When it rains in Southern California, the citizens don’t know how to react. But when it snows, everyone freezes along with the temperature. It hasn’t snowed in Los Angeles since the early sixties. And it rarely snows in Central California, where most of my family lives.
Back in 2018, it snowed in Bakersfield on the day or so after Christmas. I had to drive back to Hollywood that day. The 99 was closed, going up the grapevine, and that was my usual route. So I had to take a detour up through Tehachapi, where the snow had to be about five inches deep.
I stopped to get gas and almost slid to the ground when I reached for the pump.
It was a three-hour stall just getting there. I’d never seen anything like it in my life except for when I used to live in Pittsburgh for five years, where I expected snow every winter. But that was when I was a child. I was forty-one when I was stuck up in Tehachapi. It would take seven hours to get back to my apartment.
When the traffic finally cleared up, I split onto the 14 freeway toward Lancaster. The road was icy, and diesels surrounded me.
I drove at about fifty miles per hour and tried to glide easily across the ice. Then, at some point, I slid across a sheet, and instinctively, I slammed the brakes. My car spun around like a dreidel. I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t. My Hyundai stopped spinning after about three revolutions, and I continued forward without a bruise or a scratch. But my heart was still thundering. I didn’t want to die that way.
I finally made it home at about eight at night after a seven-hour journey through the mountains. I turned on the heater in my studio apartment and watched a movie on Netflix. It wasn’t snowing in Los Angeles. Hell, it wasn’t even raining. It was just cold and dry like it usually is in December. But I’ll never forget the time on the 14 when I almost slid to my death.
I haven’t watched television since 2003. That’s not true. I’ll watch it from time to time when I’m with my parents because they’re television junkies. They watch all the shows, from Netflix to Amazon, but they stay away from the networks. The programming is just too awful.
I’ll watch TV with a zombie affect, not laughing, smiling, or crying. It dumbs me down, which was what made me quit so long ago. I used to get angry at the shows and the commercials, especially the commercials. They’re always louder than the programs on purpose.
I quit it for many reasons. I decided to start writing, and television corrupted my mind. All those reality shows made me rot away. I could feel myself shrinking into the couch. It also made me snack too much. I would eat chips, popcorn, and pizza and never get up from where I was sitting.
My mother would say, “Go out there and play some tennis why don’t you?”
“But Mom, I’m watching Fear Factor.”
Or “Mom, I’m watching MTV.”
I used to be an MTV freak back when they were still showing music videos. They quit doing that, yet they still call it Music Television. Don’t ask.
The Food Network has shows that don’t feature food.
The Travel Network has shows that have nothing to do with travel.
AMC, which stands for American Movie Classics, has shows that have nothing to do with American movie classics.
I don’t care enough to know the reason. Just change the name.
I used to watch IFC (Independent Film Channel) because I was a buff for independent films. Now I hear they don’t do that anymore.
Television is just a waste of time. I could be outside, petting other peoples’ dogs, or playing tennis like my mother wanted me to do.
When I was a teenager, I used to watch all the dumb shows for teens, like Saved by the Bell, a sitcom I watched every day after school and never laughed once. Or Beverly Hills, 90210. I knew all the episodes by heart because they would show the reruns ad nauseam, but it didn’t matter. I had a crush on the girls on those shows, so I would just stare at their beauty.
Of course, when I was younger than that, I would watch Hanna Barbara and Looney Tunes cartoons, not the garbage cartoons with amateurish animations they show now. I lived and died by the television, but I swore it off at twenty-six years old, like a vegetarian with meat. It was no good for me anymore.
If I were to be serious, I couldn’t let it rot my brain. Now, people come up to me.
“Dude, you gotta watch this new show… and this show… and this show…”
I had to compile a list in my brain.
They have all the streaming platforms, which is another beef I have with television. The only reason I have Amazon Prime is because I use it to go shopping. I don’t actually watch the shows.
I have a long list of books I want to read before I die. It might take me until old age to finish it, and I won’t get there if I keep watching television.
Maybe one day I’ll give up and watch it again. Then I’ll have something to talk about with people because it seems that’s all they want to do. I feel left out when they mention their favorite shows and discuss the episodes. And I feel like a snob when I tell them that I don’t watch television.
That’s not true. I watch YouTube, but that’s different. I can type in whales in the search bar, and a bunch of whale videos will show up in the results. That’s different from Jimmy Kimmel.
