Day 2 of 3

Day 2 of 3

                After my Dad called, we packed up all of our stuff and got on the road, but not before Sam wanted to roll another blunt and smoke it with Kelly.  I took a hit as well, of course, but I was interested in seeing how far we could get that day.  It had begun to dawn on me that my speed would be drastically reduced from the rate I had managed the previous week. 

                I don’t remember much about the drive that day.  We did make surprisingly good progress though, looking at the distance between Harrisburg and Natural Bridge, VA on an online map.  But like I said, I remember practically nothing about the drive that day.  It was smooth.  We followed each other well.  We agreed about all of our pre-determined stops.  I think there may have been a moment where I stopped at a gas station and waited for Sam and Kelly to arrive for about forty-five minutes and became extremely impatient, but that might have even been the previous day.  Our time together was so abbreviated, it all seems to blend into one long day, almost.

                I do remember one thing about the previous evening, at that motel room in Harrisburg.  I had broken out my camcorder, and was watching a twenty or twenty-five minute video taken some six and a half years earlier.  It was of my play—what I frequently tell people is the proudest moment of my life, as pathetic as it may seem—Four Hours in Avalon, the only student-written one act in our high school that year.  About a teacher and a student hooking up.  About an illegal affair.  I wrote it when I was seventeen and it was staged right before I turned eighteen so I felt it appropriate to maintain an ambiguous attitude towards the subject matter.  It was only performed for one night, to a very filled house, (because that was the only night tickets were free—it was the “dress rehearsal” night) and according to my sister, Meredith, everyone thought my play was far and away the best.  It may have just been for its titillating low-brow romance novel-style entertainment or its Lolita-esque approach to potentially off-putting material.  In any case, I was very happy that people in my dorm seemed to congratulate me for writing it, and congratulated their more popular friend, Mike, for doing such a great job in the lead role, despite having little or no acting experience himself.

                After I watched this tape and marveled at my own past promise, I took a short video of Sam and Kelly and talked to them about the road trip.  I may have mentioned what happened to my brother or I may have ignored it and surreptitiously tried to suggest what happened through roundabout discussions of the “craziness” of the last few days.  In any case this is the only document of that evening.  Perhaps later I will transcribe the audio and give a description of the video in the space below this paragraph.

Another Camping Trip

Another Camping Trip   

                President’s Day weekend, 2008, my parents flew into Southern California with the intention of visiting me.  I’ll get into that whole experience later, but there was some question about whether I would spend that Sunday night and Monday with my family, or with my friends in the area who were planning a camping night in Malibu.  I chose my friends, and the reasons will be delved into at a later segment.

                So I drove back into L.A. (again, later delving) on Saturday night and rested up, doing my usual routine of amusements including bowl smoking and television watching and late dinner eating.  I don’t know what I spent the next morning and early afternoon doing—maybe I wrote some more of my second novel.  I am almost entirely sure that I smoked a bowl or two during that period as well.  But then I packed up my car, making several trips from the second floor apartment across the courtyard to my car parked on Rose Ave. 

                For a few weeks at that point, my roommate had been experiencing resistance from the building manager.  There had been an incident a while earlier where I had heard a loud slamming noise and screaming and shouting coming from the back of the building, in the resident parking lot.  Apparently my roommate had opened his door onto the building manager’s car and then had slammed it back shut as a way of voicing his disapproval of the building manager’s closeness of parking (an issue that will crop up for me personally a bit later).  I heard this guy shout, “You’ve got a real attitude problem, you know that!” And I heard my roommate screaming something back at him.  When he entered later on and I asked him about it, the scene was described.  But since that incident, the building manager had played closer attention to my roommate, and to me.  He had asked who this friend was that was always coming and going, more frequently than the other guests.  Brett answered that I was just his friend, and of course the first excuse that came to my mind was that I could claim I was “more than friends” with him, but I do not think Brett would have wanted that discussion to happen. 

                Regardless, I packed my car in peace and comfort, lucky to have gotten a parking spot right in front of the building.  Certain nights, usually on the weekends, coming back later than 9:00, I would have to park several blocks away, which would equate to a five or ten minute walk, sometimes with laundry or groceries in tow.  It was one of the most annoying aspects to my L.A. experience, that non-residential parking.  That day though, February 17, 2008 (my friend Andres’s birthday, I always remember, because it is exactly two months before mine) everything was wonderful.  I got my car packed up with everything, got onto the I-10 W freeway and headed for the Pacific Coast Highway. 

                I had only been to Malibu once before—very early in my time in L.A., on the lookout for Lindsay Lohan because my older brother had told me that she probably lived in Malibu—and I only went to a Mexican counter service restaurant, La Salsa, which had several choices of salsa to take from a bar and which was very good.  But this time I was a bit early, and I knew I was meeting with Sycamore and Molly and that if we were going to eat, it would probably be vegan.  So I stopped at the KFC nearby where I thought I would be turning to head for the campsite and went in and ordered a Triple-Crunch Zinger sandwich combo meal and ate that while reading the Hunting Accidents: A Brief History of Guided by Voices book.  I mention this because it was a moment of perfect bliss and happiness at the time. 

