Sex & Rage. Eve Babitz

course by: “Oh yes, of course they are pretty dreadful, but then they are terribly rich.” “Have the people who have taken The Larches got money?” “Oh well, then we’d better call.” The third phase was different again: “Well, dear, but are they amusing?” “Yes, well of course, they are not well off, and nobody knows where they came from, but they are very very amusing.”

      —An Autobiography, Agatha Christie (1894–1977)

       CONTENTS

       Part I

       Jacaranda

       The Ocean

       True Love

       The Sixties

       The Apartment

       The Innocent Virgin

       Max

       The Little Black Dress

       The Sacramento Apts.

       The Barge

       Max, Max

       Social Direction

       Max, Max, Max

       April

       Bungalow Mornings

       The Pier

       Empty Barge Blues

       The Working Girl (Xeroxing)

       The Bamboo Café

       Destiny Takes a Hand

       $1,200

       The Drinking Problem

       The Problem With “The Book,” Part 1

       The Forty-Seventh Monday

       The Problem with “The Book,” Part 2

       The Third of July (Unbidden Aside)

       Not Going to New York

       Meanwhile

       The Plot Lumps Up

       The Night Was Young

       Shelby

       The Foolproof Tableau Vivant Meets the Iceberg

       Paradise Kisses and Smacks from Hell

       Red & White

       Shuffle Off to Mexi . . .

       La Jolla (Shuffle Off to Mexico)

       Whoo, Whoo, Whoo, Whoo, Shuffle Off to Buffa . . .

       The Beautiful Friend

       The Colonial Inn

       Cocaine, Cocaine

       Empty Windows

       Part II

       New York, New York (The Mysterious East Lures the Innocent Virgin)

       The Beach Boy Girls

       The Mysterious East Versus a Constitutional

       The Skeleton Team Olympiad

       The Mysterious East Meets an L.A. Orange

       Tea for Three

       Paying for Lunch

       Complicated Woman, Complicated Dream

       You’re Actually From That Place?

       Devant Elaine’s

       La Mer

       Après Elaine’s

       The Last Night

       The Last Dawn

       Wini’s Wild Oat

       The Godmother

       PART I

       Jacaranda

      Jacaranda’s name was pronounced “Jack-ah-ran-dah,” as in jack-o’-lan-tern, the same rhythm. It’s the name of a Central American flowering tree that grows in Los Angeles,