I see my first tranny hookers on Santa Monica Boulevard and I get kind of giddy. Apart from the Hollywood sign, tranny hookers are like LA’s Stonehenge. I think tranny hookers should be on the Starline Tourist Bus route.
“Okay. That was the Chinese Theater. Up next, tranny hookers.”
The Hills on MTV steals two hours of my day. I consider suicide.
Aurelia is the lead in the Debbie Does Dallas musical that’s playing at the Key Club on Sunset. She works with me at the gym. I fucking love her.
She gives me a call:
“Do you want to go to this party in Malibu tonight?”
“I’d love to.”
“But…”
“No, no but. Just ‘I’d love to’.”
“Oh. Most people who say ‘I’d love to’ follow it with ‘but’.”
She picks me up and then we pick up Kadriya, one of our other coworkers, from the gym. Kadriya is black and from St. Louis and I almost don’t call shotgun when we’re heading for the car because of the whole Civil Rights thing. But I always call shotgun and I figure Kadriya can pretend she’s being chauffeured around by a couple of white people, so it’s win win.
We take the long way – Sunset Boulevard to the Pacific Coast Highway. We drive through Beverly Hills, which is just so fucking lush with the neatly-trimmed hedges and the pretty trees. I want to get out of the car and take a deep breath. I cycle through the radio hoping “Beverly Hills” by Weezer is playing somewhere, but no luck. Maybe if it were last summer.
We drive past Bel-Air and the Fresh Prince theme song plays in my head for about five-and-a-half seconds. We pass UCLA.
And we drive. And drive.
We stop at a gas station in Malibu and as soon as I get out of the car I can smell the salt in the air. It reminds me of being little and going to the beach with my grandparents. Fucking scent, man. Fucking scent.
I buy a Twix for $1.29. No, it’s not King Size. Shit is just that expensive out here.
The party is at a Weekend at Bernie’s type house right on the beach. Not as big, but with the same huge windows that you can see people fucking in from miles away.
You can hear the waves crashing against the shore. Somebody tells us people were fucking on the beach earlier and broke a chair.
The party is like a frat party for grown-ups. Weed, alcohol, the quiet promise of bad sex with strangers. When I was younger, I used to think that grown-ups acted like grown-ups, but in the past few years I’ve learned that life is just one big extension of high school. We don’t grow old, we just get old.
There’s a vaporizer in the living room, a weed-smoking apparatus. It looks like a pencil sharpener. A chubby, wacky dude in his late-thirties who has aspirations of one day walking down stairs on his hands provides the reefer. Until then, I had never smoked out of a vaporizer before. I’m a blunt fan, but what sucks about blunts is I have big lips, bigger than Rosie O’Donnell’s labia, and they hold resin. I’m a messy weed smoker – always wiping my lips, spitting, coughing.
None of that with the vaporizer.
With a vaporizer, you don’t feel what you’re inhaling. You just have to trust that you’re getting high. You have to have faith. Kind of like believing in God, except you don’t have to wait until you’re dead to find out whether or not it works.
So I get high with Kadriya. I like getting high with black people. I feel cool. Especially if a rap song’s playing in the background. It’s like every white moment you’ve ever had, every un-PC or racial slip-up, just fades away. Can’t dance for shit? Throw on some Biggie and smoke weed with a friend of color. You’ll feel like you can pull off a drive-by and kill every motherfucker on the block.
Bonus points if you say “What’s up now?”
A little buzzed, I talk to a girl at the party. She goes to Princeton and wants to be a diplomat.
“Do you want to be on the cover of Diplomat Monthly?”
“There is no Diplomat Monthly.”
“If I had diplomatic immunity I’d start a lot of shit.”
“That’s not good.”
“Maybe kick some old people. Order a cup of water and fill it with soda and not try to hide it.”
“Uhh…”
“What do you do in your spare time?”
“Go to school.”
“What do you do for leisure? Do you play softball?”
“No.” Genuinely offended.
“Wouldn’t it suck if you had a shitty picture on your diplomat name badge and they wouldn’t let you retake it?”
“I don’t think I’d care.”
“What if your eyes were half-shut like you were part Asian?”
“Umm… they’d probably let me retake it.”
“But what if they didn’t. Wouldn’t it suck if you were being diplomatic with this ambassador from Cameroon and you were about to have a major breakthrough or something and then he noticed your shitty picture and the breakthrough fell through?”
