Not until her body parts could be reassembled for possible identification would Margarita Martin -- known in
stripper circles as "Strawberry Margarita" after her auburn locks and salty humor -- be best remembered as a
soulless social climber with a big, fake rack and a nasty drug
habit. When I met Rita, though, she was just another fresh-faced
Hollywood hopeful like me, hot off the
bus from nowhere. She arrived with a rare bankable skill beyond
her good looks and charm. "How's your pussy looking?" she asked by way of introduction, as we
stood in a snaking line leading to some artsy-fartsy, ninety-nine-seat theater nobody went to
anyway. "You up for some free deforestation?"
Fancying myself an up and coming starlet, I already sensed the potential value in
honing that particular instrument. Turns out you get to know a lot about a girl while
lying with your knees
spread and feet together as she fingers your lady flower with hot wax.
"Grow
out your pubes next time and I'll do you a fuzzy heart," she
boasted."We could even dye it pink. Meow."
She
was also hoping to master pubic calligraphy in time for
Valentine's Day. "Nothing says I love you like a monogrammed
snatch," she promised. I told her I still hadn't gotten over my old boyfriend back in
Petaluma, where he was hoping to open a body shop, even though he'd lost
our entire life savings during a bachelor trip to Vegas. "Goddamn greedy
strippers," she said, with eerie foreshadowing. "I say go ahead and
bleed a guy dry, but hands off his bitch, bitch." Now there's a girl
with scruples, I thought.
We
became fast friends, making road trips south, using Rita's few words of Spanish to locate Mexican Phen-Fen we could peddle around at
auditions. Waving us back across inspection in our tiny bikinis, damp
towels sailing up from our waists as we blew them wet kisses, those poor
bastards at border patrol couldn't have formed a reasonable objection
at gunpoint. Oh, big deal if the stuff did turn out to blow up your
heart -- it was still legal in places like Canada and Switzerland, and
pretty much everywhere except Beverly Hills, where it was most sorely
needed.
"Forget
about that, we're on a schedule," Rita said, tapping her Hello Kitty
watch. "We got bills to pay and dreams to chase before our asses fall."
Every bit a pair of perfect nines in a town overrun by prom queens overplaying our hands, we
bucked some high highs and low lows to cash in even the occasional chip.
An auto show hostess gig there, a non-union Law Offices of Larry H.
Parker commercial there. "If I'm not supposed to be an actress," Rita
slurred another drunken night after another power agent she stopped
screwing stopped returning her calls, "Who am I supposed to be?"
I can't pinpoint the exact moment she gave up. Maybe it was a chicken and egg thing, the drugs and the
demoralization, but we were barely into our twenties by the time she'd fallen from casting call, to booty call, to call girl, to
drug-addled lap dancer grabbing up dollar tips at Starbutts. She always seemed to be working some alternative scheme on the side, however sketchy. I heard she'd been
going to Mexico alone, bringing back more than diet pills, but I figured that was her business -- and one of us had to pay
the rent.
Me,
I ended up doing nights here alone, signing off on a botched homicide
report -- all because the strange, new boss I'd fallen secretly in love
with told me it was time to choose a side in life, the right one or the wrong one. "You'll have to figure that one out yourself," he said on his way out, casually popping a Lifesaver. "Because this conversation never happened." I'd been surviving this smoggy, gray area otherwise known as
Hollywood for so long I had no idea which way to turn without some big, shadowy cop to lay down the law for me. It shouldn't come as a surprise that
once I discovered the victim had a face, a name and a past I shared, I might have to re-evaluate my definition of right, wrong and Rita.
Fancying myself an up and coming starlet, I already sensed the potential value in
honing that particular instrument. Turns out you get to know a lot about a girl while
lying with your knees
spread and feet together as she fingers your lady flower with hot wax.
"Grow
out your pubes next time and I'll do you a fuzzy heart," she
boasted."We could even dye it pink. Meow."
She
was also hoping to master pubic calligraphy in time for
Valentine's Day. "Nothing says I love you like a monogrammed
snatch," she promised. I told her I still hadn't gotten over my old boyfriend back in
Petaluma, where he was hoping to open a body shop, even though he'd lost
our entire life savings during a bachelor trip to Vegas. "Goddamn greedy
strippers," she said, with eerie foreshadowing. "I say go ahead and
bleed a guy dry, but hands off his bitch, bitch." Now there's a girl
with scruples, I thought.
We
became fast friends, making road trips south, using Rita's few words of Spanish to locate Mexican Phen-Fen we could peddle around at
auditions. Waving us back across inspection in our tiny bikinis, damp
towels sailing up from our waists as we blew them wet kisses, those poor
bastards at border patrol couldn't have formed a reasonable objection
at gunpoint. Oh, big deal if the stuff did turn out to blow up your
heart -- it was still legal in places like Canada and Switzerland, and
pretty much everywhere except Beverly Hills, where it was most sorely
needed.
I can't pinpoint the exact moment she gave up. Maybe it was a chicken and egg thing, the drugs and the
demoralization, but we were barely into our twenties by the time she'd fallen from casting call, to booty call, to call girl, to
drug-addled lap dancer grabbing up dollar tips at Starbutts. She always seemed to be working some alternative scheme on the side, however sketchy. I heard she'd been
going to Mexico alone, bringing back more than diet pills, but I figured that was her business -- and one of us had to pay
the rent.
Me,
I ended up doing nights here alone, signing off on a botched homicide
report -- all because the strange, new boss I'd fallen secretly in love
with told me it was time to choose a side in life, the right one or the wrong one. "You'll have to figure that one out yourself," he said on his way out, casually popping a Lifesaver. "Because this conversation never happened." I'd been surviving this smoggy, gray area otherwise known as
Hollywood for so long I had no idea which way to turn without some big, shadowy cop to lay down the law for me. It shouldn't come as a surprise that
once I discovered the victim had a face, a name and a past I shared, I might have to re-evaluate my definition of right, wrong and Rita.
