Supporting the Homeless: How We Made L.A. Safe for Art, 1984-1994

By Joel Rane

In the tradition of satires like "Slaves of New York" and "The Serial", "Supporting the Homeless" reveals an exclusive club in Los Angeles: the Art Scene, where the price of admission is mere attitude, but hanging around can cost your soul. Through the Downtown underground of Los Angeles to Bel Air mansions, this novel describes the “endless party” as the author experienced it between 1984 and 1994, when grunge became gentrification.
The narrator of the story is a photographer who leaves his native Bakersfield for San Francisco, full of dreams of artistic fame. After college he wakes up back in Bakersfield, working for a small-town newspaper and living with a waitress above a bar. As much as this life appeals to him, he still aspires to the limelight and abandons this future, running off to San Diego to join friends Craig Andersen and Benjamin Smart in an art gallery venture. But San Diego is also too small and the photographer abandons Craig and Ben for Los Angeles.
At first the life of the photographer is a long series of jaded parties, one after the other, and the story remains in Los Angeles, with the exception of minor forays to New York City. But through these parties the relentless social gamesmanship of the Art Scene stimulates and then numbs. The photographer befriends the stars of the Art Scene, innovative dealers Tony Picapedrero and Smith Michaels, who reunite him with Ben Smart and Ben’s new critic partner Rachel Richard, who have all come to Los Angeles to find their fortune. As their careers soar, many other friends crash from the heights, destroyed by drugs, drink and their own lack of ruthlessness. The photographer begins a personal campaign to discredit the huckster dealers and inept artists he believes have given art a bad name, but instead he finds himself being forced out by his own friends, who understand life better.
As in other coming-of-age stories, the photographer moves along once more, this time to New Orleans, where he can disappear into his own obscurity and addiction. Instead of becoming a serious artist, he accepts the surface of the Art World of California as its substance. Along the way he has watched enormous changes in Los Angeles itself, awakening from the urbane dreams of the early 1980s to the gritty reality of the 1990s, through fires, floods, riots and earthquake, with every corner filled by homeless people from across the country. And although the names have been changed, every event in this book happened right before this author's eyes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joel Rane
• Release date: Dec 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463959336

Joel Rane

Born in Los Angeles, and will probably die there.

Book preview

SUPPORTING

THE

HOMELESS

How We Made L.A. Safe for Art, 1984-1994

As told to Joel J. Rane

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2019 Joel Rane

Contents.

DOWNTOWN

1 - ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS.

2 - WELCOME TO THE ZONE.

3 - GREAT CAUSES AND GREATER COVER CHARGES.

4 - YOU THINK YOU’RE FUCKING DOROTHY PARKER, DON’T YOU?

HOLLYWOOD

5 - GIVE ME GLAMOUR OR GIVE ME DEATH.

6 - IF THIS IS SATURDAY, WE MUST BE NOWHERE.

7 - WE COME TO BURY ANDY WARHOL, NOT TO PRAISE HIM.

8 - THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE SMASH RACISM.

SANTA MONICA

9 - AND, I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW, MADONNA HATES ME.

10 - ART STARS, PREPARE TO BE SEEN.

11 - EDIE SEDGWICK IS DEAD, SO THE ADVANTAGE IS OURS.

12 - THERE ARE NO SECOND ACTS IN AMERICAN LIVES.

Smashwords License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The following story is a work of fiction. None of the characters portray any person, living or dead, artist, dealer, or groupie. Even if a public person is named, their deeds and misdeeds are my own, not theirs. I can legally divulge this simple lesson: Truth is stranger than fiction.

Some of the characters and events are based on my novella Sweetie ©1993. My muses were the novels We Few ©1957 by H. Frank Jones and Art School ©2000 by Mark Norris; the collection Slaves of New York ©1986 by Tama Janowitz; and two works of criticism, Culture or Trash ©1993 by James Gardner and The End of the Art World ©1998 by Robert C. Morgan.

This work is dedicated to my comrades, notably:

Richard Duardo

Janet Cunningham

Noah Forde (if that was your name)

Jeannie Phemister

Jason Rhoades

Geri Soriano

Una Szeemann

Louis Waldon;

my teacher, Benjamin Masselink;

and she who led me into temptation,

Merl Ross, artist.

DOWNTOWN

And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,

Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: It’s pretty, but is it Art?

—Rudyard Kipling

1 - Entrance Examinations.

You’d better sit down to hear this. Don’t repeat it. I’ll begin when I ran off on my girlfriend, but you’ll find plenty of other moments when I should’ve turned off the cameras and gone to bed. In my defense, friends, what choice do we have when success is shoved in our face? Once you hit the big time, every path leads down, and then out.

January 1984; Tule fog season in Bakersfield. The Raiders took the Superbowl against the hated Redskins, and instead of Big Brother, we got the Macintosh. A postcard arrived from Craig Andersen, high school companion, a beautiful surfer boy slamming underage liquor and tossing missiles out the car windows, nameless Central Valley towns sparkling Led Zeppelin diamonds. After our graduation I’d fled to the Bay Area, and Craig headed the opposite way, San Diego. Over four years gone by, his postcard spooked me. Not some photo of tasty waves, but a gaudy-lit casino from a century back, men in derby hats and women in corsets, a California alien to us. What is this shit, I thought, the Golden Age rebirth, a warning to dust off the reggae records? I’d been rotting in Bakersfield, twenty-two, broke and stoned, waiting for a message, and it came on a postcard.

Apparently Craig had fallen under the spell of Modern Art. I’d indulged myself academically in the arts straight out of high school; he’d recently gone into private practice with his roommate, opening an art gallery in their two-bedroom apartment. Craig’s older brother Stan had moved next door, working on cars and women, savoring San Diego’s nascent scenesters. They’d already closed one show, David Allbreath, an almost-famous gay sculptor and performance artist. Their next show would be none other than Joe Franco, the famous Pop artist. After the struggle for recognition I’d witnessed in San Francisco, this quick brush with celebrity impressed me. Perhaps a body could make easy money in Art. I flipped Craig’s postcard around in my hands like a kidnap demand, listening to Neil Young while rain battered the apartment I shared with Rosie Palestine.

