Black Fart Cloud

I didn't have enough energy to walk up the stairs, so I just stood on the escalator, looking at my feet. My peripheral vision was cut off from everything except the stairs and the railing lamps as they slid past. It could have been a good cinematic shot.

I was stuck in a black fart cloud. I had spent all day drinking beer at a social gathering, and as the alcohol wore off my spirit sunk into a Marianas Trench.

Held at the home of one Lyn Goldfarb, of Lyn Goldfarb Productions, the gathering was for documentary filmmakers. Accompanying me was a Brazilian woman who I had met at a previous gathering for independent filmmakers. I'd brought twelve Rialto Lagers from Trader Joe's and drunken about five highly superior beers from the collective cooler. I'd eaten about fourteen thousand calories from the hors' d' erv table. Overall, I'd come out ahead. The only other thing of note that happened at the gathering was that made an off-putting remark towards an attractive woman, a nice Jewish girl from New York. I said, "You look pretty Jewish," and she ridiculed me, and then walked away. For my other interlocutors, I mostly zoned out after the pleasantries.

From the gathering, I'd riden the bus downtown (too drunk to ride the Kawasaki) in order to see a theatrical performance co-written by my aquaintence Sigrid Gilmer, a playwrite I met after finding a brilliant screenplay of hers in a Hollywood Kinkos. "It's a ritual sexual sacrifice of cute white boys," Sigrid had told me.

The cast of "State of the Black Woman" was composed entirely of black women, except one black man. The audience was almost all black women with a few who had brought their partners. The theatre was inside "the black box," a room whose every wall was painted black. I could hardly see anyone in there.

Throughout the performance, several audience members drank from flasks and shouted "That's right girl! You tell em girl! That's what I'm talking about!" and whatnot at the actresses. One boozehound's heckling was so persistant that she once brought the actress out of character.

Since the bus to my neighborhood stops running at 10pm, I was then stranded in the jungle miles from the comfort of my hovel.

I get stuck in various parts of Los Angeles on a regular basis. If I can make it to a subway station, I can make it to the Sunset/Vermont station, 2.5 miles of my shack, and then walk the rest of the way, which takes about an hour. If I walked resolutely in one direction, I would make it in about 45 minutes, but I usually become distracted by such things as storefronts and birds, and stand staring at them for long periods of time.

The walk begins by passing the eateries on north Vermont, where yuppies and hipsters are usually gathered eating midnight meals and drinking midnight cappucinos and smoking. I don't like seeing people out at night, because they are usually enjoying themselves, and I feel like a dark presence blowing by them in the night. They are often couples, cuddling.

The art supply store often catches my attention here, as does the Skylight Book store. Neither are ever open at this time, of course, so I just stand looking into their windows. At the latter, I read the same titles I have several times before.

I turn east on Franklin beyond the Pyschobabble coffee shop, where they sell bagels for $2.60 and where the tables are always full. I walk past the library and a number of stately houses, and across the Gothic-style Shakespeare bridge. The east end of the bridge, I reckon, marks about the half-way point in my walk. If not geographically the half-way point, it is at least psychologically the half-way point. It is almost totally dark here.

Walking, which I spend a lot of time doing, affords me the opportunity to think about my bleak future, a black trail stretching indefinitely towards a black horizon. The years ahead will be the same as the years behind. I had an epiphany regarding this about a year ago. "Everything will always be this way," I thought. Instantly I knew it was true. I was unable to speak to anyone for three days.

Booze stopped working years ago.