4-21-00 F 2:45 PM

I'm at Billingsley's, on Pico, just west of the 405.  I rode out here on my bike after typing this morning.  When I say "typing," I'm aware of Truman Capote's criticism of Kerouac.  What I'm doing now is handwriting, but I imagine to Capote this would be scribbling.  Whatever.  "Do you get to eat here whenever you want," guy asks bartender.  "Only on Good Friday," answers bartender, which it is today.  I stopped at the Apple Pan and had a burger and read the sports page.  Then I crossed the street to the Barnes and Noble at the Westside Pavilion and felt the luxurious wonder of being surrounded by books!  Three stories of books!--that is three floors containing all the world's accumulated knowledge.  I looked through an Alaskan travel book.  Might not be practical for our circumstances.  Then I looked through a Costa Rica book that might fit the bill.  I couldn't justify buying any books at this time, though.  Maybe I'll ride up to that used bookstore on Santa Monica and see if they still have that paperback of Lust and Genius.  Barnes and Noble didn't have it on any of its three floors.  So much for the world's accumulated knowledge.  A titty bar writhes down the street from here.  And Q's.  We should go look at houses.  I want to see the Blues/Sharks game at 4:00 and the Tigers/Chisox game at 5:00.  "Hangovers Installed and Serviced" reads a sign over the ball.  My stepfather used to have that same sign in his den before my mom made him move it to the garage.  Maybe I'll get a menu.  Maybe I'll get some onion rings.  Supposed to meet with Getoff tonight.  Supposed to go to Placentia Sunday.  Forgot the play last night.  Should call Sheryl.  Last year, the Blues rallied from three games down to beat the Coyotes in game seven of OT.

 4-20-00  Th 1:56 PM

This vacation is just about over.  Not much I can do about it.  Being a family man, I'm broke.  I never wrote here yesterday.  I did add three or four lines to Jim today and wrote a pathetic third-person page.  Typed fifteen minutes.  Went with Rochelle to Santa Monica City College.  That turned me into a horny college freshman again.  Rochelle got info to enroll in classes over the summer.  Now I'm sitting in the backyard.  I read about Maria's daily escape to the freeways of LA in Play It.  Was there no traffic back then?  Read about the Riordan/Mahoney covenant in Quartz.  Now what?  I've got a beer I'm afraid to open.  I never learned to just fuck and forget. That would have been wise.  I fell for all that decency bullshit.  Too late now.  "Too late now" is becoming a new mantra.  I need to get some exercise.  Go for a bike ride.  Maybe call Carlos.  [photo from June '95, snow-capped peaks, Olympic National park]  June 95 was right before I started keeping really extensive journals.  Maybe there's stuff about it in the green one with the yellow pages.  I should start providing captions, duh.   I might golf tomorrow.  I feel like a bad husband.  Maybe I'll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I haven't read the news today, oh boy.  [black ink sketch of snow-capped peaks, Olympic National Park, June '95]  It's a sunny spring day, rustling leaves, chirping avians.  I'd love to tur-ur-urn you-u-u o-o-on.  I haven't smoked today because I got so depressed yesterday.

4-17-00 So, You Don't Look Like a Bouncer

 4-17-00 11:13 AM Tu

Stocks?!  I'm needing some tape.  After I typed this morning, I rode my bike to Hollywood Video and dropped off the derivative "Stir of Echoes" (It gave Rochelle nightmares, I think because the wife/mother became irrelevant to the husband/son--not going to make good pregnant dreams), "Three Kings," (great) Fellini's "8 1/2" (great) and a movie about air traffic controllers called "Pushing Tin."  Then I rode over to the news patio at Wilshire and Detroit and bought Los Chicago Times. That's what I'm calling the LA Times now that Tribune owns it. I read the sports page at a little table there.  Then I rode back to the house.  

A message on the machine from Sandra Puterin's office at American Financial said my credit is "perfect, superlative, and macho," but I need to pay off two little claims against me.  I felt like a superhero. 

[grotesque blue ink self-portrait with wife and family friend]  I woke Rochelle so we could go up to the credit union and see how much of a loan I qualify for.  I filled out a card, and they said they'd let me know in three to four business days.  We strolled up to City Walk.  I was feeling like a cool guy with superb credit.  At bar/restaurant/bowling alley, a shrimp at the door said we couldn't go in because of a private party.  He had a security wire in his ear. 