I phoned Craig from the bar downstairs, Brody’s. We were both turgid with green dope and lying wit, but the slam of the receiver couldn’t scare off everything I’d left out. Surely Craig heard my pathetic existence going nowhere; there was no longer any kidding myself that Bakersfield held any opportunities. If I slunk off to grad school, I’d be in debt until middle age, enabled to teach fine art photography to other innocent children and merely repeat the cycle. I ordered a double Jack and Coke at the bar, grinding the ice between my teeth, chewing at the unfair universe, and I bought my future at Rosie’s expense.

*******

You’re gonna leave me, she wailed heavy-metal style. I’d arranged a special tableau for her birthday, fucking paranoid Aquarius bitch, our room strewn with wildflowers and candles. Her outburst caught me off guard; I’d just gotten her bra off, my lips on her tits.

What the fuck are you talking about? I growled into her navel.

Just like Brian. All he ever fucking bitched about was going to L.A., how he could never make it in Bakersfield, blah blah blah.

What the hell does this have to do with your ex? I’m not a longhair or a musician, and I’m not going to L.A. Rosie rarely mentioned Brian. He’d come from Ridgecrest, even more desolate than our city, with a Gibson guitar and Bob Dylan dreams, and a year later ditched Rosie for the dubious friendship of a cokehead record producer in Malibu. I predicted modest success and a metal plate in his nose by the age of thirty. Rosie, who usually laughed at my jokes, kept silent.

You said the secret words, man. Los An-ge-les.

"I didn’t say anything about moving there. I said, let’s check it out and take a road trip to Diego to see my pal Craig."

You implied it. You said the exact same thing as Brian. ‘It’s happening there.’ Well, it could happen here, too. You said so yourself.

I mumbled a sweet nothing, but she was fooling herself. Nothing would ever happen in Bakersfield.

I ground my teeth as Rosie cried herself to sleep. The hard rain slackened and I stepped into a strange dream. I cowered in my winter coat, hands in the pockets, slumped inside a movie theatre in some foggy Bohemian district. A woman sat stiff beside me, not Rosie, but dark-haired, chalk-pale, with a smile of collaboration. What the fuck do you want? I asked. I followed her through a mountain pass below a swirling orange sky. Fantastic beasts patrolled the barren hilltops, giant leopards, lions and wolves, yet I felt no fear. They guarded a sanctuary I had no desire to violate. Craig Andersen stood at the top of the pass, gesturing beyond it with a grin. Colossal dirigibles floated in the air, and strange machinery jutted up from the ridges. A huge cross glowed atop the hill. I woke suddenly, and the vision dribbled away, except for that glowing cross.

The next morning I called Craig from the office of the Oildale Register, where I was the staff photographer. Ready for a visit, man?

I’ll buy the whiskey and the cigarettes today, Daddy-o.

*******

A week went by. I cut back on dope to clear my head, and over vodka tonics at Brody’s, I tried to fit Rosie into my future. The evil Tule fog clung to everything, chilling at some moments and revoltingly lukewarm at others, until the rain dissolved the miasma over the cotton fields. As a kid I’d loved those Tules, especially when school called a fog delay. But life continued beyond satisfaction from the fog. Rosie and I scored an o-z off a Deadhead bus following the tour, and every morning my woman put on the Clash to warm the bong. Usually I complained about Ronald Reagan when I should have shut up, enjoyed my buzz and paid more attention to Rosie’s mouth blowing smoke-rings past my ear. She cuddled in my lap while I raged death against the President of the United States of America; Reagan was a shill, I howled. Later I hated many other people, but never vocalized my fury so much. I held Rosie while fog curled against the window, and we pretended the world was descending into Hell. Come to San Diego with me, I whispered.

She’d shake me off without a word. Maybe she wanted to be rid of me, saw my future and was trying to shove me through the hatch into the sunshine. Honey, let’s have a real authentic Bakersfield date tonight, she chirped.

What’s that?

Get loaded, do some crank and screw! She threw her arms into the air.

*******

I was paralyzed by that blazing future, especially during monotonous afternoons in the unheated office of the Register. I filed, played cards, and told horror stories to the new reporter, a kid named Tony. Then a terrible sign arrived that my life in the Central Valley was truly over.

Don’t scare the fresh meat, a senior reporter yelled in his exaggerated redneck drawl. Leave him to us. Tony snorted, aware how pathetic our whole newspaper-room bullshit was, decaying in the asshole of the world on squeaky chairs. The city editor leaned out of his glassed-in office, soaked with night-sweat. He’d been daydreaming by the police scanner, feet up and hands behind his huge head. I glanced at the Tule out the windows and pulled on my leather gloves. I knew what was coming.

You and the kid get up Highway 65. There’s a smash-up, and I want the story before the bastards down on I Street. He meant our rivals at the Bakersfield Californian. The scanner had described a scene of Pulitzer Prize-winning gore. I brought both my cameras.

Color and black-and-white? Tony asked, fumbling the clutch as he gunned his cherry ’68 Firebird up the Porterville Highway.

I grinned into the fog. Yeah, I figure Gramps might pay for color under the headline this time. Red splashes! How many people’d he say? Five?

So far, Tony said, sucking his lips and toying with the tape-deck. Five Dead in Tule Bloodbath. He laughed and ran a hand through his hair. Probably straight off the student newspaper at Bakersfield College, I thought, Jesus Christ, what the fuck was I doing speeding past oil-pumps and cotton fields with some greaser who’d be married and divorced before I even got my shit together?

