Читать книгу No U Turn - Michael Taylor - Страница 3

“Colorado? I really didn’t spend a lot of time in Colorado. Colorado for me was more of an ‘on-the-way-to’ California type of thing. I know that the second time I went out to California, I drove out there with a very good friend of mine. David Rosen. We basically worked our way across the country.

“Our first stop was in South Carolina, and we got a part-time job for 10 days that got us enough money to get to New York. Then from there we went to Wheeling, West Virginia—where his grandmother was staying—where we had a roof over our heads and we got part-time jobs rehabbing an old house. And then we got enough money to make it to Colorado.

“We had a friend that we went to high school with in Colorado, who was into jewelry. He was a flower child. Arnold Cohen is his name—a good guy. Arnie went to the University of Colorado at Boulder and never left. He fell in love with it. Anytime we were anywhere in the vicinity, we always had a standing invitation and we would stay with Arnie.”

Laughing, Boogie said, “I remember David and I got a job on an assembly line in Colorado—assembling awnings for recreational vehicles—to get enough money to continue our trip out to California. That was in the summer of ‘76.”

Hesitating, or perhaps remembering wistfully, he added, “Yeah … Colorado was beautiful.

“The second time I went to Colorado, it was really more job-related—I was older and opening up stores for Sleep Castle. I basically went to Colorado to open up stores for them. This was in the mid-90s. So that was my second experience with Colorado. And I can tell you that from experience … Yeah, ‘Colorado-Rocky Mountain-High,’ there is something definitely to be said for that.”

≈ So tell me … How many times have you lived in California? ≈

“I’ve been to California four different times. The first time I went out to California, I was actually staying with my Cousin Mike and his then fiancée—Hannah—in her dad’s house in Virginia Beach. And this was in ‘74.

“I’d come up from Florida to visit my Cousin Mike in Norfolk, and kinda hung out on his waterbed—which he used as a love couch in the middle of his living room—while he went to work and taught students. And I tried to catch some of his overflow, ‘cause he was doing pretty good at the time! And then he hooked up with Hannah, and it became serious; and then Hannah talked to her dad and allowed me to stay there—at her dad’s house.

“I got a job delivering auto parts to the different military bases around. Yeah, I did that for about six—, or 8 weeks. Then I got a call from a friend of mine that was out in California, telling me: Hey, he’s all set up, he’s got a great apartment, and blah, blah, blah, and he’s got a job waiting for me. Just come on out! And bring myself.

“So, in my ‘67 Cadillac convertible—that I bought for $400—I drove out to California—L.A. Went 30 hours to Dallas and 31 hours to L.A., and I showed up on his doorstep with $20 in my pocket, no gas in the car, and found out he was sleeping on somebody’s couch!” said Boogie, stifling a laugh. “One of the girls—she was friends with one of the other girls that he was staying with—was kind enough to allow me to sleep on her couch. Leslie. That was in the ‘70s.

“And that was at the height of the Quaalude phase … craze. We were Quaalude addicts. I mean, it was ‘peace and love, sex and rock ‘n roll,’ and drugs and more drugs. We knew that if we could get a girl to eat a couple of Quaaludes with us and hang out, we were getting laid that night; and we got laid a lot,” Boogie said with a small smirk, laughing in appreciation of the resurrected memory. “Just a wild and crazy time in California.

“We met some crazy people. Half of them were working for this one company called Denim West, which was a blue jean, California jeans store, where they sold jeans back then in the ‘70s for sixty–, 70 dollars a pair, which was a hell of a lot of money. They were all cocaine freaks. So a combination of cocaine and Quaaludes really can mess up one’s mind a little bit. And we used to call it the ‘nervous-hilarious’—where you’re coming down from the Coke so you start eating Quaaludes to mellow it out, and the next thing you know you’re falling all over yourself, ‘cause moderation was not in our vocabulary. So we always overdid everything!

“But, I met Katie Walston, who was Ray Walston’s daughter—My Favorite Martian—like the second night I was there in California! Me, I’m feelin’ my oats. I had had a couple of Quaaludes, so I’m hittin’ on her. And she’s a good-lookin’ redhead, and she proceeds to tell me that if she was straight, she could go for a guy like me, but she prefers women.”

≈ And you believed her? She was just more experienced at getting rid of unwanted passes than you were at picking up the daughters of Hollywood stars! ≈

“So that was my first taste with the homosexual community there; which, where I lived in West Hollywood, was half gay. And we had a lot of fun with the gay guys, as they loved to party and you never had to worry about them with competition for the girls. And the girls liked them. They were good bird dogs for getting women.

“I got a job working downtown L.A. doing some kind of inventory control for an importer, making a big $120 a week, 1974, feeling my oats, rented a place. Every Friday when I got paid, I would fill the car with gas, buy a carton of Winston cigarettes and spend the rest on Quaaludes; basically hand to mouth until the next Friday. I went from 195 pounds to 145 pounds in about three months. I looked like I came out of Dachau. That was it! Thin and beautiful.”

