Luellen Smiley
The throw of the dice this week lands on livingness of Los Angeles.
Standing on the curb of SWA Ticket counter in Los Angeles, waiting for John to pick me up. The caustic culture shock from Santa Fe is still feeling like I’m the dart board, and they are all throwing darts at me.
“Can’t stand there, get up on the curb.” I thought the Police Officer was joking, but he looked like he was ready to aim and shoot.
John scoops me up before we get one-sided by much bigger and more important limousines.
“You want to have lunch first?”
“I’m starved, How about that Deli, Jerry’s, it’s close by isn’t it?”
“Right down the street.”
I knew John wouldn’t argue. He’s the most agreeable man I’ve met. John is a screenwriter; a dinosaur from the forties, when writers loved their subjects, and courted them while they inhaled all the tidbits that would fit into the story. I came to John by way of a childhood family member, not the biological family but the other one that Dad belonged to. I still don’t know what to call it. It’s not the Mafia, and organized crime is a government term, and the thing is a Hollywood stunt, and what the guys on the inside call it, is family.
John was writing a script for JF and got half way into the script and JF backed out. It was about a famous Mafioso, his Uncle Johnny. I trusted John when he said he liked my story enough to start a script and asked me to write it with him. That’s why he was picking me up in LA, so we could meet.
We sat in a vinyl booth and our waiter, a part-time performer in a gay club, lips still red from last night’s make-up, saunters up, “ You know what you want sweetheart?”
“Tuna Melt and fries.”
“Perfect, and what about you?”
“I’ll have the Cobb salad.”
I was home, I could feel it in the thickly tempered air, and in the light, the rush of traffic penetrating through the windows, and the other customers, talking and eating without time to do either one, because the phone rings, or someone walks in, or there is a news flash on the television.
We drove to the hotel, and I unpacked, and then John and I talked in the alcove, while Yogi’s tiptoed past us, and bowed or prayed silently. I was home; across the street was Santa Monica Hospital where my Aunt worked for years on the switchboard, and on the other corner, the Funeral parlor where mother lay before the funeral. I had already booked the three nights so I opened the refrigerator and a bottle of wine. Then I called my therapist, Ann. I hadn’t spoken to her since 1999. The phone was disconnected.
I remembered Ann, her voice, and watery blue eyes, the way she tilted her head when I cried, and the impending but softly stroked, “I’m afraid our time is up”, and how she led me back to my childhood and into the vacuums I had plugged up. Ann appeared after a desperate attempt to find help, she was practicing at the Emergency Physiological guidance center at UCLA.
Every week for five years I went to Ann, and we unwrapped all the knots I’d been tightening for years. When I left, I was not all healed and ready to beat the world, but I wasn’t tied so tightly. Just after leaving her, is when I decided to write my way home.
In the morning, I walked along Wilshire Boulevard and almost drown in memories, of high school, and later when I was a young adult, and then later when I was an adult working in commercial real estate. I walked knowing where I was going without even looking at signs. John and I met up later and strolled along Ocean Avenue, and talked about writing a script. It was more than irony that fourteen years ago, this is where I broke down, and knew I needed help. At the corner of Barrington and Wilshire is where I made the call to UCLA admitting I needed help right that minute. I wasn’t suicidal, and I didn’t want to get there, but the aroma was drifting dangerously close. I was at a public phone booth, and there was a man next to me shouting into the receiver, “ I have the script, it’s finished.” Something along that line, and I’m shouting, “I think I should be committed.”
So when the next morning the window filled with those old memories, me and Lizzie cruising down Wilshire singing ‘Hey Jude’ on the way to the beach, the face of home was right there, and I loved everyone, even the unconscious people made me chuckle.
That afternoon I met my distant cousin Paula,for the first time. We exchanged a familiarity, and instant trust and awareness. She is related to my father’s side of the family.
“Did you know about my father?”
“My mother told me in clipped unfinished anecdotes; we have a gangster in the family.”
I chuckled, because now I can, it doesn’t make me bow my head in shame. Outside on the Venice Boardwalk, a passing stranger noticed John’s gold guitar medallion around his neck.
“Are you a musician?”
“Well, yes, I am. Not famous, but I sing and record.”
She told us she was one too, and asked for his card, and seeing her embellished in joy at being noticed, I could have applauded right then. More was to come that night. John, Rudy and I were on our way to see Master Jam, one of the original Jammers, of my dance troupe. I hadn’t seen Vince in fourteen years. To be continued..