We hit the thick of the Tule, white mist hugging the car horror-movie style. If Tony didn’t slow his ass down, we might also make the front page of the Register, Two Brave Journalists Killed in Tule Irony. Then colored lights began to flash all around us in psychedelic rhythm, a huge machine-smoked disco. A police car blocked the road. Okay, I hissed. Here’s tomorrow’s Corn Flake Special. Pull over.

The cops waved us back, and we ditched the car at the shoulder. We jumped a barbed-wire fence and took a stroll across a pasture, wet grass, sage and shit, the heavy aroma of the San Joaquin. Once around the police barricade, we jumped back over the fence. A dump-truck had crushed a Chevy compact head-on, and at least three other cars had wedged themselves into the wreckage, a real horrorshow. I snapped away, wishing I’d timed the mushrooms for the headliner. Tony, suddenly green, went over to interview the cops supervising the tow-truck drivers. The dump-truck driver sat at the side of the road, crying.

Stupid Mexicans, he moaned bitterly to himself. He was also Latino, his thick mustache moist from fog and tears. I took the photo. People in the other cars were dead and covered with sheets on the side of the road. I took the photos. I went over to the Chevy. They couldn’t cover that driver; she was stuck in the windshield, the rest of her a mess. I recognized her immediately: Yesenia, Griselda’s best friend in high school. Griselda, my first love, Flaca to everyone, gone to New York City. Double-dates in Flaca’s ‘64 Ford Falcon; Yesenia moaning from the back, her mechanic boyfriend from Shafter caressing her tits with his blackened muscle-car hands. The drive-in of all places, how fucking corny is that. Yesenia, we called her Colorada because of her reddish hair, and I remembered how strong her laugh was, and how she had big plans after she got into Porterville College.

Hey, Colorada, I said. I slowly reached out and touched her hand. It was the same temperature as the fog. She looked shocked, eyes open, and I started to laugh. Feeling sick, I walked around the car. The passenger door was wrenched off by an inhuman claw, and somebody was under a stained sheet nearby, breasts, a woman, long black hair fanned across the asphalt, oversized plastic platform shoes at the other end.

Oh, no, I said, and the whine in my voice shocked me. Oh no, you went to New York! You went away to fucking New York! Sure, Colorada had many dark-haired friends, hynas stick together, right? But I sat down in the road anyway, staring at that long hair. No one else in Bakersfield wore fucking shoes like that. That hair was the first I’d ever felt as a man. I could smell Flaca’s hair; I’d kept locks of it, a sweet burnt smell like twilight after a scorching day.

Five years gone by since my graduation from frightened child to obnoxious asshole. It started with these tough Mexican chicks at Garces High School, riding the bus from the wrong side of the Kern River. The refugees from Central America and Laos hung out in shy groups under the pepper trees, but the Chicanos liked even faster cars and louder music than us Okies. The girls drew Aztec portraits of themselves with their novios on books and locker doors. Junior year I fell for Griselda, the scrawny, hunched girl everyone called Flaca. She had hair to her waist and ashy skin, and after we found each other in secluded corners, she drew me constantly.

Why d’you keep doing that? I asked her one afternoon. Can’t you get it right? We’d ditched school to lounge along the railroad tracks, kicking greasy rocks at passing trains with our black laborer’s shoes.

So I’ll remember you when you’re gone.

I laughed at her. I’m not going anywhere. We’re in fucking Bakersfield, remember? It ain’t the jumping-off point to fame and fortune.

We gotta go, man. If I see your fat ass hanging over a barstool on Chester Avenue in twenty years, I may have to fuckin’ kill you. And she was prophetic; there was no early failure for me. Only one photograph of Dorothea Lange’s studio in Berkeley, a beautiful room of slanted glass in the trees, was all I need to apply to the University of California, overlooking crazy San Francisco from across the bay. I would perform on an extraterrestrial stage at the end of the Seventies. Flaca got a full scholarship to NYU, and like so many later friends who tuned into New York, she disappeared with enthusiasm.

I remember her waving good-bye, or not waving really, staring at the ground in a white tank-top and trench coat, following my Greyhound bus like a zombie. Maybe she could see into the future, that beautiful Chicana. We wrote for a while. We were fucking crazy in love, but behind that teenage devotion was the truth of our parting. We hadn’t communicated since I’d moved back home. Maybe she’d heard about my pathetic life above Brody’s Drift Inn, and Colorada was driving her into Bakersfield from Porterville to fulfill her promise to kill me.

Hey kid, the ultimate cop voice yelled. Without even turning I took off running, hurtling the barbed wire back to Tony’s car. He could’ve shot me in the back, that pig, but he just yelled obscenities through the fog, alone except for his cursing. I could have departed the mortal world that day, if that cop hadn’t kept yelling like the fucking Boy Scout troop-leader he probably was. My hatred for him kept me alive.

I quit the Register and rode my motorcycle to San Diego that night, two-hundred and fifty miles. Getting my few possessions was easy; the building had back stairs and Rosie had already gone to work down at Brody’s.

I let the winding Interstate take me south from the snowy Grapevine at an obscene speed, weaving between semis and cars, my suitcase bungeed to the frame, and then there was Los Angeles. A horizon of blocky buildings ruptured a bejeweled carpet, and the clouds flashed with reflections of searchlights and skyscrapers. The Olympics were coming that summer and I would be reborn. No more Berkeley and now no more Goddamn Bakersfield. This cat was going to live another life.

