Floating
It was a shitty Tuesday at the cheerless office. I hated the people with whom I worked. The bitches sat four feet away from me and whispered of conspiracies to get me reprimanded by their superiors. I still had hopes that my life would change for the better, but at the time, I didn't realize that lives don't change and that it's the other way around, people change lives. I left the office disheveled and in adrenal overdrive at 6:01 and barrelled my unregistered starter-model luxury sedan straight back down Melrose through the gridlock to my side of town, and I made a left when I got to Virgil. My mind went to a peaceful silence when I turned onto Virgil and heard the honking of street vendors' cart-horns and the distorted melodies of Mexican ice-cream trucks. Past Virgil, I was in my realm at the bottom of the nicest hill in LA, and from the base of that hill eastward, no workplace melodrama could mar my exquisite existence of watching TV in a 10'x10' storage locker with carpet. There was nothing that could pervade my beautiful disinterest in the general aimless ambition that caused my morbid obesity due to stress-eating during my salaried hours. I lived just on the wrong side of the yuppiest neighborhood in Southern California, and I would jam my sausagey body into a track suit and run those hills like a real harrier. Then I would spend the rest of the night drinking wine alone at the apartment, or I'd head over to the Smog, which was where I went directly from work on this particular evening.
I walked in, the Thai bartender greeted me by my first name. She and I had become quite good friends over the course of two or three years, and she knew I meant business on nights I showed up at 6:30, since I usually showed up with the karaoke crowd later in the evening, to stay til 2. I sat down at the bar and drank my Bud Lights without speaking a word for a half hour. She just stared at me. I appeared, upon catching my reflection in the mirror behind the bar, not dissimilar to the old Filipino who sat in the corner and drank away his remaining days. But my pity was of a different strain; I was tired of what must lie ahead of me in order for my life to be made right, he was simply just tired. And he was a little bit content. All this, of course, I didn't consciously think; it simply had become part of my daily acquiescence to the life that I was living. I thoroughly enjoyed being at the bar, as it was pretty much the only place in LA that seemed at all authentic. It was a karaoke bar called the Smogcutter and it sometimes smelled like rotten fish. (It was later discovered that there was mildew growing under the carpet behind the bar. I cannot speak to why there was carpet behind the bar.) It was owned and run by an old Thai woman who was called Mama. The walls were covered in red velveteen and their were various shrines around the room. The place, legend told its' patrons, for thirty years had a that only played country music predating the 1960's (it was replaced in 2001 with a newer model for CDs). So it was that I decided this place would become my own honky-tonk, and here I would proceed to absolutely pretend that my life existed only in the bar, as though I were a screen actor from the heyday of Westerns- which, I guess, was probably among the secret yearnings that comprised my capricious decision at 17 to go to college out here in the first place. The Smog was so absurdly decorated with both wallpaper and people that it felt like a movie set and I felt authentically Angeleno when I was a fixture at that bar.
Around 7, Erik came for some beers, and we talked briefly, mainly about Erik telling my boyfriend that he loves him and something about how I should tell him I love him too. I was lacking patience and didn't really want to address anything of that sort so I ordered another beer, and Erik went outside to talk to his girlfriend on the phone.
Keifer Sutherland came in and I just didn't feel like dealing with him. I'd been introduced to him like fifteen times but of course he wouldn't remember me. We had a short talk at the jukebox about the Talking Heads and being 27, then he was off to make out by the pool table with some girl who looked maybe like a guest star from 24, but I wasn't sure because I didn't watch the show.
Left to my beers, I looked up for a moment and caught my reflection. The huge mirror ran the length of the bar and I looked at Keifer and at the old Filipino and at my plump self. I just figured that everyone in that bar should be as pathetic as me. As depressive. Every person in that room should be a sad song from bygone days or a heartbreaking tale from a bleak frontier. Nobody ever went there if they didn't have something wrong with them; some vulnerability.
