Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction

At Avila Beach

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Here I am, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to think about. It’s only a few days here. No big deal. I’ll survive.

I’m at a coffee shop, drinking an iced espresso because they don’t serve a cold brew in this small town. I’m in San Luis Obispo because the little town where my parents talked me into staying doesn’t have a coffee shop for miles, and it pisses me off why they would want to stay here. It doesn’t make sense why they would want to stay somewhere far away from civilization like this in California. But, like I said, it’s for a few days. I can live.

But anyway, I’m wearing my gray woolen coat because it’s cold out here in June. It’s sixty degrees, and my feet are freezing inside my deck shoes. But I’m not complaining, just a little bit.

I had a dream last night when my old friend, whom I don’t talk to anymore, gave a speech in a full auditorium about himself. And I sat in the back row. Don’t ask why I was there. I can’t control my dreams. But he was there to promote his book of poetry. I didn’t even know he wrote poetry. But it was a slap in the face to me. All I know is he talks on podcasts, performs music, and produces movies. Now, he wrote a book of poems, something I’d dreamt about doing.

I never went up to him and congratulated him because he doesn’t talk to me anymore, and it would’ve been super awkward to begin the conversation. And that was how the dream ended. He finished his speech about himself, and I woke up in the hotel room I was staying in.

It’s not really a hotel—it’s an inn. I could tell by the state of its closet, in which the walls are torn, but I’m not one to judge that the old inn needs renovation.

I left my keycards inside this morning. What do I tell the inn staff? I’ve done it before. I imagine I just tell them what happened, and they open the room for me. They’ll probably have to check my driver’s license.

So what am I going to do today? My mother said that I could maybe hit the tennis ball machine at the tennis courts they have in this little village, but there are no guarantees. Other than that, what else is there to do but write? I can’t find anything else here with my time. I’m turning forty-seven on Sunday. What does a forty-six-year-old do? I’ll just sit in here until they kick me out, which won’t happen.

I’m in a coffee shop in a shopping center. It has Wifi, which is all I need to save my material to a cloud in case I lose my computer. That’s what the cloud is for. I have my whole manuscript in there, so everything is where it’s supposed to be.

I ate so much yesterday. I began the day with an iced Americano, a cheese Danish that they never warmed up, and a peanut butter milkshake for lunch. I waited until dinner to have a cup of clam chowder and an order of fish and chips on the boardwalk. The clam chowder was creamy with lots of clams but mostly potatoes. My parents ordered a basket of sourdough bread, so I would dip the bread in the chowder as if it came in a bread bowl. And then I ate a small order of fish and chips. Small, as in, they gave me only two strips of fish with an entire basket of fries. The fries were battered, just like the fish, and I could barely stomach them. They gave me so many of them because it’s cheaper to serve fries than it is to serve fish. It would’ve been a whole hell of a lot nicer to serve a bunch of fish and only a few fries, but, like I said, they were cheap. That’s why when I go to an Indian restaurant and order chicken tikka masala, they give me two pieces of chicken and a pound of rice, or the same thing happens when I order orange chicken at a Chinese restaurant. Restaurants have to be cheap.

Anyway, I complain a lot. It’s why I write. Get used to it.

Non-fiction

In Goleta

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I arrived in Goleta last night at about six o’clock. The waves were crawling along the ocean as I drove by with the sun beating my face from the west on the 101. I’d driven four hours from the heat of Palm Springs to the cool of Santa Barbara County. The hotel room was waiting for me.

I checked in with a kid named Chuck, who was probably close to twenty-three. The lobby smelled like peanuts and beer. (It was next to a lounge where folks were laughing and chatting.) Chuck was a nice kid.

He said, “How’s’ your day going so far? It’s hot. At least it’s cool in here.”

It was seventy-two degrees in Goleta. I’d just driven from the hottest part of California, arguably.

“I live in Palm Springs,” I said.

His smile changed. “Oh. Okay. Are you parking here?”

What an odd question. Where was I supposed to park?

“Yes, I am.”

He handed me an air refresher in the shape of an old-fashioned Woody car that I could hang on my mirror. “This will allow you to park here,” he said.

I’d never been given one before, but I took it.

“Thanks, Chuck,” I said.

Chuck told me where to park. Like hotel staff people do, he showed me a map of the complex by drawing a curve to the right building. I thanked him and drove there.

I rolled my suitcase to the second level, which smelled like sanitizer. It was outdoors. My room was 270. It was above the pool.