“Uh, I don’t think that would happen.”
“Do you like Biggie or Tupac?”
“Neither.”
“Who do you like?”
“Sufjan Stevens.”
“Oh, that indie douche.”
“Yeah…”
I carry the (lack of) conversation like it’s my bastard child. And it goes on. Aimless, pointless, etc. The girl is a victim of too much book learning. To the point where she needs a graphing calculator to figure out if someone’s fucking with her. It’s like reverse stupidity. Like the motherfucking Terminator not understanding tears.
The party thins out pretty quickly because it started at three and we didn’t arrive until after nine. By 11:30, everyone is gone.
Uneventful, but a fun time nonetheless.
We drive back into the city. Kadriya lives downtown, near Koreatown. I observe that Asians are all about some bright lights. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Koreatown. Lit up.
Is it because their eyes are half-shut?
“I don’t think I’d care.”
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
End of July - Aug 4
Alex leaves. Takes the fan. Not that I expected him to leave it, but if I wasn’t the cheap bastard that I am – if I were him – I would’ve left it. And cut the cord. Cruel, cruel, cruel.
But onto what he did leave: pizza boxes and other garbage. The room was starting to stink. I wasn’t sure if it was the trash or if Buzz the Cat planted a shoe-sized rat he caught somewhere in the room.
But there were maggots on the floor. Little white grubs worming their way across the wood. I pick up a bag of garbage and find the source: a hole. And inside this particular bag is some of Alex’s old yogurt, Lactaid, and bread. All rotting.
And the smell. Oh God. Like two mammoth dykes eating each other’s assholes out in an elementary school cafeteria.
I dispose of everything.
The thing with maggots is they turn into flies. So my last two days in the room are hell – nothing but heat and bug bites. Somewhere in this universe, there’s a sick fuck who jerks off to such things. I can see the porno now: Sweat and Mosquitoes.
I move out.
There’s a law to moving out. Not a law law, but a scientific law. Newton, etc. Let’s call it the Shit-You-Have Law. The Shit-You-Have Law states that what ever shit you THINK you have, you ACTUALLY have double of. This is why, when moving out, you often think or say “Goddamn, this is a lot of shit.” Or some variation of that. It’s science.
Nate, my new roommate, picks me up and helps me load my shit into his car. He’s a nice, normal guy from Pennsylvania. Likes pussy and sports. Works as a grip on productions.
We stop at Ralph’s on La Brea so he can recycle his beer cans and water bottles for laundry money. Easy, right?
There’s a recycling station out back and every person with an annual income under $40,000 who drinks soda is waiting in line with garbage bags. Worse than Cracker Barrel on a Sunday after church.
What sucks is there’s no bulk method of disposal. You have to feed each can or bottle into the machine. One at a time. When the machine clogs up (every other can), you have to wait for an attendant to come over and unclog it. I always thought working in a toll booth would be the shittiest regular job to have, but this might be worse.
An old leather-skinned man with a drum-belly and a hat advertising septic services gets mad when the machine won’t cooperate with him.
“Ain’t s’posed to do that with cans! Ain’t s’posed to!”
He shouts at a Hispanic attendant and makes her come over and do his recycling for him. He gives me one of those “can you believe it?” looks and lights the last cigarette from his soft pack. He drops the empty pack on the ground.
Littering at a recycling booth. That’s like listening to rap on the way to a Klan rally.
We get back to the crib and I move my shit in. Some pictures:
But onto what he did leave: pizza boxes and other garbage. The room was starting to stink. I wasn’t sure if it was the trash or if Buzz the Cat planted a shoe-sized rat he caught somewhere in the room.
But there were maggots on the floor. Little white grubs worming their way across the wood. I pick up a bag of garbage and find the source: a hole. And inside this particular bag is some of Alex’s old yogurt, Lactaid, and bread. All rotting.
And the smell. Oh God. Like two mammoth dykes eating each other’s assholes out in an elementary school cafeteria.
I dispose of everything.
The thing with maggots is they turn into flies. So my last two days in the room are hell – nothing but heat and bug bites. Somewhere in this universe, there’s a sick fuck who jerks off to such things. I can see the porno now: Sweat and Mosquitoes.
I move out.
There’s a law to moving out. Not a law law, but a scientific law. Newton, etc. Let’s call it the Shit-You-Have Law. The Shit-You-Have Law states that what ever shit you THINK you have, you ACTUALLY have double of. This is why, when moving out, you often think or say “Goddamn, this is a lot of shit.” Or some variation of that. It’s science.
