The Overnighter

Then it really started to go downhill when I learned the boys who sell me Modelo at 7-11 didn’t get an Xmas bonus this year. I was standing in line with two Modelo on Xmas Eve afternoon, hoping to catch the last light at the table in the garden, and not really bursting with cheer (the bandwidth conflict), and I faked a Merry Christmas to Asif.

ASIF: [mumble mumble mumble]

ME: Asif, you OK?

ASIF: NO!

ME: What’s wrong?

ASIF: Boss gave no Christmas bonus, man…

I want to laugh and kill. It’s funny, Asif bitching about the Xmas bonus. It’s enraging, it’s everything that’s wrong with America, with humankind, with the universe…Well, not quite, because I had no idea that these guys were even in position to get bonuses…But damn it to hell, Asif, Manjit, and Gil all do a great job. I walk in there and, beyond their usual model behavior, they are cheerfully serving the guy in slippers and a bathrobe, who is addicted to the lottery—he’s got his dozens of slips of paper, his whole system mapped out, he’s standing there on the side, and he’s in slippers and a bathrobe most days…they aslo indulge a retarded “helper” who is doing some kind of time—he can only sit on a plastic milk carton tray most of the time, but they indulge him, dammit! And they cheerfully ring up any kind of desperate retail item that comes into the store, no matter how inane—those felt black Raider Christmas stockings are perhaps the greatest case in point—and the store is so busy, yet they always make time to ring up my Modelo with cheer.

Asif’s growing a beard, maybe in retaliation—who knows, maybe he’ll grow really despondent, join some Pakistani anti-7-11 cel, hatching a plot to jam the Slurpee machines across LA…No bonus! I told Lynn about it and of course she said:

LYNN: Yeah? How big was yours?

OK, no ordinary Xmas Eve…

~~~

For that matter, Ms. Apollonia, how big was yours? I agree, the cut-and-paste lifestyle wears thin at the holidays. Still, we’re obliged to go to “Derek’s” (”Derek’s”—how gay is that?) for Xmas Eve dinner with one of Ms. Apollonia’s benevolent workplace patrons. The hasty pudding waiter is taxed to the limit early on by a request for a second free taste of a second wine…he declines…immediately after, my martini arrives, enormous, double-digit dollars, and…lukewarm. I would send it back, even on Xmas Eve, but I fear all the good will between waiter and table has already been exhausted by this attempt to turn the evening into an impromtu wine tasting…grrrrrr…if I speak up, after this wine fiasco, the whole dinner will be blown…grrrrr….I’ll be sipping a beheamoth and expensive lukewarm martini that never kissed a single ice-cube all through Xmas Eve…grrrr…

~~~

Not that I deserve anything for Xmas beyond lukewarm martinis and corporal-level punishment. Of course, all year long I have been all the things God and Santa don’t dig: fretfully obstinate, overloaded with berserkness, splenetive and rash, pointlessly recreational, and possessed of a spiky temperament and a frequently sordid private life. Still, I wonder—do I ever do anything for anyone? Yes, of course I do—I am orientally polite to 7-11 clerks, and when women are beautiful I tell them so, and I am great at giving rides to and from the airport, and when life dishes up its horrorshow worst I do aspire to comfort the afflicted, if only for the moment, and if only with good intentions. So if the big wheel of karma shoves a flat tire my way at Xmas time, I’m obliged to grin and bear it anyway, and sure, we’ll take a friend to the Cathedral…

Pleasant service, merely so. After the service, Kostelnik walks over to say hello—he rarely does this. I feel good about it, for the moment I almost feel like he knows my name after three-and-a-half years. And then said friend, often hilariously spiky herself, takes on Kostelnik over a dangerous quibbling point of his sermon, something about midnight mass and Vatican II….I think I’m standing with Brady Westwater for a minute, but no, it’s my longtime friend, frequently spiky, maybe some of my own spikiness derives from admiration of her combative logorrhea, and here it comes, even in the Cathedral plaza on Christmas morn…by now, I am just looking for a camera to look into, to give my most pained Larry David face…