                I called Sycamore and he directed me towards the campsite at Malibu Creek, which they eventually arrived at first due to my own inability to follow their directions and my failure to do my own research before leaving.  I showed up not too late though, and I set up my camp.  Shortly after I finished, Erin and Nathaniel arrived and began setting up their tent.  By the time we were all settled we had started drinking and we were setting up a grill to use for veggie burgers.  We sat like this for several hours.

                I brought out my iPod boombox and played a variety of songs, including “My War” by Black Flag, which I had told Sycamore and Molly I wanted to cover.  We were going to be in a band together, for a while, and that will also be discussed later.  Sycamore told me to turn the song down to a lower volume and I found that to be somewhat wimpy on his part, but I complied.  Later I put on New Order and told everyone that I wanted to smoke when “Bizarre Love Triangle” came on, but I don’t think anybody else wanted to.  In fact, I don’t think I ended up smoking that night at all, nor the next morning, surprisingly. 

                I do remember getting a call from my friend Mike, who I think was just giving me more specific detail about his upcoming trip in March to visit me.  We talked for about thirty or forty minutes, me getting drunk, smoking cigarettes, walking through the woods in Malibu, him in New York, potentially buzzed, in his apartment. 

                At some point we all went to sleep, and I remember it being quite cold that night.  In the morning we woke up and I think we had some sort of vegan quiche or something, breakfast that was probably more appetizing than the veggie burgers.  Nathaniel, Sycamore and I hiked around the area for about a half hour, trying to give ourselves enough time to vacate the premises by Noon.  At one point we crossed a small creek to get to a more interesting area.  We actually had another whiskey and coke in the morning.  We were close to getting kicked out at Noon, but we left before any very unkind words passed. 

On the way back we stopped at some shopping plaza in Malibu and got a cup of coffee at a Coffee Bean there.  We walked around for a while and I remember seeing a particularly tall girl that I found quite attractive.  We went into a hipster clothing store that also sold CDs and saw the LCD Soundsystem album Sound of Silver and Nathaniel and Sycamore talked about how they were thinking about buying it and I told them I had it, it was great, and they should just burn it off me.  Not too long afterwards, we headed back.  And I think this was the day I stopped with Sycamore and Molly in Santa Monica too, and we stopped in another Coffee Bean so Molly could use the facilities, and then we went into some hipster shoe store where Sycamore bought some $70 eco-friendly walking shoes.  I thought some of their items looked kind of cool, but I wasn’t in any position to be spending the kind of money that store advertised.  We parted shortly thereafter, and I drove back to Palms, and I unloaded my car in several trips, and one guy in the courtyard nodded at me a couple times, and apparently the building manager had also noted me coming and going quite noticeably that day.  

Day 3 of 3

Day 3 of 3

                After leaving our campsite at Natural Bridge, VA (we had considered going to visit the actual “natural bridge” but it cost something like $15 to tour it and we decided we better get moving early) we stopped for gas and decided to head for the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Sam had heard stories about this place and how scenic and beautiful a ride it was for someone on a motorcycle.  I went along with them, not quite realizing that the drive would not take us in any progressive direction.  We started going up all of the crazy hills, and before I knew it I was above the clouds.  The turns were sharp, the drops and climbs were steep, and it was the only part of the trip where I couldn’t catch up to Sam and Kelly on their motorcycle.  For the rest of the trip, they rode behind me, and generally couldn’t keep up the same speed, but on this particular stretch, I became very nervous about getting lost. 

                Luckily it all ended up okay and we made the descent down from the Blue Ridge mountains and we stopped at another gas station for a quick snack before heading down through Virginia, towards Sweetwater, TN where we would finally visit the Lost Sea. 

                The drive had been going smoothly enough.  It was a nice day, we were moving pretty quickly, we had a simple stretch of road to follow without any difficult to communicate highway changes, and we seemed to really be starting our trip now.  We had settled into a rapport.  I remember stopping at a rest area that day, and Sam and Kelly wanting to go up into one of the more remote areas of elevating forestry, with winding walkways.  Sam wanted to roll a blunt and smoke it there before we continued.  I started freaking out about potential conflict from police officers stopping at the area.  I had close to an ounce in my car.  I didn’t want any trouble on that front.  This was one of my greatest fears—travelling with weed—and I had kept my car at a very reasonable pace thus far and had not attracted any attention from the flashing lights.  I turned down their activity and headed back to my car.  I think I left a while before them, so we must have stopped somewhere else not too long after, because I could see them in my rear-view mirror when it happened.

                I happened to be looking back when they crashed.  For some reason, the reality did not register.  I didn’t want it to be an impediment to our plans, so even though I was pretty sure I had just seen them lose control of their bike and swerve around and lose their bags strapped onto the back of the bike, I didn’t stop.  I kept going.  I went past Roanoke, and I passed Blacksburg, and then I got the call from Sam. 

