I first met L at a party in the Valley, the band "Back in Black " was playing, an AC/DC cover band. The name Back in Black was a fitting beginning for the few black years that followed, years of lying and cheating, years of poverty and chance, years of resentment and redemption, it's all here like grand Opera and to up to now it has not been revealed…

L has broken a few hearts in her day, she's left a trail of scorched earth and burnt Spandex in her wake. L had the uncanny ability to look you straight in the eye and LIE to you, she could spin lies out of the air like a spider spins a web and after all you wanted to believe them, didn't you? No one wants to believe the worst about someone they're going out with…

When I first met L. I was a writer living alone in a building in Downtown L.A.---I had virtually zero contact with the hated Human Race other than an occasional foray out into the rock scene for a few beers and a chance encounter. I met L at a party, I was with my friend Johnny at the time and he introduced us. We chatted for a bit, I thought she was cute, that was about it. She had come from the Midwest only a few months ago and had already slept with a few rockers, it seems us musicians tend to eat from the same Trough. She came to Hollywood looking for her very own "Tommy Lee", that stereotype black haired tattooed rocker with a bad attitude that all chicks dig. Girls come from all over the country to L.A. seeking the same exact thing, their very own Tommy Lee. It comes from all those years of watching Headbangers Ball I guess. L was no exception, she wasn't sophisticated and she didn't have to be. She was probably the prettiest girl in her one-horse town and that was enough of an impetus for her to seek her fortunes elsewhere. And here she was, looking for Mr. Right, or Mr. Wrong as it were---either would do. And she chose me.

A few days after the party I got a call; it was L. I don't know how she got my number; in retrospect it doesn't matter. Her and her roommates were having a party over at their house and would I attend. I said yes and went over. She lived with two other roommates in a large apt. in theValley. The party was goofy, chock-full of wanna-bes and rejects from the Rainbow. I was the only guy there who had actually DONE something musically and was consequently treated with scant respect and a lot of resentment by the rest of the Lip Service Crowd. I don't think I slept with L that night but I did soon after. And so it goes…the Hollywood Shuffle. I had known L perhaps 3 or four weeks and maybe slept with her twice when I got a phone call, it was L, crying hysterically. Her so-called "friends" were kicking her out of their apartment and she had nowhere to go. I didn't know what to say, she was desperate, frantic-could she stay at my place until she got back on her feet? "Um…well" I hemmed and hawed, I didn't need a roommate--- " Please please please…" she said in that Little-Girl Lost voice "It's just for a little while-- I'll pay all the rent, you won't ever even see me, I'll be at work all the time-it'll only be FOR A LITTLE WHILE" ….So I agreed, like an idiot. It won't be the first time you hear the words 'me' and 'idiot' uttered in the same sentence. I moved what little shit she had into my place and became a boyfriend/ person. Now remember I lived in a band rehearsal space in downtown L.A., I had a bed and a TV, amps and drums, not much else. Bars on the windows and bums trolling the streets, trucks and noise and pollution-no place for a girl. I didn't mind living there, I wrote songs all day, I worked out frustrations with a heavy bag I hung from the ceiling and I scribbled anti-social propaganda on the walls with my big black Sharpie pen. To me this was Heaven. So after knowing this girl only a month I let her move into my place.

The first thing L insisted that I do once she moved in was to make me take an AIDS test. She was just an innocent girl from the Midwest you see and all the sins of my past troubled her. I had had an HIV test a few years ago back in those crazy Orgy days of the early 90's but I'd been pretty solitary since then, only venturing out once in a while. This was the era of Green Day and the second Korn record, cock rock guys basically stayed in the shadows until our wheel of fortune came round again as it inevitably did. Anyway getting another test didn't bother me so I went ahead and did it. L acted as if she had led a mostly sheltered life, the 'small town girl' gag. Considering what I later found out about L's past activities it should have been ME that asked for the test. L had left her home in the Midwest a few years before and went to live at an east coast college, her parents securing two huge student loans so she could live and go to school. Well apparently the nightlife took precedence over the discipline of school and soon L found herself missing more and more class. After a semester and a half she was out of money and failing her classes, things were getting desperate. So she decided she could make money doing unsavory things, things good little girls don't do. She got caught with a gentleman caller in flagrant delecto doing some of those unsavory things in her apartment by one of her roommates and was subsequently kicked out. She was then forced to leave the State for passing a series of bad checks so to this day L cannot get a bank account. Of course I didn't know any of this at the time, I was playing guitar and recording and occasionally I'd lift my head up and take a look around. L got a job in Hollywood and since she didn't have a car I let her use mine during the day.

About that time L decided she needed to lose weight. I never said anything shitty to her about it but every time she said something about trying to lose weight I was always right there to encourage. This was the era of the Phen-phen phenomenon, the so-called "miracle drug", everybody was using it to lose weight. L went to a shady doctor, got a prescription and started using it. Well let me tell you that shit worked with a VENGEANCE, the pounds literally melted off her like hot butter, L lost 20 pounds in 6 weeks, it was amazing. She really started to look good, her face lost all of its baby fat and even her thunder thighs were less thunderous. The only problem was that the drug made her sort of goofy, loopy. You lost the weight but you ended up stupid. This wouldn't do, I was all for the new improved L but I didn't want a retard for a girlfriend either so we both agreed she'd stop taking the magic pills.

