A Legend in His Own Mind-15

November, 1981

Dear Lázaro,

I hope you're not in a foxhole when you read this. I don't want to be responsible for you blowing up a body part or something. I have been going to Sunday services at church.

It's not what you think though. Johnna needs me to drive her to the Valley so she can teach Sunday school. This is not a Catholic Church either...it's called Science of Mind. It's really trippy. No fire and brimstone. No guilt! Everything is basically centered around you. You are the master of your own destiny. They had me. Almost.

In the middle of the preacher's sermon he said something about going to a mountaintop to commit suicide and if you jumped off the cliff, but were really, truly sorry on your way down, God would send a couple of angels to pick you up and place you back on that cliff. Somehow that's not a theory I would like to test. Know what I mean?

Johnna is like that, though. Before she met Merrick she was married. And her husband told her that he's going into the next room to blow his brains out. You know what she did? Absolutely nothing! She decided that if he had chosen that path for himself, she could not stand in the way of his destiny. Do you believe that?

Another time this guy approached her in a parking lot to mug her and she ended up giving him her car because he obviously needed the money more than she if he was able to commit such actions. That's how I ended up driving her.

She's really sweet though. She wants to start an Adopt-a-Mugger program. This way citizens who are better off can give money to criminals before they commit the crime. That way they don't have to be punished for it and they will have hope that things will get better.

She works at a piano bar called The Tam 'O' Shantern Inn. Gary and I have gone to see her a couple of times. She always plays "Night and Day" when we come in. She thinks there's something between us. I could only hope. I'm still his "young and confused" friend. Let me tell you, it can get very frustrating. That's the one guy I want to be with and I am not allowed to.

Perfect example. He was late for the show the other day so I went to his house. He only lives a few blocks away from the studio. I got there and he was asleep wearing nothing but purple bikini briefs. I tried to be professional. After all, I was there as an envoy from the show. But he looked so cute.

I tried to wake him to no avail. When I smelled his breath I realized he must be drunk. I didn't understand that. He said he was a recovered alcoholic. All I know is when I picked him up and he fell against my body, I got so turned on that it was visible. If he hadn’t been unconscious I would have shown him how young and confused I really am.

But he was! So I took him to the shower and revived him. I wonder what made him fall off the wagon? I didn't feel right asking. I didn't want him to think I was prying.

December, 1981

Hey Butch Buddy,

Was that macho enough? I was very upset when you told me that you burn my letters after you read them. Knowing where you're at, I think I understand. You don't want your manly pals reading about my unconventional life.

Well go find a match 'cause here comes more unconventionality.

There's this camera operator named Lithium. She had an acid flashback while taping and decided that the camera was a machine gun. She started rat-tat-tatting away in the middle of a scene. They should've put the other two cameras on her. It probably would have been a better show.

Anyway she had been kicked out of the back of the bar where she had been staying. I felt bad for her so she spent that night at my house. The next day she asked me to drive her to Hollywood to meet some friends.

When I got to these guys' apartment I thought I was the one having the acid flashback. Two skinny bare-chested blond guys with their hair pulled back into ponytails greeted me at the door. The apartment was wallpapered with posters of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Doors. There was a color wheel next to the lamp. It bathed the room in a psychedelic light. And of course, the apartment reeked of pot. Cheech and Chong would have been proud.

Then she asked me to drive her to the supermarket. She goes to the frozen food section, opens her blouse and starts to stick steaks inside her bra. I'm freaking out. I'm with her. Technically wouldn't that make me her accomplice?

Can you imagine being sent to Alcatraz and bunking with Bubba the serial killer; and Bubba asking me, "So what did you do kid?"

"Oh I helped a girl steal frozen hamburger from an Alpha Beta."

I would have been passed around that jail more often than that porcelain bong at the Valley party.

I was so glad when I finally took her back to the apartment. The two guys were sitting on an Oriental rug singing along to Jefferson Airplane's "Need Somebody to Love."

I drop Lithium and her frozen contraband off. I'm out of there. As I'm getting into my car a man approaches me and says if he gives me money for gas could I drive him and his old lady somewhere?

In comes this emaciated woman in hip-hugging bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed T-shirt and flops into the backseat of my car. I'm shocked. I was expecting his mother.

He gives me the address to a methadone clinic in Redondo Beach. I spent the major portion of the day driving two recovering junkies through the greater Los Angeles area.

