Moon Unit Zappa is ready to share her story. The daughter of Frank Zappa, who appeared on his 1982 hit “Valley Girl,” has lived an eventful life from the very beginning. The weirdness is detailed in her new memoir, EARTH TO MOON, which is out Tuesday and follows her unconventional upbringing in 1970s Los Angeles all the way up to the death of her parents.

EARTH TO MOON is as much about Moon herself as it is about growing up in her father’s shadow. Though she has always been known as his daughter and collaborator, she has paved her own path as an actress, an artist, a spiritual person, a wife and mother, and now an author. In this passage, Moon recalls losing her virginity to an unnamed, unromantic, married heavy metal drummer. Read it below.

Below excerpted from the book EARTH TO MOON by Moon Unit Zappa. Copyright © 2024 by Moon Unit Zappa. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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I am in New York taking meetings with casting directors and hanging with some friends in the lobby of the Royalton when I meet a heavy metal drummer in a band with more double consonants than vowels. He’s a grown-up. He even dresses like a grown-up—spiked wrist cuffs, shredded jean shorts, blond highlights, and eyeliner. He asks for my number, also like a grown-up. Back in LA he actually calls me, as he promised, from various hotels on the road, and we talk for hours. Well, he does most of the talking. And mostly about the Beatles. Yawn.

He’s a Libra, like me, which is good, but married with kids, which is bad, but ultimately fine because we are just friends—just two friends talking until we both fall asleep on the phone several nights a week.

One summer night I’m lying on my bed in my bedroom, which Justine Bateman and I just splatter-painted pink, aqua, and yellow. I am staring at my ceiling, twirling the phone cord around my finger, when the dreamy drummer I’m now regularly talking to says, “You should come to Florida.” I freeze.

Laughing, I try to play his flirty invitation off. “Oh, should I?”

“Yeah, you should,” he repeats with no irony in his husky, married voice. “I’ll get you your own room. It’ll be fun. You can just visit as my friend.” I sit up, but my heartbeat is thunder in my ears—he means it.

“As your friend . . . ,” I say back, stressing the word “friend.”

“Yeah. I think of you as a friend. Aren’t we friends?”

“Yes . . . well . . .” I assess his question. I don’t think this suggestion is in any way a good idea, but I can’t say that. What if he stops liking me or stops calling me? If I am honest, I think of him as an older friend I’m attracted to. Then again, a lot of my friends are attractive. I reason, Beauty is important to me. Does he think I’m attractive? Can guys actually be friends with girls they think are attractive? Can older guys be friends with girls under twenty? I decide to ask Dweezil and some of my other guy friends what they think about this, after I get off the phone.

“Well?” he says. “How about this weekend? You can hop on the bus and stay for a few days. C’mon.”

“What would your wife think?” I say, warming to his invitation but still a little wary. “Shouldn’t she visit you if you are lonely?” I blurt out. I feel a surge of pride, being protective of his wife and protective of myself. I wonder how many of the women my dad approached had the courage to be so direct and respectful of my mother.

“She just visited, and anyway she’s home with the kids. You and I are . . . friends,” he coos. “Look, I’ll even buy your plane ticket.”

No one has ever bought me a plane ticket before, besides my parents. He must really like me.

“Let me ask Gail and Frank,” I say, stalling. I mean, I do have to ask them. I do still live at home. “I’ll ask them and let you know what they say.” I feel another swell of self-protection pride. “Hold on.”

I set the phone down on my flowery Laura Ashley duvet, take a deep breath, and head for my parents’ room. The door is open. I knock loudly anyway.

“Hello?” I call out. “Can I come in?”

“Yes,” comes my dad’s voice.

I walk past their bathroom, which is festooned with discarded clothes and towels on the tile floor. I glance at the big window showcasing the little courtyard. When I enter their sleeping area, I see Gail and Frank sitting in their California king bed together, topless. Which means they are also bottomless. Anxious to exit quickly, I speak fast. “Can I go on tour with a married heavy metal drummer? He’s paying. And I’d only be going as his friend.”

