To Live and Love In L.A.

by Ben Peller

  We pressed Dr. Stewart’s button and waited several minutes uneasily paging through magazines. While I shivered slightly in the office’s cool I snuck glances at Ariel, feeling like a thoroughly married couple. Finally there was the merciful whoosh of a door opening and out stepped Dr. Stewart.

  She looked to be in her late 50s, and had a firm handshake that matched the tightness of her face. Her eyes scanned me with such efficiency I felt naked. After all, Ariel had confided that she told this woman everything about our relationship. Everything covered a lot of ground. If taken literally, it meant she’d revealed how I sometimes called out chess moves during lovemaking. I had a tendency to call, “he shoots, he scores” at appropriate (or some may say inappropriate) times. And then there was that time she’d made me put on a dress and slathered me in makeup and insisted on calling me “Shawna” while she bent me over and used a strap-on dildo liberally.

  With the idea that this stranger probably knew all this about me, I tried as mightily as possible to return her solid grip and look her in the eye.

  “You look so much like I imagined you would,” she said, in that maddeningly knowledgeable tone therapists seem to cultivate through the years.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” I responded guardedly.

  “The feeling’s mutual,” she replied, releasing my hand. I rubbed my sore fingers as the three of us took our seats.

  “So,” Dr. Stewart began. “How would you two describe your relationship?”

  After years of writing and letting words roam free, I now found I couldn’t corral one.

  “Open?” I proposed.

  This drew a slow nod from Dr. Stewart. I turned to Ariel for help but only caught an even slower nod. “Not open that we’re necessarily sleeping with other people,” I blundered on.

  “You’ve tried to get me to go to swinger parties!” Ariel said pointedly. “Aren’t I enough for you?”

  “But those kinds of parties might be fun,” I said, not daring to reveal that I’d already been to a few with past lovers and there was no “might” about it. They were fun.

  “I think what Ariel is saying,” Dr. Stewart put in smoothly. “Is that with the introduction of anal sex into your relationship, you may now see her as more of a sex object than a woman. She’s revealed to me that during your lovemaking sessions you often bring up how much she enjoys anal sex, as though it’s something that degrades her instead of empowers her. You even make her say…” the doctor glanced down at her notes, “‘I’m your naughty slut. Please pump my ass until your cum’s dripping out of it.’”

  It’s amazing how phrases that can sound so erotic during the throes of sexual activity can sound so disturbing in an analyst’s office.

  Disturbing enough to make me ponder what seemed a constant in my relationships with L.A. women: that I felt vastly inferior to most of them, being that those I seemed to attract usually drove fancy cars, produced television shows and movies, and were generally successful at their chosen fields. Was my constant barrier of attempted humor and a desperate self-professed need for my own space just a draw bridge, thus ensuring these women wouldn’t get inside of me and then one day leave me, as back when I was a child Georgette had? By treating my relationships with these women not so much as relationships but as stopgaps, did I hope to maintain a semblance of equality, even though they were so obviously my superior?

  What in heaven’s name was wrong with me?

  Such is one of the dangers of being in an analyst’s office – too many unsettling questions begin to assert themselves. So I did the only reasonable thing one can do under such circumstances.

  I went on the attack.

  “Why are you trying to make Ariel doubt her relationship with me?” I prodded Dr. Stewart in my best Humphrey Bogart rasp. “So you can keep her on the hook every week for three hundred bucks a session?”

  “Actually,” the Good Doctor replied in the severely calm tenor she’d probably been granted the day she’d received her license to practice shrinking people’s heads. “I’ve already advised Ariel that I feel our time together is done. She’s ready to move on. Ariel has gained so much strength and confidence as a result of the sexual exploration you two have shared. You’ve really helped her grow, Shawn.”

  Ariel reached over and touched my hand. “It’s true, Shawn,” she cooed. “You have helped me grow.”

  It was like being back in professional wrestling, an art form that permits a bad guy to become a good guy in an instant. Here I sat, having gone from a being a “heel” who’d treated a woman like nothing more than a sex object to a newly crowned “babyface,” a good guy who had helped her grow. I started to hear an imaginary crowd’s cheers. My heart swelled.

