Running with Monsters Page 4

  “David Forest?” I’d reply.

  “Yeah, man. The cat who runs this place. Nice fella. Flamingly gay.”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course I know him. He’s my uncle.” I’d flash my driver’s license and show my name. Nobody ever noticed that we spelled our names differently. The ruse caught on. People accepted it as fact that I was David Forest’s nephew. David even started to believe it. It gained me access. I never had to pay to get in the club. I had the magic pass. I saw so many free shows I lost count. I also gained access to David Forest’s inner circle and was allowed into his office, where he’d hold court with his boy toys. Of course there were drugs. David would ceremoniously break out a bag of cocaine and say, “Oh, this is beautiful, boys. Look at how it sparkles! That’s how you can tell if it’s good. It catches the light like crushed pearls!” His coterie of rough trade and pretty boys would giggle and squeal with dramatic euphoria while David drew out huge lines on his desk and then brought out a sterling silver straw set with a small blue star sapphire. It was a fascinating scene to my increasingly opened eyes. I was also intrigued when I learned that the Starwood, along with several other area clubs I frequented, was owned by a reputed drug kingpin named Eddie Nash, a shadowy Palestinian with a spooky and dark reputation for violence and mayhem who would later be implicated in the grotesque “Wonderland Murders,” which left four people beaten to the consistency of guava jelly in a Laurel Canyon duplex in 1981. To a kid from the OC, things like this were undeniably exciting. You could read about these events in the Los Angeles Times, but to walk the same streets as the people you read about was a wholly different experience. I loved it. I set my brain to figuring a way to move to the big city.

  The first step was to get out of Orange County. To keep the Social Security money flowing, I transferred to Los Angeles City College in Hollywood. The second step was to find a place to live, and I found a great spot, one with a serious rock-music pedigree. Three blocks east of Main Street on Fifth Street downtown was a building that had a café and bar on the ground floor called the Hard Rock. It wasn’t the fancy, upscale chain, but the place that inspired it: a wino-infested hole in the wall that had been featured on the back cover of the Doors’ Morrison Hotel album. Upstairs was a huge loft that took up the entire third floor. It cost $600 a month, but it was a lot of space … and it was over a place the Doors had made famous! I couldn’t believe it. I had learned my lesson about rent in Huntington Beach, so I enlisted some roommates. My friend Dave Hansen had a brother, a skinny kid named Chris who knew his way around the fretboard of a guitar. His punk rock name was, humorously, Chris Handsome. He came aboard along with his girlfriend, Lora Jansen, and my girl, Sheree La Puma. We were all under the influence of the punk scene, so we formed a band. It seemed like the right move. Lora played drums, Sheree handled keyboards, Chris and I played guitar, and I also sang. We weren’t a standard rock group. We weren’t even a standard punk band. We were an art-noise band. I had always had the ambition to play music, but I was convinced that it would have to be something avant-garde and not mainstream because I thought of myself as a weird-looking person and my chops on the guitar were average at best. I would never be a Teen Beat magazine cover boy like Shaun Cassidy. I’d never even be like the Popsicles and get featured on the inside of Teen Beat. It wasn’t until I saw the Replacements do a show in 1983 that I thought, Holy fuck! Really weird-looking, unattractive people can play rock music! It was a revelation, but until then, I was firmly committed to noise rock. We managed to book a few gigs at Al’s Bar, a small space on the ground floor of the American Hotel, a transient flophouse, that became known for hosting a lot of up-and-coming punk bands.

  Despite the fun and the excitement of playing in a group, I had one primary mission: to keep the cash coming in. And the way to do that was to stay in school. Any school. It didn’t really matter. Unlike Chris, who had real academic goals, I only cared about that monthly check, so I drank, did crystal meth, and used cocaine, all to the detriment of my studies. I loved the rock-and-roll party lifestyle and felt at home there. Drugs and alcohol were central to it. The Beatles, Dylan, and the Stones all endorsed drugs either outright or through their music, and it seemed to me that I was following some grand rock tradition. As a bonus, when I was high, I felt really good. I had fun. I was only at LACC for two semesters before I flunked out. The Social Security people contacted me.