I saw a few scantily clad women in bikinis at half past six. It was cool outside, and they were lying to get a suntan.

When I entered the room, I noticed the shade was transparent. Everyone could see me in there, but then I saw another shade that was made of bamboo. I rolled that one down so no one could see me.

I dropped everything off before I went to get my favorite pizza in town. Rusty’s Pizza Parlor brought me back to my youth when I used to eat the same pizza up north. I used to drive for them as a delivery boy in college. It’s some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. I ordered it with pepperoni, sausage, and mushroom, the standard pizza I always eat.

And then I took a shower. Whoever designed it needed their head checked. It didn’t have a shower door. When I went to turn it on, the water blasted out and doused my head before I could take my clothes off, so my shirt got wet. What a folly that shower was. At least the shampoo was peppermint, and the soap had the aroma of rum, of all scents.

Anyway, I went to bed at around 9:30 p.m., which is the standard time I go to bed, and I kept waking up in the middle of the night. I’m a bad sleeper.

I awoke to the smell of a dusty air conditioner before the sun rose and brushed my teeth in the shower. I wash myself at night and brush my teeth in the morning—that’s two showers a day. I also shave in the shower. It gets things done quicker and easier.

Then, I drove to my favorite coffee shop, the Old Town Coffee Shop, where the coffee beans lured me in with their distinct smell.

I ordered the iced Americano. The lady behind the counter told me to use a password on the receipt that was case-sensitive to use the internet. I waited about ten minutes for the one guy who was making the drinks.

The iced Americano didn’t taste like espresso. It tasted sour, and I didn’t like it. But I love this place not for its coffee but for its ambiance.

It’s huge, with a large back patio with orange canopies, a wooden fence surrounding it, and violets growing over it.

The white brick wall of the building next to it has a painting of two brown hands holding each other and swirls of green, dark blue, and light blue. It’s ugly, but most paintings these days are ugly anyway. I go to a museum and leave unimpressed. People just don’t have the time to make a good painting anymore.

But anyway, what am I going to do today? Eat. That’s what vacations are all about—nothing else. It doesn’t matter where I vacation—Switzerland.

“What did you do in Switzerland?”

“I ate.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t go on any tours?”

“Nope.”

I’m not the average tourist. I spend my time eating. Eating and writing. What else is there to do in Switzerland, Morocco, or Brussels? What else is there to do domestically in New York, in Key West, in Seattle? To me, that’s what vacations are all about. I’ll spend my time this week just eating, looking forward to the next glutinous meal.

Non-fiction

Your Thirties

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Your thirties were different from your forties. In your thirties, you had your longest relationship of one year. It ended on a sour note. You ignored her and never talked to her again because she lost her mind. Then you vowed never to involve yourself in another one again.

You became spiritual, a so-called Buddhist. You began reading books on spirituality and meditated on mind-altering drugs every day to help with your spiritual quest. (Om, focus on the present, the here and now.)

By thirty-three, Jesus’s age, you were walking around telling others about your journey as if they cared. You read Eckhart Tolle and really related to him. All the while, you worked that traumatic delivery job in the city. You started drinking at night with the mind-altering drugs to mix between getting high and coming back down.

By thirty-five, your spirituality crashed, and you grew a new surliness. Disillusionment set in. You realized that spirituality was overrated and really got you nowhere.

You continued dating other women, but none of them matched up with your ex, whom you loathed now anyway. You met your first sugar mama, who was eight years older than you. She promised the world, but you sabotaged the relationship before the world ever came. You were never that attracted to her, so you ended it before things got too serious.

And then the downward spiral began spiraling faster. The drugs and alcohol took control of you. Your only friends left were at the bar, and they weren’t really friends.

At thirty-eight, you went to your high school reunion, where you were a blackout drunk. You got in a fight there among your alumni and got kicked out of a bar for throwing a glass and cutting someone. You were lucky you weren’t arrested or taken to the hospital because the bouncer had beaten you to a pulp.

As if you didn’t learn your lesson then, you continued spiraling into your forties. The big age came, and you saw that your dreams had never materialized. You heard it too often:

  1. It’s all downhill from here.
  2. Life begins at forty.

You thought those were both lies. And then you saw your parents aging. Your mother ended up in the hospital. Your one opportunity to make something of yourself was pissed away by a cruel authority.

