The Saga of Jimmy Stark: Pt I

Michael Gray wakes up in L.A. and finds former childhood star Jimmy Stark.

Day of the Living Dead

I woke up early the next morning, too early. But I couldn’t get back to sleep, I was too excited, I was going to meet Caitlin’s father, Jerry Osprey! One of the things I wanted to do in L.A. was to find a writer. In the same issue of Variety that I saw the notice of the impending Doors movie; I found an ad for a freelance writer in the classifieds section. While I waited for the day to begin, I flipped through the TV channels reliving my childhood. Watching reruns of The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Gilligan’s Island. Morrison mentioned TV frequently in his poems, convinced we were becoming voyeurs to our own lives instead of participants. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Dawn’s light was creeping over the horizon, so I decided to walk off some of my energy.

The early morning streets were quiet, and a haze hung in the air. Walking down the street I saw a prostitute. As she passed by she asked, “you wanna date?” she was dressed in a dirty short white dress. Through the thin fabric I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. Like Kerouac, Morrison liked to frequent the skidrow side of town, but he was a tourist on the seamier side of life, he could walk out any time he wanted. I on the other hand could find myself caught here, enmeshed in the day-to-day tribulations of survival, caught in the lives of those around me.

I walked fast and soon found myself on Hollywood Boulevard. I was surprised to see the streets alive with people, all at discrete angles to each other. Drag queen Madonnas, boys standing around practicing looking stunning, hoping for the day someone will ask them to pose, and runaway kids with dirty hair and dirtier Pennywise T-shirts, the homeless in the corners and crevices of the dirty streets. Occasionally, one or two would crawl over the concrete, reminding me of The Night of the Living Dead. Morrison was right to emphasize tragedy in his songs. L.A. is a tragic place. From mansions to people sleeping in the streets, all within a couple of blocks of each other. I felt a hand grab me.

“Help a guy out?” The voice beseeched.

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“Check your pockets.”

“Fuck off.” I said, pulling free of his grip. I walked a little farther down the street when I heard another voice cry out of the wilderness.

“Somebody give me some money to get drunk!” I looked down at the guy sitting on the sidewalk, his face was dirty and unshaven, his clothes ripped way past being fashionable, a cigarette resting between two fingers, more filter than anything else. But I recognized him. Through all the dirt he still looked like himself. He was America’s little boy, everybody’s brother or friend, he was a child star of my childhood, even though, like most child stars, he hadn’t quite grown into his face. He stabbed out the remains of the cigarette on the sidewalk. The Walk of the Stars, where every tourist in the world comes to gawk. I looked at the name on the star in front of him, it was his, Jimmy Stark. “It’s like visiting your own grave.” He said, “which is what a lot of L.A. is like anyway. Scrape away the dirt and underneath you’ll find the stars.”

“Then it is you? You are him?”

“Yeah, I’m me.” He said, a bit wearily. “You a tourist?”

“Not really.”

“You have any money?” He asked.

“Some.”

“How would you like to see the real L.A.? What the tourists are really looking for but get ripped off on every time.”

“It sounds intriguing, but . . . .”

“Don’t you wanna hear the rest of my pitch first?” He said, impatiently. “I’ve been everything and nothing in this town, from star to street. I can show you things and tell you stories no tour guide could possibly know.”

“How much?” I asked.

“A hundred bucks a day, and a place where I can wash up and a couple of meals.” I considered it. “No, can’t sorry.”

Then he said loudly, “You know most people who walk down this street avert their eyes and try not to see, but I want to see, what about you?”

“See what?”

“The truth, the city you’re really here to see. Maybe the city you’re afraid to see.” He said motioning back towards the homeless guy I had rebuffed earlier.

“I don’t know the streets well enough to drive around, yet.” I said.

“I can drive you around to your appointments and point things out. We got a deal?” He asked, extending his hand. It seemed like it could be fun. Jimmy Stark was known for his wild nights in Hollywood, maybe he could find a party or something later.

“C’mon, I’m starting an entourage.” I joked. “All right, the price is the same though.”

“All right,” I said, “let’s go back to my motel.”

