The Offer
I’d been a runaway in Hollywood, California for a few months and had gotten quite comfortable with the culture of hitchhiking to get around town. All a girl had to do was stick out her thumb and usually the first car that saw her pulled to the side. It seemed that everyone my age got around that way in the Hollywood area, at least back in 1968.
So I would stick out my thumb and hop into cars without a care in the world at the age of 16. Friends of a big sister, who I barely knew, had taken me to California and sort of dropped me off to fend for myself. Somehow I had connections, from Texas friends visiting. And I was put up from place to place, by various friends of friends, and never violated. I cleaned the homes of the people who took me in. I’d become a pro at that having been trained by my second foster mother, Nora.
It was the summer that MLK and Bobby Kennedy were shot, it seemed days apart. I got glimpses of the news, moving place to place. I didn’t like the war, I knew that much. But I was clueless and not equipped to be an activist at that time.
One day, a little white convertible sports car zipped up beside me and I hopped right in. I couldn’t believe how exciting it was to feel the full sun on my head and the wind in my hair as we flew down the road.
He said that he had a job to offer me and it involved spending the night with a famous rock star who “liked young girls”. He said the pay was $500. That was a lot of money back then and I really could have used it. I’d taken to smoking cigarette butts I found on the ground to stave off the hunger sometimes.
So I asked him what it was I was supposed to do for the money. I was scared. What exactly did he mean by, “spend the night”? I was hoping he’d tell me he wanted me to sit at a table with him and talk for the night. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting what it sounded like he was suggesting, so I prodded him to be more specific. What exactly did he expect me to do, I asked. He said something like, “You know what I mean.” but I continued to insist on details, hoping that it wasn’t what it sounded like, hoping I could somehow get that money, when he finally said, “Look, I’m asking you if you would have sex with him.” … I don’t remember what I said then, I only know I declined and he immediately pulled the little speedster over and dropped me off.
He was the only person to drop me off by a field, a little outside the perimeters of the safe hitchhiking zone which was a 1.5 mile stretch where Hollywood Blvd and Sunset Strip remained parallel. I never knew what happened with those two streets after that. But on these two streets, for that small stretch, cars cruised slowly and stopped at every half block, so it was easy and safe to jump out of them, which I did have to do a couple of times. Curiously, only this elitest of them all showed me the most arrogant disregard by dropping me off unsafely and unceremoniously. He was on the hunt. A dog and a pimp. And I’ll always wonder who that rock star was.
I even wondered that night if I’d made the right decision, thinking about that five hundred dollars that I could have used. I fantasized that I could have talked the person out of wanting to sleep with me and turned them into a better person. I’m glad I didn’t get the chance to try that out.
Oikos 