To completely round off my day, I was in Megan's apartment. She told me to help her with her lines. Well, she took me to her bedroom 'cause the light was better in there and began to strip. Let me tell you, I had never been that close to a vagina in my life and now I knew why. As if psychologically traumatizing me wasn't enough, she proceeded to have oral sex with me. She kept grinding her teeth like a weed eater. All the while her cat would keep bouncing up and down on my lap. I don't know what scared me more....her biting it off or her cat shredding it to pieces. It was a moot point anyway. 'Cause the sucker shrank. I swear running naked in the middle of winter over our rooftops wouldn't have made it that small.

I guess she got tired of searching for it 'cause she gave up. Then Dudley walks in. Maybe I'm not hip enough, but how do I explain to this man how I ended up on his bed with his cat covering my privates while his naked wife was attached to my kneecap?

He said hello and began to take off his clothes. This apartment was like a nudist colony. Check your clothes at the door.

Now I don't know what was worse. Her or his teeny tiny pink penis. It looked like a piece of Bazooka bubble gum that had been stretched out of shape. I think I needed to leave. I grabbed my clothes and ran out. I got dressed in their laundry room. I figured if anybody came in I would tell them that I was washing the only clothes I own.

I was at a party that Slovak gave. He was celebrating the fact that he just finished a job as a stunt man for, "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Well Dudley goes up to Slovak's mother and informs her that Megan and I are both his lovers. I was so embarrassed. Then I realized that Slovak's mother spoke no English. Then I got angry. The nerve of that guy. What if reporters for the Enquirer were lurking around? I heard they camp out on people’s lawns.

I should ship him over to you. You'd take care of him for me. You were always there to protect me.

A Legend in His Own Mind-14

September, 1981

Dear Lázaro,

People who say New York is full of kooks just haven't been out here. I think Los Angeles is the training camp. They pass their finals here and then they're ready to go out into the world.

We were interviewing this lady for the show the other day. She looked like Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Fifty pounds of make-up for each wrinkle on her face. A jet-black wig that looked like a mop that hadn't dried too well.

She sat down with her arms folded across her chest looking from side to side. Like there was an invisible tennis game or something. So me, being the official good will ambassador of the show, approach her and say hello.

She points to an actress making her entrance in a red bikini and says, "I don't like her! She called me Jack. Jack is a boy's name. And I'm a girl. My name is Jackie. Do you know that I went on "The Gong Show" three times? And I got gonged three times. I went as a comedienne. I write jokes for me and for my pet rock."

I'm still trying to figure out how the pet rock told the jokes.

She came back the next day to audition. The only thing that had changed was the color of her wig. Now it was ratty blonde. She sits down and opens up a shopping bag. She begins to take out teddy bears of various sizes and line them up in front of her.

She says, "I work better with an audience."

Then she pulls out this little pistol and sticks it in Joe's chest. Joe is this little Armenian guy who plays the Jewish Sheik. He has just had a pacemaker installed.

She says, "Give me all your money or I'll shoot."

She says this in a totally monotone voice. Merrick, who was probably high on Thai sticks, begins to laugh. José, who is sitting behind me, begins to get up.

He says, "I work in a gun shop, man, and that ain't no toy."

I'm a nervous wreck now. I'm trying to tell Merrick that this woman is one slice short of a loaf. I'm worried that Joe's pacemaker is going to explode from the excitement.

Well she begins to do impersonations. She stands up, waves her right arm in the air like she's shooing away a fly and says in a deep monotone, "What a dump! I fooled you didn't I? You thought it was Bette Davis, didn't you? It's not! It's Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" People have told me when I'm wearing my black hair that I look just like her."

Not even after a long camel ride filming "Cleopatra" through the Sahara.

Merrick is very amused at all of this and Joe hasn't moved. I think he went into shock. Merrick begins to offer her the part of his aunt.

She freaks, "Your aunt? How old do you think I am?"

I'm leaning over the chairs whispering to Merrick, "Shoot low! Shoot low!"

The idiot says forty.

She blows a gasket. "I happen to be twenty-one and you are real nasty to me. You are worse than Chuck Barris. I'm so upset I'm not even going to do the song I prepared on my ukulele."

She left in a huff and hasn't been heard from since. I found out that she's a counter waitress at the May Co. downtown. I hope they tip her well.

