Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper

I finally lost my virginity in the house in Topanga Canyon. One day Troy Donahue brought a stack of unused lumber over in the back seat of his car, and Mike Allen helped me build a massive coffin with all the accessories you’d find in a Cadillac. It was painted black enamel, and there was a glass window in the lid so I could see up. I padded and lined the insides in an old satin ball dress and wired the top with two car speakers for stereo music. There was even a tiny light that went on whenever you opened the lid, just like a refrigerator. Curiously, although I can close my eyes and see every nail-head in that coffin, I don’t remember the name of the girl I bedded there. That’s probably because our lovemaking session fell far short of the expectations I had come to have from my pillow and right hand. It was, however, not much different than balling a jelly doughnut.

I appeared at the Whiskey A-Go-Go that fateful night, opening third on a bill to Led Zeppelin their first time around in America. I came prancing out on stage in pink pajamas and a garbage can. When the show was over there was a rush of groupies, one of whom, a strawberry blonde with pert tits and wide ass, kept tellingme, “You’re so adorable,” squealing out the word adorable with a little pelvic thrust. This was not the age of glitter groupies, mind you, but the prehistoric era of California hippies. Not that this girl was from California. She was from Denver, actually, and had to leave early the next morning to drive back there. But everyone seemed to look the same then in California: beads, long natural hair, sandals and jeans or short dresses that were no more than wide belts.

I don’t know what made the girl different from all other girls, but I drove back to the house in Topanga Canyon with her and threw her into the coffin. Both of us tld each other massive fabrications about our sexual histories, and I let her believe this was just another tumble in the casket for me. Not only were we terrible liars, but we were wretched lovers, too. I’m sure it was her first time, also, because if she had an inkling of what she was doing, she didn’t let me in on it. My ass kept on slapping against the top of the coffin, our foreplay lasted about four minutes, and getting my broken thing into that hole nestled in a thatch of hair four inches below her navel was so much trouble it was more like a wrestling match. Edward Satrinao had been right!

As soon as she left in the morning I became convinced I had the clap. I didn’t even know what the sysmptoms were, and I was too embarrassed to ask any of the other guys. I went to the free clinic in Hollywood for a checkup because I didn’t have any money. The place was filled with dirty, sypilitic hippies and everybody stared at me because I brought the coffin with me. I thought th doctor needed the coffin for some reason.

As the house band at the Cheetah we opened for the Doors a half a dozen times. “Light My Fire” had turned them into a supergroup that year, and as we got to be buddies I got the impression that Jim Morrison didn’t exactly know how to handle what was happening to him.

Morrsion was always drunk. There was a great, otherworldly mysteriousness about him. We talked for hours on the pier behind the Cheetah in between gigs, sipping scotch from a bottle, occasionally both throwing up into the ocean. I passed out in Morrison’s house a hundred times. I woke up in the morning smelling of stale beer. Morrison would be asleep on the couch a few feet away from me in his black leather pants and black T-shirt. I would stumble to my feet, walk the twenty-eight miles home to Toganga Canyon.

One day on my way up the hill I heard someone calling: “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Excuse me!”

A woman about forty years old, I guess, had just pulled up in front of the house in a Chevy convertible. I strolled towards her, and as I got closer she said excitedly, “It is! It is!”

When I got close to her she was beaming. “You’re Tiny Tim, aren’t you?” I just smiled back, not answering.

“Do you live around here, Mr. Tim?”

“Sure, I live up the hill. How did you know I was Tiny Tim?”

“Well, I recognized you. From your nose.” She gave me the once-over, her eyes widening at my torn dungarees and the cheerleader’s skirt I had on backward. She spotted my perpetual beer can, now crushed and empty. “Would you like another beer?” she asked hesitantly. “I didn’t think you drank or smoked.”

“That’s just publicity,” I told her, and followed her into the house. She poured beer after beer into me, getting me nice and high so early in the day. I was very grateful. After an hour I had her whole story. She was from Seattle, divorced, and had moved to LA a few months before to teach music in a high school. She loved my (Tiny Tim’s) music and wanted to know if I wanted to learn how to play piano. I didn’t, but I thought maybe Tiny Tim would, and there was free-flowing beer in her refrigerator, so I told her I’d be delighted to take piano lessons.