To Live and Love In L.A.

by Ben Peller

  Yours in Christ,

  Nicki

  8/18/10 7:43 P.M.

  Do Shawn Michals justice and don’t disappoint him, he is the greatest and awesomest to some of us (namely, ME).

  (For some reason, people writing to me while at the same time addressing me in the third person disturbs me even more when they write about themselves in the third person. However, it is admirable to use creative terms, and ‘awesomest’ certainly qualifies as such. On an even more positive note, using Shalom in one email and Christ in another email suggests a more flexible mind than many seem to have.)

  8/19/10 7:02 P.M.

  Hello, MY BABY! I can’t stop thinking about you! I thought about you so much today I went out and bought a dildo. It’s bright pink and it does me so goood, better than ANY MAN ever has. Imust confess you have been the best so I named my new love after you. I call it SHITHEAD ASSHOLE. Ha ha!

  8/19/10 7:45 P.M.

  I just came! Meanwhile you, Shawn Michals, you bastard, can go suck a cock and then call me. Pronto! On the double!

  8/19/10 10:04 P.M.

  Your bullshit of not calling me bach hath not impressed me. But you are not the first person to try and make me doubt myself. My sisters are as jealous of Nicki’s luminance as you are. Still I love you and want to help you! Cummm see me tonight, my baby, baby, babeee! I’m at **** ****** Street in Studio City. Come to me and be quiet because my Auntie may be up. She’s another one who wants to make me doubt. She’s out to get me! RESCUE ME! I will FUCK YOU until you’re blind and then like the black widow I will kill you and make you mine forever.

  (Though I’ve always fantasized about having a statue or something similarly majestic named after me, one could consider a dildo is even more meaningful, on a personal level so to speak. However, this previous email ramps up the ‘threat level’ of Nicki. She’s showing extreme paranoia regarding her family and comparing herself to a black widow. Female black widows don’t usually cannibalize their mates; but there are animal species, such as preying mantises, who do so on an alarmingly regular basis. As far as rescue goes, the only rescuing this woman needs is from herself, but quite frankly I’m too afraid that if I so much as contact her again she may carry out her threat of fucking me blind and then murdering me, black widow or not.)

  8/21/10 8:02 P.M.

  WHERE O WHERE is my Shawn Michals? He leaves me at the mercy of my family. These people who want to consume me, make me doubt myself, and persecute me. I may head back to North Carolina, where I still have disciples, ones who will care for me. Los Angeles is tooooo much. With guys like you roaming the city, its no wonder girls get driven mad out here. But you have taught me so much, in ways you’ve been my guru. My hot fantastic guru who I still want to have in my heart. Since I met you I have dreamt about living with you. I would luv to look at you each and every morning. Yeah I know, call me crazy. Call me the craziest girl in L.A.

  Lost in shambles for my love, Nicki

  (A guru? Me? Talk about pressure. But I’ll give Nicki credit: to call one’s self the craziest anything in Los Angeles takes some serious balls.)

  POSTSCRIPT:

  The above entries are unedited, both Nicki’s emails and my commentaries I wrote immediately after receiving them. At the time I found them both amusing and disturbing. They certainly weren’t dull. Nicki’s messages may have been all over the map, and at times she contradicted her feelings several times within a twenty-four hour period, but she did feel, and feel quite deeply. I commented on her emails in a humorous note because I figured she was just young and going through a phase. She was, as she called herself, a ball of raging hormones, and would soon meet someone who could handle her and then she would settle down and be as happy as she could.

  I figured wrong.

  About a year after I received her final email calling herself the craziest girl in L.A., I was on the World Wide Web late at night, slightly drunk, when I found myself googling Nicki’s name. I was inebriated enough to acknowledge that though she’d seemed a bit out of her mind, there had been a genuine voice to her messages. She was like that crazy cousin nobody wants to necessarily spend time with but who always gets asked about at family reunions.

