Thing's Vegas Cherry

May 24

Like when John Bayless announced proudly that he had resisted the sin of titty bars for seven years, and then the Gip talked him into going to one about seven minutes later. I was talking about when I was inspected going into Canada with roaches, crack and syringes in the truck and they let me through anyway. Thing says he feels like a geek. This is only the third time in four years he has smoked pot. And he's never been to Vegas. It's something he seems to want to rectify. Shirelle says, "I want to go with you guys." I say, "No way. No how." Thing says, "C'mon, Zurn, pop my Vegas cherry." "Not if you're going to talk like that I won't."

Shirelle is at the kitchen sink filling water balloons. I was freaked. I pulled into a gas station to attempt to sleep in broad daylight, cuz I was still wasted from the night before in Portland. I smoked myself out somewhere along the line that morning to try to take the edge off my hangover. I stopped at Bob's or Denny's or one of those and tried to get healty with a bowl of bran flakes, but the milk was warm, and that was turning my stomach. I felt lost and high and asked the waitress how to get back to the border. She said there were two places to cross, and she told me to go down a road and turn here or there and I still had no clue how to get over the border. So I just started driving in what I figured must be the general direction judging from the part of the gray sky that was most light and thinking it must be before noon, but I was way the fuck north so I didn't know if west would be where it was related to the sun back in LA. I stumbled upon the crossing anyway. Back in Pasadena several years earlier, I had found a big tackle box full of drawers and compartments full of hooks and weights and reels and lures and lines just sitting on the sidewalk. If I was cool I might have just left it for the poor dummy who had forgotten to load it in his car on his fishing trip. That must have sucked to get all the way to the water and discover he hadn't packed it, thinking "I'm sure I brought it out to my car." I should have put up signs around the neighborhood: "Found Tackle Box". But instead, I took it to Canada with me. It was in the back of the truck. It had syringes in it. I think fisherman use them to inflate bait to keep it near the surface for targeting certain fish. So I got crack and syringes and knives and beer, and when I got to the border kiosk they asked me if I had any drugs or drug paraphenalia or weapons like guns or knives."No," I say. The rock was wadded up in a piece of TP mixed in with some other wads of TP crumpled with snot in the tube of the the TP roll, sitting right up on the middle of the front seat. I stopped to

May 20th 7:22 PM

From Adult School again. Seems like another wasted day. I woke up around seven or so, but I just lay in bed, not even thinking, for about an hour, I got up and pissed and walked around the house despairing for a plan.

May 21 7:05 PM W

My twenty-ninth birthday. I don't know what's wrong with me. My eye twitches. Isn't this the age that Morrison and Hendrix self-destructed? My life is too tame to compare myself to them. Why am I so blah? I'm on vacation. I should be reaching a productive high and the exact opposite is happening. I lay on the couch in a sober stupor for hours at a time. This is the third straight day of it. I'm doing a pretty lazy-ass job of teaching tonight.

May 22 7:34 PM Th

This is pathetic. This is the least I've writen in a great long while. There's nothing to say. Shirelle was pointing out everything today, not unlike a child. It was endearing. "Look at the park," she would say. "There's the top of the hill." We were hiking Runyon Canyon. On the way home, some roofers were dropping debris from the top of an apartment building. She said, "Look, they're droping stuff from the top of that apartment building." I said, "Well, you're just the Queen of Announcing Your Observations today, aren't you?" She said, "At least I notice what's going on around me, unlike you, buried in your ownself all the time." I said, "Ha! I note everything and I record it." "You ain't recording now." "I will, though, and I won't just float it out on the air an let it dissipate, either." "What the fuck does dissipate mean?" I gave her a kiss. "Evaporate," I said. We showered and ate at Acapulco on Sunset. Then we went to my place and lay in bed. She was right about me. And my little scribblings are less than her announcements of what she sees. I suggested a sixty-nine, since we were like a snake eating its tail. I am anyway.

