Lost Angeles

by David Louden

  “Said you threw him out a window.” She’d offer nonchalantly.

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah. Said some other stuff too,” She’d smirk “he offered me a revenge fuck…I think he reckons me as your lady friend.”

  “How was he then?”

  Ignoring me completely she counters “You ran out pretty smart last night.”

  “I had stuff. You understand.” The headache had begun.

  “So it’s got nothing to do with Benoit then.” Billie feigns surprise.

  “You want to see someone like Benoit Balls by all means knock yourself out. It’ll save him having to drug you. You do know he’s permanently full of shit right?”

  “Excuse me?!”

  “We can smell our own. You’re a smart woman Billie, a beautiful woman and a damn right interesting woman…” I start to realise I have no idea where I’m going.

  “…and this would have nothing to do with you right?” Her tone stiffens.

  “I am the last guy you’d want to get involved with Billie believe me but I also…” I struggle with words, “look” I continue as I pull up my trousers and button my clean shirt “we’re all heading out. You’re here and looking fine and no doubt Benoit’s caught up looking at himself in a hubcap or something…”

  This time I break her resolve and I see the foundations of a smile poking from either corner of her mouth. Stepping forward I offer my hand.

  “I never thought I’d be coaxing you out of my bed but what do you say about going out and gettin’ stupid and crazy.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve gotten stupid and crazy enough?” She’d retort with a faux adult tone.

  Billie would take no coaxing at all and within minutes the six Yellow Cabs ordered would be shepherding the twenty strong alcoholic explorers into the silky night that the City of Angels had to offer. The cab ride would be quick, largely due to the fact that the Moroccan driver had not only a love of speed metal but also an extremely liberal approach to traffic lights. It would lead Billie to take my hand, I tried to remember to tip him generously. It had been a while since someone had held my hand in that way, the way that says “everything will be ok because you are here”. I gave it the slightest squeeze to acknowledge the presence of her delicate fingers wrapped between mine before relaxing into it.

  The cabs form an orderly yellow line outside of a run-down factory on Alvarado Street at the north end of Echo Park. The large metal slide door sits slightly ajar from the street but as we move closer and the music gets louder both the doors and the gap gets bigger. When we’re close enough to be patted down by the security staff it’s clear that the monolithic doorway has enough room for us to walk comfortably in, albeit in single file. Paying the three dollar cover charge to the punk girl sat behind an old school desk a quick glance around indicates just how large this old working class establishment actually is. At a guess at least two hundred people dance around to a techno track with a sample from Jimmy Cliff yet the place looks almost empty as nobody seems to have trouble waling around. A white Ford transit van is parked in the corner furthest from the door. The rear doors open and facing us. Taking Billie by the hand I lead her towards it for a closer look in the dimly lit strobe heaven, she mouths something about wanting to dance and breaks off with Cristelle and Victoria towards the makeshift dance floor. As Hayden, Bret and I get closer to the transit van it becomes clear that it’s the venues non kosher bar as a thin man in a skull cap is selling beer and plastic cups of whiskey.

  Having convinced the skull cap to sell me the bottle and securing a handful of pills from an out of place looking businessman I allow Billie to convince me that dancing, or at least dancing with her, is a good idea. It takes a lot of awful white guy movement to drain the pleasure from having your hands roaming the curves and contours of a woman’s body as she snakes to the music; but fuelled on whiskey and uppers, not to mention the catholic awkwardness we’re all injected with at birth it manages to make twenty minutes of what is essentially dry humping the most painful experience in months. Oscar passes, saving me from another Sean Paul track and helping to take my boner down to standby mode. He looks frantic, he usually carries an extremely laissez faire expression upon his face but he has the father of a missing child look about him.

  “I can’t find Hay’d, he’s gone off. He was ranting about somethin’ but I was…” Oscar’s sentence drifts off as Billie interrupts.

  “There he is!” She’d point.