  “But Shawn,” Ariel said, now squeezing my hand with firmness similar to the grip Dr. Stewart had greeted me with. “I think it’s time I move on from you as well.”

  The way she said this, with such pity and understanding, made me feel like a hometown someone had finally realized they’d completely outgrown.

  “It’s just that Ariel has come to the conclusion you’re a bit too emotionally immature,” Dr. Stewart said, twirling what I imagined was an imaginary knife. “For the kind of relationship she needs.”

  Given that I assumed myself too emotionally insecure to deal with roughly 98% of the world’s population, I questioned why it had been worth three hundred good round American dollars per week for Ariel to come up with such an obvious dénouement.

  Dr. Stewart coughed. “And Shawn, I believe it would be a good idea if you gave some thought to attending therapy sessions.”

  “Wait a minute…” I sputtered. “If you think I can afford three hundred dollars a week…”

  Dr. Stewart shook her head with a smile. “Oh, I wouldn’t be seeing you. There happens to be a very capable program at the community welfare help center. It’s right down on Pico Boulevard near…”

  My ears were too busy being lit on fire by indignation to decipher any more. Being dumped is hard enough. Being dumped while being told by your suddenly ex-lover’s analyst that you should seek therapy is a bit harder to take. But being dumped while being advised by your suddenly ex-lover’s therapist that you yourself should seek cut-rate therapy is enough to drive one truly crazy.

  I like to think I handled the situation maturely enough. I tried not to shout too loud while informing both Dr. Stewart and Ariel that there was no chance in hell I was going to lower myself to telling my secrets to a perfect stranger. I already had a Doctor, Doctor Smirnoff, and he counseled me quite well, thank you.

  When I slammed the door on my way out, I thought it quite graceful, other than the fact that I caught my finger in the door jamb and spent the next five minutes swearing audibly to myself as I tried to get that damned security card into the stupid elevator slot.

  That night, Ariel called to check on me. I assured her I was fine, and I was. Cocktail in one hand and a book in the other. I thanked her for her concern, and for so many good times, and we genuinely wished each other well.

  “We just want different things, Shawn.” Ariel sighed.

  “How about you come over and we have one more Rochester trip for the road?” I slurred.

  Her laugh was one of those maddeningly patronizing ones. “I don’t think that’s a good idea at this juncture, Shawn,” she said.

  Proper reasoning. Even more maddening.

  “Fine,” I said to her. “Glad to have helped you grow.”

  “For whatever it’s worth,” she said in parting. “Every time I take a really big shit, I’ll think of you.”

  The last thing I heard as I groped for a proper response was her laughing as she hung up the phone.

  I hung up as well and was soon consumed with laughter as well. Blame it on the foolishness love can bring. Enter laughing, exit laughing… there were worse ways to handle a romance. For nostalgia’s sake I pulled out my old high school yearbook. There was Kathy Ann Tischer, the girl whose ass cherry I’d accidentally broken. I won
dered where she was, what she was doing on this Tuesday night. Making dinner for her kids? Tapping her finger impatiently while she waited for a rerun of Seinfeld to come on? Or was she maybe reminiscing, like me, how we’d shared a good chuckle that very first time I’d violated her anal cavity, a time, for better or worse, which would never come again?

  However she or Ariel remembered me, I like to think it would be fondly. After all, pretty much everyone has “taken it up the ass” at one time or another, be it literally or figuratively. Perhaps if we learned to accept taking it up the ass as part of life, to embrace that pain may come hand in hand with pleasure, that adults could take a cue about laughing at themselves from teenagers, this world would be a better place.

  Not to mention it would have a lot fewer analysts.

  Temp Romances And

  Permanent Scars

  OrangeGrove Temporary Employment Agency is located on Wilshire Boulevard on the Westside, nestled between a medicinal marijuana dispensary and a costume shop. A pretty freckle faced woman is busy behind a desk, oozing charm into a phone receiver: “- was certainly not our intent to send you someone who wasn’t completely qualified, Mister Bloom. Oh yes, we can have someone else sent to you by tomorrow morning.”

