Boite de los Angeles

It started as just another Friday night, as so many of those Friday nights did, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, but an insistent adolescent libido pulsing through my veiny joy stick until it drove me crazy and I became frenzied with desperation, like a dog chasing its own tail.

Houston Rollett lived a half mile or so from my parents' house. Rollett was a recent arrival from the projects of East St. Louis. His family, like so many others back in the day, had been lured west by the sunshine, the Hollywood movies, the beach, the mountains, the desert and the easy terms on the food stamps and welfare checks, which were decidedly more generous in the golden state than in more godforsaken places like Illinois or Missouri, or wtf.

Rollett's step dad even found a job, with the phone company no less, and the family was able to move out of the two room rented airstream hard by the freeway trailer park on Garvey, and into a rented two bedroom crackerbox in my northside neighbourhood.

Rollett had an older brother and sister. His sister was already not married with child, collecting her own AFDC. The older brother was a junkie who sooner later came home and nodded into a blissful three part harmony with Ma and Pa Adenoids, his pockets also ripe for the picking. I gathered Rollett had had a younger brother who had died just prior to the family making the trip west. This subject was the only one that seemed to pain Rollett at all and so I never was able to figure out how the kid died but I strongly suspected some form of parental negligence exacerbating extreme poverty.

I never saw Rollettt's mom when she wasn't passed out on the sofa. Typically, there would be a quart sized empty bottle of one fine bourbon or another lying about somewhere like an excuse slip. The only thing that ever changed about her was her weight. When I first met Rollett she was skinny but a few years later she suddenly ballooned into obesity. And then on one bright and sunny day to come soon thereafter she just up and died right there on the sofa, with the empty Ten High bottle standing sentry to another life destroyed. But thats a different story...
Rollett's step dad might still be half conscious in the easy chair, smoking a cigarette, watchin the Angels looose again, blanking on the legendary KTLA news lead in, by George Putnam.

"See you at ten, see you then." Or wtf.

Finally, say by 9:30 or so, they'd both be gassed and snoring in that peculiarly comforting/annoying mom/dad call and response that we cherish in our fading fondest memories of a distilled youth.

Rollett opened the door to let me in. He had a styrofoam cup filled with french fries that he'd rustled himslef up for dinner. I don't know why I remember that detail. When he finished he produced the car keys.

=You got any money?
=Couple dollars.
=Good. We need some gas but I have the oil in the trunk.

How their car ever made it I'll never know. A 1958 Bel Air, 283 cubes of Amerikkkan exceptionalism in a Chevy V-8, but this one's pure love had not been reciprocated by its abusive owners.

It was a wreck on four wheels, with worn out retreaded tires, burning through oil as fast as it guzzled gas and rolled on the loudest springs that seemed to echo after you hit a bump or crossed the tracks, or wtf.

Rollett popped the trunk to show me an array of coke bottles filled with dark spiritual matter. A case of used motor oil. Perfect.

Off we pounded into the beckoning Friday night, adding a billow of grey exhaust to mark our territory against the millions of other canines busily contaminating the demented raceway to nowhere AKA "Southern California".

=We have to pick up Pablo.
=What?
=I promised we'd take him with us.
=Why'd you do that?
=I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, he'll have some cash...

Rollett said nothing more after I played the financial card. But I could sense his annoyance.

Worse, I'd anticipated his reaction filling me with self-disgust.

Curiously, it did not.

Pablo had developed a crush on me during the school year. He began calling my house at all hours of the day and night for any reason at all practically every day of summer. My dad often took those calls, no doubt hearing the feminine-sounding voice on the other end of the line, and wondering where he had failed me along the way.

Finally, to end the silliness, I'd agreed to come over to Pablo's house one day if he would stop calling my house all the time.

He lived in one of the new subdivisions in town, and when I got there a gorgeous woman, one of the most beautiful I had yet encountered in my short life, answered the door.

She was a dead ringer for Pablo, except she wore long hair, expertly applied makeup and no clunky black eye glasses.

=I didn't know you had a sister.

Pablo looked puzzled.

=Thats my mom.
=Whoa. Why is she all dressed up like that?
=She owns a club in East LA. She works nights. She'll be leaving for the club in a few minutes.