                “We’ve had a wreck!  Wreck!  Please turn around immediately and meet us back in Roanoke.”

                I remember I had just been talking to my friend Sycamore, who had recently been taken out of work because of an emergency gall bladder operation.  As I talked to him he was recovering at Molly’s parent’s house in Idyllwild, CA.  Then Sam called and I had to turn around.

                I was upset but I was mostly concerned about their safety.  I called them when I was approaching the area where it occurred and they told me they had already been picked up by their car insurance company, Progressive, and that they were at their local office in Roanoke, and I should meet them there to find out what we were going to do next.  Also, the bike was destroyed. 

                I finally found them after a little bit of confusion due to the unplanned nature of the driving directions.  Their agent there was very helpful and kind and he told them we should stay overnight at the Quality Inn and get a rental car in the morning and that they should head back to their home.  We went to the hotel, and it was the nicest one I had stayed at so far on the trip.  The date was August 30^th. 

                It occurs to me that I must be messed up about these dates.  Earlier I stated that I arrived in Chapel Hill on the 25^th, and left New York on the 27^th, for Larchmont, and then said I spent “several days” in New York.  My mind must be confused on one or more of these counts.  I would double-check the day of the personal tragedy for verification (perhaps my calculations are off by a few days—though I remember it being the 27^th) but my internet happens to be down at the moment.  Just a note for fact checking purposes, which is no fun in the case of a confusing story across many different states.  Let me just say for the record—I am positive I was in New York for more than one day—I remember specific experiences, like not visiting one particular friend named Jill and going to visit a younger girl named Jill that I had met once before and made out with in the hopes that we would take things even further, but it ended up being a total mistake.  I just bought her alcohol (she was a sophomore, then) and smoked out of the Ghost with her and she was less coked out and drunk than the previous November and so did not like me as much.

                In any case I hope to get to the bottom of this soon.

                I think we went swimming in the pool at the hotel.  There was no mention of who would pay for the room.  Maybe the insurance company was doing that, maybe Sam was doing that out of his own pocket—I don’t know, it wasn’t mentioned.  But swimming there was fun, and we still smoked in the room, though now under far different circumstances, and I had found out that Sam had left his ¼ pound stash in a laptop case in my car and that he had been very intelligent to think to leave it there, because eventually the cops showed up at the scene of their accident and they went through all of his stuff there.  It was serendipity in one of its saddest forms. 

                Sam asked me if I could drive him to the nearby Sonic Drive-In and I said of course, anything for him at this moment, now that our time was nearing its close.  This proved to be its own mini-disaster.  We drove, and I had never been to a Sonic before, and I immediately loved it after going for my first time, and Sam and I ordered some regular food, and then Sam ordered like three or four different kinds of desserts, which we had no room for in my car, and which started melting immediately on the dashboard under the hot summer sun.  I started to get pissed off about how the cream was getting all over the dash, and the seats, and it was making it sticky and gross.  Sam did everything he could but we had just ordered too much.  As we drove back to the hotel we remarked that the town seemed like it was redneck territory.  Though I’m sure you could do much worse.

                We made it back to the hotel and Sam gave Kelly her mostly-melted desserts that he had promised.  I don’t remember what we did for dinner that night but I think we went somewhere else too.  I looked up on my computer where I would continue my next day’s drive to.  I found Birmingham, AL to be the most logical stop for the next night.  It was at a near perfect distance of eight hours away, and it was a seemingly fun town to be in for a night.  I made a reservation at a Ramada Inn there and we enjoyed a pleasant evening.

                The next morning their rental car arrived at the hotel, and we loaded all of the stuff from my car into theirs.  I had a good amount of extra cargo space now.  We said our goodbyes, with some difficulty and amazement that this had actually happened, and departed in our opposite directions.  I was alone again.

The South Bay Era, Part 1: The Long-Awaited Rest

The South Bay Era, Part 1: The Long-Awaited Rest

                On the nights of September 18, September 19 and September 20^th, I stayed in Venice Beach with Sycamore and Molly.  They shared a small studio for about $900 or $950 a month.  They had two cats that were rescued strays.  I remember the first day, driving Sycamore back from Westwood, parking in the visitor’s spot that I would use so many times over the next three months, and waiting for Molly to return, because she had the keys.  We went into a bar a block or so away and got large-sized Newcastle beers and waited for Molly.  I was also quite anxious to smoke.  When Sycamore went to use the bathroom, I took out my spiral notebook that I had used to write out all of my driving directions, and wrote this: “Arrived in L.A.  Am at bar with Sycamore.  We have giant Newcastles for $9 each.  We are waiting for Molly to get back so we can get into their apt.  I hope we can smoke weed there.”  My memory is stronger than I remember. 