A few hours later I slipped through San Clemente at the other end of the metropolis, a half-digested meal on concrete intestines. The gray tits of the nuclear plant at San Onofre stood watch over my passage, and across the dark plain of Camp Pendleton I spied the lights of Oceanside, the outermost suburb in San Diego’s orbit. I stopped for gas and a quick bowl of soup at Denny’s, a fantastic meal, the soup of Picasso in his garret, the soup of an underworld scumbag fleeing the chains of his devoted woman, the soup of liberty. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper buzzed their hippie swan-song in my ears and the exhaust fumes intoxicated me, mixed with salt spray off the Pacific, that’s the smell of freedom, man. Oceanside, a cold fluorescent town full of jarheads, seemed the right place for epiphany. I bought a postcard of a bikini queen leaning on a palm tree, bummed a stamp off the night manager, and wrote to Rosie. There wasn’t much to say, but I told her to keep away from artists, and never to leave Bakersfield unless it drove her crazy. Bakersfield, I wrote, will keep you safer than any man.

*******

The next few weeks delivered on the escape fantasy, adventures in a new city and my return to the Art World. San Diego faded through sea air and marijuana smoke, tumbling down arroyos onto sexy beaches. I loudly hated every minute, but secretly I thought the place could rival paradise. Then the boredom started to get real.

Craig Andersen lived in Hillcrest, the hip gay quarter, a glossy strip of candy-colored Thirties houses and storefronts adjacent to Balboa Park. His roommate was a lanky redneck with a shit-eating grin under a blond Beatle cut. Benjamin Smart, he leered; I drew back warily, then reached for the loaded pipe he offered.

Craig and Ben had converted their apartment into an art gallery by slanting false walls around the living room. Across the front window the words NEXT WAVE GALLERY glossed in the sunlight. Eventually I met their nervous Greek landlord coming down the front steps, yelling as I pulled up in my new used car, loaded with folding chairs for that evening’s opening. By then I’d been crashing there a week.

Who the fuck are you? he screamed as I tried to get by.

A lawyer for Renter’s Aid, I said without missing a beat.

He waggled a finger so close to my mouth I wanted to bite it. Yeah? I know my fucking rights. These assholes are running a business in my place without a license, and not in the fucking lease either. I’ll have them outta here, don’t matter what you say, shyster.

I laughed, too stoned to care. I was stuck in the noir of the Oildale Register, and so was he. You just haven’t got your cut yet, pal.

The landlord leaned back thoughtfully. Yeah, asshole, there’s money in art. Ben and Craig cornered him, getting down to the size of his bribe. He was a cheap little shit and settled for an extra hundred a month under the table, beer money to us.

You set that up nice, Ben said with a nod. I knew right off I had more in common with Benjamin than Craig. Ben was finishing his art degree at UC San Diego with little effort, but Craig had continued as a grad student in science, reveling in the abstract mysteries of the universe. The mysteries of the human animal, their base desires and ephemeral curiosity, were more to my liking. I’d also been a student.

What’s for dinner? I yelled, mixing myself a vodka tonic. Craig came out with his big red bong and slammed it on the kitchen table, bowl loaded.

Not Mexican again? I squawked. Ben cracked up.

Who is this fucking guy? he yelled at Craig.

Craig repeated my legendary excesses at Berkeley. Apparently addiction and insanity could fill out an artist’s resume; Ben, who’d done time at a private school in Kentucky, had a similar history. But Ben didn’t dwell in the past, preferring the swiftness of artistic Blitzkrieg. He would escort us onto the stage, and once combined, our mouths could take us from the artist’s garret to the collector’s villa. Until we turned on each other.

Yet now, friends, I speak in hindsight; analysis of the beginning sheds less light on the end than you might hope. We were young and loved attention, and art provided a motive to the reach that epitome of youth. I pitied the lazy bastards who posed every night in the bars, impressing lanky women with their tans and muscles. We flashed artistic immortality at those chicks. Come over and step into the limelight, ladies. You’ve heard of Picasso, haven’t you? And Weegee and Warhol and Malanga and Joe Franco? It’s the spring of ’84, and they’re all here waiting for you at our pad in Hillcrest.

How did we fall into this world? I was never exposed to art as a child. Bakersfield during the Seventies promised few opportunities at enlightenment, just fast cars, juicy hamburgers, shitty beer and skunk weed, sweetening the intolerably hot afternoons of silenced televisions with heavy metal soundtracks. I can’t complain. I survived a normal California youth with an older brother and a younger sister, an occasional misadventure with bored cops, bored farm girls and bored friends like Craig and Stan. Ah, but those innocent girls of Bakersfield. You city slickers are accustomed to insincere women tottering on five-inch heels, but I know a place where a lady can polish off a pint of Jack and still smile at strangers without bitterness.

Open another bottle, I called, as we set up chairs and tables across the sidewalk. The opening was about to begin, the moon clearing the treetops in the east and inviting the city to dance. Craig’s older brother Stan worked at ignoring us from under a car-hood nearby, puffing a joint and muttering like Popeye. Nearing thirty, he claimed to know something we didn’t but refused to say just what, and I suspected he was just a dumb cracker who hadn’t figured out jack-shit himself.

Why don’t you get real? he sneered. There’s no fucking scene in San Diego. You gotta go to L.A. if you wanna get shit done.

Why don’t you fucking help us? Craig yelled. Look at all these Goddamn chairs, you lazy bastard.

I notice you’re not in L.A., I replied with a smirk.

He hissed like a flat tire, running a hand through his sun-bleached hair as he tightened a spark plug. I’m not part of anyone’s dumb scene any more. I just follow the pussy.

You’ve gotta work for pussy, Benjamin replied coolly, smoothing a tablecloth. Joe Franco, man, he’s bigger than any pussy you can name.

Stan snorted. "I could paint better than Joe Franco, if I put my mind to it."

We heckled him derisively, sure, Stan, sure. Joe Franco, the Pop artist, Warhol’s protégé? Get real.

