Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (6 page)

All the Silverlake girlfriends were named after bushes: Holly, Rosa, Heather, Juniper. I was fascinated. A.F.K.A.S. was the opposite of me and everything I believed in. I told him about Jesus. He told me I was the dream-girl he had been praying to God for every day. He wanted to have sex with me. I said no, but I was flattered. No one would want my flat-chested, thick-waisted body, and I thought only nice Christians would want me for my pure heart. But here was A.F.K.A.S., who was very worldly and experienced, wanting me.

A verse from the Bible whispered loudly through my mind at the hippie house. It was from II Corinthians 6:14: “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath light with darkness?” I looked up at God and said, “I know. But I’m taking him to church.” And I was.

I found out back home, and from a “Dear John” letter, that my high school sweetheart and true love, Paul, was going to marry the church girl who used to wink at him when he was engaged to
me
! So much for my true love riding to Hollywood on a white horse to sweep me up and save me from the hippies.

Dear Vicki,

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written… been very indecisive on whether or not to write due to my situation with… oh yeah, we’re getting married… sorry about my handwriting, just got off work, it’s 7:30 a.m., I’m the night shift… all is going well with the Police Force, so much to learn… glad you weren’t harmed in any way when you were held at gunpoint by that armed subject… Please be careful… How’s show business? …How’s Johnny? …Does he still bug you about having sex with him? I hope not (only I’m allowed to do that). …I’m sure you’ve been exposed to quite a bit of that sort of thing by now with as many “wild” people as there are out there in “liberal” Los Angeles… Oh well, sex seems to be a national pastime… hope all is well with you…! I do lust… I mean, think of you often and will write again soon…

Love, Paul

He never wrote again.

So on Paul’s birthday, May 22, 1982, I gave A.F.K.A.S. my virginity. I was so mad. I felt like I’d been doing my part of the deal, but God wasn’t coming through with His. I had saved my virginity for my true love, but he was marrying someone else. I was tired of following the rules. All I got in return was loneliness, poverty, and now this. Maybe it was the letter, or hormones, or the craving for closeness—especially with no family or friends anywhere around—or the fact that A.F.K.A.S. was actually cute. I told him right afterward that we were married. My Dad had said that whoever I had sex with first was my husband in God’s eyes. A.F.K.A.S. stuttered, “W-w-what?” I stayed at his house after that instead of my now-falling-apart-Beachwood-Avenue apartment that had a caved-in ceiling and smelled like urine.

One time I called my Dad from A.F.K.A.S.’s house. He asked me why I was never at my apartment. I told him about the caved-in ceiling. It really was uninhabitable, and whenever I complained to my landlord, who always wore a Hawaiian sarong and no shirt, he’d rub his beer belly and lisp, “There’s nothing I can do.”

Dad said, “Well, does this guy, who’s ten years older than you and that you’re temporarily staying with, walk around in his underwear in front of you?” Right then, A.F.K.A.S. crossed the room naked.

I said, “Uh… no.”

Then, I wrote a poem about it.

Incense

Billowing red scarves on the ceiling.

My cigarette girl outfit in a heap on the floor.

Christmas lights.

A Goodwill couch with the stuffing sticking out.

A roach clip in the ashtray.

Vodka and grapefruit juice.

A fuzzy piano.

Fifty finches peeping.

Doves in a cage.

He’s a magician.

Appear. Disappear.

The wrong guy.

I lost my virginity here.

Twenty minutes out of his day.

A scar on my heart that won’t go away.

I did everything I said I would never do.

A.F.K.A.S. gave me my first pot. He took me to his, yes
his
, gynecologist. I’d never been to one before. The first thing the doctor said when we walked in the examining room was, “Hey, how’s Rosa?” My face fell. I was just another notch on his bedpost. I gave him my virginity and he threw it in the garbage. Suddenly, Vodka didn’t taste so bad, and I needed it every day. I felt like a used woman. No nice guy would want me now. I also felt like I really was married in God’s eyes, and that the only way to make this sin not so bad was to officially marry the guy. Of course, I had to talk him into it first. He seemed to begin believing in marriage when I started getting lucrative TV work a year later.

The morning after I first slept with A.F.K.A.S., I didn’t feel guilty in the sense of “Oops, my bad, better not do that again.” This was big. Once you give your virginity away, you can’t get it back. I was hitting bottom. I felt guilty about my whole lifestyle. It was all so overwhelmingly wrong, but I didn’t know where to start fixing it. I was trapped. If I left my job, where the alcohol was flowing, I didn’t know where else to work, and I had no money to live on. If I left A.F.K.A.S.’s house, I had nowhere to go and knew nobody. If I quit drinking and smoking, how could I make it through the day? Those things gave me an instant, though temporary, numbing feeling. There was no vertical evolution happening in A.F.K.A.S.’s house. As far as I could see, the hippies’ lives basically revolved around drugs, sex, and then getting more. They were creative and attractive people, with lots of talent and potential, but they kept swirling around in a circle, never advancing toward their goals. They had songs and cymbals and guitars and scarves they wore that hadn’t been changed or updated since the day they met “Mary Jane.” Most of them had come to LA from Louisiana or Baltimore, seeking fame and fortune in the music industry or modeling. Ten years later, they still wore the same little flowery dress, with their dreams in their tie-dyed purse, but the dress was tattered and faded, and the purse was now filled with pouches of funny, dried-up grass or vials of white powder. They lived in poverty because all their money went to drugs. Their homes were beautiful, though, because of their creative gifts. The drug addicts invented shabby chic. A.F.K.A.S.’s living room was beautiful even though the couch had the stuffing sticking out. There were twinkly Christmas lights hanging on the ceiling, and antique shop tapestries draped everywhere. I remember waking up one day and looking at my situation. How do I get out of this? I went and got a glass of vodka, and walked over to our Salvation Army typewriter with the blank piece of paper in it.
If my life were a novel, or a movie
, I thought,
this would be beautiful. It would be meaningful. It would be research. Good art comes from pain.
The only words that tapped out of the old black and white keys were “God please help me.” I was twenty-two years old.