When I was young, I predicted this would happen. In the future, everyone will have their own TV channel. Well, I don’t. I’m too lazy. Besides, I don’t have any content. I could present my apartment, including the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, and which toothpaste I use. Other than that, there isn’t much to show.
I’m naturally wary of strangers. They come and go in my life. Of course, I have more strangers than friends. Friends come and go as well, except less often.
I watch strangers when I sit in this coffee shop. They chew their food. What strange things people are. They have two eyes to see, one nose to smell, and a hole in their faces that stretches to fit this stuff called food through. And then I watch a bald man stick half a banana through that gaping hole in his face, and it opens and closes as these things called teeth mash the banana into particles so that he can swallow the food.
Not that humans are the only ones with gaping holes in their faces. From apes to zebras, they all have mouths.
I consider these people all strangers to me, even the barista who wishes me a good morning every morning with a smile. I don’t know his name. I don’t know anyone’s name except for a few dozen in my life. Not everyone can be my friend to the level of knowing their names. Once someone introduces me to someone else, I forget someone else’s name, usually out of lack of interest, not lack of attention. The stranger just doesn’t intrigue me. Then, after knowing the stranger for several days, I realized I should know the stranger’s name by now. I can’t ask them, “What was your name, by the way?” I’d already crossed that boundary. I would’ve insulted the person if I asked them too late. They’ll forever be another stranger whose name I don’t know.
On very rare occasions, say two weeks after I’d met the person, I would ask them for their name. And they wouldn’t mind telling me at all.
“My name’s Dave,” they would’ve said.
“That’s right. It totally slipped my mind.”
“That’s okay.”
But I could imagine I would’ve offended most people, even if they didn’t show it.
Strangers leave their cups on the tables without bothering to throw them away. I hate that. Everyone I know cleans up after themselves before they leave the coffee shop. I don’t associate with people who leave their cups and crumbs on the tables. Those beasts belong in cages. I’m looking at a crumb-filled table right now. Who does that?
I’ve experienced the receiving end of the name game. I swear this person who called himself Johnson (although I know it wasn’t his real name—not even his last name) never knew my name.
I’d known him for over four years and never bothered to ask him, “Hey, do you even know my name?”
We used to talk about football when we would bump into each other.
He never once said, “Hey, Joel.”
I kind of took offense to it. But maybe he did know my name, except he just never said it. I’ll never know. He moved to Texas, and he’s somewhere on my social media. I could always message him and ask him, “Did you ever know my name?” But that would’ve made things way too awkward. I thought he was a cool dude, but I still considered him a stranger.
I haven’t received a rejection letter in almost ten years. Or maybe it was over ten years. I can’t remember. I know it was when my old psychiatrist was still alive because he scolded me for not sending out proposals. I was too afraid of rejection, and I still am.
It was for a manuscript that began as a memoir. I sent it out to over forty literary agents and received about five rejection emails. Most of them were generic. Actually, all of them were. The rest weren’t even responses.
I knew it was coming, so my new plan was to hire an editor. A writer for the Los Angeles Times told me that I shouldn’t pay for one, but he was out of touch. All amateur and professional writers need professional editors to keep a second eye on their material.
But anyway, I hired an editor for the manuscript, which I’d written for seven years—seven years of rewrites. After the editor tore it apart and told me that it needed a theme (which befuddled me), I wrote it once again for another year, and it turned into a surrealistic science fiction story that didn’t make any sense. I didn’t dare send it out to the public because it would be too embarrassing.
So now it sits on the shelf in my closet in one of those plastic boxes. I use plastic boxes now instead of cardboard boxes because of a bed bug infestation last year, and I heard that bed bugs could hide in cardboard.
But I digress.
My father knew someone whose daughter was supposed to be a high-profile editor in New York, and that person wanted me to connect with her. From what I heard, the agent begrudgingly agreed to do it. She sent me an email asking if I had any questions. I divulged to her everything that had happened in my writing pursuit. She responded coldly, basically saying that if I couldn’t handle the process, I should find something else to do. It crushed me, my only chance at something that could’ve changed my life for the better.
I gave up after that email.
That same year, I ended up in a psych ward, rehab, and recovery. I won’t say those two are connected, but they might be, along with my mother’s back surgery that same year, when I witnessed her anesthetized in the hospital for a whole week. I bawled outside where no one could see me. My psychiatrist was dead by then.
