Languages in LA

Someone actually said this in my hearing the other day, and without the slightest trace of irony or playfulness. She just said it like a normal person would say “Great!”

 
It was at the Coffee Bean on Robertson, where I had been hanging out like a seal on a rock because their internet was free. I was standing in line, having just ordered my mocha latte, and to my left was a young woman not of this world. She had apparently just stepped off of a billboard, and was still all shiny from the finishing touches of the hairdresser, make-up artist, and artificial suntan spray-on technician who hover just off camera.

 She was wearing black spandex leggings, because she could, having the butt and legs of a 12 year old boy. Said leggings and legs were tucked into black suede boots with heels so pointed and high they looked like spikes. Under her perfectly tanned skin, her breasts sat on her ribs like two plastic bowls on a xylophone.

 
Her hair was bouncy at the crown,  fluffy at the forehead, tendrilly at the neck, a cascade down her back, thick as a horse’s tail and blonde as some lisping clothesrack in a salon could make it. Her lips were pouty and her sunglasses were expensive.

 
The Coffee Bean barrister, obviously recognizing her, cooed, “How have you BEEEEEN???”

 
“Fantabulous!” She replied, her perfect white teeth flashing, her perfect French manicure touching the counter.  “I was at a party last night, and I had SO much fun…”

 
So that’s what fantabulous looks like, I thought, walking away. No wonder I just say “Fine.”

I found out where the homeless of West Hollywood hang out. But first, some background. Having finished decorating my new apartment, I sat down to assess my expenditures and nearly fainted. I decided, as an act of contrition for my Visa abuse, that I would declare today the “Don’t Spend a Penny Day.”

 I vowed I would not spend a single cent today. Not even a dollar cheeseburger from the McDonald’s drive-thru. Not even a bottle of tonic water to go with my gin. Nothing.

 By 1pm I was going through withdrawal, so I decided to do what I would have done 20 years ago: go to the public library.

 
Here I found them: the most motley collection of discarded people ever to fall asleep at a table. This is the West Hollywood library, people! A block from Robertson! Across from the Pacific Design Center!

The doors were smudged black with fingerprints, the tables too… a wan looking speciman of a man was on one of the computers. He typed for a moment, picked his nose, and then typed again. I decided I didn’t need to use the computer.

 I picked out a book on the Roman Empire and sat gingerly down. Not wanting to touch the table, I turned the pages with a daintiness utterly foreign to my character. After 20 minutes, I’d had enough. As I left, I saw a filthy plastic bin with a sign that read DONATIONS held on with aged, peeling tape.

This is where the unwanted go: unwanted books, and unwanted people. Those with money are over at Starbucks with their laptops. I’ve seen med students there. Didn’t it used to be, long ago, that the homeless hung out in diners and the scholarly went to the library?

West Hollywood is so sunny and well-bred that occasionally I am overcome with the urge to do something barbaric just to rattle the natives. Nothing appalling, mind you, like failing to smile at dogs and small children. Nothing that will give me a lifelong reputation, like snarling at those damn Salvation Army bell-ringers.

No, just something unexpected and peculiar enough to set them back on their well-heeled heels, their French manicures fluttering in consternation. Something that will bring a whiff of The Other into the breezeless, blue-skied days.

I hit on the perfect act of rebellion, something that violates boundaries but with perfect moral authority, something that suggests a self-sufficiency combined with a disregard for appearances that, in a woman, raises red flags all over: when I buy a cord of firewood, I grab the whole thing and haul it right into the store and up to the cashier.

This is fun. The accepted method is simply to tell the cashier that you are buying firewood and then you take it on your way out. Or better yet, if you are female, you let a store employee pick it up for you, so you won’t muss yourself.

Muss, hell, I pick that baby up and stomp into the store. The security guard jumps out of my way, utterly baffled. Skeletal matrons with plump lips stare through their sunglasses as I stagger past them. Cashiers’ smiles die on their faces and they shrink perceptably as the ragged wood comes toward them.

My grandfather used to cut wood out back with an ax. Here, people mince up to the cashier delicately extending their Visa cards. Somewhere between the ax and the Visa is me.

