Chapter Ten                                 

Interview With Cooker  -  Chapter Nine

I was madly in love with Janis Joplin--wanted to be just like her. I idolized everything she did. I never drank hard liquor seriously until she came along. Then I also became a Southern Comfort lush--just like Janis. I wanted to be mouthy and ballsy just like my idol, and I made a big effort to act like her and drink like her. I remember a poster of her that was popular in those days. She was dripping in beads and boas and she had one boob hanging out of her blouse. I remember I had mixed feelings about that poster. I was jealous because Cooker loved it, but I loved it too, and I spent many hours just staring at Janis and her boob. I thought maybe she had gone too far exposing herself like that. I couldn't understand why a woman would do that unless she had to earn a living. But I have to admit, I loved that poster--was captivated by it. 

I went to the Whisky almost every night. Didn’t want to miss anything, but I also had to work five or six nights a week at the Body Shop. There were six dancers and we rotated. In other words, one night a week, I went on first, another night, I was second, and so on. Some nights I got off work really late because I was last, or next to last, so I would rush out to my car and make a beeline for the Whisky, but that could take awhile on Friday or Saturday night--forty, forty-five minutes; so during that slow drive down the strip, I would try and make up for time lost at work. I had to catch up with my friends in the fastest way possible, because I didn’t want to be straight when I walked into the Whisky. In order to cop an emergency buzz, I would knock down a pint of Southern Comfort on an empty stomach, so by the time I got with my buddies, I’d be able to relate.

Later that night as the Whisky was closing, I was standing outside as people were filing out, When Hendrix got outside the door, he turned his head towards me, looked me dead in the eyes; and with that killer grin, said, "Good-bye, Sagittarius." I’ll never forget that moment for as long as I live and then some.

That was some damn good Southern Comfort.

Spontaneity was a driving force in those days. You would never stop and think a situation out first. You’d lose yourself in the moment, so the Hendrix encounter  was typically a slice of the times straight out of Hollywood California, l969.

That incident must have taken place late in sixty-nine or maybe early in 1970. The sixties were ending and if I would have been able to stand back with a little perspective, and take a good look at the whole scene, I would have noticed the changes, but I was deep in the middle of all the changes myself, moving with the flow, losing my innocence, growing paranoid, feeling stressed and edgy; but it was not obvious to me at the time. There were so many clues, however, if my head had been screwed on straight, I would have felt the gears switching into a negative zone. But I became too involved in dealing with the other side of the coin--We had slipped into a contradiction in Hollywood. All the things that had been so good were becoming mud on our faces. We were having to eat our own words, break our own promises. Our little neo society was falling apart at the seams. It was becoming hard to trust anyone-- with money, or with your heart. The waiting room at the free clinic was busting out at the seams. We all knew someone who had OD’ed by then. Greed had set in and the big time drug dealers had moved into town. I had friends who were hooked on drugs ripping me off. If it weren’t for my sister, Dixie, there would have been nobody left in Hollywood that I could trust at all.

I bought a stereo system one time off a friend of mine for fifty dollars. It was a pretty nice little system and I was proud of the way it sounded, plus I thought I was helping a friend out financially when I bought it from him. A few days later, there were some people over at my house and we were listening to music; and one guy seemed to be admiring my new system when suddenly he announced, "That’s my stereo! It was stolen out of my house last week!" What could I say? "But I paid fifty dollars for it!" I let the guy take his stereo. I know now that I was set up for that. They evidently had planned the whole thing. I was a big sucker. I just didn’t realize it then. This dark stuff was slinking up slowly--just slow enough to go unnoticed by me for awhile, but I couldn't see the forest for the sleaze.

It was getting more difficult to make good money, too. It was not easy keeping up this phony rich image of mine either. It took a lot of money to keep a fancy car on the road, live in a home up in the hills, and never be seen in the same clothes twice. My clothes had to at least LOOK expensive. There were also my wigs, make-up, shoes, costumes and gowns for work and it took drugs to keep me up there dancing all night long and looking like I wanted to be there. It took drugs to get me to sleep and drugs to wake me up from a drug-induced sleep. I was that little mouse running circles in the wheel. I was a dog chasing my own tail. I was caught up in something that was very difficult to get a handle on. There was never enough money. I had layaways all over Beverly Hills--I Magnin’s, a leather shop on Rodeo Drive, The Broadway Department store on Hollywood and Vine--I would do anything to stretch my clothing dollar.