It seemed totally incongruent that the mother of this kid, this nerdy brainiac who would in a few years graduate as class valedictorian with a full scholarship to Claremont, who lived in the "better" part of town, seemingly a charmed existence, was nothing more than an upwardly mobile lady of the night, but there it was.

Pablo brought out cokes and potato chips and we sat next to each other on the sofa. There was no papa around, never a single mention of one as I recall, and these being daze of strict Freudian hegemony, simpler times where every aberration had a clear, concise cause upon which most everyone agreed, I saw that Pablo, an only child, couldn't help being the "cute little girl" about whom everyone, including my closest friends, and me, expressed derision and mocking contempt as a daily feature of the skkkoool yard.

Why was I always drawn to the looosers?

Here I was, pretty smart myself, honours classes, near perfect GPA, an accomplished athlete, surething starter for the upcoming varsity baseball season, handcrafted for adolescent stardom by my father, who'd had none of my advantages himself growing up during the Depression, and I found myself spending summer evenings on the sofa alone with a faggot who was in love with me?

Life ransacks the thermostat when you are sixteen, and the blood which boils your body from inside out contains the power to free or imprison you. From a sulphourous steam spring on a volcanic field, there is the insistent hiss of the escape valve, whether you choose to listen or not.
You are kept unaware of the subterranean geology, then one day, by accident, the molten ground fissures beneath your feet, gaping wide open as you scramble instinctively for safety yet there is nothing to hold onto as you fall and fall and fall and fall.

I reached over, carefully pulled off Pablo's eyeglasses and laid them on the coffee table. He looked up at me expectantly with hands folded in his lap.

More than anything, I wished I'd never laid eyes on his mama.

*********************
I jumped out of the Bel Air before we came to a complete stop in the driveway and walked up to the front door, as self conscious as I had ever felt, and that was saying something. My movements were as stiff as a marionette's. My lower back and my head throbbed in tandem.

Pablo smiled at me as he opened the front door.

=I can't believe this. Pinch me. I must be dreaming...

Don't worry about it....but, y'know...

Pablo smirked.

=Ashamed of oursleves, now, are we Pete?
=Yeah, well, maybe...but....just stay cool, man. Just stay cool.

But Pablo was cool and I was the basket case. He seemed altogether a different person now, self assured, assertive, less the passive cardboard figure.

I'd already lost control. Shit! I had so much to learn...

=Hey Pablo. Glad you could make it tonite.

Rollet jammed the shift on the steering column into reverse and we screeched out of Pablo's driveway, bouncing backwards into the street.

He laid about ten feet of rubber for added emphasis as we fish tailed off. The oil light popped on.

=Motherfucker!

We pulled over and Rollet jumped out to grab a coke bottle from the trunk and come back around to pop the front hood.

I looked back at Pablo sitting quietly in the back seat.

=You sure you're up for this?

He smiled back at me.

=Are you up for this? Our first date...

Rollet jumped back into the driver's side, put her into low and off we lurched. He reached out an opened hand to me.

=I found this in my brother's pocket. You gotta match?

I took the joint and pressed it between my lips. I couldn't be less ready for anything but Lord have Mercy! At least there was weed...

I took a deep, deep hit and gagged it out immediately, choking and coughing.

=What the fuck is this shit?

It tasted like mint and chemicals.

Rollet glanced over at me.

=Whassamatter? You never smoke weed before?

He laughed.

=Not anything like this shit, man. If this is weed I'm Bob Dylan.

I handed it back to him. He held the burning joint to his nose and shrugged. Then he took a hit himself and also starting coughing reflexively. He handed it back. Not wanting to seem a pussy, I took another, though much smaller, toke.

We passed it back and forth a few more times then Rollett remembered his other guest and held it out for Pablo.

=Here, man. Ever been high?

Pablo hesitated then reached out for the joint.

=Don't!

I grabbed it from his hand and tossed it out the window. I was already more fucked up then I had ever been in my life but not in any recognizable way.

Rollet laughed his ass off and couldnt stop as we bounced and backfired our way to the freeway.

He reached under the seat and produced an 8 track player.

=Check this out. My old man hooked it up. We got one tape... I hope yoou like it...

He laughed and laughed as he snapped the the tape into the deck. The red light on the tape deck seared my mind.