                Their apartment would have been ideal for one person.  They were literally one block from the ocean.  While the rent was more than I would end up paying later for my own single-person apartment, the ocean-front quality certainly seemed to be worth it.  Later I would look at an apartment a few blocks away, also one block from the ocean, and it would be $975.  Venice Beach is pretty expensive.  So is Santa Monica.  But I stayed there for three nights. 

There was an incident on my first or second day staying at their apartment in Venice Beach when I talked to my mother on the phone and she came down on me, hard.  She had never spoken so sternly at me in my life since I had committed a particular transgression in 7^th grade, involving the abandonment of a friend at a mall.  She said, “What are you going to do in La-La land?  You think that’s actually going to work?  L.A. sucks.  The same thing that happened to your brother will happen to you.”  She meant my older brother, and that will be discussed later.  I told Molly about how mean she was being and I felt like crying for about two hours after that call. 

The first two nights I realized how tight it was going to be.  The apartment would be ideal for one person.  They could make it work with two people, who were very much in love.  Added to that, Molly’s father had built them their own natural loft bed, with real tree trunks as support beams.  It looked fantastic, and they had set up a couch underneath the loft, but alas it was too short for me, and I preferred my air mattress.  Their two cats—Eleanor and Desmond—terrorized me.  As these cats and I became more familiar over the next ten or eleven months, I would not be as scared of them—they also would soon be moved to a larger roaming space, and so were not always on top of you in their domain.  But after two nights, I said enough was enough. 

                 I could afford to stay in a hotel for a week, even if I had spent way more money on my road trip than I intended.  I probably had under $10,000 left to my name.  On the third day, I drove around the South Bay area, settling on a string of motels in Redondo Beach.  I went to a few different places—the Starlite Motel, a place in the completely different direction in Santa Monica, and the Moonlite Inn.  I talked to the motel managers and asked if they could provide a lower weekly rate for a room.  The best answer I got was from the guy at Moonlite Inn—which advertised private hot tubs—who said he would give me a room for a week for $400 if I paid cash—and then I could avoid paying tax.  That sounded good enough to me.  I went to the ATM, took out $400, gave him the money, and told him my stay would start the next day. 

                I went back to Santa Monica to the NRDC office to visit with Molly so that I could get the key to their apartment or something.  I told her that I had found a motel and tonight would be the last night I would be staying with them, and she politely and warmly told me I didn’t need to pay for a motel and I told her no, I insisted on having my own place to stay.  I wanted to take her and Sycamore out for sushi that night, my treat, as a way of saying thank you for letting me stay with you.  We did that, getting sushi around the “circle” in Venice Beach, which was some $75 or $80, but which was nothing for treating two dear friends to dinner, compared to what I had done in say, Oklahoma City. 

                The next day I drove along the Pacific Coast Highway down to Redondo Beach and loaded all of my stuff into the room.  It was a Friday.  I was moving in during the weekend.  I was very happy, but I did not get one of the rooms with a private hot tub—those were the fancy, higher-priced rooms.  I got the bottom-of-the-line economy room for the low rate of under $60 per night in Redondo Beach.  Redondo may not have been quite as upscale as Manhattan or Hermosa—but there was very little difference in truth.  Here was the problem as far as I saw it:

                I wanted to get a sublet for the month of October.  A week from that Friday, I would be returning to New York for about nine days in order to attend a wedding that next weekend, and to attend a concert the weekend after that.  Now, I had already bought my airplane ticket from LAX to LGA.  I think I had made this decision sometime around my stop in Boulder.  Never mind that I could have left at that point and returned to Chicago and flown from Chicago to New York.  Never mind that I probably could have even driven all the way back to New York in that week.  I had been in L.A. for three days and had not gotten to explore Hollywood or any of the other dozen more exciting, fresh, and new locales that I would never get the chance to see again.  I was there now, and I didn’t want to give it up.  Yes, instead of getting the motel, I could have left.  Yes, I could have even stayed at the motel, kept my belongings inside my car at LAX remote parking (which I did anyways), taken the trip, and left L.A. afterwards, maybe staying for another week or so somewhere else as a tourist.  I could have done that, but by this point I was floating around the excuse that I was “too depressed to drive all the way back across the country.”  I just wanted to stop and settle.  I didn’t want to go back to Chicago where I had no apartment or job and would have to live with my parents who were already disapproving of my plans.  This was mistake number one: extending my stay beyond this week in Redondo Beach. 

                Because in a way, that week symbolized everything I loved about California.  The weather was still warm and nice—though unfortunately the water in the Pacific was too cold for swimming.            I unpacked all of my stuff in my little studio, sans kitchen or hot-plate—but including medium-sized mini-fridge—and felt very cozy and comfortable, as if I would be content to live the last week of my life in that atmosphere.  It was like being in some kind of noir thriller or Raymond Carver short story.  Except there was no plot and all I worried about was getting some form of exercise, smoking pot, and feeding myself.

