Hollywood Blvd. Nights

Where Naivety and Seamy Collide

This post is in response to the poll results for the July 24, 2025 poll. Be sure to get your votes in on this week’s poll. Whoops! Got ahead of myself! This is in response to the August 1 poll which should have been the July 31 poll. You’ll get a new post tomorrow. Be sure to get your votes in on the new poll.

Living in the Hollywood Inn, located at 6523 Hollywood Blvd., when I was in Sea Org had a few little perks. I’m using the term tongue in cheek here, but it was certainly an entertaining place to be after dark. We were in the midst of what a good Scientologist would refer to as wog aberration. 

Within walking distance was Frederick’s of Hollywood 6608 Hollywood Blvd. and several xxx rated theaters, the most notorious of them being the Pussycat 6656 Hollywood. And for some reason, we had to walk by both to get to the laundromat where we did our laundry.

When walking down the Boulevard with the guys to do laundry on libs day, I felt safe. However, they were forever teasing me about my lack of sophistication. One night, they convinced me to go into Frederick’s. Here is a page from a 1975 Frederick’s catalog. As you can see, it was really not much. However, going into a lingerie store with a group of men made me want to melt into the floor. I think we stayed 7-10 minutes. Sheesh.

So, I made it past the Frederick’s test. Guess what came next…Pussycat Theater. That took more convincing. I had never been to even an R rated movie in my life so I really didn’t want to go in there. But … peer pressure. So in I went.

Around that time, apparently “Deep Throat” and “Devil and Miss Jones” were sweeping the nation. And that’s what we watched. Of course none of the group of guys had a clue what was going on in my real life behind closed doors. And I had no clue what deep throat meant. Fifteen minutes in, I ran out in tears.

That was the end of the peer pressure. They didn’t ask what broke me, but they knew they had pushed it too far. I sometimes wonder how different things would have been if people we considered friends were able to actually talk about things like that. Communication was always so superficial. The last thing a person wanted to do was admit they had anything but good feelings… ever.

We would sit in the parking lot outside our squalid berthing in Hollywood Inn and watch people and make fun of them on Saturday nights. Looking back at it, we were the zoo animals making fun of those people who came to view us. Hindsight. How glad I am to have escaped and have the opportunity to see it for what it really was.

When Alex was there last week with protesters at what is now the Hollywood Test Center, just seeing the location on livestream brought back a plethora of ick. It’s amazing how a building from 50 years ago can do that. I never wanted to see that place again. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I needed to at least see someone else there – on the outside – to feel like it no longer had a hold on me. It’s almost impossible to ever heal from Scientology because they program you to believe that the harm they do to you is for your own good. It isn’t.