Not Taco Bell Material

by Adam Carolla

  I’m not sure how much of a factor the Dating Game incident played, but Stephanie dumped me soon thereafter. It might have also been a fight we got into one day when she was in the middle of a little afternoon delight when someone began buzzing her apartment’s doorbell/intercom. Rather than ignore it or step up the pace to finish the job, she just stopped. I was not thrilled and let her know it.

  As far as the dumping, I remember the day vividly. Music is a great way to capture a memory. A song playing on the radio during a joyful time or the worst moment of your life will capture the memory and lock it in. As I was driving away from the scene of the breakup I turned the radio on and Dionne Warwick and Barry Gibb’s “Heartbreaker” came on. I fell into a heap of tears as Dionne and Barry asked the question I had for Stephanie: “Why do you have to be a heartbreaker?” Here I was, a former jock and current construction worker, bawling his eyes out in a pickup truck with Dionne Warwick and a Bee Gee.

  It was less about Stephanie and more about where I was in my life. When things are going well, breakups aren’t nearly as devastating, like getting a parking ticket when you’re rich. Life requires balance. For most guys that covers career, hobbies, religion or spirituality, family, and an intimate relationship. When all the other facets of your life are in a drainage ditch, then all the eggs get put in the relationship basket. And when that basket is fucking another guy in Hermosa Beach, it’s catastrophic.

  I guess unconsciously I had some hope of reconciliation because I pulled a move that I would recommend to all you future dumpees out there. I left something at her place, so I had to go back and get it. And I hid it so she wouldn’t just find it and throw it out. It had to sit for a while so I could go back and pick it up when things cooled down and maybe get another shot. My object of choice: a softball mitt. Six months after the breakup, I went to her house to get it. It did not turn out as intended. First off, her sister answered the door. Stephanie wasn’t even home. But it only got worse. I demanded she let me in so I could find the mitt. I went in looking for it (and to do some reconnaissance on Stephanie’s post-Carolla life). I rummaged around and eventually went to look under the bed. I lifted the dust ruffle and what I found was not my softball mitt but rather a spent condom. It was devastating. She had moved on and was getting it on. She later claimed she was in Palm Springs and had a friend stay at her place, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. I was in a funk for a good year.

  The Weez tried to help me shake it off and took me out barhopping. But the ladies can smell the stink of failure on you. We were at a club and I walked over to a table with a slightly below-average-looking girl and her friend. I was ready to bed down a five-and-a-half just to get my groove back. I said, “Mind if I sit down?” She responded with two emotionally crippling words: “What for?” Without saying anything I turned around, walked back to The Weez across the room, and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  So I was single and working for ABC—Always Better Closets. We were based in a warehouse across from Burbank Airport. I’d go out to houses in a van and install custom closets with born-again gangbangers. The born-again gangbanger is a particularly scary breed of cat. You know these guys have stomped their fair share of dudes and have the prison teardrop tattoo, but they also have the Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo and would break out into sessions of speaking in tongues and asking for traveling mercies. They wouldn’t listen to anything but Christian rock. Just like my previous stint with Andy the Jehovah’s Witness painter, I was stuck listening to Jesus music all day.

  The weird thing about Christian rock is that some of it sounds good. If you don’t know what you’re hearing, you’ll be tapping your foot and bobbing your head, thinking the guy is singing about some chick he’s banging. “Wow, he really loves this broad. He’s totally going to … praise her? Wait a second.” Then you listen a little closer and you realize it’s about Jesus. I also think Christian rock is one of those situations like children’s books. Just like that author who wanted to write the Great American Novel but could only manage to shit out ten pages of rhyming cat with hat and hop with pop, Christian rockers I’m sure would love to be real rock stars but aren’t good enough. You can tell because when they are good enough, they stop being Christian stars. Kings of Leon started out singing the praises of Jesus and Mary but quickly realized they had actual talent and started singing the praises of booze and groupies.

  You can only hear so much Stryper before you want to be crucified yourself. So one day I said to my closet-installing amigos, “Can we just listen to some normal music? We can just switch it to the classic-rock station and hear some Beatles or something. Not all music is evil. It’s not all Ronnie James Dio screaming about the devil—we could get some Doobie Brothers ‘Jesus Is Just Alright.’ ” So we switched it to the classic-rock station and they all gathered around me and the radio while we were installing a closet in some custom home in Malibu. (That’s another thing that sucks about installing custom closets. You’re always going into rich people’s houses and seeing shoe collections that cost more than you made in the past four years.) When we flipped the station, it was right in the middle of Bob Seger’s “Main Street.” So I said, “See, it’s Bob Seger. It’s a nice little softly strummed ditty about—” Before I could finish, one of them chimed in, “a prostitute.” I was like, Huh? Then I listened to the lyrics about her body softly swaying to the smoky beat down on Main Street and thought, Shit. One of the guys said, “He falls in love with a prostitute. We went over this one in church specifically.” I took a good five-Mississippi and gave them a hearty “Yeah, but still,” and we switched it back to the Christian rock.