Nate, my new roommate, picks me up and helps me load my shit into his car. He’s a nice, normal guy from Pennsylvania. Likes pussy and sports. Works as a grip on productions.
We stop at Ralph’s on La Brea so he can recycle his beer cans and water bottles for laundry money. Easy, right?
There’s a recycling station out back and every person with an annual income under $40,000 who drinks soda is waiting in line with garbage bags. Worse than Cracker Barrel on a Sunday after church.
What sucks is there’s no bulk method of disposal. You have to feed each can or bottle into the machine. One at a time. When the machine clogs up (every other can), you have to wait for an attendant to come over and unclog it. I always thought working in a toll booth would be the shittiest regular job to have, but this might be worse.
An old leather-skinned man with a drum-belly and a hat advertising septic services gets mad when the machine won’t cooperate with him.
“Ain’t s’posed to do that with cans! Ain’t s’posed to!”
He shouts at a Hispanic attendant and makes her come over and do his recycling for him. He gives me one of those “can you believe it?” looks and lights the last cigarette from his soft pack. He drops the empty pack on the ground.
Littering at a recycling booth. That’s like listening to rap on the way to a Klan rally.
We get back to the crib and I move my shit in. Some pictures:
This place is definitely a step up from Maurice’s yoga dojo. Well ventilated, carpeted, screens on the windows. I can sleep at night without fear of being sacrificed. There is no hommus, no raw butter, no walking in on Maurice trimming his pubes – which did happen by the way. No, they weren’t braided.
I feel almost normal again.
I pass an old woman slumped in a wheelchair in the shade by the McDonalds on Sunset and Vine. Homeless. There’s a yellow-stained paper towel stuck to her ankle, flies all over it. She’s asleep or dead. Normally you can go by the smell, but not with homeless people. They smell worse alive than most people do dead, which is fucked up considering how many car washes this city has – at least one on every block.
This is why I think cities should have a weekly hobo bath-giving day. Call it the Homeless Hosedown. At designated car washes all across the city, homeless people can show up, get soaped up, and hosed down. Donated towels will be provided.
I’m dead serious. In fact, why isn’t something like this in place already? Are we afraid such a thing will dehumanize the homeless? Make them seem like pets? Because I tell you, there’s nothing fucking human about digging in the garbage can, unless you’re at the movie theaters and looking for a refillable bucket of popcorn or a giant plastic cup. But cheese sandwiches? No way.
I win a screenwriting contest. The Tennessee Screenwriting Competition, which most likely won’t do shit for me. But the $500 prize money will help. Not sure how many entries there were this year. At least a couple hundred. This is all bittersweet though, because two of the three scripts I submitted to the Nicholl, the big career-breaking competition, have already been bounced. Think I caught a bad reader, which happens. If you’re familiar with screenwriting competitions, you know that a script that wins one contest may bow out in the first round of another. There’s no consistency.
I’ve been working six or seven days a week, lifting, and writing my latest screenplay, so this is why the updates have been few and far between. Right now this blog is what I call “break writing” – the writing that happens when you get burnt out working on the important stuff.
Yes, I write to take a break from writing. Somebody, on another blog, said if you can’t understand this then you’re probably not a writer.
But writing and getting paid to write are two different things, aren’t they? So pardon me while I get back to what may someday earn me a little cheddar.
Or not. Either way, it’s the hope that counts.
And I’m sorry for not writing more about the city, but I just don’t have the time to indulge my wanderlust at the moment. So talk all the shit you want about how this blog sucks now or whatever. It's probably like having sex with the same person for an extended period of time -- exciting at first, less interesting with each subsequent thrust.
But it happens.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Update on Friday
Was going to have it today but I had to go into work early. Look for it manana... if you're still reading.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
July 20 - 26, 2007
This blog has become my neglected child – locked in the closet and fed once a week. It’s not that I don’t love him. I do. Just not enough to take him out and beat him every day.
But I will continue to keep him alive. Past July. And on.
Close your eyes and imagine a drumroll…
I’ve found a place to live. Assuming I can pass a credit check.
$442 to share a room in a white-carpeted college-ish apartment in the heart of Hollywood. Only a block from Sunset and Vine. I know what you’re thinking: “Ooh, Hollywood! Glamorous!” But you’re fucking wrong because Hollywood is dirtier than a day-worker’s dick.
