Breathing deeply, my mouth opened
wide, yearning to receive his essence, feeling him in my very core. This…thing we had together went on at least
twice a week and lasted for years, from the late 1970’s to the mid 1990’s. It
wasn’t a booty call; it was a ritual.
Around midnight, I’d steal through the always-unlocked gates in
of Hollywood Memorial Park, and head directly to Douglas Fairbanks’ monument. Bounding down the stairs and trotting
the length of the magnificent reflection pool, my anticipation grew,
knowing I was about to commune with the star of Robin
Hood, The Thief of Baghdad, Zorro.
I needed his devil-may-care,
swashbuckling, adventurous spirit… so I’d cram my entire face into the vents of his tomb, open my mouth as big as a
Great White Shark, and inhale deeply
until I almost passed out. I was valiantly trying to absorb his silent movie
star DNA, hoping it would affect my genetic makeup by changing my chromosomes. Though I’d ingested
copious amounts of controlled
substances in my life, none were as potent.
The vents on Douglas Fairbank’s sarcophagus
have been cemented shut for decades, and
the cemetery gates are now padlocked at
dusk, but in the ‘70’s, you could just walk
right in after dark- and several people did. Back then, not only were the main
gates carelessly left open, the entire place was in such dire disrepair it looked like a set from a
mid-sixties Hammer Films B-Movie Vampire
flick. All that was missing was Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
The baroque wrought iron doors on the Edwardian Era mausoleums were rusted
and hanging from their hinges; some had been pried off and lay on the
ground. A few of the mausoleums had
visible-and severely vandalized- wooden coffins inside, surrounded with broken
beer bottles and covered in “R13” spray
paint tags from the local gang The Rebels. Pre-1920’s grave
stones tilted at crazy angles due to the ground settling; weeds grew rampant;
the grass was rarely mowed. Bouquets of weather-worn
cheap plastic flowers and fading,
shredded miniature American flags stood
forlornly on the markers. A few pieces of statuary were missing hands or the
tips of their angelic wings, others were defaced with graffiti.
In those days, the cemetery
was like an after-hours hot spot for juvenile
delinquent punks like me: it was free to get in, no one carded you, and you could make all sorts of noise cause the neighbors… weren’t alive! I spent
more time, did more drugs and had more
sex in the graveyard than I ever did in my house. I actually considered
Hollywood Memorial Park my bedroom. My favorite spot for dead-of-night (pun intended) erotic encounters was the island monument. I’d
bring my leopard print flannel sleeping bag, a handful of qualuudes,and a hot squeeze.
Sometimes we’d actually pass out there,
waking up as dawn broke.
I had sex with humans with the dead as voyeurs: sprawling on the
markers for Jayne Mansfield, Tyrone
Power, Cecil B. DeMille and on the marble
floor under Rudolph Valentino. Raised as
a feminist, I avenged Fatty Arbuckle’s rape of Virginnia Rappe by copulating on
her grave, leaving her a paper cupful of Cold Duck and an earring as an offering. I hooked up with a cute goth guy
I’d just met at a show on Mel Blank’s monument while we were both on acid. When
he said “What’s Up Doc?” in a Bugs Bunny voice after we were done, I thought
for sure we could build a long term meaningful relationship…but I never saw him again. THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!
The following incident took place during the very rainy Spring
of 1978. I’d just turned nineteen and
was once again tripping my brains out on
LSD. The Mumps were in town from New York City. Darlings of the Lower East Side
CBGB punk scene, The Mumps were lead by the infamous Lance Loud, who’d come out
on national television on the PBS show “An
American Family”. I’d interviewed The Mumps for Slash Magazine, and they’d just
been on the cover of Lobotomy: The Brainless Magazine a Xerox fanzine I did with my buddy, photographer Theresa Kereakes.
She was one of the only people in our crowd with a car-a little Honda that had
recently transported a load of crazies
up to San Francisco to see The Sex Pistols at Winterland. One night, Theresa, my roommate
Kid Congo of The Gun Club (and later,The Cramps, Nick Cave, etc.etc.)) and I too The Mumps bassist
Kevin Kiley to get a whiff of Douglas Fairbanks.