  She looks up at me, smiles, then mouths what looks like Have a seat.

  So I do. There’s a partition blocking any sort of view of the office proper, but from beyond I hear the clamor of women debating who “kicked ass” on Dancing With the Stars the previous night.

  Next to me is a lady who looks well into her fifties, and is very smartly dressed in a crisp blue suit. Thin sapphire earrings complete the effect. She smiles at me. “Are you here to try out?” she asks.

  Before I can answer, the woman behind the desk hangs up and addresses us. “Can either of you type sixty words a minute?”

  “I can!” my seatmate quickly responds.

  “Great, you’re hired,” our hostess laughs. “Well, we do have to test you first. But I’m sure you’ll do fine. Let me show you where the testing area is.”

  The older woman gives me a wink and I wink back. She and the younger woman disappear behind the partition. Within a minute the younger of the two has reemerged. “Now then,” she says. “Just how many words do you type?”

  “About seventy.” I pause. “Per hour, that is.”

  Her laugh is spontaneous and unforced. I like her. “I’m afraid we may have some trouble placing you. Unless you can do magic tricks.”

  I shrug. “Every time I walk down a street I turn into a bar.”

  She laughs again, and I like her even more. She cocks a hand on a hip. “So what brings you here?”

  “Some research, actually.” I say. “I’m here to collect something on behalf of a Mister Shawn Michals.”

  “Oh my God!” she squeals. “That imp! Hold on.”

  She runs back behind the partition.

  Imp? I think. Well, he’s been called worse…

  A burst of excited giggling spills over the partition’s top edges. One by one some faces peer out at me from around the plastic walls pockmarked with black and white dots. They’re all smiling, and a few of them wave. I wave back, surprised but at the same time not that just being connected to Shawn Michals in some manner is enough to elicit excited salutations from the staff of this temp agency I’m assuming he must’ve worked for.

  The receptionist comes out bearing an envelope almost as thick as a briefcase. “Here you are,” she holds it forth with both hands. “My God, if you ever see Shawn, send him down here. All the women love him.”

  “They know him?” I ask.

  “Well, in a sense,” she springs her delightful laugh again. Like coins spraying the edge of a wine glass. “You see, we’ve all read this story he sent to us. And we just can’t imagine what it would be like to actually meet him. He sounds…”

  Seconds pass. She stares down at the envelope in her hands as she tries to articulate what inside of it makes Shawn Michals sound like.

  “Different,” I suggest.

  “Oh,” she tinkles laughter again. “Very different. But also…”

  “Susan!” a woman whose tight cheeks match her smile has darted her head out from behind the partition and is now fastened on both of us with laser eyes. “Ms. McCallister has completed her word test. You might want to come back and set up her Excel screening.”

  “Right,” Susan replies, sounding strangely relieved. “Okay,” she says to me. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “Can I have him?” I ask, then shake my head. What the hell have I just said? “I mean it. The envelope, I mean.”

  “Oh, of course!” Susan gushes, and places the envelope in my hand. It’s pretty weighty. “I hope you enjoy it.”

  Then she turns and hurries back beyond the partition.

  The laser-eyed woman is still staring at me.

  “Did you know Shawn?” I ask her.

  “No,” she says slowly. “None of us really did.” Then she chuckles. “At least not until we read what he sent. A few of us were passing it around. But you know, the turnover here is almost as bad as at a temp job. So none of were working here when he worked for our agency. If you ever see Shawn, do tell him we say ‘hi.’ And if he ever needs a job, he knows where to come.”

  I nod, and am prepared to leave when there erupts what sounds like a terrific ruckus from back beyond the spotted partition walls. Suddenly a lady with peppered long hair and a furious look storms up to the opening of the partition. “Nonsense!” she shouts. “You tell that monster that he will never get a job through OrangeGrove again! He never would’ve gotten one in the first place had I been supervising manager at this branch when he was busy running amok and disgracing this organization at every job he was given. As for that… document… I had no idea it was still here, being that I specifically ordered its destruction.”

  “Maybe then,” I try to smile while inching my way toward the door. “What’s in here isn’t even the real document. Maybe it’s just a bunch of blank pages.”