Ben and Craig owed their gallery’s success to Michael Quinn, a La Jolla entrepreneur who’d anticipated a real estate boom and wisely bankrolled his profits into Modern Art. San Diego had only recently emerged from the shadow of Los Angeles, and Quinn aimed every penny of his family wealth at that sunrise. He’d redeveloped century-old warehouses in the Gaslamp District; he’d invested in chic Hillcrest businesses like the Next Wave; he’d helped break the stranglehold of the tourist industry on the Chamber of Commerce; and he’d supposedly allotted large donations to the City Council, who then made urban renewal in the Gaslamp a priority. Empty buildings filled with boutiques, law firms, coffeehouses, lofts and art galleries, including the contemporary Michael Quinn Gallery on Avenue I. Yeah, the Eighties were like that. Wherever you looked, a rich bastard got the Midas touch and up sprung a village full of rich bastards.

For this opening of the Next Wave, Quinn fed his boys Joe Franco, the real thing, fame, money and power. We glowed from delusions of grandeur. But I couldn’t help wondering, watching the homeless stagger up Sixth Street, who the hell is Joe Franco, anyway? Berkeley questions, Ben Smart told me. Too many Berkeley questions.

*******

My Berkeley education began shortly after my eighteenth birthday, a freshman in the dorms. Revelations abounded, as exotics from Morocco to Wisconsin buzzed about, and infinite possibilities manifested with the clarity of trees emerging from the mist of the Berkeley Hills. For every drawing Flaca made of me, I’d taken a photograph of her. In Berkeley I photographed everything: preppies, Deadheads, punks, homeless, exaggerated expressions, beautiful ugly faces, sudden emotions. Buildings towered over silent streets and dead animals washed up on empty beaches. Life changed from an idle pleasure to an intense competition. It was fucking beautiful, man.

Gertrude Williams, a grad student artist from San Francisco, lived down the hall from me. The grad students were light years apart, living in the dorms on scholarships. An aura floated with them as they trudged to their seminars, and I hung near faithfully, for I might follow their path. These steadfast scholars, rejecting the good things to spend a decade in college, killed time drinking gallons of coffee and smoking Humboldt green between packs of low-tar cigarettes. We’d come a long way since the Greeks experimented with academe.

I met Gertrude through her roommate Christine Chang, a Psych major who shared my unhealthy devotion to New Wave music. Chris had transferred from a community college up in the Wine Country, and came bouncing into my room one day, her bleached hair feathered around her porcelain features, her zebra-stripes hypnotizing me.

Who’s blasting that crazy music? she yelled at me, the only person in the room. My roommate, a delusional Libertarian from Costa Mesa, was handing out rally flyers on Sproul Plaza.

Me, I yelled back over Nina Hagen. I was lying across my bed, half-asleep on a warm day, imagining Nina twitching through a West Berlin penthouse in a red wedding dress.

That’s the soundtrack for my life! she yelled.

Gertrude stopped me in the hall a few days later. Your tape is driving me out of my skull, she smiled. Christine had borrowed and played Nina Hagen non-stop.

Sorry.

Don’t be sorry. Here’s my revenge. She handed me an invitation to her first solo show in the Art Department.

The Ryder Gallery at Kroeber Hall was an airy white room, Gertrude’s paintings surrounding a table of crackers, meat, cheese, bottles of gin, vodka, and tonic. Listen up, jaded scenesters. Here was my first opening, so forever the sweetest. Nature cooperated, warming the building with an easterly breeze, scented with the wildflowers of my Central Valley. Whoa! I said to Christine as we entered. I smell a party. I pointed out the liquor.

She giggled. Silly freshman, Trix is for kids. It’s just a goofy art opening. Don’t get too excited. Besides, there’s that acid party tonight at Ehrman, isn’t there? She grinned wickedly. So don’t drink too much.

But this was a new one on me. It was Monday, and here I stood sipping free gin and tonics, tasting real Brie cheese, talking about art with grown-ups and feeling good about myself. I don’t even remember what Gertrude’s paintings looked like, although I can tell you they were better than most of the crap I’ve observed since. People filtered in and out, making obscure, often bizarre analytical statements; everyone dressed a cut above the hippie uniform of Berkeley. Gertrude, who never wore dresses, sported an enormous one that evening, blue and wide like a sharp iceberg ready to leap in front of the Titanic.

I’m so glad you could make it, she said, her eyes wrinkled with delight as she leaned over the dress to give each of us a peck on the cheek. Another first for me, that Continental kiss kiss, and her perfect white teeth standing out in the room like a tiny Greek ruin. The gin sang in my heart. Paris in the Twenties, and I was Man Ray out on the town. All we needed were a few rails of coke, and the evening would be perfect.

So this is an art opening.

You don’t have ‘em in Bakersfield? Christine drawled.

Not as many as Petaluma, I replied, referring to her own hometown, a mini-Bakersfield of chickens an hour north of San Francisco. She chuckled and punched me in the shoulder. I poured myself another drink. I can still taste that oily gin, meshing perfectly with the cheese and the breeze. A perfect appetizer for an acid party.

I could be found at Kroeber every Monday after that. I thought I could live on cheese, crackers, art, cigarettes and gin. Nobody questioned my presence, and I discovered that the Art World appears exclusive only to the uninitiated. If you could talk the talk and walk the echoing gallery walk, you were in. Just for fun I took classes in art history, not realizing until later that just by browsing a few books I could drop enough names to sound properly obnoxious. I made good friends, who soared like skyrockets, and faded as fast.

Still, I maintained some distance; I was majoring in geology, my father and grandfather’s profession. But through artists I found parties, drugs, and beautiful women in designer clothes who liked to fuck once and then forget. The Scene slowly consumed my life, night by night, as I dressed up and chatted up every artist I could find. It never bored unless boredom was your thing.

I enlarged my reach to the San Francisco galleries, and younger students began to seek me out to party when Friday came around. Finally I gave in to the obvious, switched my major to art and never hung out in Kroeber again, I was so sick of the place. I shelved my geology books, studied photography and became, in somebody’s opinion, competent.

