Deja vu

Last fall I drove to a book party at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles---a mere five hundred mile jaunt.  Oh, don't worry about my queer extravagances---I was multitasking the whole time, picking up sweet deals on seasonal closeouts at nurseries along the way, visiting family and friends---hoping to be inspired to finished one of my own quasi-literary projects.

That afternoon a high tropical overcast broke free at the edge of the San Fernanado Valley, and I broke free of the Ventura Freeway at Topanga Canyon to drive the Boulevard.  Not because it is faster, but because I had the luxury to do so instead of rushing along like everyone else in a walled off world as representational as the Los Angeles River.  On Ventura Boulevard the traffic is more tidal---bowling forward and hissing back, cars like kelp breaking off and stranding behind a beached whale of a bus.  Yet there is still room enough to recall the story of my grandfather's 1936 Buick---the one that lost a rear wheel and squatted down on the same street, while the wheel itself continued on its way to Glendale.  The wheel eventually lost its bearings and wondered off into a storefront. Great Great Aunt Ada---who once described herself as "slightly smaller than a Buick"---cried in the back seat, thinking she was the cause of the mishap.

Ventura Blvd at Tampa --- circa 1950

Hang a right on Havenhurst and one can drive into the past.  The walnut groves are gone, but the 1930s haciendas are not---still prominent midst their latter day crop of post war homes.  A turn to the right, a swing to the left and then the climb through the decades begins---topping out in the swinging sixties where the pavement ends on Mulholland Drive.  Heading east again, my car sways south and north along the ridge, catching views from Catalina to Mulholland's Cascades at San Fernando.  The indirect afternoon light is like a memory, revealing and softly surreal.  A dozen lifetimes caught in amber, that low smudge of smog creeping northwest along the base of the Verdugo Mountains.

The canyon roads bisect the way: Beverly Glen, Coldwater, Laurel.  Topless tourist vans stop to focus on the inner galaxy of stars below them.  My eyes follow suit but briefly and then my mind wonders back to Sunday walks up Outpost Drive from my courtyard apartment on Franklin.  The compound was built to corral Paramount's starlets in the 1920s, to plant and nurture the seeds of glamor---a trait gone extinct in our now-hostile environment.  Fakery is now more direct, less sophisticated.  Twerk it, baby.

Mulholland at the Caheuenga Parkway --- circa 1940

Approaching Caheuenga Pass the downtown skyline appears to the southeast like a Golden City of Oz.  Mulholland twists down and vaults over a river of cars on the Hollywood Freeway and then gets lost in the other Hollywood---the one with the lake and the sign that the movies did not build.  The largely exotic landscape grows lush and hangs over serpentine concrete streets, muffling the outside world.  Not much has happened here since Peg Entwistle jumped off the thirteenth letter of the HOLLYWOODLAND sign in 1932.  She was an actress, but we'll never know if her launching spot was symbolic or merely convenient for her, being a resident of Hollywoodland's Beachwood Canyon for that last year.  The LAND ending was eventually scrapped and what remained recycled to sell a much bigger commodity---leaving the neighborhood to lose itself under swaths of magenta bougainvillea and the gentle sway of creamy angel trumpets.

Hollywoodland --- circa 1930

There is no way but down from here, at least while behind the wheel.  Franklin, Hollywood---the merge onto Sunset.  This stretch of boulevard looks way better than it did twenty five years ago, yet proudly retains its edgier establishments.  Familiar shops have moved here, escaping other once-fringe neighborhoods of Hollywood that have gone twee.  Silver Lake, Echo Park---and finally Figueroa and downtown Los Angeles.  I'm only an hour early.

Emerging from the parking garage under the Central Library into the pink twilight, I wander across Meguire Gardens and up Hope Street's Spanish Steps.  A young bearded businessman smiled indulgently as I reached for the stony cascade of water at hand atop the meandering central divider.  It's a quirky feature, this waist high brook---as if it rose from the past into this forest of skyscrapers.  And there I am in my cowboy boots and western print shirt, flicking a finger through the water.  His eye contact with me is direct yet fleeting as his dress shoes click on down the steps.

