| fucking off in los angeles |
| This was 30 years ago. I was married at the time. The city was Los Angeles. We lived in Koreatown before it was Koreatown-—when it was Whitetown—-on Berendo st in a 7 room apt. The rent was $175. That is correct. It was a refreshing change from the previous pad, a studio pad on the East side of New York, bordering Spanish Harlem with one window that looked directly into the window of a similar apt across the void of an airshaft. The rent was the same--$175 per. That was New York. We settled in. My wife took a job as a copywriter for an ad agency and I opted for non-employment. I was a writer--or wanted to be. I was a Henry Miller type. Miller spent the first 40 years of his life talking about all the books—masterpieces--he was going to write--and then he actually got down to writing them. I was still in stage one--the talking stage. The writing process involves a period of gestation. Powerful influences-—from the parents, the friends, the wives and girlfriends, etc, also books—other writers-— gather and find their way into the writing part of the brain where they percolate for a time and at some point the process sufficiently completes itself and the writer is ready to begin--to speak in his own voice-— an original voice, distinct from any other. It’s an interval of time that varies from writer to writer. Miller had to wait 40 years. I had to wait 50—another 18 into the future. But there I was, in the 7 room apt, trying to write and meeting with zero results. It was like pulling teeth—-a bad sign. Writing should be fun. That is the idea. This was the opposite of fun. It was tedious, dull, maddening. It was a pain in the ass. Three blocks from the house was a tennis court. I didnt play tennis. But now I had all this time to kill and a diversion was required from the misery I was inflicting upon myself via the writing process and the diversion was tennis. I met some people and started to play. I played tennis. I played and played. I still wrote every day. I was waiting for something to happen and now it was happening--on the tennis court. My wife would come home from work and ask how the writing went and I would say: the writing sucks; but the tennis is coming along. One night we were sitting around and I said: we need to find a good bar. Except for sex my wife practiced moderation in all things and hanging out in bars endlessly pissing away time to no purpose was not her idea of moving forward in life. But I was from Buffalo where this was the off-duty activity preferred above all others. We needed to find a good bar and we found a good bar—-we found The Coach and Horses. I met a guy playing tennis, another wastrel, with too much time on his hands, a TV producer with no shows to produce. One day following the tennis he invited me for a beer and I tagged along behind, over to Sunset and along Sunset into West Hollywood, past La Brea, a nondescript stretch of thrift stores, greek diners. golf discount outlets, guitar repair, etc and here was the Coach, squeezed in between a barber shop and the Louis French drama and film bookstore. The decor was the English pub Hounds and Hares look with the distressed oak beam framing, the Guiness posters, mounted weaponry, etc and the American version of darts-—the pool table. There was a juke box featuring a random mix of rock and rhythm and blues, bit of country and handful of Sinatra classics. Behind the bar was Bob Grant—the owner. Ill get to Bob. It was dark, cool, quiet We had a beer, and another. We had another. I punched up a few Sinatra tunes on the jukebox that recalled fond memories of the old days in Buffalo getting hammered with my guinea friends from the west side. A few regulars began to drift in. These were people I would come to know well. There was Bob the barber and Mario the songwriter and Phil the car thief and Steve the carpet salesman and Alice the postal clerk, etc. You get the idea. Henry Miller wrote a book called Tropic of Cancer, a classic account of a handful of misfit types who all shared a common view of life--never to find a job—-leaving them with vast amounts of time on their hands— to drink, fuck, talk—a lot of talking, and they all bore a staggering resemblance to the people at the Coach and Horses. For a writer it was a goldmine. Time passed. I called my wife, working nearby, to join us. The drinking continued. At some point Bob Grant whipped up some steak sandwiches, quite good. We ate, drank, shot some pool. We continued to drink. I switched from beer to the hard stuff--scotch. Now I don’t drink. But then I did—with a vengeance. Time passed. It was one o’clock—last call. In Los Angeles—the entertainment capital of the world, inhabited by a vast horde of drug lords, porno stars, necrophiliacs, pimps and pederasts, pet shop arsonists, fleeing Nazis, etc, practicing every vice and hideous perversion of the human spirit on an hourly basis--the bars close at one o’clock. In Buffalo the bars close at 4 am—if then. But last call at the Coach was an ambiguous concept. That depended on who was installed at the bar at the time and the unpredictable mood of Bob Grant. If bob was in the mood and everyone looked cool the front door was locked and drinking continued. Various drugs were broken out, including amyl nitrite—poppers. You supplied your own or Bob would provide a hit for 50 cents a copy. Time passed. More drinking, more drugs, more pool. Time passed. Ill make a long story short. We got home at five am. That was the Coach and Horses. We returned a few nights later. It was more of the same, drinking, listening to rock on the juke box, shooting pool, sniffing amyls. There was something about the place--an addictive quality. You started by going one or two nights a week, then it was 3 or 4 nights a week, then it was every night a week including Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here are short profiles of a few regulars I recall vividly to this day, in no way diminished by the passing of 25 years: BOB GRANT. Owner. 