You realized you were all alone from the beginning, so you broke down and ended up in the psych ward. The doctor there told you never to take drugs and alcohol again. So then you didn’t even have that to fall back on.

They sent you to meetings to get your life back, but you couldn’t relate to the other people there. And all the while, you looked back at your thirties and thought, man, what a wasteland they were–worse than your twenties. All that self-abuse to try and alleviate the past traumas. The traumas weren’t even real, but they ate away at you from the inside. There was nothing for you to do except continue to live without your vices. And what a lonely life that was. There was really no solution.

Non-fiction

Hotter than Bejesus

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I’m on fire as I’m writing this. It’s only six a.m., and the room is hot. It’s supposed to be over one hundred degrees in the desert today. My father said it was supposed to be 111. I can’t believe it.

I burned my ass yesterday on the curb when it was 107 at four in the afternoon. It was as if I was frying out there. It’s going to stay that way in the summer before the fall comes. Summer has just begun today. It’s supposed to be the longest day of the year, I heard. But how can that be? Anyway, I’m used to the heat. I’ve been living in hot climates for most of my life, so it’s nothing new to me. But the heat gives me a headache. I’ve been waking up with headaches every day this week, and I haven’t been able to go sleep very well.

At least I’ll go out of town tomorrow and stay in Goleta before I drive to Avila Beach where it’s cool and I can wear jeans. Otherwise, I’ll just keep burning. It’s miserable. Misery follows me like that kid in grade school who would follow you and you couldn’t be rid of him. He just tagged along and got on your nerves. What would I be without it? What would I be without worry? I have to worry constantly or else I’m out of control. And that’s no good.

The heat has followed me, too. My brain is fried. I wonder how it is in Maryland. What kind of heat are they facing? I know there are tornados in the country sweeping up cities, and I’m thankful I don’t have to live through that.

But damn this heat.

Non-fiction

What am I Even Reading?

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I’m reading a book right now, as I always do, and what am I reading? Authors from years past just loved to bore and confuse their readers. Either that, or I need more Adderall. Whatever the case, I wish I could say who wrote the book. All I know is it’s called Paris Stories. I forgot the author’s name right away. Why should I find it important if this is the only time I’ll read from him? I’m waiting for the book to end, like chewing carrots, waiting to digest it so I can move on with my life.

I wrote about my book list a few weeks ago, a bunch of classics that a woman had compiled in alphabetical order. I’ve enjoyed one of those books, and I’m only in the G’s. Needless to say, I still have a lot to read. But is any of it good?

What happened to my passion for literature? It all seems like one big chore now. But the work impresses me. I can say that much. It’s possible to praise the prose and hate it at the same time. But man, I used to read like a champion in my twenties, but my attention span has gone in the trash. I’m too worried about work. I obsess over it while I’m trying to read the author’s word soup. It’s a collection of short stories. At least I’m able to discern that. Imagine if I was incapable. I would be even more confused.

But anyway, according to my Kindle, I’ll be done with the book in a little over nine hours. I read for twenty-five minutes a day, so if my math is correct, I should be done with it in a couple of weeks. That’s too long. I want to be done with it tomorrow. Maybe I should just give up on the book and move on to the next one. Maybe I should give each book one chapter to have a chance, and if it bores the living snot out of me, I give up and move on to the next one. Life’s too short for me to read stuff that makes me want to fall asleep.

Non-fiction

Travel

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Next week is my birthday. My parents are meeting me in Avila Beach for a celebration. The drive to Avila from Palm Springs is over four hours, so I’m staying in Goleta for a night, where my favorite coffee shop is.

But anyway, I’ll have to gas up the tank entirely. It costs me fifty bucks, roughly, when I’m on empty. I figure I’ll run out of gas by the time I get to Avila Beach. So I’ll have to gas up again to drive back to Palm Springs. You do the math. That’s a hundred dollars to gas up to go there and back, which can cost as much as a plane ticket to some parts of the country.

I look at gas as something that should be free. That’s my mind for you. I guess some people value gas differently, but I would rather spend my hard-earned money on another commodity. Whatever the case, it’s gonna be a travel from here to there. I just hope there will be no traffic along the way. There have been wildfires near Gorman on the 5 freeway, which has altered the course for some people. That could be the direction that I’m going. If that’s so, I’ll just stop on the road more often.