It’s not over yet, not by a long shot. I am busy missing travel arrangements as we speak. I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older that hell seems to manifest itself most directly over the holidays of late…you can live with your fresh little hells all year and compartmentalize them a bit, but at holiday time they arrive on little cat-feet, over and over, first the right forefoot of hell, then the left, then behind, now all you’ve got is an icy holiday for everything but your gin…and then you get an email, someone spent the holiday bedside in the hospital, attending a dying relative…hell? It’s just the right forefoot after all…that goes for you too, Asif—how could we forget as much? (Answer: natural born only-child-level selfishness).

….Lynn in Seattle, now I’m supposed to join her…transit problems, I think I have to take a freaking Greyhound Bus…No, in truth this holiday has been merely flat and fragile. There’s no reason to have been completey exhausted by an Xmas in which I only saw, all together, four people other than Lynn—but if you only can complain about as much, should you really be yearning for a yurt so you can go hut-of-baba-yaga it for a year in the backyard…or simply live for another day, another Xmas, another frozen year, and try again?

The Overnighter

Lisa gave me a shotglass for Christmas. It’s an admirable one, charcoal and modern; I can use it with one of my flasks, nipping from it at intermission. I can use it splashing lime juice on top of sweet rum. I can use it; it fits my Spiky Temperament and Frequently Sordid Private Life; thank you, Lesniak.

I am due in Seattle Monday and don’t know how I’m getting there yet. But I am certain that the Virgin Mary will make yet another artful intervention in my life. And I haven’t encountered the Virgin much in my Advent to date; although I have thus far neglected to mention how, the day I went out to the Harbor Room to have an Old Fashioned (an Overnighter Lynn posed many affable questions about recently), I stopped in at St. Vincent de Paul’s on the way home, and made a perfect prayer to the Virgin. Lest anyone say “How silly,” I am obliged to remind you that without the Blessed Virgin Mary there would be no Christmas, and basically any Son’s birth is truly a commemoration of the exemplary effort of that day expended by the Mother.

~~~

St. Vincent de Paul’s is a notably Churrigueresque-stylized church near USC, at Adams and Figueroa. The fact that there is a Churrigueresque-stylized church at the corner of Adams and Figueroa, built by a firm with a name like Albert C. Martin, with money from a family with a name like Doheny, may indeed be clinically insane, but all the more reason to be appreciative in my book, the way you are appreciative of aluminum Christmas trees and non-alcoholic beer. It is, rather, the fact that even people at purported institutes of higher learning consider a church built by a firm named Albert C. Martin to be at all exemplary of Churrigueresque architecture that is the greater educational crime—alas, it’s no different than believing that the earth is 6000 years old or that the moon is made of cheese.

St. Vincent de Paul’s is dark inside, darker than most. Before noon there are sprinkled faithful, largely Latino and Filipino, some praying Rosaries, a practice I find increasingly enchanting, even vital, as I grow older. My rose garden is a kind of Rosary…inside, St. Vincent de Paul’s is indeed redolent of Mexico; not turista Mexico but the Mexico of Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory Mexico, Mexico on the run, celebrity death match Mexico, Aztec sacrifice Mexico, where battlelines are drawn, there is only extreme darkness and extreme light, and you are either Faithful or you are Not. I am always on the reluctant cusp of faith myself so this Churrigueresque knockoff is good to me, and indeed you can find the Virgin anywhere you seek Her anyway.

I made my perfect prayer at the communion rail—itself an anachronism within a faux-antiquity—in Catholicism, there are many levels of error even attendant to the most perfect of prayers—and was walking from mid-aisle to statue, Gucci heels pounding the humble paving stones of the transept in slow, holy rhythm, many scattered sets of eyes on me–I, a tall Anglo in the Mexican chiaroscuro noontide….

…and my cel went off.

