James Ellroy (6 page)

They
all
blew me off. My opening salvos
all
pertained to Beethoven. They were
all
perusing classical music LPs. I flopped again. Their alarms scree-screed. A Beethovian principle was at work here. Beethoven was the only artist in history to rival the unknown and unpublished Ellroy. He was a fellow brooder, nose picker and ball scratcher. He yearned for women in silent solitude. His soul volume ran at my shrieking decibel. You and me, kid:

Her, She, The Immortal Beloved/The Other. Conjunction, communion, consecration and the completion of the whole. The human race advanced and all souls salved as two souls unite. The sacred merging of art and sex to touch God
.

Those women could not have read my heart. My heart would have horrified them.

I want to crawl up inside you and offer you the same comfort. Cup my ears. I’ll do the same for you. The scream of the world is unbearable and only we know what it means
.

I put that out to total strangers. My botched repartee was the scream. It was the high-note dissonance in Beethoven’s late quartets. I remained that obsessed in a dead-sober state. There was no hint of abatement and no sign of release.

Sobriety kicked in. That death scare kept me focused. The dutiful part of my nature got buttressed all day every day. AA offered me absolutism and a compatible latitude in my faith. Half of my sober comrades were women. I studied them and tore through unrequited crushes at great speed. They joined me in the dark. I reconstructed the words they spoke in meetings and altered the meaning of their lives to spotlight their fictive love for me.

It was all about recognition. The dialogue was encapsulated 50/50. We shared the truth of our lives on an equal basis and kissed. We stepped back from the brink of precipitous passion, pledged monogamy and made love. I masturbated then. That part of my sojourn ended abruptly.
Whew
—now we can talk about what it all
means
.

Soft-focus pix scrolled along with the pillow talk. Women never seen naked appeared in the buff beside me. Melinda D. folds a breast back to burrow closer in. I touch the acne scars on Pat J.’s neck to tell her it’s okay. She shakes her head, removes my hand and goes, Hush now. Moonlight beams through my dive hotel window. Laurie B.’s got tears in her eyes. I’m smiling because she just said, I love you. She laughs and tugs at my grotesque little teeth.

It was like that. It was over 30 years ago—and I cannot let go of one moment of it
.

Deep talk, lovemaking, deep talk. Sweat and nicotine breath back when classy women still smoked. The pledge of a shared future. The common cause of
Us
. The analysis of
our shared pasts to vouchsafe a utopian future. Their real stories and my reinterpretation. My disingenuous omission of the dead woman hovering. My savior shtick and their capitulation to it. Their vow to assuage my big hurt. My vow to kick the shit out of every male being who had ever done them wrong. Our certainty that we would never cheat and that it would always be this
gooooooooood
.

Deep talk, lovemaking, deep talk. On a transferably monogamous nightly basis, with any woman who might be Her.

Crazy boy, all mental tricks, artist manqué.

This fever consumed a full year. Shifting soul currents defined it. My physical anguish increased. The pillow-talk patterns swerved. The real world called again. I had to have Her
now
. I remained immobilized. I listened to the fantasy Her less and talked to the fantasy Her more. I lived in the stimulus of Her and raged to rewrite Her life to my own specifications. Passion circumscribed by the flow of perception. Life stories revised to suit my narrative needs and to sate my huge and defective ego. A training course for a ruthlessly ambitious young man, guilt-racked and devoutly religious at his core.

“I will take Fate by the throat.” Beethoven’s shout at his advancing deafness. The Master’s chaste solitude and my retrospective conviction: art is this dialogue with untouchable spirits—and what you grasp for you can write.

My stimulation index exploded. Hookers invaded the Sunset Strip en masse.

It was ’78. The Hillside Strangler panic had raged and subsided. No more Hollywood abductions. The fucker had vanished. My prayers for the fucker’s capture went unanswered. I observed the upshot.

Prostitutes swarmed Sunset for solid miles. Some wore skeevy whore threads and garish makeup. Most dressed like normal women. They seemed to represent a new love-for-sale lifestyle. If they were selling, I was buying.