Ever since that email, I haven’t wanted any help from an agent. I’ve decided on the self-publishing route. It seems to be the only way to go, even when everyone else is doing it. I’m just another one out of millions. Oh well. Life is hard. What can I do?
It’s even more difficult to self-publish. There are all these different things I have to do for the book to come out right. I don’t want it to look amateurish like so many of those other self-published books. I’m not a book designer. All I can cling to is hope.
Never in my wildest dreams, when I played at recess, did I think, someday, I’m going to sit in a bar every night until closing time. I thought I would be a superhero. If not a superhero, I would be a baseball champion, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the youngest pitcher to ever grace the mound. I used to daydream about that when I stared out the window in class, only for the teacher to send me to the principal for not paying attention. They put me in other classes, separate from the normies.
I grew older, and the baseball dream was zapped like the acne on my face from my dermatologist.
Soon after I became an adult, a woman I was dating introduced me to bars. I would drink into blackouts. The baseball dream may have gone, but I had other dreams of becoming rich. Those dreams faded, too.
Next thing I knew, I heard the bartender shout, “Last call!” The music shut off. The bartender switched on the light and exposed our drunk faces, which was never a pretty sight. We all had to pay up. He gave us freebies on the house. I would get deals because I went there every night and blacked out at some point. The bouncer used to smoke with me out front before marijuana became legal.
Everyone would wait for me to show up. I was the staple of that bar. They should’ve named it after me: Ben’s Hideout. But that never happened. I would’ve loved to have had a bar named after me and have my picture on the wall, so people, decades later, would see who the best customer was in the early part of the century. The picture would’ve been framed, with me in front of a group of regulars.
There was one time, when I blacked out and ended up at the bar in Hollywood, not knowing how I got there. I called my buddy from work, who’d driven me after the work party.
“What the hell happened last night?” I said.
“Oh, we ended up at your watering hole, and you fell asleep at the counter.”
“I was afraid of that,” I said.
“You climbed onto the counter and slept there.”
“No, I didn’t. And they let me?”
“They let you until closing time.”
I went there the night after he’d told me, just to confirm that it happened and that I wasn’t booted out permanently. And my favorite bartender said, “Yes, you did.” That was when I knew I owned the place. The scariest part about that particular blackout was that when I awoke the next morning with a wicked hangover, I saw everything in the right place. My shoes were exactly where I always put them. The same with my wallet, my keys, my clothes. None of it was scattered or missing. It was like my unconscious had navigated me through it all.
That happened over six years ago. Ancient times. I don’t drink anymore after having gone through it all–rehab, recovery, outpatient—still as the same person. A part of me still wishes he was still doing it with the regulars.
I woke up on someone’s front lawn at twilight. The grass was long, thick, and itchy. I didn’t know where I was. It was another blackout.
The front door was painted purple with an orange porch light on and three purple steps. I hurried up the walkway to the porch steps and knocked on the door using a golden handle.
After I waited several seconds, who answered the door but my ex-girlfriend?
“You,” I said.
“You,” she said. She’d sounded angry to see me.
And I was stunned.
She looked the way she did when we were together, and that was sixteen years ago. My god. She rolled her eyes at me.
“I don’t know how I got here or where I am,” I said.
“You’re on Venus,” she said. “You look scared. Come in.”
She opened the door to let me in.
I sat on her couch in front of the television. A cartoon was on. A cougar was chasing a squirrel with a sledgehammer.
She slammed the door shut to her bedroom. Why did she let me in if she was so angry to see me?
Someone was washing dishes in a kitchen to my right. It was my mother. She scrubbed each dish with a wet sponge and minded her business.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked.
“Washing dishes,” she said. “What does it look like?”
A cowboy stepped out of another room to my left. He sat on the couch with me and smelled like mud.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Cleetus. I could shoot you.”
His six-shooter was packed in his holster. There was mud all over his pants and his boots. He watched the cartoon with me, but I really wasn’t paying attention to it.
Her door opened again. Out stepped a man who looked about ten years younger than me, somewhere in his thirties.
He stopped to shake my hand.
“I’m Josh,” he said.
“Ben,” I said.
“She told me all about you. Welcome to our house.”
I didn’t know what to say to him.
The cowboy crossed his legs and put his arm around me on the couch.
“I better get going,” Josh said.
He went out the front door. My mother kept doing dishes.
The cowboy got up and pulled his six-shooter from his holster and shot a hole in the TV.
