Don't Be Wasted
Crone delivers wisdom at a secret disco in Los Angeles.
It’s just after 10:30 on a midsummer Saturday night when I pull up to the secret disco. My car door opens and from under a crown of black curls a hand extends to meet mine as my Italian spike heels hits the pavement. Kai, the twenty-two year old valet, flashes a smirk. “There she is,” his dark eyes glimmering with some kind of ancient mischief. “Hey gorgeous,” I smile and toss him the keys to the Beemer, taking a brief moment in his shadow to adjust the black mini skirt that seems intent on riding up my thighs. He seems used to this maneuver and buys me another moment to fidget. “You’re all good, doll. You look beautiful. Hey, I checked out that artist you told me about and he’s down for a collab so, thanks,” he seems genuinely optimistic. “Progress!”—again with the eyes and the mischief.
The dim glimmer of city lights hits the rhinestoned and sequined outline of a bird of paradise on my kimono, animating the creature into a trembling migration, and we both start our strut to the velvet rope. “Don’t hurt ‘em too bad, sparkler,” Kai calls after me. This kid has a grin and dimples like a split-blade dagger—lethal. “No mercy, Kai,” I beam back with a murderous smirk.
The invite-only secret disco is conspicuously hidden within a midcentury modern hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Walking through the automated double doors, the scent of bourbon-vanilla and warm, low lighting suggests a more welcoming vibe than the faces of the staff can ever seem to muster.
L.A. is an odd place. No one is friendly. In fact, it’s very rare to find genuine happiness emanating from the eyes of anyone and it’s no secret why that is, at least not to me. Take the most beautiful and talented individuals from every small town in the world, throw them together in a cauldron of affirmation and ambition, boil on high for about ten years, and you end up with a condensed soup of assholes. The city runs on the spite of underlings and the overlooked who unironically think with every fiber of their being that they’re cooler than you. One can’t step foot into a yoga class without having to dodge the schrapnel of flying ego as it richocets off the walls. An environment pervaded by this level of constant effrontery manifests a sustained tension, like a default resistance that when investigated reveals itself to be more complicated than just ego. It is the subtle wall of self-preservation, a calcified byproduct of years spent safeguarding the innermost self while outwardly projecting an amorphous and variable kaleidescope of appearances, depending on who’s watching. Turns out there is a consequence to being everything to everyone while never truly getting at the heart of what you really are—the pearl of great price, as it were. It is undoubtedly this level of toxic self-consciousness, or crippling insecurity as we say in circles of sanity, that prompts California to lead the world in the search for and adoption of spiritual dogmas and practices; anything to relieve the affliction of selfhood.
The age of social media has dilluted what was once an industry of egomaniacs with talent into a cesspool of narcissists where talent is optional. It is inside this fantasmagoria of fake shit that two personality types thrive: the top-tier bullshitters and the bullshit immune. Have fun acclimating. It should be noted here that the real wealth of Los Angeles is not exemplified in the megalithic estates hidden behind the gates of nepotism. The richness of this place exists in the shark-infested waters that, when dropped into, have the ability to amplify within us our natural tendencies and reveal, with any degree of self-reflective discernment, something about our deeply inherent nature. My fourteen years here have shown me to be decisively bullshit immune.
Bypassing the small crowd that has accumulated near the entrance to the secret disco, I exchange hello’s with Terry at the ropes and he lets me pass. Making my way through a small hallway and the guts of the hotel kitchen, I eventually arrive at a soundproof black door, lean my bodyweight against it, and slowly ooze into the darkened room. The space is small, with smokey mirrors on all sides, ebony marble floors, velvet embossed wallpaper, and gold gilt molding. Behind the bar, a black glass tile facade glimmers and dances under the light of buzzing pink neon: mmhmmm. Adam, the DJ, is spinning a remix of Gladys Knight’s “Bourgie Bourgie”. I smile at the irony of the lyrics and survey the scene.
The dance floor is an aquarium of exotic fish tonight—strict dress-to-kill code in full effect. To the left of the main stage, a gorgeous blond in a red lace catsuit and fur coat is draped across a black grand piano, laughing, flirting with Marcello the photographer. A few tables to the right of their scene, a party of Africans decked in full sapeur regalia are popping champagne and hollering celebrations at each other in french. Their suits, impecably tailored in turquoise, chartreuse, dark blue velvet, are not to be outdone by their hats, canes, and spats. Under the strobe, a six foot brunette in a white velvet tuxedo is channeling Bianca Jagger as her NBA star boyfriend laughs and spins her around, his burgundy brocade smoking jacket and velvet slides serving aspirational nonchalance. Bodies dripping in beads, headdresses, painted faces, mirrored shades, glitter, Halston, Fiorucci, Versace: it’s a coral reef of cool.