  It was absolutely true, there he was. Standing toe to toe with a tattooed Mexican who dwarfed Hayden’s five foot six stature by a good two feet and to make matters worse he was just about to slap the Mexican bull across his large face. As if from nowhere Bret steps in between the two men, whispers something in the Mexican beefcake’s ear before putting a guiding arm around Hayden’s shoulder and dragging him to relative safety. The relief amongst those of the group who knew Hayden was palpable. Billie takes the bottle from my hand and sinks a swig; I stand and watch as a bead of sweat runs the uncharted path from her brow down her face under her chin and between her breasts. It was Oscar’s turn to rescue me from myself and in doing so explain how he saw me transform into a cartoon wolf before his eyes. The decision is made there and then to drink a copious amount of alcohol, to flatten any possible horn that might arise throughout the course of the evening, kill it dead.

  “You know I like you right.” Slurs Billie.

  I’m not entirely sure how I ended up smoking through my pack of cigarettes with her and having this conversation. I nod - my ability to operate my jaw seriously hampered by the muscle’s relaxed status. There’s a conscious effort to explain to Billie that she doesn’t owe me any justification but the words keep coming from her mouth. How Benoit’s a “realllly good guy”, how he’s “busy” but even though he misses a lot of her shows he always turns up at the end. What I really want to tell her is that a real boyfriend wouldn’t allow himself to miss her shows, especially when she moves like that but my brain is misfiring as the uppers fade and the alcohol takes a strangle hold. Suddenly a commotion breaks out somewhere around me, my head is swimming…it could be two separate commotions. Looking around I see Oscar has stripped down completely naked and is in the middle of trying to get ladies to “pet his puppy”. The sight of blonde balls is sobering; sobering enough for me to realise that the real commotion is coming from deeper inside the group of people who are no longer dancing but appear to be frozen. Pushing past Oscar who’s wrestling with one of the security staff I make my way to the middle of the factory.

  “Fuck you man, you black-wearin’ bastard!” Yells Hayden before throwing a punch at the Mexican behemoth.

  Clarification would come later that this was not a racial slur from my mixed race friend but rather a conflict of fashion. Hayden having mopped up his suicide tequila blood opted to dress entirely in white for our expedition to the hard edge of Los Angeles. In seeing the tattooed Mexican dressed entirely in black Hayden had gotten it into his head that they clashed – a thought that would, thanks to alcohol and narcotics, evolve into Hayden thinking this man whom none of us knew, had done this on purpose. As the Glock was drawn and pointed at Hayden it appeared that our volatile little bassist was about to eat the bullet over fashion. Stepping in front of the two polar opposites Bret tries to cool the situation explaining how Hayden “meant no harm. He’s just drunk and incredibly stupid and would like to apologise” all the while being undermined by clipped words from the drunken Aussie. As the Mexican goes to lower his weapon the six foot flesh torpedo that is Oscar flies through the air landing on the three of them. He sends Bret, Hayden and the Mexican crashing to the ground and causes the Glock to let out a single shot that makes the dance floor clear in a heartbeat.

  Scrambling to my feet I reach out and take Billie's hand dragging her vertical and powering through the crowd of spooked and bolting ravers as they rush the slide door of the metallic factory frame. Pushing through there is a second shot that has clearly been a laxa
tive for many judging by the smell of shit that erupts into the dusty night air. Once outside we run to the safety of Alvarado Street, surely the first time a white tourist has ever thought that. Inadvertently leaping in front of a meandering cab; the echo of the breaks screeching in my already sore head; I bundle Billie into the passenger seat and give the driver her address and fifty bucks to rush her home.

  "Get in you dumb asshole!" She’d order.

  "Bros before sexually attractive hotties in plunging necklines.” I state unable to pull my eyes from her chest; I close the door giving the driver the ‘all clear’ to put some lead into it.

  "That's my cool moment right there," I tell myself "if I don't get shot tonight that is."

  Cautiously I approach the factory, by now I am the only person heading in that direction - even the blue shirts of the venue’s security have seemingly forgotten what they were there for. I wonder whether I should flank the place, action movies have been one of my five a day for years and there might not be a second chance. As the police sirens ring a little closer than they were a minute prior the flanking manoeuvre is taken out of my control. Appearing from the factory doors the Mexicans and the group of dangerous individuals I had begun to see as friends come walking out of the rave in what can only be described as in "good spirit".

