My Dark Places Page 15
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 that bad. I had a safe spot to sleep, and I could hang out with Lloyd and read in public libraries all day. I could shave in public restrooms and take occasional showers at Lloyd’s place.
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 weren’t supposed to swallow the wads and fly on righteous ten-hour speed highs.
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 gooooood. It was brain-popping and groin-grabbing. It was just as good as a pharmaceutical-upper high.
I went back to my spot in Robert Burns Park and jacked off all night. The high lasted eight solid hours and left me dingy and schizzy. T-Bird took the edge off and eased me into a fresh euphoria.
I’d found something. It was something I could have at will.
I went at it willfully. I stole inhalers and flew every third or fourth day for a month. I chugged down inhalers in library men’s rooms and buzzed back to Burns Park with my head scraping the moon. The speed continuum gave me my most textured crime and sex fantasies. I stole a flashlight and some skin mags and worked them into my scene.
Outdoor life was good. I told Aunt Leoda to send my monthly C-note care of Lloyd. She thought I was bunking in with a buddy. I didn’t tell her I was now a perpetual camper.
I forgot to factor rain into my outdoor-life equation. Some drizzles sent me looking for shelter. I found a deserted house at 8th and Ardmore and moved in.
It was a two-story job with no interior lights and no running water. The living room featured a moldy faux-leather couch. The couch was good for sleeping and sustained jackoff action.
I settled into the house. I kept the front door unlocked and hid my stuff in a closet when I went out. I figured I was being discreet. I was mistaken.
It went down in late November. Four cops kicked my door in and charged me with shotguns.
They threw me to the floor and handcuffed me. They stuck those big 12-gauge pumps in my face. They threw me in a car, drove me to Wilshire Station and booked me for burglary.
My cellmate was a black guy popped for armed robbery. He held up a liquor store, got away clean and saw that he’d dropped his Afro comb at the scene. He went back to get it. The proprietor recognized him. The cops bagged his ass right there.
I was scared. This was worse than Georgia Street Juvie.
A detective interviewed me. I told him I was sleeping in the house—not burglarizing it. He believed me and knocked the beef down to plain trespassing. A jailer moved me over to the misdemeanor side of the tank.
My fear subsided a bit. My cellmates said trespassing was chickenshit stuff. I’d probably get cut loose at arraignment.
I spent Saturday and Sunday at the Wilshire holding tank. They fed us two TV dinners and two cups of coffee a day. I was in with a bunch of drunks and wife beaters. We all lied about our crime exploits and the women we’d fucked.
A Sheriff’s bus hauled us to court early Monday morning. It dropped us off at the Lincoln Heights Division—home of the famous Lincoln Heights drunk tank.
We waited to see the judge there. The tank was forty yards square and jam-packed with male lowlife. Deputies lobbed lunch sacks into the crowd. You had to fight for your food. I was tall enough to snag my chow straight out of the air.
The day stretched. A dozen winos suffered alcoholic seizures. We went before the judge ten or so at a time. The judge was a woman named Mary Waters. The guys in the tank said she was a nasty old cunt.
I stood before her and pled guilty. She said I looked like a draft dodger. I told her I wasn’t. She ordered me held without bail—pending a probation workup. I was due back in court on December 23rd.
It was December 2nd. I was headed for three weeks in stir.
I tamped down my composure. A deputy hooked me up to a 12-man shackle chain. Another deputy herded us out to a big black & white bus.
The bus took us to the Main County Jail. It was a huge facility a mile northeast of downtown L.A. The induction process took 12 hours.
Deputies skin-searched us and sprayed us with delousing solution. We traded our street clothes for jail denims. We got blood-tested and inoculated for various diseases. We spent hours moving from one barred pen to another. I got to my actual cell at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.
It was a four-man cell overpacked now to six. A deputy told me to slide my mattress under the left bottom bunk. I scooted down there and passed out from complete exhaustion.
I woke up for 6:00 a.m. chow. A deputy called off some names on an intercom—my name included. We were being “rolled up” to the Hall of Justice Jail.
An inmate said this was everyday stuff. You processed in at the “New” County and got rolled up elsewhere. The Hall of Justice Jail was known as the “Old” County.
A deputy shackled me to some guys. Two deputies herded us out to a van and drove us to the Old County. We elevatored up to a tank on the thirteenth floor.
My tier was packed to double capacity. A deputy said the new guys had to sleep on the catwalk. You had to roll your mattress up in the morning and drift between cells until lights-out.
I had twenty days of this coming. An inner voice hipped me to the basic gestalt.
You are big—but not tough. You commit crimes—but are not a real criminal. Watch how you act. Watch what you say. Be careful, be calm and hold your breath for twenty days.
