Pete White couldn’t stop licking the front of his teeth, running his tongue over them. He knew it made it look like a spaz, but it was such a weird sensation after having braces for as long as he could remember and then suddenly, not having them. He hadn’t been able to properly close his mouth all the way since he was in grade school with all the wires and the headgear in the way.
“Hey man,” a shady stranger sidled up to him, “you holdin’?”
“Hengh?” Pete blurted, tongue still flicking under his lip.
“What you on , bro,” the creep pressured him, pointing at his eyes, “Bennies? Dills? Co-Pilots? Wake-em-Ups? Lid-Poppers? Black Beauties? J-birds? Pep Pills? Choolies?”
“Oh, I getcha! Drugs!” Pete blurted a little too loudly, “I don’t have any drugs, sorry.” He hadn’t entirely shaken off the “naïve college boy” after a year in the city. The drug-seeker shook his head and wandered off muttering to find a better mark.
This, technically, was his first “big Hollywood industry party,” but really it was just KXPX’s annual holiday open house. A perk of being station PA was he got to go to the party. Unexpected bonus perk: be asked for drugs by a greasy stranger with questionable moustache! This was so Los Angeles and he was right in the middle of it!
Management set out a cooler of fancy foreign beer and a folding table of bottom-shelf liquor in the break room next to a six foot party sub. All the label reps and hangers-on and the deejays and their friends were invited. He stood in a corner and sipped at his plastic cup of melted ice and paint-thinner-grade vodka, suddenly feeling awkward in his own workplace.
“Oh my little sweetie Petey!” belted by a husky woman’s voice was the last thing he heard before being swallowed in a tornado of scarves and deafened by the clanging of chunky jewelry.
“Merry Christmas, Miss Mandy,” Pete choked out from within a boa constrictor hug, overwhelmed by off-gassing vapor of patchouli and clove cigarettes.
Miss Mandy in the Morning, the only regular female deejay at the station, was famous for her sultry voice and flirting with callers on the request line. However few knew the whiskeyed-honey of her throaty laugh was emitted by a face that looked like it was sculpted out of a sun-dried tomato. One of the many “face for radio” types that called the station home. She adored PA Pete ever since he was able to adjust her mic set-up to stop peaking with the clank of her armloads of bangles.
“Look at you, all dressed up,” Mandy said admiringly, giving him the once over.
“Yeah, well, it’s a party,” Pete said, a little embarrassed at the attention.
On work days, he usually just wore the band shirt of whoever he saw most recently (he went to shows almost every night) and jeans since he was always crawling under a desk looking for a loose connection or a dropped broadcast cart (Fidelipac cartridges— the jingles were on those, y’know.) . This was a special occasion so he blew a week’s salary on the poet shirt draped in a gossamer scarf over skin-tight white jeans tucked into white slouchy ankle boots.
“Gonna find a sweetheart to smooch under the mistletoe” Mandy elbowed him, “Flash those love eyes at ‘em,” She tipped down her aviators and winked.
Pete wore tinted glasses at work but most of the staff came to work high or hungover in sunglasses so neither his red eyes or the shades earned much notice.
“I’m not expecting anything,” Pete blushed, “But never say never, right?”
“Ooh, I bet that took a whole can of Aqua Net!” She admiringly palmed his pouffe hovering over his forehead like a tethered cloud. His hair was like monofilament and nearly-transparent, but with skillful ratting he could achieve impressive volume even with half of his head cropped short.
“If I’m gonna be a freak I might as well be a beautiful one,” Pete smirked.
“Like that unicorn Barnum & Bailey’s schlepping all over the country? Is that you?” she teased.
“Exactly, very sparkly and lots of hoopla but underneath it all just a deformed goat.”
She laughed that signature sexy laugh that men all over the city had built their one-handed fantasies around without picturing the old-leather-moccasin-came-to-life-and-moved-to-Haight-Ashbury woman that went with it.
“Oh Bobby,” Mandy pulled in another employee walking past holding a tiny paper plate of Chex mix while stuffing a wad of the party sub down their gullet, “Doesn’t our Petey look nice?”
