5-27-98 Mormon Rocks and Voodoo Convulsions

5-27-98 W 7:23 PM
The next morning...we drove out to Havasu together.  Mac, Mitch, Shirelle, and I.  Loco loco I am loco.  That's all I can tell you for now.  Ugh.  I'm at class.  I often resent my lack of freedom, but at least teaching gives me something to deal with other than my fucked up life. 
I've got to talk to Steve G., and Kris and Carlos, and what about the Czechs, and Carlin and Getoff?  Should I invite my students?  I'll have to make a flyer for school maybe.  Ugh.  Whatever happened to Jim?  Julio?  Agh.  I'll smoke when I get home.  How can I not eat?  What else?  Right back to listing items of bullshit, aren't I?  I should have written at the lake.  Shirelle had me over for dinner last night.  We argued about the house we should move into. For my own sanity, I don't want to go into details.  Thing and I saw "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" on Sunday when I got home from Havasu.  I was just in Barstow.  Sometimes I think that passage in Barstow is the only reason people idolize HST.  Coming onto the 15 from the 40, the traffic back from Vegas had clogged the highway.  I got off and found some back-road, long-lost section of Route 66 which we had all to ourselves and cruised it through sparse population of Joshua trees past old shacks and dead gas stations under the high blue sky with top down on the LeBaron.  The route met up with the interstate again at the upheaval of earth at Mormon Rocks near Victorville where the traffic was jammed again.  What else?  I typed for fifteen minutes and did my third person page.  I guess I better start putting a dent in that Augie March.  I've been stopping at the donut shop for a bran muffin and OJ and coffee and to look at the newspaper and hide out before school.  I like it in there.  The morning news is on.  Hot weatherchicks.  They're building an Arco station on the vacant lot catty-corner.  A new wrinkle in the urban landscape.  We got two new Macs at school today.  Mr. Cowain played some Hendrix for the kids on his guitar and lost it, fell into the throes of voodoo convulsions.  It was beautiful.  I can go home in about fifteen more minutes.  I've got to try to do something with Jim.  Make some phone calls.  See if Shrill calls.  Like an Astro Burger veggie burger or maybe one from Trader Joes. 

