The Hollywood Trilogy Read Online Free
Author: Don Carpenter
the Hellâs Angels, and a lot of tough hombres who didnât belong to any particular gang, like Al deAlba or Billy Martin, but would stomp your ass if you looked at them funny. Once on an F train headed for downtown Berkeley, I didnât keep my eyes to myself properly when three zootsuited Pachooks made their way down the aisle, and I was forced, in front of my friends, girls, old people, etc., to eat crowâthe head Pachook stopped in front of me and said, âI donât like your face.â
It was a comment that invited response, and I suppose a bigger boy or one with braver friends might have said, âYeah, well, fuck you , greaseball,â and let it go at that. But the situation being what it was, I merely said, âNeither do I!â and, I think, saved the face in question from getting stomped on, because the three young zootsuiters laughed and left us alone.
My first job as a comedian.
I arrived at the jam session in the trunk of a friendâs car, lying down in darkness for the entire ride up into the hills, but with consolationâDotty McCarty was right next to me, my first date with her, and her reputation was that she would screw anybody who was halfway nice to her, so as the car rumbled and popped up and down and around the hills looking for the barn, Dotty and I got to know each other in the trunk, a few fond kisses, a certain amount of touching here and there, so that when we arrived and Forni, who was driving the car, opened the trunk and Dotty and I came out into the spotlights outside the barn, I was pretty jacked up, and ready for anything.
That night I was wearing a wine-colored cardigan sports jacket, that is, with no collar, a white shirt with a Mr. B collar, snappy necktie and a pair of charcoal chalkstriped pants that came up to my breastbone and were thirty-six inches at the knee and sixteen at the cuffs.
In the group milling around the entrance to the barn my clothes were a bit formal, but not unusual. There were other zootsuits, plenty, greasy Levi sets (Leviâs, Levi jackets and field boots), plenty of topcoats and hats and sunglasses (including mine), lots of motorcycles, lots of chopped and channeledcars, some chopped and red-primered pickup trucks, evidence of cases of beer and pints of whiskey, a couple of shoving matches over by the door, and the sound of that music flooding out of the barn and making everyone who wasnât already inside with the insiders a little pissed off at the delays, the need for invitations (not on paper, just in the memory of the braincases at the door) so that the ozone was exploding with tension. My personal tension mounted pretty fast as I saw that Dotty was one of the few girls in sight, and that she was waving to quite a number of guys who were a lot older, tougher and drunker than I was.
So of course the trick was to get inside before anything happened. I pushed Dotty in front of me and used her as a battering ram to push through to the door, getting a lot of âHey-what-the-fuck-oh-scuse-meâsâ from guys as they saw it was Dotty pushing them out of the way, but naturally Jim had forgotten to leave my name at the door, or the brilliant guys taking names had forgotten mine, but we got inside anyway because a couple of guys were trying to get in aboard their motorcycles, and this distracted the door-guards long enough for Dotty and me.
Inside was a different party.
It was a barn that had been turned into a theater, a stage at one end and lights on the performers. I had never seen so many guys carrying musical instruments as there were at the stage end of the room. The audience was lit up by a string of red and blue lights around the room, but it was pretty dark anyway, people packed into the place all bouncing to the music, smoking cigarettes and passing pints of whiskey around. Dotty and I got as comfortable as possible against the wall pretty near the stage, and I pulled out my own pint, which Dotty and I
It was a comment that invited response, and I suppose a bigger boy or one with braver friends might have said, âYeah, well, fuck you , greaseball,â and let it go at that. But the situation being what it was, I merely said, âNeither do I!â and, I think, saved the face in question from getting stomped on, because the three young zootsuiters laughed and left us alone.
My first job as a comedian.
I arrived at the jam session in the trunk of a friendâs car, lying down in darkness for the entire ride up into the hills, but with consolationâDotty McCarty was right next to me, my first date with her, and her reputation was that she would screw anybody who was halfway nice to her, so as the car rumbled and popped up and down and around the hills looking for the barn, Dotty and I got to know each other in the trunk, a few fond kisses, a certain amount of touching here and there, so that when we arrived and Forni, who was driving the car, opened the trunk and Dotty and I came out into the spotlights outside the barn, I was pretty jacked up, and ready for anything.
That night I was wearing a wine-colored cardigan sports jacket, that is, with no collar, a white shirt with a Mr. B collar, snappy necktie and a pair of charcoal chalkstriped pants that came up to my breastbone and were thirty-six inches at the knee and sixteen at the cuffs.
In the group milling around the entrance to the barn my clothes were a bit formal, but not unusual. There were other zootsuits, plenty, greasy Levi sets (Leviâs, Levi jackets and field boots), plenty of topcoats and hats and sunglasses (including mine), lots of motorcycles, lots of chopped and channeledcars, some chopped and red-primered pickup trucks, evidence of cases of beer and pints of whiskey, a couple of shoving matches over by the door, and the sound of that music flooding out of the barn and making everyone who wasnât already inside with the insiders a little pissed off at the delays, the need for invitations (not on paper, just in the memory of the braincases at the door) so that the ozone was exploding with tension. My personal tension mounted pretty fast as I saw that Dotty was one of the few girls in sight, and that she was waving to quite a number of guys who were a lot older, tougher and drunker than I was.
So of course the trick was to get inside before anything happened. I pushed Dotty in front of me and used her as a battering ram to push through to the door, getting a lot of âHey-what-the-fuck-oh-scuse-meâsâ from guys as they saw it was Dotty pushing them out of the way, but naturally Jim had forgotten to leave my name at the door, or the brilliant guys taking names had forgotten mine, but we got inside anyway because a couple of guys were trying to get in aboard their motorcycles, and this distracted the door-guards long enough for Dotty and me.
Inside was a different party.
It was a barn that had been turned into a theater, a stage at one end and lights on the performers. I had never seen so many guys carrying musical instruments as there were at the stage end of the room. The audience was lit up by a string of red and blue lights around the room, but it was pretty dark anyway, people packed into the place all bouncing to the music, smoking cigarettes and passing pints of whiskey around. Dotty and I got as comfortable as possible against the wall pretty near the stage, and I pulled out my own pint, which Dotty and I
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