God must have heard me, because the next day A.F.K.A.S.’s house caught fire. Well, it might not have been the next day, but it was real soon after that. I had accompanied A.F.K.A.S. to a Pacific Bell employee party where he had been hired to do magic tricks and eat fire. I was dressed like Tinker-Bell to look like his assistant. He was wearing his usual turban and gypsy vest. When we returned from the gig and drove up the mountain, we saw fire engines lining our street. As we got closer, we could see A.F.K.A.S.’s house engulfed in flames. We ran to the front door and let the dogs and cats out, then the firemen blasted their hoses until everything that wasn’t already charcoal was ruined by water. The ferret was toast, and the gold Victoria necklace my parents had given me was melted. A.F.K.A.S. cried, “You can’t leave me now!” Two days later, I flew back home to Miami. I kept thinking that the fire was pretty suspicious. I did hear A.F.K.A.S.’s brother shout to him, mid-blaze, “Did you get the stash?”—meaning the drugs. If nothing else, the fire was a sign from God. At the airport, Mom looked at me. The pill had made me gain twenty pounds. Vodka had bloated me. Pot gives you the munchies. I got a permanent to look like Bernadette Peters and have curls, but all my hair burned off because the hairdresser left the chemicals on too long. Mom shook her head: “This is what Hollywood did to you.”

I was a typist for six months in Miami. Eighty-four words a minute. I was bored out of my mind. I lost the twenty pounds on Slim Fast. I didn’t drink or smoke, of course. I was living with my parents. They didn’t say “I told you so,” because they hadn’t told me so. They just kind of walked around me wondering what to do with me. I watched Pat Robertson’s
700 Club
every morning. It made me feel clean. It gave me a glimmer of hope. I did handstands at work sometimes. The lawyers and accountants at the offices, where I was a “temp,” looked at me like I was insane.
Hmm. In Hollywood they love this
. A.F.K.A.S. called me every night to say he loved me. My mom had often told me the story of how she married my Dad while he was still an unbeliever. Dad had changed, so I knew A.F.K.A.S. would if I just took him to church long enough. My gay best friend from Auburn flew to Miami from Georgia to give me a pep talk. He told me that I was special and LA needed me. It was my destiny. He told me not to give up on my dream. So I returned to LA and found my A.F.K.A.S. sleeping with another girl, some random blonde who “meant nothing to him.”

So, after poverty, drugs, alcohol, losing my virginity; after a bad perm, a house fire, and moving; after loneliness, depression, fatness, living with parents, and starving; after driving back to LA with my gay best friend in my Toyota Starlet with my cat, Thunder, and his litter box, and being cheated on, after this year of the nervous breakdown…

Milt Larsen gave me my cigarette-girl job back. And Jim McCawley,
The Tonight Show
talent scout, discovered me in my French Maid costume at the
VAC
doing a handstand and reciting poetry. One month later, I was in the wings. My first
Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson. My stomach was full of butterflies. My name was announced, and I walked to center stage. I had what felt like an out-of-body experience. I watched my act from the ceiling. Just like my balance beam routine during a meet, or a rape victim, I was too scared, so I detatched from my body. I watched myself kicking up to a handstand and starting my poem. I watched the people responding and Johnny giving me the okay sign. The six minutes were over. I was safe, so I came back down and inhabited my body.

After being on Johnny Carson, I thought my life would change overnight. It did and it didn’t. The next day I went to the grocery store, humbly hanging my head, thinking I would be mobbed. No one noticed me. I asked the checkout girl, “What were you doing last night?” She looked at me as if I were a stalker. “What I mean is,” I continued, “what were you doing last night at around midnight?” She looked more afraid. So I went to a pet store and bought a goldfish to celebrate the occasion. I hate fish.

The funny thing about LA is that most of the people there are dreamers, but some of the residents are actually real people—“normies”—whose lives don’t revolve around their next audition or their next big break. It was always fascinating to me to watch the gas station attendants or accountants or pet store owners, and wonder how they could not try for the brass ring. They were already “living there,” for goodness’ sakes. I had to leave home, and travel millions of miles, suffer numerous discomforts and scary things just to be able to be a waitress in the Dream Factory Capitol of the world. Yet here they were, just happy to plod along in boring routines they could find anywhere. How could they resist the glow of the spotlight? Were they shy? Maybe they knew something I didn’t know… like the bad side of fame. If they did know a secret, they weren’t telling me. They just whistled a little tune, sold me the goldfish, twisted him up in a plastic bag, and gave me the receipt.