Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (42 page)

I had flubbed my first attempt at fiction, but my questionable notoriety was getting me some interesting writing jobs. I was doing the music news on a cornball Playboy Channel show called
The Hot
List
, reading teen poetry and passages from the book at Michael’s eclectic “poetry nights” at various local haunts, and writing a column called “Yakety Yak” for a rock mag. I found myself in small conference rooms with L.A. Guns, Mary’s Danish, Dramarama; eating handfuls of sushi with XYZ, plates of pasta with Lions and Ghosts, the Sea Hags, sipping frothy cups of cappucino with the dashing Adam Ant, Zakk Wylde, Bryan Adams; hanging on the telephone with various members of Faith No More, Bad English, Corey Hart, Dave Edmunds, the exquisite rock grande dame Marianne Faithful. But I think my fave interview was the one I did with Dwight Yoakam, that lanky golden-throated cow-punk with the billion-word vocabulary. I had to wait in the lobby while he finished up a conversation, and I discovered I had actual nerves. Dwight had been one of my pet faves for a long time because he had the guts to tackle the stiff country music scene and speak his prolific mind. Not to mention his incredibly long, lean legs and tight little butt. Finally ushered into his office, I got into such a turbulent conversation with Dwight about the insensitive treatment he’d received from the L.A. press and the backwards goons in Nashville, that the phone was ringing back home as I walked through my door.

“One more thing,” Dwight launched into a thought he hadn’t been able to finish at the office as I scribbled wildly. “Remember, I grew up watching Elvis and Mick Jagger, so what I do with country music isn’t calculated. For them to say it’s inappropriate is a blatant example of cultural prejudice, trying to keep me down on the farm with some straw in my mouth going, ‘Aw shucks.’ It destroys their comfortable perception of what is tolerable from a country artist—figuratively asking the country musician to perform in blackface in a colloquial sense. I engage in it because of my love for the form, and I’ll do as much or as little of it as I see fit.” Go on, Dwight. Gosh, I was starting to feel like a real journalist, and I was about to be proven right.

I met a true mentor at my dear friend Allee Willis’s famous fifties pajama party, Annie Flanders, the inimitable founder of
Details
magazine. While Annie and I rambled on, Joni Mitchell sat by the pool in her fuzzy robe, dourly surveying the other nightie-clad ladies. Teri Garr had on a shortie fluff-job, Cyndi Lauper had on an indescribable sweeping sleepy number, Sandra Bernhard wore a leopard-print getup. I waved to her, blushing, and she called out, “Hello, sweetheart, how have you been?” Sweetheart. Did she call everybody that? Girl games went on all night. The best prize was a date with fiftiesthrobber, Fabian. Boo-hoo, I didn’t win.

Annie Flanders had an instant, unswerving faith in me, and I promised to confirm her good taste. She wanted me to do articles on anybody I thought was cool enough. She even wanted me to appear in photographs with my pet subjects. Wow! My first piece was on Hunt and Tony Sales, my old pals and new members of David Bowie’s Tin Machine, and I got Randee St. Nicholas to take the arty, charcoaland-chalk shots with me in the middle. What fun! Then Annie flew me to New York for a piece on Michael Hutchence from INXS, and I spent an entire, brilliant fall day with him in Manhattan, discussing the Higher Power and posing for hours of hands-on photos in a vast, vacant loft. This was the perfect job for me! I could flirt like a she-devil, but having to remain a professional journalist, couldn’t get into any trouble. “I believe you and I are kindred spirits, darling,” Michael said to me, so I called the article “Kindred Spirits.” I did my first cover story on the legendary Iggy Pop, photographs taken by bigshot Greg Gorman, and I really felt on my way! Annie let me write about my favorite unknowns, review hip movies, and travel around the country with my trusty tape recorder. She even shipped me off to London for tea with one of my ultimate inspirations and old-days crushes, Ray Davies, founder of the Kinks. Diary jottings:

So grand! A lovely time spent with Ray
—
equality
—
which means personal growth. I was still in awe but fully able to do my job. We reminisced sweetly. “Remember that time you came to my hotel room door with two cheap bottles of fruit-flavored wine and we drank it all down?”

La-di-da, la-di-da.

