Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up by Pamela Des Barres, Michael Des Barres Page A

my important career when his girlfriend’s teen movie idol son walked through the room and spotted me. I had met him a couple of times, so I said hello and he gave me a very curious look, complete with warning signal, like “What the fuck are
you
doing here?
Watch out.”
My blundering heart turned over and sure enough, that very day after asking what I was going to do for him in return for his generous promotional favors, the actor gave me the single most putrid line ever uttered by someone with a penis: “A man has needs.” He wanted sex. He wanted head. He wanted a hand job in return for making me a star.
    I saw the party yacht sailing off into the sunset as I stumbled out of the clean-cut Beverly Hills house with white shutters like on
The Partridge Family
. I had even asked the eager has-been, “But what about your girlfriend?,” and he shook his head and said again, “She’s out of town right now and, honey,
a man has needs.”
I didn’t have enough balls (fallopian tubes?) to tell him what I thought that day, but I would certainly love to bump into him right now. Yes, indeed. I wish I could divulge the name of the cheesy Hollywood throwback, but he’s the type who would probably sue me for telling the truth.
II
     
    Needless to say this typical, pathetic Hollywood incident made me question just about everything I was doing and what it all meant. Michael was enraged and wanted to have one of his menacing roadies do some serious harm to the actor’s needy male area, which didn’t happen but made me feel loved. I took stock of myself every once in a while, and since I was pushing thirty and still found myself in these questionable situations, it was time for a serious review:
The statistics are as follows
—
I’m five feet three and a half inches tall, but I always write five feet four inches on my acting résumés, which I send out constantly despite my insecurity problems. I fluctuate between 110 and 117 pounds. I’m 114 right now, which is a bit too heavy, so I go to the Beverly Hills Health Club for toning up the tummy. I have bluish eyes
—
not extremely blue so that people comment on them very often
—
they are also pretty small and nearsighted, and I have a turned-up nose that I got from my mom and a full, pretty mouth that I got from Daddy. It all fits well together, but I’ve always had a lousy complexion, small tits as well, which agonized me in teen years. I live with a stunning, talented, beautiful, and crazy man, whom I met three and a half years ago, and we plan on getting married this year. We live right in the heart of Hollywood in a totally gay building. He sings rock and roll, and I call myself an actress. I’m a lazy person most of the time, and I have silly, negative thoughts even though I’m aware how destructive they can be. I’m also sickeningly naive. My career has flopped out, so at times my confidence aches, but I get up and do it anyway. I get migraine headaches for an unknown reason, but my health is fine otherwise. I haven’t eaten meat in over five years. I’m in the most professional acting workshop so far, and I pray they don’t throw me out after I do my first scene on Tuesday. (See! My confidence is in agony!) I write songs
—
so far the only ones recorded have been on Detective’s albums.I read one or two books a week and relish it and someday want to write the story of my nutty life. I worry about Michael because he drinks so much and gets so manic and self-destructive
—
but I also know he’s following the dots and I have no control
.
    I was wallowing in confusion and needed a spot of spirituality to jolt me out of the constant inner nattering that clogged up my head. So I got up real early one Sunday morning and drove our new ’73 Toyota, bought with Michael’s Detective money, up into the glorious hills of Ojai to hear Krishnamurti speak the solemn truth to a hushed pack of soul searchers. I listened so hard that my eardrums throbbed, still only grasping