I recoil when they say in unison, “Go! It’ll be fun!”

I must not have been clear. I repeat myself, this time more slowly, enunciating the words I need them to focus on. “I have been invited to go on tour with a married man, but we are just friends, so . . . go?” This time I pantomime airplane wings.

“Yes! Go!” they say again.

My posture screams disbelief, outrage even. I want them to say no, to protect me, so I can say no and protect me, so I can blame them for not being able to go, so the very cute married drummer will still like me and be my friend without being mad at me. “Go?” I ask again in a small, tight voice.

“He’s paying, right?” says my dad.

“Yes,” I say.

They stare at me.

I stare back.

My dad slides a Winston out of an open pack, lights it.

A few minutes later I am back in my room staring at my phone. I pick it up. I can hear Sade’s “Smooth Operator” playing in the background. “You still there?”

When I land in Florida, I am driven straight to the show. I am given an all-access pass and ushered into the venue past a chain-link fence of screaming girls with visible underboob.

In the middle of the concert, the married drummer pulls out all the stops. He makes sure I’m seated by the soundboard, where the acoustics are the best and he can find me in the crowd, because he’s doing that twirly-finger drummer thing and pointing directly at me and mouthing the word “YOU!” I have to admit, it’s pretty intoxicating. And flattering. And sexy.

After the show, we can’t stop smiling at each other. He hugs me all sweaty with a towel wrapped around his neck. Pheromone over-load. He keeps the obligatory postshow backstage band hellos to a bare minimum and we head for the hotel bar, even though I’m too young to be in there. He’s drinking champagne and I’m sipping a Shirley Temple. After I hurl a fawning multitude of post-concert compliments his way, we don’t have that much to talk about. I start yawning. “Good night,” I say, “thanks again for such a fun show. It really was so great and so, so cool how you singled me out.”

He polishes off the last gulp of his drink, sets the flute down a little too firmly. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I flew you all the way out here. You can’t just go to your room.” He stands up and grabs the open champagne bottle out of the ice bucket. “We can go to mine.”

“Um,” I say, “okay . . .”

I follow him, staring at my feet. Then we are standing at his door and he’s unlocking it.

I want to run back to my room and call an actress friend and ask her what to do. Her cherry was claimed by a Tiger Beat pinup and now they are a real couple with real problems. A few weeks back I even drove her to get a secret abortion. She’d taken some of her acting money out of the ATM two days in a row because there’s a three-hundred-dollar limit and the abortion was four hundred in cash. We pinkie-swore to never tell her boyfriend or her family. After her procedure I felt bad for judging her, so I took her to get her favorite turkey sandwich on Italian sesame bread, with shredded lettuce and extra mayo, and made it like a girly spa day with a special treat.

Heavy metal drummer opens his door and turns on the light. “Well, don’t just stand there, come on in.” He holds the door with his foot until I’m inside.

His room looks just like mine except his clothes are everywhere and he has a VCR and a boom box. He puts on the Madonna Like a Virgin video concert tour with the sound down for the visuals and plays INXS’s album Listen Like Thieves for the music and mood. He offers me some quaaludes and I pass. He eats my portion and drowns it with more champagne from the bottle, then strips down to nothing and hops on the bed. I want to ask him about a condom but feel frozen. He pats the mattress. I obey and robotically take a seat beside him and begin to undress. Everything above my waist. Then I lie down next to him and awkwardly remove the rest of my clothes. I do not mention I am new to all of this, despite the one “romantic” attempt in the UK.

He lies on top of me and grinds his hipbones into mine until our stomachs are sweaty. I feel a soft, thick dampness making circles in the space between my legs. It isn’t pleasurable. Is this what Frank and Gail feel? If so, why be so noisy about something so . . . nothing? Then he fast-pumps a few times and it’s over. He rolls off, spent, leaving me to sleep on the wet spot. Even though he is out cold within minutes, I am wide awake. I just lie there feeling . . . confused.