Bob Gunderson just grunted. Program directors didn’t tell interns they looked nice.
“He’d look better if he went out in the fresh air and got some sun,” Mr. Gunderson blurted with his mouth full. He swallowed, “You look dead, son.”
The further west he went the more people reacted to how pale he was. Back on the East Coast, they thought he looked kinda weird but he more likely to get beaten up for being “queeyah” or a poindexter or just looking at somebody the wrong way. At college in the middle of the country, everybody knew him as “that kid with the white hair,” but it was, like, who cares, right? Here in Southern California, being totally untouched by the sun, they treated him like he was some kinda alien from outer space. They couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
He wondered if he had gone the other way and moved east to, like, Denmark or Sweden he’d eventually be so normal no one would even care. But what did Denmark or Sweden have to offer? Pickled fish and ABBA? No thanks.
“Did you hear my guest spot last week, Boss?”
Mr. Gunderson flapped his hand noncommittally. His mouth and attention were fully occupied by the party sub again.
Pete needed to believe that the station had hired him as PA/Trainee because they were wowed by the “sizzle reel” demo of his college radio show but at his core he knew it was that f*cking Computer Science degree and the implied technological skills that came with it. The station was slowly “going digital” to keep up with the times. At least once a day he was called away from shelving LPs or logging playlists to help the accounting department work around a DOS error on their brand new IBM PC/XT. He’d protest that he was a computer scientist – it’s a real science with math and sh*t – not a Radio Shack help desk, but no one would have cared. He’d never complain about it again if he got to be a real deejay.
On one overnight shift, Pete was running the board for an old deejay – a hippie drug casualty who even called himself “Professor Burnout.” They got to talking during the commercial breaks and Pete aired his woes. The Professor threw on MacArthur Park,lit up a J, and gave Pete 7 minutes and 21 seconds of solid career advice:
“If you want to be the diva on center stage, never tell management you know how to work the lights, dig?”
From then on, Pete started leveraging his position— trading computer expertise for being jumped ahead in the sub queue to cover for absent DJs and eventually work up to a slot of his own.
Pete walked away from Computer Science— from all science, really— the day after he went to a recruiter fair on campus in his senior year. Tech firms from all over the country set up booths and displays: Contoso, Cathedral Soft, Fabrikam, Vericorp, Initech, ENCOM. All the heavy hitters in Corporate and Military Hardware. He saw a gymnasium full of table after table of chinless men with clip-on ties and safety glasses recruiting undergraduate versions of themselves with brochures and key chains and it depressed the sh*t out of him.
He didn’t even return the cap and gown first. The ceremony ended, diploma in hand, he was hitchhiking west. Outta State. Destination: Show Biz.
Mandy had moved on to force rib-crushing, patchouli-soaked hugs on someone else she recognized. More partiers were arriving, the room was getting crowded and sweaty. Pete recognized fewer of the newcomers and went to refresh his drink.
Enter the woman.
She wore a plastic dress that looked like it was made of a garbage bag shrink-wrapped onto her body and criss-crossed with duct tape. Her half-shaved hair was teased and back-combed into a lion’s mane that floated upwards into two pointed spires a foot above her head. Her eyes were pinpricks in an iridescent oil slick of eyeshadow smeared up and out over her temples where it met the hard fuchsia slash of her blush above a furious mouth that paused sucking on a lemon only long enough to tell you to piss off and die. In other words, the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen was walking right up to him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I’m Lonnie’s friend. I’m Kara.”
Who the f*ck was ‘Lonnie?’ Whatever. Roll with it.
“Cool. I’m Pete White.”
“Cool.”
“She said you’d be here.”
“Yeah, I’m usually here.”
“So, do you wanna go somewhere more private?”
sh*t. She didn’t waste time. People in show business don’t tiptoearound the subject. He looked around the crowded station. He had an idea.
“We can go to the boss’s office. She’s out, I think.”
❄️
He closed the door behind them and locked it.
Desk. Executive swivel chair. Leather couch. Yeah, let’s do this.
