2004. I was living in a nondescript pink stucco apartment building in Hollywood.
It was a modern but somewhat generic 2 bedroom 2 bath place. During more prosperous times, I'd use the 2nd room as an office or gear/guest room. When things got slow, I'd have roommates, usually friends between 1 month & a couple of years.
A few months went by and I couldn’t find anyone I knew to move in short or long term, when a modeling agent friend of mine suggested the agency rent the room from me for their “Better” girls who wouldn’t stay in the “Models Apartment”.
“Models apartment” It sounded glamorous. Sexy anyway. What an out of towner might think the Playboy Mansion would be like, but with better genetics and style.
The apartments were usually in decent buildings. Usually 3-4 bedrooms with sometimes 3-4 twin mattresses on the floor per bedroom. Overflowing ashtrays, burned & red wine stained carpeting and rotting food. Kids running amok and no shortage of drama. "I know that bitch stole my underwear". "Someone left a used tampon on my bedspread” “Movie star “X” had sex with underage mormon girl "Y"”. And so on.
My rules were simple. No parties. No drugs. No being late on rent. Oh. And don’t knock on my door if it’s closed.
For a handful of years, it became a revolving door for a lot of friends I have to this day & a lot of great memories
This is not one them.
I was introduced to a girl, we'll call "Stephanie" several years before. Everything about her was big. Built like a racing greyhound. Olive skinned brunette, 5'11". Big eyes. Big smile. Big personality. And from all reports, big drug problem.
Her agent was a good friend of mine & came to me with the idea of her moving in. I expressed my concerns about the drugs and she assured me Stephanie had been clean for ages.
I met with her, we talked & decided to give it a go. She knew the stakes. If you fuck up, you’re out & I will dispassionately throw you & your shit into the street.
Everything was pretty smooth until month 7 or so. The first sign of erratic behavior was her walking in on my girlfriend and I with the lights off naked & I asking if she could sleep with us because she had heard a noise and was afraid to be in her room. . As you can imagine, my girlfriend was rather displeased with this idea which turned into her suspicion that something was going on between Stephanie and I. I assured her I'm wasn't a cheater and even if I were single, I'd never get my tail where I get my mail.
We returned from a weekend at Korakia in Palm Springs to discover a shopping cart full of things in the living room. Fuck. Many of them mine. The energy in the place felt black. Wrong. I open her bathroom door and There is was...
Jackson Pollock. Meet Dexter. The Dark Side of the Spoon. A filthy, black, soot covered stainless steel utensil, a few broken off, unused camel cigarette filters & a near empty blue lighter. I look up to the ceiling & there it was. Horror. An expressionistic work made by Squibb U100 hypodermic needle squirts containing a mixture of brown dried blood and west coast, Mexican Black Tar Heroin on the ceiling. Something I'd heard inmates on TV call "The Gravy". It was sickening.
I ran to survey my bedroom. Yep. Camera cases gone. 2 Leica Bodies. 2 Mamiya RZ bodies, my Linhof 4X5 camera, a pile of lenses, my ’63 Stratocaster & my Franck Muller watch. A first gen Sony digital camcorder Nic Cage had given me with some homemade porn in it (mine not his). All gone. Blood is boiling.
I call an emergency locksmith and got the locks changed. And I put what little she had into white plastic garbage bags & placed them in the hallway.
She arrived back at the apartment & the drama began right on schedule. LAPD is here. Banging on my metal door with a metal baton. Wanting to know why I locked my roommate out and telling me it was illegal to do so. I explained that I had no roommate. The lease was mine. She was briefly a guest and was a drug addict & a thief. A neighbor who had just moved here from Alabama was charmed by her beauty and sympathetic to her situation & agreed to put her up. Poor hayseed bastard. She holed up in his place like a squatter and refused to come out. Welcome to Hollywood, kid.
There’s a lot of yelling & histrionics in the hallway. I stick my head out to see what’s going on.
Stephanie: I have fucking rights. Don’t come near me I have RIIIIIIGHTS.
I’m wondering why the 3 cops look so freaked out over a scrawny model. They’re wearing blue nitrile gloves and are exercising extreme caution. Then I notice it. Stephanie had forgotten to remove the syringe from the vein in her arm. It’s just bouncing up & down as she's pacing, ranting & raving. Blood is running down the forearm, and drip drip dripping from her fingertips onto the dove grey hallway carpeting.
Stephanie: Don’t you come near me. I have RIGHTS, fuckers!
I went back inside & deadbolted the door. She was removed and thankfully my life got quiet again. For 5 minutes anyway. My girlfriend let me have it with both barrels for being too nice, too trusting and too hopeful with broken people.
I never saw Stephanie again. A few months later she was found dead a bath tub full of frozen vegetables left there by a guy whom she was getting high with and made a half assed attempt to save her.
But, like many junkies, the fear of getting busted outweighed any clear thinking or sense to call 911 from a pay phone.
I later found out who the guy was. Just a few weeks ago, I met him by chance at a store on my corner. He’s a somewhat well known actor and strangely after 10 years, I felt no resentment toward him. He didn't kill her. Dope did. As Elvis Presley's friend Lamarr Fike once said “How do you save a man from himself”? As the Marines say. “Marines die. It’s what we do”. Same goes for junkies.
I was sure a guitar player she was also seeing that I knew in my 20’s had the missing guitar. He didn’t. But he too died 6 months after her.
Not my funniest story, but...
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