Even Jesus.....

It's been a while and I've been some places. But I've been in LA since Saturday. I mostly don't like it and today wasn't much of an exception. But it got better (or at least more interesting) towards the end. Here's why:

Walking toward Wilshire, to get my cell phone going, I innocently asked an older lady if I was going in the right direction. "Where are you from, dear?" she wanted to know, ignoring the question. I considered this a bit too long, wondering if she meant where I'd come from today, or where on earth I was from, in general. After what was too long of a pause, I finally admitted "Here, actually," and found myself doubting it just as much as she obviously did.

"Whatever, honey," she told me, "I've probably never heard of it. Now you are going towards Wilshire, but this is a rough city. Not like where you're from." I assured her again, this time a little more heartily (like a pirate) that this was in fact where I am from and that I can handle this city. "Whatever you say. But this city will eat you up and spit you back out, soon as look at you."

I considered telling her that I was going to eat her up and spit her parts at her doubtlessly retarded and equally ugly off springs, but instead, I just walked away, reminding myself that the only thing I can control in life is how I react, which has become my rageaholic mantra in Los Angeles and which has been saving the lives of many people.

A few blocks later, I came to the cell phone store. It had three massive customer service desks, each with four separate terminals for employees to ostentatiously fiddle around on computers, looking self important. This meant in theory that there could have been twelve employees manning the customer services stations. But there weren't. There were four employees, all spread out through the store, not giving any indication of which desk a troubled, foolish and apparently foreign customer should approach. I tried to nervously make eye contact with each of the four employees and was ignored. Another customer showed me that there was a sign in sheet on which to write your name, as though we were all yuppies (which we assuredly were) trying to get into some new hip restaurant rather than just yuppies trying to get a company to provide a service for which we paid them.

When eventually my name was called, I was served by Mike (damn it, why?) from Missouri, who didn't say very much of anything except to disagree with me that LA is a weird place to live. He also didn't seemed to find the alliteration of Mike from Missouri as charming as I did. But he did fix my phone though and so I was able to depart the store in better mood than when I entered it.

I wanted to finish up Don Quixote before I got to the bookstore and so I was reading as I walked, which is not an especially great idea, but is at least better than driving and reading or driving and doing math homework, as I used to do. I was expecting to be bumped into and willing to risk it, but when it eventually happened, the women I knocked into managed to drop her cellphone. She was blond, slightly older than I and with most of her breasts on display, breasts faker than the small, apology smile I tried to send her.

"Pinkberry!" she squeaked shrilly, diving for the phone like her child had gone flying. I laughed. You would have. "Pinkberry?" I asked her, as she fussily dusted the phone off and checked to see if it would warrant a visit to the cell phone emergency room. "My phone," she explained, "It's a blackberry but it's pink so I call it Pinkberry." Considering that I completely suppressed the urge to say something like "I'll bet you are involved in a really challenging career," it pissed me off a little that she wanted to know "Why don't you watch where you're going?"

Luckily, third grade had taught me the perfect response to this. "Why don't you watch where you're going?" I thrust my right shoulder at her when I said you, like a boxer taking a jab with their right, and then switched to my left shoulder when I said you're, the boxer going for the left hook.

"I was texting my agent," she informed me, swishing her hair and touching her face in the careful way women will when they don't want to smudge their excessive make up.

"Well I was reading Don Quixote," I said, brandishing it at her.

"Well I'll bet my text was way more important than your nerdy book," she told me, walking away.

That stung. I was about to yell "Not uh!" at her retreating back when I realized the book in question is about a mad man who thinks he is a knight and harms a lot of people in the futile pursuit of fame and glory. If you are ever going to debate the merits of the comparable importance of things in day to day, modern life, I imagine you'll want to be holding a book that isn't Don Quixote. I made a mental note of this and dejected, entered the book store.

In the book store, I studied Spanish for an hour in their costly studies material section and then as a treat, picked out a couple of things I'd been eyeing earlier, retiring to a sunny section of the store to lay on my stomach on the carpet and peruse them. That was great. I easily killed three hours like that.

Eventually an employee asked me if I intended to purchase any of the books and I laughed and said no. She asked me why and told her her store was criminally over priced and that any non moronic person would find a used bookstore in Venice or order their books on Amazon. I was asked to leave the store, which I did, calmly enough, already planning to disguise myself somehow, return and repeat the experience. After all, I only got through the first chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. There were a lot more lies to unravel.

From there I walked down to the beach, assaulted by all the English conversation around me and wondering how long it would take me to get used to it again. I felt very lonely and realized I haven't been out and about on my own for quite some time. There was no Geoff, no rock to take comfort in or to feel socially superior to, no one to support my decisions. This realization was disquieting, so I sat down on a bench.

