John Faga 11 August 2009 Stories and Appreciations 1,117 views One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

EDITOR’S NOTE: We fade in on Los Angeles, where John Faga is making his way in the face of fresh adversity, stale radio and The Gloom.

It was the beginning of summer in LA, or so I was told by the over-groomed mouth-breather shilling weather on the tube.  A marine layer had drifted in from the coast and made the City of Angels its resting place for the better part of June, lying on top of the town like a mother crocodile brooding its eggs, with only a little less bite.  It’s known as “June Gloom” to make the mouth-breather seem clever, and had lasted all month.  Just one of the things they don’t tell people in Tacoma, Buffalo or St. Augustine.  To them, LA is all Beach Boys and Conan shows.  The Gloom is reserved for the locals.

I spent the day putting in time for the man in Santa Monica before taking the long, winding drive down Sunset back to Thai Town.  Sunset snakes its way through every possible standard of living from the filthy rich to the dirty poor, and every dusty Joe between. I drive a 1979 VW Beetle convertible.  It’s called the “Champagne Edition” because it was made in the final year of Beetle production in Germany. The color is white on white.  I’m sure that’s a coincidence.  The same way it’s a coincidence that all the kids in Berlin have blond hair.

Thai Town is a bustle of restaurants and massage joints juxtaposed between Little Armenia and Hollywood.  The neighborhood is lit almost exclusively by signs for Asian beer and discounted rubdowns that cast shadows over the huddled masses that want nothing more but can afford neither.  I pulled up to my apartment and took in the air.  Pad Thai and cigarette smoke.

My apartment is as huge as a crib without the mother’s milk.  Not that it matters.  I sleep there and I eat there. Occasionally I might even sit down.  The rest of the time I spend working for the man or making him laugh.  I’m a comedian.  I work out of a theater on Hollywood and Cosmo.  Sometimes he laughs and sometimes he doesn’t.  That night I was going to make him laugh.

I had a fried egg and a drink and changed my shirt.  I had another drink because the shirt wasn’t enough.  Then I went back out the door and down to the theater to make the funny.  I clicked on my radio and quickly clicked it back off when I realized they were playing the same twelve-minute Yes song they played earlier in the day.  And the day before.  And the day before that.  Radio in LA is predictable and stale, like the pipe under the kitchen sink that gurgles the same gurgle long after the water has stopped.  That’s another thing the locals keep to themselves.  I spit out the window and backed down the driveway.

On Hollywood Boulevard there was the usual mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.  The Thai girls with their coquettish smiles and strong hands stood giggling on the corner by Jumbo’s, the local pole joint. It’s a nice place if you like nice places with a layer of film on them.  I do.

West on Hollywood across the highway.  The Trannies that make their nighttime haunt on the overpass were feeling the Gloom.  Their broad shoulders were slumped and I could barely see their brownish-white teeth through their drooped, coagulated blood-red painted lips. They’ll smile again in July.

On the other side of the highway lies the “Velvet Crotch” section of Hollywood.  This is where my theater is located, wedged between stores that carry everything from women’s undergarments with tiger-striped fur on them to women’s undergarments without tiger-striped fur on them.  Variety, spice and all that.  I had to double-take on the mannequins in the windows.  They looked like a lot of someones I know, and were just as conversational.

I parked my car and walked by the homeless guy balled up in the alcove across the street.  I could tell it was early because the brown and once-white Navajo blanket that draped him from head to toe hadn’t sprung a leak yet.  But it will.  It always does.

Into the theater and ready for a show.  I slid down another drink to help ease the day away.  Once the show was over I’d follow it up with one or two more.  At least that’s what I told myself, even though I knew that number was as conservative as Mitt Romney’s red tie.  But there’s never a shortage of night crawlers to share a drink with. Three city-blocks worth and more.  Hell, one of these days I might even throw on some fishnet-stockings and join the ladies in the sweaty clubs across the street looking for movie stars to ignore.

I sipped my drink the same way a whale sips krill.  Andy Dick was standing in the corner talking to friends.  What kind of town is Hollywood?  The kind of town where Andy Dick is the sober one.

June Gloom had settled over Los Angeles.  I finished my drink and headed for the stage.