all across the restaurant,
we were transmitting thoughts to each other.
All the,
frankly, the
white
upper class,
upper middle class—
whatever your,
the
definition is—
white successful …
spending too much money,
too, ya know, too good a restaurant,
that kinda thing.
We were just
getting ourselves into a frenzy,
which I think a lot of it
involved
guilt,
just generic guilt.
When we drove back,
and it’s about a ten-minute drive,
talking about the need
for guns
to protect ourselves,
it had just gone from there to there.
But I’m tellin’ you, nothin’ happened!
I don’t mean somebody in the restaurant
had a fight
or somebody screamed at someone—
nothing, just,
ya know,
Caesar salad,
da-de-da,
ya know,
but the whole
bit
went
like that.
We walked in
from the underground garage into here and we looked at each other
and we could see people
running around
instead of … like,
people walk fast in this business
but now they were, they were like
running,
and
we looked at ourselves—
“we gotta close the office.”
So we had gone from
“I’m a little nervous”
to “We gotta close the office,
shut down.”
This is a business
we don’t shut down.
Memo goes
out saying:
“Office closed for the day.
Everyone please leave
the office.”
And then
I remember somebody said:
“Did you hear?
They’re burning down
the Beverly Center.”
By the way, they …
No no no, it’s …
There is no who.
Whaddya mean, who?
No, just they.
That’s fair enough.
“Did you hear they are burning down the Beverly Center?”
Oh, okay, they …
Ya know what I mean?
It almost didn’t matter who,
it’s irrelevant.
Somebody.
It’s not us!
That was one of the highlights for me.
So I’m looking outside
and the traffic is far worse
and people were basically fleeing the office
and we were closing all the blinds
and this is about,
um,
I guess about four o’clock.
The vision of all these yuppies
and aging or aged yuppies,
Armani suits,
and, you know,
fleeing like
wild-eyed …
All you needed was Godzilla behind them,
you know,
like this …
chasing them out of the building,
that’s really it.
Aaah, aaah.
(He laughs, a very hearty laugh)
Still,
still,
nothing had happened—
I don’t mean to tell you that bombs were exploding—
nothing, zero.
So we,
I was one of the last to leave,
as usual,
and the roads were so packed it
it must be like
they were leaving
Hiroshima
or something,
Dresden …
I’ve never been in a war or …
just the daily war of …
(Intercom beeps)
Who’s that?
Do you need me?
One sec. (He leaves, then returns)
Where was I?
Yeah.
What, what was, was
“I deserve it,”
you know,
was I, was I getting
my …
when I was fearing
for
safety
or my family or something …
those moments.
Because the panic was so high
that, oh my God,
I was almost thinking:
“Did I deserve this,
do I, do I deserve it?”
I thought me, personally—no,
me, generically,
maybe so.
Even though I, I …
what’s provoked it—
the spark—
was the verdict,
which was
absurd.
But that was just the spark—
this had been set
for years before.
But maybe,
not maybe,
but, uh, the
system
plays unequally,
and the people who were
the, they,
who were burning down the Beverly Center
had been victims of the system.
Whether well-intentioned or not,
somebody got the short shrift,
and they did,
and I started to
absorb a little guilt
and say, uh,
“I deserve,
I deserve it!”
I don’t mean I deserve to get my house burned down.
The us
did
not in …
not,
I like to think, not intentionally,
but
maybe so,
there’s just …
it’s so
awful out there,
it was so heartbreaking,
seeing those …
the devastation that went on
and people reduced to burning down their own neighborhoods.
Burning down our neighborhoods
I could see.
But burning down their own—
that was more dramatic
to me.