There are a lot of homeless people in Santa Monica. Which is, on the one hand odd, because it's a pretty wealthy area, but on the other hand obvious because it also has its strangely quirky, bohemian bits.

On a bench near me was a large black guy. Ostensibly homeless, he seemed to have a lot of his belongings in a shopping bag under his bench and his beard was wild in a way that suggested a lack of regular access to a mirror, bathroom, razor. He was looking at me pretty pointedly. I smiled, which is what I always try to do at people in LA, maybe I can teach them how.

But this guy smiled back. "How ya doin' today?" he asked me.
"Not terribly well," I replied, realizing that this kind of response might be why people think I'm a foreigner, and then overcompensating hideously when I tried to ask him, "How 'bout yourself?"
"Oh you know, man" he said.

I did not know and I wanted to know, but I didn't want to push. Luckily, I have no job and nothing to do all day except finish Don Quixote.
"Do you like it here?" I asked wondering if this could be the only person in Los Angeles crazy or foolish enough to engage a stranger in conversation.
"Sure do. This is my favorite bench. I sit here just as much as I can."

I appraised his bench, a little disbelievingly. "But the sun's shining right in your eyes. You should sit on this bench. It has shade and a view of the pier."
He looked at me some more, now tilting his head. I clearly didn't get it. "Naw man. I'm good here."
"Are you sure? I'll share this bench with you. I promise it's better."
"Maybe it looks that way, man. But it don't feel like this one do."
There was something deep about this, something prophetic. I left it be. I'm learning to do that these days.

"So what do you do, man?" he wants to know.
"Nothing at the moment. I don't have a job," I admit, realizing we might very well have that in common, "But I was a teacher."
He grunts, unimpressed. I wonder if I should risk it. I do.
"What do you do?"
He shuffles himself slightly, checks with his hand under his bench for his stuff, a knight touching his sword, which is still there, and thus reassured, he answers, "I'm a traveler, man."

I like this. I like it enough to imagine myself saying it to somebody else, later one. But for now, all I think about what a different word that is when he says it and how excluded I am from what he means when he says traveler, despite the fact that I've just returned from traveling.

"Do you like LA?" I ask him.
"Nobody likes LA," he tells me certainly, not a salt sized grain of doubt in his voice.
"My mother does," I tell him, being a little childish.
"No she doesn't, man," he tells me, being even more childish but also very masculine.

We are silent for a time, letting this sink in.
"What about the movie stars? They must like LA?" I point out.
"Man, movie starts, they can travel all over the place. LA is like they office. What kind of fool person like they office?"

This is some truth in this. But I'm not through yet.
"I'm sure there must be someone in this city who likes-" I start.
John cuts me off, taking his eyes out of the sun and fixing them on me, "Even Jesus don't like LA, man."

We are silent again, contemplating a city so bad that even Jesus, not God but Jesus, wouldn't like it. The city that comes to mind, my mind at least, is in fact Los Angeles.

"What's ya name, man?" my friend wants to know.
"Arianna. What's yours?"
"John, man. Hey Ariel-"
"Arianna"
"Yeah man. Hey Ari-ann....you got any money, man?"
"I don't actually."
"You don't have any money?"
"I don't."

He gives me a long suffering look, like we've been over this a million times and I should already know that I'm wrong.
"I don't," I repeat, then feeling a little mean, "Do you?"
"Naw man."
"Well then."
He still looks skeptical.
"Here," I toss him my weird little wallet with the Korean cartoons all over it, "You can check."
He does. I'm somewhat insulted.

"But man. You got all them credit and debit cards in here."
"I do."
"So you have got some money."
"In the bank. And I need that. I can't even spend that on me."
"Why not man?"
"Because I need to go to school."
"School? Schools free! How old are you man?"
"24. University school. Not school school."
"But you've got money in the bank."
"I do."
"And you won't spend it? Not even on a sandwich?"

I relent a little. "What kind of sandwich do you like?"
"Me? I don't like sandwiches. I like burgers."
"What? Then why did you say sandwich?"
"You look like the type of lady who likes sandwiches."
"Can I buy you a sandwich?"
"No man. I'm the kind of man who likes burgers."

This homeless guy is really beginning to test my patience.

"I hate beef. I would much rather buy you a sandwich."
"The burger's cheaper, man."
"Yeah but its like a goddamn moral thing."

I am glaring at this homeless guy. He looks taken aback.

And then I realize that I'm supposed to remembering that the only thing I can control is my behavior and my reactions to the demanding homeless man that I've engaged in accidental conversation.

So I bought him a burger.