We cracked bottles of illegally purchased
Mickey’s Big Mouth as we sloshed through the muddy overgrown grass, showing
Kevin our favorite monuments. Though I was appalled so many graves had been
vandalized, I thought nothing of plucking Easter Lilies from the bouquets the
living had left for their dearly
departed. I loved fresh flowers and couldn’t
afford them…plus, the recipients were
dead. Kevin helped me gather up a big bouquet as we chanted
over and over in a Katherine Hepburn voice,
"THE CALLA LILLIES ARE IN BLOOM!"
Somehow I fell behind the group, stopping at a
life-sized statue of a weeping woman, her hands covering her face. I watched in
morbid fascination as the collected water from the recent rain slowly
dripped through her fingers like tears, splashing onto the granite pedestal. I thought I heard a low whistle, but chalked it
up to being freaked by the spooky statue, until I heard bushes rustling…and then footsteps. Stiffening in fear, I went as alert and still as a hunted doe. I heard men’s
voices mumbling; they seemed very
close by, and were definitely not wildlife, a ghost or a hallucination. I felt their eyes on me and knew it wasn’t my
imagination, so I walked away swiftly,
but as casually as possible to find the
others.
“There’s people here,” I said in a breathless whisper, “They’re hiding and I think
they’ve been watching us…and…we should
go…like now!”
Kid rolled his eyes. We’d taken acid together so many times, he knew I was prone to
outre thoughts and obsessive behavior.
Once, at my insistence we spent hours
examining the entire contents of a box
of Ritz Crackers individually to see if
they really had SEX stamped onto them as a subliminal suggestion.
“
You’re just being paranoid,” Kid said
patiently.
“ No, I swear!”,
I gasped, trying not to flip out. “We
gotta get outta here!”
There was a loud whistle- we all heard it and
whirled around in unison.
A tall, heavy set man
appeared from behind one of the mausoleums. He had wild long black hair and crazy eyes and
was brandishing a long length of lead
pipe. He ran towards us as a second man, also armed with a pipe, closed in, coming from the area near the front gates.
“Run!” Kevin yelled.
We all took off, instinctively sprinting for the east
wall of the cemetery, the one bordering
Van Ness, because Theresa had parked
there. Kid was already on top of
the wall, extending his hand as I threw
my Easter Lilies over before climbing up. Getting a boost from Kevin, I used the
thick ivy to hold on but it was slippery with dew. Though Theresa was last to
scale the wall, she unlocked the car
with miraculous speed. As we pulled out,
the first thug grabbed the door Kid was closing, and with abnormal strength, kept it open until Theresa backed the Honda up abruptly, knocking him to the sidewalk.
We sped south on Van Ness, the thug’s late
model Impala in hot pursuit. For nearly thirty minutes, we darted in and out of
small, quiet side streets at high speed,
trying to lose the men, but they followed so closely it was impossible.
Meanwhile, I was having a legit panic attack in
the back seat because there were giant
slugs crawling all over the lilies I’d stolen.
As we lurched around corners, I
started screaming…not at the situation, but from Slug Panic. In a phobic
fugue state, I shoved every stalk that had a slug on it to
Kevin, who, to humor me- and probably to make me shut the fuck up- started stuffing them out the small window vent. Non-stop lilies flew onto the Impala’s windshield, like floral missiles.
There were , nine or ten huge Calla lilies plastered on it, and in hindsight, I’m reasonably sure that the
lack of visibility they created was the
only reason Theresa was able to make it onto Melrose Avenue.
She hung a left, and with a squeal of tires, made a huge donut,
driving illegally on purpose hoping to attract the attention of the cops.
Finally, we lost the thugs and jammed
down the deserted street going 90mph all the way to La Brea.
Completely shaken, we exited the car and gratefully
entered her apartment. The Mumps’ drummer Paul Rutner, who’d opted out of the cemetery
excursion in favor of rest, was shocked when he saw our faces.
“ What the hell happened to you guys? “ he asked, adding
without a drop of irony,
“You’re as white as ghosts!”
#
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