I went to Casa Fiesta that night, where, as usual, there was a fluid cast of people who all resembled one another—young, eager, restless, ambitious, beautiful, looped on drinks or drugs, oversexed, or some combination of all of that. Ice jingled in glasses, and neat little marijuana joints passed from hand to hand. Casa Fiesta is the only place, other than Central Avenue, where you’ll see race-mixing: Negro musicians and flamenco guitarists, artists and actors and writers, dancers and hangers-on. A bespectacled bongo player named, in fact, Bongo, seemed to live at Casa Fiesta. By day there was always some leftover guest lounging on the back patio or someone sleeping (or screwing) on the couch. I’m not sure Jonathan ever noticed.

Tonight, though, something special was afoot. Every actor Jonathan knew who had ever wielded a spear in a sword-and-sandal picture was there, all of them wearing robes or togas, costumes from these roles. In the back patio they had stoked a bonfire in the firepit, and by the time I arrived, the flames were snapping high and the smoke was rising above the eucalyptus trees.

Someone put a drink in my hand and introduced me to a handsome Negro actor named Clayton Strong and his girlfriend, Rita, a PE teacher at Jefferson High. She wore a tattered bedsheet to suggest a Nubian slave, and he wore the costume of a Nubian king. Clayton towered over everyone here; he had played football for the UCLA Bruins, and even played pro football for a while.

“But I quit football. It’s easier to be an actor and deal with bigots instead of dealing with bigots and getting the shit kicked out of me,” he said.

“Yes,” said Rita, bristling, “but it’s a damned shame you can’t be anything but a slave or a savage king. As an actor you have no . . . no . . .”

“No scope,” he filled in for her. “It’s true. I’m too old to be a shoeshine boy and too young to be someone’s pappy.”

“I can’t imagine you as either one,” I said.