  I found her name on page three of my Google search. From a paper in North Carolina dated about six months ago, there was an article that lasted five lines, telling the world that Nicki had been found dead on a sidewalk. There had been numerous cuts in her arms, and their pattern pointed strongly toward these wounds being self-inflicted. Cause of death was acute loss of blood, and her death had been ruled a suicide. Neighbors had revealed that she’d been acting “acutely disturbed” for some time. The article concluded with the news that Nicki left behind an aunt and four sisters.

  Five lines in a newspaper describing how this raging beauty had bled to death in the street.

  I read the blurb – that’s all it was – how many of us get much more? I read it over and over again. I told myself that Nicki had been destined for an end like this. I told myself this over and over and with each retelling it sounded more and more like bullshit. My only response to her numerous cries for help had been to write humorous comments about them, blissfully imagining she would type the craziness out of her system and then magically reinvent herself, as I’ve tried to do on so many occasions. I paced my apartment, and soon I was pacing the streets. Within an hour I found myself on Santa Monica beach, in the volleyball area, right where I’d first met Nicki.

  In my hand I held the rubber heart she’d planted in my hand, an hour or so after she’d licked the back of my neck. Mine Forever, it read.

  I tried my best to track down the spot where we’d laid, when she’d talked about how even grains of sand could remember moments. I sank to my knees and felt like a fool. What could I possibly say? I’d been unable to prevent my mom from killing herself. Now here was another woman, one who’d been reaching out to me, and she’d done the same thing. I dug into the sand and buried the heart she’d given me because she thought I “knew.” The only thing I knew was I didn’t know a damn thing, not about love or life or…

  “Yeah, Nicki,” I said. “I’ll never forget you.”

  I twisted my mouth into a grin and, just for the hell of it, stuffed a handful of sand into my mouth. Its grit bit the inside of my mouth like an invasion of tiny bugs. Such dryness, an empty shock that demanded repelling. After heaving the sand back out, I began to choke and then laugh so as to expel the sand more rapidly. The sound of the ocean’s waves ebb and flow mocked my forced hilarity, and the infernal moon was full enough to cast a harsh glow on their tide. The whole thing would’ve been funny, if only there weren’t so many useless tears falling from my eyes, joining the grains of sand that would never forget this night when the craziest boy in L.A. was sobbing over the loss of the craziest girl in L.A.

  How To Trap A Cougar

  Vs.

  How To Trap A Cub

  The Venetian Villa, an assisted living home, occupies a full block along Santa Monica Boulevard, just about ten blocks from the beach. Its pleasant looking terraces and a sparkling fountain in the shape of a swan lends it the impression of a nice hotel flirting with a four diamond rating rather than a place where senior citizens come in acknowledgment that this could very well be the final permanent residence they’ll have in this life.

  May Weathers is the person I’ve come to find. Who could she be in this home? A receptionist? A resident? A janitor?

  I walk through the doors and right off the bat am surprised by laughter. Two men, probably mid-sixties, are stalking around in a semicircle side by side, trapped in hilarity.

  “She loved it!” the one on the right hollers. He’s thin, wearing a horribly mismatched outfit of striped trousers, black shirt, and a pair of cowboy boots. “I’m telling you, she was begging me for more!”

  “You’re more full of shit than a crock of shit is!” his companion cackles. His white suit jacket seems to be perfectly pressed, and matches his white pants and white sho
es. “She’s so old her you-know-what couldn’t get wet if it got caught in a tidal wave.”

  “She managed to stain my sheets!”

  “The only thing stained is your memory. You’re living in a dream world!”

  “She took me to IHOP the next day!” the fantastically dressed man declares. “What do you think of that?”

  “I think she was probably starving from being awake all night listening to you snore and almost shit yourself as you farted away. She’s eighty-eight years old, you idiot! She’s old enough to be your mother.”

  “You know, just thinking about this makes me hungry. I could do for some breakfast. What do you say to IHOP?”

  The man in white stops rotating in a circle and cocks his head. “As long as you’re buying.”