Kinda Lonely
The Park Family & Walter Park Store owner, gunshot victim
(A very pleasant, sunny, high-ceilinged new modern home in Fullerton. There is a winding staircase that comes into a hallway. The furnishings are replicas of Louis XIV. Walter Park, who has had a gunshot through the eye, has a scar on the left side of his face. He is wearing a blue golf shirt, white socks and slippers, and khaki pants. His wife, June, is sitting on a love seat next to him. She is elegantly dressed. She has on a black silk blouse and yellow slacks and a wonderful concha belt with red stones. Chris Oh, her son and Walter’s stepson, is in another chair, perpendicular to them. He is dressed simply and in his stocking feet. Birds and a lawn mower are very present throughout. The lawn mower moves close and then distant and then close. The birds are really beautiful. Piano music of Ravel’s “Death of the Princess” playing on an excellent sound system.
(The feel of the place is airy but there is a lot of furniture. The love seat is in a sitting area with a sofa and two chairs and a marble table. There is a wooden cart with wheels and porcelain pitcher. The dining room has a cabinet with many porcelain items. Along the wall of the staircase is a long strip of fabric, which is a Korean banner. There is a tree which is real, in the living room, but other plants are silk or artificial. There is a painting of a white woman with a white baby at her breast. I think it was a rendering of Christ and Mary. It’s clear that good taste and a lot of thought and joy went into the design
. At the same time, it is clear it’s an imitation of the European aesthetic.
(Mr. Park speaks in the rhythm of a person who has full authority and ease, and a person who has all of the facts exactly straight. When he begins talking, his wife and son shake their heads to let me know that he doesn’t know the answer to the question. He is sitting with his arms crossed and legs crossed, also in an easy but confident and authoritative position. From his body position and his rhythm you would think this was the most reasonable, sound response possible. It is, of course, emotionally sound, but there is a gap between the question and the answer. He is heavily sedated, and has been since he was shot.
(He starts by nodding.)
I felt kind of
lonely,
you know,
in the store,
so I said
well,
I might need go
travel somewhere,
y’know,
and I said
well, I’m gonna probably go see
my mom
or, you know,
somebody.
So I try to go to Korea.
Then I call a couple guys up
and, uh,
“I feel kinda lonely.
I wanna go Korea,
see if I can change, uh,
situation,”
and they didn’t say nothing.
(Very passionate, and amazed)
(Birds and lawn mower closer)
it’s
kinda, you know,
wondering thing,
and one guy happened to tell me,
“Why you wanna go Korea
for?
You just came out of
hospital.”
You know,
that,
that makes me wonder too.
So I came home and
I told her about it
and
she didn’t say nothing.
Uh,
it happens to …
(His voice is much fuller here)
among the Koreans,
among Orientals,
if they really love somebody or they really like somebody,
they try
hide certain things
for different manner,
and, uh,
I accepted it as different manner
that
that’s the way she loves
me and it’s fine
as long as I know
and I have way to pay her back
that makes it even.
And she didn’t say nothing.
To Drive
Chris Oh Medical student, stepson of Walter Park
Besides, you know, being his son,
I also said I’m a medical student
and
I’d like to know
what the prognosis is
and I’d like to know
what you’ve done.
And, um,
they didn’t tell me anything
and so here you are
and he’s in this condition.
You don’t know that he’s already had
a bifrontal
partial lobectomy.
It’s,
well, the bullet
passed through his temple—
temple side here—
and it went through his left eye
and lodged
in his frontal lobe.
And, um,
the frontal lobe is …
In the past,
in the old days,
they did a lot of frontal lobectomies
when they just removed
that part of the brain for people who are very tense and,
yeah,
lobotomies.
That’s where your higher learning skills are,
your impulsiveness,
your willingness to do things,
and your, um,
I guess
your basic character.
(Pause)
And, um,
you know what … when you have … when you think and remember how
things used to be
and you realize you can’t do those things now,
you
look different,
and
you can’t drive.
I know he wants to drive.
And in My Heart for Him
Mrs. June Park wife of Waiter Park
(She cries sometimes as she speaks, a natural flow.)
He came to United States
twenty-eight years
ago.
He was very high-educated
and also very nice person to the people.
And he has business about seven,
what ten years,
twenty years,
so he work very hard
and he so hard
and he also
donated a lot of money to the Compton area.
