A couple weeks ago an emotionally intense road trip with my roommate, Hilary, and two brand-new girlfriends, Jamie and Natasha, ended in Los Angeles. While we were walking from our car to a superchic cafe in Hollywood where a cup of tea can run upward of eight bucks, a guy in slick sunglasses rolled up next to us in a shiny black Mercedes. “Hey,” he called. “Are you girls in a band?”
We went out to the enclosed patio, where everyone was smoking. Scanning the area I fixed my gaze on a willowy, high-cheekboned dishwater blond of a certain age in tight white jeans and a black leather jacket, wrists overloaded with shiny silver bangles. His eyes met mine with approval and his plump lips, which looked lined in scar tissue, curved into a smile.
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If I wasn’t busy later that night, he asked, might I like to go to his home in West Hollywood? “Yes, definitely,” I replied, envisioning skinny-dipping in a kidney-shaped pool, gazing at stars just visible through clusters of palm trees. “And I’m bringing my girlfriends.” He gave Jamie, Natasha, and Hilary–the last two were dressed in black-and-white ensembles–the up-and-down and nodded. “White and black attack,” he said. “All the kids are wearing white and black. I’m responsible for that.”
His bandmate Jimmy Sweet, a petite Jason Schwartzman type sporting a San Diego hessian haircut and Virgin jeans (produced by the branding geniuses who brought you Virgin vodka and Virgin cola), kept butting in with personal trivia, such as his story about the time he went to a Renaissance fair and accidentally saw a guy’s penis while using the pissing trough.
From the looks of the place–gentle oil paintings of sailboats, decorative decanters filled with herbs–the roommate could’ve been his mom. He guided us into a small den with turquoise velour button-back sofas and an enormous box of a TV that was playing a porno. “Here girls,” Noah said, bumping a shriveled black balloon in our direction. “Play with this.” Then he and Jimmy left the room.
Jimmy walked into the room and informed us that he knew where we could get some drugs. Eager to get the hell out of there for any reason at all, we walked back to Hilary’s car, and the dudes followed.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Hilary Olson, Liz Amrstrong.