It's actually quite sad if you think about it. She's like the Hollywood clichés of star wannabes. Spending her whole life in a dream world where her big break is just around the corner. Except she hasn't stood on that corner for at least thirty years.

And you think you have to deal with shell shock.

October, 1981

Dear Lázaro,

I am so relieved. They only censor your letters. I can say whatever I want. I can even breach security if I wanted to.

I went with Tostita to a fund-raising party Halloween party at the Hollywood Palladium. It was for solar energy. She went dressed as a pregnant nun because she didn't need any padding. She figured people would think it was the costume. You see, she has this huge crush on Jon Voight and she wanted to make an impression.

I went dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. I couldn't think of anything else. I called it a man who didn't have time to get dressed.

We had a great time. The Village People performed and I danced my slippers off.

Of course, Mami is now upset that I'm hanging around Jane “Hanoi Hannah” Fonda.

"I cannot believe that I left my contry to avoid communism and jour father is in the jongles fighting it and jou..."

She didn't finish. I guess she grabbed her rosary beads and went to say another novena. She has more conversations with Mary than Joseph did.

Father is convinced that there are subversive coded messages in the counts that Jane does in her aerobics classes.

I hope it's okay to mention Hanoi Jane. It won't get you in trouble, will it?

Well my dreams of TV stardom went out the door. I never made it to Paramount. Slovak decided that he wanted another scene...and another scene partner. It seems that someone told him that taking another man would be too much competition. What competition? Like a skinny Cuban from New York would be considered for the same parts as a guy who looks like an armoire with a bad attitude. And I had already seen myself as Lenny and Squiggy's roommate.

But I had a taste of fame anyway. Or infamy if you want. Don took me to The Apache again and people were recognizing me from that billboard. It was very exciting. And embarrassing. Just because I'm in a shower doesn't mean I'm easy. These guys were like Pavlov's dogs. I should have been wearing a raincoat.

Don introduced me to this guy that right away I recognized from a soap opera. He was breathtaking lounging there bare-chested. He had the prettiest nipples that I had ever seen. I got so nervous that when I went to shake his hand I accidentally knocked a Piña Colada on his tanned chest. The pineapple wedge started this long descent between his perfectly shaped pecs.

I apologized profusely and quickly grabbed some cocktail napkins from a passing waiter’s tray to wipe him off. He beamed this sexy smile at me and said, “You could wipe me off another way”.

I was dumbfounded by what I thought he meant. Don had to lean over and confirm my suspicions in my ear.

Well what could I do? I couldn’t refuse the big-time television star. Let me tell you that pineapple has never tasted so good. And I have never been able to look at another Piña Colada the same way again.

But it does make me wonder...is sex all they think about? I want romance. Moonlit strolls holding hands on the sands of Zuma. Going up to the observatory and gazing at the moon. You now, like James Dean and Sal Mineo.

I know what you're going to say. That scene was never in the movie. But you have to read between the takes. It was clearly obvious to me that Sal was in love with James. And James wasn't bothered by it. Natalie was just there to oversee the whole thing and cover the relationship with society's cloak of respectability.

I did meet this great guy there. He doesn't want me to reveal his name because he just got cast in a television show. Talk about security breach. Personally I think it's silly but...I will tell you that he plays a mounted policeman.

He's a sun-drenched blue-eyed blond boy from Nebraska. Birthplace of James Dean, I might add. He has that type of hair that falls over your right eye all the time. We went to Palm Springs for the weekend and he did the most incredible thing. I was driving his blue pick up when suddenly he takes off his clothes.

I said, "Wow! You want me to pull over?"

He goes, "That won't be necessary. Drive on James."

He unzipped me, straddled me and began to have sex. I didn't think that was possible. I thought I was going to crash. I had to lean over his pecs to see the road. Using his nipple as a marker for the center line.

It was incredible! I guess the fact that I had to keep at least one hand on the wheel at all times added to the stimulation.

You can imagine. If this was the ride over there...I couldn't wait to get to Palm Springs.

A Legend in His Own Mind-13

July, 1981

Hey Pal?

Screw you and your suggestion. Binky Wendelsohn III? Come on, what do you think I am? Some country club tennis playing geek? Besides I already picked one.

Mami won't talk to me now. The Dragon Lady says I am denying my family roots. I told her it was a professional move not a personal one, but she wasn't having it.

Anyway, my friend Slovak has an audition for "Laverne and Shirley" at Paramount and he wants me to be his scene partner. Isn't that great? I know it's his audition but they might like me too.

