So it was the ‘80s, which explains the big hair I’m wearing. I say wearing because it was a wig that I bought on Hollywood Boulevard in 1988 when I was visiting my daughter, who lived in LA.
I wore it for the first time to the Rainbow Bar & Grill, a nightclub on the Sunset Strip that has been in the news recently because Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Joe Perry have started a band called the Hollywood Vampires. The name refers to a group of hard-drinking rock stars, including Cooper, Keith Moon and Harry Nilsson, who used to hang out in a loft at the Rainbow and drink themselves under the table. If you go, you’ll see a plaque there that says, “The Lair of the Hollywood Vampires.” I stuffed that wig into my suitcase when I went back to Pittsburgh, but I’d take her out on weekends.
See, by day I was a single mother, who worked a 9-5 job and managed to put a hot meal on the table every night. If you looked the word “responsible” up in the dictionary, you’d find my name. My real hair was short and spiky. I’m pretty sure there was a lot of Tenax Hair Fixitive involved in the styling process. But when I wore that wig, I became a completely different person—a free spirit, wild and unfettered. When I’d go out with my girlfriends, they’d ask if I was wearing my wig because “we always have more fun when you do.” One thing’s for sure, guys loved it—it’s that whole long-hair-on-the-pillow thing, but that’s a whole other can of worms, and you don’t want to get me started. We’ll save that discussion for another issue.