This is a bittersweet victory for me. On one hand I’m happy that I’ve found a cheap place in a good location with sane people. On the other hand, if I pretended I was gay, I could’ve had my own room in a large house in the hills. For free.
To make things worse, this girl I know who’s a friend of a girl I once wanted to fuck very badly during my fifth-year of college is renting a spacious townhouse in Kentucky for less than $300.
On the bus there’s a large, light-skinned black woman wearing short overalls. Her legs are hairy. She has more rolls than ghetto dice. Pretty standard for the northbound 210.
Except for a tattoo on her neck. In small, cursive lettering:
Sexy Mama.
In what bus shelter? I can’t even see the shopping cart gang worshipping at the throne of this woman. Wait… yes I can.
If a woman needs to tattoo “Sexy Mama” on her neck, or anywhere, then she is probably not a sexy mama. She may have ass for hours, days, weeks, months, years, or epochs, but that’s not good ass. It’s the ass you imagine having shat before you whenever you need to defecate in a public restroom. Big, hairy, pockmarked ass.
An ass with a crack dark enough to be outerspace on a movie poster.
At the grocery store, chunk light tuna is end-capped. There’s a big cheerful sign that says “Only $10 for 10!”
A dollar a can. Only.
Would this have worked in Hitler’s favor? “It was only six million!”
For some cruel reason, Ralph’s has discontinued their generic chunk light tuna. 62 cents a can and it’s all gone. What’s an insecure male supposed to do for cheap protein these days? There are a number of stray cats in this city…
Alex and I have an argument over the fan and everything else we’ve come to hate about each other after two months of living together in a small, hot room. He accuses me of eating the rest of his lo-mein, to which I reply:
“No I fucking didn’t!”
“Whatever.”
“I did not eat your fucking lo-mein!”
“Okay, I believe you.”
But he doesn’t, and I know this. He asks me how it feels to intimidate someone 60 lbs lighter than me, and I do some quick math in my head and realize it’s more like 70 or 75. And it feels pretty good. But not because he’s smaller. Just because he’s so condescending. Yes, I may be an overly-critical asshole, but I am not smug. Ask ten white people and more than half will tell you smugness is worse than AIDS.
I yell at him for being a rich kid, hogging the fan, and having a smelly ass. He says the fan is his, and it is. He bought it. Wouldn’t even let me go in half on it, which I wrongly assumed meant it would be shared. Still, regardless of fan-ownership, you do not enter a room and just turn a fan away from somebody. People are executed for fan-turning in lesser countries. There are fan rules, fan guidelines. I liked it better when he was sneaky about turning the fan away from me, “accidentally” knocking it down and then repositioning it towards himself.
Cunning. Deliberate.
Alex tells me he’s kept his mouth shut about me for the past two weeks.
“Kept your mouth shut about what?”
“Nothing.”
“Fucking tell me.”
And then he mentions the lo-mein. Nothing else though, although I’m sure he has a whole list of things, as do I.
Our music wars for one.
For the first couple weeks he was all headphones. However, in recent weeks, he’s staged a coup, blasting Death Cab and other emo, Hot Topic t-shirt bands in defiance. Please imagine Djimon Hounsou, Hollywood’s go-to noble negro (Blood Diamond, Amistad), shouting this dialogue to a group of African warriors, his neck bulging, abs rippled:
“Why must we wear headphones? Why! Are we not people? Do our lungs not breathe? Do our hearts not bleed? From this day forward, we will wear headphones no more!”
Loud cheers. And then the third act begins.
Our music wars have been like air-headed conversations with chatterboxes. You wait and wait and wait for that break, that hesitation, so you can finally say something. So while I’ve been monopolizing the conversation with Big L and Citizen Cope and Amy Winehouse and Weezer and Ray Lamontagne, he’s been waiting for me to breathe so he could respond with Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Eat World and other generic, whiny rock bands that are cool for skinny kids to listen to.
Maurice pops his head in the room a couple hours later:
“I ate the lo-mein.”
(Big shout out to Leah for her birthday!)
But I will continue to keep him alive. Past July. And on.
Close your eyes and imagine a drumroll…
I’ve found a place to live. Assuming I can pass a credit check.