I knew some cops from AA. They gave me the lowdown. The women were “weekenders.” Some were “actresses” looking to score extra bread. Most were office workers and schoolteachers, branching out from Bakersfield and San Berdoo. They jungled up in motels and found safety in numbers. Sure, they looked normal. But—no normal chick peddles her ass for gelt.

The appearance of normalcy jazzed me. I sensed individual stories shaped by specious social codes. One cop cited cocaine. One cop cited rogue feminism. One cop cited greed. Shake yo booty—the times, they are a-changin’.

The women seemed
real
. I borrowed cars, cruised the Strip and scanned faces. I read their eyes, sensed what brought them there and what would convince them to stop. The women clogged the sidewalk from 8:00 p.m. on. I made dozens of recon circuits. I scanned for wholesome faces and evidence of cracking facades. I detoured then. I drove Sunset east to Bunker Hill. I staked out the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Symphony concerts ended around 10:00 p.m. Women with violins and cellos scooted out rear exits. I was a tongue-tied stage-door Johnny. Most of the women met their husbands and boyfriends. They wore tight black orchestra gowns with cinched waists and plunging necklines. They looked anxious to shuck their work duds, belt a few and talk music. Single women walked out, lugging heavy instruments. I offered to help several of them. They all said no.

Back to the Strip. Back to reading faces. Back to the honing of my Let’s-buy-sex aesthetic.

I liked the women older than I. I thought they might be more grateful for my biz and be more responsive. I liked the women with glasses. I liked the women with creased brows that said, Hooking might not be kosher.

It took two dozen drive-bys and blow-offs with the L.A. Philharmonic. I saved up some coin, borrowed a car and pounced.

It was midweek. It was cold. Rainstorms had blown through L.A. The Strip was packed. The women wore puffy windbreakers and buckskin dusters. I noticed a solitary pro upside Hollywood High. She wore granny glasses. She was rangy and fair-haired. She wore a slinky skirt under a toggle coat. It was affectless and
sweet
. It was a geek’s idea of sexy attire. She was seven or eight years older than I and appeared to be nervous. I extrapolated her life story instantly—and to my mind, adroitly. College prof on the skids. A history of weak men. A disengaged notion of prostitution as a lab experiment.

I pulled to the curb. She walked to the car and leaned in the passenger-side window. I said, Hello. She asked me if I was a cop. I asked her why she thought that.

She mentioned my short hair. I justified the close-cropped style and told her I worked at a golf course. She said, You just want to be different.

The perception delighted me. She had a flat, midwestern voice. She said it was twenty for French and thirty for half-and-half. I said I had a C-note and just wanted a decent stretch of her time. She looked at her watch and asked me if I wanted something special. I said, Just some time with you. Her look said, Oh—you’re one of those.

She directed me to a motel, four blocks away on La Brea. The room was twice the size of my room and still small. She locked us in and pointed to the dresser. I laid five twenties down.

The room was warm. My legs fluttered and dripped sweat. She took off her coat and tossed it on a chair. She had soft arms for such a slender woman. An image hit me: Vera Miles as a cocktail-lounge artiste in
The Fugitive
. She scooped the money into her purse. I said, We don’t have to do it. She said, I’ll kick you out if you cry.

I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes. She told me not to make it into such a big deal. I opened my eyes. She unbuttoned her blouse. I asked her where she was from. She said, Fullerton.

An Orange County college town. My theory validated. I started to say some—

She unhooked her bra. I saw her breasts and smiled. She said, That’s better. I took her right hand and kissed her arm above the elbow. She jiggled my hand and said, Lighten up. Okay?

Deep breaths tamped my rev down. She kicked off her shoes and kept her socks on. She pulled off her skirt and underwear and stood there.

She said, Okay?

The room tumbled.

It was rushed after that. It was rushed because she wanted it to be over and I didn’t want to embarrass or displease her.

She didn’t want to talk.

She dodged my questions.

She wouldn’t let me hold her.

I don’t know how long it all lasted. It felt like the world revealed.

So I did it repeatedly—with weirdo intuition and horny pastor’s kid intent.

The count was high, overpayment kept me broke, my
criteria was unique. The swirl of available faces kept on coming.