We entered the San Bernardino Freeway, heading west, my forehead knocking against the dashboard as I wretched the dry heaves to the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, holding my head in my hands down between my legs repeating nonsense over and over into an echo chamber.

=Too late. Too late. Too late.Too late.

Hypnotized, held down, as if I were fighting against an irrestible force that pinned my shoulders and wouldnt let me move.

=What the fuck, dude, what the fuck, dude, what the fuck, dude?

I glanced over at Rollett but could see he was in no better condition. He had the steering wheel and he had the freeway in front of him and that was pretty much it.

The night blazed passed in disassociative flashes. I searched outside the window for the comfort of well-known landmarks. There went the Cal State LA sign lighting the hillside. Then County-USC Medical Center. The Brew 102 wall sign on the curve as we passed the old brewery signalling the transition from the San Bernardino Fwy onto 101 downtown.
County Jail.

=My brother got cut looose just last week. A week ago.

Rollett chuckling to himslef. Pablo sitting silently in the back looking on, increasingly terrified at the two invalids up front who controlled his immediate destiny.

To his credit, he said nothing. Nothing at all.

Some time may have passed. We sat at a red light in Redondo. How we got there I couldn't tell you. We'd forgotten all about the Bel Air's craving for oil. Moving was what mattered. To stop moving was to die.

A 1967 Pontiac, raised rear end, Cragars all around, classic ricky racer mobile rumbled up next to us at the intersection, revving provocatively. Three dudes laughing at us. A cranked skull leaned out the passenger window and leered. We sat helplessly adrift, shrouded in the blackening exhaust. The Bel Air stalled.

=You girls wanta hava go?

Rollett looked over at the skullbones and proceeded to hock a green projectile lugee straight into his face.

=Fuck off!

The light changed and the Pontiac veered hard right, forcing Rollett up over the curve and into the parking lot beyond the sidewalk. It was shit luck that nothing or no one had been in the way.

We heard a creaking, pounding racket behind us, signalling that we were being followed.

=Ah fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Now we're dead.

I looked over at Rollett who worked the wheel best he could, maneuvering his way through the cars and the pedestrians, maintaining his cool, thankfully hitting no one in the process. The wide parking lot drive lanes were laid out in a square shape, but we had no idea. The lot seemed full and there were many people strolling to and from their cars. Looking back, we could see the Pontiac hadn't yet made the corner.

The Bel Air stalled. Next, one of the rednecks yanked open the driver side door and began pulling Rollett out. I grabbed onto him and pulled back, my feet planted in the floorboard. In his absurd position of being torn apart, Rollett still kept working comically at the ignition and the gas pedal in a futile attempt to get the Bel Air running.

The crankbrain holding onto Rollett laughed his ass off while punching him repeatedly about the head and shoulders, as if he were the angel of death laughing in our faces, to assure our final moments were the most painfully humiliating of all.

I managed to pull Rollett away from his attacker and he slammed the door shut just as another of the boneheads reached through my side window, twirled me roughly around and began to administer a repeat pummeling, only this time it was on my face. I flailed and fought to get free but the blows continually rained in, too many of them connecting. I couldn't escape his grip and I began to taste blood.

Suddenly, there came a shriek from the rear and my assailant yelped in pain and flinched just enough so that I could pull away from his grasp. Pablo had jumped the goon's back and buried those sensitive, long-nailed fingers into my tormentor's eyes and face. I leaned back across the bench seat, swung my legs up and kicked the death angel squarely in the neck and chest, sending both he and Pablo staggering back away from the car window at the very moment the Pontiac came roaring up to catch them both square in the grille. The goon went down under the front bumper while Pablo sailed into the air before crash landing onto the hood.

I jumped out and grabbed him as he slid off the side of the Pontiac and dragged him quickly back to the Bel Air.

The skulls attended their downed friend, momentarily forgetting all about us. I held Pablo gingerly not knowing where he hurt.

=Get us the fuck out of here!
=Can't. Flooded.
=Shit!

Pablo lay moaning with his head in my lap. He wasn't really conscious but I felt him reach up and clasp my hand tightly. Rollett wheeled around to look back. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered about the fallen kkkreep. We were free. For the moment.

=That dude's deader than dust, man.
=Lets get outta here! NOW!