So I slipped into the 3'x3' ladies' bathroom (with a 7' ceiling and powder soap dispenser from 1967) and I leaned against the wall and and cried. It smelled like sewage and there was a sign on the wall reading, "Ladies: Please Throw All Papers In The Trash, And Until Further Notice, Please Limit Your Bathroom Activity to Urination." I cried and I cried because it wasn't fair that on my very own movie set, my sweet dirge was being spoiled by a simple reminder of the constant LA success around me. I was forced for just a second too long to think of my own lack of having done anything remotely useful with myself since helping my high school cross-country team win States in 1996 by placing 31st in a field of 500. I couldn't control it and I cried for twenty minutes. I just didn't know where my life had gone wrong. I thought I was supposed to be the star, but as it turned out, I was just another extra. And I was only capable of thinking in the most cliché metaphors, so I knew that I was stupid and I deserved to be a loser.
That night, I had four more beers, then moved a dining table from Erik's van into the apartment, then went back to the bar for another round. The next day was the same. Exactly the same. I drove to work, I submitted to the persecutions of my autistically bitchy coworkers, and I drove home. When I hit Virgil, I felt fine. Everything was wiped clean and I had my little hillside LA story that I could tell myself: I was just a sad loner floating through life in my very own epic Western. I would go to the Smog again three days later. I lived this life for two and a half years.
I read Jose Saramago's Blindness a few months after the night I cried in the urine-soaked bar bathroom. It took me a while to read it, because I hated it. I actually hated it so much that it made me lose my appetite, and I lost weight when I read it. So when I was reading it, I lost like 30 pounds and I was hot for a brief period of time. During this time, I went to the Smog one night and I was hit on by a short young Irish guy (with a beret) who was trying on Hollywood. He kept talking of his "really famous" boss who he didn't want to name, and of a recording studio around the corner that he wanted me to go back to, with him and some hipster girls who looked like the 19-year old Cobrasnake models and some guys who looked British and had their nails painted black. We were going to go make some off-the-cuff music. I didn't go, but I wrote down the studio number on the back cover of Blindness, which was the only paper thing I had in my purse. I was supposed to dial that number at the gate for them to let me in.
The next time I saw Keifer we ended up drinking after-hours together and he told me that he had a recording studio around the corner from the Smog. I didn't bother to tell him that I'd met his PA, but skipped the late-night jam session. I also didn't tell him I had his phone number on the back cover of a Nobel Prize winner's book, or that he made me cry in the bathroom. I did tell him that his ears were pinned back too far, and I thought they looked better when they were more natural like when he was in Footloose.
I never did anything to change my life, and my car got towed for being unregistered. The crazy bitches got fired, but one of them stole a client from the company, so she ended up ahead in the end. And every day for the rest of my life, I drove back down Melrose to Virgil, my overture silent as I disappeared into the Sunset hills, aphorisms echoing between the buildings, the valley of the Smogcutter awaiting my melodramatic return.
I walked in, the Thai bartender greeted me by my first name. She and I had become quite good friends over the course of two or three years, and she knew I meant business on nights I showed up at 6:30, since I usually showed up with the karaoke crowd later in the evening, to stay til 2. I sat down at the bar and drank my Bud Lights without speaking a word for a half hour. She just stared at me. I appeared, upon catching my reflection in the mirror behind the bar, not dissimilar to the old Filipino who sat in the corner and drank away his remaining days. But my pity was of a different strain; I was tired of what must lie ahead of me in order for my life to be made right, he was simply just tired. And he was a little bit content. All this, of course, I didn't consciously think; it simply had become part of my daily acquiescence to the life that I was living. I thoroughly enjoyed being at the bar, as it was pretty much the only place in LA that seemed at all authentic. It was a karaoke bar called the Smogcutter and it sometimes smelled like rotten fish. (It was later discovered that there was mildew growing under the carpet behind the bar. I cannot speak to why there was carpet behind the bar.) It was owned and run by an old Thai woman who was called Mama. The walls were covered in red velveteen and their were various shrines around the room. The place, legend told its' patrons, for thirty years had a that only played country music predating the 1960's (it was replaced in 2001 with a newer model for CDs). So it was that I decided this place would become my own honky-tonk, and here I would proceed to absolutely pretend that my life existed only in the bar, as though I were a screen actor from the heyday of Westerns- which, I guess, was probably among the secret yearnings that comprised my capricious decision at 17 to go to college out here in the first place. The Smog was so absurdly decorated with both wallpaper and people that it felt like a movie set and I felt authentically Angeleno when I was a fixture at that bar.
