Joanne at 2nd and Irving.
Secret worlds.
Daryl moved up to Portland in early ’68. Fritz transferred to UCLA. Lloyd was attending L.A. City College. He was almost as booze-and-dope-addled as I was.
Lloyd possessed the balls that I lacked. He had a bent for tortured women hooked up with abusive men. He tried to rescue them and got into fights with dope-dealer sleazebags. He had a big heart and a big brain and a wickedly nihilistic sense of humor. He lived with his religious-nut mother and her second husband—a produce merchant with a couple of fruit stands out in the valley.
Lloyd had a taste for Hollywood lowlife. He knew how to talk to hoodlum types and hippies. I tagged along on a few of his Hollywood excursions. I met bikers, fruit hustlers and Gene the Short Queen—a 4?10? transvestite. I stumbled around Hollywood, took weird drug combinations and woke up in parks and Christmas-tree lots.
The peace-and-love era was booming. Lloyd had one foot in that cultural door and one foot back on the edge of Hancock Park. He had his own dual-world scheme going. He postured and copped dope in Hollywood and came home to his crazy mother.
Hollywood scared me and vexed me. Hippies were faggot shitheads. They loved degenerate music and preached specious metaphysics. Hollywood was a pus pocket.
Lloyd disagreed. He told me the real world frightened me. He said I only knew a few square miles.
He was right. He didn’t know I supplanted my knowledge with things he’d never know.
I kept burglarizing. I went at it cravenly and cautiously. I kept reading crime novels and brain-screening crime fantasies. I kept stealing and eating an all-steak diet. I lived off a C-note a month.
The dog disappeared. I came home and found my door open and Minna long gone. I suspected my dog-hater landlord.
I searched for Minna and put a lost-dog ad in the
Aunt Leoda refused to advance me some coin. I spent a week crashed out in Fritz’s back room and got evicted by his father. I moved into Lloyd’s bedroom and got evicted by his mother.
I moved into Robert Burns Park. I stole some blankets from a Goodwill box and slept in an ivy patch for three weeks. A nocturnal sprinkling system doused me at irregular intervals. I had to gather up my blankets and run for dry spots.
Outdoor living ate shit. I went to the California State Employment Office and got some job referrals. A Serbo- Croatian psychic hired me as a handbill distributor.
Her name was Sister Ramona. She preyed on poor blacks and Mexicans and spread her message via mimeographed flyer. She healed the sick and dispensed financial advice. Poor people flocked to her door. She soaked the stupid cocksuckers for all they were worth.
Sister Ramona was a racist and right-wing fanatic. Her husband drove me to poverty pockets and dropped me off with newspaper bags full of handbills. I slid them under doors and stuffed them in mailboxes. Little kids and dogs followed me around. Teenagers laughed at me and flipped me the bird.
The husband gave me two bucks a day lunch money. I spent it on T-Bird and muscatel. Flame-O was right: I turned into a full-fledged wino.
I put a roll together and got my pad back. I quit my Sister Ramona job.
A high-school acquaintance introduced me to a woman who needed a place to stay. She said she’d devirginize me in exchange for a roof. I eagerly accepted her offer.
She moved in. She devirginized me under duress. I didn’t turn her on and my acne-scarred back repulsed her. She fucked me four times and told me that was all I was getting. I was crazy about her and let her stay anyway.
She bewitched me. She dominated me completely. She stayed with me for three months and announced that she was a lesbian. She’d just met a woman and was moving in with her.
I was heartbroken. I went on a long vodka bender and blew my rent money. My landlord evicted me again.
I moved back into Robert Burns Park and found a permanent dry spot by a toolshed. I started to think that outdoor living wasn’t
I got my rationale straight and proceeded on that course. I switched my diet from steaks to luncheon meat and haunted branch libraries all over L.A. I drank in library men’s rooms and went through Ross Macdonald’s entire oeuvre my first few weeks on the street. I kept a change of clothes at Lloyd’s pad and bathed there occasionally.
It was fall ’68. I met a freak at the Hollywood Public Library. He told me about Benzedrex inhalers.
They were an over-the-counter decongestant product encased in little plastic tubes. The tubes held a wad of cotton soaked in a substance called prophylhexedrine. You were supposed to stick the tube in your nose and take a few sniffs. You
Benzedrex inhalers were legal. They cost 69 cents. You could buy them or boost them all over L.A.
The freak said I should steal a few. I dug the idea. I could tap into a speed source without dope connections or a doctor’s prescription. I stole three inhalers at a Sav-On drugstore and hunkered down to chase them with root beer.
The wads were two inches long and of cigarette circumference. They were soaked in an evil-smelling amber solution. I gagged one down and fought a reflex to heave it back up. It stayed down and went to work inside half an hour.
The high was