“So, do you have it on you or do you have to pick it up?”
Weird phrasing. He kept a rubber in his wallet.
“No, I’m cool.”
He leaned in to kiss her and she backed off.
“Eww. No. I have money, I can pay.”
Pete looked confused.
“I thought we were gonna make out.”
“Grody. I just want an eight-ball. How much?”
“You want to… buy drugs?”
“Duh.”
“You think I’m a co*ke dealer. What the hell? I don’t even DO cocaine.”
“They say you shouldn’t get high on your own supply.”
“Why do you think I’m a co*ke dealer?”
She rolled her eyes, “Look at you.”
“Lots of people dress like this. It’s f*ckin’ cool.”
“No, spazz. The color. The hair. The face.”
“What, do you think co*ke dealers advertise by dressing up like the product?”
“It makes good business sense, like, from a branding angle.”
“Wait, you think I look like this as branding? I’m not the Jolly Green Giant of blow! I'm albino! It’s a genetic disorder!”
“You told me your name was Pete White.”
“That is my name.”
“Ugh. This is so stupid. Are you going to sell me drugs or not?”
Pete chewed his lip. She was very, very good-looking and he hated to disappoint.
“Wait here a minute.”
He ducked into the hallway. A radio station. In Los Angeles. A party full of music industry types. In 1985.
How hard could it be to find some blow to lift?
❄️ ❄️ ❄️
The station hallways were stuffed with partiers now. Drunk. Loud. Sweaty. Screaming and singing. He squeezed past a knot of people out of the General Manager’s office towards the men’s room. A room with mirrors and hard surfaces is as good as any to start his search for wayward cocaine.
Pete ducked in. The room appeared to be empty. An island of quiet compared to the rest of the office. He scanned the sink ledges, the window sill, and the corners of the room for misplaced “party favors” but it was never going to come that easy. He remembered the paper holders in the stalls were right at nose-level to a seated person making it an ideal venue. He glanced at the first stall – no feet, unoccupied – before gently pushing the door no more than an inch when it ricocheted back into his face, pushing him backwards to the ground.
Vernon Storch from Ad Sales leapt off the toilet where he had been crouching in wait, landing with each heel of his Tony Alamo cowboy boots astride Pete’s head, grazing his ears.
“There’s the pasty queer,” Vernon drunkenly shouted, “Can’t resist the lure of a men’s toilet for your sick, sick *belch* desires.”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Storch,” Pete said coolly, sliding out from beneath Vernon’s pose and back onto his own feet, “I like your boots.”
Vernon Storch was obnoxious enough when sober. Getting called to the Sales office to reboot the department’s computer or fix a phone line or pick up a dropped pen was just an excuse for Randy to grind his heel into “the little bitch boy’s” back. He loved “pulling rank” and assigning “the intern” pointless jobs designed to humiliate.
Pete ignored him and kicked behind the toilet and looked inside the tank and under the rim for any baggies stowed away. For a music industry party, the station was coming off damn puritanical from his point of view.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, Fishbelly!” Vernon clamped his big, sweaty hand on Pete’s shoulder and pulled him close enough to smell the salami and whiskey residue in his mustache, “Whaddya think of the Top 10 of the Year countdown, heh? Wake you up a bit?”
This… Pete was not anticipating, “What about it?”
“No synthesizer. No fluffy-haired girly-men,” Vernon smirked, “That music you like is over, man. You are living in the past,” he swatted Pete’s pouffe for emphasis.
“You’re drunk,” Pete stated the obvious, “Depeche Mode just put out a new album! We just got Duran Duran’s live album this month!”
“‘Live Album’ is just another word for ‘No new material’ if you ask me,” Mr. Storch muttered, casually looking at his fingernails.
Now Pete was getting really angry. He counted off on his fingers, “Ok, fine. New albums from Eurythmics. Talk Talk. UltraVox, for Christ’s sake!”
“Yeah, but nobody caaaaaaaaaares,” Vernon wheezed, “Nobody’s buying that sh*t. The public finally figured out they're all a bunch of ‘Haircut Bands.’”