Rollett tried again. The 283 wobbled then mercifully turned over. We sputtered out of the parking lot spewing black smoke and made for the nearest freeway entrance, holding our collected breath every inch of the way.

I can't say why but I've always felt safer on the freeway. I worked on Pablo while Rollett headed south on the 405. I pulled off Pablo's shirt, shoes and socks after he complained of intense pain on his right side and right ankle. His hip was badly bruised from the impact with the Pontiac and had somehow managed to either break or sprain the ankle, which was swollen a hideously reddish shade of purple.

Rollett looked at me in the rearview.

=Where we goin?

I thought first about the emergency room, but then had another idea. I looked down at Pablo, who had regained full consciousness. Thank God for the lucidity of pain.

=How late does your mom stay at the club?
=Pretty late. She usually gets home about sunrise. Sometimes later.
=Where's the Club exactly?
=It's on Whittier Blvd....not far from the freeway...the Long Beach Freeway. About a block east.

As if on cue, the green sign for the "California 7 - Pasadena" exit loomed ahead. Rollett was already in the correct lane.

But we faced another problem. The Bel Air was dying fast. Overheating and making odd metallic noises.

=Fuck it, man, just keep going as far as we can go. Nothing else to do.

The Chevy chugged heroically northbound on its last legs, sputtering and lurching, the steam beginning to rise from the hood vent clouding Rollett's view of the road. I prayed that we would make it all the way. Pablo seemed like he would live and we didn't relish any encounter with the pigs, especially under the circumstances.

I sat back in the darkness, stroking Pablo's head and looking out the window into the luminous dark night of the city. Pablo relaxed under my touch. He peered up at me and smiled, same as he had that first night.

=Sorry for, uh, fucking you up like this Pablo, I wasnt thinking at all, I guess...

I felt humbled, perhaps as much as I would on the coming day when my first child would be born. Pablo kept smiling through the pain. I let him snuggle his head deeper into my lap for comfort. I no longer felt any shame for my feelings toward Pablo. Fuck it, they were my feelings and he deserved them as much as anybody did, for he had shared his love with me in a way that nobody had before and very precious few would afterwards, for that matter.

But the shame was instantly replaced by guilt, for I knew that I wasnt what he would need in his life, that I wasnt the right one for him nor he for me. We'd used each other in the natural course of adolescence. And the truth is that we will never know what we truly need in this life anyway for how do we overcome the shackled ability to learn only what we laughably consider "knowledge," out of the enormous circulation of the world and the infinite, which exists inside of us? Or if we do stumble upon salvation out of shit luck, out of sheer happenstance, how can we recognize and value it in that case without feeling compelled to toss it away as blithely as we might push out a burning cigarette butt through the wing window of a speeding car in the Angeles National Forest, always searching, insatiably searching for the next, the new and the better?

Suddenly, the engine began shaking so violently in its death throes that Rollett killed it and coasted off the freeway, taking the Bel Air expertly down a short embankment off the shoulder of a freeway exit, coming to a stop in a ditch alongside a chainlink fence. We were pretty much hidden from roadway view.

=How far are we from Whittier Blvd?
=Not very far. Maybe a few miles, I just saw the first sign. I'll go.

Pablo stirred and sat up.

=No! Pete needs to go. My mom already knows Pete...she knows all about him, in fact...she doesn't know Hugh at all. Pete needs to go.

Both Rollett and I looked curiously at Pablo, surprised at the determination settled on his face.

=Ok, ok. Whatever you want. You're the hero. Now, how in the hell will I get there from here?

The clock on the S&L across the street read "2:09" when I reached the "Boite de los Angeles," which sat under the shadow of the freeway bridge, one block east, just as Pablo had said.
He'd instructed me to go around to the back. It was locked. I rapped loudly on the heavily reinforced door. A large Mexican man answered with a pistol aimed at my midsection.

=What do you want?
=I'm....I'm here to see Gabriela...Miss Perez...I'm a...a friend of Pablo's...there's been an accident....he's hurt his ankle and our car broke down a few miles from here....

I babbled on with my hands up, like in the movies. The man looked me over suspiciously, then relaxed when he realized that I was just a punk high school kid in trouble. He waved me inside with the pistol but kept it trained on me.

=Gabby!