  “Mr. Forrest, we see you’re not currently enrolled in classes at Los Angeles City College.”

  “No, no,” I said with practiced nonchalance. “I’ve been accepted at Cornell University. You know, the Cornell University. That’s why I’m not in those classes.”

  In the days before computers and the Internet, this kind of scam was incredibly easy to pull off. Records got lost all the time. The mail was slow. Any number of things before the advent of the Digital Age could slow things up or cause delays. And all you really needed was a little time to work the system. I had some family near Watkins Glen, New York, so I decided a short break from L.A. might be fun. An academic vacation of sorts. I took off for the East Coast with Sheree. I admit that I liked the prestige of being a Cornell undergraduate, even though, technically, I wasn’t. In fact, I hadn’t even bothered to apply. When I got to Watkins Glen, I went to the financial aid office on campus and put on a little show to keep the money coming in.

  “I’m not even registered here? How can that be? I’ve come all the way here from Los Angeles, and now I’m stranded here? You have all my paperwork. I sent it in months ago!”

  The poor clerk in the office looked stunned. “Well, this does happen from time to time. Here, let me get you started,” she said, and handed me some forms to fill out.

  I worked my hustle. I ran my hands through my hair in a pantomime of false despair. “This is so bad … so bad. What am I going to do? I just did this whole life-changing thing to move here. I left my home all the way across the country. My financial aid’s been transferred here!” I looked upset. I looked like I was about to cry. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I enrolled in some drama courses. That stuff could come in handy down the line given my increasing reliance on putting on these kinds of shows.

  I convinced her. She sighed and peered over the rims of her glasses. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Now that we’ve started the paperwork, everything will be fine. You can register.”

  I signed up for classes. I skipped drama, but I took on a full load of art and history courses at one of the most prestigious colleges in the country. That alone felt like a huge accomplishment. Of course, my hustle didn’t always work. This particular one only lasted for about a month. I had thought that once I had my foot in the door as a registered student, I’d just slip through the cracks and nobody would ever notice that I’d never even bothered to apply. They did notice.

  In an art history class one day, the tweedy professor cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Forrest, may I speak to you?”

  I gulped. “Sure.” It didn’t feel right.

  “You can’t attend this class. You need to go to the registrar’s office.”

  I trudged over and went inside, my typical morning hangover suddenly, screechingly worse. The woman behind the desk sent me back to another office deeper in the building. A stern-looking official had my pathetically, laughably thin folder in front of him. “Mr. Forrest, we don’t have transcripts from you. Nor do we have SAT scores, nor do we have a basic application form, nor do we—”

  I cut him off. I tried to work up a front of righteous, middle-class indignation straight from the heart of suburbia. “This is outrageous!” I sputtered. “What kind of incompetent office do you run here?”

  He just leaned back in his chair and said, “I’m sorry. You are not a student at this university.”

  Well, the jig was up. It was a good scam while it lasted. I turned around and headed back to Los Angeles and re-enrolled at LACC, which I was once again eligible to attend. Once I officially signed up for classes again, those government ch
ecks started to arrive in the mail. The purpose of my student days and my only academic goal was really just to be registered somewhere to get money to live and to do drugs and go to clubs. It was a pretty good hustle as far as hustles go.

  Now that I was back in town and my financial situation was settled for the moment, I got back to my real business: rock and roll. One of my favorite clubs to visit was the Cathay de Grande. Situated dead center in Hollywood at the corner of Argyle Avenue and Selma Avenue, the club’s main stage was the subterranean home to some of the most exciting music in Los Angeles. It featured the raw punk of local acts like Fear, X, the Circle Jerks, and countless others. The Orange County punk bands like Social Distortion made the Cathay their home away from home. The club was also home to a vibrant local roots-rock scene, with the Blasters and Los Lobos often taking the stage, as well as numerous cow-punk bands, who, really, were playing the kind of straight-up Bakersfield country that had fallen out of favor with rednecks but was finding a new audience with young punk rockers. It was the kind of music that would have fit right in at Zubie’s in Orange County … if the sweaty cowboys could get past the punk rock look of the musicians playing it.