Pete was off his game now. Storch knew how to twist the knife and it’s not like he hadn't noticed the major decline in synth-pop from just a year ago. The latent computer scientist urge within him even compelled him to throw together a predictive algorithm of New Wave’s decline and the fall-off in line graph was stark.
"The future is all about ROCK," Vernon Storch literally spat, "Rock by real men. Like BRUCE." He stomped triumphantly around the men’s room, chanting: "BORN! IN! THE! USA!"
“Hey, have you ever actually listened to the lyrics of that, big guy? It’s not exactly–”
Vernon roared, “The Boss is gonna kick your blousy-shirted fa*g ass!”
“I’m sure those are exactly Bruce Springsteen’s priorities,” Pete droned, “1. Unite the farm workers. 2. Kick my ass.”
“AND METAL!” Storch's bloodshot, randomly-focusing eyes lit up, “Next year is ALL METAL. New Romantic is gone by summer. JUST WATCH!”
Pete realized arguing with a drunken sh*thead was pointless. He had cocaine to find. He started for the exit.
“I’ll go do that right now. Mr. Storch, I wish you a Merry Christmas-”
But Vernon wasn’t done with him, “Just like Disco, man. We flushed that queer sh*t down the toilet! DISCO SUCKS,” he bellowed to the empty men’s room.
“So does your mom,” Pete muttered, rolling his eyes. A near involuntary reaction but absolutely the wrong one.
Vernon got the excuse to kick off he had been fishing for. He blocked Pete’s path out of the room.
“I’m gonna kick your David Sylvain wannabe ass from here to Japan,” Vernon snarled, cracking his knuckles.
He lunged for Pete. Being an old pro at having swings taken at him, Pete side-stepped out of the way leaving an unobstructed path to the top edge of the urinal. A sickening crunch echoed off the tile walls as face connected with plumbing at top velocity and then a dead drop of body to tiles.
"Great, that's all I needed tonight," Pete complained, nudging the body with his toe, "A murder pinned on me,"
Vernon Storch seemed to moan horribly. Or was that the death rattle of gasses escaping his corpse? Pete leaned down to check. Storch was still breathing, which Pete felt mixed about. Pete rolled him over on his back and raised his head so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood.
A bag of white powder fell out of Vernon’s shirt pocket, which Pete claimed as his fee. There was so much blood pouring out of the dented lump that used to be Vernon’s nose it was just wasted on him anyway.
“...And have a Happy New Year,” Pete wished the body on the way out the door.
❄️❄️❄️
He dropped the bag in her hands.
“No charge,” Pete said glumly, flicking blood off his hands. “Just take it and get out. Please.”
Quick as lightning she had already poured out two neat lines on his boss’s Filofax.
“Aw, not the Filofax,” groaned Pete.
She snorted up the first line in a blink. Even her snort was beautiful, Pete noted.
“Ok, you go,” she ordered, wiping her nostrils furiously and handing him the rolled $20.
He hesitated momentarily. If he wasn’t gonna get laid, he reasoned, he might as well get high.
He licked his teeth even harder afterward. They stood awkwardly, Pete had no idea how to “conclude” a drug deal as he, in spite of the exchange that just transpired, was not a drug dealer.
She broke the silence, “Yeah, I guess we can make out a bit.”
[stop here to preserve the happy ending]
❄️ Postscript…
He got her number but, worse for him, she got his... and shared it.
Her friends wanted something for the weekend and a lot of them, as it turned out, were also the most beautiful women he had ever seen who also agreed to make out with him after doing cocaine.
The whole thing snowballed (heh) and without meaning to, Pete White, radio deejay, was accidentally moonlighting as Pete White, cocaine dealer. Being a mule, a dealer and a prodigious consumer dogged him through his career changes from radio personality to voiceover actor to low-rent game show host.
By '89 he got a tip the Fed was closing in and had him fingered as a person of interest. He really need to get out of LA for a while and lay low somehow...
❄️ God bless us, every one. ❄️