 "How do you know we're not with the party?" Rochelle asked.  

"You don't look like "Baywatch" lifeguards.

I said, "So?  You don't look like a bouncer."

He didn't laugh.  I didn't want to risk running into Shirelle in there, anyway. We walked away.  I didn't feel like a superhero with superlative, macho credit anymore. 

We walked back down the hill and drove home.  Rochelle made some chicken parmesan and angel hair with marinara and a salad.  I drank a beer. When I'm done here, I'll read some Quartz.  Then third-person.  Then read some Didion. Then Jim.

 4-17-00 Mon 9:20 AM

After I wrote for 15 minutes last night, I read a couple of pages of that Mysteries of the Bible book about the varied climate and geography of the 150-mile-long and 50-mile-wide strip of land that is Israel. Then I went to sleep. I dreamt of a twilight spring break beach bar party.  I was drooling drunk in the dream.  My sister Bernice was there telling me to act my age.  It was a fun dream-drunk.  I was riding my bike from bar to bar.  I was wearing flimsy flipflops on my feet.  I was drunk, and it was dark, and I was having a hard time figuring out which bike out of all the bikes in front of one of the bars was mine.  I was on an elevate boardwalk like at Redondo. I spotted a titty bar down below, the mirrored silhouettes of dancing girls under colored lights in front.  I didn't go there, though.  I went to the bathroom at the bar.  The floor was wet and sandy.  I wasn't too keen on walking on that floor in my flimsy flipflops.  When I came back, my sister, friends and family were pretending like they'd left without me.  The other patrons were playing along, but I was onto their ruse.  

Then Rachel got out of bed to go to the bathroom, and I awoke.  I lay in bed awhile before rising to pee.  I put on slippers and drove down to the market to buy two-weeks' worth of groceries with one hundred and twenty-seven of the last two hundred dollars I had left for the rest of the month.  

Now I'm having a vitamin with a cranberry vodka.  Roch is watching the end of "Three Kings" in the next room.  Her sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law are on their way here.  Steve is going to audition for "Rock and Roll Jeopardy."  The sisters and I are supposed to go to breakfast.  I have to call Modchill about Morro Bay.  I can't decide whether to go for my loan approval now, or at the end of the summer when I SHOULD have more money.  Why not now and then again later?  I guess I need to call what's-her-name?  Sandra something and see how much my dad wants to chip in.  Urgh.  I'm hungry.  

 4-13-00 12:41 PM Th

Like to ditch night school tonight.  Not coming tomorrow.  [ink and pencil, forest and mountain impression]  4:11 PM Should I go to work tonight?  I'm at a total loss.  I'm at home.  Sometimes you just have to locate your body, and all your fantasies dissipate.  Is the opposite of "dissipate" "sipate?"  To meet my duty or to not meet my duty?  To teach or not teach?  "To be or not to be?" is an oversimplification.  Maybe not.  

The Kings will face the Redwings on TV in a playoff game in a little while.  The first game of the first round.  I was walking across the playground today at the same time as Senoritavilla, she, feigning interest it seemed, which made me laugh weirdly.  I was happy it was so.  It was better than when she ignores me.  I won't be seeing her probably for another ten days.  She's going to Petaluma.  That's a whole thing: it's better I no go into.  Obsession and love are two different things, right?  Whatever.

What else?  I bummed a ride to work this morning.  I keep thinking of her.  I thought of her at "La Rondine" last night.  That is the way things work.  Happiness will not last.  Jealousy, lust, or some other of Pandora's ills unleashed will will drown you in fog eventually.  Love and sweet kisses must be paid for in tears and sorrow.  We saw "La Rondine" at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.  I forget the name of the heroine, nor do I remember the name of the woman who sang her part.  We took a cab back to where the car was parked.  I told Rochelle how the sheriff's deputies put me out of jail at three in the morning in Dolphin shorts.  I have to go to LACAS.  What'll I do before the game tomorrow?  Write.  I've got another chapter of Play It As It Lays to read.  Sentence by sentence, it's better written than Jim.  It might be a bit obscure even if, overall, she's set forth a compelling introduction.  Electrodes hooked up to her daughter.