Glass shattered everywhere.
After that, he left out the front door, too.
It was just me and my mother.
My ex-girlfriend came out of the bedroom with wet hair and a white bathroom towel around her body.
“Where did Josh go?” she asked.
“He left already,” I said. “So did the cowboy.”
“Oh,” she said. “What happened to the TV?”
“The cowboy shot it,” I said.
She rolled her eyes as if it were typical of him.
Another man stepped inside. He had a long nose, like Cyrano de Bergerac.
My ex stood up straight and stopped combing her hair. She said something to him in French, and he said something back in French. They began arguing in French.
I didn’t want to be in the middle of it, so I stood up from the couch and went to the kitchen.
My mother kept washing dishes at warp speed. She wasn’t even paying attention to me.
“How did you end up here?” I asked.
“I live here,” she said.
“At my ex-girlfriend’s house.”
“No, it’s my house.”
“Your house?” I said. “Where’s Dad?”
“Dead for seven years.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I opened the fridge while my ex kept arguing with him in French and my mom was washing dishes.
There was nothing in there but milk cartons, I would say at least twenty of them. I took one and opened it because I was really thirsty. It was spoiled. I spit it out immediately, and the curdled milk was all across the tiled floor.
I needed water to kill the putrid aftertaste, so I ducked my head into the sink and drank from it.
The Frenchman left, and my ex slammed her door shut again. I sat back down on the couch with no TV to watch.
Mom kept doing the dishes. There had to be over five hundred of them by the way she was doing them so quickly. But where were they coming from?
The doorbell rang. I didn’t even notice there was one.
My mother wouldn’t stop to answer, and since my ex was in her bedroom, probably changing, I answered it for them. It was another man. He was shorter and fatter than the other two men before him.
“Hi, I’m Josh,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
“Josh?” I said. “Didn’t we meet a few minutes ago.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
I let him in.
He kept his hands in his khaki pockets and began to walk to her room. He tapped the door, being polite, and called her name.
I didn’t know what to say to anyone. I couldn’t remember last night.
A beagle came out of nowhere and rested its chin on me, asking me to feed him.
I had no food on me.
“Hey, Mom, do you have any food for this dog?” I said.
“No,” she said. “Ronnie will have to fend for himself.”
I guessed the beagle would have to go out and chase game.
So I opened the door for it, and it ran down the porch through the street, where there was a man on fire standing on the sidewalk waiting for something.
I’d seen enough of Venus.
My ex opened the door. She wore a pink prom dress. They held hands and began to walk to the couch. I remained there at the door.
“Do you happen to speak French?” I asked the short man.
He said, “Yes.”
I couldn’t believe it.
They sat on the couch and stared at the hole in the TV, not talking, their faces filled with boredom.
I stepped outside into the moonlight while my mother was still washing dishes, and hoped somewhere there was a 7-Eleven.
I don’t know what I would do if I were famous. The hope is that I get there because I’m tired of being a nobody, a face in the crowd. But these days, it’s punishment. You put yourself out there for people to put you down.
Before social media, it was a privilege. Nowadays, angry souls attack you when you’ve made yourself known. Since childhood, I’ve wanted to be popular, but I never got to that point. I had to do something special in order for everyone to pay attention to me and for them to like me. I never could figure out what that specialty was. So I disappeared in high school and became more obscure in college. I’m just a ghost, like most of us. I’m nothing extraordinary.
But is it worth the cost of my safety? My privacy? My well-being?
I write to reach a crowd of like-minded people, but I don’t ever want to become some legendary icon these days. Or maybe I secretly do.
When I was in recovery, in our group session, we talked about what we really wanted out of ourselves. Our counselor read a lot of Kant and taught us his philosophies.
It came to my turn, and I said, “When I was young, I wanted to be like Bruce Willis.”
Someone in the room, a young guy, probably about twenty-two, said, “You wanted to be an actor.”
It had never dawned on me until then that, yes, I’d moved to Hollywood to become an actor, not a writer. I’d only chosen writing because it seemed to be the easiest, most accessible way to get through the door. I could reach fame without having to show my face. I was forty-one when I was in recovery. That kid was wise beyond his years, even though what he said sounded simple.
This wish to be known is really an escape from the grind of work. I don’t want to be just another cog anymore, but I know that if the impossible ever happens, I’ll run back to the shadows and hide from the mob of angry cogs who post their hatred on social media.
