That morning, after spending some time with Shade Christie’s memorial plaque, I headed back out to the parking lot with Officer Maez when he tapped my arm and pointed at something. I followed his gaze and saw, perched on a rusty post twenty feet away, a strange and beautiful owl staring back at me with whirling eyes, tender and probing. In my billowing sadness, just beginning to understand that I would never hold Shade in my arms, I had the odd but persuasive thought that Shade had died and come back to Earth in the form of this owl. I’ll always remember the way that owl looked at me.
NIBBLE, LICK, SUCK, AND FEAST
In May of 2004, a New York publisher put out a book I’d put together called Found, based on the annual magazine I produce, which collects love letters, to-do lists, journal entries, photos, and other personal notes and ephemera that folks around the country have plucked off the ground or the street. To help spread the word I bought a van on eBay and hit the road with my little brother for an 8-month, 50-state, 136-city tour. The publisher’s publicity team managed to get me booked on local morning TV shows in most of these cities. How it worked, I’d show up at the station around 6:30 a.m., a producer would clip a little microphone on me, and somewhere between weather and sports, one of the morning-show anchors and I would talk about the book for two to three minutes.
Early on in the tour, I took these gigs pretty seriously. After all, the publicists and TV stations were clearly doing me a huge favor by pimping the book. In Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, I made sure to arrive plenty early, act energized, and be prepared with cool Found notes to share. But by the third week of the trip, I was starting to wonder who exactly, if anyone, was watching the local news at 7:00 a.m.? Also, while a couple of the hosts of these shows were real cool and genuinely enthusiastic about the book, most of them didn’t get me, or the whole idea behind Found—yet this only increased their chipperness and jaunty dawn enthusiasm. “Those pants are so fun!” they’d say, looking me up and down. “Plaid pants! You’re fun, huh?”
What kept me excited about these TV gigs was getting to meet and hang out with the other folks who were my fellow guests on the morning shows. These were local chefs with recipes-of-the-week, mayoral candidates, a team of Irish dancers, a kid with an eighty-pound pumpkin. In Baltimore, on FOX 5’s Good Morning Baltimore, I did my little Found song and dance, and then the anchor asked me to stay on her couch while she brought on the next guest—Baltimore’s Best Mom. This was right before Mother’s Day. Baltimore’s Best Mom turned out to be an eighty-seven-year-old woman named Darnelda Cole. She sat next to me on the couch, and on the far side of her sat her fifty-year-old son, Dice. Darnelda had no idea why she’d been asked to come on TV; they’d plotted this as a surprise. The anchor asked Dice Cole to read the letter he’d written nominating his mother for the prize. Darnelda grew weepy. At last, the anchor declared Darnelda Baltimore’s Best Mom and produced an oversized plaque from somewhere and presented it to her, at which point Darnelda fell sobbing into my arms; I gave her a wild bear hug, caught up in the moment. The anchorwoman quickly joined our embrace. Dice, meanwhile, had lit up a cigarette, which an alarmed producer raced over and doused with a splash of sparkling water. Darnelda took this in and began hollering at her son and whacking him with her new plaque—“Dice, you can’t smoke in here. This is TV we’re making, what you thinking, boy! Put that damn thing out!”
There were other high points, and by high points I mean low points for the stations and their guests. In Cleveland, two city parks employees showed off an injured hawk and falcon they’d rescued and rehabilitated. Then the falcon got loose and started flapping about, crapping on everything. The anchors had to forge on through the local news and sports and weather while the falcon continued to dive-bomb them, rationing its poop so it had enough to drip a few drops on them with every sortie. It was fucking amazing. In Chicago, a young soccer champ whom they’d invited on to demonstrate his fancy moves booted a ball off the wall of the set, knocking it over backwards, revealing the fact that we were not actually in the hosts’ living room, as it might appear, but in the middle of a big, dank, concrete hangar. In Phoenix, I was sandwiched on-air between Cedric the Entertainer and the governor of Arizona. Cedric came on right before me, dropped a couple F-bombs, and then sheepishly left, telling his chaperone, “I didn’t mean to say that shit, it just came out, I swear to God!”