He called out. She was sitting at the corner of the bar, either talking intimately or making out with a man in the shadows. When she heard her name, she unlocked, rose and came forward. She freaked when she recognized me, trying to block my view of the man she'd left dangling in an erotic daze at the bar.

But it was too late. I recognized him, alright.

How could I not know him, for that man sitting there befuddled in his sexual arousal was none other than.... dear old Dad.

Flutter WIngs

I have an idea. Ok. I know. Its seriously fucked up. I've been thinking about contacting my first ex-wife and apologizing for the time I broke up with her when our daughter was still so young. I'll never forget that day...my daughter crying, her pleading two-year old baby face savaging me in that awfulest moment. Thunder rolled as I stepped out of Maria's VW for the last time, my daughter's shrieking and the rain pounding as her mother sped off and I just stood there, the pathetic fool in a puddle from which I couldn't escape.

I saw Maria recently, first time in decades, at our daughter's wedding awhile back...she's quieter now and composed, matronly, settled. Married to an old school Southern gentleman who is as different from me as La. is from L.A.

I was nervous about them meeting but my wife took to her immediately. They found a corner of the apartment and locked onto each other, as women so often do, as if they'd both planned for the chance meeting and of course, thats exactly what both had done. I stood off to the side with Maria's husband, sipping an Italian beer, mostly in awkward silence, while our wives whispered and nodded knowingly.

="Pete hasn't changed."

Frau Tale reported Maria's assessment later, once we were back in the hotel room with the commanding view of the Jackie Robinson Apartments, which they built after they tore down Ebbetts Field on the day America died.

=She feels very, very badly for you. How everything's turned out.

Probably another phone call I need to make is to this woman I know in New Orleans. I spent the better part of two years with her there during the mid-90s.

New Orleans is where I should have gone and should have stayed. My destiny feels as tightly wedded to New Orleans as an oyster to its shell, just before the knife removes it.

Lena's a successful businesswoman and amateur ballerina, a powerhouse, a demurely Southern sweetness that is always in total control.

Over you.

I captured her heart momentarily in my hands and can still feel the dust from her fluttering wings on my fingers.

I still want her so bad I can taste it.

Recently, I went searching online and found her company's website. I clicked on "About Us" and there she was, serene and everwise, a gracefully aging fortress of feminine vulnerability.

Surely, I had my reasons then that made perfect sense, didn't I? There were male ego issues involved. There's the fact that my son was just a baby at the time and I still had these nightmares about a lost little girl crying in the rain.

Lena had two kids of her own and I couldnt bring myself to live with them while leaving another one of mine behind. They are both college age now and he's in high school. Ha! I didnt really raise him up, anyway.

Damn it!

I can still feel the heat and the resentment rising off the prison walls of her fancy house.

We spent every weekend together, mostly in bed, drinking red wine, making love, talking, making love, eating, making love, sleeping, making love, sleeping. Five times, ten times even, as I expertly picked the lock to her soul in the upstairs bedroom which overlooked the pool, the guest house and the rotting garden. I stood at that window so often, in self-satisfaction, overlooking so much.

She informed her elderly, Catholic parents that I slept in that guest house because I had nowhere else to go. She insisted that we always lie to them about the nature of our relationship. Lena's way of resetting the lock, which of course I never noticed.

Her dad saw through me clear to the third rung of hell...never once failing to graciously enquire about the well-being of my boy.

=You own me.

She'd gasp and shudder in spasms once we were alone, always with her riding tall in the saddle. She'd get so inside of hers, which took such a long, long time to develop, a very long time, so long that her facial expression when it finally happened made me laugh out loud sometimes.

Selfish, wasn't it, in that odd way of sexual bargaining, the expense of so much middle-aged energy and for what purpose, really, except to exult ourselves through casual degradation?

One day during a dispiriting trip to the home office in DFW, I was introduced to a new staff support employee, a freckle-faced Vietnamese girl who possessed the silky, underdeveloped body of a preteen. This was like her third day in town, and my schedule was open, so I invited her to lunch. It started out innocently enough, sharing lunch and then a few drinks after work. Soon I found out that she had left behind an abusive ex-boyfriend, her first and only, back home in Arkansas.