It isn’t like the old days when being iconic was royal. You could get away with things. Now every move you make is looked upon by cynical folks who hate their lives.
I’ve said before that the wrong people have reached stardom. I believe that still holds true. You have to have some sort of talent. Either way, they all face the same pressures of being watched, judged, and tormented for being in the limelight. Some of them go insane, while others welcome it like it’s their friend. I believe I would end up in the former, given my track record, when all I want is peace of mind.
I moved to Palm Springs from Los Angeles this year and haven’t found my way yet. It gets cold in the mornings, to my dislike. I wait for the heat to come and bring me pleasure. As I sit here, outside a coffee shop in La Quinta, the cold winds burn my arms. It’s May. It shouldn’t be like this, but it is.
But it’s only six in the morning. I woke up at five like I always do. I set my alarm for that time. It’s a haunting piano tune on my phone. I should really change it because it scares me. I don’t know what to do with myself in the desert. Sometimes, I daydream about living in a trailer in the middle of the sand, saying, “Forget about a nice home and all those responsibilities,” and going to a trashy diner where no one knows me. I could go back to alcohol. No one has to know.
Where I live, crows dominate the apartments. I don’t know why they’re there. What’re they looking for besides dead squirrels? I know it’s a dark premonition when they fly around me, like a bad fate is coming my way, but I just deal with it as it comes. How tragic can the result be? The crows mean nothing. They’re just another bird.
I walk through downtown, past the little shops and restaurants. Summer is near, so the northern birds have escaped to Canada before the heat—the real heat—eats them up. I’m glad they’re gone and I have the desert to myself. They take up too much space.
I stare ahead at a gas station with the canyons in the background. Another crow flies by. What is it with these goddamn birds? They’re everywhere. The desert is what it’s supposed to be: barren. I don’t miss the traffic in Los Angeles. There’s none here, of course. No one wants to live here when it’s one hundred and ten degrees all day. I don’t mind the heat as opposed to the cold. I say that now before July when I’ll be sweating from the moment I step outside.
The cars begin to collect at the drive-thru. Coffee shops have them now. They didn’t used to. If you were old enough, you would’ve remembered them without one. People sat outside—hipsters, bohemians—and drank their cappuccinos as they talked about trendy bullshit. They smoked their cloves at the tables and snuffed them out in ashtrays. Now it’s all gone. Coffee shops go by corporate laws. They’ve chased away those people as far as I can see. Where do they go now?
I’m at Adams Street and the 111, the highway that leads to Interstate 10. The sun is brightening the brown canyons. Palm trees shiver in the cold morning breeze. I ate an egg sandwich this morning with an iced mocha. It had bacon on an English muffin.
Not a single soul walks by on the sidewalk. No cactus is around either, and cacti are abundant in the desert. But you know that.
In another month I’ll turn forty-seven. Being forty-six was a bitch. I don’t look forward to growing older.
The people are nicer in the desert. They accommodate me, but they’re not perfect.
The breeze is slowing down. Pretty soon, the heat will strike, and I’ll be sweating out here, wishing for the cold to come back.
The blue palo verde, the peacock flower, and the lantana wiggle in the wind. Some of the petals have been blown off, leaving just the green leaves. The sun hits my back, and I feel warmer now.
I’m going to hit tennis balls today on Mother’s Day. That’s if the tennis courts are open. You never know on a holiday like this.
The same old customers come into the store each morning. I see the red-bearded man with a bald head and tribal earrings in his earlobes as he sits in his wheelchair, talking with the other old men at a long oval table. He’s tatted from his neck on down to his shins. A lot of older men have tattoos these days. And I always used to wonder how people would age with ink all over themselves.
There’s the man who looks Italian with slicked hair and a gold Rolex type of watch who always sits at the end with those men. He bridges his fingers a lot and gesticulates. He seems to be the talker among their tribe.
And then of course, the old lady with her dog. She dresses extravagantly each morning when she steps inside the coffee shop. I’ve never bothered to ask her what she’s drinking, not that it matters too much. She wears huge designer sunglasses, so huge that they cover half of her forehead. She always wears expensive knitted sweaters and cloth pants, always with a smile.
The same woman comes in every day to talk to her, with the red hair, always with a smile too.
I know the baristas’ faces by now, but not their names. They’re all fast-paced, busy beavers with the customers’ drinks. They all smile even when they’re not helping anyone.
