la la land

sanctioned dereliction
Hold the potion up
stare your shadow down
remember to forget and then rename your shame.
“Overfloater” (Cornell)


Terry woke up about an hour past the sunrise with a strange taste in his mouth. Almost metallic, but not quite. Something sour, but not rotten. Something that was not banished by brushing, gargling, and rinsing. That, and the headache pulsing over his right eye told him that what he really wanted was a drink.

The idea, of course, was always there. But when his body joined in on the taunting it made him want to jump out of the five storey bedroom window of his apartment into the canyon below. The coyotes would make short work of his broken body, he imagined.
Almost Hemingway-esque, he thought, remembering one of the literature classes he took before quitting to chase the dream. Didn’t Papa want to be gored to death by a bull, or something?

It was better to keep wondering about random, silly things rather than focus on the torment at hand. Because it would get worse, these cravings always did. For all the doctors who attempted to convince him that alcoholism was primarily a psychological addiction he had hostile retorts that argued otherwise. Which led to a lecture that the physical symptoms were psychosomatic. His mind was convincing his body that he would die if he didn’t have a drink, and the mind could not, would not win. Because if it did, that was it for him. Unscrewed from the moorings of reality, set adrift in a freefall of self-destructive bridge burning. He closed his green eyes, gritted his teeth, and let out a scream that lasted almost half a minute. The physical effort required for such an exertion left him winded and somewhat placated. Stumbling from the bedroom to the kitchen, he grabbed a container of grapefruit juice out of the refrigerator and drank about a fourth of it before coming up for air, gasping as he leaned on the fridge door. Jack had recommended grapefruit juice.

“God, I loved vodka. Even the really cheap shit that burns the hell out of your throat. I mean, that was all I could afford after they kicked me out of the band. So when I finally had to go to rehab I met this guy who was hardcore, I mean, he was a drunk for about 30 years. He told me to drink grapefruit juice because it has that same burn. And it works.”

After drinking more juice and deciding he didn’t have the stomach for anything else, Terry picked up the phone and dialed Jack’s number. When his sponsor answered, he could hear wind and voices and the thwack of golf clubs.

“You’re out on the links already?”

“I had a 7am tee time, my friend. What’s up?”

“Which would be preferable: drinking, or smashing my head against my bedroom window to see if I could break it?”

“Well that depends. What would you do if you actually broke the window?”

“Throw myself out of it.”

“I’d have to say drinking then. But since you can’t do that, why don’t you drag your tired ass around the block about ten times and call it jogging?”

“You’re not helping, sponsor.”

“Look, I’ve gotta go thrash around in the sand trap for a while. If you can not drink today I’ll take you to Bar Sinister and we’ll troll for prissy Absinthe-drinking little Goths. I mean, you’re lookin’ kinda Goth lately, right?”

Terry laughed. “That’s your idea of a reward? The girl thinks she’s a Goth too. She even wears a corset.”

Jack was laughing as he hung up on him.


Jack came to pick him up at five o’clock, and they went over to Los Hermanos in Boyle Heights for some carnitas before crawling through traffic to the Unitarian church where the meetings were held. Jack was down to one meeting a week, and although Terry had been told he should attend every other day, he found he could not stomach more than one dose of circle-jerking per week. Terry felt that he and Jack had a greater bond than merely that of sponsor and newbie, as they probably kept each other from drinking on a daily basis, even though their conversations were of the kind that were best held accompanied by social lubricants. Sitting at a stoplight, Jack drummed his hands on the steering wheel of his Porsche while watching people, looking for attractive women. It was a reflex with him, since the demise of his marriage he wasn’t truly interested in cultivating meaningful relations with anyone possessing a vagina.

Over burritos and fake beer they would talk just to talk. Usually the serious existentialist conversations did not occur until the early morning hours. Neither of them had anywhere to go in particular and since Terry had his license revoked after too many DUIs and a refusal to take a Breathalyzer test, no way to get there as well. He knew that living without a car in Los Angeles was death in terms of making a living, but there was nothing to be done for the moment, he had nowhere else to be.

“Have you gotten laid recently?” Jack asked him.

Terry rolled his eyes and swatted at his hair. His would-be girlfriend had cut and colored it for him last week and the style she came up with was driving him crazy. His bangs kept getting in his eyes, but she said it was all the rage. He had her dye it black rather than attempt to bring it in line with the dark brown tone he possessed naturally because he was going gray with a vengeance. It peeved him that Jack was only four years older than he was but showed no real signs of advancing maturity, follicle or otherwise.

“Well sure, the girl and I have sex every so often. Last night she wouldn’t do it, though, she said my hair still smelled bad.”

“You know, last week, when that guy at Meeting said everything was better sober? I wanted to say ‘shut up you ignorant motherfucker.’ Sex is not better sober, I don’t care what anyone says.”

“Yeah, I much prefer blind groping to actual cognizant intercourse. You know, with feeling.”

Jack cackled and took another bite of his meal, loading as much food on his fork as humanly possible. After a long time spent chewing and swallowing, he began a confessional tangent.

“You know the band went to therapy years ago. Talked out our feelings. I used to get so upset at the jealousy the others seemed to display, but if someone had something I wanted, then I’d do anything to get it. So I guess I had a lot of jealousy myself.”

“Did the judge make you and Sandy go to counseling?”

“Yeah. I had to sit there and take it, when she said things like, ‘you don’t give a shit about me, I’m just a little trophy to show, another possession’ and I wanted to fuckin’ kill her. This is the person I loved for ten years and all of a sudden she says that I never did? Dude, I got down on my knees to her and proposed. I didn’t have to marry her.”