At the top of the stairs I head north and then east towards an opening in the glass forest.  California Plaza is the kind of vast public place of sheets of water, stairs and terraces where Busby Berkeley could put a thousand dancing girls through their paces---with perhaps a gratuitous tracking shot of City Hall through a tunnel of the best legs on the lot.  A dark blue glamor spreads over the scene, nearly empty of people in spite of the warm night.  Square domestic tableaus light up overhead, climbing skyward like digital sparks.

KRKD radio towers and City Hall --- 1930

I find myself on the eastern edge of the plaza, next to the upper landing of Angel's Flight.  To the north is the iconic monolith that is City Hall, to the east southeast a Beaux Arts building lit up like a wedding cake aflame.  Farther south is a blue black bulk of a building topped with twin spires---archaic radio antenna towers, each with the letters KRKD silhouetted against the lit horizon.  I scan this view, over and over, like a meditation---until the atmosphere is dense with the layers of time.  Now the Lindbergh Beacon is slowly rotating atop City Hall, the Beaux Arts building is softer, whiter---and the now red letters on the antennas are spelling out each letter downward: K-R-K-D.  Then the call letters flash as a whole.  I watch the neon cycle, unsure of what I'm seeing.  The letters' action is likely lost to history; perhaps they never displayed more than static indifference.  Yet the letters continued to cascade and then flash as a whole.  I return my attention to City Hall and its relatively well known Lindbergh Beacon, darkened after Pearl Harbor and only recently reinstalled and lit for special occasions.  It is not lit now, that I know because the beam it throws cannot cut the modern urban glare---but there is that beam, spinning slowly round.  I'm not looking into the past but looking through layers of it, as the glass forest remains.

I am not alone.  I'm aware again of the usual characters of the past around me, but there is someone new.  I am unsure, because the new presence is akin to an old favorite---but Linda is stepping back, making space for her look alike.  It is the subject of the book, the reason for the party I'm about to attend.  She is dressed better than my other specters of that era, and I suddenly feel shy---focusing on the bias cut of her chic dress, the silk covering the glimpse of leg above her pumps.

"Don't you think it's time to go?"

Ann Dvorak

Her voice is unmistakable, one that still sounds modern after its initial impact on the silver screen some eighty years ago.  It is Ann Dvorak.  I catch the flash of her smile---understanding, open, indulgent---and I follow.  And the rest of my gang follows along.

It is too bad the author doesn't believe in such things.  She is a librarian at the library I'm about to enter, and she's just been through the seasonal spate of people suddenly interested in researching the past owners of their houses because they are haunted.  She posted on Facebook that her poker face was getting good practice because "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HAUNTED HOUSES."  I suppose not, at least in the pop culture sense.  The thrill is not in the fright, but to connect.

I turn back towards the Central Library, my spectral cloud tagging along as I drop down the Spanish Steps.  Outside of Ann, we're a casual crowd.  Linda---who really could be Ann's stand in---is dressed in a print frock and the man---who is an actual contemporary of Ann's---is in trousers and sweater.  We move along not in close knit form but as a contingent of compatriots with our own agendas.

Richard Cromwell and Ann Dvorak in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, 1932

They disappear when I enter the library and everyday anxieties take over me.  Meeting Room A is to the right and I pause, considering my unfashionably early entrance.  The door is open, people come and go.  I'm not the only one.  I take a deep breath and enter, only to immediately encounter at my right a larger than life black and white projection of the man who had just accompanied me back to the library.  Richard Cromwell, now costumed as a bell boy, is exchanging lines with knocked up and spiraling downward Ann Dvorak in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain---the book party's first feature of peripheral entertainment.  I grin at the image, reminded that they'll take every opportunity to regain my attention.