  It would appear that neither gunshot was voluntary, though the second had done enough to convince Hayden that the fashion faux pas wasn't nearly as important as he thought it was. Bret smiles, more relief than genuine pleasure and puts an arm around me introducing me to the man-mountain Shadow - which I assume is not the name his mother gave him, and Luis the self proclaimed "Biggest Pimp in Hell.A". There's something about gunfire that unites the common man regardless of trouser colour. The fire baptism we had undergone meant that Shadow wanted us to party with his crew and would not be taking no for an answer.

  The mass evacuation had led us to several losses leaving only Bret, Carl, Hayden and a fully dressed Oscar who triumphantly boasts of winning a bet with Carl. Relocating half a block from what the police will call "the crime scene" we smoke cigarettes and try to act cool as we await the additional motorcade that Shadow had ordered up to transport us to Los Feliz and what he promises is a "crazee pussy party".

  The blacked-out SUVs roll up and stop almost in unison. Climbing on board there's a sense of general uneasiness, not about Shadow - if he had wanted to kill us he could have done it without messing the soft leather interior. No, the uneasiness came from the presence of Hayden and whether the lesson learned on Alvarado would stick.

  Inside the modest abode in the working class Los Feliz neighbourhood were all things to soothe the heart of the red blooded male. Wall to wall booze, babes and blunts as the front door bellowed out a marijuana smoke screen that wouldn't have looked out of place in Backdraft.

  Buzzing along with the heavy bass of Orishas we glide into what Luis says is his "party house". I drop into an armchair next to Bret before being handed a 40oz and a large joint. Taking a deep breath I finally relax and watch the floor show as a wrestling match breaks out before us for our viewing pleasure.

  Whether it was the rate of 40oz consumption, our similar views towards weed or our mutual appreciation for the shaking rears of Mexican lady folk I found a kindred spirit in Bret. He had spent his formative years dreaming of becoming a good enough snowboarder that it would provide him with a living.

  Three years in and having just signed a sponsorship deal with a small clothing line he landed a jump badly and tore up his right knee bad enough to require several surgeries. Twelve months on from them and he was perfecting a substantial morphine addiction and a hard line of only dating nurses who could help tend to his needs. It was while nurse hunting that he met Joan, a scrub nurse at the emergency room in the Alexandra Marine and General Hospital. Engagement would come within weeks only for Bret to wake up one day and see something needing fixed staring at him while shaving.

  Packing himself off to a treatment centre not only would he get clean but he'd come to realise that though Joan was lovely, the world they had constructed together was not for him. Explaining it to her would be heralded with statements like "it's perfectly natural after all you've been through" and "what about counselling?" One day Joan would come home from a double to discover half the house gone, Bret sold all he could and started walking until he reached somewhere that felt comfortable. Seemingly that place was next to me staring at asses.

  The walk of shame the following morning would coincide with the school run. The hardworking parents would glare, knowing all too well where we had come from and what we had been up to. My arm hurt, I had become accustomed to the early morning aches and pains but they usually resided closer to my liver. It would be hours before I would discover the tattoo and days before I would recall when I got it, in the meantime IHOP was calling us and Billie texting me.

  "Let me know you got home safe x."

  11

  WITH NOBODY to look sternly at me my behaviour had become increasingly irrational yet at the same time routine. Kelly had a way of looking over her glasses that not only gave me wood but helped with my moral compass. Sometimes situations would leave me heated these would inevitably lead to me saying or doing something that was out of line. The look would be the first indicator; the second would be how she went about breaking it to me that I was being a total shit. Always polite, conscious of my feelings and if that didn’t work then calling me an asshole and leaving me to sleep on the couch would usually help me reflect. When I wasn’t her equal I would strive to make it up to her. Now with Ms. Marley out of the picture I had settled into a cycle of cheap drink and an almost knightly nightly quest to pay her back in ways that she wouldn’t even know about. My debauchery would be on her head.