I came back to the motel room with two breakfasts of huevos rancheros wrapped in tinfoil. Jimmy had washed up and changed into clean clothes, mine.

“I hope you don’t mind?” He said, seeing me notice the clothes, “but which is better, a clean former child star, or a reeking transient?”

“I see your point.” I said. We lay on the bed eating the breakfasts and watching TV, ‘Family Muse’ came on. He couldn’t take his eyes off the TV.

“I think we need to amend the Constitution,” he said, “to include the right of everyone to be on TV.” Then the image of Sandra Wright, his TV mom, came on the screen.

“I had a crush on her when I was a kid.” I said.

“Me too,” Jimmy said. “The difference is, I did her.”

“What?”

“It was a few years after the show ended, you have to remember when the show was on she was only in her mid-thirties, and she’s still beautiful. It’s the only way to do your mom without any Freudian repercussions.”

“It is?” I asked.

“Well, maybe a few.” He laughed.

When we were finished eating I asked him, “what happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“How’d you get to living on the street?”

“Well,” he said, giving himself a second to think, “I lived in a bigger make-believe world than most kids when I was on TV. And when the show was over and I was thrust back into the real world, I didn’t know anything else, so I sought the comforting unreality drugs provide. Basically, I traded on what little talent I had, I traded on my cuteness, I traded on my looks, and I traded on my celebrity. I traded on everything until there wasn’t anything else left to trade on. I just always thought there’d be more.”

“So, you left show business?”

“You know how before you die, you’re supposed to see your life flashing by?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it is my life flashing by on that screen.” He said, gesturing at the TV, where the child Jimmy still cavorted, running, and playing. “I couldn’t watch those ghosts anymore.”

“Yeah, I guess I can see that.” I said, feeling sorry for him.

“Come on, don’t feel bad,” he said, swaying towards me playfully. “I’ve lived the life I wanted to. I’ve had a lot of experiences writers would kill for. I’ve had girlfriends rock stars would be jealous of. I’ve lived in houses and places the rich only dream of, and oh yeah, I had a lot of fun.” I looked at the clock.

“C’mon we gotta get going.” “Where we going?” Jimmy asked.

“To see Jerry Osprey.”

“You know him?”

“Not yet.”

“I always liked his music,” Jimmy said, “although I always thought the name Jerry and The Osprey’s sounded like it should be a surf music band.”

Jerry And The Osprey’s

Jimmy was driving us back into the hills to Jerry’s Laurel Canyon address that Caitlin had given me. He was taking the turns and curves pretty fast, but there was a certain confidence in his reckless abandon. He wasn’t scared, so, neither was I. The top was down on the car and flowers scented the air. I was getting off on being chauffeured around by someone famous, no matter how far removed. I flipped through the pages of No One Here and told Jimmy, “we have to go on Rothdell Drive.”

“No, we don’t, not to get to the address you gave me.”

“Just go that way.” I said. As we rounded Rothdell, Jimmy turned up the street and I discovered the house Jim and Pam had lived in, that Morrison had memorialized in song. On the front lawn was a totem pole that had Morrison’s, Hendrix’s and Joplin’s likenesses. The house was a wooden frame but looked like no one had lived in it in a while or hadn’t taken care of it, I could see the wood on the porch was splintered and weather beaten, I felt the urge to go pry off a piece of the wood, I guess it would be proof that I was there like having a relic of the one true cross, but I resisted the urge it all was beginning to feel like a pilgrimage to a past, not the discovery of the future I was looking for. “I see you live on love street.” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing, just part of a song.” Jimmy eased the car down the road and around a corner, and there was a store that had a large white façade that said, ‘Canyon Country Store,’ it had a wooden front porch that looked like any general store off Main street, or out of Mayberry and that without much imagining I could see it hadn’t changed that much since 1968. “The store where the creatures meet.”

After my sightseeing detour of Morrison’s life, it was time to get back to the reality of my unfolding life. Jimmy found the address. Soon, we were standing on the front porch of a wooden beam house. I rang the doorbell. It took a moment or two of Jimmy and me looking around, smiling politely at each other before the door was opened by a beautiful blonde girl holding a baby in one arm.