Eventually I left the University behind too. Berkeley, once spread out like a new continent, appeared the nosy suburb it is. We joked that a person could score at Gilman and San Pablo, and ten minutes later his friends would be warming up the razor blades cross-town at Alcatraz and Telegraph. College imprisoned me, and through the bars I could see the real universe, San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Berlin. Even going down on some nameless hippie chick, incense twirling in the candlelight, my mind would wander to the prices of plane flights. Art gave me the disease, and instead of the world being my ashtray, it became my playground.

The cold night before my graduation I ran into Gertrude, two years after she’d received her MFA. The Art Department threw a celebration in Kroeber for the graduating class; even the pariahs showed up, and most of us dropped acid to make the end more interesting. We played with arrogant finality to the crowd, as my glamorous comrades stared blind into the future. The implications of this transformation didn’t register in my drugged brain. I’d become immune to their Scene, but the symptoms of real ennui need years of stupidity and lost friends to surface. And disease it was, of the worst kind, the disease that mutates talent and intelligence into style and fashion.

The acid left me nauseated and instinct told me to head for the City, to smoke cigarette after cigarette and laugh with the street punks in the cold humidity, snapping away with my camera. Gertrude wafted down the stairs as I struggled up, reminding me of a person that I hadn’t met but should know. She was wearing a dress again, so out of character I didn’t recognize her. Years later, the world dims when I remember Gertrude’s radiant smile, plain but real, her big teeth in her happy mouth.

Hey you! How have you been? She hugged me violently.

My entire body flushed and I reached for the support of the cocktail in my hand, blue with a dry-ice haze pouring from the top. Jesus, Trude, it’s been forever. But I was just about to split.

Yeah, I’m not staying long. Just came by to check on the old dump. So what have you been doing with yourself?

I’m graduating. I’m also, well, kind of tripping.

She nodded and looked sad. I have an important warning for you, she probably thought, but you won’t get it now. She patted me on the back. Well, good luck to you. Write me sometimes. You still have my address?

I knew it, a cozy house on Twin Peaks, facing the Pacific Ocean. I leaned close to her. I wouldn’t stay in there long. It’s a vipers’ nest.

Gertrude smiled and shrugged with one shoulder. It’s art. What can you say? It’s the job everyone wants who doesn’t want a job. She looked down into Kroeber, her dark curls falling across her eyes. You’ll dig it, buddy.

She tottered inside. I never saw her again, but everything since, I owe her. Thank you, Gertrude; I owe you a Brie wheel.

It seemed like five minutes later when the sun rose in fury over the Sierras, the smog of the Central Valley already simmering on a May Sunday. Much bigger than when I’d left four years earlier, yet still homespun as any distant outpost of the Empire, I shuddered and stared across Bakersfield, California. The only worse place to be, I thought, was overlooking San Francisco Bay, surrounded by junkies and artists. I’d spent a lifetime in Berkeley, but now I was back home and no one gave a shit.

*******

The sun sank behind Point Loma as Joe Franco’s opening began. I read passages from Bright Lights Big City while Ben chopped out fat lines of coke on the kitchen counter. Would you stop fucking reading, man? Craig shrieked. Ben encouraged me; I kept reading. A glass of Jack Daniels on the rocks appeared, and a short-haired girl named Tommy smiled down with desperate eyes, sliding into my lap. Couples entered whispering and left howling. The moon stopped dead center above Balboa Park just for us. New friends showed up, Quinn’s Downtown connections, then the rich bastards from La Jolla. Someone told a story about hanging out at a mercenary bar in the Sudan. Two neighborhood queens started a catfight over their designer clothes. A suburban girl flattered everyone to death, even Stan. Oh, how she loved artists. A few people seriously studied the Joe Franco paintings on the walls, warm in the golden pools of the track lighting, the kerosene smell of the airport floating inside. The incoming jets fly in low over Downtown San Diego, right between the tops of the skyscrapers, over Hillcrest and into Lindbergh Field. No one cares; the air in San Diego can’t conduct even a tiny charge of danger.

I’m moving to New York! I screamed down the alley at three in the morning, laden with sacks of Mexican take-out. That’s it! Fuck all this blond-haired-taco-beer-surfer bullshit!

Stan laughed from our porch, cradling an empty fifth of vodka. You wouldn’t make it one day in L.A., man, fuck Manhattan.

Fuck you, Ben yelled around a mouthful of burrito. We’re gonna watch you beg for change outside our Bel Air mansions.

Stan glanced inside at the Francos. Just don’t climb so high up, idiot, that I can’t reach your wallet.

*******

Every sunny day we woke up, put on Iggy Pop, smoked a bomber and staggered outside in the darkest sunglasses we could find. We kept a basket by the front door, full of extra shades in case a pair got lost; without shades, we’d be trapped in the apartment until nightfall. We ate out every day, and Hillcrest suited this purpose excellently, bright cafes lining the streets, going out of business so quickly that we rarely dined at the same place twice. Every morning began a fresh movie.

Sometimes we’d drop by the Escape, a gay bar around the corner from the Next Wave. Our pot dealer was fixed to a stool facing the door, his ass nailed there since the Seventies. Needless to say, he knew us well, and we thought we’d have him forever. Getting kicked out of Eden seemed impossible. On money nights, we drove Downtown and hit the pubs, wedging loud blonde Australian tourists away from their soccer-hooligan boyfriends. On broke nights, we bummed rides to Ocean Beach, rubbing elbows with the speedfreaks and the bikers, wandering diplomatically from a redneck bar to a reggae bar, drunk and in love with everything under the sky.

Ben and I began a hazy Ocean Beach summer on wings of crystal meth, afraid of nothing human. We fixated on beer cans vanishing into raging bonfires and the terrible laughter of forgotten runaways facing the Pacific, realizing that their wandering had reached an impasse. Rather than turn back, they stayed, and OB burst its seams with homeless punks. With Berkeley smarts and Bakersfield charm, I ingratiated myself into their midst, and soon had a portfolio of nearly a hundred perfect photographs, some black-and-white, some appallingly nostalgic Kodachrome, whichever brought out the horror of life’s punishments with clarity, like Larry Clark’s Tulsa brats.