I see the nice Chinese man.
I see the older man, who looks like the district manager.
I see a younger man with a mustache who’s new to me. Where did he come from?
And where’s the exotic barista this morning? The one who wears the big glasses, who looks Pacific.
Most of them know me by name by now since I come here every morning. It’s a refuge from the isolation of home.
A lady in a motorized wheelchair has just rolled in. She wears a surgeon’s mask, a flower hat, and Crocs. She’s talking to a homeless man who can’t stand or sit still. I see him every day, too. He has some sort of disease. I don’t know what it is. I smile at him and say hello. He wears a lot of different clothes, and it makes me wonder where he got them from.
You need a code to use the restroom. Most days it’s one two three four. But they change it up.
I order the same things every day: a cold brew and a cheese Danish. And I sit here for hours and observe people. Most of them are so friendly. The town is friendly. They open doors for each other. It isn’t like it was in Los Angeles.
The baristas give free coffee to the homeless man.
The woman in the motorized wheelchair has her drink, and she and the homeless man continue talking.
I don’t know where I would be without this place. Probably somewhere, walking aimlessly, as I need to stay active to let my anxieties abate. I feel safe in here. I leave my laptop at my table to take a break outside and not worry a thing about it. People don’t steal here. It’s almost a utopia.
I hear them call out names for the people whose drinks are ready.
Where did the lady in the wheelchair go? She’d disappeared while I was deep in thought.
More dogs have entered the shop. They play with each other. The old lady with the big sunglasses holds her white dog by its purple leash. I don’t know its breed, nor do I know any of their breeds. Random people, such as the Italian man, pet the dogs as they come by. I don’t pet the dogs. I feel like I’m not permitted to. They don’t belong to me. It’s like if someone parks a motorcycle and I hop on and squeeze the handles. Maybe it’s a little different. The old lady’s dog has sniffed my deck shoes before, and I don’t mind one bit. She would pull the dog away like it was bothering me, but not at all. I welcome any dog. I welcome anyone in here, my home away from home.
This past week was the Kentucky Derby. I watched it with my parents in my apartment, having not watched it in years. It’s an interesting extravagance. People from all over the world dress in flamboyant costumes from years bygone and attend the Derby to get drunk.
It’s not about the race. The race takes about two minutes, and then it’s over. People either win or lose thousands of dollars over the horses and stay and party, I assume. My parents and I watched it to the finish, and it was a photo finish. I already forgot the name of the horse that won, but it didn’t have the best odds to win. And then we went to dinner.
My friends and I used to go to Hollywood Park before it became SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. We would bet on the horses and usually walk away with money as opposed to losing money. We would drink beers, eat hot dogs, read the racing forms, and bullshit in the stands, spending an afternoon there on a clear Saturday—never when it rained, of course.
I can’t remember a time when I won big. I think the most was about sixty dollars. Nothing to write home about. But it was a lot of fun, sitting with my friends and betting on those horses, win or lose. It was an experience of its own. There was suspense after placing our bets and watching the horses enter the gates. We would wait a few seconds, and then they were off. The crowd began cheering. We began cheering. The horses galloped around and around the track until they met the finish line. I remember the first time I went to Hollywood Park. I won my first race ever. It was a trifecta for thirty-seven dollars. I thought, This is easy. I went on to lose for the rest of the afternoon.
That was well over a decade ago. I remember going there on my thirtieth birthday, depressed to be thirty.
“I’m officially old,” I told my friend.
And he said things are only going to change, and not for the better.
I thanked him for the vote of confidence.
We ate at a Russian restaurant that night in West Hollywood. I forget what I ate, but I remember all of us were sunburnt from sitting outside all day.
We would go to the races a few days out of the year before everyone moved away. Two friends moved to the east coast. I was left with two other good friends. And then one of them moved to the south. I burned bridges with the last one. The next thing I knew, I didn’t have anyone left in Los Angeles.
I never went to the track alone. That smelled like too much desperation. Nor have I ever gone to the casino alone. Too risky. I needed someone to tell me when to stop because I would’ve kept going until there was nothing left.
One of those friends was the last to admit he had a gambling problem. He would drive down to Commerce Casino by himself, about an hour’s drive outside of Los Angeles. No one stopped him. He would usually lose big—in the thousands. At least he had a good-paying job.
I miss Hollywood Park like I miss most things from my past. It seems that the older I get, the more things I lose.