I fed myself that message instinctively. I did not verbalize the thought. I didn’t know that my mere presence shouted: fool, chump, geek, ineffectual kid.
I kept my mouth shut. I programmed myself to be stoic. I tried not to betray my fear overtly. My fellow inmates laughed at the plain sight of me.
Most of them were felons awaiting trial in Superior Court. They understood and disdained male weakness.
They laughed at my twitchy walk and shortened my two names to the hated “Leroy.” They called me “the Nutty Professor.” They never put their hands on me. They considered me beneath that kind of contempt.
Lloyd visited me. He said he called my aunt and told her I was in jail. My insurance money was running out. The old girl was set to advance me 200 scoots anyway. Lloyd knew a flop I could get for 80 a month—the Versailles Apartments on 6th and St. Andrews.
I counted off my 20 days. A probation officer came to see me. He said Judge Waters was set to release me. I would get a suspended sentence and three years’ formal probation. I would have to get a job.
I said I’d look for work pronto. I promised that I’d walk the straight and narrow.
I kept my mouth shut on the tier—and listened. I learned that Romilar-CF cough syrup gave you a righteous high and that strips of tape along window panes denoted alarm systems. The guy at Cooper’s Donuts knew all the hot black hookers. You could score dope at three Norm’s Coffee Shops. The place at Melrose and La Cienega was called Fag Norm’s. The place at Sunset and Vermont was called Normal Norm’s. The place on the south side was called Nigger Norm’s.
Marijuana grew wild in certain parts of Trancas Canyon. Ma Duncan’s son was now a hot criminal lawyer. Doc Finch was up for parole soon. Carole Tregoff turned lez in the joint. Caryl Chessman was a punk—all the guys at Quentin hated him. That Susan Hayward flick I Want to Live was bullshit. Barbara Graham really did beat Mabel Monahan to death.
I listened and learned. I read a beat-up copy of Atlas Shrugged and came to the unsound conclusion that I was a superman. I stayed booze- and dope-free and added ten pounds of jail-food muscle.
Mary Waters released me two days before Christmas. I boosted some inhalers on my way back to Burns Park.
I got a one-room pad at the Versailles and signed up with a temp agency. They sent me out on some mailroom jobs. My probation officer found my work life satisfactory. He liked my short hair and Ivy League threads. He told me to avoid hippies. They were all strung out on mind-altering substances.
So was I.
I worked my temp gigs Monday to Friday. I killed a half-pint of scotch for breakfast and chased it with Listerine mouthwash. Cruise control got me through to lunch and some wine and/or weed. I got drunk every night and took inhaler trips on the weekends.
Romilar was a good B&E drug. It made common things seem surreal and full of hidden truth. I went on a righteous burglary run behind it. I hit Kathy’s house, Kay’s house and Missy’s house—and concentrated on the medicine chests. I popped every inviting pill I saw on top of my cough syrup. I blacked out and woke up on my bed two times out of three.
I liked appearing clean-cut and cosmetically wholesome. Every freak in ’69 L.A. was a fuzz magnet. They wore long hair and fruitcake clothes and sent out “Bust Me” vibes. I didn’t. I bopped around in my co-existing worlds with relative impunity. I was good at giving people what they wanted to see.
I turned 21 in March. I gave up my pad and moved to a cheap hotel in Hollywood. I got a long-term temp job at KCOP-TV
I worked in the mailroom. People responded to ads for shit like 64 Country Hits and sent folding money and coins in through the mail. The heft of quarters and dimes gave those envelopes away. I started raking in a lot of extra money.
I spent it all on booze, dope and pizza. I moved to a better place—a bachelor pad at 6th and Cloverdale. I got hopped up on some women there and followed them around the neighborhood.
My insurance money ran out. My mailroom thefts more than covered the loss. I got in a fender bender with the company van and had to admit I had no driver’s license. KCOP fired me. I got some short-term temp gigs and lived ultra-cheap. I got desperate. I broke into Missy’s house and broke a cardinal rule.
I stole all the money in her mother’s purse. There was no going back to that sweet house at 1st and Beachwood.
My pad prowls were starting to scare me more than thrill me. I felt the law of chance on my tail. I’d broken into places maybe twenty times total. My jail stint taught me things that fed my sense of caution.
House burglary was first-degree burglary. It was a penitentiary offense. I knew I could handle county jail time. Prison time would eat me up whole.
The Tate-LaBianca snuffs occurred in August. I felt the ripples all through Hancock Park.
I noticed some tape around Kathy’s windows. I saw more private patrol cars out trawling. I saw security-service signs on front doors.
I stopped B&E’ing cold turkey. I never did it again.