After the flawless meeting with Ray, tea and scones, an hysterical come-clean interview, I arrived home to the horrendous news that Annie had been fired! How could she have been fired from her own magazine? It turned out she had put half the ownership and all her trust in the wrong soulless giant-shots. Annie had stapled together the very first copy of
Details
, and there ought to be some kind of law protecting creative individual rights. You can bet your nine lives that it will all come out in the cosmic wash. Don’t even worry about it.

Speaking of the celestial laundromat, I had another awesome, cleansing session with Ariana:

March 26
—
I went way down/out/in
—
got warm all over, realized I was underwater, in a flowing Greek-type garment, on my way to complete an important task for my “teacher.” I was one of twenty people trained to go into this large city, reach the powerful leaders, and alter their consciousness for the better. Sounds simple, eh? I got into this massive hall
—
a long table full of men in political power having an all-important meeting
—
by posing as a servant girl. As I poured their wine from a stone pitcher
,
I caught their eye and zapped them. It was supposed to snap their consciousness gradually to include more universal ideas, make them more accepting, not so set in their selfish, rigid ways, opening them up to a whole new way of thinking, slowly changing the world as it was. On my way back to my teacher, a powerful sense of peace came over me. It was my mission, and I accomplished it just by sticking my soul into their eyes
.

As I came out of this creamy, turquoise trance state, I could see Ariana grinning like mad, she was so excited for me, her face was glowing. “Do you see how powerful you were in that lifetime? You can access that power any time you want to. It’s yours. Remember that.” Powerful. Not a word I used about myself too often. And why not? The power of God is right in the center of all of us, smack dab in the middle.

I needed all my Godly power to deal with the authorities at the “special” school. It’s true that math, science, and English were taking a backseat to the so-called emotional counseling Nick was supposed to be receiving, but Nick was bringing home the same stupid printed-page homework assignment eight or ten times and, of course, refusing to do it over and over again, then getting in trouble for not handing it in. I was concerned that when he got back into “regular” school he would be way behind academically, which was a sin because he’s sooooo damn bright. The teachers kept leaving—endless substitutes brought in only to be run ragged by the mutinous boys. When a teacher came in that Nick finally related to, promising to stay the entire school year, things got a little better then got hellishly worse when the guy couldn’t handle it either and left with no notice. Nick rebelled riotously, with good reason, and wound up in their damn time-out isolation room one too many times. “It smells bad, Mom. Kids pee in there,” Nick told me, and I stormed into the school, demanding to see the punishment chamber for myself. I was told that the proper authorities had to be consulted first. Fierce, fangs-bared, mama-lion madness erupted from inside me. I had to find out what was going on.

I had always had a very hard time with Nick’s therapist, Adolf, who refused to put any credence in Nick’s spiritual nature and saw his reliance on meditation and prayer as an escape from his problems—the same problems that nobody at the “special” school could ever seem to name or fathom. When I wanted some answers, they spoke in smart-ass psychiatric circles, such a pile of Freudian crap, I was inflamed with despair. After throwing a fit in the main office, I was finally taken down to the time-out room for a look-see. A look-smell. Nick had been so right. The closet-sized, carpeted space smelled like a urinal, smeary spots spread across the walls. This horrendous, fetid isolation even for a few minutes must have been so wretched. Such a hopeless, ensnared feeling wafted out at me. I begged silent forgiveness for unknowingly allowing Nick to spend one single second in there. After speaking my mind loudly, threatening to tell the school system about this squalid hole, I went straight to the classroom, took Nick by the hand, and removed him from the premises forever, having no idea what I was going to do next. Nick told me later that kids peed in the time-out room because they were pissed off. It made a whole lot of sense.

Nick’s next “placement” was in “special education” at our local junior high. At first he was so quiet—almost invisible despite his ever-lengthening mop of hair—that he was pretty much left alone. But once he started speaking up, he got the usual cruel taunts about being “weird” and finally blew up one day in class. I was called in, a therapist assigned, and I felt like a hamster, caught on an endless, rusted, squeaky loop. What did Nick feel like? Since his art skills were off the map, Nick was sent to an advanced art class but immediately had a run-in with the teacher. She told the pupils to put ten things in their picture, and Nick asked why. She told him it was the rule. Nick said, “Art has no rules.” How could anyone argue with that? I had long talks with him about authority figures and how teachers should be obeyed, that’s why they’re in charge. Respect your elders, yada-yada. “But art has no rules, Mom,” he said to me. Nick told the prim, grinny-faced school psychologist that she was “plastic,” and I started looking around for yet another school setting.