My Thirtieth Birthday Bash

2 Coronas and a rum at Rozelle's.  Tim and Sera took me to Tom Bergen's for an Irish coffee. 
Tu 5-26-98 9:10 AM
A week later!  Holy crap.  Wednesday night I wanted to go out and blow the last two hours of my twenties, but no one wanted to go out except the Gip, but he got mad at me when I hung up on him twice when he said Piazza should go to the Giants or the Padres.  Carlin came up and pestered me all night.  It seems like she's trying to get some dick.  I don't have the heart to tell her it's out of the question.  So, I sat on the couch and drank beer by myself while I turned thirty, slumped in the TV chair, brooding, Leno flickering on the walls.  I woke up the next morning, not bitter or depressed, but empty and scared.  I guess you could write a novel about what scared me, but in a few words, it must be my total lack of courage.  By the time I got to school, though, the bitter depression had replaced the empty fear.  I buried it under my public façade to perform my public duties as a public school teacher.  I gave myself to the kids.  When school ended, I was about to walk home when Rozelle called across the playground.  I had been helping her with her resume a day earlier and something came up about birthdays and she learned that mine was imminent.  "So," she now said, "Zurn, what's up for your birthday?"  "Nothing," I said, "I'm probably just going to go home and drink."  She said, "Get in my car."  Good old Rozelle.  We went to a place on Melrose called Hot Wings and drank some beer.  Then she drove us over to Gabi's house.  Maria and Maria showed up, and we went back to my house where my brother was waiting with five cases of beer.  I picked up a bottle of bourbon and one of tequila.  And we drank and partied and danced and limboed around the living room.  We played quarters and drank tequila shots.  Soon the room was littered with dozens of dead beer cans.  GIP and Thing showed up.  Montes brought some lemons and limes.  Somewhere along the line, though, the girls left, and things got weird.  I don't remember exactly what sparked it, but my brother and I started going at it over his disrespectful, free-loading, fucked-up, ungrateful, never-ending rip-off attitude.  Some might say it was just the flammability of the mescal, but I squared off with him, and I tell you, it had to be done.  What were the exact words?  We'll never know, but the result was we went after each other.  It sucked because 250-pound Gip was holding back 200-pound me while 170-pound Thing was holding back 220-pound Mac.  A few bruises and other assorted sore spots were incurred in the melee but no significant damage.  I don't remember the exact order of events, but I let it go with "Change your tune or get out of my house!" and everyone said, "Come on.  Forget it.  Let's go to a bar."  So I went and showered.  When I was done showering and started to get dressed, I was still too disgusted to go anywhere, so I just sat in my closet brooding.  I heard everyone start asking where I was.  Someone peeked in my bedroom, but didn't see me in the closet.  "He's not in his room."  I just sat there and listened.  I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present.  To be a fly on the wall at your own anti-funeral, to listen to the people closest to you speak freely from their hearts about you, without knowing you are there.  "I bet he walked up to Molly Malone's."  I heard.  "I bet you're right."  "Should we go up there?"  "Screw it."
They went on to take turns talking about what a fucked-psycho I am.  I don't remember what exactly they said, unfortunately, but it wasn't actually as instructive as I might have hoped.  Each one of the bastards seemed to think they had the perfect insight into the psyche of  John Zurn.  Fucking hypocrites.  One time John did this.  Another time John did that.  He's throwing his life away."  Maybe he went to Shirelle's," one of them said.  They paged her.  She called right back.  She told them I wasn't with her.  "Whatever you do," one of them said, "Don't tell him how quickly she called back."  Everyone agreed on that.  I walked out to get a beer.  It was funny watching them trying to quietly play it off.  "Johnny Boy, where you been?  You been in there the whole time?"
"I shit on all of you," I said like Tom Berenger in Platoon when he listened to his men plot his murder.  It was calm for a while.  The eye of the hurricane.  But soon my brother started talking his usual smack where he thinks he is the Alpha Dog when he brings nothing to the table (Five cases of beer on this one occasion notwithstanding).  I roared and went after him with my one wood.  I cracked it over his fucking car and the head went flying from the shaft.  All of a sudden cop cars came rushing up and stopped.  Maybe they'd been on call since our earlier brawl.  Nine of them, nine cops, frisked us on the front lawn.  They told Mac to go home, but he was too drunk to drive and too broke for a cab.  "We can take him in if you don't want him here.  You want us to take your own brother in?"  I didn't say anything, but turned after a few seconds and went back up into the house to ice my broken finger.  I went into my room and passed out.

5-27-98  W 7:33 AM

The next day, we drove out to Havasu together, Shirelle, Mitch, Mac, and me.  I drove us in the LeBaron with the top down.

Pissing on the Ceiling

5-19-98 Tu 1:50 PM
At my school desk.  I went to Molly's last night.  The band sucked.  I talked to no one but the bartender to order my three Harps.  Then I went to the Mint.  I scooted in while the girl at the door had her back turned, and I avoided paying the ten-dollar cover charge.  Harry Dean Stanton's band was playing.  I talked a long while with a woman who was worried about the state of education in Los Angeles.  I tried to mollify her fears, but don't think anything came of it.  It couldn't have helped that I was out after midnight on a Monday (technically Tuesday) drinking bourbons when I had to teach the next day.  She had adopted her two nieces and said they were afraid to go to school.  I didn't ask what she was doing out after midnight on a Monday with two frightened nieces at home.  She was a pretty, older woman with a twenty-year-old daughter.  I would have liked to do her.  When she left, people were dancing to Harry Dean.  I asked a couple of girls to dance, but neither wanted to.  Then came last call, and I drove home.  I woke up with a tremendous hard-on this morning.  Jacking off wouldn't work.  I needed some actual pussy.  I started to miss you-know-who and got sad.  My dick stayed hard for close to an hour.  I got up to piss and it started to soften a little, but I still had to perform some yoga to keep from pissing on the ceiling.  I went to Carl's Jr. and had a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger with mayonnaise and lettuce for breakfast.  I should get another one.  I slept on the floor of my classroom at lunch besieged by half-dreams of naked women.  I could cry.  Life's so short--to be in your prime without a love...It hurts.  It's sad.  Whatever.  What else?  What'll I eat today?  Got to go to the LACAS office.  Got to call Gabina Maxima about housecleaning.  Will I go out after night school tonight?  See "Godzilla" maybe?  I've got a banana.  I stole it from Thing.  The Lakers lost last night.  What else?  I haven't made any plans for my thirtieth birthday.  Mac invited me to Havasu.  He'll just rip me off.  Carlin made flyers for a party.  GIP says Rawler and An and he want to go out to dinner.  I'll wind up waffling until it's too late to do any of it.  Then I'll get into a drunk depression.

