One funny thing is that angelinos are obsessed with themselves. Just turn on a tv in LA and LA is all you will see, as if the rest of world didn't exist. Like other cities I guess, you want to go at LA, but only if you are rich. The ordinary and the poor eat a lot of shit, but there are the beaches. You can go and pretend everything is great if you look okay in a bathing suit. There is that sense that you live on the edge of the world because of the ocean. When I was a kid, I loved the ocean, especially Zuma where the waves could get monsterous and body surfing in them was sometimes a life death adventure. Then I would stagger out and at the foamy ankle deep water wait for my breath to come back watching the little kids slapping the wet sand and playing with their buckets. In some season I never could tell when the big brown kelp would get loose and wash ashore. You could bust the air sacks or use it like a whip to tease off your asshole friends.
At night the beach changes character. I almost got my first there, but it was cold and not very pleasant. My bathing suit was sandy and uncomfortable. L was pretty much in the same eager, but not comfortable mood. I had no idea it hurt at first. What a drag.
Sex was always a fucking issue of where if you still lived at home. It used to plague me. Where? The cops regularly patroled all the known parking spots. Mullholland was already an icon and definitely out. But there were other spots. Topanaga was a long drive. It was an issue everywhere. I think now, why on earth were the cops interested in teenage sex? I mean why should they care? I think now they were getting their jollies.
And this gets to the underbelly of LA. It's really flithy, morally speaking. Maybe a different way to put it, LA has no moral character of any sort. How could they prosecute Roman Polanski in child fucker central? A rich lawsuit? I mean what do you think would happen if you let your thirteen year old go to parties in Hollywood, well Beverley Hills or the canyons? Hollywood discovers young stars by fucking them. Is that news? Well there's Michael Jackson.
Yeah it makes me nostalgic. My dad worked on the city desk and he saw all the police reports. What he must of seen explains a lot of his character and attitudes towards me back then.
I guess what pissed me off the most was the completely phoney character of the rich and semi-rich. Somebody said under the tinsel is the real tinsel. My best friend in high school changed his character with the same ease as he changed girlfriends and this continued on into his forties, when we finally had a blow out. He was obsessed with the rich and near rich. His family was down and out, old lefties who lost jobs in the red mence bullshit.
So, B was dating some fat not too bright but very rich Jewish woman. At that point B claimed to be Jewish. He was only by blood and a few habits. The rest was a kind of imitation. She had a really interesting very rich father. I was getting pretty high talking to him over scotch and looking at his fabulous collection of paintings in a quiet spread in Tiburon. Most of the big ones were all there from Matisse to Stella.
B was getting pissed off and his date was impatient. Her little kids were upstairs and beginning the early evening whinging routine. B had arranged a double date for me, since I was single again. Some aimless rich friend of the other date, pretty much LA style. Where did they want to go? Go see the latest Star Wars, I think it was The Empire Strikes Back. Now why would grown ups want to see that? Because they never got much passed their own teen life well into their forties? Can you talk about such a movie? It was actually pretty good for Spielberg. But that's the thing about Spielberg. He captures LA in near perfect fantasy, not a speck of dirt anywhere.
Well B scored the big time. This date turned into his second wife. I am sure the old man died long ago. I doubt B kept the paintings. Back then B was a family and child psychologist, set up shop in Santa Monica and pulled a rich practice from West LA and Berverly Hills where childhood traumas were evidently of epidemic proportion.
There was, whether deluded or not, always the feeling LA was a trend setter. If it broke out in LA, the nation was soon to follow. At least that's the way LA thought of itself.
Yet, I usually don't think about all that, just some of the fabulous passages that seem to come out of nowhere. A chance afternoon going through whatever had come out from New Directions, and old man Lewis, came over with some suggestions. On Reseda Boulevard?
CG