Nick St. Nicholas (love? . . . love!) lost dreams, superficial things. And why am I so rude to the poor people who don’t know any better? (do I?)
Wondering what life has in store for me, just about ready to plunge into it. (bellyflop?) Am I late? I feel I haven’t lived much—and what have I been doing if not living? When shall I begin? Now! My God, I began living when I was born. (I don’t believe in the theory that you begin to die when you’re born. How can it be that you “live” for nine months and die for seventy years?) What can I do except live within the boundaries of my mind? How grand to escape, tho’ I’m not as confined as most, all bottled up in their cliches and prejudice. At least I’ve broken some molds.
Pamela Ann Miller, 19 ¾, blonde hair, blue eyes, 116 pounds: ready, willing and able to LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST! TAKE ME I’M YOURS!!!