  It was quite a crew. In addition to the born-again bangers whose names I can’t recall, there was a white guy named Big John and a Filipino nicknamed Pogi. I don’t think I have a ton of Filipino fans, so I’ll translate. One day I asked him what that name meant and he said “handsome.” I remember at the time thinking, That makes for a somewhat cute nickname when you’re talking to English speakers, but when you’re talking to people in your native language, doesn’t that make you a gigantic asshole? That would be like me walking around and calling myself “Gorgeous Carolla.” Later Pogi was cutting a piece of red oak, a very hard wood, on a table saw. The wood got caught in the blade, kicked back, and smashed him in the mouth. I wonder what his nickname is now?

  One of the born-again Latino guys whose name I can remember is Frank. Frank was that scary ex–gang member who doesn’t really talk. When he did speak, it was slow and low. He looked like an extra from The Shield or that Sean Penn movie Colors. I don’t know if it’s being dumb or too tough to express yourself with anything but fists and knives, but these type of guys hardly talk. Frank’s voice was barely audible, but every now and again the spirit would overcome him and he’d start speaking in tongues. Then you could hear him. He’d be in the van with his eyes rolling back in his skull shouting “Shandala shandala.”

  Frank stands out from the crowd for me because of one particular incident. We were doing a job in a very small Valley house that had an even smaller hall bathroom. While I walked around the house with the owner, a high-strung gay guy, Frank went into the bathroom. When we got into the hall next to the bathroom, Frank was walking out of the can and mumbled, “I wouldn’t go in there.” The frenetic gay owner was busily talking to me about matching the molding around the bathroom window and stormed, oblivious, into a Chernobyl cloud of Frank’s fecal funk. He had done some serious gangbanging on that toilet. I had to follow the owner in like the second guy to get off the Higgins craft on D-Day.

  THE WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE (SO FAR)

  My most memorable closet-installation story was not with Frank or any of the other guys. I was on a solo mission in the Valley. The boss, Tom, gave me an address and told me to take the panel truck out there to install a closet and put a towel hook assembly in the master bathroom.

  I arrived at the house, knocked on the door, and was greeted by a Hispanic woman holding a whi
te infant. It was the maid or nanny. She didn’t speak any English, but I managed to talk my way into the house. This, by the way, is a great tip for thieves. Anyone could walk into any house in L.A. in the middle of the day and rob the joint if they’re greeted by the non-English-speaking nanny and have some tool bags and confidence.

  I went into the master bedroom and saw that they had not cleaned the closet out. Everything was still hung up. We always asked people to clean out the closet before we got in there to install our custom system. But once in a blue moon the customer would forget, and we’d have to get everything out of there first. This was a pain in the ass, so I angrily piled their shit on the bed, then pried out the existing shelf and pole and replaced it with the custom unit.

  At this point on any other job I would have just left an invoice and gone back to the shop. That was standard operating procedure. But for some reason on this job the boss told me before I left that I needed to get a check from the owner. Assuming they’d left a check with Consuela (you can’t call me a racist unless you can prove that wasn’t her name), I asked her for the payment. She said, “Que?” I handed her the invoice and said, “Dinero.” She said, “Yo no se.” Getting frustrated, I said as slowly and sing-songy as I could, “El check-o.” She shrugged her shoulders. I held the invoice up to her face and pointed to the total on the bottom. She studied the invoice for a second, then nodded her head, and walked into the kitchen. I thought, Finally, I can blow this taco stand with enough time to swing by a real taco stand before the boss misses me. She returned a moment later with something in her hand, and this time it was her turn to shove something in my face. She held up a piece of mail and pointed to the address.

  I looked at the address number and then looked down at my invoice thinking, “Yep, that’s right, 11231 … so far, so good.” Unfortunately, that was followed by the street name.

  Hartsook. I was at the wrong house.

  The house you’ve read about where I lived with my dad in the garage was on Hartsook. The next street up is Otsego, which was the cross street of our Laurel Canyon apartment. When the boss handed me the address of the job, I said, “Oh, that’s where I live.” Somehow I had gotten where I lived mixed up with the place I was living at the time.

  You might be wondering at this point how it was possible to install a closet system that was customized for one house into a completely different house. First, they were only one street apart and most of the homes in that area are ranch-style houses built at the same time, so the closets were roughly the same specs. Plus, the way ABC used to do it allowed for a little give. We wouldn’t cut the closet pole at the shop; we’d cut it on site, thus giving us plenty of room for in-the-field adjustments.

  As I looked at the letter the nanny handed me against the invoice, I had that split second in between 100 percent certain I was right and feeling like the biggest idiot on the planet. I looked up at the nanny with eyes that read confusion, fear, and panic. Our language barrier had suddenly disappeared. She took off like an express train. First stop—kid. Second stop—phone. I ran like the village coward being chased by a hyena. First stop—truck. Second stop—closet.