I can take my time getting there, as I have all day to get to Goleta on Sunday. I’ll stay the night, hit the coffee shop in the morning, and work on my manuscript before I drive to see my parents in Avila on Monday. That sounds fair. I’m taking the whole week off from work. Thank God. To work is to suffer, and I love traveling anyway, especially to those parts where it’s cool by the ocean. I’ll eat my favorite pizza and my favorite Danish. It’s something to look forward to.

Non-fiction

The New Kid

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Junior high was hell. I entered the eighth grade as the new kid. They’d moved me from Florida to California, and it was a culture shock. I lived in a house in Florida with a swamp in my backyard, where the alligators roamed and ate ducks. I felt like those ducks when I went to school because I was the new kid there, too.

Kids used to tease me because I wasn’t like them. I’d come from Pennsylvania in the fifth grade and wasn’t like those southern folks. The boys wanted to fight me.

One kid punched my face in the bathroom. I saw streaking lights. The kid’s face turned red and he started to cry before he ran away. I was too stunned to cry, at least then.

Florida was the worst. I lasted through the fifth grade, the sixth grade, and the seventh grade before I was moved to California.

Not all the boys acted tough out here. They rode rollerskates and dressed in vibrant colors. They would’ve gotten their asses kicked in Florida, where everyone wanted to fight. But I was still picked on for being the new kid. There was something about the new kid that attracted bullies. And it wasn’t like the bullies were feared by everyone, just the prey they decided upon.

One kid would flick rubber bands at my head in English class. I got fed up, took a rubber band, and flicked it back at him, and it caught him right in the eye. He put his head down on his desk and kept it there. The teacher never saw us. I felt terrible. I thought the kid had gone blind. I asked under my breath if he was okay. He pulled his head up, and it was wet and red.

When the teacher wasn’t looking, he snapped the rubber band at me, and it caught me in the left eye. My self-esteem was low enough that I thought I deserved it for doing it to him, so both of us were temporarily half-blind for the rest of the period. I forgot the kid’s name. One of the few friends of mine called him Wanger. And he looked like a wanger. His nose was big, and his eyes sunk into his skull. He had a big floppy head of hair. He would chase me to my school bus, and I would always escape.

I guessed the bully illness rubbed off on me because I would bully someone as well. A skinny kid would ride our bus back home, and after the bus dropped us off, my friend and I would follow him and push him into the trash cans in front of the girls. He would crash through those cans like a bowling ball and pick himself back up.

“You two are stupid,” he would say, which only provoked us even further.

We continued bullying him through the rest of the eighth grade. I never knew what happened to him, but I’m sure he’s a successful doctor by now—maybe not a brain surgeon but someone like a gastroenterologist. I’m sure if he could see me now, he would believe he had the upper hand. What if I had ended up as his patient? He probably wouldn’t have remembered me.

But anyway, the bullying tapered off by high school, where I became invisible. I never dated any girls. My friend would ask the girls out for me in eighth grade, and the girls wouldn’t respond with an answer, which was as good as no. And high school was out of the question. All the girls I wanted were out of my league. The other ones who could’ve been in my league weren’t up to my standards. It was a rough go.

One girl showed interest by the time I was seventeen. My doubles partner on the tennis team told me, “She likes you.” It was the first girl who ever liked me, and I was stunned enough not to react. I ignored her, in fact. Now I regret ever behaving that way because I’d missed an opportunity.

But oh well. It wasn’t as if I had to face any consequences because of it. So yeah, being the new kid sucked. I still feel like the new kid every day, no matter how long I’ve lived somewhere.

Non-fiction

A Trip to the Dentist.

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Yesterday was a day to forget. I woke up early as usual, but I was thrilled that I didn’t have to work. Instead I wrote for four hours, went for a walk and went for a swim before my two o’clock dental appointment. It was my first visit to this dentist whose name I didn’t know. The office was a mile away from my apartment, so I walked there in the blazing heat, making sure I got there early because I had to fill out a ton of paperwork.

Well, they gave me the paperwork at about 1:45 p.m. I expected to see the dentist in fifteen minutes, so I went as fast as I could. Four other people waited in the waiting room.

2:00 p.m.

I finished the form and handed it off to the unhappy receptionist. The same people were sitting in the waiting room as before. It wasn’t like a fancy dentist’s office that I’d been to. It was rundown, felt more like an urgent care. It was a bad sign when more than two people were waiting before me. It was also a bad sign when there was a television mounted on the ceiling, showing daytime TV. General Hospital came on. I hadn’t watched that show in decades.

