I saunter in to a place that I saw several typical O.C. residents leaving last night. It smells delicious, like the barbeque pits in Hawaii, the pacific lending it’s particular brand of spice to the aroma. The hostess and the waitress are both modestly attractive even if the hostess can’t make eye contact and the waitress is wearing so much mascara, I wish she wouldn’t. That I can still make out the color of her slate rimmed iris makes up for any cosmetic indiscretions, though. The bar is pretentious in its homage to an island care, but there is so little about the O.C. that isn’t on some level.
Kona Longboard Lager: apparently there is something in their seller’s agreement that requires them to serve this in a cross between a snifter and a fish bowl, because no one would do this of their own accord. Maybe it’s a practical joke. I am hoping the portions of food are as generous… and as tasty. It’s been a long time since I have had a beer and this one welcomes me back heartily; massaging my throat even more thoroughly than the sea air I have to chew before inhaling.
There is a girl sitting at the table near the bar with her friends. She looks at first glance like Erica Durance if someone had smashed in her nose and upper teeth with a bowling ball. Great body; posture and hair like they were clipped from the pages of the latest couture rag. Blouse and shoes pink and delightful just like every good attribute of a woman should be. She would almost be attractive… if not for the bowling ball. Music: Top 40’s. Clientele as varied and shifting as my indiscriminate thoughts. Since I have been seated, every table around me has had a changing of the guard. Lauren, my Tammy Fae impersonator, sidles up to the table hosting the pair of old women to my right, pulling down her apron out of some habit, accentuating her California-flat stomach. Cute.
My shrimp arrives at the table with a taste that could rival the seawater for saline content. I love it. Juxtaposing the sweet ginger vegetables on the side, the taste in my mouth is nothing short of a party. Perhaps not the party where you wake up three blocks away wonder whose panties you are wearing, and if their original owner is now wearing yours, but a party nonetheless.
The setting sun has made the sky more bipolar than my 400 pound bald Aunt Donna. The clouds are darkening faster than Lindsey Lohan is losing weight but the sky everywhere else retains a bright purple cast. I think I’ll make some sort of Rorschach/personality test out of those two colors; I’ll print porn up in those two shades, run around waving it in people’s faces and see which one gets me punched most often. Naw, they already do that in Vegas, but I wonder how much companies would pay for the results of that study. It would probably only interest people as mentally defunct as me, and Lord Knows they wouldn’t have any money. Damn, another million I almost made.
Lauren is engaging and pleasant in the way that a good waitress is to a good tip-to-be. It’s odd that the more I study about human interaction the more hesitant I become. Blech, ignorance is bliss I suppose. When processing this statement, I imagine how cocaine happy my ex will be until the end of time. Another Kona as Lauren takes the desolation that is my dinner plate away from the table. Yum.
Wow, the couple that just passed me was tremendous. The lord giveth and he taketh away. The woman has as much an overabundance of breasts as the man had a severe shortage of hair. I suppose that could just be nature’s way of compensating.
Halfway through my latest Kona, I’m feeling it… the warm hum of an alcoholic embrace. I’m sure I’ll kick myself for it when my alarm goes off at 7 am tomorrow but it feels great now. Tentative sips giving way to gulps, the life expectancy of this glass is leukemia-shorter than the last. Lauren let’s me duck out for a smoke on the street. The coast always makes me think of Amy. She’s the only poison I have shared both the Atlantic and Pacific with. I say 4-rules be damned and call her. As per usual, no answer. Screw it. I’m enjoying being alone in a beautiful city with my pen and paper.
There is a great coffee place called Dietrich’s down the street that I am heading out to as soon as the Kona is gone. For some reason the later it gets, the older the clientele at the cabana seems to get. I wonder if there is a point of the night at which this reverses and the younger crowd is reintroduced or wether the bar has to close at a certain time for fear its customers dying or turning into zombies. I’m toying with the idea of coming by each night this week to see if the phenomenon repeats itself. The napkin that originally accompanied this latest fish bowl is so sodden with errant splashes that its original purpose of intercepting condensation has been superseded by its latest role of playing tattletale to just how much beer I have spilled all over the table in my attempts to erect the barley and hops barrier between myself and the rest of the Cabana patrons.
In watching the gay not-so-boyish couples wander around I am left to wonder if they don’t gravitate to the poofter-persuasion because of fear of the unknown, the female factor that no man ever fully grasps. Ultimately I think it defeats them, the unknown is what keeps us coming back for more, has continued to motivate man since the beginning of time to dash himself on the rocky shore of female indifference.
Seeing the care and concern the locals here take in situating their vehicles, I am even more shocked at the idiocy displayed by locals in Barstow. As a child I was told stories of the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, perhaps the imbeciles that reside near me were told similar stories of a ‘Parking Fairy Bunny’ that would magically correct the haphazard maneuverings when they weren’t looking. Perhaps they think that if they drive as if they were asleep that this fictitious character will come and aid then in their futile efforts at controlling motorized death on wheels. The boobs and baldy pass by again, returning from whence they came tailed closely by a cluster of people.
I have had the distinct pleasure of showing some of the world’s most amazing women nights that they will remember, much to the chagrin of their mates, until the day they die. I suppose it is only natural that this comes to an end eventually, but the one thing that plays over and over in my mind like a broken vinyl is the phrase, “Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.� Do not go gently… there is so much more to be had, I think this is just a shifting of the gears, As soon as I get it situated I’ll be riding smoothly again. I just need a little transmission work. The strange thing is that I have been borderline savant in all my outrageously successful dealings thus far.
After being denied my traditional Chai and threatening to jump the counter at the barista, I come to rest outside Dietrich’s adjacent to an AA addict trying to convert another barista on his sober way home to join in the AA movement. Completely happy and sober on his own, the barista declines as best as he can and extricates himself from the clutches of the eager groupie and heads out to parts unknown. Oddly, or perhaps not so much, the coffee here is better than any I can recall. Combined with my aural voyeurism, the sea air, and a cigarette it’s almost more than I can ask for. The A.A. Nazi is recounting horror stories from his friends lives as if he were immune to it. As if given one evening of indiscretion he wouldn’t be on the other end off the parable. I wonder what it says about my character that these stories meant to frighten and impress his company sound like a great Saturday night to me. Nothing remarkable about him, but he is entertaining two delightful young ladies. I am left to wonder how rapport compares to the newness of a heretofore unknown individual. In my own world the new and original always outweighs the familiar comfort of a known lovers arms. Why, given this knowledge of myself, is it so hard to talk to a person I don’t know sometimes? The element of the unknown again rearing its ugly head. Maybe I’ll be sober enough to avoid winding up in one of the AA Nazi’s stories after I finish my coffee. The girls talking to the Nazi have that chunky black and blonde hair, that even though it is leaving vogue I still adore; Two different cuts, but that same style of coloring. The girls and Nazi leave in separate cars for the same destination: an A.A. meeting almost an hour away in the City of Angels. It gives one pause that in a metropolitan area so reputed for its substance abuse one would have to travel that far for respite. Then again, perhaps there are that few people attempting to quit that they are that sparsely populated as to require a significant drive time.
Beer, Latte, half a pack of cigarettes and countless pages of scribbles and doodles, it’s time I head home. Hotels have always felt like home to me.