I spent the next year in fantasy limbo. I held down temp gigs and a job at a pornographic bookstore. Hard-core packaged smut was now legal. Unpainted hippie girls were spread out nude in full-color magazines.
The girls didn’t look jaded or degraded. They looked like they were posing for chuckles and some bread. They were engaged in an ugly pandering business. They betrayed their awareness of it with little frowns and glazed eyes.
They reminded me of the Black Dahlia—sans heavy makeup and noir baggage. The Dahlia choked on movieland illusions. These girls were deluded on some junk metaphysical plane.
They bored straight into my heart. I was the porno bookstore clerk out to save them from pornography and take his reward in sex. I hoarded their pictures the way Harvey Glatman hoarded pix of his victims. I gave my girls names and prayed for them every night. I sicced the Dahlia killer on them and saved them as his blade descended. They spread their legs and talked to me when I flew on Benzedrex inhalers.
I didn’t fall for ones with perfect shapes and pert faces. I loved the smiles that didn’t quite work and the sad eyes that couldn’t lie. Mismatched features and oddly shaped breasts hit me hard. I was looking for sexual and psychological gravity.
I stole that bookstore blind. I examined every sex mag that came in and ripped out pictures of the most wrenching women. I worked midnight to 8:00 a.m., tapped the till and went to a bar that screened beaver flicks all day. I got drunk and looked at more hippie girls—and I always studied their faces more than their bodies.
My pornographic season passed too quickly. The bookstore boss got hip to my thefts and fired me. I went back to temp work, built up a surplus roll and went on a gargantuan two-month bender.
I socked in a case of vodka, a load of steaks and a load of inhalers. I gorged myself on fantasy, fantasy sex, cholesterol, and the work of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and some junk crime writers. I stayed inside for days running. I lost and gained and lost weight and worked myself into a near-insane frenzy.
I stiffed my landlord for two months’ rent. He started banging on my door and talking eviction. I didn’t have enough money to muzzle him. I had enough to secure a cheaper pad for a month.
I found a place by the Paramount Studio. It was a genteel dive called the Green Gables Apartments. A small bachelor rented for 60 a month—very cheap for 1970.
Lloyd helped me move. I packed my stuff into his car and pulled a classic late-night rent dodge. I got squared away at the Gables and looked for work.
I didn’t find any. The low-skill job market was soft. I took a series of inhaler trips and started seeing and hearing things that might or might not be real.
The tenant next door smirked at me when we passed in the hall. He banged on my window when I inhaler-tripped. He knew what I was doing. He disapproved. He read my lips and deciphered all my dirty sweet nothings. He read my thoughts through the wall that separated us.
He hated my porno books. He knew I murdered my mother and killed my father with neglect. He thought I was a freak and a pervert. He wanted to destroy me.
I flew and crashed, flew and crashed, flew and crashed. My paranoia raged in proportion to the dope in my system. I heard voices. Sirens on the street sent me hate messages. I jacked off in the dark to deceive the man next door.
He knew me.
I bolted midway through an inhaler trip.
I left my clothes and fuck books behind. I ran out of the apartment and fast-walked three miles northeast. I saw a For Rent sign in front of a building at Sunset and Micheltorena.
I rented a convenience room for $39 a month. The building was filthy and reeked of spilled garbage.
My room was half the size of a six-man jail cell. I moved in with the clothes on my back and a short dog of T-Bird.
I popped some inhalers the next morning. New voices assailed me. The tenant next door started hissing through my air vents.
I was afraid to leave my bed. I knew the heat coils in my electric blanket were microphones. I ripped them out. I pissed in the bed and tore the pillows apart. I stuffed foam rubber in my ears to muffle the voices.
I bolted the next morning. I headed straight for Robert Burns Park.
It went bad from there. It went bad with self-destructive logic.
It went bad slowly.
The Voices came and went. Inhalers let them in. Liquor and enforced sobriety stifled them. I understood the problem intellectually. Rational thought deserted me the second I popped those cotton wads in my mouth.
Lloyd called the voices “amphetamine psychoses.” I called them a conspiracy. President Richard M. Nixon knew I murdered my parents and ordered people to stalk me. They hissed into microphones wired to my brain. I heard the Voices. Nobody else did.
I couldn’t stop taking inhalers. I heard the Voices for five years.
I spent most of that time outside. I lived in parks, backyards and empty houses. I stole. I drank. I read and fantasized. I walked all over L.A. with cotton stuffed in my ears.
It was a five-year daily sprint.
I’d wake up outside somewhere. I’d steal liquor and lunch-meat. I’d read in libraries. I’d go into restaurants, order drinks and meals and ditch out on the check. I’d hit apartment-house laundry rooms, break into washers and dryers and steal the coins inside. I’d take inhalers and notch some nice moments before the Voices claimed me.