The author, Christina Rice, espies me from across the room and flashes one of her trademark million watt smiles.  That smile, those dark locks and bangs---her perfect pale skin personify the second tier, slightly saucy vintage Hollywood look.  She slowly makes her way through the growing crowd towards me.

"This is crazy," she gasps as she draws near.  "Nobody comes to a library book party early."

Christina pauses, eying me---a stranger but on Facebook.  My body language must be more relaxed than I am, as she assumes a pose of offering a hug---and I happily oblige.

"I can't believe you drove all that way," she says once she releases me.  "I hope you had other reasons to make the trip."

I assure her I did, and after a few other niceties we could have settled into a getting to know you type of conversation if not for the ever growing population of the room.  Christina glances around and smiles apologetically.  She must get back to her duties.

It would be the last of the personal contact I experienced at the party, outside of standing in line to buy for a library-supporting premium her book  Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel and having her sign it.  I stand a good five feet from the wall to avoid being the proverbial wallflower, but there's no getting around that this is what I am.  I perennially try to make eye contact with strangers, and occasionally they reflect my silent plea, but it seems nobody is a stranger but me.  Singles unexpectedly couple up or bump into people they haven't seen in twenty years.  They pile up at the refreshment table, tasting purported Ann Dvorak recipes pulled from old movie magazines and newspapers.  It's at once alienating and heartening, being part of this love fest for the author and her subject.

Mary Carlisle, 1930s

There is a guest of honor.  She sits under a large blowup of a newsprint photo of her young self along side Ann Dvorak.  She looks surprising spry for a woman batting a hundred, dressed in shades of hot pink---right down to her sneakers.  The laces are missing, and there are suggestions that her feet are swollen, but her hair is remarkable.  Dyed a becoming pale shade of strawberry blonde, it falls thick and wavy to her narrow shoulders.  Large sunglasses complete her look in spite of the subdued lighting---something I choose to believe is less about attitude and more about something like macular degeneration.  Occasionally the boys stop and stoop to pay homage to her, chatting for awhile before moving on, but the one steady by her side is a middle-aged woman that must be her companion/caretaker.

I should go over and talk to Mary Carlisle.  She starred with Richard Cromwell in Baby Face Morgan, after all.  But I do not move.  I feel totally opposite of my experience at California Plaza an hour before.  She might not remember Richard, or tell me something that I can't believe.  I can't recall any other movie Mary Carlisle was in.  I play polite conversation in my head but can't make myself walk over.  Instead I stand and watch a movie silenced by the din in the room.

Enter an old homeless woman---most certainly the fairy godmother of Pippi Longstocking.  Tiny as a sparrow, she sports stripped stockings topped by clothing in tight layers.  Her granny cart is similarly packed, and she parks it in a dark corner and then stands a few feet from me.  Great.  Guilt by association.  But her proximity grows on me, even when guests catch her out of the corner of their eye and then quickly look away.  We watch the film on our own little island away from humanity, she never seeking eye contact as I do.  She wanders off to discreetly wedge her way to the rapidly diminishing refreshment table, and I hope she finds something to her liking.

Pippi's godmother again returns to watch the film.  I've seen it so many times that I can almost hear the dialog, so I wonder what she's getting out of it.  No one else is watching but us, and she looks enthralled.  Childlike.  I can imagine her in a movie palace as a little girl, lost in the magic---and maybe, briefly, forgetting a horrible reality.  The End flashes on the screen, and she raises her tiny hands in the air to applaud like a grateful audience at the greatest stage performance ever.  One palm hits the other, and then stop in mid motion.  Her hands quickly retreat from their heights, suddenly aware of the situation, of the segregated reality we all live in.

One Out of Six Ain't Bad

My husband and I have had chickens for fifteen years, more or less.  They make good pets, eat food that has expired or you've lost interest in, and occasionally give you eggs.  That is unless you're Bitch Bird, who hordes her eggs in far away places.  One realizes she's up to something when she goes about her business, only to stop and suddenly display a certain calculating expression.  Then she waits until no one is looking and disappears --- at first for hours, then days.  Eventually, after many a repetitive search, we find her little blonde body spread out over dozen green, infertile eggs.  Bitch Bird deserves credit for being broody, though --- all the other hens we've ever had have been the lay 'em and leave 'em type.

