the walk up to kathleen's lonesome lane estate is an all too familiar hike for writers and photographers. after parking at the side entrance for appointments and deliveries, one then continues up the narrow, shaded dirt path and doglegs through a back alley - nicknamed 'freak alley' by the papers - to ultimately end up at the front gates. to the left, sits a security booth. up ahead, lays the main house.
on this particular evening, however, the walk to kathleen's lonesome lane estate is unusually dim; the twinkling christmas lights installed earlier this year - in an act of home defense - are off, the moon casting a shadowy track from the side entrance to the main house. even the security booth, mounted after the knifings on skid row, is dark - instilling a grim veil over the property. the only light that can be seen is trotsky's, at the distant end of the manor.
i persist up the walkway and notice that, even in the darkness, kathleen knows i am here. she is on the front porch of her house, smoking a cigarette, her towering pile of blonde ratted hair shining in the dusk. she throws me a slight wave and then disappears back inside.
the front door of kathleen's 10050 'love shack' is closed and locked. all the windows have been drawn in and the house looks uncanny; it is sinister, without so much as a glow emitting from the inside, save for the candles placed haphazardly throughout the house. upon a second look, i realize that two windows closest to the entrance have been shattered and are secured with american flags. when i later ask what happened to the panes, she responds, "i lost my keys........twice."
through the threshold, there is a surfeit of sounds resonating. i can hear the wolfman jack show blaring from the kitchen, drowned out by the clamor of kathleen screaming from her bedroom and trotsky trying to calm her from the study. i knock, but no one answers, so i take it upon myself to walk in. within seconds, i am assailed.
kathleen bounds through the house at a record pace; she shoots me a dirty look and says, "who the hell are you?"
"i'm a writer - i work for hep parade."
she continues to dissect me with her eyes and says, "and you think you can just waltz in?"
i feel my brow winkle and say, "well, it was dark out there and there was no one at the side entrance; the guard is gone, so i figured you were expecting me."
her face drops. "the guard is gone?" i nod. her eyes open wide and she screeches for headlock. he pokes his head in the room and she howls, "those asshole lessons are really paying off! get your tail to the front gates now or you can find another doll to displease." she doesn't notice, but he rolls his eyes before stomping out of the room, out of the house and down the lane.
this is when i become aware that not only kathleen, but her house as well, are trashed. her appearance is sallow; she is gaunt, frail and sickly. she is wearing a dirty babydoll dress, with plastic clips in her hair, ripped stockings and smeared makeup. she is pale, pie-eyed and littered with cuts and bruises. drops of dried blood dot her arms. garbage spans the floor - wadded bits of foil, broken glass, old credit cards, ruined garments and candy wrappers act as a provisional carpet. amid the mess, notebooks upon notebooks that kathleen asserts are her drafts for ☺. perusing through the pages, i note scribbles and objets d'art; such as, a train pass, flattened cigarette box and hotel key - and blood. some pages are blemished with drops of blood; others are stained red, as if the blood were used for ink. as if that weren't bad enough, trotsky, boyfriend ludo ludovic and joey kiss are acting equally as odd. running around the house with black spray paint; they commence coating the walls with evil eyes, upside-down crosses and pentagrams stars, without comment or reason. filming all of this while it happens is one of, if not the, hippest director at the moment, johnny frigiletti. he stands just a little over five feet and wears embroidered snakeskin boots, a plain white button-up shirt and leather pants. dark, handsome and completely unintelligible due to a heavy italian drawl, he is a mysterious character and remains on the outskirts of the group, locked in observation. he could basically be the second-coming of roman polanski.
joey, who looks almost identical to jimmy, has peroxide, bottle-blonde hair and says, whether joking or not, that he did so to differentiate himself from his rather recognized older brother. "he's a scumbag," joey declares soon after, "some of the things he says about my doll makes me sick."
kathleen nods and adds in, "everyone thinks jimmy was my first kiss, but nobody knows shit from shinola - joey and i fell in love when we were just kids. then there was jimmy, but he didn't last long. if you ask me, it's always been joey....only joey." joey beams brightly.
i gaze off toward the swelling wall of rubbish that consists of, but is not limited to : old fanmail, take-out menus, unopened subpoenas, invitations to all the popular parties and, naturally, plenty of past-due notices. kathleen spies me eyeing them and remarks that she hasn't paid a bill in years. "one day, out of the blue, the lights went out - just like that. i don't know who pays the bills around here, but it isn't me and it was almost a whole week before we had power again!"
astonishingly, kathleen talks openly about the most melancholic of issues - jimmy kiss, her failed work with hep parade and suicide. of jimmy, she says, "our time spent was, like - oh, what did coleridge call it - as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. you know - an impasse."