Dixie and I even got into a health mode for a while--our version of Yoga. We could save money if we stopped eating for awhile. We fasted on nothing but Southern Comfort milkshakes, pot, and acid, for three days and we really felt like we had tuned into something much bigger than us by the end of the "fast." We'd seen God; and he had long electric hair and was wearing a purple and green T-shirt  that lit up like a neon sign, when  He spoke, except his voice sounded just like Granny's. We also contacted Otis Redding on the Ouiji  board. Far out, man! He told us his death had not been an accident. I still believe that to this day. It was soooo " heavy."

We had a live-in maid, and we borrowed money regularly off the maid! We gave her thirty dollars a week, but she had no expenses. She lived with us, ate our food. We paid all the bills. Every week her little clutch purse got a little fatter. She saved every penny that she made. I always paid her back, but that was so I could borrow again from her the next time.

The maid’s name was Ester--probably pronounced EsTAY, but we called her Essturr with a Beverly Hillbilly's accent. She was Mexican and didn’t speak any English, so we had a tough time communicating with her in the beginning, but we soon learned a few Spanish words and we used our hands to try and explain things, but in the beginning, it was tough to get her to understand us. The first time we took her to the grocery store, we gave her a cart and tried to make her understand that we were shopping for the things we needed and food we liked. We wanted her to fill up the cart with household and cooking supplies and tried to explain to her with our arms wildly mimicking someone filling up a grocery cart. We left her in the store for awhile and when we came back to get her and the groceries, we were shocked to find she had filled the cart, alright. It was brimming over with cans of pinto beans, tortillas and tequila. I bet there were twenty-five bottles of tequila in that cart! We let her keep a couple of bottles, but we had to finish the shopping for her that day. Eventually we managed to get across to her our love for cheeseburgers, bacon and eggs, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream, but we ate a lot of Mexican food after we hired her.

 Our Ester was great. We loved her to death. She was an immaculate housekeeper.
 I got up one morning to pee--I probably hadn’t been home for very long--it was daylight; and when I stepped out of the bathroom and headed back to bed, the bed was made! She would follow us around the house and clean and pick-up. When we had friends over, you could often see her peeking at us from another room--watching us mess up the place. I’m sure she woke up to some murky trash the morning after some of our parties, but she never complained. She was only about sixteen or seventeen years old then and we learned she had a son she had to leave behind in Mexico. His name was Havier, and Dixie somehow arranged for her to get her son up to California illegally. I don’t remember now how she did it, but Ester was very, very grateful.

The strip clubs were changing very quickly. Sex was getting looser and looser. Club owners were taking advantage of the new freedom dancers were exhibiting on stage--lots of money to be had from customers who wanted to view the blatant sexual displays that some of the dancers were willing to perform. Those dancers were greedy for money, too. But not me. I did TRY to convince myself to get up there and do what they were doing, because they were walking off stage with shitloads of money, but I never could talk myself into it. One time, though, I was working in China Town and I got up the courage to bend over, put my head between my legs and stick my tongue out at some sleazeball. He returned the nastiest look I've ever seen in my life, licking his lips like some rabid Komodo dragon. My stomach knotted up; I thought, "I'm gonna be SICK!" That was the end of my lewd behavior on stage. Can't go to my grave saying I didn't try it, though..

It became difficult for my agent to find work for me in the daytime. The clubs that used to hire me, didn’t want my style of dancing anymore. My booking schedule became thinner and thinner along with my bank account. I would call my agent periodically to see what he had available, and if I wasn’t willing to involve audience participation in my act or willing to dance with a male partner and simulate sexual acts, then there was not much work for me. It hadn’t been that way in the beginning. We weren’t allowed to even talk to patrons--let alone be caught touching one of them, but those days were over. Now they were encouraging us to make contact, and it had better appear to be sexual, because the customers expected it when they came in.