Borrowed pervmobiles got me to the Strip and home again, laid and unsated. Runs by the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion counterbalanced and ratched up my rev. I aroused suspicion at both locations. The Hillside Strangler was a fresh local horror. I cruised the same turf. Why are you offering me extra money? No, I don’t need you to carry my cello.

I understood the distinctions between the two professions and treated both sets of women the same. I looked for a cultural component in the hookers and a brusque wantonness in the string players. I got action from the former and zilch from the latter. My extreme acuity was delusional and acutely self-serving. I read faces for signs of the worthiness of love and demanded reciprocated love instantly. It was all crude male barter—money and mock-impromptu favors. I came in with prepared text and crumbled at the first sign of improvisation. Prostitutes did not want to hear my rationale for buying their body. Violinists did not want my loser ass—they wanted a straight Sviatoslav Richter. Both groups saw me as a zealot with a smoke-screened agenda.

The prostitutes put faith in the banality of sex and trusted fuck me–pay me men on that basis. I could not accept the implied dictum. The musicians viewed sex as an intergrated aspect of their lives in search of refinement. That idea was just as restrictive. The proper answer is sex is
everything
—so show me the faces and I’ll write the story.

My agenda was women as muse. I ran the entire gender through an obstacle course. The few and the proud cleared the last hurdle. Selected prostitutes survived a run of drive-by sightings and were deemed fit to be with me once and reside in me forever. The musicians survived chastely. I never lugged their instruments. I got a few smiles that sent me through to next week.

The Strip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and back again. My selection process. A C-note offered for this: Can we get naked and talk a bit?

I logged three refusals. It worked four times. It depressurized the girls. It got me softness, taxed sighs and conversation. The thrill was the undressing and the staged tableaux. I heard stories of bad dads, cheating hubbies at Camp Pendleton and freaky Uncle Harold. I snagged my prey later in the evening. They were tired and pleased to find a low-exertion john. I studied them as I pressed close. They were saving bread to open a boutique. They needed coin for a retarded kid’s schooling. They were post-sex or above sex. They were feminist pragmatists hopped up on some paperback doctrine. They pooh-poohed the idea of sex as the biggest deal on earth. They gave me a pinpoint moment of their lives and were grateful that I granted it importance.

I learned to chat a little. I learned a few sensual tricks. Do this or this—you might have a girlfriend one day. You’re a sweet guy, get your teeth fixed, don’t
stare
so much. What’s going on in that weird head?

I told two of them. I said I wanted to write novels. I loved crime fiction and classical music. My brain was overamped. I walked to my golf-course job and dawdled to look at women. Drama was a man meets a woman. Violent events intercede. The man and woman are swept away by catastrophic corruption. They confront a series of morally unhinged people who need to be interdicted and quashed. The man and woman cannot run from this malfeasance.

The moral point of struggle is to overcome it and change. It scares me to think that real love/sex flatlines and dies over time. I want real love and will find real love and will not let it numb my imagination. You’re drawing me little pictures. We’re here to tell each other special things. I don’t care if you’re just trying to be nice and I’m paying you
for it. Women take me someplace thunderous and hang me out to dry. I want to write from that romantic perspective. You rewire my heart and show me how shit works. You talk to me and listen to me. It’s the world in a pop-up book I can understand.

Yeah, but I’m naked.

Well, I’m naked, too.

You’re not going to ask for something creepy.

No, I’m not.

I had that conversation four times. Stunned looks and soft looks followed. The last woman and I talked until 2:00 a.m. She was a ranch worker from Kern County. She kept her hands laced behind her head. I kissed her underarms at pause points in my monologues. It seemed to delight her. We didn’t have sex. We faded out and slept together. She leaned into me and held my left wrist.

The mojo built that way. The faces cohered over my watcher’s lifetime. Faux pillow talk and real talk at hot-sheet motels. Spirits revised at the expense of their probable truth.

The story sprang from a grab at the women I couldn’t have and loomed as big as their mythic construction. I was easily transmogrified to a music-mad private eye. He came from the poor edge of Hancock Park. He was recently sober. His mother hadn’t been murdered. He didn’t stalk rich girls and rip off their pads. I deleted the pathos of near-fatal masturbation. This fucker had more dignity.