“Yes?” She asked.

“I’m here to see Jerry Osprey.”

“Are you Michael?”

“Yeah.”

“Come in.” She said, holding the door open for us. We walked into a bright naturally lit, open space with a lot of wood and natural materials, a stairway ran up the side of the room to the second floor, and the girl walked over to an intercom on the foyer wall, pressed a button and said, “Jerry someone to see you.” Then turned back to me, “he’ll be right down, Caitlin called and told us all about you,” she said, “oh, I’m Dana, Jerry’s wife.” She held out her free hand to shake, I shook it, “and this is Sam.” She said bouncing the baby.

“Samantha or Samuel?” Jimmy asked.

“Samantha.” A man’s voice answered, coming from the stairs. I turned to see a barefooted man in jeans, his long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, coming down the stairs, “thank you, honey.” He said, kissing Dana. She looked like she was younger than Caitlin. I wondered how that all worked out. He tosseled the baby’s wispy blond hair.

“Oh, this is . . .”

“Jimmy Stark.” Jerry said.

“How’d you know?” I asked.

“Don’t you know, everybody in L.A. knows each other.” He said, with a wink. “It’s worse than mentioning a high school and people ask if you knew Joe Blow or Cathy Smith. C’mon let’s go into the living room.” We followed Jerry into the next room. Dana went the other way. Jerry noticed us watching her leave.

“Pretty good, huh? One of the perks of being a living legend, she’s my third wife. We have children and hold such high hopes for them to create a new world, but we start to let them down right away, conditioning them in the same old ways and nothing new is accomplished, so I’m trying to make up for my past mistakes, staying home with the kid, and being a good father. I try to make it up to Caitlin, too.” The house was open and airy. It had lots of windows, the sun shining in. Outside the patio doors was a rather large yard for L.A. The grass was green, and some pretty pink flowers were growing on the fence that surrounded the yard.

We all stood staring out at the yard. Jerry broke the silence, “oh man, I’ve lived here forever. Look at those houses out there. A real neighborhood now, but I don’t think I know any of the people in those houses. Back in the sixties, when there weren’t so many houses and they were further apart, I did know almost everyone who lived up here. I remember Jackson Browne lived around here, David Crosby, Peter Tork for god’s sakes. It was an artist’s community; we were all young. And if we weren’t in the music business proper, we were musicians playing for the joy of being alive. Making music that no one else had heard before. I remember one of us would write a song and walk over to Crosby’s or whoever’s house, play the song, smoke a joint, and then someone else would come over, then someone else would show up. Some really famous parties started just by going over to someone’s house with a song.” Then he ended his reverie and looked at us, “but you boys didn’t come up here to hear me babble about the past.”

“No, it’s great to hear those stories.” I said.

“Have a seat guys. So, you’re friends with Caitlin?”

“I met her on a tour of my Doors cover band.” “Oh, how history does like to repeat itself.” “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” I said.

“That’s too bad. Caitlin turned out all right in spite of me, or maybe despite me. A Doors cover band, huh? How come no one wants to do a cover band of me?”

“That would be cool.” Jimmy said.

“Nah, I still need to make a living touring. The Doors don’t, certainly not Morrison.” Jerry said, shaking his head in amazement. “The fucking Doors, Morrison was a dick!” He said, then thought about it, “but then so was I. It was a little past my hits and the start of the living legend crap, and he was on his way up. I probably took myself a little too seriously. I’ll tell you, if you want to feel already dead, being called a living legend will do it. You gotta give it to Morrison he probably played the cards right, leave them wanting more, if he had lived he’d probably be in my shoes, a living legend, but who bought my last album? Much less know there is one. But you know, every once in a while one of the old songs makes it into a movie and sparks some interest in the old musicarino. And a few months later I trot out to my mailbox and pick up a nice juicy royalty check. Not bad for a few hours of writing I did almost thirty years ago, and I suppose when I die what I’ve done lately will be worth something.”