I'll take that back about chickens being good pets.  Sure, we've heard about all those hens that get in your lap when you sit down, but it seems the little bantys we always get are of the more independent, high-strung type.  We did have one that would follow us around and once got in the Prius as we were packing for a trip, but that's about the most allegiance a bantam hen has ever displayed to us.  The trade off is that they're much thriftier to feed and a much smaller, faster target for predators.  And honestly, when do you really need an extra large egg?  If you're a poor enough cook not to be able to guesstimate the equivalence of medium eggs in a recipe, go buy a dozen jumbos at the store.

Bitch Bird --- uh, Beebe --- with her full-size stepchildren last summer.

Bitch Bird doesn't live with us anymore, having been adopted out during our last, long moving process.  She now lives with Our Lovely Lesbians, who discreetly call her Beebe.  She is the step mother of most of their full-size hens, having sat on their eggs collected from our country neighbors.  Beebe now also has a full-size boyfriend, although initially it seemed she was too bitchy for him: Her first dozen infertile eggs eventually started exploding under her.  This time around she has managed to hatch one of her own eggs --- a tiny gray chick (which we will inherit), and one of her step-daughter's --- a giant black chick.  Then she rejected five eggs and moved the remaining four to under the straw where she hangs out with the two chicks.  She was correct about the five eggs --- the proved infertile upon inspection, but her summer brooding method on the last four remains a mystery.


Since Beebe's track record has been poor as of late --- oh, hell, let's blame her boyfriend --- we purchased six chicks for our new home.  Six chicks usually guarantees around three hens (bantams are too small to be sexed as chicks), but it soon became obvious we had at least four budding roosters, including one that started out having calm bedroom eyes but morphed into a adolescent with a paralyzed leg.  He spent most of the day nestled in the lawn, his bum leg out to one side like an demented ballerina.  Otherwise he seemed content and healthy and was not harassed by the others, so the situation was sustainable.

The Chiclets --- in happier days.

While at our last property, Rancho Notorious, my husband built a portable A-frame hen house that can be rolled about --- providing security and a perennial patch of new ground for our hens.  A slight drawback to the design was that one end had to be lifted and two wheels installed in order to move it over the rough ground inherent to the ranch.  Now that we have lawn in exurbia, it's fairly easy just to push the hen house a short ways to a new spot.  This worked the first time --- the flock just bungled along as the frame pushed them, but the second time our one obvious hen got her foot caught.  She let out a plaintive cry as we jumped around, trying to lift the frame off her foot and feeling like complete shits for our laziness.  She hopped away on one foot, and Mr. Disabled immediately followed, sitting down next to her when she parked on the grass.  Aww.  She suffered no visual damage, but it's likely she'll be at least disadvantaged from now on.

Next morning, life in the hood wasn't so swell.  Her passive posture on the ground caused nascent sexual domineering among the pubescent boys --- something her new boyfriend could not defend her from, so we moved the new couple to a cat carrier.  Her attitude suggested this was the nadir of humiliation, but her boyfriend thought it was swell and crowed for the first time --- all the while maintaining a gallant manner towards her.

We had no intention of maintaining separate and unequal chicken housing.  My husband already had found out the local feed store takes in strays and unloved animals --- including roosters --- and finds them new homes.  We just had to wait until their current stock of roosters was adopted out --- an event that happened to coincide with our negligence.  So we scooped up the three obvious roosters, but what about her boyfriend --- and the Silver Seabright, who is slightly bigger than the rest and looks like a rooster, but was at least lowest in male hierarchy?  Upon removal of the three roosters, the Seabright looked startled, and then let out his first crow of triumph.  Okay, our lady has a new boyfriend.  If they get along, we may get slightly larger eggs and prettier hens.