~~~

Suffering my ignominy later at Popeye’s Chicken across the street, also at Adams and Figueroa. This monument seems more artful to me at this particular intersection than a Churrigueresque-stylized church, to be honest. And inside it’s all Buffalo wings (new!) and tankards of soft drinks. I needed something to restore myself before seeing Lynn. So I had me a few of them wings.

One man in a wheelchair with a social worker in tow—he was coughing as though straight from a tuberculosis sanatorium, and had a blanket over his legs. Reminded me of a Katrina victim at the Superdome. There was a seat available at a table with a woman already seated at it. She was dirty and obviously schizophrenic, and I took it. I like talking to schizos, imagining I am good at it—I’m really not, but at least I understand that they have trouble distinguishing boundaries, which we all do to some degree, writers being luckier than most because when writers violate boundaries you generally can’t tell, and besides, it’s part of their job to do so.

“You don’t trust me. I like you,” she said as soon as I sat down.

“I trust you,” I said. “But I know you have reason not to trust people. It’s OK with me.”

“You’re good,” she said. She was working on an order of wings herself.

The tuburcular man coughed, menacingly.

“Shut up,” the woman at my table yelled. Then she added more:

“These are people who have lean and hungry looks. That lean and hungry look.”

By now I was working hard at memorizing conversation. I was going to write down everything I could as soon as I got back into the car. “That lean and hungry look” is Shakespeare, of course, Julius Caesar.

“Wow, you know your Shakespeare,” I said, and she smiled. I wasn’t fussy for the smile, but I acknowledged it with one of my own.

Then she started screaming again.

I challenged her this time.

“Have you spoken to other people today, or just me?”

It was a terrible question, but it also established a boundary in her mind, and she identified it. Now she hated me; I was one of them. The people on the clinical side.

“I don’t trust you and I don’t like you,” she said.

“It’s OK,” I said, ruined, but kind of happy to have re-established the boundary to her.

“You think I’m crazy. That’s what you’re doing here.”

Busted! By a schizo! Yet again! They do two things very well: play chess and see motives. Yet I admitted:

“Look—anyone who walks over to that Church over there and says a prayer to the darkness—aren’t they crazy?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, I did that. I think I’m crazy. I don’t know about you.”

“I don’t know about anybody,” she said.

~~~

Minutes later, I was in the car, working on my own tankard of soft drink. Something was rattling around at the bottom of the drink, and I checked it out, opening the plastic lid, somewhat nervously…

Hilariously, the plastic spigot that filters the drink had fallen into my cup. I dutifully returned it via the drive-thru window, and sped away from the intersection of Adams and Figueroa, still glad for the time at St. Vincent de Paul’s, and still glad for the time at Popeye’s Chicken. The spigot was about the size and shape of a shotglass.

Hermosa

So where
did I lose the Stuka
pelicans; to which
lifeguard stand did they say
au revoir at last,

and the sandpipers with
their panicky legs,
where did they race to, finally?

Bicycling, along with a school
of dolphins for a mile,
maybe more, ramping up
and down the strand, as the smiles
rise to spout, their dorsal fins
splitting the surf like
a laugh at the library
gone out to open water now

drinking
one martini
deliberately,
while her nude fin-legs
prick a green olive
the plastic Mermaid
has many such suitors
many would-bes, but no

real lovers, like
the sun
to which all sandpipers scuttle,
all pelicans rise,
all dolphins blow,
all mermaids shake and flap,
every soul seeks out, the sun
at last says in the evening:

Here
is the wind now coming your way,
your feathers blown like spring pollen,
your beaks crusted, damaged,
your blowholes spraying harmlessly,
your shoulders
growing colder in my breeze,
your faces sandpapered,
your bodies beaten, exhausted, spent at last...

did you think I would fail
to make you too wholly mine in the end,
and why
do you still need me,
not settling, not letting
the setting light go again,
even yet again?

The Overnighter

This song is played quick and is mostly all downstrokes.
It is fairly difficult to play up to speed.

A Manhattan at the Rustic, calling your whisky—or letting Jamie call it for you—costs $9. Jamie still wears a locket with the king of Thailand around her neck. She is still crazy and worth it, even in those plaid pants—unsettlingly, the only other woman I know who’s a two and who wears plaid pants is Lynn. But Lynn would never say what Jamie said when the Stella Artois tap sprayed foam and froth all over her blouse.

“Gee,” said Jamie the barmaid, without a blink, “I didn’t even rub it!” A called Manhattan at the Rustic is now $9, and as delivered by Jamie, I don’t complain about it.

She had to leave
Los Angeles

~~~

Mel is now at The Drawing Room across the street. She used to be at the Rustic but like Pooch ten years ago she took the walk.