“Caitlin said you toured with The Doors,” I said. “Did you ever talk with him?” Before he could answer, “did you ever have a beer with him? What was he like?”

“Hold on. Morrison was a just a guy who happened to be in the same business as I was, who I happened to meet a few times. He was a little younger than me and seemed a lot more fucked up. I don’t understand how Manzarek and the others who knew Morrison can keep answering the same questions over and over again. But it does explain why they haven’t hit the mass popular audience since Morrison died, because everything they do is tinged by Morrison, the legend, nothing they do can ever live up to the legend. I don’t think even The Stones had to deal with that when Brian died.” He looked at me, then smiled, it was a peaceful calm, calming look, like a priest. “But that doesn’t help you much. What can I do for you?” I heard in that Caitlin’s plaintive voice asking the same question.

“I was hoping you would have some contacts and that maybe you could introduce me to some of your friends in the industry?”

“Whatdya do?”

“The Doors cover band thing.”

“You sing?”

“Yeah, but I’m not really a singer. I can’t write songs or music. I’m up for a part in a movie”

“What movie?”

“They’re going to make a movie about Jim Morrison.”

“Oh, you’re an actor?”

“Not really, I’ve been doing Morrison for a year now. I’ve read just about everything there is about him. I know how’d he react in any situation.”

“What about a part in the next movie? Or the part after that?”

“My story?” I ventured, “or, maybe I’ll write a book on The Doors. I’ll be the foremost authority on them. Then when anything Doors related happens, they’ll call me asking for my thoughts and ideas on the subject. And everybody will be hanging off my every word.”

“Wow. I can really see what Caitlin meant.” I wondered what he meant by that. “Then you’ll end up in the same boat as The Doors. No matter what else you do in life, they’ll always ask you about Morrison. Don’t you want to create something for yourself? Of yourself?” I didn’t know if it was a rhetorical question or not. “Look, you seem a true believer in the myth of Morrison. You have to remember the legend always did more drugs, slept with more women, jumped higher, and ran faster than the man. I’ve heard stories about me, and I wish I had been there.” He looked at me, shaking his head. “And to tell you the truth Michael, any contacts I had are twenty-five years old or older. I go out on tour once or twice a year now and those aren’t the big promoters any more. And every once in a while, it’s one of those nostalgia festival rock shows where the receipts are split between five or six bands. As for recording, none of the record companies want to record me, not even the small independent ones. I don’t think I can be of much help to you.” Jerry looked at me thoughtfully and said, “what do you see when you look at me?” I didn’t know how to answer. “I’ll tell you what you see, an unreconstructed hippie. And now that I’m looking down the leg end of legend as it were, the only thing I know is I managed to keep my idealism intact. In the sixties we sung of freedom, flowers, and love.” He said, a faraway look in his eyes, “and those damn songs of peace, love, flowers and hippies are what’s left of my idealistic youth. We were almost like real troubadours. I had my heroin period, acid, coke, pot, booze. And this is what I’m down to.” He said, lighting a cigarette, “and I’m trying to quit. Sometimes I wondered if all that idealism was just platitudes, words to be mouthed. So, I decided to live by my lyrics. The point is I came out the other side, idealism restored. I’ve been around this town long enough to know that actors can tell the false reality of the situation because as soon as he walks onto a set he’s in the fantasy but he can still see the reality behind the fantasy, he can see the cameras, the crew, when a rock star walks out onto the stage all he sees is the seas of adoring fans and the adulation they’re giving you, it’s the seduction. Isn’t that what you saw on stage?”

“I don’t get what you’re trying to say.” I said.

“I gave myself the chance that Morrison didn’t have or didn’t allow himself. Jimmy knows. You better be careful if you’re just pursuing fame for the sake of fame. You’ll be severely disappointed. Rock ‘n’ Roll really isn’t about sex, drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Maybe it’s not even about the music.” He stopped and thought a moment, “no, I guess it has to be about the music, doesn’t it? It’s about changing the world. Look how its changed the world. Rock ‘n’ Roll should be in a continuous state of revolution. Morrison got that one right. Look, I never wanted to be famous. I was just this little cat who wanted to play the guitar better than anyone else. Everything else was an accident, no one even thought we could make a living at it for a life time, it was something to do for a while when you’re young, have some fun, make an artistic statement, and maybe make a little money before getting real jobs and becoming a productive member of society. Hell, when I started the only person that was making a living in Rock ‘n’ Roll was Elvis.”