45. Bob has owned the coach 10 years. Before that I don’t know. He is divorced with two kids, one doing time for mail fraud, the other 6 or 7. He lives with his brother in a tiny pad in the hills. JACK GRANT. Bro to Bob. The human liver. He was born with a glass in his hand. I have known people who can drink, including a guy named Gene Calogero I worked with in New York I once saw drink 13 martinis, but Jack Grant puts them all to shame. Also: he didn’t get drunk. He put away enough sauce each day to destroy the liver of a water buffalo but he didn’t get drunk. It was amazing. BOB VOLK. Bob is a barber—at the barbershop next to the Coach—very convenient. If Bob spent as much time cutting hair as he does drinking at the Coach he’d be sitting pretty. Of all the people I met in Los Angeles at that period of my life it is Bob Volk who stands out as the quintessential LA type that could exist nowhere else. Los Angeles is unique. It isnt even S. Calif. It’s equal parts sun, the ocean, the vastness of the grid and the freeway sprawl-—and the movies, don’t forget the movies, this is where they are made, a devious element, brainless and subversive, and it all combines to operate on the spirit in a particular way—- to pervert reality. I arrived from New York where there are 2 possibilities: you either have a job or are looking for one. LA is different. You exit the terminal at the airport—LAX—and stand there on the curb with your face beaming up into the sun and 3 thoughts enter your mind: hookers, surfing, drugs. And that was Bob Volk—an existential type who embraced the notion that anything worth doing is worth doing until you drop dead doing it. I was with him one night and he was drunk as I had ever seen another human being—including Gene Calogero. He couldn’t see, talk, hear or move. He wouldn’ t go home. He sat at the bar welded to his seat twitching. I said: Bob: I/ll drive you home Nothing. I said bob: I/ll drive you home Nothing. One more time. He said: No Bob grew up in Venice where he studied scuba diving and dabbled in auto theft. He was a machinist and a fence. One thing led to another--the opening of a whore house in Mailbu. He had hit the big time. He had a pad, a string of hookers and a book full of telephone numbers including—he said—a certain famous singer whose last name was Sinatra. He had the whore house going full blast and was peddling dope on the side and the money was pouring in and going out just as fast, or even faster, because he was that kind of guy—a Bob Volk kind of guy. He got busted for the dope and became a barber. MARIO. Songwriter and small time film producer of the B—or maybe D--variety. A hustler but not a scumbag. A sweet man. He was crazy about my wife and wrote a song for her. ELAINE. Artist—of the conceptual type. Shes had some shows including a group affair downtown at the Temporary Contemporary and she was the star. Not too hard when you consider some of the other participants: the guy who inserted his dick into an artificial tree, the guy who dug a giant hole exposing a corner of the foundation of the building, the guy who installed a piece of vomit sculpture. You get the idea. Elaine took 3 mobile homes, shorties that she wrapped with used mattresses and baling wire and hoisted into the air where they dangled, filling up the atrium, slowly turning. There are some others I will get to. One night I arrived, nine o’clock or therebouts, alone. My wife is home. She was losing her taste for the place. She was a social drinker, not a devoted drinker and the people were not her meat. They were too desperate and lonely. Also: she had a job. That morning I entered the bathroom and there scotch-taped to the mirror was an advertisement clipped from a fashion magazine that endeavored to make a point summed up by the headline, which was: YOU CANT BE TIRED AND BEAUTIFUL. I enter and sit next to Bob Volk. He is with Trudy—his wife. They just got married. Trudy is hot, a piece of ass, and on the same wavelength as Bob—the cuckoo wavelength. They met at the Coach-—where else? I was there. It was the usual, post last call, getting on to 4 am, the air saturated with the fumes of amyl nitrite and here is Trudy, the piece of ass, a little worked up and now Bob proposes the notion of a spin on the back of his bike up Sunset blvd--with Trudy naked. She has to be naked because otherwise what would be the point? And this they proceed to do. We are out in back, in the lot behind the Coach and off come the clothes and onto the bike she jumps and Bob fires it up, the Harley, what else, and they peel off down the alley out into the street—Sunset Blvd at 4AM, but Sunset goes all night, and they take a quick spin around the block and come zooming back, hook a right at the alley and into the lot behind, raking hard, and he kills the beast with a squeal of rubber. It was wild. We went nuts. Naturally, following