ARTISTE
INTRODUCTION
This is pornography. You are only reading it because you can not look at it. It is only interesting because it involves bloody carnage, money, and nudity. There is no vital information to be gleaned from reading this. No higher purpose, no life calling, no cautionary wisdom, and no caustic rebuke of general mores is to be found on this page or any that follow. It is just a story told in straightforward, factual reportage. It concerns a man raised in money who grew to become even more successful in his father’s business than said father had been. This one is for prurient interests. Please don’t find anything else here. There will be pictures.
When William Bush was a young man, he made a name for himself as the socialite brat son of a well known installation artist, Georgie Bush. While Georgie was bringing in a fortune by placing mimes next to a desk, his son W. was out enjoying the nightlife that New York had to offer. By the time Georgie had pieced together a living room in a gallery of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, thus achieving billionaire’s status, W. was busying himself in a gay bar along Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, during the early 90s rush among the glitterati to “go gay”. It was this implicit condoning of gay marriage that nearly toppled Georgie’s reign. But few things are as inevitable as an installation artist becoming staunchly wealthy. In the end W. recanted and publicly agreed that gay marriage would bring about the downfall of U.S.ian civilization. His little rich friends agreed, and thus Osama Bin Laden was defeated in the greatest battle in the War On Terror I, The Gay Marriage Amendment.
Nobody could accuse Georgie of not raising his boy with the proper respect for humanity. W. finally achieved respectable status in his own right several years later, with his now classic painting/mixed-media-piece “Hobo Who Got Stabbed In The Chest, Drowned In Sulfuric Acid & Melted”.
The questions that now surround the life of W. Bush are a sad turn of events for the man once hailed as “The Prince oF Pop Art” (Time Magazine, 1994). At what point did killing homeless people go from concept-kitsch to over-bearing bore? Is it really fair for a celebrity to fake his own death in a Pay-Per-View spectacle? Doesn’t the glamour-loving public deserve more? Or is First Amendment Constitutional double-speak about “free speech” (Los Angeles Times, May, 31 2003) more than just a string of syllables?
One thing is certain. W. Bush killed a lot of people. He was an innovator at a time when less corporal artists stood around doing nothing. And he was an American original. Nowhere else in the world could he have bought the modified Hummer H2 that he used to kill David Justice and seal him in a mylar pouch with lifetime statistics sewn onto the back (“Baseball Card”, currently exhibited in the Hague).
What is not so certain is what part W. played in cleaning up the rampant drug use in the professional athletic community. As well, what part did he play in stopping global warming? Ergo, did he actually do any of the things he took credit for? Aside from killing a bunch of homeless people? How much does any of this have to do with the actual story? Very much less than one might imagine.
Enjoy
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Chapter One – In The Beginning…
The night began at a party in the Hollywood Hills home of actor David Gourmet, grand-nephew of Edith Gourmet. He had decided to bring together the world of Young art and the world of young Hollywood. He succeeded in a way he had never dreamed possible.
It was a cool autumn night in a sleepy City of Angels. Winds rushed through the Canyon as though God himself were having a huge asthma attack brought on by the stress of bringing his most prized creations, celebrities, together for a night of revelry. He had to top his last outing, and now things were very cold as W. Bush drove his brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee along Mulholland Drive to the Valley-side home of his boyhood friend David.That date, October 16, held a special significance for the boys already. It was the day they had met, lo so many year a-prior (5 years), at the Santa Monica Crossroads school. David was on his way to an art class when he tripped over a sleeping W., who was in deep concentration preparing for an acting class. The irony of this chance meeting was not lost on the two, who had made it a year-marker. This particular year, they had invited many A-List guests to ring in their “New Year” together. Even though each man had his share of homosexual moments, it is not clear whether or not they have ever shared anything more than a passing sexual bond.
“W. wasn’t really a gay man, so much as he was an opportunist”
David Gourmet now resides in a California penal colony in the dusty backroads just south and east of Santa Barbara. Even though he has been in prison for “14 years, 6 months, and 13 days”, as he states repeatedly in our 3 days together, he still maintains a modicum of the youthful boyishness that made him so attractive to the teenage girls (and boys) of this country. He will be free on or around May 27th, 2007. It is a hard road to plow for this child of priviledge. Where he used to beg the pretty boys at The Prison (a high concept bar that ruled the club scene of Los Angeles for three weeks in 1987) for oral sex, he is now forced to perform fellatio on 400-lb men with syphilis. His neck is green with advanced syphilis of the throat. If he survives the next several years inside, noone can say how long he will survive once he is out. His once booming finances have certainly dwindled. Whoa is he.
“I remember when W. was happy just to get his picture in the WeHo Art Sheet. He’d scamper around the prison looking for boys to dance with just so he could get his picture taken. He wasn’t gay, just thought-provoking.”
