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| Kid and me at our infamous Lobotomy Magazine punk crash pad, 909 Palm in 1977 Photo by TheresaKerakes |
In 1976, when I was seventeen, I came up with
an ingenious way of buying booze. The idea was that I’d disguise myself as a
practical, somewhat harried young mom who just happened to be picking up a
fifth of vodka… along with the rest of her weekly household supplies.
I’d go to the supermarket- never a liquor store; that was an
obvious bust- dressed up in what I hoped looked like “straight lady” clothes: taupe pantyhose and
a conservative beige vinyl pocketbook that had all been dumpster-dived from a
Salvation Army Donation Box. In keeping
with what I imagined a Normal Housewife would look like, I’d pull my hair back
in a tortoise shell Goody barrette, and apply frosty turquoise eye shadow as
opposed to my customary winged Ronnettes-like tough rock’n’roll chick winged
eyeliner. Then I’d put my glasses on- I’m so blind that I need them to see more than two feet in front
of me- but they were so ugly and dorky I never wore them to gigs or anywhere
important. However, they were perfect for the
character I was creating!
Somehow, I always passed. I like to think that
my superlative dramatic skills were what conveyed my Young Mom Realness to the staff at the many stores where I pulled this
scam. It wasn’t until I hit my late
thirties that I stopped I looking like a baby-faced pre-teen. Hell, maybe it was the glasses after all! So I’d get all dressed up in my costume and collect
money from my three roomies whenever we needed a drink- and that was often- before trotting off to the
supermarket to score.
The four of us lived in a non-descript 1950’s
apartment building at 909 Palm in West Hollywood. Our lifestyle was
similar to a hippie commune, though our aesthetic was strictly Post Glitter
Rock, informed more by John Waters and The Rocky Horror Show than The Merry
Pranksters. The lease on our place was
signed by Ann McLean, a party girl whose Hammer Films Scream Queen looks belied
her eternally sweet nature, and Bing Crosby’s grandson Dennis, a witty, louche
bon vivant who’d spent his years at Beverly High tottering around on platform
sneakers doing amyl nitrate in the hallways while he cut class. Ann and Dennis had been fast friends ever
since they’d met at Rodney’s English Disco. Tiny but legendary, Rodney’s was
the ne plus ultra of Glam, where The New York Dolls, Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin
would get cozy with the scads of scantily-clad fourteen year-old-groupies while
Rodney himself spinned Bowie and The Sweet. None of us living in the apartment
were gainfully employed-or working at all- except our fourth roomie, Kid Congo,
who, in his life before The Cramps and The Gun Club, took the long bus ride
from our apartment to his part-time job as a clerk at Bomp! Records in North
Hollywood. At the rate we all drank, I
had to pull the Young Mom stunt so often that it was absolutely necessary to rotate
between the many markets in Hollywood so as not to arouse suspicion.
Once I arrived at the store,
wary of any grocery clerk’s watchful gaze and with the craft of a highly
trained Method actor, I’d stroll down the aisles at a leisurely pace, acting out “comparison
shopping” on stuff like sponges, Tupperware and cooking utensils. Since my roomies and I were on an extremely
limited budget, literally scraping up pennies from the carpet to buy our hooch,
the concept was to keep up the ruse while at the same time spending as little
money as possible on non-alcoholic things.
In addition to the all-important vodka, my regular checkout haul included
three or four jars of baby food, a roll or two of toilet paper, and a package Kraft
Macaroni and Cheese or Top Ramen.
The booze was consumed instantly, the food got
wolfed down in short order, and we were never
without bathroom tissue. But
after a few months, the jars of baby food became a problem; they began to take
over our kitchen. We were all so poor we
were loathe to waste food, so once in a while someone would wind up eating a
jar of Gerber’s mashed plums or add some Toddler Chicken Bits to their Top
Ramen, but even that never made a dent in our supply.
At one point, in a moment of
practicality, Ann suggested we simply return the baby food to the stores and
get the cash, but I nixed the idea. First of all, it was impossible to tell
which store all the jars came from, and it wasn’t like I saved the receipts!
More importantly, I was afraid that it would blow the entire scam if I suddenly
showed up at some market with, like, twenty or so full jars of strained
spinach… what would I say, that my quintuplets died suddenly?