In my favorite photograph Deronda, a young woman from Nebraska, shot heroin at a kitchen table, her skin blue in the morning light, her faded T-shirt pulled up to reveal an obviously pregnant belly. She was pro with a needle, not even looking at her arm but staring out the window, her eyes empty of feeling or intelligence.

Where’d you get that camera? she asked me on a tape-recording.

My folks bought a new Grand Prix and gave me their Dodge, which I sold, then spent the money on a motorcycle and this vintage Leica M3. I let her fondle the camera. I loved my first camera, of course, a serviceable Olympus OM1, but I’ve never held anything else, not the most beautiful chick, that fit my hand like that Leica. It always nestled perfectly in the crook of my arm as it hung from my neck, and it magically transformed every square of reality I saw through the rangefinder into poetry. I could take it apart in the dark, and lavished it with expensive lenses and accessories. I worshipped that fucking camera. I wrapped it in silk and it never let me down. I’ve bought other cameras, but they will bury me with the Leica.

How old are you? I asked Deronda on the tape.

Eighteen in two months. Why? Do you want me?

Sure, I lied. Where you from?

Same as you, dude.

I played these tapes of her and the other street kids during my first opening, a group show at a trendy bookstore in the Gaslamp District. Michael Quinn, in sharkskin, nodded over his Martini, an expensive smirk on his face. He’d brought friends to this opening.

Watch out for that guy, Ben said nervously, nodding back at Quinn. He thought he’d lose me, not as a friend, but as a potential client of the Next Wave. Nothing slipped past Benjamin in those days.

*******

Of ten Franco pieces, Ben and Craig sold six; of five photos, I sold three. Not bad. Quinn, ever magnanimous, arranged for us to meet Joe Franco himself. You’ve got the greatest ability a businessman can have, he said over cocktails at the Escape. The ingenuity to sell a story, no matter what. That’s the spark of real genius. He passed a joint to Craig and waved to our dealer. I fixated on a patch of sky through the saloon doors; alcohol and marijuana swirled in unison, numbing me. You boys drive up to L.A. next weekend and drop the unsold lots at Franco’s space in Venice. He’s throwing a party. He actually winked. Nope, our talent for grift shouldn’t be confined to cajoling women into bed, when we could be making millions for ourselves and Michael Quinn. San Diego is a limitless market, guys. This city is busting out, and all those new houses in the Highlands and on the Mesa need art on their walls. Like Franco’s. Like yours.

Yeah, why not Smarts? Ben asked the bar loudly.

Sure, baby, sure, Quinn laughed. But don’t forget the market. Why paint when you could fill the world with the sticky canvases of others? Much less effort.

Craig took the opportunity to go for another round. He’d become interested only in science, collecting antique instruments and pondering the nature of reality over stony afternoons; he’d buried himself in his studies and forgot about the gallery. The day before our ride to L.A., however, he surprised us by switching to road-trip mode, cashing a student loan check for a gram of speed, an ounce of weed and some mushrooms. I was delighted; what else is life for? Completely wasted, amped and hefting my Leica, I focused on documenting this sordid Olympic trip, dedicating myself to mocking Eugène Atget’s cool realism. We juggled drugs and comp tapes all the way up Interstate Five, and when Craig’s sputtering VW bus finally mired in traffic, we were deep in Orange County, hidden behind pollution and banal office buildings.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, I mouthed around a joint.

Arbeit macht frei, Ben added, as I passed it to him.

Forever you drive into Los Angeles; you cross mountain ranges, deserts, you play comp tape after comp tape, and then the freeways widen, the signs multiply. We stopped to eat in Long Beach and got lost looking for a restaurant, anything, but the poisonous smell of chemical refineries drove us away. Craig stopped to ask a bunch of Latino day workers how the hell you found Venice Beach. They spoke almost no English and tried to sell us their services instead. My poor Spanish got us to a fab taco truck, and from there Venice drew us in effortlessly. As high as we were, L.A. wanted us higher still. Now there were restaurants, bars, clubs, and everything else a modern person could want.

Bring a Goddamn map next time, Ben yelled at Craig over Pink Floyd.

Lincoln Boulevard, Craig called, pulling off.

Get off! Get off! Ben yelled, flailing over the seat as if he meant to take the wheel. I let out a hiss of relief and raised my camera. California on the surface. The streets were wide and empty of pedestrians, the rows of shops darker and maybe more battered than expected. A homeless guy pushed a shopping cart loaded high with aluminum scrap. It wasn’t San Diego, not yet, not until Michael Quinn and his rich friends finished Babel, reaching to the sky while we admired from the shadows.

Joe Franco’s studio was two blocks from the beach, with its own razor-wired parking lot. No one was home but a secretary, an unhappy petite woman perfectly wrapped in the latest Vogue. A San Franciscan, I suspected, and menaced her with the Leica while Ben and Craig unloaded the paintings. We wandered into the misshapen corners of the Brutalist space. Benjamin demanded to shake hands with Franco personally.

Are you from the City? I asked her abruptly.

Which city? she frowned.

Not a San Franciscan; they would know what I meant. She handed us invites to the party at Billy America’s house that evening, just up the street. Joe, she assured us, would be there to thank us for the delivery.

Ben could barely contain his glee as we drove off. Did you fucking hear that, man? Billy fucking America! I only knew America as a has-been actor from the Sixties, more celebrated for self-abuse than talent. But he knew art when he saw it, and he’d known Franco and the creators of Pop from the beginning, way back before we were even born.