  “What’s in that envelope, young man, is an illegally Xeroxed copy of a manuscript that, vulgar though it may be, is the property of OrangeGrove Temporary Employment Agency. I will thank you to hand it over to me this instant!”

  Given that whatever’s within this envelope has inspired emotions stretching from perplexity to exuberance to venom in three different women, I’m now really fired up to read it. I make a ridiculous gesture of glancing about while shifting the envelope to one hand. Damn, the thing is heavy. I then tap my ear with my free hand, hoping this will imply that I can’t hear all that well, and frantically make for the door.

  “Come back here!” this woman who missed her calling as a dictatorial high school principal shouts at me as I barrel out to the street.

  Freely outside, I take a satisfied breath. How cool it is to be an adult! If I were a minor in school I would’ve been forced to listen to a lecture amidst threats to call my parents, etc. Now, I’ve simply obtained what I came for and left. I chuckle and silently congratulate myself on my hard won maturity.

  Then there’s a hand clamping down on my shoulder. I turn and find it’s her. This seems against the rules. Here we are on Wilshire Boulevard, one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles. Cars are passing by, office workers are stepping around us; I’ve already escaped this woman and here she is still pursuing me. The variables don’t add up. It would be as if Michael Meyers attacked some elderly man in broad daylight on a London Street.

  Before I can point out that, technically, as a mature adult I should be allowed to go free, she hisses, “You will give me that envelope or I will contact the proper authorities!” she hisses.

  THE PROPER AUTHORITIES. Holy shit.

  On pure instinct I’m halfway down the block before I even realize I’m running. As the cries of my would-be incarcerator ring out behind me, I keep my eyes on the corners I weave around. Down 14thStreet, onto Arizona, onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Why, Shawn? I won
der. Why when I retrieve your chapters do I usually find myself running from someone?

  Finally I get up the courage to cast a nervous glance behind me and thankfully see no one. After heaving a sigh of relief, I perform a magic trick and, at the corner of 14thand Santa Monica, turn into the blessed darkness of the Wild Child Bar. There I order a $3.00 Happy Hour Bloody Mary, open the purloined envelope in my hand, and begin to read…

  After I was fired from my first post-college job at the Pitz hotel, for various reasons they termed Insubordination but I liked to classify as “living and drinking to an extreme,” I went on a two day bender. On the third morning I awoke, rolled over, fell out of bed, then finally staggered to a standing position. I opened the door of my apartment to allow the fumes of vodka and cigarette smoke to escape and came face to face with an envelope taped to my door. I’ve never known this to be a good sign. Very rarely does the managing company of an apartment complex tape an envelope to one’s door that contains a notice reading: Just wanted to say you’re one heck of a swell tenant! Keep up the fantabulous work!

  This instance proved to be no exception, as with trembling hands I opened the envelope and pulled out a notice informing me my rent was three days overdue. I had two weeks to make immediate restitution before legal action was taken…

  I threw the notice to the floor and opened my freezer. Here an even more startling vision greeted me. Only a finger or two left in my latest bottle of Smirnoff. And I had a hazy idea that my “rations fund” was hovering near the two hundred dollar mark.

  I had to get a job. And fast.

  Drastic measures were thus undertaken. I showered, shaved, and put on a suit and tie. An hour later I threw myself at the mercy of the recruiters of a local temporary employment agency called OrangeGrove. Luckily, three of them were fellow Midwesterners who also had majored in English in college, and here I was armed with my wondrous ability to recite lines from John Hughes’ films as well as type sixty-five words a minute, not to mention remember what the name of Odysseus’ dog was in Homer’s The Odyssey. It didn’t matter that my knowledge of John Hughes films came as a result of my finding a bunch of VHS tapes in a dumpster during one of my diving expeditions, or that my ability to type sixty-five words a minute was the result of spending the past two years working daily on novels which had been written at the furious rate of ten pages a day and all of which were currently unpublished. As far as Odysseus’ faithful pooch went, that I knew its name had been Argos was because my sophomore English teacher had caught me cheating on a test and forced me to outline the entire poem in all its epic glory.