5-18-98 M 1:03 PM
Silent reading.  Nose drips.  Edgy and pissed.  Can't wait to get away from these kids.  What to do with my three hours after school today?  I've got to get my ass in gear somehow.  My work handcuffs me.  My bad attitude heads me off at the pass.  My sadness shanghais me.  My anger scares people.  Maybe I'll go to El Coyote or El Cholo or something and treat myself to a grub or a margarita or something.  Maybe I'll meet a hot, young female casting agent, maybe an editor in town from New York.  Actually, I don't give a shit about writing anymore.  It's a waste of time in this day and age.  There's no respect for thought or intelligence.  Earning-power, that's what wins respect.  Besides I'm stupid.  Stu-stu-pidio.  Foolio, foo-foo-folio.
3:00 PM  See, now I'm at El Cholo sitting at the bar.  I was home for a few minutes.  Couldn't find the remote control.  Got bummed and bailed.  I haven't been reading much at all.  I can't get into Augie March.  I cant respond to Julia.  Yesterday after the Getty we stopped at Versailles and had Cuban food.  Kendall's Argentinian boyfriend came along.  Cool-boy Zagat bailed.  That's what I am now : [blue ink self-portrait in the mirror among the bottles behind the bar] shadows and lines.  Olivia Kong said her boyfriend said I looked too cool to be a teacher.  Ha.
A girl sat near me.  I said Hi how ya doin'?  She said fine how 'bout you?  I said I was hanging in there but the margaritas are pricey at five fifty.  She ordered a coconut margarita, then left to meet her friend at a table.  She's got a big ass anyway--no, no, a giant ass.  Must be the calories in the shit that goes into a coconut margarita. 
I won't be able to see the Laker game tonight because I'll be at work.  My lips are chapped from alcohol dehydration.  I don't drink near enough water.

W 5-13-98 6:40 PM
From room 33, ESL1A, Pio Pico Elementary school.  Went out to the Lava Lounge last night.  Didn't talk to anyone.  Ate a ham and cheese croissant today and a meatball sandwich and a hard old bagel that I softened in the microwave and put cream cheese and jelly on, and three slices of toast and margerine with peanut butter.   Modchill stopped by with what he called Le Pew.  I took my tax refund up to the credit union.  What else?  I read some of the paper today.  I proably ought to iron my clothes and go to bed at a sensible hour tonight.  What else?
5-17-98 Su 4:30 PM
From the Getty.  Been walking around with Mike and Kendoll and Florelle.  I can barely keep my cynical-bastard attitude under control.  I peeled off.  I'm by myself now.  We're supposed to meet up front.  Here comes Shirley Feldman.  She was telling a catshit story in the car on the way here.  I didn't know why.  She told it completely humorlessly.  I don't want to go into it.  It was a pointless revelation of her scatological mentality.  I did think it was funny as we drove west down Wilshire that a statue of all-American-values icon John Wayne stands in front of sleaze-meister Larry Flynt's offices.  What shall I do about supper tonight?  Wonder when I'm gonna fall for somebody new and vice versa.  I got Sinatra tunes trotting through my ears.  The girls from Philly took pictures with us.  We said we were going to exchange numbers, but we didn't.  I read most of the sports page this morning, but that's it.  I've got to read some more Bible.  I forget what book I'm in.  One of the prophets.  A girls sits next to me wearing blue tights.  She's shading her eyes from the sun with her hand.  It's a pretty pose.    I am the frustrated, out-witted satyr. 