David lights a cigarette, stares into the distance for a moment, takes a long drag, stares for a moment, then takes another drag. What is amazing is that he never exhales. The smoke escapes through several holes in his throat on the way down. He never really gets much of a nicotine fix.
“It was thought, at the time, that to be an important new artis you had to be die-hard gay. W. wanted to be important more than anything else in the world. His commitment to that idea sustained him through many an ass-plugging. All of us knew he wasn’t gay, so we would plow his ass unnecessarily hard every chance we got. Even though most of us didn’t like anal sex. I still don’t much care for it.”
He motions to his throat. I don’t know what the syphilis in his throat has to do with anal sex, but I nod and laugh. A moment passes between us.
“He never hit me.”
This small fact may have ultimately been the spring board for W. to escape the fun-boy ghetto of glamorous art and become an MTV icon. It definitely kept him out of jail.
As that fateful night began in earnest, there were about 3000 people crammed into David’s 2436 square foot home. Some of them were crushed and killed within seconds of entering the party. Paramedics waited outside, helplessly, while more hangers-on and pseudo-celebrity stragglers attempted to enter “The Main Event”. There were other parties around town to celebrate the meeting of these two momentous characters, but most of them were in dark church cellars, with prayers being sent up to the lord like kites every 13 minutes. The Hollywood Hills home of one of the two greaties was absolutely the hot spot.
As David and W. sat above the fray, lounging in near isolation on David 16’x 22’ mattress, W. turned to his old friend and let out a secret. It till haunts Mr. Gourmet to this day and, to this day, he will still not reveal what was said.
“He turned to me and told me that he believed in Jesus and that, under the One True Cross, he, William Bush, would become more famous than anyone – certainly any other painter – had ever been. And he would do it by destroying the devil.Now, you have to understand, up to this point in human history the devil is still seen rather benignly. Sure he plays gags on people, like telling little kids to go eat poop, but he’s a harmless prankster really. He’s this huge religious figure with this huge following of fans, but nobody believed he was really evil.But Georgie, W.’s father, had really had a profound impact on his boy. It’s too bad, I always thought he took more after his mom until that point.”
Georgie Bush was part of a radical Christian sect that had sought out the devil in all his many guises with the big idea being that the devil could be killed while he was wearing a white robe. What has never been made public is whether it was Georgie or The Devil who would need to be wearing the white robe. If you read the first sentence in this paragraph it isn’t really ever made clear. That’s the secret that David Gourmet holds, and he will probably take it to the grave.
It was at that point in the party that W.’s plan for cultural domination became clear to David and the several onlookers who were in the room not saying anything.Todd Grace was one of those onlookers. She remembers it like it was yesterday.“Just like it was yesterday.
”With a little prodding I explain to her that I wasn’t intending my question as a simple yes or know. “Do you remember what happened?”
“David was kind of tuggin’ at W.’s pants bottom, right around the ass, y’know? And he starts to shiver. David, I mean. I guess W. had let one go and didn’t tell anyone. He thought he was top of the cats pajamas, that one did. So David recoils, and we all gasped, you know, ‘cause we knew David was thinking he could just assault W.’s asshole. And W. had a different idea.”
Todd Grace is a woman with an ironically masculine name. Even though she is barely 40 years old, she has picked up all the annoying speech traits of an 85-year old. She also has the teeth and hearing of an 85-year old, and I assume those things are all related. On her driver’s license, her age is listed as 85, but she is only 40.
Even though they basically told the same story about this moment, I feel it is necessary to cut between the interviews of both Todd and David. It uses all my sources and makes this book seem much more thoroughly researched.
David stretches out his long thin frame. He still looks like a movie idol at times like this. He is reclining on a bench in the common area of the prison. One suspects that there is no reason for David to stay in prison. The guards barely notice him, and the door to his cell is never even locked. Still, he tried to walk out once and got shot in the foot. Never again.
“So W.’s sitting on my bed, and I tug at his pants bottom…”
Lost in David’s still ever-so-dreamy eyes, I had forgotten what he was talking about. With razor-sharp precision I am able to finally remember just in the nick of time. He is telling me about Georgie’s announcement of his plan to become a big huge celebrity. A plan that apparently worked all too well.
“He turns to me and says, ‘David, there’s a lot of dead people down on your front lawn.’ I just smiled and put on a goofy Southern accent, because what gay boy can resist a Southern cowboy? I said to him, ‘I reckon there maught bee.’ He didn’t laugh, but…”
“We all cracked up! Heaven’s to Betsy!”
Thanks, Todd.
“He just looks at me for a moment. Maybe 5 seconds, this moment was. And he says, he says, ‘I should go down and paint them.’ I thought he was gonna take a picture or draw a sketch and go home and paint that as a picture.
”No, thank you, David!"