The Drawing Room has nothing on tap, but lots of bottles. If the Rustic is a neighborhood bar that attracts people from all over, The Drawing Room is the neighborhood bar that attracts people from the Rustic.

“Is it too much trouble to make a Manhattan?”

“Noooo!” she sings. Mel is also one of the most beautiful bartenders in America. She has the body of a fertility goddess from a culture in which fertility is not only extremely important, but an art form. Her eyes are halfway to Cambodia and her lips look permanently pressed against glass even though there is no glass. She also has haunting and barely-hurt eyes that make you imagine that those on the other side of the bar are her personal Lords Protector.

A Manhattan at The Drawing Room with a well whisky is $4.50.

“How long has Mel been here?” I ask Lou, an actor, who has like me been everywhere forever.

“Six months,” Lou tells me.

~~~

Shuttling between Ye Olde Rustic and The Drawing Room for hours on a Sunday, I’m nowhere but home, home where I’ve been for years and years. Nobody in either needs to think of another place to go. At one point, at The Drawing Room of course, I run into Russ, a colossal bore, but one I feel for, and he asks me if I’m “doing laundry.” I don’t know how to answer other than “No.” At one point at The Rustic I watch a new waitress slam her pussy against the sink below the bar four times in rhythm with every quick thump-and-pump in the power chords (E C D G A) after the chorus of X’s “Los Angeles.” She had to get out get out get out get out get out. It wouldn’t occur to me to do that even if I had one and even if it did occur to me I wouldn’t do it but it looks like an immensely enjoyable and satisfying thing to do—it looks as good as sex, maybe better—it looks purposeful, universal, a high human achievement: the female pelvic thrust.

~~~

Two a.m. and Fred 62. Dozens of people, nobody near sleep. “Hi, what can I do to serve you?” a waitress asks through a pasted-on smile. “You don’t have to fake it,” I say, “I know it’s wild and you’re tired.” I’m 48, she’s 34. All her toys wore out in black. She leans over and grabs both my arms and shakes her hair against mine. Her hair against my hair feels like affection, it feels like sister to best brother. To think that that bitch Tough Galina, when this place was George’s, when that bitch Tough Galina was 48 and I was 34, used to routinely tell me to go fuck myself for not bringing Trina in enough, and not being nice enough to her, or something. The head-to-head greeting is better. There are just a few moments as you get older that are better.