Seabright (left) and Peg Leg

 They get along.  Perhaps Silver Seabright is less than gallant, keeping the choicest food offerings for himself, but he does spend a lot of time sitting next to her.  Peg Leg --- the unlovely name my husband has given her --- now has a trophy husband.

Not So Clever

In the vast and fascinating wasteland called the Internet, there's an image that surfaced a few years ago and has become---at least in certain circles---perhaps even more gazed upon than when published some seventy-five years  ago.  The image is the dust jacket from a book called How To Win Boys.  The title is enough to amuse a certain crowd, but the image is even more thought provoking.  There are no girls present, only a lone young man fishing.  Yes, he is fishing---and surely a girl that bought or was given the book How To Win Boys was fishing too, but what is a girl to do?  Casually walk up behind him, tap him on the shoulder and brightly say Hi! My name's Vera---what's yours? and continue yammering on until he strangles her with his best fishing line?  Or is best for Vera to wait in presenting herself only after he gets bored with fishing and decides to go skinny dipping?

I'll vote for the latter---if only because the image is so mindful of something I drew almost twenty years ago.  The drawing was part of a long series based solely on ancient and salacious movie titles I had collected.  What else could a boy do with a title like Bachelor Bait except to hook on some old proverb?  My drawing on the envelope probably had as much to do with the content beyond the dust jacket.

As I've written before, I don't draw any more except for vary rare occasions.  For one, I'm not that naive exhibitionist anymore, and I find I have more to say than I can illustrate---but whenever I see the book cover above, I wonder if my drawing would have been the same if the Internet was in 1996 what it is now and I had access to it.  Media wise, I lived a very sheltered life then, and drawing was much a creative outlet as entertainment.

Perhaps I would have started writing earlier if I had ready access to the fact that the book How To Win Boys had nothing to do with girls but the uneasy notion of winning boys over to Sunday School.  I recall being coerced into Sunday School once with Popsicles.  It was all innocent and democratic enough---the boy who brought me along got a Popsicle and so did I, and if I did the same, I'd get another.  Even at six I knew that was bribery and wrong.  Actually, I think it was a girl who brought me---the same one who lived down the street from my Grandma and who's mother once served egg salad on Wonder Bread for lunch.  The memory still makes me gag.

Rochelle Hudson, Bachelor Bait.

A movie poster of Bachelor Bait would not have inspired me---I can't find one.  Released in July 1934 by Radio Pictures, the nominal story involves a man who starts a matchmaking service and gets overly involved with his clients.  Naturally it's a comedy, but having been released a month after the Production Code of thou shall nots was reinforced, it's likely to have been more tedious than naughty.  And it certainly did not involve fishing poles.  However, isn't this a strikingly modern looking image of the leading lady, starlet Rochelle Hudson?

That 'boy' on the cover of How To Win Boys has to be at least sixteen---far to old to be coerced by Popsicles. In light of latter-day revelations of sexual abuse, the whole presentation looks lascivious, if not disturbing.  Which, of course, is why it keeps popping up on the Internet.

Match Sewn In Heaven

"Shall we wear matching shirts?" I asked, suddenly yet vaguely inspired.

"Huh?"  The standard first response between each other.

"The tan and black cowboy shirts you sewed."

"Oh, sure," my husband replied indifferently.

And so we dressed for Valentine's lunch, since cheap bastards are wont to pay for dinner.

As I buttoned my shirt, I recalled certain boys on certain streets in certain cities---those couples who looked like twins in form fitting polo shirts.  Those couples to both disparage and envy.  Surely they never asked huh? of one another.  They were like tick and tock, not like a schnauzer and owner in matching sweaters.

I assure you I did not leash my husband.

Yet at the right moment, matchy-matchy has magic---even if I have to wear my less flattering blue jeans instead of the caramel denim he custom fitted to me.  And Valentines Day seemed like an ideal time for a Mutt and Jeff couple to go that route, judging by the endearing smiles we got.