How Far I Am From Where I Want to Be

5-7-98 Th 12:45 PM
Kids are doing silent reading.  I felt like a giant walking to school today.  My gait covered yards; my back was somehow more erect than usual, my head higher.  Maybe it was the heel of my boot or the fact that I was walking downhill.  I felt eight feet tall, master of my domain.  But time passed.  Shortly the streets leveled.  I became ordinary once more.       I saw Seraphina for a few moments.  I asked if she had recovered.  She laughed embarrassedly and said she had.  I fell into her deep warm, eyes.  The sly of her full lips when she smiles is the only hint of her wickedness.  Nerves jangle round my pump, heart in jeopardy.  I walked away, left much unsaid.
M 1:00 PM 5-11-98
The lights are flickering in here.  It's pretty annoying.  What else?  I was just talking to Galicia Caricia.  She's an adorable kid.  I want to marry her mother and be her stepfather and send her off to a good college some day.  What else?  Seraphina was in the break room today.  She and Maria went up to City Walk Friday night.  I was jealous.  I still want to slip her a love letter.       The pilot light went out in the classroom.  The place must have been filling with gas all weekend.  We didn't realize it until Gladys got a headache.  I turned off the gas and tried to go back to teaching, but I started getting short of breath, light-headed and nauseous, so we left the room.  After I had gotten some air.  I went back in and opened all the windows and both doors and grabbed some balls for us to shoot some baskets for a while.
What else?  Got to work tonight.  What'll I do for my thirtieth birthday?  I'm a weirdo.  I can't be trusted.  Jahvonna says she can build me a house for twenty bucks.  What else?  Jen Jen won a beauty contest, I'm told.  What else?
5-12-98 2:43 PM Tu
We have a meeting after school right now.  It's a class-size reduction training.  Now that class size has been reduced from thirty-four to twenty, they figure we need to be trained to teach a smaller class.  Lilly Sternbaum is teaching the class.  She's wearing a tight white sweater, and I keep staring at her breasts.  I'm sure that's the desired effect.  I hope no one reads this over my shoulder.  We'll be here an hour.  It's raining again today.  I had insomnia last night.  I just lay in bed hour after hour with how-far-I-am-from-where-I want-to-be staring me in the face all night. 

5-4-98 M 2:15 PM
Jameal, 9, just called me "Mr. Doggy Style."
I asked, "Where'd you get that?"
He said, "I don't know.  You're just the King of the Dogs."
How he knows this, I don't know.  Now I hear him and Marlin talking about their Moms' boobs and butts.
5:50 PM In the car in the parking lot at Pio Pico Elementary where I teach night school.  I'm writing with the nub of a broken pencil.  The streets are wet with drizzle.  Shirelle called this afternoon.  She's sorry.  She made a mistake.
11:15 PM I want to buy an old typewriter.  Should I page her?  Have to work on Jim still.  Have to wind my clocks.  Water my ferns.  Xylophone on the radio.  Makes me want to tickle my guitar.  What else?  I'm chewing a hemp stem.  Relaxin' in Camarillo.  Yvette came out.  She looked a few hours into a demonic possession.  She said hi.  I said How ya doin'?  She said Sad.  I said Why?  She said I don't know.  You don't know? I said.  She said No, I know.  We left it at that.
I et Taco Bell today and a ham and cheese croissant.
Halfway.
The other day I figured out I was conceived in September.
Yvette said You want to see what I got?  You want to see it?  I'll get it in a minute.  She brought out some paints.  Lots of Day-Glo colors and stuff.  She was painting some ceramic clown figurines.  What else?  I have to take some paperwork to the LACAS office tomorrow.  Should I bring my camera to school tomorrow so I can walk it up to Samy's at lunch?  Enlarge that other Coney Island photo?  Doesn't look like I'll get to Jim tonight.  What else?  What more?  Dodgers lost to Braves while San Diego and San Francisco won.  Lakers lost to Seattle.  What else?  What more?  Is that my kidney quivering?  Michael Adams' mom has to have dialysis every day.  She says she's on a four-year waiting list for a kidney.  Guess I'll go to bed after this.  No one's in the kitchen, but the light is on.  The light is off now.  I remember thinking about the electricity bill, but I don't remember getting up and turning it off.  I'm invited to a union thing down on Wilshire Friday at 4:30.  I wonder if I should go.  What else?  My laundry.