Oh my, I have arrived. I feel so posh: I just got my first West Hollywood West Residents’ Association (WHWRA) Newsletter, thus certifying that I am indeed a denizen of West Hollywood West. Yes, they say west twice. I guess it’s because I’m at the western-most cusp. I’m so close to Beverly Hills I could throw a stone and hit it, but of course I would never, because they have their own stones over there and probably don’t want ours mingling in.

Anyway. It’s a very nice newsletter, printed in full color on stiff, smooth white paper. The president of WHWRA is Steven Golightly. Yes, really. I thought that was a made-up name when Holly Golightly appeared in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but apparently it’s a real live name! There’s a cut-out section if I want to join the Resident’s Association and pay dues.

I just might do it. I usually bridle at the very word “dues” because … well… it usually isn’t due. I don’t, for instance, feel I owe anything to the faculty association at my school, that irritating bunch who try to squeeze $25 out of me every year so they can buy flowers for every teacher who has a baby. If it were going to provide birth control instead, I might be tempted.
 

But for the WHWRA, I just might cough it up, if only for the chance to someday meet a man I can call President Golightly. My God, that’s priceless. And look! On page 2 it says that the WHWRA will soon have full-fledged 501©(3) tax status, so the dues will be tax deductible! Could it be? Have I found a little Galt’s Gulch of fiscal conservatives in West Hollywood? Shivers are running down my spine. I wonder if they’ll accept a personal check.

I am convinced that Pavilions on Santa Monica Blvd and Bristol Farms on Beverly are in a competition to see who can cultivate the most aggressively friendly employees. They pounce on you the minute you walk in the store.

 “Good afternoon! Happy Holidays! Do you need any help? Anything at all? Need a hug?” (only a slight exaggeration.)

 
At Pavilions, if you use a credit card, they see your name and say “Good bye, Miss Morrissey!” in a ringing voice so that everyone within ten feet now knows your name too.

 When you leave they can’t bear to see you go, and volunteer to carry your one tiny bag of cat food and protein bars out to the car with you, waving goodbye till you pull into traffic. Pulling into traffic takes time, too, because the nicer people are compelled to be to your face, the more psychotic they are behind the wheel of a car, suggesting that there is no more dangerous place to be than the parking lot of Pavilions at closing time.

 
Even the security guards will kill you with kindness, although at Bristol Farms, the true nature of the beast is evident in the jagged metal spikes that await the tires of any car trying to exit through the entrance. Nevertheless, it’s both pleasant and unnerving to go to pick up a bottle of wine and have the cashier so delighted to see you again that you feel guilty for not offering him a drink.

 
It’s almost a relief to go occasionally to Ralph’s across the street from Bristol Farms. where the cashier rings you up with the silent resentment of someone who blames you for her broken fingernail. But sometimes you just want to go where no one knows your name.

There’s only one thing you can’t really say or do in Hollywood without facing dire repercussions. Most things you can do. You can curse vilely on live award shows, you can come out of the closet, you can call family members dreadful names, and hit paparazzi with your car (not that they don’t deserve it.)

 You can flash your naked, waxed bottom while shopping. You can drive drunk. You can hurl phones at underlings. You can leave the scene of a hit and run accident.

 You can use drugs. You can shoplift.  You can deride the war, the President, capitalism, corporations, and the free market. In fact, you rather have to do those last things if you expect to be invited to any good parties.

You cannot, however, be a Republican. Better to be a Communist. Better to be a terrorist! Better to be a rapist, frankly. 

Proof here.

I have a script that has been optioned, and my producer takes a peculiar delight in introducing me to his friends as a Republican. I suspect I’m the only one he’s ever seen up close, and I think he’s fighting the urge to look down the collar of my shirt to see if my back is covered with fur.

 Unsurprisingly, we have not yet found funding for my film, which is not in the least political, but rather a dark comedy involving corpses and blow-up dolls. Corpses and blow-up dolls usually play quite well in Hollywood.  But I must convince my producer to stop introducing as a Republican and merely tell them I’m shoplifting drug-addict who waxes her bottom.