According to witnesses and news reports, including the New York Times group interview with the security guards at the party (December 21, 1993), what W. did was walk downstairs from the bedroom to the common area, parting the crowds as he went, pick up seven of the dead trampled bodies, and pile them up neatly in the front lawn. He then returned to the house, made his way to the linen closet, and pulled out seven white flat-sheets. He went back to the front lawn and, in full view of guests paparazzos (not one of whom snapped a single photograph), and security personnel he laid the seven sheets flat in the yard and immediately placed one dead body face up on each sheet. Next, he made his way to the garage before materializing in the front yard with seven cans of house paint, each a different color. W. Bush then proceeded to denude each corpse. Their naked, bloody, glistening bodies now covered only by moonlight, and leaves and twigs, W. began painting them. He opened the cans of paint, and poured the full contents of each one on a separate body and sheet combination.Immediately, the crowd responded. They were obviously in the presence of greatness.
The reason that they were at the party had now been confirmed. W. Bush (and David Gourmet) was a truly great man, deserving of the Presidency of the United States of America. He had just created art.
Within minutes, there were bidders for each piece. “Yellow (No. 5)” pre-sold (since it was neither dried nor framed) for $16,000,000 to an “investor”. That night, W. pocketed well over $74,536,392 in total sales. It was shear pandemonium.
“I never actually left my room. I just went to sleep. He was still my best friend at that point."
Here in a California State Prison sits a tired broken man. His name is David Gourmet, and he did not paint any of the victims of his party. Beside W. Bush, 3 others followed suit. While none of them proved to be as successful, they all became billionaires in the late 90s. David Gourmet, however, became a prisonaire.
On the subject of Mr. David, sir, Todd Grace had this to say of his actions that fateful night:“He went to sleep.”
Friday, January 06, 2006
Monday, December 26, 2005
greatest story ever told, by me precisely
“The Greatest Writer in the History of the World”
In spite of any declarations I may have made in my life, I don’t really know God. He could be a swell guy. He didn’t ruin my life. He may have designed me to be lazy, but I don’t know.
My world is very small. Others around me go places and do things. I know these people but I don’t do things with them. God probably did not have anything to do with that. It is entirely possible that he meets my friends places when they are all out on vacation together and I am home alone or working at the fish factory. They have never told me these things.
My whole life revolves around wanting to have things done. I have no desire to do these things. I also have no desire to go to a bar and sit in silence. Half my life is spent in bars while people talk, meet, contend, coagulate, etc. I leave myself to make snide or willfully stupid commentaries. Sometimes I go outside and leave me in there but mostly I think about death.
Within the small pieces of earth and society that I inhabit there is room to expand. I have even gone so far as to meet people and talk to them. And, yes, make friends. Secretly this is why I go to bars. It is not why I drink, but drinking is why I have friends. This night I went out with lust in my heart and cocaine near my focus. And it began in a dark alley along a not-quite-main drag downtown.
Crampy Joe’s. If Jim Crow were in effect there would have been a sign on the door saying “Colored”. When the cabby dropped us off he did a double-take.
“You sure this is where you want to go?”
They assured him this was right. I didn’t know. Wasn’t aware that we were tourists. Found out quickly that we were joining a train of young hipsters there to slum it. It wasn’t a long jump back to Silverlake habitués, so it’s reasonable to assume nobody realized it was sightseeing.
The second we hit the curb we were facing three crippled teenagers and their caretakers. They were each getting their hair done. In the middle of the night, on the curb, in the middle of Downtown.
One of the girls from our group stopped to talk to a guy who assured us that we were college students. I didn’t think about it, kind of laughed. She was a college student, though. So she stopped to talk to him about her college.
He asked her if she was an exchange student. Somebody snickered that we were all exchange students. It seemed like he was putting the guy down but that was, at most, implicit. A woman standing outside of Crampy Joe’s told us that we looked pretty American to her. The whole crew started walking. Somehow that broke the tension from questionable to menacing.
I didn’t mean to come in and gawk or feel like I was salt-of-the-Earth. I didn’t want instant nostalgia. I wanted a bar to drink and have sex in. I really wanted that. But Crampy Joe’s or T.G.I. McScratchy’s or Diver Down or whatever “funky” Eastside bar I found myself in still would have brought up the question of why this is fun. As a social activity.
I am a social alcoholic and a private teetotaler. I never drink in the 10 or so hours per week that I am home alone. And when I am out, while I am actually there, all I feel is shame at not having a partner or a fuck buddy or a husband or a wife or a girlfriend or a fiancé. I feel fucking shamed. And that is what I do for fun.
I do not actually feel any good will for stories of how “we found each other” or “how lucky we are.” I don’t always feel angry for it, but it’s never a good feeling. And I never feel happy for people kissing. I used to feel shameful for being the couple kissing. And I don’t want a girlfriend or a wife ever again. That will change, but I don’t want it to. I want to be a hermit with far away children and memories of a long dead and beautiful bride. I only want the dead one. I don’t look forward to all the joy and family fun and those sorts of things. I want loneliness and 200-year old bottles of Scotch while I look at ships trawling around in the sea. In this version of the story, there is always a visible moon.