“I thought she was gonna be deported for letting her visa expire.”

“Yeah, but the lawyers were working on that.” He put his fork on the plate and ran his hands through his hair, making it even more tangled than it had been. Terry doubted Jack ever combed his hair.

“Want the girl to cut it for you? You look like a damn bark eater.”

“Naw dude, I need to keep it long otherwise it gets all curly and shit. Have you seen my brother’s hair – it’s like a steel wool pad. Same thing would happen to me, and I’d just look stupid like that.”

“What does it matter now?”

Jack looked surprised and annoyed for a moment, then smirked.

“You’re right, it doesn’t matter, but I’m not cutting my hair.”

“Okay, okay. Forgive me for trying to help your pathetic ass.”

“Fuck off, alky.”

They ate the rest of their meal in relative silence, the only accompaniment the jukebox which apparently had at least ten different versions of “La Cucaracha,” and Terry was certain they’d heard every one by the time they paid the bill and set out again.


It was Jack’s turn to share and Terry noted he gave the same speech he always did (I had a great life until I really fucked it up.) and he would smile in the same way, that big shiny grin that made it easy to overlook his tendency to invoke hostility when a situation did not go his way. But today he had something new to add.

“I almost drank today.”

The audience murmured, mostly sympathetic, a few smirking self-righteously. Terry ascertained after a few weeks that Jack wasn’t too popular among the AA populace because his adherence to the program was only of the most superficial kind. He let out a startled breath and smiled encouragingly at his sponsor, who stared at the podium, then looked up at the ceiling.

“Yeah so, I always golf with my lawyer. Golfing is my crutch now -”

A laugh from the assemblage.

“- and my lawyer knows I’m a drunk, but he brought along one of his colleagues who’s got his nose buried so far up his partner’s ass he didn’t hear me when I said I didn’t drink. And the next thing I know there’s a beer in front of me at the table, back in the clubhouse. When I drank I would have sent it back because it was a fucking Budweiser, and as you all know, I’m strictly a Heineken man.”

More laughter. Despite Jack’s obvious terror when it came to public speaking, he was actually pretty good at it.

“But you know, there it was, and all of a sudden it was like the entire world receded and all there was, was this beer. The beer was all. I started tearing up, man, because I wanted to drink it and I realized how pathetic that was. So I got a grip, sent it back, and waited till I got home to cry.”

Silence.

“Yeah, so, you know, let go and let Allah, whatever. All that happy crappy. I didn’t drink today and I’m thankful for that. Hopefully you can say the same of yourself. Thanks.”

Scattered applause as Jack sat down next to Terry, heaving a sigh.

“And you want to take me to a bar?” Terry murmured to him.

“We’re not gonna drink.”

“We’re not?”

“We’re not gonna drink. Today. Tomorrow might be a whole other story, but if we can make it to 2am then it doesn’t matter. Now quit whining already, goddamn it!”

“What makes you think those girls are gonna want a couple of middle-aged drunks anyway?”

“Because we used to be famous, and trust me: there is nothing women like more than fallen angels.”

Terry chuckled. His pseudo-relationship with the girl had already proven that point. She was unfailingly supportive, even during his panic attacks which caused him to vomit uncontrollably. She held back his hair and murmured soothing things while he knelt in front of the toilet. Some part of him insisted he should be grateful for finding someone who believed in the very fact of him, rather than was fascinated by the failed potential or the tarnished glamour. But another part loathed her pity, even as he accepted it in the form of affection and solace.

“You swear we’re not gonna drink, right?”

Jack made some obscure hand gesture. “By the Beast, I swear.”

Terry noticed a couple of newbies staring at Jack and whispering among themselves.

“Uh oh, fanboys at nine o’clock.”

“Fuck it, let’s go.”

In the car on the way to West Hollywood, Jack turned down the stereo again to muse.

“What bothered me more today was one of the caddies told me he’d been to the house back when Sandy first left. I used to have parties every night, it was sweet. He said, ‘so what happened to the house, man?’”

“Ouch,” Terry said, pretending to be enthralled by the street scene so as not to look at his friend. If anything truly pained Jack about his downward turn it was losing his fabulous Spanish-style mansion in the Hollywood Hills to his ex-wife. But it was either that or sign over all his future royalties, which would be the only likely source of income in years to come.

“Yeah, I was ready to break my five-iron on his forehead, the little fucker.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him he could go there and if he remembered the code to the gate, to tell Sandy I said hi. Then I told him to shut the fuck up and let me play golf.”

“Sounds like you were fairly diplomatic.”

“Damn straight. Now I need to get laid, because I’m in a bad mood. And if you blow it for me with that morose attitude you’ve got going on, I’ll have to sodomize you instead. I know it’s what you’ve always wanted, but it would be out of desperation, not because our friendship is so meaningful.”

“I’ll try to control myself, because frankly, when was the last time you took a shower?” He sniffed at Jack for emphasis.

“You know it takes five years to sweat out the accumulated effects of twenty years of drinking, right?”

“That’s the ratio? Christ, no wonder we smell bad.”

“You stink of despair. I, on the other hand, reek of anger and that is far more attractive to the opposite sex. That’s why were going to Bar Sinister, where every girl wants a villain to instill some discipline.”

Terry found himself laughing uncontrollably as they cruised around looking for parking. But around the edges of his mirth lurked that taste, that vaguely metallic taste that was neither insipid nor spoiled, but like his spirit lay somewhere in between.