≈ Who else did you meet there? ≈

“The most impactful person I met there was L.M., Laura Malman. We used to call her the Quaalude Queen, because that’s what she was: The Quaalude Queen! She would sit home … she was a want-to-be dancer, thin, nice body. Her puh-n’m [face] though—you could definitely find better. But a nice body. She was the gatherer of Quaaludes from several different sources. Back then, people used to go to doctors and get legitimate scripts for the Quaaludes before the doctors were even aware that this was a misused drug. And they would go and get thirty—, or 60 Quaaludes and they would sell them to Laura Malman for a buck a piece, and then she would sell them for two-fifty [$2.50] a piece. She used that power over the drug addicts like me and my friend Don, to kind of control us a little bit. I became her ‘consigliore’ and used to advise her on business acumen and different ways of handling her business. And she used to meet up with some pretty strange guys.

“We were on the periphery of knowing some, quote, famous people. So, we would go to a party out in the Valley, Thousand Oaks. And there would be Grateful De—not Grateful Dead. The uh … No. It was the Grateful Dead! And there were a couple of other bands that would show up. And God … we met Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin and other people like that,” said Boogie, visibly excited to be re-living the moment—much more than ‘re-living’—more, as if, really back in the moment.

“One day while helping Laura Malman move into her Laurel Canyon home, the next-door neighbor came down to offer us a hand, and it turned out to be James Earl Jones. And he said, ‘Need a haaahnnd?’ ” recounted Boogie, attempting to imitate the deeply resonant British-sounding voice. “And he rolled up his sleeves and helped us move furniture into the house. You just never knew who you were going to rub shoulders with.

“I remember in West L.A., we used to go to this famous barbecue place. And again, we were, 99 times out of 100, stoned on Quaaludes and we ran into—this was in ‘74—we ran into O.J. Simpson and Nicole (Brown) Simpson. This was just before they got married. And me, being stoned out of my mind, started needling him because I’m a Miami Dolphins fan, telling him ‘how much better the Dolphins were than the Buffalo Bills,’ which is who he used to play for at the time, and he ‘could never hold Jim Brown’s jockstrap, as far as a running back goes.’ To this day, I look back and wonder how he didn’t just pop off and smack me in the mouth or something. Things like that … you would just run into people. Yeah, L.A. was a very interesting place, but a tough place when you didn’t have money.

“And the second time I went back there, which was three years later, which was in ‘77. Again, I didn’t have a lot of money and,” Boogie added nervously, “got into a scrape with a guy. I stole … took his girlfriend out or something. You know … had a fling with her for a couple of weeks. And he was some big huge humongous guy, six-two, and he wasn’t too happy about it! And I tried to reason with him, ‘Well, if she wanted to be with you, she’d be with you!’ So he picked up an ax handle and threatened to smash it across my face and, and ‘Not make me so pretty anymore!’ After that, and a couple of other things, I ended up actually going to Spokane, Washington later that year and spending time with my Cousin Mike, who bailed me out of many a tough moment. And that was one of them.”

≈ But, what did you learn from all of this? ≈

“The first two times in L.A. were interesting, met a lot of people, had good times, but it was almost always drug-related. And I was almost always broke! It had the allure. You could go to this coffee shop, and whatever, you could smell the money. You just knew there was money there, and you just had to figure out a way to make enough money to make it happen.

“Thank G—!” said Boogie, clearly stopping himself from completing the word. “Eventually I did, back in the early 90s, after working with Sleep Castle for a while, went out to California and opened up stores for them, and made a very nice living. And it certainly was from a different perspective having money. And it was just a much, much nicer lifestyle. Wasn’t into drugs at the time. Just a whole different animal, when you have a beautiful apartment in Newport Beach, looking out at the ocean. Again, it was a very, very consumer-driven … very, very Me-me-me, Look-at-what-I-have type of society. But when you have it, you don’t mind flaunting it a little bit. And when I finally did make it, I didn’t mind flaunting it a little bit.

“In ‘74 I left California and ended up taking a Greyhound bus from L.A. to Miami. It was a three-day bus ride. And unbeknownst to me at the time, I had hepatitis. I was really feeling lousy, and had no money. I basically made it across country on less than 20 dollars for the 3 days. Needless to say, I ran out of money after the first day and,” sounding like a preacher, Boogie added in a cocky, nasal tone, “relied ‘on the kindness of strangers’ for the rest of the trip.

“I’ll never forget my mother picking me up at the bus depot. You know, basically, here I am …defeated! —Or at least that’s the way I felt—having, quote, failed in California, and being sick as a dog—convalescing on her sofa for the next six—, to 8 weeks. So that was the first trip to California.

“The second trip to California was … you know, I couldn’t wait to get back. Our home situation was tough. My younger brother and I still lived with our parents. My dad was ill. And it just drove us crazy. We couldn’t stand it. We took any and every chance we could to get out of there. Again, with my dad being ill, I was kind of trapped into helping him run his business,” said Boogie, a little louder than normal, but not shouting.

“And I hated that! I hated the pressure. I hated the fact that, quote, the family’s livelihood depended on me! And I just couldn’t stand that pressure. And I couldn’t wait to get out of Florida. So I went back to California the second time, and it was kind of a repeat performance of the first time. Went back there in ‘77. Again, it lasted maybe seven—, 8 months. And that’s when I went up to Spokane and started another chapter of my life—living with my Cousin Mike.”