Somehow this all occurs to me in an instant. Satori! Shit, here I am in a crew of people with girlfriends and living wives and nearby, very young children. It is wretched. I am wretched.
When we first got in the cab there was a cute girl who was very messy and likable. She was not there for my sake, though, and I will never force the issue. Like I said, I never want to actually have things; I want to have had them. And people are possessions. Much more tangibly than a pet or a yard could ever be.
Now we are bumbling down the street to another bar. This new bar is sanctioned, apparently. I don’t think anyone in the crew knows for sure but the question of “Are we on Skid Row?” is asked and not answered. We aren’t, but there are homeless people and it is dark and there is not sheen to anything. The parking police drive a multi-toned quasi-lowrider. In spite of the urban knowledge delivered by Vice and the LA Weekly our collective self finds this all exotic and dangerous. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (was it Ginsberg?) pushing a shopping cart down the streets of San Francisco or New York is in my head. I don’t remember the girl’s name. I never remember the girl’s name. The new bar has a line out front and it’s pretty much last call, so we are none of us in a rush to go in. The crew starts to dissipate. The fat guy in the Lycra (I know I hadn’t mentioned any characters so far, but this one makes me laugh, in hindsight, so I had to bring him up) waffles between following me, Jackie and the Killer or going to eat. The fat guy chooses food. That somehow always strikes me as obscene. This is no different.
There is no crew to speak of now. It’s just the three of us, which is similar to being around my brothers except there are no fake Catholic Masses (or real ones) and the Killer has never met my mother. Most of my brothers and sisters have. We go to a bar.
The new bar is in a hotel, across from the reception room where a wedding party is ongoing. We are still downtown, but now in the silly clean corridor where they built all the new expensive townhomes and condos and what not. We are now threatened by halfway rich people who are very wealthy compared to ourselves even though they do not appear to be much older. Maybe this is more disconcerting than it is threatening. I always wanted somebody to make a pop song that says, “I hate everyone.” Sometimes I want to make it myself. More often I wish I didn’t have to have a shape and could just float in warm jelly. Still, here I am in a bar having fun.
An old woman is tending the bar. We are there for four or five hours between 1am and 2am. This is similar to being in warm jelly, but not as comfortably amniotic. Also, it involves drinking, whereas my idea of being in jelly wouldn’t involve moving on purpose. The old woman gives us a pamphlet that tells us where all the bars are. She tells us about something that burns or something and something to do with a bar crawl, which is what we were trying to join, Killer and I. Jackie was on the whole thing. I’m not sure what the woman is saying. She has an accent, but that’s not why I can’t understand her. Jackie and the Killer are speaking, too, and I don’t understand them, either. I just don’t understand right now.
Once when I was drunk and a little skied up I told the Killer that I was the greatest writer who has ever lived in the history of the world. Jackie had my back on it. I was explaining why I was much better than Shakespeare, for what that was worth, but also better than Dante and Hemingway. And everybody else who has ever lived. Nobody asked me for proof then. No one has asked for proof since. Sometimes I talk a lot for no reason other than to keep talking, to stay tethered to the people in the world. There are stacks of words that fall out of my mouth that don’t mean anything but sound like conversation. And I rarely, if ever, listen to what anyone else is saying. That time I really meant it, though.
I haven’t been able to write much ever since I started working all the time. I’m pretty sure that’s related. I never thought of writing taking a physical toll on me and I never thought of time as a bitch goddess until I had to pay my own bills and couldn’t afford to pay for my credit cards anymore. I hate everything except for sex.
So I’m here in this bar, the one in the hotel, and I’m looking at every girl that walks in as a possible sex partner. Even if they are with other men, women, fish, etc. I’m also looking at the fish tanks. And every once in a while I drop into the conversation that is next to me. Robotically I chime in on every name I recognize. Ronnie? I’ve heard of him! You’re mom? I’ve met her! Cows? They stink!
Mostly, I’m just feeling mopey because I don’t ever do anything I like and I’m ashamed of the way I make my living. And I live on scraps compared to these people. And the only thing I’ve really ever been better at than other people I know is writing, and I’m not really even very good at that. But I’ve convinced myself for a long time that I am the greatest writer that has ever lived and so I am gotten fat and lazy, soft and buttery. Just like my physique. Except with less hair. And now I’m not even good at writing compared to the people I know. I am just a malcontent.
So I’m in this bar, listening, not really speaking, and I keep thinking what I was thinking earlier. I hate everyone, and bars are a storehouse for people and their stories. People and their sex lives. People meeting people. People talking to people. People inviting other people to come hang out at the firehouse after hours because there’s going to be poker and fun and rib-eyed steaks with potato chips. I hate bars.