A tidal wave of remorse hits me. How could I do that to another woman, knowing how mad it makes my mother when my father cheats like the drummer and I just did? Does my dad ever feel regret like I do now? Does this drummer? Do my dad’s slutty side dishes? If not, how do any of these people live with themselves? I am feeling a permanent kind of dirty I can’t wash off.

As soon as the sun is up, I make arrangements to leave two days early. The drummer is miffed but doesn’t say anything, just flicks his long golden hair and waves goodbye as my taxi heads for the airport. When I get home, my parents ask me how the trip was. I say, “Fine,” and leave it at that.

Back in the safety of my bedroom, in my own bed, I let myself feel some small amount of relief about having tried naked sex and finally at least heading in the direction of normal, like all my friends. Maybe now I can find a real, steady boyfriend. Sting seems like a good option.

I’m having trouble sleeping, though. Every day I still feel like a shit and worry the drummer’s wife will find out and confront me, not that I know who she is, where they live, or what she looks like. I am drowning in self-hatred and fear of running into her. Even if I apologize, I know the drummer’s wife will still hate me and feel as shitty as my mom feels. The hate Gail feels never goes away.

Thankfully I don’t hear from him or his wife. But I do throw up at Disneyland.

A group of us are there doing a photo shoot for Life magazine to go with a piece on my pal Molly Ringwald, who is now Dweezil’s girlfriend. I write off the puking to drinking Carnation milk with a hot dog and riding the teacups. But when I puke again a short time later while exiting Tomorrowland, I decide I better take a pregnancy test.

Later that night, I see the two plus signs on the stick. My baby dream is coming true in the exact wrong way, so I call my actress friend, the same one I recently took to get her abortion. Now it’s my turn to go to the bank two days in a row, to take out four hundred dollars of my “Valley Girl” money. She drives me to her Beverly Hills gyno who takes cash and we pinkie-swear to keep this from the drummer and from my family. On the way home we get girly spa turkey sandwiches again, and when she drops me off at my parents’ house, my pupils are the size of pins. No one notices.

That night I lie awake feeling certain I am being punished for having sex, and for having it with a married man. I have a full-blown panic attack and become absolutely convinced I have AIDS, too. AIDS is on the news all the time now. Isn’t that the karma I deserve?

Earlier my doctor mentioned I am supposed to stay off my feet so I don’t clot or get an infection. I didn’t tell him I am pulling double duty as a language consultant and an actress and have to be up at 5 a.m. and on the Fast Times set by 6.

After two days of being on my feet for too long at an abandoned high school in the Valley in the full heat of a California summer, I do start clotting. I’m terrified. I convince myself that I’m gonna die from blood loss, infection, and AIDS. A kind, older red-haired actress named Kit notices I seem “off.” Through tears, I confess. “Let’s call your doctor and get your legs up. Maybe you can also get tested before you write your will.” She is so kind that my self-hatred and panic briefly subside. So does my bleeding, and I decide I don’t have to out myself or say goodbye to my parents just yet.

But that night, I still can’t sleep. I knock on the wall next to the open door of my parents’ bedroom. “Can I come in?” I call out. I tell them everything without taking a breath, like a fire hose extinguishing a hillside blaze. “I slept with the married drummer when I went to Florida but only one time and I got pregnant and I used my ‘Valley Girl’ money to get an abortion and I’m scared I have AIDS as extra punishment for what I did.”

They both stare at me. Finally, my dad says, “Wow, you are a good actress.” It’s the first compliment he’s ever given me. Gail says nothing. Not a single word.

Then they hug me. I don’t feel comforted, but I do feel relieved for telling them the truth. The AIDS test comes back negative. I have no proof, but I am pretty certain it’s a reward for my confession.