But my mom also saved a lot of women when she went through ovarian cancer, because initially the doctors couldn’t find the cancer in her ovaries, even though it was genetically marked to be ovarian cancer. In recent years, researchers have discovered that ovarian cancer can start in the fallopian tubes, and I understand that mymom’s case was one that spurred on the research. For many women, by the time cancer is found in the ovaries, it’s too late. These days, women also have their fallopian tubes removed when they have a hysterectomy, eliminating the danger of cancer in the fallopian tubes remaining undetected.
My mom survived, but it was a dark time, for both of us. I found myself struggling with dangerous thoughts even on my island oasis.
And now the saddest. A beautiful girl named Jennifer Justice took her own life on Sunday. Although I wasn’t extremely close to her, I’m affected all the same. What really affects me is that I know how she felt. All too often the thought of suicide crosses my mind. Almost every day. I am so damn tired of this life sometimes, it’s scary.
At least I had Hawaii. Despite these spells of intense darkness, I was a happier, different person there, more myself than anywhere else. I was nobody famous. I was nobody. I wasn’t only the survivor of my childhood. I wasn’t only the woman who faced down a terrible boyfriend and found her freedom. I wasn’t Kelly Bundy. I didn’t even have to be Christina Applegate.
April 4, 1996, 9:45 p.m.
Just arrived in Oahu. Sitting in back of a stranger’s truck on my way to swim with the dolphins. All is well in my kingdom. All is well.
PS. I rode underneath this blanket of stars tonight… I’m sleeping in a tent next to the crashing waves. It’s so dark out, heaven on earth, heaven on earth. Deep calls unto deep and deep answers deep.
March 19, 1995, Maui
Here I am in Maui—my home, my soul, myself. I leave tomorrow. So sad. It’s beautiful out right now. Just a few clouds that blanket the sun. The water like jewels, glistening, inviting. Soon the sun will set off to the right of Lanai. As it kisses the horizon I will see God. I will feel as small but powerful as the Universe intends. Ineffable.
August 6, 1996
I swam with the dolphins yesterday for about five hours. It was amazing the way we communicated. I felt joyous open exposed radiant clear… Today I felt high. I was floating in a surreal fog of absolute. Submerged in the warmth of God and my own power.
I was a new person. Through my healing on those islands, a new person emerged. She surprised even me.
These days, very little of Front Street on Maui survives, gone in the terrible fires of 2023. Every time I think of it my heart hurts. Many of my friends lost their homes; many are still displaced. This is made especially poignant as in recent months my hometown of Los Angeles has suffered catastrophic fires of its own. We evacuated during the worst of the winter fires of 2025 from an abundance of caution, but so many friends lost their homes here, all their possessions, their histories. My grief for Maui has only deepened in the past months, having faced similar losses here at home and seeing firsthand what people in Hawaii had to go through.
And my heart hurts for that time I spent in Hawaii for other reasons, too. After the terrible years with that abusive guy, I yearned for sanctuary, a place I could escape to, a place to heal.
I’m lucky I found it, out there at the very ends of the Pacific Ocean, the shooting stars jangling at the very edge of my sad eyes, somewhere out of sight.
NINE
FILTHY McNASTY
IHATED THE LIMELIGHT,and everywhere in West Hollywood was bathed in it.
Then came the Viper Room.
I’m here to tell you that the Viper Room was the coolest club that ever existed. It was an otherwise squat and forgettable building at 8852 Sunset, right by Larrabee Street, built in the early 1920s. Originally it was a nondescript grocery store, though it would go on to have multiple famous iterations across the decades: at one time it was a nightclub, and then a bar called the Melody Lounge, which was something of a wiseguy hangout. Eventually, it became a club owned by and named for a legendary Angelino known to everyone as Filthy McNasty. Filthy McNasty was from Berlin, and his real name was the much less fun Wilfried Bartsch—you can see why he was happier to go by a new name.
Filthy McNasty’s set the tone for what was to come. Famous people—everyone from Evel Knievel to John Wayne—loved the place because photographers were not welcome. In a city wherepaparazzi are as plentiful as fire hydrants, folks just wanted somewhere safe to hang out, away from prying lenses, especially in the days when celebrities cherished their privacy. They also knew they had to maintain it, so that when they did finally emerge, their presence would be something to talk about and might put bums in theater seats and movie halls. Nowadays, every famous person has an Instagram account where they share their most intimate moments the second they happen, but in an earlier time, it was imperative to keep a mystery about oneself, hence the advantage a place like Filthy McNasty’s had in turning away the fame vampires.
In the eighties, Filthy McNasty’s morphed into the Central, a jazz club that attracted performances by a young Rickie Lee Jones, as well as her musician friend Chuck E. Weiss. Rickie would write about a conversation with the third member of that famous trio of musicians, Tom Waits, in her hit “Chuck E.’s in Love.”
When Chuck E. eventually persuaded Johnny Depp and others to buy the Central and turn it into the Viper Room, the owners were quick to reestablish the emphasis on privacy. They created a kind of speakeasy, an exclusive, secret-handshake sort of hangout that felt personal and familial, an escape from the crazy scene that dogged us everywhere we went in nineties Los Angeles.
Johnny also made sure that Chuck E. could still play there. This was a big deal, because Chuck E. Weiss wasn’t to everyone’s taste—he sometimes thrummed a washboard and told long tales in between his blues songs, accompanied as he usually was by his band, the Goddamn Liars. But I loved Chuck E., and he played at my twenty-second birthday party.
I’d been at the Viper Room’s opening night back when I was twenty-one, and by that twenty-second birthday, the Viper Room had become my home away from home.
It attracted all the coolest people, cats you just wanted to be around. And it wasn’t just celebrities: it was all manner of weirdos—“us weirdos,” as we put it. Everyone was treated the same on the inside, no special treatment for being famous or known. Everyone was a character in their own way, like these four guys called the Millionaires’ Club, who were never seen in public unless they were dressed in three-piece suits. Shannon and Carolyn and Tommi ran the Viper Room back then—they were the bartenders and managers, but really, they were its beating heart. Sometimes when Shannon was overwhelmed, she would make me help her at the bar. Then there was Sean G, who ran the front desk. These were my people.
The Viper Room was a list place—you couldn’t get in unless you were on it—but not for me. For me it was a home. I was there almost every night. Everyone felt like family, even the bouncers, like Big Ed, who was six foot five and could crush you if he wanted to, but who is also the sweetest man alive. I felt safe because Johnny had a standing policy of no assholes in the Viper Room. He wanted to create a place he could relax and hang out, and I felt the same way—it was the club where I could go and have drinks with a bunch of fucked-up fuckers, who didn’t care who I was, and I didn’t care who they were, as long as they were interesting and unfazed by fame. Most nights there weren’t even paparazzi outside.
Everything, both inside and outside the Viper Room, was painted black. The air was always thick with cigarette smoke because Johnny would never have a place that you couldn’t smoke inside. He once said, “I wish I could graft another mouth on my cheek so I could smoke more.” There was a bar and booths, and my favorite spot, a secret room with one long bench opposite a wall that consisted of a one-way mirror, so you could sit in there on the bench and watch the whole club. It was a quieter spot where you could go and be alone,where you could corral your thoughts and take a breather. You could barely even hear the music. Carolyn or Pharel or another friend and I would sit on the bench and chat.
Johnny instilled a cherished level of privacy for anyone, not just celebrities—the first rule ofFight Club,et cetera. It was our safe haven, a private place, and that’s how it will remain.
August 15, 1993
