Driving In L A

By Brenda Bakke

Driving in LA is the story of the narrator's first 2 years of moving to, and surviving in Los Angeles in the early 1980's. From being driven to become a professional actress, her story takes us through rapes, cocaine addiction, and prostitution, all while trying to keep her spirit and dreams alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483454597

Book preview

DRIVING IN

LA

BRENDA BAKKE

Copyright © 2016 Brenda Bakke & Brenda Jean Bakke, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5458-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5459-7 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 07/01/2016

Contents

1 - Oregon

2 - Umbrellas

3 - Rapes

4 - The Bus

5 - Fear

6 - Westwood

7 - My First Car

8 - Pasadena

9 - Trust

10 - The Trip

11 - Cocaine

12 - Venice

13 - Buck

14 - The Gift

15 - Favors

16 - Heart Seizure

17 - Prostitution

18 - Meeting the Man

19 - Independence

20 - Busted

21 - The Paper

22 - Hotel Room

Author’s Note

About the Author

CHAPTER

1

OREGON

P eople don’t want to allow me to be dark. That’s why I hide from them now. Of course, I do run into them now and then, and they keep trying to help me. They keep telling me that I should be happy. And I think, well maybe, but there’s all of these other things I need to think about. You know, like rapes, the story in my head about preschool, prostitution, or the ever-recurring infant nightmare of the moth, and I think, well how am I supposed to be happy all of the time when I’ve got all of this other stuff to think about.

You know, like jumping out of cars I’m riding in with some guy, sitting shotgun, smoking a cigarette, and drinking coffee in a to-go cup, while we’re going really fast on the freeway, so I’d be sure to die, because I’d be so mangled by all of the other cars on the freeway that my body would just bounce all over the place. I mean, you’d hardly be able to even recognize me, or even be able to figure out who the hell I was, if it wasn’t for the goddam guy driving the car, or maybe my dental records.

There’s a lot of cars in LA. There’s hardly any time of day now when there aren’t a lot of cars. I remember when I first moved here, there weren’t half as many cars as there are now.

You know what’s so funny? I didn’t even know how to drive when I first moved here. I swear to God. I took the bus everywhere for the first ten goddam months I was here. But, I was good at it. I’d taken the bus for the past five years in Oregon, so it wasn’t such a big deal, because I was used to it. I used to go everywhere on the bus in Oregon, when I wasn’t walking. You do a lot of walking in Oregon. Well, at least I did anyway.

And I was always very busy in those days, because I had a career in mind, a career ahead of me, so I worked really hard and moved as fast as I could. Even if I was riding on the bus, the slowest transportation on earth, other than the mule for crissakes, at least I was moving. But what I finally figured out was that I just had to get the hell out of there. I was just sick of the whole thing.

I was sick of the down vests, and the down parkas, and the Oregon Ducks, and being from Beaverton, and everyone wearing tennis shoes all the time. And even though one of the biggest tennis shoe manufacturing companies did originate right there in Beaverton, it just didn’t seem natural that everyone had to wear them every single day of their lives. It just didn’t seem right.

And the people who lived there, it seemed to me anyway, just had no ideas. They just didn’t want to go anywhere. And this was an anomaly to me. I just wanted to live and grow and travel, and it seemed to me that all of these people just wanted to thrive on the quality of their barbeques and their lawn mowers, and that they would just be perfectly happy to have a heart seizure in their stupid tennis shoes while turning a couple of salmon steaks on the grill in front of the kids. I mean, what is that, and how is that anyway to live, you know?

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I really didn’t know how to drive when I first moved here. Although, back in Oregon when I was a kid around ten or something, my dad used to let me drive every once in a while. But it was this big truck with a camper on the back, so it wasn’t even fun. He’d owned it for years, and it was big and old and ugly, and very large.

But anyway, about the driving thing. We’d be going along these forest highways in Oregon, from some camping trip, or from skiing, and he’d let me ‘take over the wheel.’ And his breath always smelled like coffee, and he always had a thermos of it in his truck. So when he talked to me, or gave me instructions, I couldn’t even concentrate because of his horrible coffee breath. And he always made me drive so slow, at least twenty miles an hour under the speed limit, so how could I ever really learn how to drive?

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I ran away from home when I was thirteen. Well, away from my mom and sister, anyway. It did take a few times to get the court to believe I was serious about it, so I just kept leaving, and would take the bus to go stay with some friends of my new stepmom. And the best thing about this couple I stayed with was that the husband was really good at ping pong, and he taught me how to play really well.

But the first time I decided to run away was the worst. My mom was home, and I had to shove her away from the front door to get out, and it was all tearful and yelling, so it was pretty awful. But after that, I would leave when she wasn’t around. I mean, I felt pretty terrible about all the shoving and yelling and stuff, and I just didn’t want to have to go through it again.

Anyway, I was finally away from my mom, and could just be with my dad. But the whole thing wasn’t as fun as I thought it was going to be, and I was nervous around him all the time, because I really didn’t know him. Of course, I knew he was a workaholic and all, but I always thought that I could help him be happier and to get more out of life than just working all of the time. In fact, I really thought that my new stepfamily would help. I even thought that they already had, and that’s why I went there.

And before I left her, my mom wouldn’t even let me be around him at all, so how could I even know what it was like to stay with him for an extended period of time or anything?

And once I was actually living with him, I found out that my mom was right about what it was like to be around him 24-7. Like, there was this one time he left us all in this restaurant because he had to take off on some assignment. I mean, we sat there for hours just waiting for him to come back, but eventually we ordered dinner and took a taxi home. Or he’d fall asleep in his office that was right next to my bedroom, not because he wanted to be near me, but because his best friend IBM’s cursor was still blinking at the last sentence he’d left off on.

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Now, the stepfamily was pretty great. My stepmom used to make the best whole wheat bread from scratch, and we’d diet and drink smoothies for breakfast, and my step sister taught me how to play tennis really well. But we really didn’t belong together. Especially after all the drama and all. We went through a lot of drama. In fact, one time to get dad to stop ignoring us, we faked this whole suicide thing. And my stepmom promised me a new hat if we pulled it off. I was crazy about hats in those days.

So when he got home, I had to cry and freak out while I told him about this whole suicide attempt she’d made by trying to drown herself in the pool. We splashed a lot of water around the edges of the pool, and she was in bed, supposedly recovering. And it did have the required effect, because he actually did stop ignoring us for a week or so. Then he was gone for another week, and came home one