  I worked that scene like it was a job. Sure, I partied and had lots of fun, but I constantly inserted myself into peoples’ faces. I met the musicians, the regulars, and all the staff. I made sure to remember everybody’s name. I sincerely liked just about everybody I met at the Cathay and I was genuinely happy to be there. People responded to that. I was a best friend to whoever I might meet. It wasn’t long before I was accepted into the inner circle.

  Things were great at the Cathay, but they could have been better according to the owner. There was a problem. The place was divided into two sections, upstairs and downstairs. Downstairs was where the bands played and where the crowd stayed. Upstairs there was a beautiful, ornate bar that was left over from the club’s restaurant days. Very few of the customers used that bar. There was no draw upstairs. All the music and fun happened downstairs. The reluctance of the crowd to go upstairs was costing the place currency. The major moneymaker at any club isn’t the door, it’s the bar. The owner, Michael Brennan, had an idea. “People won’t leave the stage because they want to hear music. What if we have music upstairs?” I was twenty-one years old, loved rock and roll, and lived two blocks away. Michael approached me with his idea. “You’re here every night anyway,” he said. “You come in, play some records, and make a little money too.” His logic was flawless, and the truth is that I would have carried out his plan for free if he had asked. I started coming in five nights a week with a crate of records to spin through the bar’s sound system. I took care and consideration with what I picked to play. I had a vast collection of vinyl I had collected over the years that covered just about every genre of twentieth-century music. I’d play everything from scratchy Delta blues to early rock to psychedelia to the latest underground sounds from Europe. It worked. People started sitting at the bar because now it seemed like something was going on. People would come up, buy a drink, sit and talk and cool out, maybe buy another round or two, and then go back downstairs. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was in the right place at the right time. The gig supplemented my student money. I got $15 a night and, equally important, I got all the booze I could drink on the house. Best of all, I was in the center of the action at one of the coolest clubs in Los Angeles.

  One night, I was in the DJ booth playing “Defunkt” by Defunkt when this shirtless, hyper, rubber-faced kid barged his way in like some sort kind of punk rock commando, took the needle off the record, and flipped it over to put on “Strangling Me with Your Love.”

  “That’s a better song!” he yelled at me before he ran out on the dance floor and started slamming around with the rest of the moshers. I was dumbstruck. It displayed a total lack of respect, although I had to admit, it was a pretty ballsy move on the kid’s part.

  “Who the fuck was that? Security! This kid just came in and flipped my record!” I yelled. The guards went looking for him, but he was a slippery little bastard. They couldn’t catch him. And he kept doing it all night. I was impressed by his persistence—and his taste in music. Finally, I managed to get him to sit still long enough to tell him, “Look, man, you can’t just come into my DJ booth and flip my records.”

  He looked at me like I was insane and laughed. “I’m Flea. I play bass for Fear!” he boasted. “I can do anything I want!”

  Another regular was Lori Paterson, who eventually became my first wife. She helped book talent for Club Lingerie. She must have seen something in me and we started a fairly dysfunctional relationship right away. She was a little older than me and had absolutely no trouble matching me shot for shot and line for line when it came time to drink or get high. And it seemed like it was always the right time to indulge, although neither I nor anyone around me saw what we were doing as excessive or over the line. It was just something to do to keep the party in constant motion. I moved in with her and one day, fueled by booze and speed, we drove to Victorville in the high desert across the San Bernardino county line and tied the knot. She had faith in her man’s talents and kept after her boss, a flamboyant Scotsman named Brendan Mullen, to let me DJ at the Lingerie. Whatever she said convinced him. I also grabbed a gig where I spun records at Eddie Nash’s Seven Seas club. My schedule was full and I worked every night. From Lori’s apartment in Beachwood Canyon, my nightly routine took shape. I’d wake up late. Drink, do drugs, and crate up the records I planned to use that night. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t need one. My days in Orange County had been spent on the deck of a skateboard, and I had a fine fishtail ride. Powered by gravity, I’d start at the top of the canyon, my crate of records cradled in my arms, and free-fall, high out of my mind, down to Gower to the Cathay de Grande. Sometimes, I’d slide onto Franklin, or I’d just highball it all the way down Beachwood to the Lingerie. You can build some frightening momentum on your way down that hill. If I was scheduled to work the Seven Seas, I’d hook onto Hollywood Boulevard. The stone paving that makes up the Walk of Fame is a fast surface and I could haul ass as I dodged pedestrians and balanced my records.