Often, my brother and I would do a Found event in one city, hit the road for seven hours, taking turns driving all night, and get to the TV station parking lot in Louisville or Milwaukee at around 4:00 a.m. for a couple hours of sleep before it was time for me to unfold myself, clomp inside all rumpled and bleary eyed, and do my thing for ninety seconds on-air. In the wee hours, security guards in the station lots would poke flashlights in our van windows and roust us, and I’d explain that I was going to be a guest on the morning show, and they’d disappear for twenty minutes to check into it, then come back and wake us again to tell us that things had checked out and everything was cool.
In Seattle, after a young security guard played this game with us, I asked him if I could come inside to use the john. We ended up talking for a while. His name was Pico. It turned out that the station was moving soon to brand-new, larger digs, and that Pico was going to be replaced by an automatic gate with a swipe card reader. Pico asked why I was going to be on the morning show and I explained to him the whole idea behind the Found book—all notes and letters and photos that people had found and sent in to me, little scraps that gave a glimpse into the lives of strangers. Pico got excited. He told me that earlier that very same night he’d been sifting through boxes that were being tossed out before the station’s big move, just looking for mugs, T-shirts, old calculators—anything of value—and he’d found a bunch of racy notes from the morning show’s old, dour anchorman to a young camerawoman. We galloped out back to the Dumpsters and mucked about until we found the stack of steamy pages. “You should read some of these on the show!” Pico cried. I resisted for a bit, but Pico was vehement. “This guy’s a class-A asshole,” he said. “I’m telling you. He got a janitor fired for throwing out his lucky tie that he left on the bathroom floor. She worked here eight years.”
Three hours later we were on the air, and the anchorman was turning to me with a grumpy look. “So tell me about this book. You collect trash, is that it? You like trash? Trashy trash? One person’s treasure is another’s treasure?” He might very well have been drunk at seven fifteen in the morning.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “People are finding this stuff all over the country, all over the world, really, and sending it in to me. Some of it’s hilarious, some of it’s heartbreaking. It’s amazing how powerfully you can get a sense of someone just from a little ripped piece of paper you pick up off the grass. Like this one, for example.” I held his note up high and read it aloud. “‘Stacey, you’ve got a rack on you, now that’s a pair. I will nibble, lick, suck, and feast on them. Quit playing hard-to-get.’”
What an expression that fellow had on his face! Back in the lobby, Pico stood with two janitors by a big TV set, and as I walked past them, out into the bright, blurry morning sun, Pico smiled, gave me a little nod, and said with quiet pleasure, “Good job, man, good job.”
CANADA OR BUST
My friend Tim Nordwind is the bass player for the band OK Go, and he’d been invited one Sunday night to DJ at a bar on Sunset Boulevard called Hyde Lounge; since he knew I was visiting L.A., he asked me to come down and hang. I’m usually a dive-bar sort of guy, but I’d heard that Hyde Lounge was L.A.’s fanciest, most exclusive club and I was pretty sure that getting my name on the list at Hyde Lounge would impress Missy Freeze, the beautiful blond-haired girl I’d met earlier in the week. Missy had grown up in rough-and-tumble Youngstown, Ohio, but now lived in Beverly Hills and worked in special promotions for St. Pauli Girl, the beer, which meant that she dressed up as the St. Pauli Girl at conventions, movie premieres, outdoor rock concerts, and other events and served beer to people. I
’m always drawn to girls in the service industry—waitresses, baristas, bartenders, concierges, strippers—basically anyone who’s working for tips. I dream of burrowing through their lacquered shell of professional friendliness to investigate the soulful edges I glimpse underneath.
OMG, Missy texted back instantly. How’d you get on the list at Hyde???!!!