  “Withered Balls,” the refugee from a thrift store declares. “You’re buying”

  This very odd pair walks past me ranting nonstop at each other about sex, love, and the rooty-tooty-fresh and fruity breakfast at the International House of Pancakes on their way out the door I just came through.

  I approach the front desk. A woman whose cheeks carry slight wrinkles offset by a wonderful smile peers up at me. Her hair is a brilliant crimson that matches her fingernails. “May I help you, young man?” she asks.

  “I was wondering if a May Weathers lives here.” I say.

  She purses her lips. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “She checked out two weeks ago.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Might you have an idea as to her current whereabouts?”

  The woman looks puzzled, and agitation takes over her face. “I don’t know,” she says. “She died.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Sorry for…” For what? For not being familiar with the term ‘checking out’ as a… What? Allegory? Reference? Perfunctory manner of referring to an inevitable death sentence? Sorry for being alive when someone else has taken the next step in whatever walk we’re on?

  She takes a deep breath. “No, I’m sorry. For being so blunt. It’s just that working around here you tend to develop a thick skin when it comes to death.” Her gaze is now one of increased interest. “Were you a friend of hers?”

  “A friend of a…” I hesitate. “Friend.”

  “I see,” she nods with a severity that makes me ask, “Were you close to May?”

  “May was my mother,” she answers.

  My hands clench, and my mouth drops just a bit. I manage to maintain a sense of composure as I recite, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Her eyes blink swiftly. “Thank you,” she answers again, this time a trifle more gently. “So why are you here? Her estate’s already been settled…”

  “Oh no, it’s nothing like that!” I tell her. “I’m here for my friend, Shawn Michals—“

  “Oh! Shawn!” she squeals, in that delighted way some people demonstrate at the breaking of tension. “How Mom used to talk about him! She was really entranced by that guy.”

  “You mean you never met him?”

  “No,” she says, sounding a bit sad. “I never did. By the time I came to work here she was, well, she knew she didn’t have much time left. She didn’t want Shawn to see her in such a state. She told me she preferred the time they had together to be preserved. And, my God, it was so strange, here she was at the close of her life and she was talking about him as though it was her first crush. She used to joke that she was glad she had the chance to become a Gilf in her final year.”

  “A…?” I’m pretty sure what the acronym stands for, but am a bit too embarrassed to utter it in such a setting. So many mature people milling around, playing poker, arranging pictures of nieces and nephews…

  “Grandmother I’d like to fuck,” my new friend provides it with ease, in a tone that’s respectfully low but mischievously well above a whisper.

  “Wow,” I say. “She did tell you about him then?”

  Her hands grow busy with forms on the counter as she casts her eyes downward. When she finally does speak it’s in a tone husky with emotion: “She spoke of him very tenderly. Said he made her happy.”

  I nod, stunned at the water welling in May’s daughter’s eyes. So Shawn had made a person happy in their final days, enough so that they’d passed onto their offspring memories suitable to unleash whatever sentiment might spring tears. “He mentioned he’d sent something here,” I continue. “A document of sorts.”

  “Of course!” she exclaims, seeming almost relieved. “I have it in back!”

  She stands and disappears around a doorway. I look around. Several people are seated on the plush sofas. A few chat quietly while some simply sit, their expressions ranging from contemplative to vacant. In an old-fashioned wooden rocker there’s a man with leathered skin and a haggard moustache. He looks to be in his seventies, and he’s chuckling away, book in hand. With a start I recognize the cover. It’s To Live and Drink In L.A.!

  Enchanted at the sight of this book in the hands of a senior citizen in a nursing home, I approach him. He looks up at me.

  “That book any good?” I ask, as casually as possible.

  “Pretty damned good,” he nods. “But it’s also pretty damned dirty. Wouldn’t let my granddaughter read it, that’s for sure! But I’m sure as hell gonna get a copy for my daughter. She’ll love it!”

  “How’d you get it, may I ask?”

  “You may. And it was May, God rest her, who gave it to me. May… I forget her last name…”

  “Weathers.”