I never think of anything to do other than go to a bar. I have one that I like. It is in Studio City and so people in the basin and the eastside think it is too far away and it is uncool because it is in the Valley. I like it because I will never run into anyone there by accident. I like it because it is cheap. Also, nobody I know has ever hooked up with anybody because they went to the place. I wouldn’t name it in print because I don’t want people to go there. I like it how it is and has been for years.
I like going to museums. I like walking around, playing sports, throwing things, hurting animals, burning cars, and destroying houses. But I don’t like to ask people to do these things with me. It would be like asking a friend to come over and help you with your masturbation homework. You could do it, and certainly folks do, but it feels like an intrusion into me. Well, I don’t hurt animals or burn houses or whatever other shit I say, but I don’t like to share myself with people. It’s like I lose control at that point.
Anyway, the point I was getting at, as I’m sitting in the bar I start to think I should be writing. I’m drunk and despondent and having happy times, but I want to be writing. Because there’s this story (there are about eight that revolve in my head all the time: 3 screenplays and 5 novels) that I have been meaning to write for the last few years and I think I could really nail the voice of it if I started right now. It is one of the novels, and it will be perfect. I am going to become the literary champion of a new generation and I will thank J.K. Rowling for getting kids to read again because kids my age sure as hell never did it. And that is what I want to be doing.
“Dude, you want to go to a strip club?”
We can’t, really, because Jackie is in love and we are meeting his girlfriend in about 5 minutes, after the bar closes. So he would not be interested. I am not really interested either. The Killer’s suggestion is left alone while a story about a strip club incident that happened about a year before with Mikey J and Earnhardt is recounted. It’s a good story and people should really hear it some time, but it’s best if those components are left unformed as of now. It’s really better for all involved.
So we’re not going to the strip club, which is better because I’m scared it would be boring with all the new laws that are being enacted. Why are their always new laws governing strip clubs? I’ve been to quite a few, and the faction of the community that is actually being affected by the constant changes in laws is a very small portion of the society, so why is it necessary to infringe on it? But we’re not doing anything else, either. Well, me and the Killer aren’t. Jackie has a girlfriend, and if it’s anything like the girlfriends I’ve had, it’s a crap shoot that he has anything to do, either. But the chances he is going to have sex are heightened by the presence of all these people and the filthy stink of being a social being that is so fresh upon him. Good work, pal. Really, I mean it. I hate the fact that it’s you and not me. But it’s a lot of work to be happy. A shitload more work than I have to put into being miserable. Besides, I’m happier being miserable than I could ever be having a lot of friends that I can’t remember.
Now we’ve got to find something else to do. We drive over to Anna’s. The Killer’s car is there and it’s not far from where Jackie and his precious cargo are heading. We go inside at Anna’s, just me and the Killer. Anna’s awake. We have drinks, discover too late that she has no blankets and pass out.
The next morning I wake up early. It’s raining for no apparent reason. I sit there and read the history of photography. Everyone else is still asleep (Anna’s man-love ChorizO is asleep there as well) because they all had padding under them. I slept on a wood floor and am not that resourceful that I could make it comfortable.
By the time the Killer wakes up, I have started hearing not-strange but sexual noises. At least the bathroom is now opened. Part of why I went outside in the first place is because it was locked. I didn’t have to pee bad enough to pee outside, but I thought about it just because it’s always a joyous occasion to pee outside unless you get a ticket from a police officer. What a dick.
We don’t bother to say goodbye, we just leave to go get juice. We stumble past the front house and probably are viewed but juice is all that’s important. We go to the happiest place on earth, Juices Fountain. There is a parking attendant asking for money, which is horrible. We don’t pay him, go inside and scarf juice. We drive back to the Killer’s apartment, I get in my car, and we make plans to reconvene later that day. By the time we finally break apart, I’m bounding. I can’t wait to get home and write.
All the way home I am thinking about the new threshold I’m about to cross. It’s going to be a great new world. After I am rich and successful I will let my friends come and live with me. There will be a great big pool, a sand shuffleboard, a basketball court, a bowling alley, and coastal access. Everybody will love coming over and I will be happy to have the respite from my solitary life of leisure.
First things first, though, I am excited to write the story because it’s going to be a great story. I will be happier for having it done than I will be for all the boundless success and monetary rewards that are sure to follow.
I more or less jump out of my car and run to my door. I go inside, pull out a stack of lined paper. Then I go pee to get it started. I thoroughly dry my hands after washing so I don’t smudge the paper. I could type it out but want the immediacy of loose leaf. I want to feel like I’m back in high school smoking weed and writing in between marathons of Madden on the Sega.