$442 to share a room in a white-carpeted college-ish apartment in the heart of Hollywood. Only a block from Sunset and Vine. I know what you’re thinking: “Ooh, Hollywood! Glamorous!” But you’re fucking wrong because Hollywood is dirtier than a day-worker’s dick.
This is a bittersweet victory for me. On one hand I’m happy that I’ve found a cheap place in a good location with sane people. On the other hand, if I pretended I was gay, I could’ve had my own room in a large house in the hills. For free.
To make things worse, this girl I know who’s a friend of a girl I once wanted to fuck very badly during my fifth-year of college is renting a spacious townhouse in Kentucky for less than $300.
On the bus there’s a large, light-skinned black woman wearing short overalls. Her legs are hairy. She has more rolls than ghetto dice. Pretty standard for the northbound 210.
Except for a tattoo on her neck. In small, cursive lettering:
Sexy Mama.
In what bus shelter? I can’t even see the shopping cart gang worshipping at the throne of this woman. Wait… yes I can.
If a woman needs to tattoo “Sexy Mama” on her neck, or anywhere, then she is probably not a sexy mama. She may have ass for hours, days, weeks, months, years, or epochs, but that’s not good ass. It’s the ass you imagine having shat before you whenever you need to defecate in a public restroom. Big, hairy, pockmarked ass.
An ass with a crack dark enough to be outerspace on a movie poster.
At the grocery store, chunk light tuna is end-capped. There’s a big cheerful sign that says “Only $10 for 10!”
A dollar a can. Only.
Would this have worked in Hitler’s favor? “It was only six million!”
For some cruel reason, Ralph’s has discontinued their generic chunk light tuna. 62 cents a can and it’s all gone. What’s an insecure male supposed to do for cheap protein these days? There are a number of stray cats in this city…
Alex and I have an argument over the fan and everything else we’ve come to hate about each other after two months of living together in a small, hot room. He accuses me of eating the rest of his lo-mein, to which I reply:
“No I fucking didn’t!”
“Whatever.”
“I did not eat your fucking lo-mein!”
“Okay, I believe you.”
But he doesn’t, and I know this. He asks me how it feels to intimidate someone 60 lbs lighter than me, and I do some quick math in my head and realize it’s more like 70 or 75. And it feels pretty good. But not because he’s smaller. Just because he’s so condescending. Yes, I may be an overly-critical asshole, but I am not smug. Ask ten white people and more than half will tell you smugness is worse than AIDS.
I yell at him for being a rich kid, hogging the fan, and having a smelly ass. He says the fan is his, and it is. He bought it. Wouldn’t even let me go in half on it, which I wrongly assumed meant it would be shared. Still, regardless of fan-ownership, you do not enter a room and just turn a fan away from somebody. People are executed for fan-turning in lesser countries. There are fan rules, fan guidelines. I liked it better when he was sneaky about turning the fan away from me, “accidentally” knocking it down and then repositioning it towards himself.
Cunning. Deliberate.
Alex tells me he’s kept his mouth shut about me for the past two weeks.
“Kept your mouth shut about what?”
“Nothing.”
“Fucking tell me.”
And then he mentions the lo-mein. Nothing else though, although I’m sure he has a whole list of things, as do I.
Our music wars for one.
For the first couple weeks he was all headphones. However, in recent weeks, he’s staged a coup, blasting Death Cab and other emo, Hot Topic t-shirt bands in defiance. Please imagine Djimon Hounsou, Hollywood’s go-to noble negro (Blood Diamond, Amistad), shouting this dialogue to a group of African warriors, his neck bulging, abs rippled:
“Why must we wear headphones? Why! Are we not people? Do our lungs not breathe? Do our hearts not bleed? From this day forward, we will wear headphones no more!”
Loud cheers. And then the third act begins.
Our music wars have been like air-headed conversations with chatterboxes. You wait and wait and wait for that break, that hesitation, so you can finally say something. So while I’ve been monopolizing the conversation with Big L and Citizen Cope and Amy Winehouse and Weezer and Ray Lamontagne, he’s been waiting for me to breathe so he could respond with Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Eat World and other generic, whiny rock bands that are cool for skinny kids to listen to.
Maurice pops his head in the room a couple hours later:
“I ate the lo-mein.”
(Big shout out to Leah for her birthday!)
Thursday, July 19, 2007
July 13-19, 2007
I get a phone call this morning from work that basically amounts to “please don’t write on the fitness board anymore because your handwriting is shit”. Which is fine by me. I know my handwriting is shit. I’m just surprised it took this long for upper management to realize this. My handwriting sucks so bad that I’d probably be better suited carrying around a bag of clipped-out magazine letters and a glue stick.