I have no sooner spotted Melanie Griffith shaking ass in a black catsuit on the dancefloor than a hand grabs mine and pulls me into a spin. It’s my friend Dino, a jet-setting interior designer who is celebrating his 60th birthday with several dozen of the most gorgeous gay men and their straight girlfriends I have ever seen. “Oh my gawwwwwd, Jaz-MINI,” he eyeballs my skirt in rebellion, dancing me into his inner circle and his glass of vodka. “Honey, legs for dayyyyyyys,” he grins through his caps, downing half the glass of clear liquid and throwing out a gesture as if to say ‘twirl’. I show off the prized bird kimono and adjust the lawless skirt that has at this point resorted to anarchy. Unphased by the bedlam below or my new vodka tonic perfume, I look over at Adam behind the turntables. Evidently sensing the darts from my eyes or spotting the glimmer of my bird, he catches my gaze, smiling, and I mouth the words “play my song”, throwing in a lip-bite and grin for effect. He laughs and nods, raising a single finger into the air that pumps with the beat as he works his magic. In seconds, the remains of Bobby Thurston’s “You’ve Got What It Takes” is melting into Prince’s “Soft and Wet” and a surge of electricity courses through the place. It is as if we are all suddenly struck by a sense of reverence for our departed saint of flamboyant realness and, in an unspoken prayer of movement, pay tribute to his spirit dancing under the purple reign.
If Oscar Wilde were a twenty-first century nightclub promoter, this masterwork of human collage would be his doing. The scope of interesting people that accumulate in this small room is an art form unto itself—new school mixing with the old—dancers, performers, designers, agents, film crew, stars, locals. It is as much a visual feast as it is a place for real artists to accumulate and vibe together. Everything is inspiring—the style, the dance, the music, the altered states. It’s a true celebration of the senses. Nights such as these are like bonbons at the dinner party of existence.
After an hour or so on the dance floor, I make my way to Dino’s table and plop myself (and the bird) down next to a stunning grande dame of a woman and say hello. It turns out to be Dino’s ninety-two year old mother, Despina, who has just flown in from Greece for the occasion. She takes an immediate liking to me and we fall into easy conversation. Her aquamarine eyes, lined with coal, dart between me and her son on the dance floor and she seems reminiscent in this place, pulling memories of her early life as a dancer and her adventures around Europe in the seventies when this music was living its first life. It’s all alive within her again, that much is plainly evident, although the picture show she is seeing remains unknown to me. She turns the conversation to my life, inquiring about my music, my other creative endeavors, am I married? (no), boyfriend? (no).
When the questions have all been asked and she has a decent read on me, she puts her jeweled hand on my wrist, looks me dead in the eye, and says intently, “Don’t be wasted.” It is a delivery and I have received it without question. As I hold her gaze in this moment, she conveys the wisdom and sentiment of generations of women I will never know.
All of us come into our appreciation of things in our own time. There is no blame in that. We cannot know true worth until we lose what is loved or we gain the life experience to know better. And this applies to all things: jobs we take out of necessity, careers we base on natural ability, cities we choose to live in, friends, family, political affiliations, ideologies. It is inevitable that the best of us will be wasted at times in sacrifice to what is needed. But there comes a point where time wasted becomes sacrilege and we face a moment of truth.
Being honest about where we are being wasted means cutting loose of our moorings and that’s where it gets tricky for a human animal that does not budge until moving becomes less painful than staying put. The temptation to settle for what is safe and easy in any circumstance is a pervasive reality. Life is an infinite bazaar offering up ways to sell you what you will settle for and this offering is the open-ended question of existence. “This? This ok for you, my friend? Here, you take this.”
You’re the buyer, the seller, the product, and the one who has to take it home and live with it. Staying safe is tempting. But as the defiant Mr. Wilde put it, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
So, go ahead. Settle. Be wasted. It is an invaluable and unavoidable teacher. Nothing shows us the preciousness of something real as much as time spent in the emptiness of everything else. But when it dawns on you that your best is being wasted on something, and it will dawn on you at some point, how will you answer the voice that peddles the easy road?
This life, this time, is so precious. Don’t be wasted, friends.
Enjoy the mmhmmm experience with a playlist of favorites from the secret disco.