2:15 p.m.

I figured, what the hell. There’s nothing to do today. I have all the patience in the world. A patient came out of the actual dentist’s office and waited in the waiting room again. That was another bad sign. What else were they waiting for?

2:30 p.m.

More people showed up. An old couple. A middle-aged man who also had to fill out a form. The body count was then eight people and growing. A young woman was celebrating her birthday on General Hospital, and then it cut to a dramatic scene between a man and a woman. The man looked out of shape. He didn’t belong on a soap opera. The woman wasn’t that attractive either. More people came out of the back and waited in the waiting room. Body count: ten people. My patience was wearing thin.

2:45 p.m.

Body count: back down to eight. People who were there before me were called in to see whoever the dentist was in that old office. I had the feeling I would be waiting there all afternoon and was tempted to leave.

2:55 p.m.

The young woman on General Hospital finished her birthday celebration by blowing out the candles on the cake. And one of her guy friends announced he was running for mayor. He would restore justice back to the city. The dramatic scene between the man and the woman reached its dénouement when the woman left his apartment, and he stared into his glass of gin (or was it vodka?) some clear fluid. Ah. So he was an alcoholic. Fade out. Credits rolled. I was about to leave.

3:00 p.m.

The same amount of people were in the waiting room. The old couple lost their patience, so the old lady limped up to the receptionist desk to ask what was taking so long. I tried to listen in but couldn’t hear what the receptionist was saying.

3:15 p.m.

The Kelly Clarkson Show had already begun after General Hospital. Man, did she lose a lot of weight. I didn’t know. It went to show how much daytime TV I watched. She brought out a country singer, and they had a banal conversation. I texted my mother. Should I just get up and leave? I never heard back from her.

3:30 p.m.

I was shaking my knee, ready to lose my mind in there.

“Ben?”

It was a miracle. I grabbed my backpack and hurried towards the nurse before she would change her mind.

She took me through the back to an X-ray room where they did that annoying thing and placed that uncomfortable rubber piece in different angles in my mouth and took pictures.

3:45 p.m.

The back of the dentist’s office resembled the dungeon in the film Hostel. Except I didn’t hear a leaking pipe. It was a mistake choosing this dentist. We all make mistakes. The nurse led me to a dentist chair in a room where there were no barriers for other patients. I walked past a woman who looked as if she was suffering through a root canal: a lot of drilling with a pair of shades over her eyes. I sat in the dentist’s chair. The nurse asked me questions such as if I was feeling any discomfort.

“Just gum irritation but nothing to be alarmed about.”

The nurse typed into a computer.

“The dentist will be with you shortly,” she said before she walked away.

I knew what “shortly” meant in there.

4:00 p.m.

I remained lying in the chair, staring out a window where the blinds were crooked. Only a rundown dentist’s office would have something like that. I couldn’t see them but I listened to a nurse or someone shouting in a foreign language at one of the patients. Man, did I make a mistake coming there.

4:15 p.m.

The dentist stepped in. Finally, after my appointment was at 2:00 p.m., but I didn’t complain. She looked at my X-rays and checked my mouth. She never asked what I did for a living, which was a first. She wore glasses with a protective plastic shield and a surgical mask. Maybe that Hostel movie wasn’t too far off.

”Open wide, please, “ she said.

She started that game where the nurse came in and the dentist started spouting off numbers two, three, four… Four, two, two, two, three, three, four, four, three, three, two…

Anxiety mounted as I knew not what those numbers meant.

After the numbers game, she left me alone in there again.

4:30 p.m.

The dentist returned with her assistant. I could barely understand her because of her accent and the surgical mask, but it sounded to me as if she said filling replacement. Damn it.

”You have receding gums,” she said.

She made me hold a mirror while she opened my mouth and showed me a tooth where the gum receded so far back that I could see my root. It was hideous. I wished she wouldn’t have shown me. I had no choice in the matter but to accept the filling replacement. I never even got a cleaning after waiting in there for two and a half hours. Her assistant handed me a financial breakdown of what I would spend. Two hundred and fifteen dollars spent on the filling replacement after insurance. Could be much worse. But I would have to go back there, and I had to set a new appointment for three weeks later. At least I knew what to expect.