I even tried our local Catholic school, remembering what dear Shelly had told me about the high-level academic expectations and the very strict rules that had to be obeyed
or else
. Michael came with me, and as we sat across from the dignified nun with a severe bun, nodding quietly as we told our tale once again, I realized this wasn’t
the right place either. Our Lord hung forever suffering on His cross directly behind the headmistress and in several other places throughout the school grounds, while the Holy Mother Mary bared her raw, flaming heart for the students to witness in every single hall. Nick was forming his own wide, open-minded religious beliefs, and he was having enough of a difficult time without being thrown a humongous trowel full of guilt. I thought about the time at Jesus day camp when the person in charge told Nick to cast his eyes away from the statue of Buddha, lest he be contaminated by the devil, and I thanked the bunned nun for her time. Michael and I hung our heads and held hands through the echoing Catholic halls, heading back to the real world. We were at a loss.

Despite my increasing search for potent inner discovery and some much-needed assistance in the blindfolded mystery of parenthood, I was still having a good time on the planet. My book had come out in England, and I flew over for a two-week blast into the British public eye. The scathing
Sun
had crammed my life into their centerfold, complete with some rip-off hot shots from the
Playboy
layout, rewriting my personal history so it seemed even more salacious and hornified. Thank God I had gotten the hang of self-defense, because no one else was going to defend my blemished honor. I did a Johnny Carson—type talk show, and the other guest happened to be Dion. He and Runaround Sue hadn’t liked an article I’d written about them, but the former Mr. Slippery-Suave was sweet to me. Zach, his manager, told me he had finally reconciled it with the Lord, so I guess I was forgiven.

Then I packed up all my cares and woes and pitched them out the window of a 747 on my way to Berlin. I spent a week in that severe, stifled, elegant, buzz-cut city where
Band
had just been published under the title
Light My Fire
. There was no such phrase as “I’m with the band” in German. What did the girls hanging off drummers’ arms
say
in that country? “Let me in, I’m next to the band?” Close to the band? Near the band? Under the band? The big Berlin newspaper had run a tawdry spread on the naughty, wicked girl who slept with all the bad boys of rock. They paid me many thousands, and nobody in America ever saw it. Should I care? Isn’t it the same as Woody Allen selling whiskey in Japan?

Every street corner seemed haunted. I went to a radio station down
in the dungeon of a former Nazi headquarters, which was cold and dismal with the highest ceilings I’ve ever seen. I wanted out of there fast. The people who published my book in Berlin were brave souls doing a daring deed. Freaks among soldiers. We went out to macabre bars until almost dawn, downing deep blue drinks and laughing loudly about things American. The oddkins in Germany stand out strong: They have to push a lot of buttons to find the one that plays the right music. I was proud to be with those people. They were undaunted, genteel, and belligerent. They appreciated Gram Parsons and Frank Zappa. I loved my spartan hotel in Berlin—the scratchy, stiff, white bedclothes. I adored the smelly food, and I found a couple pairs of very fabulous, bizarre shoes that my friends didn’t understand.

After a short stop in Hamburg (I went to the spot where the former Cavern Club had been, where the Silver Beatles once played . . . aah, now just a squat vibeless building), I spent four days in Dublin, staying with my friend, Rona, and her three Irish flat-mates—all lovely, swinging girls with Irish eyes that cracked up constantly. I was on the front page of the Dublin paper, an old shot of me with Noel Redding, who happened to live in Cork, not too far away, with passages from my book all about our young, hot fling when he had been the bass player with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The local trendy pub was throwing me an afternoon book bash, and Noel was coming on the train to attend the proceedings. Although we had written intermittently, I hadn’t had my eyes on Noel for almost twenty years, and when he walked into the full-house, cacophonous, ale-swilling pub crowd, everything seemed to get quiet as we looked at each other from across the crowded room. Ha! My second lover—the very first guy I had an orgasm with. There’s something to be said for that. Noel and I spent that entire day and evening together, having loads of photos taken, answering moss-grown questions like the rock-and-roll antiquities that we were. We talked about all our dead friends and counted our blessings. “Pamela, me old lovey,” Noel whispered at the end of our exhilarating reunion, “how about a night together for very old time’s sake?” I was touched—but not by dear Noel. He had a long-time ladylove, and I’d long since learned you just can’t go back.