Around 7, Erik came for some beers, and we talked briefly, mainly about Erik telling my boyfriend that he loves him and something about how I should tell him I love him too. I was lacking patience and didn't really want to address anything of that sort so I ordered another beer, and Erik went outside to talk to his girlfriend on the phone.
Keifer Sutherland came in and I just didn't feel like dealing with him. I'd been introduced to him like fifteen times but of course he wouldn't remember me. We had a short talk at the jukebox about the Talking Heads and being 27, then he was off to make out by the pool table with some girl who looked maybe like a guest star from 24, but I wasn't sure because I didn't watch the show.
Left to my beers, I looked up for a moment and caught my reflection. The huge mirror ran the length of the bar and I looked at Keifer and at the old Filipino and at my plump self. I just figured that everyone in that bar should be as pathetic as me. As depressive. Every person in that room should be a sad song from bygone days or a heartbreaking tale from a bleak frontier. Nobody ever went there if they didn't have something wrong with them; some vulnerability.
So I slipped into the 3'x3' ladies' bathroom (with a 7' ceiling and powder soap dispenser from 1967) and I leaned against the wall and and cried. It smelled like sewage and there was a sign on the wall reading, "Ladies: Please Throw All Papers In The Trash, And Until Further Notice, Please Limit Your Bathroom Activity to Urination." I cried and I cried because it wasn't fair that on my very own movie set, my sweet dirge was being spoiled by a simple reminder of the constant LA success around me. I was forced for just a second too long to think of my own lack of having done anything remotely useful with myself since helping my high school cross-country team win States in 1996 by placing 31st in a field of 500. I couldn't control it and I cried for twenty minutes. I just didn't know where my life had gone wrong. I thought I was supposed to be the star, but as it turned out, I was just another extra. And I was only capable of thinking in the most cliché metaphors, so I knew that I was stupid and I deserved to be a loser.
That night, I had four more beers, then moved a dining table from Erik's van into the apartment, then went back to the bar for another round. The next day was the same. Exactly the same. I drove to work, I submitted to the persecutions of my autistically bitchy coworkers, and I drove home. When I hit Virgil, I felt fine. Everything was wiped clean and I had my little hillside LA story that I could tell myself: I was just a sad loner floating through life in my very own epic Western. I would go to the Smog again three days later. I lived this life for two and a half years.
I read Jose Saramago's Blindness a few months after the night I cried in the urine-soaked bar bathroom. It took me a while to read it, because I hated it. I actually hated it so much that it made me lose my appetite, and I lost weight when I read it. So when I was reading it, I lost like 30 pounds and I was hot for a brief period of time. During this time, I went to the Smog one night and I was hit on by a short young Irish guy (with a beret) who was trying on Hollywood. He kept talking of his "really famous" boss who he didn't want to name, and of a recording studio around the corner that he wanted me to go back to, with him and some hipster girls who looked like the 19-year old Cobrasnake models and some guys who looked British and had their nails painted black. We were going to go make some off-the-cuff music. I didn't go, but I wrote down the studio number on the back cover of Blindness, which was the only paper thing I had in my purse. I was supposed to dial that number at the gate for them to let me in.
The next time I saw Keifer we ended up drinking after-hours together and he told me that he had a recording studio around the corner from the Smog. I didn't bother to tell him that I'd met his PA, but skipped the late-night jam session. I also didn't tell him I had his phone number on the back cover of a Nobel Prize winner's book, or that he made me cry in the bathroom. I did tell him that his ears were pinned back too far, and I thought they looked better when they were more natural like when he was in Footloose.
I never did anything to change my life, and my car got towed for being unregistered. The crazy bitches got fired, but one of them stole a client from the company, so she ended up ahead in the end. And every day for the rest of my life, I drove back down Melrose to Virgil, my overture silent as I disappeared into the Sunset hills, aphorisms echoing between the buildings, the valley of the Smogcutter awaiting my melodramatic return.
posted by Kir at 3:13 PM
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