Kimberly visits and we fuck like experienced teenagers. And god is it good. In the past few months, I’ve forgotten what pussy feels like. There’s just been a faint memory. It’s like trying to recall the quadratic formula:
“Uh… negative B over X… uh… plus the square root of… uh… equals me jerking off. Squared.”
Pussy is a five-sense juggernaut. Touch, taste, smell, see, hear. But when you don’t get it, and must watch porno in its stead, then all of those senses disappear. You can just see it. Sure, you can try jerking off with a can of tuna under your nose while you chew with your mouth open and finger a McDonalds apple pie, but it’s just not the same.
Even if you add sweat to the tuna.
Because I masturbate so much, over the past few months I’ve come to associate pussy with my large, calloused hand. So, naturally, after months of conditioning, the first thing I wanted to do when I saw Kimi’s vagina was jerk off into a brown Chipotle napkin. Foil shizzle.
Kimberly comes… into town with her friend/former Gap manager Rob. Rob is the fucking man. He also likes to fuck men (Go Tops!), so we hit up the West Hollywood boy bars.
On the first night, we go to Mickey’s on Santa Monica Boulevard. Ever see a movie with ripped, tighty-whitey’d guys dancing on tables? Well that’s this place, complete with bubblegum techno and lusty-eyed gay professionals looking to unwind after a hard day of making a shitload of money. The dancers with the most dollar bills wear their underwear low to show off their ass cracks and trimmed or shaved pubic regions. They have exaggerated, cod piece-like bulges. It looks like their dicks took a shit.
On Saturday night we go to the Abbey. Imagine a bar from the Canterbury Tales. Now imagine lots of cigarette smoke, overpriced drinks, and men. Rob chases some Miller’s tail – a young stubble-faced god who may or may not be scamming for free drinks. Kimberly is his wingman. I crash out on a big leather chair near the fireplace. Tired, not drunk. It’s hard for me to close my eyes because my neck is exposed and I’m worried that somebody’s going to come by and inject me with a 24-hours-to-live poison and I really don’t want to go on a high-octane quest for the antidote.
We leave eventually, but Rob goes back out once we get back to the room, determined as ever.
And he succeeds. Go Tops!
We spend the rest of the time doing touristy shit: Hollywood and Highland, Kodak, Chinese Theater, the Grove, Venice Beach, etc. We don’t make it to Santa Monica or South Central, but that’s okay because I’m still perfecting my Crip Walk.
One of the awesome things about Kimi’s trip is she rents a fucking car. And I get to drive. I zoom past bus stops where I’ve logged hours waiting and give the finger to the Metro signs. In my head, because people are waiting and I don’t want to flip them off.
LA is a car city until it comes time to park. Fuck. Three tickets in three days. $180 total. Never, ever, ever park if any fraction of your car is hanging into a red zone, even if it’s 1/16, because you will get a ticket. Parking officials are professional tattletales who nanny-nanny-boo-boo their way through life. Fuck them.
On Friday night one of my coworkers has a birthday party at this place on the Sunset Strip called Bar Marmont – some ritzy hotel bar. I dress up in jeans and Etnies. Kimberly wears a sexy black dress. Rob goes all GQ.
And it’s all for naught.
That’s right. We get velvet-fucking-roped:
“We’re at capacity.”
Two bimbos step up.
“Come on in.”
Just like in the movies. We still can’t get in even when my coworker comes out, points to us, and says we’re with her.
And so I’ve come to this conclusion:
LA is a city based on exclusion. The barred windows, the gates, the hedges, the velvet ropes, the parking permits. Exclusion is this city’s theme. It’s like one big cool-kid table in a high school cafeteria. Do you look good? Do you have money? Do people know who you are? Awesome, bro. Have a fucking seat.
The rest of us can sit somewhere else.
Kimberly visits and we fuck like experienced teenagers. And god is it good. In the past few months, I’ve forgotten what pussy feels like. There’s just been a faint memory. It’s like trying to recall the quadratic formula:
“Uh… negative B over X… uh… plus the square root of… uh… equals me jerking off. Squared.”