Non-fiction

Getting Old

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Yesterday, for Father’s Day, my parents took me to the 849 Restaurant & Lounge in Palm Springs. The decor was all white with old-fashioned wooden chairs and tables. They gave my mother a miniature coat rack for her to hang her purse and sweater on. I ate fried chicken with a biscuit and mashed potatoes. My father ate Chicken Milanese, while my mother ate Scottish Salmon with rice cakes. It was the best dinner I’d had in months.

We got to talking about old age. My father is seventy-eight. He doesn’t think he’ll live for another ten years. My mother didn’t say anything about that. She must agree.

They’re going to a funeral today. They have to drive three and a half hours out of town to attend it. The person who died was a family friend, and he was ninety-four years old. I saw him at the Greek church celebration a few weeks ago. He was in a wheelchair, missing teeth. He’d known me since I was a child, but when I asked if he remembered me, he said no. His daughter used to babysit me, so we were closer at one point in my life. A lot has happened since then. His wife had dementia, and she’s been dead for over ten years.

I’m turning forty-seven next week, and my mother will turn seventy-eight in August. Birthdays aren’t what they used to be. That’s for sure.

One of their friends baked me a raspberry cheesecake with a graham cracker crust. Last night, I helped myself to two and a half slices and couldn’t stop eating it. My parents and I sat on the couch in my apartment and didn’t have much to say.

“You need to make friends,” my father said to me. “That’ll get your mind off work.”

I couldn’t agree with him more.

“I’m seeing a neurologist this week because of this pain in my head,” he said.

“Your father bumped it twice on a golf cart,” Mom said.

He can’t remember people and places like he used to. He gets names wrong. It worries my mother, and it worries me, too. He used to be pretty sharp, but those times have passed. We have to remind him of things. Who knows where he’ll be in five years? The same for me. It’s difficult to think about, and I would rather not think about what will happen to me once they leave. Age catches up to us all. What else can we do but have friends to grow old with?

Non-fiction

My Time in Hollywood

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I spent almost seventeen years living beneath the palm trees and near the stars on the sidewalk. My slumlord was a witch. She didn’t cast spells or anything, or she did. I didn’t pay enough attention. But she would scold me every time I broke the garbage disposal. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to dump a pound of grease down there. Oh well. I lived and learned.

“You run the disposal every day for one minute,” she said. She grabbed my bottle of dish soap and poured it down there. “And you do this.” Her cigarette hung from her mouth as she told me. “Don’t be an idiot.”

I couldn’t make sense out of it. I couldn’t throw anything down there: no celery, no stringy meat, no grease. So I ended up not using it at all. I was in my twenties, and I drank beer every night alone in my little castle, a studio apartment near the Hollywood/Highland shopping mall. My parents were afraid to see me because the traffic was too hairy.

The witch kicked me out of the garage one day because I’d broken the garage door for the second time. The garage door, as it was designed, was a steel gate that slid across a track sideways with a piece sticking out at the end. My car clipped it twice.

“You idiot,” she said. “You park on the street.”

I had to pay for a parking permit every six months. It was about sixty dollars each time.

I could park on my street except for the mornings when the street sweeper came, which was Monday and Tuesday between nine and noon. I never knew when it would come between those hours, but it didn’t matter. If I parked there, the parking enforcer would write tickets as if he were writing holiday cards. In other words, it gave him something to do.

And those were lucky times when I could find a space on my street. When I came home from my delivery job late at night, around ten o’clock, usually every space was filled. I would have to park on someone else’s street on a steep hill. Sometimes I would have to park a mile away from my apartment building. Sometimes it would rain. Those were times when I thought about bad things happening to that witch. She had to go. She may have cast spells, but I cast fantasies. I hoped for the day when I would make it big in Hollywood and move out of there, where it was less than a thousand a month to rent. But that never happened.

Instead, I had to live in the same building as her, and she made sure my life was miserable. She had the ugliest dog. It was gray with bloodshot eyes, the size of a Doberman but uglier. Every time I saw that dog, it would chase after me as I checked the mail.

I would fantasize about moving to the Hollywood Hills. That would’ve been great. My studio apartment in Hollywood would become just a memory. It’s a memory now, but the Hollywood Hills never came to be.

I remember the day when I moved out of the slum. The movers showed up and packed all of my furniture into a moving truck. They would drive it down to Culver City. My slumlord and her husband, with his shirt off and his belly hanging out, watched me move out from where they stood on the lawn. There came the moment when I handed her the keys. I didn’t even say “thank you” or “have a nice life.” I just dropped the keys in her hands and walked away.