 4-11-00 Tu 11:43 AM
Let's see.  Uhm.  Hmm.  Oh, yeah, I know: UGH!  and uckf and whatever.  How did "fuck" get to be such a bad word?  It's just a sound, really, and everyone seems to agree that the sound means intercourse or maybe it's more like penetration, the penetration of the most holy of holies with a foreign object, a penis--is this what makes it vulgar?  Whatever.  What else?  Same shullbit, different day.   The date's different anyhow, even if this day is just like yesterday.  Whatever.  I read the newspaper this morning.  Rode my bike to school.  Had a bagel with cream cheese on one half, peanut butter and butter on the other half.  Typed fifteen lame minutes.  My writing reaches new lows.  I congratulated Skully on her wedding and wished her well and the dumb b***h ignored me like I was the one who screwed her over and not the other way around.  Shunning me is a way of not confronting her responsibility for the mess she made.  She's quite content to project the fault onto me, to project blame as bitches do, angry with me because she fucked up.  Whatever.  I'm sensing collusion between her and Horowicz now.  I think all I need is Horowicz's questionnaire and Harvard's, and then I can pack that pack that shit it up, drop it off, and be done with it.  The Dodgers are opening PacBell Park, the new home of the San Francisco Giants.  It's right on the bay.  Homers to right splashdown right into the water.  Got to read some more City of Quartz.  Grind out a shitty third person when I get home.  Got to the LACAS office.  Teach night school.  Try to write a fucking line for stupid-ass Jim.  Tomorrow is opera night.  Friday, Dodger game.  Ugh ack ick fuck.  What else?  

 4-12-00 W 12:50 PM

What can I talk about other than the treacherous bitches here at Wilshire Hill, like Monique Vincent and Sally Steinstern and their little clique?  I'll not waste another drop of ink on those self-serving, unaccountable assholes.  Whatever? What else?  Usual shullbit.  Got a ride from work in the car from Rochelle today.  We drove through [my portrait in profile, from the thigh up, hands behind back, shirtless, belly half pregnant, in Atlantis] McDonald's. They gave me the wrong food, but I didn't discover this 'til I was in class.  I read the paper.  We talked about common and proper nouns.  I typed a page to put with the math tests saying that I "mishandled my duties" as STEPs coordinator.  Who knows how that'll fuck me.  Just so long as the dummy that actually lost her whole classes tests doesn't have to be responsible for her shitheadedness.  Rochelle's going to pick me up after school so I can take this crap to the testing center.  There's one on Crenshaw and Slawson and one on Venice and Centinela.  Then I have to call Aurora at LACAS and arrange to have a sub go in for me tonight.  Rochelle and I are supposed to meet Tim and Sarai the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see the final dress rehearsal of an opera for which Tim's mom, a member of the conservancy, got us tickets.  Tim hasn't been able to tell me the name of the opera.  So, I can start getting drunk as soon as I get home, if I want.  I won't be able to go to the Teacher Network Meeting tonight.  I guess I better inform McCade.  If I can just make it through tomorrow, I'll be in the clear for ten days.  The relative clear.  I've got to find a bigger house.  Being a family man is kind of ripoff.  Why do guys do it?  I'm at a standstill with Jim.  We have to start our social studies now.  We'll play a little softball after that.  I took Play It as It Lays off the shelf today.  Got Quartz to read still.  Ugh.  Dodger game on Friday.  

 4-10-200 M 12:15 PM
A dancer from the Sunset Strip was a virulent racist.  She didn't like competing with the black dancers' moves.  I had four beers there, I think, before I rode home.  I mostly rode down Wilton.  Rochelle heated a frozen pizza.  We ate it and watched a movie.  I fell asleep.  It was hard to get out of bed this morning.  I dreamed of sex with the with the wife in bed.  I thought it was real 'til I woke up.  

Back to the stripper:  she kept getting up on the barstool on her knees to lean over the bar as if to look for something, but really just to invite me to admire her ass.  

Forget about that stripper.  I have a bruised apple to eat.  "Look, you can see my cherry," she said, pointing to the little red bastard in her champagne glass."

"We got new glasses," the bartender said in his Russian accent.  

