Nancy Rommelmann on drinking with the one-time Great White Hope in a Santa Monica dive on her 26th birthday: "Jerry Quarry says he is considering another comeback. This seems to me unlikely; he is not fit, and there is something unmoored about his eyes. It’s nearly five and he’s been drinking for a while. Then it’s nearly six..."
A reading of "Punch Drunk" by Nancy Rommelmann, which first appeared on my Substack, Make More Pie.
I am serializing "Forty Bucks and A Dream: Stories of Los Angeles" on Substack. New chapters drop Mondays. Below is the Table of Contents, with links to what’s posted before. Please subscribe!
PROLOGUE
STARLETS
1: Forty Bucks and a Dream: The lives of a Hollywood motel
2: The Camera and the Audience
3: Jena at 15: A childhood in Hollywood
4: The Waxer
LEADING MEN
6: Brown Dirt Cowboys: Meet your Mexican gardening crew
7: Punch Drunk
8: Us Versus Them: The code of the cop bar
LEADING LADIES
9: Who She Took With Her: The husband, the son, the boyfriend… a drunk’s tale
10: Giving: the Hollywood way
11: No Exit Plan: The lies and follies of Laura Albert, a.k.a., J.T. Leroy
12: Porn for Women
BACKGROUND PLAYERS
13: Sanctuary: Days and nights at the King Edward Saloon
14: Why Not to Write About the Supreme Master of the Universe: A day with the disciples of Ching Hai
15: Playboy: The next generation
16: J. Lo in the House
CUT
17: The Marrying Room
18: Meet the Neighbors
19: The Pathos of Failing
20: Bite and Smile