I get to the paper. I write the first line that I’ve had in my head for so long, but that’s the easy one. The second line, the one I thought of all night last night, the one that I was sure was going to be the slingshot that fired me onto my greatest winning streak ever, follows. But I can’t remember it exactly and, damn! If I hadn’t gotten it perfect in my head while I was listening to Jackie and the Killer talk about strip clubs past. No matter, I got the essence and it’s onto line three. By the time I’ve finished the first paragraph I’m exhausted. I turn on the football games to recharge and I’ll get back to the writing during the commercial breaks. That’s always the plan.
I get to a commercial break and fall asleep. An hour or so later ChorizO calls, followed in quick succession by the Killer, Jackie and Grant (our living breathing personage of worship). We will all meet up at the appointed time.
I look down at my piece of paper. Is it good work? No, it is a miserable failure. It is complete dreck. I can’t stand to look at it. I actually cry as I crawl into the shower. I can’t stand the fucking thought of going to another fucking bar. And I feel duty bound to do it. Why don’t people hate me more? I’m never going to be a writer at all. I just like to remember when I was in high school and I was good at it.
In spite of any declarations I may have made in my life, I don’t really know God. He could be a swell guy. He didn’t ruin my life. He may have designed me to be lazy, but I don’t know.
My world is very small. Others around me go places and do things. I know these people but I don’t do things with them. God probably did not have anything to do with that. It is entirely possible that he meets my friends places when they are all out on vacation together and I am home alone or working at the fish factory. They have never told me these things.
My whole life revolves around wanting to have things done. I have no desire to do these things. I also have no desire to go to a bar and sit in silence. Half my life is spent in bars while people talk, meet, contend, coagulate, etc. I leave myself to make snide or willfully stupid commentaries. Sometimes I go outside and leave me in there but mostly I think about death.
Within the small pieces of earth and society that I inhabit there is room to expand. I have even gone so far as to meet people and talk to them. And, yes, make friends. Secretly this is why I go to bars. It is not why I drink, but drinking is why I have friends. This night I went out with lust in my heart and cocaine near my focus. And it began in a dark alley along a not-quite-main drag downtown.
Crampy Joe’s. If Jim Crow were in effect there would have been a sign on the door saying “Colored”. When the cabby dropped us off he did a double-take.
“You sure this is where you want to go?”
They assured him this was right. I didn’t know. Wasn’t aware that we were tourists. Found out quickly that we were joining a train of young hipsters there to slum it. It wasn’t a long jump back to Silverlake habitués, so it’s reasonable to assume nobody realized it was sightseeing.
The second we hit the curb we were facing three crippled teenagers and their caretakers. They were each getting their hair done. In the middle of the night, on the curb, in the middle of Downtown.
One of the girls from our group stopped to talk to a guy who assured us that we were college students. I didn’t think about it, kind of laughed. She was a college student, though. So she stopped to talk to him about her college.
He asked her if she was an exchange student. Somebody snickered that we were all exchange students. It seemed like he was putting the guy down but that was, at most, implicit. A woman standing outside of Crampy Joe’s told us that we looked pretty American to her. The whole crew started walking. Somehow that broke the tension from questionable to menacing.
I didn’t mean to come in and gawk or feel like I was salt-of-the-Earth. I didn’t want instant nostalgia. I wanted a bar to drink and have sex in. I really wanted that. But Crampy Joe’s or T.G.I. McScratchy’s or Diver Down or whatever “funky” Eastside bar I found myself in still would have brought up the question of why this is fun. As a social activity.
I am a social alcoholic and a private teetotaler. I never drink in the 10 or so hours per week that I am home alone. And when I am out, while I am actually there, all I feel is shame at not having a partner or a fuck buddy or a husband or a wife or a girlfriend or a fiancé. I feel fucking shamed. And that is what I do for fun.
I do not actually feel any good will for stories of how “we found each other” or “how lucky we are.” I don’t always feel angry for it, but it’s never a good feeling. And I never feel happy for people kissing. I used to feel shameful for being the couple kissing. And I don’t want a girlfriend or a wife ever again. That will change, but I don’t want it to. I want to be a hermit with far away children and memories of a long dead and beautiful bride. I only want the dead one. I don’t look forward to all the joy and family fun and those sorts of things. I want loneliness and 200-year old bottles of Scotch while I look at ships trawling around in the sea. In this version of the story, there is always a visible moon.
Somehow this all occurs to me in an instant. Satori! Shit, here I am in a crew of people with girlfriends and living wives and nearby, very young children. It is wretched. I am wretched.
When we first got in the cab there was a cute girl who was very messy and likable. She was not there for my sake, though, and I will never force the issue. Like I said, I never want to actually have things; I want to have had them. And people are possessions. Much more tangibly than a pet or a yard could ever be.