5-3-98 9:05 PM Su
I read the Song of Solomon today.  The intensity of Rose of Sharon's love is beautiful and haunting--kisses like wine.  A band is playing here at Molly Malone's.  "I think we have time for one more song," says the singer.  It's slim pickins on a Sunday night.  I walked here.  Must be about two miles.  The singer sounds like Joe Walsh.  I typed a whole fifteen minutes today.  Guy lights up next to me.  Heartache.  He's smoking a pipe.  This seems to be about as interesting as it's going to get.  "We'll be at the Crooked Bar midnight Tuesday," says Joe Walsh's voice.  "I don't know where it is," he says.
 "It's on Sunset," someone in the bar yells out.  "In the Coconut Teazer." 
"In the Coconut District?" the singer asks and everybody laughs and no one corrects him.
Nobody.  Get used to being in love with nobody.  A roach crawled across the way.  I used my pen to bat him back from whence he came.  Fuck am I bored and lonely.  I'll roll a smoke after this.  I guess I'll take a break from working on Jim and work on editing Coydogs every night for a while.  [black ink drawing of a hand pointing to the left with the word REST ROOMS written along its wrist and forearm]
"I'm in LA, and I'm wearing underwear," I overhear.  Another band is tuning up.  Nothing is going to happen tonight.  Probably not tomorrow either.  Nor the next day.  Nor the next.  EIRANN GO BRAGH  NO SMOKING ALLOWED  The bartender has a ponytail and an apron.  I guess I'll walk back once I've finished these three pages.  What else?  What the fuck else?  The singer in the new band is a hot little bitch.  I see my curse.  I know why it is.  When you spurn love and life repeatedly, love and life decide not to waste their time on you.  What else?  Where are the single girls?  What the fuck else?  Guinness and Heineken and a bottle of Bud.  Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz. 

Oceanside

5-1-98  F 11:40 AM
I stayed home from school today.  Estaban Gracias is coming to pick me up to take me to Oceanside for the weekend. 
5-2-98 Sa 8: AM Oceanside
Fred is snoring on the hide-a-bed and periodically loud, sloppy farts can be heard to erupt from his nether regions.  Esteban is crashed out on the floor.  Pablo is taking a dump.  Dennis, who had the good sense to bring along a hot-ass Eurasian-looking honey got the bed in the master bedroom.  I slept on a big armchair.  The girl told me her name, and I repeated it, and she said, "Yeah," happily, "that's right."  But I still don't know what I said.  We were at a happy hour.  In the morning, I had drunk a beer and then I made a tequila with guava-pineapple juice.  I cruised up to Hollywood Center Studios where Jerry the Freak furnished me with a fat sack or forty-dollar mid-grade.  I met Esteban at the house.  We picked up Frederico in Montebello.  No drinks and little talking for ninety minutes down here.  Stopped at Ralph's, picked up forty-eight beers.  Cracked the first one in the car.  Had three Pacificos while we sat on the balcony.  The waves rolled in.  A girls soccer team practiced in the sand.  We went over to the Chart House and had mai tais and garlic bread.  Then I ordered a bourbon.  Then we went to the Baja Rockin' Lobster or something and sat at the bar.  Had some more beer and bourbon, some spicy tequila tiger shrimp.  We watched the Rockets choke against the Jazz.  We came back here and played some poker.  I won the first pot and then everybody quit.  I wanted to go out, fight some marines or something, but no one else wanted to.  Ugh.  Mariachi and I are going to go out to the beach and surf.  Mariachi's pulling on his wetsuit.  "Why's my crotch so low?" he wants to know.  "Cuz your dick is so little," Fred rejoins. 
What else?  I'm either going to party in Carlsbad tonight or go home on the train.