And he knows the City Council,
the policemen, they knows him.
Then why,
why he has to get shot?
You know,
I don’t know why.
So really angry, you know.
Then I cry
most of my life,
this is the time I cry lot,
so
I go to the hospital and I stay with him.
Especially ICU room
is they don’t allow the family to
stay there,
but the,
all the nurses know me,
and every time I go there I bring some nice doughnuts
to the nurses and doctors,
and they find out how much I love him.
So they just let me in
and stay with him all day long.
So I just feed him
and stay till eight o’clock
at the night,
and all day long,
and I spend all my time
and in my heart for him.
Execution Style
Chris Oh
When
he got shot,
I guess he
pressed on the accelerator
and he ran into a telephone pole,
and at that moment
there was an African-American lady
behind
in her car
and witnessed
when it happened
and it was an Afro-American who shot him.
A man.
From
what I gather,
from what I heard
and things.
The gunman,
when he was at the stoplight,
the gunman
came up to the car and broke
the driver’s side window
and, uh,
it wasn’t one of those distant shots it was a close-range,
almost execution style.
The Beverly Hills Hotel
Elaine Young Real estate agent
(Saturday, February 1993. A real estate office in the heart of Beverly Hills. She has been in real estate for many years. She sold Sharon Tate the house she was murdered in. Most of her clients are movie stars. She was married to Gig Young. Elaine is a victim of silicone. She had plastic surgery done on her face, to insert cheek implants, and it exploded. She has been written about in several magazines. She is dressed in a bright blue dress with studs and earrings shaped like stars. She has dyed blond hair. She is very outgoing. The phone rings constantly. When her friends call, she puts them on the speakerphone, and I hear the entire conversation.
So the second day—
this is what got me in trouble on television and really made me feel
bad.
I had a date
and my date canceled.
Now, mind you, I’m only three weeks separated and didn’t want to be
alone
and my date canceled.
So now comes Saturday.
> I had another date
and I thought if I have to be alone—
’cause my housekeeper goes off for the weekend.
I couldn’t get to my daughter.
Still the rioting was escalating and it was really bad.
There were alerts: “Don’t leave your house.”
And I had a date
and he lives about twenty minutes away in the Valley and they say,
“Don’t drive freeway.”
And I said, “Are you going to see me tonight? ’Cause I don’t want to
be alone.”
And he said, “Yes.”
So he came to pick me up.
And he got there and I said, “Oh my God, where are we gonna go?
We can’t eat anywhere. Everything is closed.” And I said,
“Wait a minute. A hotel wouldn’t be closed. They gotta be
serving
food.”
So I said, “Let’s see if we can go to the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
So we drove to the hotel, which was a couple of minutes from my
house,
and when I got there, much to my shock,
the whole town, picture-business people,
had decided to do the same thing.
Only, unbeknownst to me, they did
it the night before too.
So basically what happened the three or four days of the heavy rioting,
people were going to the hotel,
and I mean it was mobbed.
So we would stay there till three or four in the morning. Everybody was
talking and trying to forget
what was going on … the rioting … try to … they would talk about it until
they’d exhausted the subject.
It would start out horrible,
scared, and “What was going on?”
And “How could this happen in California?”
And “Oh my God, what’s happened to our town?”
And “These poor people …” and, and, and totally down and down and
down.
And then there’s so much you can say.
In life
once you’ve hit bottom, there’s no way to go but up.
So once you’ve talked about the bad and the horrible, you can’t talk
about it anymore.
So then you say, “Well, let me put this out of my mind for now and
go on.”
So that was the mood at the Polo Lounge
after they talked about how bad it was
and maybe they’d come back after an hour
but then they tried to go on.
“Here we are
and we’re still alive,”
and, you know,
“we hope there’ll be people alive
when we come out,”
but basically,
they would come there every night.
And I finally went there for three nights
and stayed till two or three in the morning
so I wouldn’t be alone.
I talked to a lot of people.
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