Monday, May 13, 2013

Tess


I'm at a local cafe today called The Unurban Cafe in Santa Monica. It's really hot day. This place is so naturally dark and cavernous. Seems like it's 20 degrees cooler than my apartment.
I finished my last posting mentioning a dancer called Tess. I actually met her while I was still living at the 'beach'.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
(^This is part of The Unurban, btw. Never used this feature before, so I'm not sure how to place it).
Tess was tall, thin, fair, gorgeous and had a wild energy. Not sure how we connected so well. She must have sensed my misery and insecurities. She was sort of hiding from an abusive boyfriend. So, she would stay with me on the nights I worked late. She slept out on the beach and would hide when the Bobs got up to go to work. She was kind of manic and really liked to clean a lot. Since I hate doing that, she was great to have around.




Some time during our friendship, I got offered a gig to do a little striptease for a guy's birthday. This was for a mixed crowd. Just a little bikini show.
I invited Tess to go with me, so she could help me with the little details. I offered her a bit of pay to go with me. She was motivated.



When I arrived at my destination, the lady who hired me was a pretty, friendly blond around 30. She was very nice and helpful. After I did my dance for this lady's friend, she invited Tess and I to hang out and enjoy the party. I was having a nice time, the people were very friendly and full of questions about my profession. Perhaps 20 minutes into the party, the blond asked if she could speak to me privately. I went to talk to her. Apparently, Tess was going crazy in the kitchen. She was opening cupboards, re-arranging items, taking them out, putting them back in. Lather, rinse ,repeat. We left the party because Tess was acting so crazy.




When we got home, she said she was really tired. She ended up sleeping for nearly a day. The Bobs found out about her, so she wasn't allowed to crash there on a regular basis. She was very erratic. I asked her what was bothering her but she never gave me a straight answer.
A short time afterward, I worked an early shift at Richard's Lounge. When I arrived, Tess and Richard were having a huge argument. It was pretty heated. He actually had to throw her out of the bar. From this point on, she became very distant and moody.




A couple of weeks went by and I finally discovered the source of her mania. I walked in on it, actually. I was working with her. There was only one bathroom in the bar for women. It seemed she was in there for an hour. I really had to use the bathroom. I knocked and she wouldn't respond. Finally, I used the door handle, thinking it was probably locked. It wasn't. Tess was shooting up when the door opened. She looked up at me, said she would be done very soon, to please close the door and not tell anybody.
It's such a disarming experience, walking in on someone shooting an illegal substance into their veins. This would happen to me twice more in my lifetime. The third time, I participated. I didn't inject myself, but held on to the substance while two other people injected themselves. You don't really get used to the idea, unless you become one of the 'Train Spotting' set yourself. There is this look about them. It's like they almost become zombies. Zombies with heartbeats and pulses.It's the glazed look of their eyes, the pallor of their skin, a stillness in their demeanor.




I did my fair share of partying over the years, but the Tess Experience was enough to make me never inject myself with anything. I heard Tess went into rehab. There was another beautiful dancer that got clean and was in a relationship with Richard. He was thinking of asking her to marry him. I think her name was Raven. She looked like Snow White with Jessica Rabbit's body. That gorgeous. I don't know how it happened, but she got right back on the' white horse'. She died at 25.



I went to a zombie fashion show/ art exhibit the other night. It was an extreme example, but some of them just looked like addicts of my past.





(Me after the Zombie exhibit/fashion show last Saturday. No far from the addicts of my past)

Location:The Unurban in Santa Monica

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