  “Right. Said it helped change her life. Go ahead and ask me how in the hell can you change your life when you’re on the last lap. All I can say is you’d be surprised, young man.”

  “Here you are, sir,” a voice pipes from behind. I turn and see May’s daughter, holding an envelope out to me.

  I take the envelope. “Thank you.”

  “When you see Shawn,” she says. “Please give him my regards.”

  “Of course,” I promise. “That is, if I see him.”

  “Something tells me you will.”

  Her smile is familiar, but I can’t place it. “Well, what’s your name?” I ask.

  “What do you think?”

  And it hits me, from where I’m not quite sure. “June,” I say. And she nods. “I suppose you have a daughter named July.”

  She chuckles. “Close. It’s Julie, actually. I didn’t want her to be teased quite so unmercifully in grade school.”

  A cough rumbles from the man seated before us. “Pardon me, youngsters,” he growls affectedly. “But some of us old farts are trying to read.”

  His arm darts out and swats June’s leg with To Live and Drink In L.A. “Oh, Mr. Jenkins, you and those books…” she shakes her head, then fastens me in the path of her eyes. “Well, take care.”

  I want to ask this woman out, but a part of me is resistant. I’ve become so intertwined in Shawn Michals’ life that to date a daughter of one of his past lovers would be like dating a step-sister.

  So I return her farewell. Another cough erupts from the reader on the bench. “If you see Shawn Michals, give him a message from me as well. Tell him he’s a damned lunatic, but one hell of an entertaining one.”

  He cackles and wheezes away as I nod. Then, with another one of Shawn’s chapters in hand, I turn and pace across the floor of crisscrossing black and white triangles and out the door.

  The intimacy of the encounter, all that give and take between age and youth, man and woman… I try to picture Shawn with a woman old enough to be June’s mother. A Gilf, if you will. I want to wait until I get to the security of my apartment so that I may raise a glass in peace to what must’ve been quite a unique relationship, the last one of a woman’s life.

  I reach home, pour a healthy martini, toast May, June, and Julie, and open the envelope…

  My second cousin’s grandparents, Harold and Shelia, had been happily married for fifty-four years when she passed on. They were great people who had no problems being candid when it came to their private lives. On their fiftieth we
dding anniversary celebration Harold’s gift to Shelia, opened in front of the whole family to see, was a bronzed rendering of what appeared to be a hot dog cushioned by ping-pong balls.

  “Look familiar, my dear?” he asked.

  “Oh please,” she snorted. “Like I need to be reminded of what your cock looks like, you old letch.”

  As they embraced and kissed I told myself that if I could grow old with someone I felt comfortable exchanging sexual bon mots in front of grandkids with impunity, that would make aging wonderfully worthwhile.

  As open as Harold and Shelia were about their sexual passion for one another, both were very guarded when it came to their respective ages. Shelia went to her grave with her year of birth unknown to all, including her husband of fifty-plus years. Only after she’d passed on was it discovered through crinkly documents found in a trunk that she’d been thirteen years older than Harold. Harold himself went just four months after Shelia. Family members pegged it as a toss-up between losing his beloved and shock.

  Much like many purported myths heaped upon the American public (insurance companies really want to help you “live long and thrive” and not screw you with every doctor’s visit while pumping experimental drugs into you) the concept of it being impossible for a woman to fall in love with a man who was an infant while she was busy navigating her teenage years has been wisely abandoned by many inhabitants of the 21st Century. For a long time it was older men who had it good, shacking up with women who were not only young enough to be their daughters but their grand daughters. Now, it appears, women are finally catching up.

  They’ve even claimed their own moniker: Cougars. And cubs, younger men who are a decade or three their junior, are referred to as their “prey.” This is not entirely accurate, being that cougars can tend to be elusive creatures whereas cubs tend to launch themselves at a cougar with wild unrestraint in hopes of being eaten alive while mauled repeatedly.

  As a cub who has both happily captured and fallen prey to many a cougar, here are guidelines that may help both predator and prey, however they choose to define themselves in this specific food chain: