© 1997 Rich Grzesiak, all rights reserved.
With her face thrust out the window, she thought she resembled a goddess. But when she scratched her head, reality gave her a boxer's punch to the ear. The moonlight, you see, had a hard time penetrating the green of the neon bar sign below her apartment, and its effect radiated a turquoise look as if her face, her hair, her life, were a giant movie screen.
Her name was Sunny, yet it was one of many names she chose as she worked her way thru the sex business.
She was an expert at reincarnating herself : her body lent itself to this need to play the female Zelig: her physical appearance allowed her to play the role of chameleon wherever she took up residence. She told herself it was an act of feminine genius to reinvent herself so many times in so many ways for so many .
Her technique was less than original. In Brentwood, she was Brenda, brunette and dangerous; in Culver City she became Calvina, a riff on the legend of Calvin Klein, her schtick an obsession with lingerie which local jazz musicians seemed to appreciate. In Inglewood they called her "Ingrid," thinking her fresh from Scandinavia: she specialized in minority men for whom the whitest of Caucasian flesh was a rare apperitif. In Mar Vista, she baptized herself Mabel, down home, a six pack of beer always in the fridge, the kind of gal you could twirl around your finger til she emerged a friendly and overpowering snake.
In Long Beach, she emerged as Leona, a name suggesting an Old World of steady values and brick buildings and maybe some Mozart. She decided on refinement for her Long Beach Story: gone were the six packs, in their place cheap but elegant looking French-like California wines, artificial roses illuminated in pink light (to make them seem genuine), lace and silk the favorite material of her wardrobe.
But L.A. caught up with her Old World affectations, smashing them to ruins one hot August night when a trick didn't pay and in the ensuing shuffle, shattering the rose vase, smashing the pink lights, and tearing her lace-silk ensembles to shreds. She thought she was lucky to escape with her life, especially since the police were never summoned. There were only bruises to her face and stomach which she attempted to hide thru clothing and makeup.
Her Long Beach Story became a flight to Rancho Palos Verdes where she succeeded at temporarily hooking up with a gal who knew her business and managed it smartly. She decided she was Mexican this time, rechristened herself Rosita, bought a set of rosary beads and a deck of Tarot cards. She used the rosary as a necklace.
She was a quick study, she congratulated herself, and after thoroughly studying two books on the Tarot at the public library, she added readings to her repertoire, thinking it cute and finding it quite profitable.
They told her there were ex-governors and retired, though faded, film stars in Rancho Palos Verdes, that it had once been a huge ranch, muddy and green and virginal. She plowed through this countryside with the zeal of an L.A. stock broker, finding just the right places to be seen, knowing exactly which connection[s] to make.
Soon she met The Film Producer, a man of great presence and charisma, whose voice purred like a saxophone, whose manner slid through life with greater ease than the sun reflecting the surf. He was established; had a career; was married, but his wife traveled, and a lifetime of eccentric movie making had taught him what it was to be different and sexually kinky.
He honestly thought Rosita was Mexican, and lucky for her, he had a Huge Hispanic Fetish, right down to the Latin-American motifs which imbued the decor of his apartment away from home. He would dine Rosita til the evening faded, and then she'd produce a thick leather belt and slap it on the hardwood floor. In moments The Film Producer whom stars quaked before would be dragging his gut over the floor, clothes ripped, then scissored, and finally destroyed, sometimes even flung off the patio onto the beach, where high tide would wash them out to sea, possibly to Catalina, an island like a lump of lunch meat, murky in the distance.
She hated him, and he loved her. The more she degraded him, the more he treated her like the Madonna of Guadalupe.
She knew how to pace this liaison, taking great pains never to push him too far.
He paid well. There was always a new production of his going on at the studio, and since he controlled the accountant (and dealt drugs from him), it was all too easy to siphon off money for Mademoiselle Rosita's apartment, clothes, toys, and iron will.
She didn't know what to do with all that money. Her landlord was incredulous when she paid a full year's rent with one check. The Pleasure Chest had only so many toys it could retail, and besides, there was limited closet space in the unit. She thought of taking the used toys to a yard sale but fear of her neighbor's blue hair turning orange halted that inclination.