I remember one of the last jobs my agent booked me for was one I thought I could pull off, but when I got to the club, there were porno movies on three of the four walls and I was the entertainment in front of the fourth wall. I have never felt so much humiliation and degradation in my life as what I felt that day. There was no just way I could compete with those three other walls of porn. That was probably the straw that broke my Hollywood spirit. I made plans to get out of that town very soon after that.

I had collected a lot of beautiful things over the years in Hollywood--some nice antique furniture, luxurious Indian rugs, my huge wardrobe, plus I had a large collection of back stage passes that I treasured like gold. I packed all my precious possessions slowly and carefully. I hired a moving company and their truck was scheduled to be at my house on Friday morning. Christmas was only a few days away and I had already booked a flight out of California on Thursday night. I was leaving California for good--didn’t care to ever return, but I decided to put my stuff in storage and come back for it in a few months. I was feeling very anxious about leaving. Once my mind had been made, I wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. I called a dancer friend of mine, Sylvia, who was someone I trusted. She said she would be there on Friday morning when the moving van came. She said if she couldn’t make it, her son would be there. I left a note for the moving men. It said, "Everything goes. Be sure to get the refrigerator, stove, sofa and chair that are sitting in the room off of this one on the way to the kitchen."

I also had a 54 Jaguar that I didn’t dare try and drive home, so I left it in a residential area out on the street in front of a house where my sister was living. I partied up at Leon’s the night before I left--a going-away-party, and flew home the following day with everything taken care of, or so I thought.

A few months later, I went back to get my things in California. I stood on the loading dock while they unloaded the refrigerator, stove, chair and sofa. I waited and waited for the rest of the stuff to appear on the dock, but finally gave up and went to ask what was taking so long. They said, "That’s it." I said, "Look, I left a note with instructions that said everything must go" but they said that was all they had in storage. The only things they took out of the house, were the ones I specifically mentioned in the note--the refrigerator, stove, chair and sofa. So who had taken the rest of my stuff? I couldn’t believe Sylvia had done that to me, but someone that I knew well, had ripped me off, because only my closest friends knew I was leaving. I’m still puzzled somewhat over what happened and still wonder who could have stooped that low.

Dixie had stayed in California. She was living with Michael Doud and his brother, David and his wife, Sally. I went and stayed with them for a few days and pined over my losses. My Jaguar had been hit by a garbage truck. The driver’s side was all caved in, but I was determined to somehow tow that car home. It was one of my few remaining treasures I had left now. I called around for days to try and find a way to rent a truck to tow it home or a big car with a tow bar, but nothing was in my financial means or else the rental places wouldn’t allow it. I hadn’t talked to Kay and Francine for quite some time. I had lost contact with them because they were in Oklahoma, but I decided to go up to Leon’s anyway, and see if any of the old gang was still hanging around or if anything exciting was going on..

When I knocked on Leon’s door that day, the guitar player from Wings, Henry McCullough, answered the door. He was the only one there, but he invited me in and I went in the front room and sat on the couch and was talking to him. I was probably staring down at the floor trying to think of something cute to say, when suddenly I realized that the rug I was staring at on Leon’s floor was mine! I said something, of course, to Henry, but what could I really do? I couldn’t just roll up the rug right there on the spot and haul it out of the house! That guy didn’t know me from Adam. I could be sitting there making that stuff up--grabbing an opportunity to rip Leon Russell off because he wasn’t home: but, Damn! Off in another corner of that room was another one of my rugs! I was so upset, I couldn’t sit there any longer. I had to get out of there. I decided I would get a hold of Leon later and see what in the hell was up? Where did Francine or Kay say those rugs came from?! How could those girls do that to me? We were close friends! Maybe it was only one of them that ripped me off, but which one?!

I had to chalk up another loss, however, because I never got a hold of Leon. In the meantime, someone had come over to the Doud house one day and made me an offer for the Jaguar. It was an even trade for a cherry little Falcon convertible (yuk!) and I hesitated for several days, but I finally accepted the deal. I was so heartbroken over all this deceitful crap that had been shoveled at me. I just wanted to GO HOME! I wanted comfort and security again and one of Granny’s home-cooked meals--a little Midwestern Comfort. With my tail between my legs, I got in that gawd-damned Falcon and drove home to Illinois.