  Now there was movement. My life had direction. I no longer felt the need to continue my charade with college. My real education had begun.

  LA LEYENDA

  Drugs were everywhere in the eighties, and everybody I knew used them and loved them. Some were more devoted to the substances than others, but I didn’t know anyone who ever passed up a drug when it appeared. “Hey, you want one of these pills?” someone would say as they pulled out a plastic sandwich bag stuffed full of multicolored capsules.

  “Uh, what are those?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The red and yellow ones will slow you up and the brown and orange ones are some kind of speed.”

  “Well, pass ’em over, man. Pass ’em over! Got a beer to wash these down with?”

  There was a dividing line, though, and that was the needle. You’ll find, sometimes, that the most enthusiastic sniffer of medicinal powders will have a moment of horror and disgust when a party partner pulls out a rig.

  “Hey, man, what the fuck is that?”

  “It’s the best way to do it, dude.”

  “Maybe you’d better take that action somewhere else. It’s not cool.”

  But the thing is, it was cool. At least that’s how I saw it. When I encountered a junkie, I didn’t see some sad-sack, toothless loser with pallid skin and the inability to get through four hours without a fix. I saw a member of the Fraternal Order of Cool. The world heroin addicts occupied was closed off to me, and I was fascinated by it. There was a dividing line between drugs. Some users of cocaine and speed can get downright schoolmarmish when heroin enters the picture.

  “Want to try some of this?”

  “What is it?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Get the fuck out. Now.”

  Heroin, like needles, was cool. Or so I thought in those days. I sensed that dope might
be the key that could unlock all the doors that the secrets of art, poetry, and music hid behind. Charlie Parker had blown mad, furious harmonies under its sway. Keith Richards, the ultimate rock-and-roll outlaw, churned out thick, massive riffs with its influence. William Burroughs took its directives and conjured up dark, nightmarish worlds that I wanted to explore. The whole of the night-framed hip world grooved to its beat and pulse and created fucking art. Smack was their muse. My heroes had known its allure, felt its embrace, and I wanted what they had.

  Despite my fascination and desire to explore the dark world of the poppy juice, I learned quickly that heroin wasn’t an easy score. The pill poppers, speed freaks, and drunks I knew just didn’t have access to junk. It wasn’t something they used and they didn’t have connections to that world. The junkies I knew all possessed some strange moralistic code that prevented them from introducing a novice to the habit.

  “Hey, man, let me try some of that,” I’d say as casually as I could.

  “You ever done this shit before?”

  “No. But I’ve done everything else.”

  “Sorry, kid. I’m not going to bust your cherry.”

  “But I can pay. I have cash.”

  “No.”

  It was frustrating and a major hassle, but if you look hard enough for anything, and if you’re persistent enough, you’ll find it. So there I sat in an apartment deep inside the Hollywood wasteland. It was a hot night and the avenues and boulevards were crawling and thick with hustlers and twilight life forms. The room was dark and cool, a refuge from the dusty streets. I was twenty thousand leagues beneath a neon sea. Across from me, sitting like Buddha at a low table littered with bent and blackened spoons, misshapen candles spitting out what little life was left in them, needles, glittering squares of tinfoil, bright scraps of rubber that had once been balloons, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, and half-empty glasses, sat a guy named Top Jimmy. He was one of the coolest dudes I knew, an underground legend. I had met him at the Cathay de Grande where his band, the Rhythm Pigs, played every Monday night. A snaggletoothed, porcine throwback to an earlier era’s great, hard-living white bluesmen, his given name was James Paul Koncek, but he derived his blues handle from a counterman’s gig he had once held at a gritty little Mexican takeout joint called Top Taco over on La Brea across the street from A&M Records, where he handed out free tacos and burritos on the sly to struggling musicians and local down-and-outers.