                I remember in particular the first run I did in California—no let me be exacting, I did do one run back and forth along the Venice Boardwalk area—but the first one I did from my own, self-selected space, was down along Redondo Beach.  For this segment of the film adaptation, please include the song “Redondo Beach” by Patti Smith on the soundtrack, as that was the first song I selected the playlist on my iPod that day.  You may also choose the cover version of “Redondo Beach” by Morrissey, off a live album, which I actually used as a song in the middle of the last playlist I ever made and ran to in California.  But that was much later.  At this early and exciting stage of the game, every sight in Redondo Beach was an inspiration.  The looks on everyone’s faces—everyone was not so sad.  I ran down along the beach boardwalk there, through some outdoor shopping plazas, up and down stairs, all the way to the Fisherman’s Wharf, which signaled the end of Manhattan Beach and the beginning of Redondo Beach.  I saw there was a Lobster Festival going on there, and that Sunday was the last night, and I made a mental note of it.

                That Friday, Into the Wild had just opened in theaters, and the first L.A. Weekly I picked up had a big feature on Sean Penn’s adaptation of that book that I had so loved as a high-school and college students, that I had read some six or seven times.  I had vaguely heard that it was being made into a movie before, but I had forgotten about it, and now here it was, opened in L.A. and ready to see.  I called up Sycamore and Molly and asked if they would want to come to my place in Redondo for a couple drinks, a bowl, and a movie date.  They agreed and I offered to drive them to-and-fro, because I had nothing else very pressing going on. 

                It was a wonderful evening.  I drove them down past Marina del Rey and LAX through El Segundo and all the various South Bay “Beaches” and they told me about how they had never actually been to the area before and I was amazed at that because I thought it was supposed to be one of the coolest areas of the city.  Or, the county, as those cities each went by their individual name, as did Venice.  But we had a couple whiskey and cokes and we smoked a bowl while listening to Deerhunter and we looked at the time and decided we were going to have to hurry to the Landmark Cinema at the West Side Pavilion Mall. 

All along the way my two compatriots kept saying that there was no way we were going to make the time, as we turned right on Pico and headed up towards Westwood Blvd.  We just didn’t have the time.  I decided to sound like an inspirational speaker and tell them that we just had to believe that we were going to make it on time and that everything would work out in our favor.  We made it to the parking garage about five or ten minutes before show time and I told them, “See, I was right.”  We parked, and did not have to pay, and I was amazed at this, the first of many times I would be amazed at not having to pay for parking in that fair city.  We went to the box office lobby and saw that Into the Wild was sold out for that time, but that we could still get tickets for an hour later show-time.  This was pretty late—I think 11:00 PM start time—but we hung out in a Barnes and Noble there beforehand and went into the movie without any feelings of regret, as far as I can recall.

And the movie was fantastic.  I think we all really appreciated setting aside a Saturday night for the purposes of viewing it, even if it didn’t end until later than 1:30 in the morning. 

At the time I was working on a long document called “Suicide” which was at one point keeping pace with my word count for “Self-Mutilation.”  I recall Into the Wild having some import into my thought process at the time:

Okay well after reading some of that, it is evident that there is nothing about the movie in there, but that the movie did in fact inspire the initial idea for the word processing document.  Let us be clear: it is a powerful document!  Just skimming through it, it is full of things I would never admit in other venues, and it will be very useful as I attempt to recount the antecedent days in Redondo Beach and Beverly Hills and New York in later sections.  But I digress.  The very beginning of the document is the only part worth copying:

I have decided to do this for 3 reasons:

1) Certain things became clear to me last night

2) Certain things were made clear to me today

3) It is really cool to work on two documents concurrently called “suicide” and “self-mutilation” –but this will not be a novella, it will be a real thing, when the time is right.

Also, there is one notable mention of the film, now that I see it.  There is a short discussion of dreams (one of which I have forgotten to transcribe here today) and then these few short paragraphs:

Oh shit there’s a James Spader movie on HBO Signature.  I think I’m going to have to watch that and cut this short for now, but I’ll continue.  Last night, I saw Into the Wild, the adaptation of the book I became enamored with some eight or nine years ago.  Of course there are many overlaps between the main character’s journey and my own.  His journey ends in death.  After two years.  I have been gone a month!  And I am not living off the land; I am staying in hotels and motels, spending that $20,000 I had saved up, not donating that $24,000 he had to Oxfam. 

In a certain sense, we both ran away for the same reasons…Now the movie is starting so I’ll continue later!

Well it’s two days later and the movie I watched White Palace (a take-off of White Castle) was pretty much a complete waste of my time, except to see James Spader freak out a couple times, at the beginning and at the end when he opens up a dustbuster at a party and says, “There’s no dust inside!  There’s no dust!” Susan Sarandon was only interesting the first 10 or so minutes she was on-screen.  The idea of being embarrassed by your lover is certainly a real thing, but it’s not something I consider entertaining, or fantastic.

