Coco, Verbatim

May 23, 1987

Once in the Longs parking lot on Front street, I was talked at by a young woman, blonde and too thin.

She approached me as I left the store, or actually approached my van, which was covered in paintings and cartoons. She asked if I wanted to put the van in her portfolio. I would pay you." I said sure, and she didn?t seem to notice. She interrupted herself to say that she liked my shoes (purple velvet slippers) and my moon and star earring. (She will have one tatooed on her ear soon.)

She told me that her mom was a flower child in the sixties "You know, flower children? Were you a flower child?""

"No, I'm only 25, but I know who you mean.?"

"Well, she had me very young. I've been hanging out with the Harley Davidsons since I was a kid."

She said that she was just here from New York. "I'm supposed to be a California native, but I haven't lived in California for years. I totally lost my tan. I'm going to Hawaii in June and get a deep tan. I gotta get my title back." In the meantime she's starting a business.

"Do you know Capitol Mercantile?"

"Capitola Mercantile?"

"Yeah, well, you know the guy who owns it? Really good looking, brown hair?"

"I don't really know anybody in there.""

"Oh, well I'm with him."

She said that she was a Playboy model and does pornographic movies. She's also the double for Morgan Fairchild on Knots Landing. "I had a fake I.D. but I lost my wallet. I didn't lose it. I know it was stolen. I talked to these guys down on the beach and I went to the bathroom but left my purse down there. I know they stole it."

She abruptly showed me a photo she took of an ugly long-haired blonde guy of Mötley Crüe. As she dug through her crammed purse she remarked, "I have so many pictures of people. People are really my thing lately. The guy in the photo was drinking a Heinekin. He wore lots of eye makeup. "And after he drank it he signed the bottom and gave it to me. He's going to say my name on an album. That feels good, you know; it does a lot for your self-esteem."

"Yeah, that is special."

She showed me another photo, of a very muscular young hunk sitting in only his jeans on a muscle car.

"Isn't he great?"

"Oh, I don't know, I'm a lesbian... guys? uh...I'm not really one to judge, you know. He looks healthy."

"Oh hey, my best girlfriend Kim is bi and that doesn't bother me; why would it?"

I tried to get a word in here.

"It doesn't bother me, you know. When Kim told me I got scared 'cause I thought she was going to try something with me so I said 'don't try anything.' "

"Lesbians don't just attack women..."

"Oh I know, they go for minds and feelings and stuff. That's what I like; that's what I'm learning from the people at Playboy. I once did a scene for Playboy. It doesn't bother me at all."

She assured me she could put me in the movies. And she has some friends who could come up from Hollywood to paint the van.

"You could really make a lot of money."

"I don't really need to make money unless it doesn't take a lot of time," I was able to say.

"What do you do?"

"I'm an editor. I work at the University." She looked a little blank. "I publish books for the University."

"Oh, you make books. I want to write a book. I want to write lots of books.... poetry... lots of books."

She had just been in Hollywood but she didn't like it.

"People you know, nine girls on one guy or four or five guys on one girl and I got the shit kicked out of my leg by a cop trying to arrest this guy on the bus. He was on acid, he tried to rape this woman on the bus and the cop was kicking me and kicking me, he didn't even know it and I said I had to get out of there."

She had gone to a Playboy party. "You would like that, I really think you would."

"Why is that?"

"Cause there were lesbians there and my friend Kim. They're great people. When I saw the van I figured you probably party. You do party, don't you?"

"Well, the van has been around for a while; people change."

"Are you an artist? Did you paint it?"

"I only painted the 'making coffee.' Other people painted the rest. But I was just thinking of painting this side: 'Women without men; men without brains.' Trisha was now talking about my new movie.

"If you wanted to do a movie you know, like a love scene or something I could get a movie star--well not a movie-movie star like Marilyn Monroe if she was alive but someone from a soap or something and then, well you're an editor, you know how to get up the ladder, you know? Show them something you can do."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Are you an agent?"

"Yeah, I'm an agent too. I turn girls into models and they love me for it. That's what happened to me."

"Do you do modeling?"

"Oh yeah I love it because I can be ten different people. I just got paid. I laid on this BMW--no, a Porche--it was this color-- she plucked at her teal running shorts--and he paid me $2000 cash right there. See then they can use the photo and sell it to people making a calendar you know, and they make lots of money and I get paid and everybody's happy. My name is Trisha--my real name is Patricia; my modeling name is Coco."  She had this name tatooed on her left wrist. ("When you see this Coco you know it's me.") She also has "KG" crudely tattoed in her leg crease. ("It's going to be made into a playboy bunny with pink ears.")

During our conversation, she noticed that she was being a bit frentic--"I have the attention span of a wristwatch"--then she showed me her three wristwatches. "This one's on New York time. It doesn't work."

"Can you believe I'm eighteen? I've done things people sixty haven't done. I was with my mom, she had me young--when she was fourteen--and I was down on the beach partying with Hell's Angels when I was five. I don't like hanging out with them and their whips and chains. I like hanging out, being mellow, going to amusement parks. I do beautiful drawings when I'm on acid. Have you ever done that??

"Yeah, I used to do a lot of it but I don't see it around much anymore."

"Yeah, well up here sure but in Hollywood everybody's doing it. But I've never done 'shrooms--have you done them?"

"Yes, but they weren't..."

"Too shallow, huh? I just had a bad experience freebasing. I was frozen for ten minutes. I took a shower with my clothes on and I was wet and then just frozen--like this--for ten minutes. I said never again."

Her mother committed suicide when Trisha was just ten years old.

"That?s what too much acid did to her and so I'm doing it? I don't know."

I gave her my phone number when she asked for it but not my address." I'm moving soon," I lied. "It wouldn't be good for much longer."

"Ok, ok," she said, sensing I was lying to her. I started to take down her number too. She didn't know the phone at her boyfriend's house, but "just call Capitola Mercantile and ask for Robert. I don't know his last name, but he's the only guy there, the rest is just teenage girls."

She said she would call me tomorrow after she gets her business card. I mentioned that tomorrow I was going up to the City for the Golden Gate Bridge party.

"Party? Will they have a heavy metal band there maybe?"

"I don?t think so; it's more of a picnic."

"What is it again?"

"A party to celebrate the Golden Gate Bridge."

"Where is it?"

"At the Golden Gate bridge."

"Where?s that?"

"In San Francisco."

"Is that far from here?"

"About an hour. When people here say 'The City' they usually mean San Francisco."

She hadn't heard of the Golden Gate Bridge.

She was going to Great America.

"Do you know of any concerts happening around here? Led Zepplin, people like that?"

"It?s a small town; the biggest concert we've had lately was the Grateful Dead at Monterey two weeks ago."

"Grateful Dead!?" Her eyes got big.

Our interview ended soon after the arrival of a homeless woman who politely waited for a pause in Trisha's monologue to ask for a tampon. I didn't have any but Trisha dug through her purse again.

"I think I have something--god I have so much stuff--I have phone numbers up the butt--I really should get a book or something."

She didn't find a tampon, but was going into Longs anyway and said she would buy some in there. We said "later," and she said would give me a call. My phone number joined the rest of the paper scraps filling her purse. The woman who needed the tampon followed Trisha Coco into the store and they both disappeared.