Now we are bumbling down the street to another bar. This new bar is sanctioned, apparently. I don’t think anyone in the crew knows for sure but the question of “Are we on Skid Row?” is asked and not answered. We aren’t, but there are homeless people and it is dark and there is not sheen to anything. The parking police drive a multi-toned quasi-lowrider. In spite of the urban knowledge delivered by Vice and the LA Weekly our collective self finds this all exotic and dangerous. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (was it Ginsberg?) pushing a shopping cart down the streets of San Francisco or New York is in my head. I don’t remember the girl’s name. I never remember the girl’s name. The new bar has a line out front and it’s pretty much last call, so we are none of us in a rush to go in. The crew starts to dissipate. The fat guy in the Lycra (I know I hadn’t mentioned any characters so far, but this one makes me laugh, in hindsight, so I had to bring him up) waffles between following me, Jackie and the Killer or going to eat. The fat guy chooses food. That somehow always strikes me as obscene. This is no different.
There is no crew to speak of now. It’s just the three of us, which is similar to being around my brothers except there are no fake Catholic Masses (or real ones) and the Killer has never met my mother. Most of my brothers and sisters have. We go to a bar.
The new bar is in a hotel, across from the reception room where a wedding party is ongoing. We are still downtown, but now in the silly clean corridor where they built all the new expensive townhomes and condos and what not. We are now threatened by halfway rich people who are very wealthy compared to ourselves even though they do not appear to be much older. Maybe this is more disconcerting than it is threatening. I always wanted somebody to make a pop song that says, “I hate everyone.” Sometimes I want to make it myself. More often I wish I didn’t have to have a shape and could just float in warm jelly. Still, here I am in a bar having fun.
An old woman is tending the bar. We are there for four or five hours between 1am and 2am. This is similar to being in warm jelly, but not as comfortably amniotic. Also, it involves drinking, whereas my idea of being in jelly wouldn’t involve moving on purpose. The old woman gives us a pamphlet that tells us where all the bars are. She tells us about something that burns or something and something to do with a bar crawl, which is what we were trying to join, Killer and I. Jackie was on the whole thing. I’m not sure what the woman is saying. She has an accent, but that’s not why I can’t understand her. Jackie and the Killer are speaking, too, and I don’t understand them, either. I just don’t understand right now.
Once when I was drunk and a little skied up I told the Killer that I was the greatest writer who has ever lived in the history of the world. Jackie had my back on it. I was explaining why I was much better than Shakespeare, for what that was worth, but also better than Dante and Hemingway. And everybody else who has ever lived. Nobody asked me for proof then. No one has asked for proof since. Sometimes I talk a lot for no reason other than to keep talking, to stay tethered to the people in the world. There are stacks of words that fall out of my mouth that don’t mean anything but sound like conversation. And I rarely, if ever, listen to what anyone else is saying. That time I really meant it, though.
I haven’t been able to write much ever since I started working all the time. I’m pretty sure that’s related. I never thought of writing taking a physical toll on me and I never thought of time as a bitch goddess until I had to pay my own bills and couldn’t afford to pay for my credit cards anymore. I hate everything except for sex.
So I’m here in this bar, the one in the hotel, and I’m looking at every girl that walks in as a possible sex partner. Even if they are with other men, women, fish, etc. I’m also looking at the fish tanks. And every once in a while I drop into the conversation that is next to me. Robotically I chime in on every name I recognize. Ronnie? I’ve heard of him! You’re mom? I’ve met her! Cows? They stink!
Mostly, I’m just feeling mopey because I don’t ever do anything I like and I’m ashamed of the way I make my living. And I live on scraps compared to these people. And the only thing I’ve really ever been better at than other people I know is writing, and I’m not really even very good at that. But I’ve convinced myself for a long time that I am the greatest writer that has ever lived and so I am gotten fat and lazy, soft and buttery. Just like my physique. Except with less hair. And now I’m not even good at writing compared to the people I know. I am just a malcontent.
So I’m in this bar, listening, not really speaking, and I keep thinking what I was thinking earlier. I hate everyone, and bars are a storehouse for people and their stories. People and their sex lives. People meeting people. People talking to people. People inviting other people to come hang out at the firehouse after hours because there’s going to be poker and fun and rib-eyed steaks with potato chips. I hate bars.
I never think of anything to do other than go to a bar. I have one that I like. It is in Studio City and so people in the basin and the eastside think it is too far away and it is uncool because it is in the Valley. I like it because I will never run into anyone there by accident. I like it because it is cheap. Also, nobody I know has ever hooked up with anybody because they went to the place. I wouldn’t name it in print because I don’t want people to go there. I like it how it is and has been for years.
I like going to museums. I like walking around, playing sports, throwing things, hurting animals, burning cars, and destroying houses. But I don’t like to ask people to do these things with me. It would be like asking a friend to come over and help you with your masturbation homework. You could do it, and certainly folks do, but it feels like an intrusion into me. Well, I don’t hurt animals or burn houses or whatever other shit I say, but I don’t like to share myself with people. It’s like I lose control at that point.