I was thinking of this earlier today—art that is accessible for an audience.  I believe an audience has to want to fantasize themselves into the place of the character they are watching, or reading, or listening to, in order for them to say they enjoyed it.  They have to enjoy the fantasy too, I suppose.  Thus, if I write a book about self-mutilation, there are not many people that want to actively fantasize about it—BUT there are a lot of people that do actually cut and therefore would be interested in a book about it.  But, say I wanted to do a book on general contracting.  Not many people would want to fantasize themselves into my shoes—they would perhaps want to put themselves in the place of a potential “flipper” because maybe one day they would like to flip a house and make a bundle (once they have a bundle…).  However, the life of an operations manager of a family-owned homebuilding business is not very fantastic, or vicarious.  The best kind of art would be able to be an unfamiliar situation, but with familiar details thrown in so that one could identify with it, and also learn something by it.  I believe art should be educational, as well as entertaining, thought-provoking, and soothing.  Not always soothing, but it must soothe the soul in its resolution.

Well the night I watched White Palace must have also been the night that Sycamore and Molly and I went to the Redondo Beach Lobster Festival.  It was about $30 to get in for you to get a lobster.  I am not sure what Molly did, being a vegan.  I can’t remember.  I do remember the lobster being average to sub-par, and the overall enjoyment of the evening being somewhat a waste of time and money, but still interesting for getting to walk around the Fisherman’s Wharf area, where they had carnival rides and midway games set up for the occasion.  In a way, that Lobster Festival, that single evening, encapsulates a great deal of my experience of those ten months or so that I lived in that fair city.

Nothing Happened in Birmingham / Hyperstimulation

Nothing Happened in Birmingham

I almost just want to leave that title alone as the whole text of this vignette.  The drive from Roanoke was smooth and efficient.  I stayed in a Ramada Inn.  I tried to go out on the town, but only found a place to have a dinner consisting of appetizers (buffalo chicken tenders as I recall) and a beer or two.  Then went back to the hotel and went to sleep.  The next morning I woke up and went into the lobby to use the computer that had internet, and I booked the Crowne Plaza Hotel in New Orleans for that night.  The room rate was only $99, so I figured why not live it up for once.  It would not be too long of a drive, and I got an early start. 

               

Hyperstimulation

                A beautiful scene involving Ashleigh—one of those few times when a dream is able to lift the dreamer out of their despicable daily existence and into a heavenly construct.  There were many other parts—like purchasing weed from Sam (a different one, who no longer deals in that trade) to share with Aaron (who was always underfunded throughout college and who never bought weed and who I smoked up dozens upon dozens of times—always happily as he was one of the best people to get stoned with), who split the cost 50/50 this time.  But in particular, the scene with Ashleigh, who only appeared once or twice in a rare, brilliant flash, but who provided the epiphany of the experience.  She had constructed an artwork outside of the record store Other Music in New York, except in this case Other Music had been transferred to an alley across the street from the Reckless Records in the Lakeview location in Chicago.  She had constructed an artwork that appeared to be a cryptogram, but one that I could read because it had my name spelled out in various letters across it, which provided some sort of key to solving the puzzle, unlocking the mystery.  She disappeared as quickly as she floated through the atmosphere, and as I looked up at the piece, deciphering its message, two boys walked past me, exiting the alley and heading to the record store.  They told me that Ashleigh was hyperstimulated, and not necessarily interested in me physically.  Though this message may sound like something of a letdown, it gave me great comfort.  It also gave me great comfort to see that she had designed an artwork clearly directed at me.

The South Bay Era, Part 2: Housing Search

The South Bay Era, Part 2: Housing Search

                Not long after the Into the Wild viewing, I began my search for a sublet for the month of October.  In the meantime, I drove around L.A. and visited some sites that appeared to be of interest.  The most interesting thing that happened had to be when I just kept driving south, heading towards Huntington Beach, and Long Beach, and after going around the bumpy, fun-to-drive-over landscape of Palos Verdes and Rancho Palos Verdes, ended up at a Longs Drug Store in San Pedro, which I knew as the home of the Minutemen, and the setting of one scene in Chinatown.  While I was sort of getting lost—I sort of wanted to get lost.  I had never been around the area before, it seemed like it would be a cool place to explore, and I had no concerns about things I needed to do in the morning, or gas I needed to save, or money I shouldn’t have been spending.  It was an evening of total freedom but I ended up just getting some forgettable items from a drugstore.  I also signed up for my own Longs Drugs discount card, but I lost that not too long afterwards. 

                I looked at several places in the L.A. area.  The first was in Manhattan Beach, shown to me by a girl named Jenny.  I should mention that I found these sublets off of craigslist, and I had about a day’s worth of hesitation when I realized I would finally have to own up to the fact that I would be living with strangers I had met online.  However, later I would read Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann and witness the protagonist Adrian Leverkuhn using this very method to secure housing (except in newspapers, not online, and boarding houses, not private apartments), and was actually proud of my fearlessness.  You get to meet many interesting people this way, though I would hasten to add that one should always proceed with caution in these situations.  You can learn a lot about a person by the type of ad they post.  I did my best to avoid anyone that said “no drugs.”

