I Attempt Adulthood (A Beer With Zeus)

On the Monday after the Friday that I graduated from college with a baccalaureate degree in sociology guaranteed to open any door, I went to work as a writer of marketing copy for Warner Bros. Records. A Mr. Stan Cornyn, who was putting together what he called a creative services department while writing witty Volkswagen-style print ads for Warner’s many underappreciated geniuses, had liked what I’d written for the student newspaper about The Kinks, whose Ray Davies had come to be sorely underappreciated himself. I had my own office, with a component stereo system, a stylish Olivetti electric typewriter, and all the felt-tip pens I wanted. According to a Website I commonly consult when in the mood for self-torture, my annual salary provided over $44,000 in “buying power” in 2010 dollars. I felt rich beyond imagining.

And had no idea how good I had it. I left at a few minutes after four each afternoon to try to beat the traffic on the Ventura Freeway, though I had nothing to hurry home to. I’d moved to Ozone Avenue in Venice to make myself miserable, and it was working. Right across the walkway was a Jewish widows’ home. Around the corner, on Ocean Front Walk, there were lots of sunshine-loving junkies. I got to spend much time around them after Cornyn decided my office would be better used by someone willing to stay until 5:30. The good news was that they kept paying me my full salary to work remotely. The bad news was that working remotely increased my feeling of alienation. My depression lifted only intermittently that long summer, as when I received a letter from Pete Townshend. For one who worshipped The Who as avidly ss I, it was kind of like getting a letter from Zeus.

I took mescaline for the first time and discovered, with considerable relief, that I wasn’t queer; I lusted silently after the female half of my two traveling companions, though the other, at her insistence, was the prettiest boy in Los Angeles. At my pre-induction draft physical in Oakland (where I stayed at the home of the later-to-be-celebrated culture critic Greil Marcus), I told everyone in sight that I was indeed homosexual. That no one believed me had much less to do with my manliness than with everybody and his boyfriend having taken to feigning homosexuality for purposes of not going to Viet Nam. I was invited to play drums in a band called Halfnelson. They gently insisted that I submit to a stylish haircut. I was only too pleased to do so.

Warner Bros. flew me to New York to welcome The Kinks, who’d supposedly been banned, back for their first American tour in four years. I’d no sooner checked into my Manhattan Holiday Inn room than I received a phone call from Ray Davies, suggesting a drink. It was as though Zeus wanted to have a beer with me.

That my star kept soaring ever higher baffled me. I had little idea what I was talking about (in my review of Santana for the Los Angeles Times, I identified their guitarist as Carlos Montoya, actually a celebrated Flamenco musician), and wasn’t much of a writer, but the more opinionated I pretended to be, the more people seemed to like it. I read Nik Cohn’s Awopbopaloobop and realized that writing a boring critique of a performance that had bored or befuddled me benefitted no one. I resolved to write music criticism much as Townshend played guitar, with enough showmanship to overshadow my glaring deficiencies.

Halfnelson invited me to stop being in their band. I like to believe, because the guy with whom they replaced me wasn’t an improvement musically, that it was less to do with my being a mediocre drummer than with wanting to be scary, like my beloved Who, whereas they aspired to great cuteness. Some of them would later be the briefly very successful UK version of Sparks.

I moved to West Hollywood, a block from the Chateau Marmont, and at a nearby mostly-gay boutique bought some English-pop-star clothes that I hadn’t the nerve to wear in public, and about which I told you many weeks ago. There was no stopping me now!

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