a stunt like this, they had to get married. Gary wanders in and takes a seat. Gary is a writer—or wants to be. Why do people want to be writers? Its hard, its lonely, there is no money. But there you have it. They want to write—and write they will-—the money-—or talent be damned. Gary has asked me to read some stories and I refused. Writing is written to be read by an agent, or editor, not by an acquaintance who would rather have his fingernails pulled out one at a time. That is my view. But I enjoy talking about it—the writing process itself and also some of the stalwart American writing studs, Faulkner, Hemingway, Mailer, Pynchon, etc. Gary is partial to William Burroughs, who wrote Naked Lunch, a book I have tried to read six times and never got beyond page 4 where I came across the following sentence: I’m a ghost wanting a body—-after the Long Time moving through odorless alleys of space where no life is only the odorless no smell of death. If this was writing I am a professional water buffalo wrestler. Time passed. Over to the pool table. I play with Scott. Scott is a movie star. By that I mean he plays the lead. He was in a film called In Cold Blood, based on the Truman Capote book. There were two killers, the shy killer and the sociable killer. Scott played the shy killer and that was his problem, a common problem, the problem of forever being identified by the part that launched your career—-in Scotts case the shy psychopath. Sometimes he is invited to play an extrovert psychopath. At the coach we play nine ball. You pay your quarter and take your turn. The loser is bumped and the next one in line pays for the game. Pool is my game. I grew up in Buffalo you will recall, where the winters are cold, they are inhuman, and the summers arent much better. The humidity is intolerable. You feel like a sponge under water. The result is a colossal amount of time spent indoors seeking relief from the weather—at a bar— or poolhall. In this way, beginning at age 13, by way of Hippedrome Billiards on Niagara St, I acquired my formidable pool shooting chops. I beat Scott and then I beat Steve and then I beat Elaine. Now Scott gets lucky and beats me. Gary beats Scott and Elaine beats Gary. So it goes. Pool and drinking, pool and drinking, pool and drinking. Its pool, pool, pool. Last call rolls around. Tonight last call means last call. We/re sitting there with our nostrils quivering waiting for Bob to break out the amyl nitrite but its no dice. Everyone splits. I am standing in front with Gary, Gary’s brother George, down from Oakland for a visit, and Lavonne, high school classmate of George, paying her first visit to the Coach. She likes it. We stand out front, watching the traffic roaring up and down Sunset. Decide what to do. Gary wants to take some mescaline. I don’t take drugs. I prefer drink. But—its Los Angeles. You take drugs. Where to take the dope? My pad is out because of my wife. Garys pad is a hole. That leaves Lavonnes in Van Nuys. We make it to Gary’s for the mescaline which we take and split for Lavonnes. At Lavonnes. A nice pad. There is a pool, a garden and inside a big living room with a fireplace. Lavonne breaks out some wine. We sprawl on the floor sucking wine and smoking a joint. Lavonne is divorced. She was married 14 years. The husband—ex-husband--works for Frank Sinatra. That week Time magazine featured a story about Sinatra, a retirement story, in which Sinatra made reference to post-retirement, and his plans for such, perhaps to include teaching. I am from Buffalo, a big Sinatra town, and this is what interests me—Sinatra stories. We kick this one around—Professor Sinatra--exactly the kind of issue you choose to speculate upon when wasted by 5 hours of dope and drinking. Like what would he teach—-How to Buy a Car For a Friend 304? A seminar in punching photographers. Pinky Rings 302. We continue: Paying a Hospital Bill Anonymously. Eating Italian Food. Its endless. We are laffing like hyenas. The laughter subsides. The mescaline kicks in. the room is quiet. Lavonne retreats to the couch with a blanket. George joins her. Gary stretches out on the floor. How to describe a mescaline high. I can do it in 4 words: give me amyl nitrite. Mescaline is for low energy types. I am a high energy type. But so be it. I have taken the mescaline and I must wait for the drug to leisurely work its way through my system-—providing insights. I rise and wander about, investigating the house. I am interested in how people live— the books they read, the music they listen to, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the furniture, the this, that and the other. Its the writer in me. I would have made a good snoop. I inspect the record collection—every Sinatra record known to man along with some other crooner types of that period— Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, etc. There is some jazz—Miles, Coltrane and so forth and some blues, including Otis Spann. I like Otis Spann. I remove the record from the jacket and onto the turntable. Dey got all dat bread Justa send peeples up in space Dey got all dat bread Justa send peeples up in space But f’you an me baby We aint goin anyplace I like this. Wasted by the mescaline the lyrics seem infinitely profound. Well you tol me when I met you that That your life was awful tame Then I took you to a nightclub And the whole band knew your name Not bad. I had a girlfriend like that in New York. I wander