                Jenny was the first person to allow me to visit her abode, and she was offering a master bedroom in an awesome area of Manhattan Beach at 1125 Manhattan Ave. for $900 a month.  This would have given me my own private balcony off my room, which left the question of pot smoking solved.  There was a very nice big bed in the room that was actually going to be moved out by the exiting roommate, but I felt okay about using my air mattress for a whole month.  Their kitchen was on the second floor, right outside my bedroom, and Jenny was very attractive, and I considered the prospect of living with two girls particularly awesome.  Then, she said, “Okay, this might be really gay, but I have some questions I want to ask everyone who comes to view it, and then we’ll make our decision.”

                I don’t remember the questions, but I feel I answered them well enough.  Regardless, she did not offer me the space.  Maybe there was a hotter guy after me, or a girl they felt more comfortable living with, but my search had to continue, and believe me, it would have ended right there if I had had my pick.

                The second place I remember seeing was in Santa Monica, at 2535 S. Bundy Dr.  This was in a little house with two or three other people about my age or maybe a couple years older.  They all seemed very cool and the space seemed suitable enough and the price was good for Santa Monica and they had a nice backyard and I was pretty sure they would have smoked up with me, but they did not offer me the space after my viewing.  It is possible that my not having a job yet may have had something to do with these first few not wanting to take a chance on me.             

                The third place I found was on a steep hill in Hollywood at 1900 Vine St. in the den of a well-appointed 1 BR condo.  My roommate would have been Jennifer, who was in her late 30’s or early 40’s to my estimation, and who was quite attractive , and who could have potentially been friendly to pot smoke, but one I would not have felt comfortable introducing the element to.  She had a couple of cats and I asked her if they were friendly, owing to my experience with Desmond and Eleanor.  She told me there was no such problem and we talked for at least a half hour and she was very friendly and I thought it would be a great place for me to get started in L.A., but she informed me a day or so later that she had decided to rent the den to someone else.  On I went.

                To my least likely, most-feared option: living in the living room of a 1 bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, near the Farmer’s Market at 7961 Blackburn Ave.  This was with Jeff who obviously had a pretty nice apartment that had way too high a rent and who was asking somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 or so to live in the living room.  To be fair, it was a good-sized living room and he had a roommate that it had seemed to work out with quite well in that arrangement, and after actually meeting him and seeing the place, I half-considered it.  It was far from ideal, but it was technically the lowest price, and it was a good location, and it might not be so bad for only one month, and who knows Jeff and I could end up being very good friends, but I still had two more places to visit that day.

                The first was in USC territory for a studio apartment to sublet by myself for $865 a month at 37^th St. and Vermont Ave.  This was a vaguely sketchy neighborhood but the proximity of many USC undergrad and grad students in the complex made me feel somewhat at ease.  The unit itself left something to be desired, but it was nice enough (though it would not be as nice as the home I would eventually make for myself in Silverlake, as poorly-appointed as it may have been). 

                Finally, I went to Beverly Hills, to look at a $1000 a month sublet.  The highest price I was willing to pay, I felt it a fair price for one month (I would be paying $1600 if I did four more of the same weeks at that motel in Redondo Beach), particularly to have the address of Beverly Hills.  I was soon to find out that not all residences with the address Beverly Hills are necessarily the most chic locations in all of L.A., but no matter, I had found my place after entering.  Joel, a South African Kosher Jew, was exceedingly friendly and very motivated to fill the space.  His fellow South African Mark would be occupying the other bedroom, along with whoever else he found to sublet it for the two or three weeks Mark would be away in Switzerland.  Joel himself seemed like a good roommate—probably in his late 30’s or early 40’s, appearing to be a successful businessman, liberal, though he did explain something about not keeping any non-kosher food in the refrigerator.  He wanted to please me with what he offered (which really was not much, a small bedroom with a twin-sized bed and a little desk and a little armoire wardrobe thing as a closet, and a shared second floor bathroom), which did have its advantages (secured underground parking, tandem though it may have been, and an in-unit washer/dryer) and I told him I thought I would take the place, but that it would only be for three weeks.  I really should have tried to pay a pro-rated amount—he might have even taken it—but I was such a sucker and so anxious to have that place (though I know now that I could have done better for the price—much better) that I didn’t want to hurt my chances and asked him what he wanted me to do.  He said he would ask for a $300 deposit, which I gladly paid.  Then I explained about my trip to New York, and how I would return from LAX  on Sunday, October 7^th, and would require him to expect my arrival late that afternoon.  All was well and good and we parted ways very happy with our arrangement.