May 19 Mon. 6:10 PM

I'm writing from my night school class. Class started ten minutes ago, but there are only a few students here so far, so I'm going to wait about five minutes to call roll. Today was the first day of my vacation. It mostly sucked. Shirelle called over and over. I told her, "I love you, but our relationship sucks, it doesn't work and it's a sad waste of time." She begged me to give her another chance, to give her five more days. I said, "We've had four years to figure it out. You can't change four years in five days." I had to take the phone off the hook, even though I was waiting for a principal to call. I typed a little, read a little, watched Slingblade, jerked off a few times. I want to hurry home after class to see the end of the Rockets/Jazz game. I gues I'll smoke some even though my lungs are are all fucked up, and then I'll write a page. Maybe I'll go up to Blockbuster and rent a movie. I think it will probably be a pretty dull fucking night. I fell terrible about Shirelle. I haven't been able to write much at all. I'd like to go out and drink and shoot pool.

My little happy Room to Write book says to not worry about failure. Even when we don't produce what we want, as long as we produce, it's not failure because we learn and build from it. It says to write a page of crap and not worry about it. The book doesn't realize that that's all I ever do is write crap. This pencil is becoming a colon, the led, an anus, this book, a toilet and the writing shit.

Su May 18 11:36 AM

I took a five hour nap today, and I'm still tired and wasted from all the alcohol I drank last night. Thing and I went to a place down Pico in Santa Monica with a neon martini and cigarette blinking over the door called Liquid Kitty. Then we went to a Mexican restaurant called Lira's and sat by the window with a nice view of the McDonald's across the street. I talked a little with a Flamenco guitar guy at the bar and watched little Mexicans fight. We had dinner with some girls from Thing's work. I had chicken tacos and threw a few Dos Equis on top of my rye and bourbon. We went to a screenwriter's party in Venice. I drank Heinekken and Bushmill's and talked to a blond who reminded me of Jersey Yokonoshizu of all people. After the party, Thing and I ventured into the Scorpion Bar. A big Mexican with a big handlebar mustache and a big gun patted us down. I won a couple of pool games and drank a couple Modelos. Then we went to the liquor store and I got a twelve pack and a porno mag. Raquel and Carlin were here. We played Pictionary and Getoff came home and we talked on the porch. I was supposed to go to a Reggae cruise in Long Beach Harbor with them all, but Shirelle started acting like a baby bitch, so I didn't go. I told Shirelle I wanted off the roller coaster. She did a lot of sobbing and moaning and left, finally. The phone rang, but I didn't pick it up. The Redwings and Dodgers won. Today, John came and we drove out to Pacoima to tow the truck to Placentia. I slept on my mom's couch. Mac brought me back. All the stories on all faces in all the cars we passed, in the windows of the big buildings and old houses...I read my Bible. I'm on page three hundred and eighty. Almost done with Kings. In Spain the Sunday bells are ringing.

5-16 7:04 PM F

Alan Benes just lost his no-hitter with two out in the ninth. I screamed when it happened. And the game is still zero-zero. Life can be cruel. The Knicks and Heat are tied in the fourth despite the ludicrous suspension of three key Knick players for coming off the bench when PJ Anderson threw Charlie Ward into the stands.

Sports sports sports. My life is empty. Shirelle and I saw the horror movie "Scream" at a smelly, bum-filled Fairfax cinema. I ate lunch at the Bear Pit BBQ in Mission Hills. Place of wood, sawdust on the floor, the sign said, "Missouri Style". I had the "Combearnation" lunch with a sandwich and a rib. Now I have Jeopardy on. Who is Nelson? Got it. Who is Franco? This college tourny is too easy. Who is Bradbury?

I just went to the washer to switch my clothes to the dryer and they were covered--I mean COVERED--with lint. I pulled the shirts out and the wire spiral from one of my little notebooks fell to the linoleum. I killed it. All the little notes that I was burning to write in bars, in the car, all those lines that had to be writen immediately--obliterated. It feels as bad as when I left that journal in the taxi when I got out of jail. It's possible that one's still alive in a lost-and-found box at some cabbie station, but clearly there's no hope for this one.

