Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

A half an hour must have passed when the front door opened and a tall, dirty-looking hippie came in. He walked over to the sleeping girl, kneeled down and kissed her on the cheek. She didn’t move. He gently rolled her over on her back, and I even helped. Then he kissed her on the lips. I thought “What the fuck’s going on here? What is this?” The girl groaned with pleasure. He unbuttoned the top of her jeans and as he worked her pants down around her hips she smiled in her sleep, caressing the kittens on her chest. I watched in disbelief as the guy leaned over and gave her head. She began to moan rhythmically in her sleep, although I doubted she could have slept through all that cunt lapping. When the guy came up for a breath his mustache was glistening wet and he motioned for me to take a turn. I whispered, “No thanks,” and went upstairs to find the band and then get the hell out of there.

The other guys were sitting in an empty bedroom watching a rolling TV screen with the sound turned off. There was a pile of empty beer cans lying on the floor next to them and a large bowl of grayish sugar cubes. The surfer waif pushed the bowl towards me and said, “Have some, baby.”

“What are they?”

“Just some lousy Watts acid.”

This all sounded like code to me, and I felt so intimidated by the cunnilingus episode downstairs that I grabbed a can of beer, held it in my paw and watched the blank TV screen with the rest of the group and the girl, who were obviously seeing a program I was not.

After I chugged the first can of beer I was drunk, and midway through my second can I started feeling sick and decided to walk down the hill in the fresh air and go home. By that time my friend was talking to herself in the corner of the room. Somebody who walked by the bedroom actually recognized me from the Hullabaloo Club, and I went downstairs to find the party had started. I never saw the girl and the cunt lapper again.

When the other guys got back to Bob’s house I was still pretty ripped. Dennis thought I was faking it, but just before my head seemed to cave in and somebody shut off the sound I threw up all over Glen and passed out.

The next morning instead of being angry with me Glen was thrilled. He had the beginnings of a new drinking partner. He assured me that the only thing to do for a hangover was to have another beer. We scraped together half a buck and went to the store to get some for breakfast. From that time on I was never without a can of beer in my hand.

My body didn’t adjust easily to the sudden consumption of booze and to tell you the truth I didn’t exactly ease myself into it. I went from teetotaler to binger. Beer all day and then cheap wine at night. Getting drunk became a part of my life. I’d collect empty pop bottles from all over Evil Hill and bring them in for deposit money. Then Glen and I would guzzle a fifty-cent bottle of Ripple Peg and Pink wine — warm — and run up a hill quick to hyperventilate and get stoned. If you ask me Peg and Pink wine had never seen a grape. They must make the stuff in a cauldron. Any stomach that can take as much of that stuff as we drank and still continue to function has to be made out of cast iron. Glen and I were a medical Ripley’s Believe It or Not. People who knew us back in those days would say, “Are you two guys still alive?”

Glen, by the way, had fucked Merry Cornwall, and the magic labia was opening for us. Word was we would be playing at the Cheetah soon. We were getting desperate for money and nothing had changed except that Bob moved out of his house. I don’t know how Dick managed to arrange it, but one morning Bob moved all his belongings into another apartment in a house next door and told us to take our time but to find another place.

The Cheetah sat on the tip of the Santa Monica Pier, part of the Pacific Ocean Palisades Amusement Park. A few years before it had been the Aragon Ballroom, a dancing emporium where all the big bands had entertained people in ball gowns and tuxedos. Lawrence Welk held court there for years. The new owners covered the massive place with gleaming chrome and mirrored ceilings and walls that bounced off three mirrored stages.

Out on the middle of the dance floor, which held three thousand wriggling bodies, there were giant chrome mushroom pedestals you could climb and dance on. I always felt like we were on a giant set from a space movie at the Cheetah. There were webs of lights blinking and popping. When the light crew threw the Cheetah into “full strobe” effect you couldn’t walk in a straight line in there. Just being inside was the closest I ever got to taking a psychedelic.