Not too long after L became pregnant. I had never in my life gotten a girl pregnant so I was pretty freaked out about it. Scared to Death would be a better way of putting it, visions of screaming babies and a looming day job to pay for the Great Pyramid-sized mound of Pampers that a rug rat would need jumped into my head and shook it like a hive of angry bees. Luckily L had no desire to be a mother and the two of us took the long Hellish road to the Clinic. I walked her past the protesters and I sat in the waiting room with about 20 Mexican dudes and modern Science did its thing and it was Done. Now all this time it never occurred to me that maybe this pregnancy was not of my doing, what I'm saying is that it didn't dawn on me that maybe the kid was somebody ELSES…Life is funny that way. Nowadays you'd call it being "Punk'd" After the abortion L joined Bally's health spa and would go there religiously, even on weekends, or so I thought. Turns out she was fucking one of her co-workers, instead of going to the gym she was really going to the Jim…or was it Vince…ha ha.

So after 6 months of living together we'd gone through an abortion and now she was cheating. I was oblivious. It's not that I was stupid…well, maybe a little stupid. Fuck it, I was the underground writer, that was my character, that's all I gave a shit about---the more the girl was gone the more quality time I had to write, that's how I looked at it. Writing poetry and songs about the street really meant something now, I was literally THERE, in the street, dirty and poor, drunk but sharp as a tack, I was living it, like Bukowski or any other gutter poet. So maybe I can be excused for turning a blind eye to L's extra-curricular activities; I was so immersed in being Kerouac that it didn't matter. That is until the day the phone bill came. That month's bill had a long series of calls to a certain Valley number I did not recognize. Many many calls, all very long and always late at night, way past the time when I went to bed. So I called up the phone company and I had them trace the call, I found out it belonged to a certain co-worker that I had heard L speak of, this Vince guy. The gears started turning…hmm….from the shrouded mist of stupidity a single ray of light began to shine. So I waited until L got home that night from the "health spa" and asked her about it. We were just chatting about nothing when I pulled out the phone bill and nonchalantly asked her about the mystery calls.

" Um…do you have any idea who this number is? I asked.
She looked at the bill. " No."
I asked again.
" Are you sure you don't know who it is?" I asked.
She looked me right in the eye.
" I told you," she said indignantly " I've never seen that number so how would I know who it is?"
Weird. I took a long deep breath, let it out and said those two Immortal words.
"Wrong answer."
I got up and went over to my recording console, took a seat. L realized she'd been set up and came over to me, knelt at my feet.
" Look" she said hurriedly. " I didn't want to tell you because I knew you'd be mad but I've been calling a friend of mine at work. You never talk to me and I just need to talk to someone…we're just talking, that's all" She went on and on, they were just friends, I really didn't understand her, blah-de fucking blah-somehow she was twisting it all around to sound like it was MY FAULT--
" You're a liar" I said like Pontius Pilate, and she sat up bolt straight, like she'd been punched in the back." You're a weirdo liar," I said, shaking my head, " A weirdo… how can you just look someone in the eyes and LIE to them, how can you do that?" I was incredulous, it truly boggled the mind. I hated thieves and I hated junkies but I hated LIARS most of all.
We went on and on, arguing, over and over, her in denial, going nowhere, until I started to get mad at the whole situation, I said--
" Maybe you should just MOVE OUT." I said and then she started to freak. I didn't want to deal with it anymore, out of my House with your Theatre of Lies, Begone.
She started goofing for real now, babbling, crying, alternately moaning some incomprehensible bubble-talk into a series of asthma-like wheezes. It was brilliant, in retrospect an acting job worthy of Meryl Streep. In my mind I thought she would just leave, they always do. It got worse and worse, louder and louder, I was getting nowhere and she was getting more and more freakish--
" I'LL COMMIT SUICIDE!!" she screamed and she ran to the bathroom medicine chest where all we had was a bottle of Advil and an open box of baking soda. She held the Advil in her hand like Medea, I could hear the little pills shaking noisily.

" I'LL TAKE THIS WHOLE BOTTLE OF PILLS!!" she shrieked. I don't know if she ever really meant to do it but I was in the presence of High Drama, this was a part of L I'd never seen, the shrieking hysterical L, the weirdo L, completely out of control. I stood there surrounded by Les Paul guitars and drums and this girl was threatening to off herself with a bottle of aspirin. So I did the only thing I could think of, I left the room and went for a walk in the neighborhood to cool off. I walked the back streets of Skid Row amidst the hookers and the bums and the other stray dogs, sat down on the curb of the empty street and pondered my fate. I could kick her out but I didn't want her to do anything desperate; The Advil thing sorta shook me. I could let her stay and pretend nothing ever happened but I'm a resentful sort and I never EVER forget people that have fucked me over, in this life or the next. Or I could just let things cool down and continue as they were, I could go back to my guitar and in my musings try NOT to think about it. And that's what I did, I immersed myself in music and she went to work the next day and it all blew over…for a while.

TO BE CONTINUED…