I guess she must have mentioned something to the ex at some point, because he began to call me regularly and leave messages on my voicemail, ominous in that he sounded quite buoyant, always ending cheerfully with the threat that he was coming down to meet me, just as soon as the judge restored his drivers license.

He actually did show up finally but only after I'd already quit and gone to work somewhere else. One of my ex-co-workers contacted me and relayed the scene with relish. Oh, my god. He came up and made quite a row, asking every startled employee he could find to point out my office. Glory pleaded with him to calm down, to please leave, that I wasn't there any longer. He ransacked the office for awhile, calling Glory a cunt and threatening to cut off my balls with a butter knife when he got his hands on me.

The police were summoned.

I might find Glory's number and give her a call, too, now that I'm thinking about it. I know what you are thinking, don't I? That I am making all this up, all this false bravado about me, that this is nothing more than a deceptive trick to bare my guilty soul, like that devil in the Camus story, seated in his crummy bar in Amsterdam, who draws in the listener by weaving a sordid tale and magnifying its significance out of all proportion, as if to offload his share of the blame for the evil nature of an entire civilisation.

But really, I must tell you, it was all simply an unfortunate circumstance at the intersection of overabundance, how the corner of Rodeo and Wilshire must feel to the lonesome hobo begging for dollars along it's curb, when suddenly, out of nowhere, he gets handed a twenty.

Right before the mind police happen along to dump his wasted ass back on skid row, where he belongs.

RIOTOUS!

Glory ended up marrying the whackjob and they now live happily ever after in the north Dallas suburbs with a house, two cars, a kid and a dog.

Lena kept wanting more and more. She became for me the opposite of what she projected, concealing an insatiable selfishness beneath the composed, kindly exterior. She assumed that I had to be simply as ecstatic as she was, darling, with the way in which our relationship blossomed, never seeming to notice at all that it was me, not her, doing the sacrificing, the career changing, the priority shifting, all of the endless traveling back and forth. Or did she?

Flights into and out of Louis Armstrong International slowly started to taper off, first every other week, then every third week, then less than that.

Then, the lame excuses.

=I have too much work. I have to take my son to gym lessons. Did I already say I had too much work?

Finally, I said goodbye to Uptown, forever.

My life immediately underwent miraculous improvements in other departments. I'd started up a business with another guy I'd met by chance and it's success overflowed beyond my dreams. Mephistopheles could not have planned it any better.

One night I met a guitar player in a club during the final call band break. Drunkenly, I described to him this song I had written about my relationship with Lena. Three/four time, an unusual minor key progression that I had discovered by accident while doodling around on the old Martin. It had fallen together somehow. On a whim, he asked me if I wanted to get up there with them after the break. Sure, why not?

I wrote out the chords on a napkin, hummed a few bars of the melody and tapped out the tempo on the bar top. He called over the bass player and the drummer, who then fooled around with it onstage for a few moments until a groove revealed itself.

Wow. Just wow. When we finished, there was a generous smattering of applause from the dozen or so patrons. You know its real when you hear it.

They decided to do one more with me and the guitarist started playing a very familiar old school riff. How did he know?

Sympathy for the Devil. The live version. They invited me to join them for a weekend gig at a different venue. I couldn't make it but thereafter I did stay in touch with them for a time. When they recorded an EP they honored me by including "Lena."

I thought about sending her a copy but that seemed too triumphant.

So I mailed her the lyrics, instead...without an accompanying note.

In the beginning

you came

every morning

You were the sun

rising up

without warning

In the end

I lost you

in a fog

In the end

me frothing

like a dog

But in between

you were alive

beside me

Unseen rope

confined me

You were alive

you were alive

beside me

You crossed the rubicon

astride me

And in between

I was alive

beside you

Your poetry

revived me

I was alive

I was alive

inside you!

I crossed the rubicon

inside you!

She never wrote back so I called her about a month later. She answered and spoke to me in a glum monotone. I didn't ask how she liked the song. I could tell she was acting, but haha, so was I.

Neither of us could ever be free.

Some lawyer who'd chased her around town for years had recently presented her with a diamond ring.

I felt compelled to tell her all about my three-sided relationship with Glory.

=Oh, Pete. Will you ever learn to value yourself?

She hung up abruptly, leaving me to stare at the wall for the longest time. I turned to catch my reflection in the window, a statue of a man with a telephone held to his ear.