she spills on hep parade and declares, "i'm never, ever going to use a producer again. they are just shitty little pigs - all they're good for is telling jokes. and joey knows better jokes than any of them."
when she speaks candidly of suicide, i comment that she couldn't possibly be serious, that she has plenty of reasons to live; instantly, she bolts up and stomps into another room. moments later, she returns with an unpromising glass jar, full of scraps of paper, change and dollar bills. "this is my suicide jar," she informs me. joey goes on to explain that any time she threatens suicide, she has to slip some money or an I.O.U. in the jar. boredom soon ensues as kathleen delves through the jar, counting the contents - a total of 67 threats, some dating back to the beginning of last year.
upon revealing the total, joey muses aloud, "wow, doll, looks like you'll be dancing with the devil before i will."
kathleen quietly quips, "you don't need to look for the devil, baby - the devil will find you."
anon, she receives a call from a friend who ostensibly informs her that he is stopping by. the entire time, she speaks heavily in codes; such as, "is the weather on the coast clear for boating?" and, "it's raining really hard outside right now and the lost boys are rollerblading around the park, so i can't come out right now," and, "we need to make some cookies for ludo's birthday - do you have a cup of sugar you can bring me?"
she hangs up the phone and there is no doubt about it - whoever was on the other line has her spooked. in a worrisome fashion, she commences cleaning up and nervously busies herself with arbitrary tasks like straightening paintings, re-positioning couch cushions and arranging a tray of drinks. moments later, her friend makes his presence known outside the front gates and in no time at all, the police arrive.
fueled by chagrin, kathleen starts to spin. talking a million miles an hour, she confuses the two officers at first and then begins to intimidate them off the property. they claim that have had a report of underage use of illegal drugs and they want to search her grounds and that they would obtain a warrant if necessary, kathleen challenges them. "you two are a real pair of prize assholes, you know that? fuck you and your warrant!" totally abashed, the policemen stand silent for a moment, blind of their defeat. ultimately, they retreat back to their squad car, leaving kathleen and her friend to convene in private.
she invites him in for a friendly drink, but it becomes evident at once that the two are not friends. he introduces himself as, 'ponyboy' - which, unmistakably, is a drug alias - and doesn't speak a word the entire time. wiggling around in his seat and never breaking his eye-contact with an escape route. kathleen, on the other hand, remains standing and is noticeably on edge. she moves from window to window, lifting the blinds back to, doubtlessly; peer out onto her dark territory. her off-putting behavior leads trotsky to ask, "just what in the hell are you doing, doll?"
kathleen retorts, in a particularly haunting manner, "i'm tuned in. you ever seen the coyote in the desert? he's in a total state of alertness - he sees everything."
by now, it is nearing five in the morning. trotsky and ludo have long since skipped off to the shack on the edge of the hillside; johnny frigiletti has fallen fast asleep in front of the television set as an old episode of a 60s sci-fi programme continues on without him. kathleen has just rousted headlock with a telephone call to the security booth, in which she insisted he run to the corner-store for candy, beer and, strangely, a bible. she mockingly cracks, "i just want to know what happens in the end - do any of us make it out alive?"
there have been rumors passing through the affluent, well-to-do crowds - stories that no one has denied, mostly because they don't know what to believe anymore. there are whisperings about how she is hemmed in isolation in her lookout mountain home, a place few dare to tread because of its inhabitants; neighbors say, "she thinks that she's jesus and her people are the 12 disciples." there are stories of a former 'it girl' who now sees little of the outside world, who is too paranoid to go out the front door alone, who stays in her house to read and finish writing her most recent manuscript ☺.
but these are not just unpretentious rumors. kathleen truly is living the cliché - she is the doll holed up at her lonesome lane domain, because she is "too scared" to stay unaccompanied in her riot house bungalow. additionally, the night manager of the riot house respectfully requested that kathleen leave after a weekend of debauchery thanks to the lost boys, moonshine and a modest stash of speed. wholly abandoning all duties as proprietor of the riot house - not to mention employee of hep parade - she disappears off the face of the earth without a word of warning. it's not uncommon, friends attest, to not hear from her for weeks at a time.
"now," she tells me, in a singsong voice, "it's time for you to scram, sam." she has already been up for seventeen hours; everyone in the house is either asleep or in a solemn state of languor - except for kathleen. she is buzzing; nipping in and out of each room, each time for a different reason. within mere minutes, the house is spotless, the kettle is on, her notes are gathered for the day's writing and a hot bath is being drawn. joey, at first adamant to join her, now curls up on the loveseat and slips into a slumber. as i slither out the front gate, i find headlock, fast asleep himself, with his feet propped up and old baseball game on the radio. snoring, supine and childlike, he seems to be lost without kathleen's chaos.
then again - aren't we all?