We snorted more speed and got lost again, then found a freeway and headed for the Downtown skyscrapers. Ben wanted to meet an artist recommended by David Allbreath, the art professor who’d first opened the Next Wave. Allbreath was the first San Diegan I’d liked, and he returned my kindness by purchasing my motorcycle, which I then saw frequently outside the rough leather bars of Hillcrest. Unlike other artists in San Diego, who suffered the inferiority complex of being poor in a coastal resort, Allbreath acted the prima donna 24-7. He tilted at whomever he spoke to, a skinny conceptualist carving sexual imagery into pink sandstone, adding faded photos of himself as a youth and his relatives with their classic cars. He had a huge loft in the Gaslamp full of overstuffed Victorian furniture and luxuries nearly unknown to us, cigars and cocaine and new-fangled CDs. Allbreath was a player; he surfed nude at Black’s Beach and knew how to ride the wave of his own career just as well.

The day before our hell-ride, he’d handed Ben a copy of Basic magazine, some driving instructions scribbled across the half-naked model on the back cover. Go see this bitch, he said dryly. He’ll give you an idea of what the Art Scene in L.A. is all about. Then Allbreath laughed in a way I didn’t care for.

Those directions led to an ancient warehouse in an industrial neighborhood, the bricks loose and the sky smoky. After the placid urbanity of San Diego, it was practically unbearable, trucks shaking the streets, filthy sidewalks, and a multitude of homeless so jaded they didn’t even hit us up for change, instead glaring murderously.

Who the hell is this guy, anyway? Craig whined, remembering Allbreath’s evil laugh. Through the smog and heat-haze, the glass towers of a futuristic city hung like a backdrop from a cheap sci-fi movie. I felt a strange sensation, which I didn’t recognize until much later, the sour sensation of loss, a tragic loss, like seeing a beloved ex in the arms of another. But I’d tasted of a loss yet to come. The damage was ready to be done, and the heart would follow a worn path into the pain.

Los Angeles attracted me by complete indifference to my existence. I had walked the sparkling streets of California conscious of an amiable place, a world where I could earn a name and friends, where life meant something. As Craig, Benjamin and I walked along Central Avenue through a gathering homeless army, we witnessed a city so enormous that even the rejects and the unfortunate made up a society. We saw a city without the personality of history, so huge it assumed only the general essence of the human race, a predictable ugliness animated by survival instead of ambition. Perhaps my answers waited closer than New York City. The horror stories I’d been told about Los Angeles could have been lies, and I knew one truth: whenever someone from Bakersfield moved inside, as we called L.A., we never heard from them again. Los Angeles swallowed a body whole; you either sputtered into oblivion or transformed into something new, something disinterested in the past.

We dodged rush-hour traffic to cross the street. The artist’s name was Jim Something-or-Other, and he lived in a rat-hole of a loft. I heard Allbreath cackling at us again, for Jim, you see, composed his art using the soiled underwear of his recently divorced spouse.

I’m trying to work my feelings through, dig? he griped. He bent over a filthy electric stove making peppermint tea for us, holding his graying hair out of the boiling water. We fidgeted through dusty sunlight in varying levels of disgust. Ben made small talk with the guy. Craig gestured to me in amazement. I lingered near a window, imagining life in the underbelly of Tinseltown. But I was just a tourist, and great cities are never experienced properly as a tourist. Great cities are webs of secrets.

We went onto the roof. New buildings climbed everywhere, cranes rotating slowly above the steel skeletons. Vehicles jammed the streets and the nearby freeway, helicopters hummed overhead, and passenger jets wheeled overhead, sunset sparkling off their windows. Ben grabbed my shoulder, jolting me back into my head.

C’mon, man. We’re going for a fucking drink. Jim gave Craig directions to a place called Al’s Bar, hidden deeper among the warehouses. Tired laborers and street punks shuffled through twilight around the pool table, beneath suspended oil-drums. The bartender, a sickly Victorian woman, fixed me through the gloom. Her eyes above the seasoned bar attached to me like a parasite. But Ben and Craig suspected we were liable to get jumped, so we slammed a quick beer and split back to Venice Beach.

The freeway was at a standstill and we were in no hurry, so Craig got off and zigzagged west on the endless boulevards. Halfway across the city, he was shocked to pass El Coyote, which his brother Stan had recommended. They make a wicked Margarita, Craig repeated fondly, so we scouted a parking space and picked a patio table to better observe the street life. I hate fucking hippies, Craig announced as our first drinks came.

No shit, Ben added.

The Margaritas were a headache floating on ice, and the fake Mexican food looked tasty only to drunks or tourists. We hit the road, hopping from bar to bar, drinking until nine o’clock, the sea breeze stronger each time we staggered laughing out the door. Finally we reached Venice Beach and Billy America’s house, another forbidding Brutalist structure that reminded me of a stylish Nazi bunker.

A guy offered us crack even before we tumbled out of the VW bus. I started talking to him; I wanted to know what the fuck his deal was, but Ben and Craig pulled me away. What are you doing? Craig hissed. Trying to get us shot?

He wasn’t gonna mug us, just rip us off, I replied. I thought I might get him to pose. A new series, ‘Dope Dealer Olympics’. How ‘bout it?

Benjamin snorted. I don’t think so, man. Whatever you believe, people with mansions in La Jolla don’t want photos of crackhead niggers on their walls.

How would you know? I said loudly, as we divided the rest of the mushrooms. We were already loaded through the front door, through the celebrities and bon vivant scenesters, one foot in the gutter and the other at the Academy Awards. It was a perfect place for Ben to run around, slumming up business. I practiced holding a drink and a cigarette in one hand, the only thing my addled brain could manage.

The conversations, unfortunately, were extremely dull.

We’re flying up to the City for the weekend to see Prince at the Warfield. He’s so beautiful.

Oh, you’ve got to check out Streetwise. It’s honestly depressing.

Will he scalp tickets for the ceremonies?

Well, I’m glad I don’t jog as much as Jim Fixx!

"I adore the new wing at MoMA. The whole space just comes alive,