Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Hills

Local and national media described their antics as cautionary tales of the dangers to young people posed by the Hollywood celebrity lifestyle. The rationale was that it was constantly in their faces thanks to websites that detailed the shenanigans of celebutantes, along with reality shows that portrayed people their age living the life in Hollywood nightclubs. According to celebrity commentators who never eschewed a cliché, an abundance of danger to young people was out there on those “boulevards of dreams.”

There were a number of boulevard dreamers who couldn’t get enough of the Bling Ring, one of whom was twenty-two-year-old Jonas Claymore. He was a dropout from Hollywood High School who’d smoked way too much crystal meth during his final year of school and had never gone on to community college or done much of anything that his working-class parents had expected of him. The meth eventually led to terrifying attacks of paranoia where he became convinced that he was under twenty-four-hour surveillance by LAPD narks, and on one unforgettable evening, two of his former schoolmates decided to wean him off methamphetamines by introducing him to the wonders of 80 mg green tablets of OxyContin and other oxycodone drugs like Percocet, Percodan, and Tylox.

His current housemate, Megan Burke, was a twenty-year-old high school graduate from Bend, Oregon, who had been a good student, popular, and college-bound, before she’d developed a yen to “experience Hollywood,” as had so many thousands before her. She could not have specifically defined what that meant. Of course, she would have been embarrassed to admit that there were vague fantasies involving the movie business, and even then, she was too mature to think that she would be “discovered.” Yet it was always there at age eighteen, the notion that where life moves at twenty-four frames per second, anything is possible.

She had persuaded her mother to let her come to Los Angeles for the summer before college with a list of places in Southern California that she wanted to visit. She had explained to her mother that this was her “odyssey,” the journey of self-discovery that she and many of her classmates believed was essential for self-fulfillment. The original plan was to stay for two months working at the Gap for a former Bend neighbor who had moved to Los Angeles and managed the store. The woman had even arranged for Megan to share an apartment with two other girls, and the money she earned selling clothing had allowed Megan to support herself. She had hoped to send part of her earnings to her mother, who had raised Megan and her younger brother, Terry, after their father had deserted the family when the children were still in elementary school.

Experiencing Hollywood wasn’t anything like Megan thought it would be, especially after she learned how expensive everything was in L.A., but things went well enough until she was persuaded by her roommates to experiment with some of their trendy pharmaceuticals, like Xanax and Percocet. Those drugs led her to Vicodin and finally to OxyContin, by far the most addictive and powerful of the prescription drugs available to her, and OxyContin led her to Jonas Claymore, whom she met through a girlfriend at work.

Jonas was a valet parking attendant at upscale restaurants and he made good tips. He was tall, rail-thin, cute, and goofy, with a bush of cinnamon hair and a gap-toothed grin. He made her laugh easily and sold her OxyContin twice a week when he’d come by her apartment.

When they got high together for the first time, he said, “You won’t be offended if I drop trou and show you something, will ya?”

“Show me what?” she said uneasily.

“This,” he said, turning away from her and lowering his jeans and underwear. On one buttock was tattooed what. On the other buttock was tattooed ever. When he pulled his pants up he said, “Most of the girls I know think it’s kinda funny.”

After several drug experiences they became sexually involved, but it was never satisfactory for either of them because of Jonas’s drug-induced ED problems. Megan liked the other oxycodone products, like Vicodin, referred to as “norcos” or “watsons,” and she liked the Percocet, aka “perks,” but nothing could beat the 80 mg OxyContin, called “OC” or “ox” or “80s” or “beans.” Soon, Megan Burke fell passionately in love, not with Jonas Claymore, but with smoking ox. He loved it even more than she did and always seemed to have it in abundance. Then her life quickly fell apart. She lost her job at the Gap and got a part-time job at Denny’s as a waitress, but she lost that, too, and came to dread the desperate phone calls from her mother when the college plans were abandoned.

Megan finally sold her old Hyundai when money ran out, after she had been living with Jonas for nearly a year in a cheap apartment in Thai Town, but not with the knowledge of his landlord or her despairing mother in Oregon. By then, Megan had begun avoiding most of her mother’s phone calls and would not reveal her address or anything about Jonas Claymore, not wanting her worried parent to know how far she had fallen and how fast had been the descent.

After reading and seeing TV reports that members of the Bling Ring smoked ox, it had made Jonas Claymore proud that it was also his drug of choice. Ox was far more expensive than the crystal meth he’d formerly adored, and more than other pharmaceuticals that he’d use when he didn’t have enough money for the OCs. He was barely hanging on to his current job of parking cars at two of the newest Melrose Avenue restaurants.

It wasn’t often that Jonas actually read the L.A. Times or anything else, but when he thought there might be something in the paper about the Bling Ring, he’d run to the supermarket and buy or steal one. He adored reading about the designer wardrobes that the Bling Ring coveted and plundered, and especially the Chanel merchandise, Louis Vuitton purses, and Rolex watches they’d looted during their crime spree. They’d even stolen underwear that they could wear themselves while they dreamed. Jonas couldn’t get enough of the stories and searched for more on television and especially in the tabloids.

One summer evening, Jonas was sitting in the front seat of a BMW 535i that he’d parked, engrossed in juicy Bling Ring coverage. At the same time, his boss, a chesty and bossy Russian lesbian who ran the valet parking concession for both restaurants, was looking for her young employee in the parking lot. The lanky lad was disappointed that there was no photo of Paris Hilton in this particular story, and he was only halfway through the article when his boss came up from behind and jerked open the door of the Beemer.

“What the fock you do-ink, Jonas?” she demanded in that Russki accent that he had come to hate.

“Sorry, Ludmila,” he said, folding the paper and jumping out of the car. “Just taking a two-minute break.”

“That is shit!” she said. “I am look-ink everywhere for you. I am all ate up with you.”

“Fed,” Jonas Claymore said.

“What?”

“Fed. You’re all fed up.”

She stood glaring up at the gangly young man and said, “Do not laugh at me, Jonas.”

“I’m not laughing, Ludmila,” he said. “How about letting me get back to work, okay?”

“You do not know how to work. You do not know shit,” she said, and gave him an impulsive shove with her open hand.

“Hey!” Jonas yelled. “You just put your fucking hand on me. There’s a law about employers harassing employees.”

Two young women paused on their way to the nearest of the restaurants when they heard the raised voices in the parking lot. In what was left of twilight they saw a skinny, long-necked valet parking guy with a wiry thatch of cinnamon hair that was wind-tunnel wild from parking the cars with windows down. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt, black bow tie, and black pants, and was shouting at a burly woman identically clad, whose dark hair was cut as short as the guy’s.