Pussy is a five-sense juggernaut. Touch, taste, smell, see, hear. But when you don’t get it, and must watch porno in its stead, then all of those senses disappear. You can just see it. Sure, you can try jerking off with a can of tuna under your nose while you chew with your mouth open and finger a McDonalds apple pie, but it’s just not the same.
Even if you add sweat to the tuna.
Because I masturbate so much, over the past few months I’ve come to associate pussy with my large, calloused hand. So, naturally, after months of conditioning, the first thing I wanted to do when I saw Kimi’s vagina was jerk off into a brown Chipotle napkin. Foil shizzle.
Kimberly comes… into town with her friend/former Gap manager Rob. Rob is the fucking man. He also likes to fuck men (Go Tops!), so we hit up the West Hollywood boy bars.
On the first night, we go to Mickey’s on Santa Monica Boulevard. Ever see a movie with ripped, tighty-whitey’d guys dancing on tables? Well that’s this place, complete with bubblegum techno and lusty-eyed gay professionals looking to unwind after a hard day of making a shitload of money. The dancers with the most dollar bills wear their underwear low to show off their ass cracks and trimmed or shaved pubic regions. They have exaggerated, cod piece-like bulges. It looks like their dicks took a shit.
On Saturday night we go to the Abbey. Imagine a bar from the Canterbury Tales. Now imagine lots of cigarette smoke, overpriced drinks, and men. Rob chases some Miller’s tail – a young stubble-faced god who may or may not be scamming for free drinks. Kimberly is his wingman. I crash out on a big leather chair near the fireplace. Tired, not drunk. It’s hard for me to close my eyes because my neck is exposed and I’m worried that somebody’s going to come by and inject me with a 24-hours-to-live poison and I really don’t want to go on a high-octane quest for the antidote.
We leave eventually, but Rob goes back out once we get back to the room, determined as ever.
And he succeeds. Go Tops!
We spend the rest of the time doing touristy shit: Hollywood and Highland, Kodak, Chinese Theater, the Grove, Venice Beach, etc. We don’t make it to Santa Monica or South Central, but that’s okay because I’m still perfecting my Crip Walk.
One of the awesome things about Kimi’s trip is she rents a fucking car. And I get to drive. I zoom past bus stops where I’ve logged hours waiting and give the finger to the Metro signs. In my head, because people are waiting and I don’t want to flip them off.
LA is a car city until it comes time to park. Fuck. Three tickets in three days. $180 total. Never, ever, ever park if any fraction of your car is hanging into a red zone, even if it’s 1/16, because you will get a ticket. Parking officials are professional tattletales who nanny-nanny-boo-boo their way through life. Fuck them.
On Friday night one of my coworkers has a birthday party at this place on the Sunset Strip called Bar Marmont – some ritzy hotel bar. I dress up in jeans and Etnies. Kimberly wears a sexy black dress. Rob goes all GQ.
And it’s all for naught.
That’s right. We get velvet-fucking-roped:
“We’re at capacity.”
Two bimbos step up.
“Come on in.”
Just like in the movies. We still can’t get in even when my coworker comes out, points to us, and says we’re with her.
And so I’ve come to this conclusion:
LA is a city based on exclusion. The barred windows, the gates, the hedges, the velvet ropes, the parking permits. Exclusion is this city’s theme. It’s like one big cool-kid table in a high school cafeteria. Do you look good? Do you have money? Do people know who you are? Awesome, bro. Have a fucking seat.
The rest of us can sit somewhere else.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Reverse Discrimination
One of the aforementioned emails. Just thought I'd share:
Jeff-
That's great. I had an amazing fourth of July. So what have you been doing in LA? I am sorry to inform you but the room is no longer available. You seem like a great guy, but I had another taker. I hope everything works out and you find a place to live. In the meantime I would love to exchange emails to see how you are doing. I will keep my ears and eyes out for a place for you.
take care
-J
You might want to tell people you are gay
My response:
Thanks for the consideration, John. I trust that my sexual orientation has nothing to do with the room already being taken.
Thanks for the tip, though. I'll definitely pretend to be gay from now on.
Best,
Jeff
Jeff-
That's great. I had an amazing fourth of July. So what have you been doing in LA? I am sorry to inform you but the room is no longer available. You seem like a great guy, but I had another taker. I hope everything works out and you find a place to live. In the meantime I would love to exchange emails to see how you are doing. I will keep my ears and eyes out for a place for you.
take care
-J
You might want to tell people you are gay
My response:
Thanks for the consideration, John. I trust that my sexual orientation has nothing to do with the room already being taken.