So the ruse continued, and started
to spread. Once I explained the concept to my close friend Theresa Kereakes, a talented
photographer who worked with me on my punk rock fanzine, Lobotomy: The Brainless Magazine, she took to the idea like a duck
to water. Soon, her cabinets were chock-full o’ baby food jars too.
When Blondie first played The Whisky in
February 1977, we held a party for them at Theresa’s pad. Amidst the Quaalude
and Burgie Beer-drenched mayhem, we locked ourselves in the bathroom with the
band to conduct an interview for Lobotomy. The
resulting cassette was uproarious, with standard interview questions
interspersed with Clem Burke and Jimmy Destri yelling about The Bay City
Rollers, Debbie giggling uncontrollably, and Chris Stein singing an off-key
rendition of “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” with lyrics changed to reference the roadie
they shared with The Dead Boys, Michael Sticca.
Outside of the tiny bathroom,
the party was in full swing, with pretty much all of Hollywood’s nascent punk scene
in attendance. All of the Go-Go’s were
there, of course, as well as Joan Jett, The Screamers and The Plungers- Helen, Trudy, and Mary Rat. Members
of The Germs, X, The Berlin Brats, The Bags, and pretty much Everyone Who Was Anyone
made the scene, too.
That particular soiree was so
wild, it was an absolute miracle the
cops weren’t called -as they had been so many times before. It took a really
long time to clear the apartment, and when it was finally empty, the place was
more of a wreck than it had ever been...and that was saying something! Beer bottles and empty half-pints of
booze covered every available inch of surface, as well as most of the floor. In
the midst of the debris, we noticed that poor Kid was passed out cold on the
kitchen floor. He was a stalwart drinker
who was like The Energizer Bunny- he was usually among the last standing at any
particular event; tonight, incongruously, he was out cold. After numerous
attempts to wake him up and help him move to a more comfortable spot to sleep
it off, Theresa and I finally gave up…until I was struck with a lighting bolt
of an idea for a practical joke.
I opened the cabinet and grabbed an armful of
the baby food jars.
“We’re gonna spread this shit
all over the floor and around Kid’s mouth,” I yelled, laughing hysterically,
“When he wakes up, he’s gonna think he puked all over the place!”
“When he wakes up, he’s gonna think he puked all over the place!”
Theresa and I opened up all
the jars and began to mix the strained peas and carrots with the chunky beef stuff
to affect the appearance of a huge pile of Jack Daniel’s puke on the floor,
directly adjacent to Kid’s face. With the precision and artistry of Michelangelo
painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, we daubed a bit of the disgusting stuff
around Kid’s mouth and on his chin. In punk rock homage to Jackson Pollack,
Theresa stepped back and flung some onto Kid’s arm as well. Satisfied that our endeavor
was Puke Perfection, we decided to leave the horrendous mess of bottles and
cans for the morning, took some aspirin and went to bed.
We awoke to the delicious
scent of cooking bacon, which was almost-but not quite- enough to ease our
hangovers, which were brutal. With the hunger that can only come after a night
of binge drinking, we both enviously assumed that the smell was drifting in
from a neighbor’s window. Stepping into
the living room, we were astounded to see that all the dead soldier beers, paper cups and booze
bottles were piled into three huge trash bags sitting by the front door. As if
that wasn’t enough, the dishes were done, the floors had actually been mopped,
and Kid was standing at the stove, frying eggs to go along with the bacon he’d
just finished preparing. It also sunk
in that Kid had to have gone to the store to get the food, too, cause it wasn’t
like there was ever anything to eat
in either apartment.
Theresa and I were speechless
with shock- shit like this never
happened.
Seeing our stunned expressions, Kid ducked his
head sheepishly as he handed us plates of breakfast.
“You guys….” he began
tentatively,
“I have a confession. Last night, I…uh… kind of made a mess…so I cleaned the house.”
Theresa and I shared a
sidelong glance, and then just started chowing down.
We hadn’t anticipated the house cleaning or the breakfast, but weren’t about to look a gift horse in
the mouth!
We were so consumed with guilt that it took us years-make that decades- for
us to ‘fess up and tell him the truth.
#
For more scary
punk rock memoirs, purchase an autographed copy of my book
Showgirl Confidential ,
here: http://pleasantgehman.com/writing.html