                I had another couple of days at Redondo Beach before I would have to leave, and passing those days without the stress of knowing I had to find a place immediately were quite well-enjoyed.  I spent one of them getting my car maintenance performed at the Honda Service Center in Torrance, CA, where I wrote another long section of my document “suicide”—which also contained many details about this housing search which I may insert at a later date still.

One Night in New Orleans

One Night in New Orleans

I started the drive from Birmingham early and I arrived in New Orleans early, around 3:00 or so.  I remember getting behind a car that was going 90-100 miles per hour through the majority of Mississippi.  Of course, I had reason to fear being stopped, but if this guy was going this fast, I figured it was alright to keep to the same speed, since he would get pulled over before me.  Someone had once told me the best way to avoid a speeding ticket was to speed behind someone else who was speeding.  This may have been dangerous and it didn’t really happen again for the rest of the trip.  But I made it to New Orleans in very good time, and that stretch through Mississippi probably had something to do with it.

It was pouring rain when I arrived at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.  A bell man took the bags I had specified out of my car and onto one of those brass-barred luggage dollies.  I asked for about seven bags, and I wonder how perplexed these hotel attendants must have been of me—one person needing six bags for one night.  I went into the hotel and the valet took my car and parked it underground or somewhere and that was another $25 or so being added to my room tab immediately.  The lobby was quite luxurious.  I checked in quickly, received my bags in my room, tipping all the appropriate people for the first time, as this was the first “fancy” hotel I had stayed in where they had valets and bell men, and went into my room. 

They had provided a sleep kit on top of the bed which was very fancy.  They offered room service.  They offered in-room movies.  They had Knocked Up, which I had tried to see about three different times the previous summer in Nantucket and Chicago to varying degrees of frustration.  It was weird, but for whatever reason there kept being problems with the theaters, or it had stopped playing without warning.  I decided I would probably order that later in the evening and order room service.

But then, around 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I got very baked in my room and decided to go down and explore New Orleans.  I had been there about seven years before with a couple friends for spring break our senior year in high school.  Though we were only seventeen, one of my friends and I managed to get some drinks despite not having IDs or anything.  It was a good time.  We spent the majority of that trip in the Latin Quarter and on Bourbon Street and one night we went on a vampire tour that was very entertaining.

But this time I left my hotel quite stoned and tried to find Bourbon St., instead finding blocks and blocks and blocks of apartments and random other things, but barely any stores or restaurants or bars or anything.  The Crowne Plaza was on Canal St.  I had exited the hotel and walked left, and then made another left, following some people who looked like they new the direction for fun things to do.  This was not a good idea.  I wandered around for a good two hours, but I did manage to find an almost totally empty bar/restaurant with a few heavily tattooed and pierced proprietors.  I had a hamburger there and it was very big and it was pretty good.  I left and tried to find my way back to the hotel.  When I finally did, I realized that Bourbon St. was directly adjacent to my hotel.  This made me feel very stupid, but then at least I knew it would be easy to find when I came back down again.

I went upstairs to smoke more and then I returned back down and went onto Bourbon St.  I got a drink somewhere and walked down the middle of the street with it.  Everyone was happy and partying.  It is a completely unique place in America.  There is no demographic for Bourbon St.  Everyone hangs out in the same area together and everyone has a great time doing the same things.  I feel like it must have been some kind of Gay Pride day, because there was notably a group of several men holding up signs denouncing homosexuality.  I believe they were called Brother’s Keepers and they seemed to look on the masses benevolently but then proceeded to chant the most ridiculous slogans.  I saw a few people stop to chat with them and it appeared that they were trying to point out how cold-hearted their stance appeared, but I do not think these men were swayed.  I didn’t say anything to them—just walked past them a few times and looked at them with an indefinable, bemused expression. 

I started to get drunker.  This was especially noticeable after getting a “hand grenade” which had been advertised as the most powerful drink on Bourbon St.  I asked the guy who made it for me what was in it and he refused to tell me the ingredients, saying it was secret.  I walked around some more, not really doing anything but drinking, having a cigarette here or there, not talking to anyone, looking at the Larry Flynt Hustler Club and considering going in, walking past a blues club where the proprietor saw me and told me to go in and dig the music, which I did for about five or ten minutes.  I was probably out there until about 10 or 11 o’clock, but I decided it was time to head back to the hotel.  So I did that and I ordered Knocked Up from the in-room movie system and I ordered room service and barely was able to stay awake for the end of the movie and in the middle of the night they slipped the bill under my door and I believe it was somewhere in the range of $190 but I am not sure and I have just requested an archived credit card statement from August, September, and October of 2007 in order to get to the bottom of these various discrepancies. 

I had planned that day to drive to Houston, and I left my hotel, but before I left New Orleans, I went to an outdoor mall type place to see the IMAX film Hurricane on the Bayou there.  I had been expecting IMAX footage of the hurricane that had destroyed New Orleans two years earlier but it focused mostly on the wreckage instead, which makes a certain amount of sense.  I got back in my car in a $10 parking lot and I headed towards Houston.