Thanks for the tip, though. I'll definitely pretend to be gay from now on.
Best,
Jeff
July 9-12, 2007
Still looking for a place to live. My leads have, for the most part, fallen through. As I suspected, the “you can stay with me” e-mails stopped once they found out I’m a fan of the tuna. Not that I told them, but they probably figured it out when I didn’t respond with an emphatic “Me too!” to their “I’m gay, BTW” e-mails – which I got a lot of, BTW.
I think I responded with the unrainbow-like, “Not a problem at all. I’ve been hit on by a couple of bears.”
Still, it was mildly entertaining to see how they broached the subject. After cutting through all the friendly bullshit that wastes too much of our lives, of course:
“Are you gay?”
“… or you could stay in my room.”
“This is a weird question, but are you gay?”
“I’m gay, BTW.”
The “this is a weird question…” is my favorite. I love how he tried to soften the blow (no pun intended) with a disclaimer. Thanks for trying to make me feel comfortable, John. I’ll think of you when I’m sharing a bus shelter with Jarvis and his shopping cart.
There’s one guy in Santa Monica who’s still courting me via e-mail, asking all the typical bullshit questions men ask women when they want to sound like they care:
“So what do you do at the gym? What do you do for fun? What kind of music do you like?”
Shit like that. Shit that, if you ask the person to repeat your answer a minute later, they wouldn’t be able to. Not that I’d blame him. I have a bad habit of forgetting people’s names within seconds of meeting them because I’m too busy thinking about what to say next.
We’re a generation of people waiting to talk. Listening is for the deaf.
Kimberly’s coming into town tonight. She’s going to get reamed to the hilt. It’s going to sound like little kids splashing around in puddles.
I’m halfway through the first act of my urban comedy and there’s only two be + gerund lines so far. Should there be more?
“The way he be sweating…”
Is that racist? If so, is it racist because I’m white? Would it be racist if I were black?
I want to clarify something, since I’m pretty sure I come off as a raging homophobe or racist or misogynist or all three. I may speak candidly about race and sexuality and other sacred-cow topics from which finger-pointing-careers are birthed, but that’s because I think everything should be talked about. I’m not anti-gay or anti-black or anti-woman.
I’m anti-taboo.
I mean you won’t catch me having gay, incestuous sex with my black cousin while I’m beating a woman who’s having an abortion, but I’ll sure as hell talk about it.
With a straight face.
I think I responded with the unrainbow-like, “Not a problem at all. I’ve been hit on by a couple of bears.”
Still, it was mildly entertaining to see how they broached the subject. After cutting through all the friendly bullshit that wastes too much of our lives, of course:
“Are you gay?”
“… or you could stay in my room.”
“This is a weird question, but are you gay?”
“I’m gay, BTW.”
The “this is a weird question…” is my favorite. I love how he tried to soften the blow (no pun intended) with a disclaimer. Thanks for trying to make me feel comfortable, John. I’ll think of you when I’m sharing a bus shelter with Jarvis and his shopping cart.
There’s one guy in Santa Monica who’s still courting me via e-mail, asking all the typical bullshit questions men ask women when they want to sound like they care:
“So what do you do at the gym? What do you do for fun? What kind of music do you like?”
Shit like that. Shit that, if you ask the person to repeat your answer a minute later, they wouldn’t be able to. Not that I’d blame him. I have a bad habit of forgetting people’s names within seconds of meeting them because I’m too busy thinking about what to say next.
We’re a generation of people waiting to talk. Listening is for the deaf.
Kimberly’s coming into town tonight. She’s going to get reamed to the hilt. It’s going to sound like little kids splashing around in puddles.
I’m halfway through the first act of my urban comedy and there’s only two be + gerund lines so far. Should there be more?
“The way he be sweating…”
Is that racist? If so, is it racist because I’m white? Would it be racist if I were black?
I want to clarify something, since I’m pretty sure I come off as a raging homophobe or racist or misogynist or all three. I may speak candidly about race and sexuality and other sacred-cow topics from which finger-pointing-careers are birthed, but that’s because I think everything should be talked about. I’m not anti-gay or anti-black or anti-woman.
I’m anti-taboo.
I mean you won’t catch me having gay, incestuous sex with my black cousin while I’m beating a woman who’s having an abortion, but I’ll sure as hell talk about it.
With a straight face.
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