Odyssey

Odyssey was an all-ages nightclub on Beverly Boulevard near La Cienega, a place where Buckley students could dance into the early morning without relying on their parents for transport or supervision. Its significance lies in the double life of that setting: an ostensibly straight, alcohol-free club that nonetheless offered access to drugs and brought the narrator into contact with gay men.

Setting and Use

The narrator recalls Odyssey as part of the new freedom that came with having cars at sixteen. He and his friends could leave home, return at any hour, sleep late, and repeat the outing the next weekend. Odyssey was one destination within this wider pattern of youthful independence, alongside visits to friends’ houses and the beach club.

The club did not serve alcohol. The narrator says that people who knew their way around could obtain Quaaludes, marijuana, and small bags of cocaine there. This informal access to drugs contrasts with the venue’s all-ages, alcohol-free presentation, situating Odyssey in the permissive but carefully managed social world of the students.

Social Circle and Significance

The narrator danced at Odyssey with Thom Wright and Susan Reynolds, and sometimes with Debbie Schaffer, Jeff Taylor, Anthony Matthews, and others. The club therefore served as a shared gathering place for a shifting circle of friends, where the group could stay out until two or three in the morning.

For the narrator, Odyssey had an additional personal significance: gay men attended, despite the club’s ostensibly straight character. He found their presence thrilling because it was his first close proximity to gay men, though he did not act on that interest. The club thus marks an early, limited encounter with a community he had not previously been near, within a social setting still organized around his familiar school friendships.

Place in the Narrative

Odyssey also forms part of the narrator’s map of Los Angeles nightlife. When Robert Mallory arrives at Buckley, the narrator wonders whether they might have encountered each other before at Odyssey or other clubs; Robert denies knowing the city’s social scene. Odyssey’s mention establishes it as a recognizable reference point in the narrator’s own experience, while the exchange underscores how little he initially knows about Robert.

More broadly, the club’s role belongs to a period when cars enlarged the students’ range of movement and their freedom from parental oversight. Its late hours, informal drug access, and mixed social presence make it a compact example of the spaces through which the narrator’s adolescence expanded, even as his personal desires remained unacted upon there.