  Monday would take me to the Globe on University Road; I would forgo the weekly offer of karaoke in order to partake in the discounted alcohol and the busty songstresses that would be queuing up in an attempt to win the bar’s cash prize. Tuesday would bring the world famous Belfast Limelight and £1 a pint night. Many a band would have to slum it knowing if they could break the Belfast audience they’d have little bother wooing fans worldwide. For me it was less about which band was taking to the well trodden stage in the back of the darkened church of rock and roll, and more about how close to the age of consent would I be skirting in attempting to pry away any young and sprightly Emo from her pack. If the door staff had done their job right then there’d be no surprises in the morning, then again if the door staff had done their job right they would have probably sent me packing. I was too old to be part of their crew but my outlook on life coupled with the pain swept emotion that clung to my face spoke to their young souls in a way that cheap Harp could only dream.

  Wednesday would bring me to The Spaniard in the cobbled streets of the Cathedral Quarter. Certainly the most narrow haunt of my week and though not particularly cheap I would enjoy the conversations I would overhear. It was also close to the Pothouse which would mean that you would be able to pick up a miniskirt on the way home without having to pose for hours, listen to the trendy people’s music or be seen dead snorting what the young up and comers of the Belfast scene would call “Choke-caine”. You’d still have to scrape an inch or two of make-up from your bed sheets but you wouldn’t have to pretend to care about Beautician school. By Thursday I was praying for a home cooked meal and would always end up at Ryan’s Bar and Grill on the Lisburn Road. There would be little to offer in the way of drink promotions and most of the female talent would be either heavily involved with someone sporting a Rugby shirt or staff but it was close to home and did a mean garlic bread and chicken wings. Kelly’s Cellars on Bank Street in the centre of town would be my Friday night.

  The bar was old, low ceilings, peat fire, plenty of character, after the smoking ban it would smell of piss – all bars would smell of piss but it afforded a lock-in for its regulars, had the best seafood in Belfast next door and for some reason was always filled with Spanish
backpackers. After a couple of months of the best battered oysters I found myself as the fuck buddy of a Palestinian barmaid who could bend in ways that were inhuman and seemingly had no issue with you putting it in her mouth regardless of where you were and wanted less out of our “situation” than I did. I actually felt cheap more often than not.

  Saturday night was shameful as it would mean frequenting the Queen’s University Student Union where the drinks were cheap, music was loud and there was always a river of impressionable young ladies who were looking for someone to mentor them. I, for my sins, would make every effort to come off as more together than I actually was. It rarely worked as by five drinks in my dark side would come out and the party would really begin. Sunday brought with it The Parlour as the door staff knew me well enough to know that 1. It wasn’t personal and 2. I probably wouldn’t remember too much the following morning. I had almost been arrested the previous Friday on my way home from Kelly’s Cellars for attempting to scale the front of Duke’s Hotel in order to join a rowdy and partially clothed hen party on the fifth floor. I had decided to allow caution to prevail for one Saturday and forgo the Union for a quiet Saturday night in The Parlour, a radical break from tradition.

  The downstairs bar would thin out once the DJ began spinning his discs which was usually populated by whatever was either in the charts or sampled for a car commercial. The library themed seating area behind the bar had the comfortable seats and provided me with what would become a living room with beer taps once the music started. Availing of my own private bar I would purchase what would sound like a round of drinks for me and my friends, varying in size, shape and alcohol content they were all to keep my palette from getting as bored as I was. Slumped in a red leather armchair I sat behind my wall of glass and fluid, slowly examining and consuming all in front of me. Every once and a while the door staff would pass by and make small talk. Asking the bar staff to watch my drinks I would step outside for a cigarette and some fresh air, smoking was a good way to punctuate the evening. Smoking alone looks less weird than drinking alone. Returning to my table I ignore the female voice calling out, it couldn’t be for me. As I drop down into my chair I look up to see a familiar looking blonde standing in the doorway staring right at me. I smile; it buys time to scrape through parts of nights, fragments of memories…”nope officially no awkward mornings,” I think to myself, “so where do I know her from?”