… there is only reality ! I like that !!

It’s funny the way the word adult is used as a euphemism. If you see it on a movie, adult themes, you know this means sex. An adult video store is porn, an adult toy store is sex toys… but this is only half of the story.

I have decided to put my cats on a diet. It’s not that I thrill to the sight of slender felines, it’s just that once they reach a certain stage of complacent rotundity, they have a hard time completing their grooming. If that was put too delicately for comprehension, let me explain: if they can’t wash under their tails, the results can be truly appalling.

I suppose that was clear enough.

I currently have a cat who is a winsome, pink nosed, green-eyed delight at one end and a shuddering brown mess at the other, and if I liked using baby wipes, I’d have had babies. So I have begun to pay attention to what kinds of cat food I buy and how much I put down.

The euphemism for fat pets is, guess what? Adult. I now buy adult cat food, which I ration out as if we were under occupation. The cats are not happy, and are at this moment reclining on various perches in flat-eared, tail-twitching aggravation.

I am left contemplating the wonder of a world in which the two things adult stands for are sex and fat. I should have noticed it before, when clothing for females was sorted into Miss and Women’s sizes. If the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes, it seems the only things adult in life are sex and weight gain.

Does this mean that if I abstain from both, I’ll never grow old?

I saw something very disturbing outside my school not long ago. One of our middle school students, a tall African-American boy, was at a deli about a block from the school, playing a video game. It was the aim-gun-kill-person type, where you have the plastic gun with which you pop anyone who appears on the screen.

This boy was just mumbling over and over, “Nigga, where you from?” and then shooting. When I asked one of the other teachers about this later, he explained to me that this is a standard opening for gangs before they attack. “Where you from?” means what neighborhood, and if you are not in your neighborhood, you’re about to get jumped.

Setting that unhappy thought aside for a moment, I return to the National Geographic website I was haunting earlier, chuckling about their “Cultural Tips for visiting L.A.” Sure enough, there’s the genteel version of the same geographically-based tribalism:

Where do you live?: The thinly disguised screener for the start of every new relationship.

And, lo, National Geographic is right on this one. It’s the first thing people say, not “what do you do,” but where you from? The dating game operates on the same basic principle as the gang-turf wars. Are you a member of my posh little gang of Weho café-frequenters? Nigga, what’s your gym?

Well, perhaps I’m being too cynical. At the gang level, it’s all about loyalty, safety in numbers, and survival of the streets. At the more one-on-one relationship level, it’s all about how far you have to drive to get laid. Well, with traffic here, that’s a survival-of-the-streets issue in some ways…

But still, it’s strange to contemplate: love or hate, life-making decisions still boil down to location and proximity. Alas, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Tonight I came home to my new apartment in West Hollywood and pulled up in front of the house to find a man distractedly puttering around his car, which had a flat tire. He’d retrieved the jack from the trunk but it was some newfangled thing with the lug wrench affixed to the jack itself, and one had to perform a series of feats to disentangle it.

I came up to investigate and the thin, dark-haired man with an accent I could not place, gave a chagrined smile and admitted he hadn’t yet figured out how to maneuver this jack. I joined him in trying to peer at the directions, which may as well have been in Swahili.

As we pondered, he said, “This has not been a very good day for me. I came here to Los Angeles to try to find out more about my daughter, who is missing, and now I have a flat tire.” To say it had not been a good day seemed quite an understatement.

I sat and listened to the man talk as he changed his tire. I wished I could offer more than a towel to wipe the grease from his hands, but in the end, it was all I could do as he told me of his four month struggle to keep his daughter’s case alive with the LAPD.

She was 19 and taking classes at San Diego State. Over the summer she came up to LA where she placed an ad on craigslist offering her services as a math tutor. The man who answered, it would later surface, was a known sex offender. Donna Jou trustingly went to his house… and was never seen again.

Her father is holding on as best he can. He left Iran before the revolution to seek a better, safer life in America. Now his heart is broken. For more information, see www.donnajou.com. And teach your children well.