You know what though? There was sixty bucks in the washer, too. I don't remember losing that. So I lost a journal, but I gained sixty bucks. Can I consider it a sale?

I just jerked to the notorious Playboy of my first orgasm all those years ago. Carlin invited me to a reggae cruise tomorrow night. Raquel's sending me some seductive e-mails. Carlin also asked to go to Versaille, the Cuban joint down Pico. I just smoked. Maybe I'll play chess or Space Ace. Maybe we can go out for pool. Shirelle's supposed to be coming over. Shit to do, lots of shit to do.

My mom and dad say that I used to say "hel-i-cop-ter" when I was just learning to talk, and "leedleleedleleedleleedle" and "ap-ple sauce". That I could name all the animals in a Noah's Ark set. Stupid Kid Tricks. Remember the circus train. The change on the floor. The night they went to see "Earthquake". The first foreign language I ever heard? Isn't your first language foreign when you first hear it?

5-15 Th 7:46 PM
Now the Rockets are coming back on the Sonics. Mike's on the couch looking for a job. The Room to Write book says to remember--Oh, who cares what it says, but it makes me think of the Sears sign on top of the store at the Cerritos Mall, giant red letters up there. I'd passed them before not realizing what they said. One night, I realized I could read with no teacher around. That's the first word I remember reading.
Another story is that when we were little and misbehaving my mother would say she was going to take us to the orphanage. She would get on the phone and say, Alright I'm calling the orphanage. That worked for a little while. We would cry and beg her not to call the orphanage. Then one day she actually drove us to a big white building and told us it was the orphanage and my brother and I wailed and pleaded with her that we would be good, please don't take us to the orphanage. We drove past that building often. You could see it from the 91 freeway. About halfway through kindergarten one day, I looked out at the white building that was the orphanage and read the letters at the top of the building: JC PENNEY.
I just now went downstairs and took the thermostat off the Chrysler. It was almost dark. I dropped a bolt down in the engine somewhere and couldn't find it. Hopefully it won't like jam a gear or something.
When I get my writing down I need to make a list of things I need to do.
I should have personally invited--whatever.
Shirelle came over last night to smoke out. I loaded her pipe. I laid across the bed and wrote in red ink in this journal on the floor.

5-14 w 11:45 p
Still laggin'. Shirelle's s'pos'd to be be coming over. I drank two Bud Lights and two wine coolers and smoked some dope. I hear her car. She's going to want to smoke. I forgeot to bring this book to school or I would have already done it. I didn't bring either of the the books I'm reading either, so I didn't get to read them.
Shirelle is showing off Polaroids of her legs, before-and-after shots of like a year ago when she was in some show and now that she hikes every week. Her legs in the most recent picture are just muscle and bone and she likes that better. She wants me to like that better, too. As usual, one of us doesn't get it.
I said, "Are you spending the night?" She said, "I don't know. I have to work tomorow at nine." I said, "I have to work at eight." I said, "Why don't you smoke your hooch and climb into bed and rub my back." She laughed.
Now she spotted a note that a woman from my school put in my box at work that says, "John, if you give me good directions, I'll do all the driving." Shirelle asked what it was. I said, "I dont know. I think this lady at work is trying to hit on me." Shirelle said, "Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it." I said, "I don't know. I'm not really attracted to her. I might still call her, though. Just to be polite." So Shirelle says, "Oh, well, then I shouldn't be here." And I just don't have the energy to correct her bullshit leap. Stupid bitch nailing her own lid. "Adios, Stupid-ass," I say as she storms down the stairs. Her car just rumbled her dumb ass down the street. I have to piss. After this I'll read. I said, "Fine, then, go, cuz I don't have the time for your stupid games. And leave my pot." So she bailed. I have a tumor on my throat. I'm hungry, but I ate tortilla chips that Getoff brought to the porch. There was a knock at the door. It was probably Raquel maybe. I gave Josephine a ride and listened to her prattle in Spanish while the temperature gauge in the LeBaron crept up. Bitches. Dumb Bitches. What else? Tomorrow. Queso grande or Missouri BBQ?