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stereo—“Crosstown Traffic,” I think—and Mangione is wailing on me. On top of me.
    Inside me.
    And let me tell you, it was not fun. Getting your cherry popped while peaking on acid is definitely not the ticket, girls. Trust me. I felt like my insides were being hacked apart with a machete. I was screaming, all right. But not for joy.
    Mangione didn’t quite get it, though. He thought he was giving me the time of my life. He was up there pumping, beaming, proud. Take it all, bitch! He thought he was taking me places I’d never dreamed of going. And he was right, but they were the wrong places.
    You’d think the experience would have soured me on sex, but I knew sex couldn’t be that bad. So from time to time, almost reluctantly, I tried again—usually with guys who looked a little like Jim Morrison. Things improved, sure—
    there was less pain, for starters—but where was the magic?

    28 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N
    One night, the latest Morrison wanna-be took me down to the Hotel Diplomat to a B. B. King concert. I loved B.
    B. King. I had every album he’d ever made. I loved plenty of other musicians—the Doors, Otis Redding, Aretha, the Allman Brothers, Michael Jackson—even some of that
    nyaa nyaa nyaa music, but B. B. King ruled. It was an awesome show, made that much more electric by the piano player. He was this intense guy, the only white guy in the band, and the way he played turned me on something
    awful. That’s it, I thought to myself. That right there is what I call passion.
    We went backstage after the concert. My friend didn’t want to but I got all pouty and manipulative and used my considerable charms to get past the security guard. In a heartbeat, I was introducing myself to the piano player. His name was Ron Levy, and he looked a little like Morrison, a Jewish Jim Morrison. Okay, call me crazy. But it’s the truth. He looked more like Morrison than the guy I’d come with—and he looked a lot like Morrison.
    Ron Levy shook my hand and wouldn’t let go. I went
    all ga-ga. That fair skin, the baby fuzz on his chin, the Kool dangling from those moist, kissable lips. “Hey,” he said.
    He looked me in the eye when he talked. And his voice was gentle and tender. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show,” he said. “What’d you say your name was? Janice —I love that name. You from around here, Janice? You have time for a drink, Janice?”
    There was nothing I wanted more than to run off with Ron Levy and have a drink and listen to his dulcet voice and fall into his bottomless green eyes. But I wasn’t that trashy. I couldn’t do that to my date. So I went back to Hollywood with my friend and pretended he was Ron
    Levy. It was nice, but I still didn’t know squat about the Elusive Female Orgasm.

    N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 29

    * * *
Back on the home front, it didn’t take long for Ray to figure out that I was getting laid. The thing is, I wanted him to know—wanted to taunt him with it. You know the old joke: What’s the difference between a slut and a cunt? A slut puts out for everyone. A cunt puts out for everyone except you. So, yeah—I wanted Ray to know that I was out there doing things that he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
    It pissed him off. And the violence escalated.
    One night I got home after curfew; I was supposed to be there at 10:30, but it was storming like crazy and I could barely see to drive home.
    “You’re late,” he barked. It was a few minutes after eleven.
    “Look out the window,” I said, unable to bite my lip.
    “That sound you hear is thunder.”
    Wham! He hit me in the face and broke my lip. He’d always been smart about that—no visible marks, no blood.
    But he got a little carried away, and suddenly there was that locked-in-the-trunk fear in his eyes again. He moved toward me and began to stammer.
    “Get the fuck away from me,” I said, snarling. “I’ll go to the police.”
    He backed off. He was terrified.
    By the time Mother