Anyway, the point I was getting at, as I’m sitting in the bar I start to think I should be writing. I’m drunk and despondent and having happy times, but I want to be writing. Because there’s this story (there are about eight that revolve in my head all the time: 3 screenplays and 5 novels) that I have been meaning to write for the last few years and I think I could really nail the voice of it if I started right now. It is one of the novels, and it will be perfect. I am going to become the literary champion of a new generation and I will thank J.K. Rowling for getting kids to read again because kids my age sure as hell never did it. And that is what I want to be doing.
“Dude, you want to go to a strip club?”
We can’t, really, because Jackie is in love and we are meeting his girlfriend in about 5 minutes, after the bar closes. So he would not be interested. I am not really interested either. The Killer’s suggestion is left alone while a story about a strip club incident that happened about a year before with Mikey J and Earnhardt is recounted. It’s a good story and people should really hear it some time, but it’s best if those components are left unformed as of now. It’s really better for all involved.
So we’re not going to the strip club, which is better because I’m scared it would be boring with all the new laws that are being enacted. Why are their always new laws governing strip clubs? I’ve been to quite a few, and the faction of the community that is actually being affected by the constant changes in laws is a very small portion of the society, so why is it necessary to infringe on it? But we’re not doing anything else, either. Well, me and the Killer aren’t. Jackie has a girlfriend, and if it’s anything like the girlfriends I’ve had, it’s a crap shoot that he has anything to do, either. But the chances he is going to have sex are heightened by the presence of all these people and the filthy stink of being a social being that is so fresh upon him. Good work, pal. Really, I mean it. I hate the fact that it’s you and not me. But it’s a lot of work to be happy. A shitload more work than I have to put into being miserable. Besides, I’m happier being miserable than I could ever be having a lot of friends that I can’t remember.
Now we’ve got to find something else to do. We drive over to Anna’s. The Killer’s car is there and it’s not far from where Jackie and his precious cargo are heading. We go inside at Anna’s, just me and the Killer. Anna’s awake. We have drinks, discover too late that she has no blankets and pass out.
The next morning I wake up early. It’s raining for no apparent reason. I sit there and read the history of photography. Everyone else is still asleep (Anna’s man-love ChorizO is asleep there as well) because they all had padding under them. I slept on a wood floor and am not that resourceful that I could make it comfortable.
By the time the Killer wakes up, I have started hearing not-strange but sexual noises. At least the bathroom is now opened. Part of why I went outside in the first place is because it was locked. I didn’t have to pee bad enough to pee outside, but I thought about it just because it’s always a joyous occasion to pee outside unless you get a ticket from a police officer. What a dick.
We don’t bother to say goodbye, we just leave to go get juice. We stumble past the front house and probably are viewed but juice is all that’s important. We go to the happiest place on earth, Juices Fountain. There is a parking attendant asking for money, which is horrible. We don’t pay him, go inside and scarf juice. We drive back to the Killer’s apartment, I get in my car, and we make plans to reconvene later that day. By the time we finally break apart, I’m bounding. I can’t wait to get home and write.
All the way home I am thinking about the new threshold I’m about to cross. It’s going to be a great new world. After I am rich and successful I will let my friends come and live with me. There will be a great big pool, a sand shuffleboard, a basketball court, a bowling alley, and coastal access. Everybody will love coming over and I will be happy to have the respite from my solitary life of leisure.
First things first, though, I am excited to write the story because it’s going to be a great story. I will be happier for having it done than I will be for all the boundless success and monetary rewards that are sure to follow.
I more or less jump out of my car and run to my door. I go inside, pull out a stack of lined paper. Then I go pee to get it started. I thoroughly dry my hands after washing so I don’t smudge the paper. I could type it out but want the immediacy of loose leaf. I want to feel like I’m back in high school smoking weed and writing in between marathons of Madden on the Sega.
I get to the paper. I write the first line that I’ve had in my head for so long, but that’s the easy one. The second line, the one I thought of all night last night, the one that I was sure was going to be the slingshot that fired me onto my greatest winning streak ever, follows. But I can’t remember it exactly and, damn! If I hadn’t gotten it perfect in my head while I was listening to Jackie and the Killer talk about strip clubs past. No matter, I got the essence and it’s onto line three. By the time I’ve finished the first paragraph I’m exhausted. I turn on the football games to recharge and I’ll get back to the writing during the commercial breaks. That’s always the plan.
I get to a commercial break and fall asleep. An hour or so later ChorizO calls, followed in quick succession by the Killer, Jackie and Grant (our living breathing personage of worship). We will all meet up at the appointed time.
I look down at my piece of paper. Is it good work? No, it is a miserable failure. It is complete dreck. I can’t stand to look at it. I actually cry as I crawl into the shower. I can’t stand the fucking thought of going to another fucking bar. And I feel duty bound to do it. Why don’t people hate me more? I’m never going to be a writer at all. I just like to remember when I was in high school and I was good at it.
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