Reed thin with a headful of ringlets, the male Tracy had a vibe that, in the Prince/Michael Jackson days of the early 1980s, I was sure was right for a band. And as one of the boy dancers on The Tim Conway Show, he was already a pro. Tracy’s gender-bending Mick Jagger silhouette gave him the look of a lead singer. In fact, the first thing I asked him when we met was “Can you sing?” He said, “Not really,” but that didn’t stop me. I took him to my house and, playing piano, began training him.
Tracy and I scraped together enough money to book a little studio on Western Avenue and cut a song we’d just written, “Love Me Up.” Dan was on drums, I played all the other instruments, and Tracy sang lead. Using the Beverly Hills High/Hollywood connection, we gave the tape to our classmate Jill Bogart, to give to her dad, Neil, who owned Casablanca Records, home to Donna Summer and KISS. Bogart called the song “encouraging” and said he wanted to hear more. But no contract followed. At age sixteen, I was already looking for a major record deal.
Because Tracy’s mom was so chill, I liked hanging at his house at 310 North La Peer, in the Flats, a middle-class section of Beverly Hills, where they rented the upper floor of a duplex. His big brother, Mark, had a Marantz stereo system, cable TV, and, best of all, an oversize bong. Playboy Playmate posters covered the walls. This was the room where I first got blasted on Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Because of my dad’s uptight vibe, my house was far less friendly than Dan’s or Tracy’s. Dan could handle my folks—he and Dad bonded over jazz—but Tracy couldn’t. When I introduced him to her, his first words were “Hey, how you doin’, Rox?”
My mouth hit the floor. For all her easygoing charm, my mother was dignified. She comported herself correctly at all times. Etiquette was paramount. A child did not address a grown woman by her first name unless given permission to do so. My other friends knew to call her “Mrs. Kravitz.” In this instance, though, not wanting to cause a stir, Mom gave Tracy a pass. She simply smiled hello, but I knew she was thinking, Who does this kid think he is?
When similar incidents occurred, Mom continued overlooking Tracy’s lack of decorum. But then came the reckoning. It happened because Tracy was over after Dad had forbidden me to have company. Mom graciously offered to drive him home. On the way to his house, Tracy started lecturing my mother on how she and Dad were raising me wrong. He argued that the discipline in the Kravitz household was too strict and that I needed more freedom. Mom just kept driving. She didn’t say a word. And Tracy kept going on about the deficiencies in her parenting. Finally, Mom had had enough. With her left hand on the wheel, she took her right hand and slapped Tracy across the face. Hard. That shut him up.
When they arrived at Tracy’s house, she took him to the door and asked to speak to his mother.
“I slapped your son,” she said. “And I want you to hear it from me so you’ll know exactly why.”
Mother to mother, she explained what had happened. She had struck Tracy, she said, because he was being disrespectful. She hoped Tracy’s mom would understand. Tracy’s mom did understand. From that day on, Tracy called Mom “Mrs. Kravitz.”
TOO FAST
Mom didn’t like my first serious girlfriend, Penelope. A couple of years younger than me, Penelope wore super-short miniskirts, drank, smoked, and snorted coke. And she was the first person with whom I started exploring sex. Mom described her in two words: Too fast.
“That girl’s got more lines on her face than I do,” she said.
She thought I could do better. I didn’t see it that way. Penelope loved sex and had a lot of experience. Truth is, given what my friends were doing, I was late to the game. But that was okay. I wasn’t in a hurry. I wasn’t interested in convincing or coercing women. That’s because I’d been coerced myself and didn’t like it.
It happened when Mom and Dad went away for a week’s vacation. Not wanting to leave me unsupervised, Mom invited her friend Nigel, a charismatic actor of West Indian descent, to stay at the house and watch me. Inadvertently, she’d put the fox in the chicken coop! Nigel was a swinging bachelor in his late forties. He dug beautiful women in their early twenties, and he threw pool parties where the two could come together. Difficult as it was, I tried to keep my cool around the bikini-clad women hanging out in my parents’ backyard.
One night, I was in my room sound asleep when I felt someone slipping into bed with me. I opened my eyes and saw it was one of Nigel’s chicks—topless. When she started taking off my pajamas and going down on me, I stopped her. I told her I had a girlfriend.
She said it didn’t matter.
I said it did.
She got angry. She asked, “You’re not attracted to me?”
I said I was, but that wasn’t the point.
What was the point?
I didn’t want to cheat on my girlfriend.
That was true, but also, if I didn’t have to pursue a lover, I wasn’t turned on. I loved the ritual of seduction. I loved the chase: the conversation, the mental stimulation, the buildup, the candlelight, the music. I didn’t want it just laid at my feet.
She was persistent. But I was even more persistent. Nicely, I told her to leave.
When Mom and Dad returned from their vacation, they asked me how the week had gone. Of course, I wasn’t going to bust Nigel and shatter Mom’s illusions about her good friend. I just said that everything had gone well.
* * *
Penelope and I didn’t last long. Even if a relationship turned romantic, it seemed I had to establish a genuine friendship first.
That’s what happened with Cynthia, a friend from Beverly High who lived in Windsor Hills, a Black neighborhood close to Cloverdale. When I was in the marching band, Cynthia was a cheerleader. There was strong solidarity among the Black kids at school—we all sat together in the cafeteria—but Cynthia, like me, was part of every social group. At one point, she dated the white quarterback, which tripped out the white girls. She had a free spirit and a bubbly personality. Everyone loved her, especially Mom. Because my mother understood our relationship, Cynthia was the only one of my female friends allowed to spend the night. If she and I were up late watching taped episodes of Saturday Night Live with Eddie Murphy and she fell asleep on the couch, Mom would welcome her to stay over—that is, she could remain on the couch, not in my bedroom. Cynthia was also ahead of her time. During an era when girls weren’t likely to ask boys out on dates, she didn’t mind doing so in the least. She also had a strong spiritual side.
Cynthia soon became a permanent part of our household. Every time I turned around, she was there. She even thought that Sy Kravitz was fly. Cynthia had a far better relationship with my father than I did. But that’s not saying much: everyone got along better with Dad than me. The heat between us had been boiling since day one. Now it was about to boil over.
BEVERLY HILLS AND BOHEMIA
THE BLOWUP
The thunderous clash with my dad came in the spring of 1981. I was sixteen. It happened the night that Dan Donnelly and I were set to drive down to Anaheim to catch the legendary Buddy Rich and his big band at Disneyland. As a drummer, I aspired to emulate Buddy’s immaculate single-stroke roll.