It’s a patty melt and onion rings and a Sierra Nevada. It’s just past last call but I can squeeze in the beer. Nobody to my mind is adequately dressed for how cold it is. I have my chronic turtleneck and scarf and leather jacket and salt-and-pepper sweater uniform on and I’m still freezing. Lynn is either snoring or snoring and drooling, somewhere between a comforter and nobody. Sunday night is Monday morning. After the happy meal, it’s time to tip and smile just as fakely but in an even more fake bashful way, and to go home.

~~~

That was just for fun. Here’s the real drinking: Monday morning. Monday morning in the South Bay. First stop is a pawn shop on Hawthorne Boulevard in Lawndale.

See, there was this episode. When I was in Hermosa for two vacation weeks in summer, there was this episode with a bottle of Campari, an exhibitionist, an Easy Reader, and other things. The Mermaid Tavern was involved. The downside was I lost my wallet, the near catastrophe was if Lynn would find out she’d kill me, the upside was that I had both my passport in my bag and a very pawnable watch. The bank wouldn’t take anything less than two IDs from me. [Ed.: I like pawn shops anyway, a fact Lynn detests. They fit my Spiky Temperament & Frequently Sordid Private Life.] After an enjoyable bicycle ride, I pawned the watch at a fabulous pawn shop for $85 bucks—no Hollywood shop, I know from some engagingly desperate episodes at the track, would give more than $65 on the same watch—which meant I didn’t have to go home for another three whole days. I biked the strand, raced dolphins, drank those martinis at The Mermaid that they serve with the plastic mermaid pronging the olive with her legs, and ate omelettes and salads and salami sandwiches, as a boy might. I drank Modelo. Three days later, I took the Green Line to the Blue Line to the Red Line and was home, and began replacing things.

Four months later and the pawn ticket is due. I would hate to lose the watch but it’s not convenient to get to the South Bay and I’ve pushed things to their elastic limit, as usual. I reclaim the watch and stop at Bluebird Liquor for more Modelos to take to my parents’ grave at Holy Cross.

Bluebird Liquor makes the news all the time—they sell lots of lottery tickets. I find the place boring, but they’ve got a special table at which our lovely underclass can fill out their tickets. I’m in the wrong line with my Modelos, but get checked out anyway. Onto the gravesite.

~~~

I like to talk to my parents at their gravesite. Certainly, they understand the Modelo. They tell me that Mexicans come by all the time with cans of Bud, and surfers with bottles of Jack Daniels. My parents are laying in perpetuity next to one Czarina Figueroa, who also died in 1991. Have no idea who Czarina was, but just from the name I know she is a great heroine of mine.

~~~

Can’t take a trip to the South Bay without hitting the Harbor Room. But the jog over from the cemetary is unusually amusing. Suddenly I’m as captivated by the street names along the western side of Jefferson as with a barmaid slamming her pussy into the sink four efficiently exciting times after the chorus of Los Angeles, or with a waitress who lets fall her hair against mine, or a Modelo at my parents grave, or my Tag Heuer on my wrist after four naked months. Mesmer, Juniette, Emporia, Selmaraine, Etheldo, Beatrice, Hammack. It was a great day for Los Angeles, the day those streets were named.

10:37 a.m., two drinkers at the Harbor Room, and a new barmaid. The Harbor Room is a tiny triangle. Most of the clients are 50-80. Everyone who works at other bars in Playa Del Rey drinks at the Harbor Room. Including some WWII vets, one of whom, who owns the Marina restaurant, was not on our side.

“Is it too much trouble to fix an Old Fashioned?”

“No, of course not.”

There’s no orange wedge. It turns out there’s no cherry either. I couldn’t care less, but she says, “Wait, let me get one from across the way.” Across the way is Mo’s—there’s a lot of back-and-forth here too, as between the Rustic and The Drawing Room. But Mo’s isn’t open yet. While waiting I check the row of celeb photos—sure enough, the glossy of the old Utah Jazz Coach, Frank Layden, is still up, but Christmas foliage hides the dedication.

“They weren’t open yet.”

“This is why I always ask if it’s too much trouble,” I smile.

“I thought I had everything.”

“I’ll take what you have.”

Which is lemon and lime and bitters and sugar, thank God. I’m not fussy to sit at the bar—though the peanuts in bottles of Patron are a nice alcoholic touch—and I get up and move about the tiny space, looking at photos. Finally, I find my quarry, and point, and ask the barmaid to come over.

“I’m really sorry, I don’t even know your name, but can—”

“Loretta.”

“Joseph. Can I ask you, does she still work here.”

I point at a photo to she, Maggie.

“No. She went to Mo’s. She wanted to work nights. She’s been there about six months.”

Mel walked across the street from Rustic to Drawing Room six months ago. Maggie walked across the street from Harbor Room to Mo’s six months ago.

She had to get out, get out
get out, get out, get out, get out

Is there any doubt that this is the life for me? I find every corner of it amazing. Who else knows as much? Besides me and you, I mean…

This song is played quick and is mostly all downstrokes.
It is fairly difficult to play up to speed.