We walked out of the house, and I lost it, “screw him! Washed up old hippie, he’s the past. I don’t need Jerry Osprey. Onto the future.”

“Where’s that, man?”

“Hollywood, my good man, Hollywood.”

Writers on the Storm

We pulled up in front of a u-shaped apartment building that opened into a courtyard, the address the writer gave me. Jimmy and I walked up to the apartment. It looked like I was expected, the inside door was open and I could hear the TV show The Price Is Right coming from inside. I knocked on the screen door, loudly. A woman came to the door; she was in a bathrobe and looked to be in her mid to late 40’s. Her hair was disheveled, she didn’t have any make-up on, and she was swaying a little.

“Michael?” She asked.

“Yes, I’m here to see Tory Pearson.”

“I’m Tory. Who’s this?” She asked looking Jimmy over.

“Jimmy Stark, the star of Family Muse. Remember that show?” This didn’t seem to impress her. “He’s kind of my entourage,” I said.

“Come on in,” she said as she flipped the latch on the screen door. The apartment wasn’t that big. There was a desk in the middle of the room with a typewriter on it surrounded by a mess of papers. A cigarette smoldered in an ashtray, next to it, a half-filled glass of whiskey. A crack ran through one wall behind a picture that was askew it gave me a queasy feeling, like we were perpetually in an earthquake. Sitting in a chair opposite the desk was a barrel-chested man intently watching the TV, he was also dressed in a bathrobe, but his was open, belted at the waist with a leather belt. His hair was gray and black, Bryl Creamed back, there was a bluish tint to it. His beard was stubbly gray. There was something Hemingwayesque about him. “This is Joe.” She said introducing the man. Jimmy sauntered in behind me.

“Hey Joe!” Jimmy said.

“Oh, shit.” Joe said, seeing Jimmy, then took a slug from a glass sitting on a TV tray in front of him.

“You know each other?” Tory asked.

“Yeah, he played the lead in Tender Fury.” Joe said, brusquely.

“It is, after all, a small company town.” Jimmy said sarcastically. “And drove me up the wall,” Joe said off handedly.

“Yeah, but I was nominated for an academy award.”

“Fucking actors,” Joe rumbled, “can’t even start to be, without a writer writing it.”

“You’re in the movie business, Joe?” I asked.

“Joe wrote the novel Tender Fury.” Tory said.

“I loved that book!” I enthused, “it’s a classic!” “The movie screwed up my book.” “How’d they do that?” I asked.

“They tacked on a happy ending and got it wrong!” “Hollywood’s heavily into wish fulfillment,” Jimmy said.

“You should know,” Joe said, belligerently. “Hollywood loves the happy ending, but in Hollywood you can’t have a happy ending. From the starlet who ends up a hooker, to the happily married star who suddenly gets a divorce.”

“They’re just supplying what everybody is looking for,” Jimmy said. “And what they can’t find.”

“The problem is they’re supplying an answer they don’t take in their own lives; they love the bucolic small town middle America virtues; the exact opposite of the choices they made. The city is built on this fault.” Joe said and swallowed some whiskey from his glass. “All I have is the truth, and the truth is you’re not going to get the happy ending, not if life has anything to do with it.”

“Are you out here writing a screenplay?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“No, I write books that others make into movies. I’m a writer in the old-fashioned sense of the term, L’escritor.” He said, with a flourish, writing in the air with a finger.

“Are you working on anything new?”

“Read, breed, or retreat, I’ve chosen retreat.” He said, finishing his whiskey. He turned his attentions back to the TV, with some relief on my part. I turned to the business I’d come for.

“Tory, have you written anything I would know?”

“I wrote the book Breaker and the screenplay for the movie. Do you know it?”