Her excitement was promising, and at dinner she amazed me with stories of her childhood in Youngstown among hardened pool-hall types with names like Wrench, Smoke, and Burn, but once we were through the doors at Hyde, she saw a guy she recognized, handsome and nattily dressed, and whisked off with him upstairs without a look back. I kicked it briefly with Tim in the DJ booth, but he was busy spinning records, so I left him alone and skulked around the bar for a half hour, sipping a twenty-dollar drink, half-looking for Missy, and soaking up the atmosphere—young Hollywood agents in silver suits mixing it up with waifish models in slinky dresses. At thirty-three, I was probably the oldest person in the room, and I felt myself attracting odd looks, like an old, craggy barfly who’s sure to cause a fight.
In a dark corner, looking equally lonesome, was Pau Gasol, the Spanish basketball star who’d just been traded to the Lakers. I asked if I could join him, and for twenty minutes we chatted amiably about Barcelona (he confessed to bouts of homesickness) and absently watched as his new teammate, Sasha Vujacic, swayed on the dance floor with a girl in high heels he’d apparently just met, relentlessly sucking face. I explained to Pau the term “sucking face” and told him that I’d always hated it because it seemed vulgar, when kissing can be so tender and exquisite. But he argued that in this instance it was fiercely apt. He repeated it a few times, tickled by the expression: “‘Sucking face.’ Wait, is it ‘Sucking the face?’”
“No, just ‘sucking face.’”
Finally, Vujacic broke off and headed for the john, and I caught sight of Missy on the dance floor with the guy she’d bumped into, laughing and smiling, tugging at his tie.
“That’s her!” I cried to Pau, pointing.
“Who? The girl you were telling me about? Oh shit, that’s not good.” The guy had pulled her close, and as we looked on, they began to furiously make out. Pau shook his head solemnly. “Sorry, man,” he said, downing the rest of his drink. “Damn. ‘Sucking the face.’”
*
Missy, I figured, could find her own way home. After a couple of shots with Pau, I barged out of Hyde and on the sidewalk out front ran into two black teenagers selling bootlegged hip-hop CDs. We talked for a couple of minutes and they introduced themselves as Tito and Score. Tito was the wilder of the pair, light skinned, with long dreadlocks. He asked if I played an instrument and revealed that he was starting a metal band, though he still needed a drummer, bassist, and guitarist (he would supply all the vocals). Score, dark and gangly, stood shyly behind him, nodding along. They said they’d been drifting around the country and now were headed north, toward Canada. Their next stop, they hoped, was the Bay Area. As it happened, I’d decided in the previous few minutes—as I’d watched Missy swirling tongues with a guy who hadn’t just bought her dinner or gotten her into Hyde Lounge—that L.A. had grown old and it was time to head for San Francisco to check in with some friends up there. I gave Tito and Score my phone number. “Call me tomorrow,” I told them. “You guys can ride with me.”
My phone started ringing at eight in the morning. But it was neither Tito nor Score; it was Missy. I let it go to voice mail, then instantly listened to the voice mail she’d left: “I am so sorry about last night,” she said, sounding legitimately distressed. “I can’t believe what I did to you. I used to date that guy Martin, and I was drinking, and I just got all—anyway, that was really fucked up of me, and I’m sorry. I hope I can make it up to you later this week.”
With that, my planned trip to San Francisco was canceled. I went back to sleep for several hours and had forgotten all about Tito and Score and my ride offer when my phone rang again in the mid-afternoon from an unfamiliar L.A. number. It was Score, calling from a pay phone. His real name, he said, was Hakim. He still wanted to get up to the Bay Area, but there was a problem—he couldn’t find Tito. They’d arranged to meet at Hollywood and Vine, he told me, but it was three hours later and Tito still hadn’t shown. I explained that my trip was on hold, and he said, “Oh,” with such disappointment and skepticism that I sat up straight. I could sense his train of thought: Yeah, like some random white dude was really gonna give a seven-hour ride to a coupla hoodrats he’d met on the street. His lost faith in me felt like a challenge worth rising to. Besides, what the hell was I doing hanging around L.A. waiting on the St. Pauli Girl when I’d likely have a better chance with any girl in any bar in San Francisco?
