I come here for the dollar drinks on Monday nights, and I love it. I’ve met some superfabulous people here, both physically and mentally. My life has been one huge nightlife adventure after another. For starters, I ran away from home at 13. I grew up on the streets of LA with drag queens as my moms and all kinds of street urchins teaching me how to survive. When I was 14 I started doing tricks with some older people. They trained me to pickpocket, and we used to go to clubs and steal money. Everybody’s drunk and the places are packed, and that’s the best thing–you bump and pick. I knew it was evil even though I was doing it to survive, and “evil” is “live” spelled backward, after all. But eventually I quit pickpocketing, and around the same time I got into metal–I’m a self-taught guitarist. I had a sweet, sweet boyfriend for 13 years, but then he did a header off a ladder and died. For years I was in this really dark, dark place and didn’t even pick up the guitar. But one day I came out of my despair, quit doing everything–drinking, drugs (except for methadone)–and was fabulous again. Then I got this e-mail from my mom saying that my dad had died, all is forgiven, come bury your father, we love you, move to Chicago.
To be continued . . .
–Alan Rudolph, musician