  I set the screw gun to reverse as I ran into the bedroom and did a lightning round of backing out screws and packing up the shelves, partitions, and poles. I then slithered out of the house. Cosmically, this was somewhere between not leaving a note after you backed into a guy’s bumper and the Grinch’s raping of Whoville. I still had to install the unit in the right house and thus had to take it with me. I often think about what if I’d just left without having to collect the money as I did in almost every other installation. The couple would return and the woman would say, “Oh, Bob. You shouldn’t have, it’s not even our anniversary.” And if he had half a brain cell he’d say, “When you’re in love, every day is your anniversary.” Instead the owners came home to the entire contents of their closet piled high on the bed, a horizontal stripe of the old paint where the shelf had been removed, and a very confused Mexican woman. To this day I have no idea what she told her bosses.

  Our house had a rotating cast of degenerate roommates coming and going and friends of friends that I wasn’t friends with crashing on the sofa. There’s a reason it’s called a flophouse and not a flopapartment. Something about having a yard to park beat-up vans in becomes enticing to these no-job nomads. It’s international waters for retarded pirates. So it became clear that it was time for me to set sail for the vacated room in a woman named Joyce Schulman’s house in the aforementioned Hebrew Heights.

  I found myself in a rented room in the house of a woman named Joyce Schulman. This is where I was in my life. I had achieved escape velocity and broken the orbit of my deadbeat roommates, but here I was, a twenty-five-year-old construction worker crashing in the extra bedroom that had recently been vacated by one of my normal friends who was off to college, the daughter of a fiftyish Jewish divorcee turned widow. And believe it or not, Ray had rented the room before me.

  The house was just like Joyce, a relic of the seventies. Her pant-suits and Rhoda hairstyle fit perfectly with the cottage-cheese ceiling, burnt-orange countertops, and avocado-green fixtures in the kitchen. It was purchased in the sixties, remodeled in the mid-seventies, and never touched again. Also like Joyce. Ray, in his usual bound-by-nothing attitude, asked her when was the last time she had sex. She said it had been twenty-seven years. For my next roommate, it would be a completely different story.

  Chris was the one who discovered Star Garden. It was a weird, divey, Flashdance-style strip joint on Lankershim Boulevard. The rest of the gang and I soon followed, and it became a regular watering hole. This was where I met my next girlfriend.

  My buddy Phillip the Juggler was living out here trying to make it in Hollywood and was about to get married. This next story will chronicle how I met my stripper girlfriend and what a mammoth douchebag Phillip’s best man turned out to be. He was a hotshot surgeon from Miami who blew into town to throw Phillip his bachelor party. It started off at an upscale Mexican eatery on the Sunset Strip. Twelve boring guys including Phillip’s accountant sitting around eating nachos and soft tacos. When the bill arrived, everyone reached for their wallet but the best man from Miami grabbed the check. I remember thanking him profusely because back then I would have blown a guy for a free burrito, and that was à la carte. He said don’t mention it, and it was off to the next location. This time it was Ventura Boulevard in Studio City (across the street from the Bla Bla Café where the diner booth once resided) at a place called Queen Mary, where we drank daiquiris and watched transvestites put on a burlesque show. After about an hour of this cockfoolery I said, “I know the bouncer at a place that has real boobies. We should head over there.” Once again everyone reached for their wallets, but the Worst Man said he was picking it up. Once again I thanked him profusely. As fate would have it, one of my favorite gals was working that night. Her real name was Lindsey, stage name Catlin—thus the phrase “I’m going for a Cat scan” was born. Long story short, all of Phillip’s boring friends cleared out before closing and I was left behind without a ride, truck still parked at the Queen Mary. She ended up giving me a ride to my truck but not without a three-hour stop at Twains for a piece of a pie and lively conversation.

  Before I move on with Lindsey, let me tie up the loose tampon string known as Phillip’s best man, Carlos, and why he turned out to be a colossal pussy. When I ran into him at Phillip’s wedding a week later, I made sure to make a point of thanking him once again for the free tamales and tipping the guys who had their tamales tucked between their legs. He said no problem. He was one of those guys who, when he came into town, would rent a Porsche instead of a Pontiac like everyone else. That night at the reception, while I was dancing and attempting to get drunk, I was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder. It was Phillip’s accountant from the bachelor party. He said, “I’m collecting money for Carlos for the bachelor party.” I just laughed and continued what would later be known as the Cabbage Patch. H
e tapped me on the shoulder again and said, “It’s sixty-five bucks apiece.” I said, “Are you kidding?” He replied, “No, I’m serious. I’m collecting money to pay for the bachelor party.” I said, “Why are you doing this? Why isn’t he doing it himself?” He said, “Carlos thought I should do it, since I’m Phillip’s accountant.” I know they’ve not completed construction yet on the Douchebag Hall of Fame, but when the first bronze bust is ceremoniously placed under its Lucite case, I want it to be of this ass-wipe.

  After multiple visits to Star Garden, a romance blossomed. Soon I moved into Lindsey’s apartment in the bowels of Hollywood. It was in the basement of an old twenties-style five-story building on Franklin, down the road from the Hollywood Bowl. It was four hundred square feet with one bathroom and no bedroom. It was essentially a closet.

  This was 1989, at that time Hollywood was rundown, crime-ridden, and dicey. So I had to protect my wheels. I had an ’84 Nissan pickup truck (previously used for that ill-fated trip to Vegas with Ray and Chris). Sadly, it was the most valuable thing I owned.