“No. Is it fiction?”

“Nonfiction, it happened to me and my husband, he was a cop. I was kidnapped and a lot of people died. The episode really screwed up our lives, it made all the papers.”

“I must’ve missed it, what happened?” I asked.

“It’s hard to explain if you weren’t there. I mean, he wasn’t my husband when it all started but I fell in love with him, and when it was all over, I discovered he’d betrayed me. But where else could I go? Maybe I let the circumstances control me, but who else could understand? After all the horror, I chose love. It was a life-or-death situation, good and evil, black and white. When you’re pushed together like that how can you not help falling in love? Love conquers all, right?” “It sounds pretty intense.” I said.

“It was, but it was really only a few minutes out of our lives. Moments that were a little too real, if you know what I mean,” she said, taking a swig from the glass of whiskey. I shook my head knowingly. “But you know there are really only a few moments in our lives where life and death is decided. Moments which can either make us heroes or reveal us to be what we are, human, afraid.” “That sounds about right,” I said.

“That’s from the book,” she said, finishing the whiskey.

“I remember the movie now. You don’t look like the girl who played you.”

“She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Even after she was supposed to be kidnapped and tortured. The irony is when we met her she wasn’t beautiful. I guess in L.A. you just need the potential to be beautiful. The potential to be something other than yourself.”

“All stories are true sooner or later, boy.” Joe said, obstreperously interjecting from his chair. “Unless it’s science fiction or some crap like that.”

“Then reel life takes over, if you know what I mean,” Tory said. I must not have looked like I knew what she meant. “Like reel, as in a movie.” I shook my head yes. “And you go to all the glamorous parties; the premieres and you don’t even notice the clock is ticking on your fifteen minutes of fame. The question is, what do you do when the movie’s over? What are you supposed to do you do in that sixteenth minute?”

“Uh, yeah.” I said. I didn’t know what to say and was trying to think of ways to change the subject again. “How long have you guys been married Joe?”

“Joe’s not my husband,” Tory said. “My husband is probably out trolling the bars hoping one of the girls who played Jimmy’s sister on Family Muse comes in. So, Michael,” she continued, “what are you looking for a writer for?”

“I need someone to write my story,” I said.

“And what’s that?” She asked.

“MY story, the true story of my life. I want it to be the story of an everyman who comes from nowhere and makes it big. I want it to be a real Horatio Alger story!”

“People don’t want to hear the truth, they want a story they can believe is the truth,” Joe bellowed.

“Shusssh,” Tory hissed at Joe, before turning back to me. “I just have one question, who are you?”

“What?”

“Who are you? And why would anyone want to read YOUR story?” She forcefully expelled a cloud of cigarette smoke in my direction and propped her arm up in the air, agitatedly flicking the cigarette between her fingers.

“I’m in a band, I sing.”

“Which band?”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard . . .”

“Hold it right there,” she said, “if you don’t know if we’ve heard of your band, how do you expect anyone else to have heard of it?” She sounded irate, then the expression on her face relented a little, “OK, let’s try this. Do you have a literary agent?”

“No.”

“Do you have an advance from a publisher for your story?”

“No.”

“Do you have any interest from a publisher?”

“No.”

“Well, how do you propose to pay for my services?”

“Half interest in the book upon its publication.” She looked over at Joe, deeply concerned, who was finishing off another glass of whiskey.

“Let me get this right, you want me to write your book on spec? That means speculation.”

“You know,” Joe started to say in his oversize tones, “you look neither blank enough to write a story upon, nor interesting enough to write about?”

“What if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain?” Tory asked.

“I’ve never backed out of a deal in my life.”

“I have books published. My work has a market value,” she said. “Let me give you some friendly advice, when you’re ready to have a biography or an autobiography written, writers will be coming to you. Until then, go see a movie, read a book.”

“Hey kid!” Joe bellowed out the door, as Jimmy and I walked to the car, “all stories should end in death, the death of the hero. Give us a call when you’re dead!”

To be Continued….

If you’ve enjoyed this, you’ll find more of my stories in The Lion Communique available at Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Get your copy today!