Eventually, after two years, she tired of him. The crash of the ocean waves paled in beauty to the sound from her White Noise Machine. She wasn't used to being faithful as a kept mistress to one man, no matter who he was.
She was 32 and anxious to move on. The Film Producer suddenly traveled to an obscure part of Africa: a new movie of his was in deep trouble and given the salary they were paying its balding, bearded star, he could not suffer failure. So he departed for a good month, and her final gift to him was a large and very painful welt, lovingly belted on a part of his leg easily concealed by his pants.
When she called the moving company that day, she had 10 thousand dollars in cash in the bank. Her inner voice told her The Rosita Days were over.
She would move to Hollywood and pretend to be fresh from Canada, either Vancouver or Toronto, depending on her mood, and the needs of a fresh crop of paying customers who would be bedazzled by her lithe, luminous body, her reptilian sexual skills, her magical smile and intellect: her new identity would be "Hortense," a Scotch-Irish widow of a wealthy Toronto entrepreneur who died in a plane crash.
In Hollywood she drifted, not realizing her initial assumptions about the prostitution business were way off the mark. Her competition was endless and furious and much, much younger and twice as kinky. Her stash of savings ran down so low she almost considered contacting The Film Producer, til she learned he re-married and moved to Rancho Mirage.
She had her principles, she really believed: she couldn't destroy his new chance for marital happiness; if she did , she knew his appetite for kinky sex would explode, alienating his eighth wife, and removing the relationship he, The Film Producer, was so desperately seeking anyway.
She eased into a state that clinicians call "chronically depressed." She wouldn't leave the apartment except to buy booze or groceries. She spent her hours surfing thru the cable channels, drifting in and out of reality.
Gradually her physical decline affected the apartment's interior. What was once a breathtaking view of the Hollywood night lights was partially obscured by debris she deposited on the patio. The landlord knocked on her door several times, but she opened it only a crack, using her theatrical talent to smile wanly and assure him everything was "dee-voon."
Then It Happened, as it did to so many of them. There was a day of simulated lucidity from the booze, but unfortunately, this day of clarity came at 4 in the morning on a hot October night. She had seen a movie about the life of Harlow, her heroine, and she decided, like that doomed lady, she would go for a drive, possibly to Venice Beach.
She hadn't been to her car in weeks, but it still had a tank full of gas and the battery functioned normally. She remembered somehow putting on a black bikini and taking the elevator down to the basement garage. At 4AM there was no one around: she needed "air" and her clothes, even though they were quite skimpy, were obscuring her chance to really "breathe in" the Hollywood night air.
So she stripped off everything but her high heels, and put the car into gear.
There were very few people walking about at 4 in the morning. Just a few men, most of them drifters, some homeless.
With the car windows rolled down, she felt the breeze slapping her flesh, a welcome respite to the endless sweat forcing its way from her pores. She turned the interior car dome light on and positioned it to highlight her ample and sweating breasts, all forty eight inches of them.
She kept a reasonable speed, her car's finish contrasting smartly with the bright pink image of her breasts, each one hanging like some drunken scale of justice over the steering wheel.
As she went through an intersection, a man prowling for sex noticed her. He couldn't resist: he began to follow her through the streets of Hollywood.
She wasn't on the road to Venice, that's for sure. Instead, and unknown to her woozy head, she was traveling the same 4 block square through a particularly sleazy slice of Tinseltown. Others saw her . The dome light gave her the appearance of a Playboy centerfold out for a drive.
Soon there were no fewer than 15 cars following , some blowing horns, one attempting to pass her and blow a kiss, the others like some motorized participant in a religious procession.
When a policeman saw her he summoned back-up, and a nearby police helicopter was overhead.
In several moments his siren blared, the vehicles behind her slid away ... The helicopter lit the night.
Somehow she braked the car to a halt. As the cop strode toward her window, her eyes widened, she smiled.
He got real close and smelled vodka. "Officer, sir," she tried to say, her larynx slurring every syllable, then instantly her voice became strong and sharp and clear.
"All I wanted was air, " her body collapsed, her head hitting the steering wheel, making the horn go off like a distress call.
A homeless man suddenly awoke, startled.
The helicopter floodlight, the nude woman wanting air in Hollywood at 4AM in October.
From L.A. Stories, a novel in the making, by Rich Grzesiak