Anyhow, I read the newspaper today.  It said nothing new.  I turned in my register.  My assistant, Luis, did it for me.  I handed out teacher questionnaires.  Coons and Nattaz already gave them back.  I'm hungry.  I copied some shit.  I'm almost done with this STEPS bullshit.  But I won't be done with it today.  I didn't type this morning.  My writing is lame.  I just have to write and have fun with it and not be so serious.  Or the opposite.  Or just stop.  I've got to get fitted for the tux for Milly and Stu's wedding.  Rochelle's coming to get me after class so I can do it.  Might get a bike helmet.  I'm hungry.  Got to turn in my summer school application to LACAS today.  Cancel class Wednesday and Thursday.  Arrange Happy Hour on Friday.  For after the Dodger game.  [sketch in blue ink of Morro Rock]  I think we're going to Morro Bay next weekend.  What else?  I wish I was in Havasu.  For shit's sake, what else?  I got some new kid books:  Arthur's Pen Pal, Squids Will Be Squids, Swine Lake, and Katie Meets the Impressionists.  I think I wont give them to my turd graders to be destroyed this time.  I think I'll save these books for my own kid to destroy.  I'm hungry.  What else?  Read some more City of Quartz.  Kill myself.  I'm thirsty.  How can you be hungry and want to kill yourself at the same time?  I don't really want to kill myself.  I do want to feel better about what I can do.  I wish I could finish my novel without it sucking.  Why is it so hard?  It shouldn't be.  It doesn't know what it wants to be.

 4-9-00 Su 5:35 PM

I'm at Hollywood Billiards up on Sunset.  I rode my bike up to the Red Line and took it to Sunset and Vermont.  I was going to Cheetahs, but it doesn't open until six.  I drank mimosas all morning while I read the paper.  The Dodgers were snowed out in New York.  I think the Cubs beat the Reds.  The Angels lost to the Redsox.  Vijay Singh won the Masters.  I'm hungry.  I feel a little out of place.  I should be home with the wife.  I should have ridden up to Barnsdall Art Park.  There are a dozen guys shooting desultory games of pool.  Not a woman in sight.  What else?  Tim called and invited us to an opera at the Dorothy Chandler on Wednesday, but he didn't know which one.  I'll have to take the night off.  Where should I go from here.  Back to Cheetahs?  Keep heading west?  What time does Crazy Girls open tonight?  What about dinner?  They're showing that Jerry Lee Lewis movie.  I'm sick of Jim.  It sucks, and I'm no writer.  Should I print some for Manny and Ann or is it a waste of paper?  Should I get a burger?  Pizza?  I'm a loser, baby, so why dontchya kill me?  Should I go out to the patio for a smoke?  Do I dare to eat a peach?  Ug and ak and fuck.  I read some more of the Glorious Koran today.  I didn't get much from it.  Wars.  The Q'yresh against the Al Islam.  An old black man's getting a snifter of cognac.  Says his daddy used take him out of grade school to go to the moonshine house.  Where can we get a catalog of where all United flies?  Why'm I not famous and wealthy?  What else?  Crack up the pool balls? My beer bottle's empty now.  I had to borrow this pencil.  How long have I been away from home?  One hour?  Two.  Lust and Genius is the name of the Mailer book about Miller.  Or Genius and Lust.  Berkelouw's had a thirty-dollar copy.  I should have bought it with the money I got for the CDs I sold at Aaron's.  Well, now what?

 4-7-00 F 10:05 PM

We looked at HUD homes in "revitalization areas."  We drove through Windsor Hills, Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, and the Crenshaw District.  Made me want to move to Morro Bay.  I played my out-of-tune guitar for the kids today.  They danced and drummed and went all crazy.  [happy face]  We played a little baseball today.  My wife pulled up while Elmer was talking to me about going to a titty bar.  I left my Los Angeles Stories book at Pio Pico.  I have keys, but maybe I can just wait 'til Monday.  Rochelle and I were talking about getting M&Ms and popcorn and lying in bed and watching a double feature.  We have "Chinatown" and "Episode One."  Print Jim?  The stapler's out of staples.  I was going to staple a picture of myself in profile, big old gut hanging out, shirtless at the Atlantis.  It doesn't seem worth it to get up and go to the kitchen for tape.  I'd like something to draw.  "The Earth becomes my throne/I adapt to the unknown/The less I have the more I gain."  This journal, number 47, seems particularly pathetic.  Work tomorrow.  Get a nine-volt.  [pencil sketch of me in profile, big old gut hanging out, shirtless at the Atlantis]  My gut doesn't looks as distended in that sketch as it really is in the photograph.  Rochelle could go for some ice cream.  I wanted to runoff some copies of that Martin Amis story for Manny and Anna in advance of giving them some Jim for feedback except that I forgot the book and have already reached my copy limit for the month.  Rochelle's mom saw my drawing of downtown and wondered if one of my kids had done it.