patience

The last two weeks have been strange and surreal.

Last Saturday night my band played the show at The Whisky. It was a fine show, but weird things kept happening: people showed up late (some people just barely missed the show, others were more than 2 hours late!), the sound guy cut us off one song too soon, and my friend Ben inexplicably disappeared for 45 minutes.

It was a full moon weekend, and Mercury was still in retrograde.

I ended up at a house in Hollywood at 5am, fiending for a cigarette and striking out on my own to buy a pack, only to have my path blocked by barricades for the L.A. Marathon. Then, when I got to a gas station to purchase my wares, the car died for about 30 minutes.

A rescue team was dispatched, but they didn't see my car and passed me by. Finally, I got it all together and arrived back at the house, covered in grease, by 6am.

For the rest of the week I dealt with my car's stalling problem. But that's just what happened to me-- I can't even begin to tell you what happened to some of my friends.


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My friend Ben suffered some sort of a shaking fit due to being underfed, dehydrated, and undergoing the DTs (he is a troubling alcoholic). The fit occurred as he was walking in Burbank in broad daylight. Luckily, he was right next to a hospital when it happened. He tried to call me but I had already left my apartment to meet him at his place, and I have no cel phone. He is OK now but he felt like he was going to die.

Buddha, the drummer in my band, encountered a road rage incident in Burbank last Tuesday. What started off as a simple case of being cut off in the right lane escalated into a John Woo-esque orgy of vehicular violence, climaxing with Buddha T-boning the car full of drunken Hispanics who were itching for a brawl. Buddha emerged without a scratch.

What's weird is that my buddies Wolf Man and Down Low witnessed a carload of Hispanic guys throwing beer bottles at pedestrians in Hollywood on the night of our Whisky show. This bears noting because the car was maroon-colored, the same as the car that attacked Buddha... and in both cases beer bottles were thrown freely.

Speaking of Down Low, his car was shot at the other night while leaving his apartment. Low was on his way over to me when suddenly he called and said he heard shots being fired. I didn't believe him at first, but when I saw the two bullet holes in his bumper (and the next morning found the shell casings in the street) I realized that he was not bullshitting me. We doubt it was anyone we knew-- most likely some impatient idiot with a gun and a lot of nerve. I deduced that the gunman merely wanted to put a scare into Low, who was blocking an intersection with his car when the event occurred. From the entry points of the bullets, it seems as if the gunman was aiming for the tires, not intending to kill or maim.

Like I said, the last two weeks were strange and surreal, almost as if they'd been dreamed or staged for a film. But it got even weirder.


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Monique called me late last week, at an ungodly hour of the night. Since she is 3,000 miles away, it must have been even later for her.

She got pulled over while driving on her restricted license. She was 8 days away from taking care of her license dilemma when the trooper pulled her over. She got lucky and didn't receive a ticket for the reckless left-turn-at-a-stop-sign-without-a-signal that she made in front of the officer.

We talked for over four hours. Apparently, I had called her on Valentine's Day and caused a row with her boyfriend at the time. He didn't like the fact that she was getting a call from a guy on Valentine's Day, even though he was all the way on the other side of the country.

In a way I kind of caused her and that guy to have their last falling out, which made me smile. But without her here next to me it's all in vain, isn't it?

I told her about my drug binges. This eased the tension between us, because she has never been able to let go of her suspicion that I thought less of her for her 6 month crystal meth phase shortly before she went back home to Virginia. By telling her about my year-long foray into cocaine, she realized that I wasn't the judgmental sonofabitch that she thought I was-- in fact, she began to see that it was her own shame at what she did that prevented her from accepting my offers to help her and understand her. I never once looked down on her for her momentary weakness, because I can comprehend those weaknesses... However, it is one thing to claim I understand and another thing to actually have traveled that same path.

I realized during the phone call that with all the money I've spent on coke in the past year, I could've gone to visit her twice already. So I've made up my mind to scrimp and save, and I'll be flying out to see her by the summer. If she comes out here instead, then all that money will go towards showing her a good time.

It's nice to have a goal in mind.


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Monique wasn't the only girl who called me up out of the blue. I've been getting lots of calls and visits from girls I had an interest in, but lately I haven't been able to give them the attention they deserve. Maybe it's because they all waited so long before getting back to me and now the initial thrill is gone.

I'm not writing them off. They are all beautiful and sensual girls. But they weren't there for me when I really needed them, so now that I have found my emotional center and equilibrium, they are just going to have to be patient.

After all, I have had to be patient. It's the most difficult lesson I've ever had to learn, but I think I am making progress. I still lose it when things go wrong (such as right now-- the Internet has not allowed me to post this exactly the way I wrote it at first) but it's kind of like my car this past week: Sometimes it stalls, and all I can do is wait half an hour to an hour before I can start the engine again. Then, when it starts up I get the most mileage out of it that I can.

Thus, my love life is akin to a used car.

That's how it was with Monique at first. We met, didn't date because she was taken, then she hit rock bottom and left for Virginia, and when she unexpectedly returned there was a lot of catching up to do. But it took over two years before it came to it.

Still, I have faith that one day I will get it right. This is only because I have been so close in the past, and also because new opportunities always arise in the wake of old ones.

We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?