THE RACE IS ON
I moved to Venice yesterday. A woman smiled at me as I walked into Café Gratitude. I bought a pyrite crystal at a yoga center on Lincoln I happened by on my walk home. Pyrite is supposed to be a protective stone, blocking out negative energies and repairing any tears in my aura. I have it my right pocket right now and I swear I feel a little coolness against my thigh … although come to think of it, I feel coolness on both thighs, my arms as well. The chilly fog is in this morning, my first here in Venice, reminding me of San Francisco, of dawn patrol surf sessions at Ocean Beach, sitting in my car, sipping coffee, seeing mystic figures in the distance dancing on an ethereal plane, assessing the conditions as I’d try to conjure the courage to wrestle with a still wet and cold wet suit sitting in a tub in the trunk of my car.
I caught up with my dear old pal Mick Rousseau the other day on phone. Mick lives in Seattle with his wife and four children. Four children. MIck was a rather famous alchemist of the good life back in his single days in San Francisco. Smart, country-club good looking with his curly blonde locks, and an irresistible devil-may-care swagger, the guy had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun together … we were a rather formidable team.
He told me his life is all about coaching his kids’ lacrosse teams, that his wife was away recently doing missionary work for ten days and that he had to execute on getting the kids up, making breakfast, getting them off to school, solving dinner, etc. He told me his son Liam is now sixteen, handsome but not really crazy about girls the way Mick was. Liam likes to buy and sell high-end clothes and sneakers online. Last year, he made $24,000. His dream is to live in LA or New York City. Mick told me, much to his wife’s chagrin, the two guys Liam wants to meet the most are me and our friend Jimmy Means, who lives in New York City. Liam thinks me and Jimmy are legends. Jimmy is a 54-year-old man-child like me, recently divorced from a young Russian bride, eccentric as hell. It says a lot about me and Jimmy that neither of us has met one of our dear friends’ oldest sons.
I envy Liam. Mick told me Liam doesn’t give a shit about anything, that he’s a big risk taker. The girls love him, but he pays no attention. He’s tall and looks like an Icelandic prince, I’ve seen pictures. I’m sure he is going to kill it, be featured in Vanity Fair magazine, date a super model slash bad-ass designer, buy a decrepit farm house in Provence where he’ll spend summers fucking and conjuring and manifesting creative shit. He has what it takes … a jury of no peers, or if there is, he doesn’t listen, or if he does, he doesn’t give a fuck. I envy Liam. I envy a sixteen-year-old kid.
I set up shop in my new rental yesterday afternoon, which costs significantly more than my penthouse studio in Tribeca. I was told I’d have the place for five weeks but then received a text from the landlord apologizing that his father-in-law is coming to town and that they can only rent to me for three weeks. This shit wouldn’t happen to Liam, I thought.
The bed is very comfortable, the place is very quiet … but of course, I couldn’t sleep. I thought about a question I had posed to a gal I had slept with the night before during post-coital pillow talk … “Doesn’t it all seem like we’re just on a ride sometimes?” And when I said ride, I meant that we’re pushing forward, but mostly spinning in a circle, playing the same old games, telling the same old stories, living in the same belief system, salving the same old wounds.
I’m no different than the sixteen-year-old I was, really. Maybe the difference between me and Mick, Liam’s dad, is that Mick isn’t running in that race anymore, at least not as hard. He got to pass the baton on to his son whereas I’m huffing and puffing in the next lane trying to keep up with a kid who just sprouted pubic hair.
The difference between me and Liam is I’ve always given a shit … about girls, about what they think, about what everyone thinks. Because of that, I’ve played it safe. No fuck you house in Provence. Like I said, I’m getting kicked out of my rental in three weeks.
Mick told me he was shocked about how much Liam spends on clothes. “You know me,” he said, “I don’t buy anything.” Yesterday, on a whim, I bought a $250 jacket to stuff into my temporary closet with ten other similar jackets.
That’s the problem with being single, having no kids. Riding the carousel solo gives no reprieve from being stuck playing the game … with sixteen-year-olds. Oh, and there’s also that experience of loving something more than yourself.
I’m suddenly reminded to look online at rescue dogs for adoption. Baby steps for a fifty-year-old.
VALENTINE’S DAY
I sit in Los Angeles traffic on W. 3rd Street, heading into my office. It’s 9:31 am.
A car approaches from the opposite direction. I see it from a mile away. I tap the gas. I tap the brakes.
It is a red car with a big red heart strapped to the front, emblazoned with red glitter. Red streamers blowing off both sides and the roof. A Nissan Stanza. A 60-ish-looking black lady at the wheel. She is wearing muted colors, clay, like a dried out South Texas arroyo. There is not a trace of happiness on that face, defiant if anything. But good for her, as long as she didn’t do all of that Valentine’s Day shit for herself.
I tap the gas. I tap the brakes.
A 30-ish guy is scurrying down the sidewalk. He holds the string of a helium-filled balloon with a big red heart on it that is blows in a gentle Los Angeles headwind against his forgettable face. In the other hand is a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in fancy paper. His hair, combed back and greasy, is seriously receding. It won’t be there for long. He looks like a clerk at a Radio Shack, if they still exist, with his shitty, coarse, white button down shirt, shitty black pants that are too big for his skinny ass, and his shitty black shoes, the ones with the massive soles that sad people who are on their feet all day wear for their shitty service industry jobs. People who wear those shoes should be put on a government list to monitor for purchases of whatever the fuck people buy online to make bombs. I’m not going to look it up online, lest I get put on the list myself. He’s clearly in a hurry to nail that shit down. Go get ‘em bro, I’m pulling for ya!
I tap the gas. I tap the brakes.
I’m staring at my steering wheel, Range Rover it says in the middle of it. I roved from New York City to Los Angeles in this vehicle last month to explore a woman, to explore myself with this woman. We met over the summer on a yoga retreat on a carless, careless fantasy island off of Sicily. How could you not fall for something there?
I tap the gas. I tap the brakes.
I’m driving to work where I get to bury myself in trivial details involving the pushing around of wealth from one individual to another. A message board outside a shoe store says, “You can’t buy happiness but you can buy shoes.” It is written in pink, cursive, girly chalk. A wrapper from some foodstuff clings to an arm of the message board, for three, four seconds, and then loses its purchase and dances down the street.
I tap the gas. I tap the brakes.
My friend Alex Gordon in New York once told me, “the hardest thing in life is figuring out what you want because getting what you want isn’t difficult.” Clearly, this is on me. My go with the flow philosophy has provided me a vast palette of colors but the paint is drying in its tubes, some opened, a bit squeezed out and smacked on a board to rot, some opened and immediately recapped, all caked with the paint and dust and debris that has gotten into the grooves and the caps over that son of a bitch called time, making them impossible to open. Stuck. I was really hoping this one would stick. I am terrified of the decision I know I’ve already made.
I tap the gas. I tap the brakes.
