Black Wig Night

Shelley’s boyfriend, Mike, was cheating. She was pretty sure of it when she found a few long red hairs stuck to his Motley Crue baseball shirt. Shelley’s hair was long and blonde. Mike’s was long and black, and he whipped it around on stage as he played guitar at the Coconut Teazer when his band, Bad Medicine, opened for LA Guns. It was a night to remember, and we tried. We pieced together the blurry Jaegermeister-shot-infused pieces of the story after Mike left our apartment the next morning. Shelley had determined this definitely was not a one-night stand. Mike was soul mate material.

Now, we were a couple of classy chicks, living in our bohemian chic Hollywood apartment on Sycamore and La Brea. At our Easter weekend party, we served up jelly bean daiquiris that turned out grey because we didn’t think to remove the licorice beans. We segued to Bloody Marys made with catsup, because we had no mix. But with enough vodka and Tobasco, they weren’t half bad. Of course this was not a discerning crowd. Shelley’s rocker friends hogged the five-layer dip while my friends from the television station looked on with amusement at the tattooed dudes with eyeliner. When we cleaned up the next day, we found several long black hairs between leftover layers of guacamole and refried beans.

Shelley had actually been the other woman when Mike was dating the redhead, and it didn’t appear that he’d fully moved on. She was determined to catch him in the act, and decided we should do it in disguise. We went to Hollywood Blvd and rented long black rock-diva wigs from a store down the street from Trashy Lingerie. While Salty Dog sang “Come Along” on Shelley’s boom box, we danced around the apartment pulling on tiny black dresses, silver chains and bangles and drinking cheap white zinfandel from black goblets. Then we headed out undercover to The Roxy in stilettoes and fishnet hose.

Bad Medicine was set to take the stage at 8pm, which is a rock and roll death sentence. Generally, no one is at the club at 8pm, including the headlining band, which on this night was Faster Pussycat. Those cats were likely still asleep at the Sunset Marquis or pre-gaming at The Doll House. When we got to the Roxy, though, the energy was electric and the line was long, snaking down Sunset Blvd almost to Hilldale. Rumor had it, Slash was doing a cameo appearance with one of the bands.

Even though she was pissed as hell at him, Shelley hoped that Mike would get to share the stage with his idol. The growing crowd boded well for our disguises. We needed to blend in with all the other big-haired, Aqua-netted rocker chicks and the dudes with equally big hair and headbands so as to scope out the room for the red head.

The bouncer with the spiked dog collar looked at Shelley with curiosity, like he recognized her, but he quickly dismissed the notion until he looked at her id. “Shel?” he asked and she leaned in and said “Tonight it’s Roxanne. This is my friend, Sharona.” The bouncer laughed and waved us in and I couldn’t help but notice that I got a heck of a lot more attention as Sharona than I typically got as Suzanne. Perhaps it was the hair or perhaps it was the very low cut and very tight dress from Retail Slut that I borrowed from Shelley. When we’d first met, I assumed rock-n-roll wear was anything black. Shel quickly convinced me that going clubbing in a black turtleneck was no way to attract a man. She encouraged me to get increasingly daring until I too was wearing leather bustiers and short skirts. Shelley introduced me to thong underwear and I soon learned Victoria’s Secret. But none of my dresses was a revealing as Sharona’s.

"My" Sharona

Back at the Roxy, the first band of the night was on their last song when we entered the smoky room and walked up to the bar to order the first of many cosmopolitans. Shelley leaned across the bar seductively to get the bartender’s attention, forgetting that she had more hair than usual. A clump of her curly locks settled in an ashtray alongside a smoldering cigarette. Without her noticing, I doused the flaming ends in ice-melt from an abandoned highball glass before we had a Michael Jackson moment.

              The roadies were changing out equipment for Bad Medicine, while Shelley and I scoped out spots on the right side of the stage. Faith No More’s song “Epic” throbbed from the DJ booth, “You want it all but you can’t have it” and I struck up a barely audible conversation with a guy whose beautiful eyes caught mine from behind the fringe of his bangs. “It’s in your face but you can’t grab it.” I was dying to grab his hair and brush it from his eyes, their whites glowing in the black light.

He said his name was Fender, like the guitar, which may or may not have been true, but of course I was Sharona, which definitely was not true. In that way, and in that we both had the same hair style, we had a lot in common. Apparently, I gave him my number. But we’ll get to that later.

Mike’s band came on stage, and Shelley and I turned our attention to the leather clad dudes with hair flying in the strobe lights. Mike was shredding his guitar a mere foot from where we were standing. He was in the zone and didn’t seem to notice that the hot babe known as Roxanne knew every lyric to every song.

That’s when we saw her. The red head. Mike obviously saw her too and crossed the stage, amping up his headbanging in her direction. She blew him a kiss.

Shelley shouted “That bitch is going down!” and I know she was plotting how she might take her rival out in the bathroom with the only weapon she had: Lee Press-on nails. Or maybe she could empty a bottle of beer onto her adversary’s wildly crimped Cyndi Lauper hair.

“Or,” I suggested, holding her back by a handful of leather fringe, “You could get the guy.” Which is how, a couple songs later, Shelley ended up on stage dancing like her heart depended on it, and later that night, Mike ended up back at our apartment. I may or may not have kissed Fender in the men’s room. We never did see Slash, and Mike never saw that red head again.

A few days later, I got a call.

From Fender.

He sounded nice enough and asked me if I wanted to get a beer at Boardners.

I could pick you up at 8?

It wasn’t until he knocked at the door the next night and I opened it and he asked if Sharona was ready, that I remembered I was not the girl I was supposed to be. He was also paler and skinnier than I remembered. But what the heck, it’s just a beer. So, we went out.

And there we were in the dimly lit bar. Fender kept staring at me, trying to figure out, perhaps, if he could be attracted to a blond with shoulder length hair and a drawer full of turtle necks? Could I be into a wanna-be rock star still looking for the right band? He laughed at our undercover story, but the conversation fizzled shortly after that.

Thing is, Sharona was fun. She got attention. But she had no backstory. Without any history, she was vacuous. Suzanne, on the other hand, had a lot more going on. She was on the cusp of her story, and it was going to be electric.

As shared at Story Salon on May 28, 2025 when the theme was "I was some place I wasn't supposed t be."