The Sunset Strip Diaries by Amy Asbury Read Free Book Online Page B

spending time with our grandmother, we went off on our own and became hooligans, shoplifting important items like makeup and more magazines. I remember feeling completely thrilled.  I felt so free walking around in my acid washed jean jacket with Becky and Karen in tow. Men honked at us as they drove by, and my ego ballooned even further. It didn’t matter that they had leaf blowers and lawn mowers in the back of their trucks and no green cards, I was getting attention. My sister and I went to Karen’s on the weekends that we weren’t at our grandmother’s house and we watched her video tape of The Lost Boys ( starring Jason Patric and Keifer Sutherland), about three thousand times.
     
    We rented a video camera that winter. I was overjoyed because I loved filming things. I had always filmed in my head, meaning as I lived my life, I tried to see everything through a camera lens. I really loved the idea of capturing our life on film for the first time. I had so many things I wanted to film. One of the first things I wanted to capture was my favorite place in the world: My childhood friends Christopher and David Ashford’s house. I begged my mom to take us there. I forgot if Karen’s dad took us, or my mom took us- I don’t remember how it was set up, but we did go over, and I ran around trying to capture all of my memories with the camera. I filmed every part of Christopher and David’s house. I had grown up there and I wanted be able to always look back on it. Carol, their mother, was not home that day.
     
    I can’t remember exactly how it went down, but Carol heard that we were there filming and blew up. She was really upset that I was filming her house when she thought it was messy. I didn’t see mess- I just saw the house I loved my whole life. It looked as it always did. I don’t know what words were spoken between my mother and Carol; I just knew that Carol and my mother’s friendship ended that day. We were told that we were not allowed back at the house, and that our families were no longer friends. We could see Christopher and David again when we were grown-ups, on our own time. I was absolutely floored. I didn’t understand. Not see Christopher and David again until we were… adults ? Wait… what ? I couldn’t accept it. It was as if someone had just broken the news of a death. We had been friends since we were babies. Our families were so close! I was devastated.
     
    One day while I was looking for money to steal out of my mom’s room, I found a letter in her jewelry box. It was from Carol Ashford, who wrote that I had a big mouth and some other mean things. I already thought I was a piece of shit so it didn’t surprise me that someone else thought so too, but it wounded me to my core. I was deeply, deeply hurt to hear what she thought of me. Had my mother defended me? Was that why they were no longer speaking? I didn’t know.
     
    Later that year, Carol started to do some troubling and strange things and was admitted into a mental institution as a result. My sister and I went to Christopher and David’s and sat out in the backyard with them. It was painful to see them hanging their heads. All four of us felt broken and weak. It shattered me. They were our dear friends and such a huge part of the happiness in my childhood. I thought, once again, This can’t really be happening.
     
    Carol came back a few months later. She was back to normal as long as she stayed on her medication. But she was never friends with my mother again.
     
    My grandfather’s death, my mother’s depression, and the loss of my closest childhood friends hit me hard. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings. I closed myself in my room alone with Ratt, L.A. Guns and Mötley Crüe records blasting. Their songs were almost exclusively about drugs/strip clubs (Motley), or about girls and sex (Ratt and L.A. Guns). The subject matter was the total nightmare of most parents. I listened to the music and stared at the guys