"Love your shirts!" cried a woman.

"He made them," I said---before my husband could boast himself.

"Oh, my!"

Lunch was at a nice restaurant---a new favorite, since the old favorite's chef was deported back to France.  The menu is locally sourced and shifts with the seasons, and they pride themselves with a long list of wines and cocktails.  Unfortunately, they don't have a staff mixologist to bring these intriguing cocktails to life---yet I ordered an Aye Caramba.

"How's your drink?" asked our young and handsome waiter.

"Very good," I smiled---already feeling the effects of the tequila.  That was something new and different for their cocktail line.

"Oh, good.  I was having a hard time mixing it by the instructions.  The juices are supposed to float on top, but they kept drifting down."

"I wouldn't know any better---except that it's delicious."

The waiter chuckled and placed his hand on my upper arm, a very unexpected and pleasant sensation.  He hadn't dinged my gaydar.

"It's the best one we've had here so far," my husband chimed in.  He had taken a few sips from my straw.

After lunch there were sundry errands to do.  A girl at the grocery store squealed behind my back he's so cute---and I knew she was talking about my mutt.

At Lowe's we went our seperate ways from the parking lot---he to the return counter, I to the garden section.  A beautiful black woman was arranging plants as I approached, and she smiled and started coming towards me.

"I don't want to alarm you," she said, "but there was a man walking across the parking lot in that very same shirt!"

I studied her, trying to decide if she was joking or serious.  I decided to merely explain: "Oh, we came together.  He sewed the shirts."

"Oh," she mused with admiration.  "Are you singers?"

I cracked a smile, knowing that Merle Haggard lives in town.  I considering whether I should break out singing Temptation (Tim-Tay-Shun) like Red Ingle and His Natural Seven.

"No," I finally said.

"Oh," she repeated---now crestfallen and perhaps embarrassed.  I smiled her an adieu and kept walking.

Our last errand was an indulgence on my husband's part---looking at a car I had espied on eBay.  The coincidence of location and apparent condition was too hard to pass up, as far as I was concerned.  So we drove out into the hills and up a gravel road to a mechanic's compound.  He was a crusty thing, about fifteen years older than my husband, but friendly in a coarse fashion.  He didn't seem to notice our matching shirts.

"May I take it out for a test drive?"

"Sure.  If you two don't return, I'll sell your Prius instead."

So I took it out onto the old highway with its sweeping, climbing curves and straightaways.  The little car performed admirably for its age, with its deficits largely attributable to dinky cheap tires and likely twenty year old shocks. Cosmetically it was in very good shape.

When we returned, a friend of the mechanic's had shown up---less crusty and more like an old apple doll, with all his little features sunken into soft, shiny skin.

"Why, Darrell, they're twins!" he said---with a spit of tobacco juice for emphasis.

"Yes," my husband admitted, jutting a thumb in my direction, "but he's the older one."  

That's obviously untrue, but I played along: "Yeah," I said---bending my head aside to give them full view of my temples.  "See my gray hair?"  

The two men looked bemused but said nothing more.

My husband asked what the reserve price was---which turned out to be very reasonable and two-thirds of the price he had tried to sell it for locally.  The car seemed to be garnering considerable interest clear across the country, but Darrell had started the price very low and so far it was still a thousand under the reserve.  Still, it could go way up in the next and last twenty-four hours, so we didn't take the prospects very seriously.

Shockingly, I won it---for the reserve price.

"Well, I didn't forbid it," my husband admitted grudgingly---sounding uncharacteristically paternal. 

It was a deal but still another expense in an expensive year.  I hung my head a bit because cheap bastards are always remorseful---either for missing a great deal or having to pay for one.  Fortunately and even after dealing with the cashier's check, the DMV and insurance all in one afternoon, my husband grew more enthusiastic---eventually wanting to get behind the wheel himself and drive out into the countryside to show it off to Our Lovely Lesbians.

I can still hear Darrell calling out to us as we drove away: "Take good care of my baby."