“Tell you what,” I said. “Fuck it. I’ll give you a ride to the Bay. Find Tito.”
But Score—Hakim—stunned me. He explained that he’d just met Tito the night before. How weird! The night before I’d thought of them as an inseparable team—Tito and Score, Score and Tito—the dynamic duo. Somehow in my drunken state, I’d believed that they’d been friends for years. I’d imagined them playing themselves as the swashbuckling protagonists of a road film called Tito & Score, which I hoped to one day write and direct. Now Tito was nowhere to be found. No matter. I told Hakim I’d pick him up at ten o’clock that night. “Where do you want to meet?” I asked.
“How ’bout the parking lot of the Verizon store? I think it’s, like, Sunset and … I don’t know.” He had a ’shroomer’s spacey affect. “Hold on,” he said. I heard him calling out to a passerby, “Hey, what street is this? Western? Okay, thanks.” He giggled into the phone. “Okay, Sunset and Western.”
“Cool. See you there.” I hung up and began crafting a text to Missy, working hard to seem chipper, and careful to allude to vague creative projects in the works with collaborators in the Bay, so that it would appear that I was bolting north not as a spurned suitor but as an impulsive globe-trotter whose artist lifestyle sometimes demanded last-minute travel.
She texted me right back: Ill come with you! St pauli event in palo alto tues!!
*
A few hours later, I caught sight of Hakim in the parking lot before he saw me and Missy, while we were still at the light at Western, a quarter block away. He wore a camo backpack and had a small blue duffel bag hanging off one shoulder; in his arms, he cradled what appeared to be a lone, raggedy turntable, its cord dangling behind him like an untied shoelace. We were half an hour late, and he was searching the passing traffic with the hopeful but anxious and half-defeated look of someone who fears he’s been stood up. The light changed, and when I roared up beside him in my borrowed Jeep Liberty, he lit up with a gigantic, relieved smile. I jumped out and gave him a little handshake and half-hug, and we placed his duffel bag and turntable in the backseat. He hopped in on the other side, and the three of us got on the 101 headed north.
Hakim—smiley, somehow both shy and talkative, perhaps a bit blazed—told us his story. He was nineteen, and had grown up in a rough part of Las Vegas. He’d finished high school the previous June and soon realized there wasn’t much for him to do in Vegas besides get into trouble. He’d always loved DJ culture and underground hip-hop, and a dream had formed inside him like a hot, molten rock—he wanted to get a pair of Technics turntables and go to Canada and become a DJ. Why Canada? He’d once had a conversation with someone who’d been to Vancouver, and it sounded like a paradise—lush, racially tolerant, and highly cultured. He also appreciated its lax marijuana laws, and what he perceived to be its general laid-back vibe. Also, he imagined that there were fewer DJs in Canada than, say, L.A., and that it would be easier to break in as a young DJ.
Along the way, though, he had some stops to make. He wanted to visit a library in Oakland that he’d been told his grandfather had helped to open. He wanted to try to find some other relatives in the Bay Area who he hadn’t seen in a decade. And he wanted, eventually, maybe after a spell in Canada, to find his dad, who he�
�d never met his whole life, but who he knew lived in Newark, New Jersey, at an address he kept on a deeply worn and creased pink Post-it note which he pulled from his back pocket to show to me and Missy. “They call him Score, too,” he told us. “That’s kind of how I got the name.”
Hakim had left home nine months before and started his journey in L.A., where he’d been ever since, living on the streets for weeks, even months at a time, and then getting a room in a house for a month or two, when he could afford it. He’d been hustling CDs on the street and working as a canvasser for environmental groups. He was Internet-savvy enough to negotiate Craigslist for jobs and temporary sublets, but still had spent most nights sleeping in parks and on the beach, or in abandoned buildings occupied by squatters and crackheads. He seemed to simultaneously be a homeless street kid and an undercover reporter observing the lives of homeless street kids—he was full of keen observations and funny, affecting stories about other kids he’d met, like Tito.
My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays Page 16