A random chick asked me to share a two-bedroom bungalow half a block from the beach on a Venice walk street.  The year was 1979.  There wasn’t much else going on.  I was living in my friend’s kitchen that had I converted to a very small bedroom by simply hanging a Japanese print curtain next to the refrigerator.  It was pretty ghetto.  But it was easy reaching from my bed for a can of Tab, and I had a six-pack-a-day habit.  Anyway, I can’t resist the beach, so I said yes.  Problem was, I didn’t know this girl all that well.  And soon learned there would be no chicks staying-up-all-night-in-PJ’s laughing.  Turns out, she was a full-blown groupie.  And an alcoholic.  She spent her nights at a recording studio with some band that shared her in the late night hours.  Most of her days were spent cleaning the recording studio.  Not for money, just because she was a fan.  My roommate was never home to pay her rent on time.  And if she were home, she would start a fight to get out of paying the rent.  Fun times.

I would spend hours listening to a new artist, Elvis Costello, and the song, “Watching the Detectives,” which I would play along with on my drum practice pad outside on the patio.  It was a sorry little existence.  I never felt safe alone at night, and I was pretty sure my big cat Cosmo, who went missing for hours at a time, had joined a gang.  Some nights, I would go with my friend Pam to little bars and joints on the strand, Cosmo trailing behind us.  Cosmo wore a scarf the way dogs did in that era, which means I put the scarf on him.  He didn’t wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I think I’ll sport this great red scarf today.”  Cosmo would wait outside those little bars for us and then follow me home.  By the way, I never drank, so I’m not sure what we were even doing in those joints.  Something to get us out of the house, I guess.   Most days I wore stars on my face.  Sometimes I carried a wand.  A combination of vintage and punk clothes was my wardrobe.  I was very colorful.  Speaking of colorful, the roomie once told me this story.  Actually I had heard this story for years, I just didn’t know I was now living with a “famous” person.  Or is infamous the better word. (more…)