We're doing the linguini scene from "The Odd Couple." You know where Felix is not talking to Oscar and Oscar kicks him out? I'm Felix. We're at Slovak's house trying to rehearse while his girlfriend, Samoa, is running around moving linen from one closet to another. This girl is so hyper. Beautiful Hawaiian girl with long black hair but totally whacked.

Later on she's sitting at the dining room table with a bowl and she dumps an entire box of Captain Crunch cereal inside of it. Slovak is getting mad. Looking like he looks, I wouldn't want to see him angry. He once took on an entire busload of Mormons in Utah. He told me that the reason he had to leave Yugoslavia was because he killed a man in a bar fight.

He says to her, "Now, Samoa, why do you do that? You know you're not going to eat all that cereal."

So she answers him, "Don't worry about it, Hon. Whatever I don't eat I'll just blow dry it and put it back in the box."

I can see it too. This woman is fried.

And talking about fried...are you toasted? Why would you want to join the army? I know they pay for your college but you could have gotten a scholarship. I mean you graduated Summa Cum Laude in high school and you were great in baseball.

You were the star pitcher of our team. I don't know why I still refer to it as our team. All I did was shine the bench. The only time in the season that I actually got up from there was to hit a foul ball that beaned the coach's wife from the dugout.

Why would you want to go somewhere where they treat you like that? I mean they're all so nasty and rude.

August, 1981

Dear PFC Vega,

Does that sound officious enough? Wow! I still can't believe it! You look good in your uniform. But don't be doing anything stupid like volunteering for missions to Yassir Arafat's house. I know we're not at war but they are shipping you to Beirut. I mean, come on, those people throw mortar shells like we throw firecrackers.

When Dad saw your picture, he was so proud. He'd love it if I joined him in the Everglades with his revolutionary group. Revolutionary group! Six old men dressed in camouflage planning to overthrow Castro from an airboat. Not me. Green is definitely not my color. And I don't do well in mud.

I'm sending you a picture of my Head and Shoulders ad. You can hang it up in your footlocker. I'll be the Farrah Fawcett of Lebanon. They have this shot blown up on a billboard overlooking the Ventura Freeway. I have to see a twenty four-foot image of me coming out of the shower every day. Could you die?

I sent the picture to Mami and you know what the Dragon Lady said?

"I'm glad jou changed jour name since jou estarted doing porno."

All you see is my chest! What is she talking about? You know, someone has to tell that woman that she's living in the twentieth century. Abuela thought I looked real cute with wet hair.

Even though I'm "young and confused", Gary still took me to Oil Can Harry's. Another gay bar on Ventura Boulevard. It was very strange. He said it wasn't a date or anything but he hovered over me like a chaperone.

Gary should've been hovering whenever Megan got close. Yes I'm still dancing with her but see we keep winning dance contests. It's a great way to supplement my income.

Anyway I was in the backseat of her car. Well? I couldn't offend her by refusing, could I? She managed to get under me and I'm sweating bullets. She pulls me over her and I start to fumble...I mean, I really don't know where IT is. All of a sudden my search is impeded by flashing lights. She yells, startled, thinking it's a cop. It wasn't! But I took the opportunity to tell her it wasn't safe out there.

I didn't know what else to tell her. Stop yelling at me! You're right. I should tell her that I'm gay. But I don't want to hurt her feelings. I mean, I didn't tell her the first night 'cause I really didn't know. But she doesn't know that. She's gonna think I lied. That I lead her on somehow. I'll just keep subtly refusing her 'till she gets the picture.

On to brighter things. Don finally got his office. It overlooks Sunset Boulevard. I helped him move the other day and we spent all night talking about the clients we were going to have. The sun started to set and let me tell you, it was one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen. This orange haze covered all of Hollywood. I guess methane gas will do that.

Don wrapped his arms around me and we both sat huddled together and admired that incredible glow. It was one of the most spiritual experiences I have ever had. It wasn't sexual at all. I mean he didn't try anything. Not that he would. He's my friend. But it was this incredible union between our souls. We didn't have to say anything. It was like the mere touch of our bodies communicated everything.

I better stop before this sounds like Harlequin romance erotica. You know, the hot breath on the nape of my neck and things like that. I don't want to get you into trouble when they start to censor this letter.

Well don't do anything I wouldn't do. Not that you ever would.