the house. Here are some books— Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, Herman Wouk—the best seller types. Well—why not? Writers write to be read—and by the widest possible readership. Any writer who claims otherwise is either lying or highly delusional. Here is a book—Post Office-by Charles Bukowski. Ive heard of this man—from Gary. He lives in LA. I open the book: One night she came home and let me have it. She said, “Hank, I cant stand it”. "Cant stand what, baby?” “This. The situation. Me working and you laying around.” “What about when I worked and you laid around?” “That’s different. You’re a man.” “Oh, I didnt know that. I thought you bitches were always screaming about equal rights.” “I know whats going on with you and the whore in back”. “Mary Lou? She’s straight as an arrow” “She’ll screw anything with a cock.” “Now, come on, baby. Youre just a little upset. I reached for her. She pushed me away. “I’m not sleeping with you tonight—or any other night.” I considered this oneThere were advantages and disadvantagesthe advantages prevailed I said fine. keep your pussy. its not that great Not bad. Funny. Theres a gift. I wander the house—into the kitchen. Lavonne has a nice kitchen—in spite of the mess it presents at this moment. There are dirty dishes, in and outside the sink open cans of food and other unrefrigerated items, bags of garbage bleeding oil, racing form, box of tampax, cassette recorder, curlers, etc, etc. A dirty kitchen bothers me. My mother was a scrupulous housekeeper—and I have a bit of that as well. DH Lawrence liked to scrub floors. I wash the dishes and file in the dishrack. I wash the pots and pans and dry and put away. I empty the garbage and install a fresh liner, return all food to the pantry and fridge. I clean the sink deck. I mop the floor, collect the racing form, tampax, curlers and so forth and organize at one end of the sink deck. That’s that. I feel better I inspect the yard. Here is the pool, also in need of some tidying up--a mask of dust, leaves and other tree debris, scraps of paper, dead bugs and so forth. I sit on the grass, listening to the roar of traffic from the freeway. The house is 50 yards from the freeway. Time passes. A little light beginning to creep in over the hill. Traffic picking up on the freeway—the working stiffs rushing off to the job. One of these days that will be me—- rushing off to the job. But not yet. This is my mescaline insight. Return to the house. Gary, George and Lavonne are conscious. We lay around, sprawled on the floor, speaking of this and that. Have you ever listened to four people, stoned on mescaline, engage each other in conversation? It is the mindless psychotic drivel of an autistic child. Time passes. Now we have a brilliant idea: food. We go to Arts Deli on Ventura Blvd. The waitress is a sharp-looking blonde the age of a young grandmother. My mother was a waitress. She worked a place called Biffs in Oakland, the worlds busiest coffee shop. She worked a split shift, six days a week, and in this way, via tips--nickel tips, quarter tips, five dollar tips--she helped put two grandchildren through college. We order. I have a monte carlo with fries, Lavonne has the triple decker sardine, egg salad and pepper beef combo, George has the swiss steak, Gary has a double chili dog. We eat, we finish eating, we leave, we give the waitress a fat tip. We/re standing outside Arts. It’s a typical valley day. You mix equal parts of sun and smog with no wind or clouds. We take a walk, along Ventura Blvd. There is something about this—-walking in Los Angeles, stoned or otherwise, morning, noon or night-—that seems ill-advised--a pointless activity. We return to Lavonnes. We drink beer for an hour and I decide to split—back to LA. Gary comes with. George stays with Lavonne. Its back to the Coach where Gary has left his car. The Coach is empty. Jack Grant is behind the bar, down at one end drinking beer with an old dude. Gary splits. I have a beer, call my wife to tell her I am alive and will pick her up from work. I have the afternoon to kill, make it over to Book Soup, on the strip, to read for a bit—- tennis magazines. I wander over to fiction. Im losing my taste for fiction. I used to read 4 novels a week. Now I pick up one of these books, highly touted in a Times Book Review piece, and come across a description of a guy standing in a classroom sharpening a pencil while looking out the window at snow falling onto cars in a parking lot—-a riveting moment that requires half a page of cholesterol-riddled prose to describe-—and I close the book. Pick up my wife who asks how I feel-—good. “Youre not tired?” “No” We go for a drink—-to Musso/Franks in Hollywood—-still going strong after 70 years—-the grandaddy of the watering holes for writer/drunks from the studio. If you cant be a writer yourself you can at least find a good writers bar to drink at. It was at Mussos that a famous lunch occurred, between William Faulkner and Sam Goldwyn, there to discuss a new film, assigned for the writing chores to Faulkner, and they are eating and F says: “I have a favor to ask. I want to write this one at the house--not the studio”. Goldwyn thinks this over and says: “Fine”. So they finish lunch and Faulkner gets into his car and drives to Mississippi. Mussos is famous for its martinis. Will Rogers said he never met a man he didn’t like. I never drank a martini I didn’t like. In Buffalo they are called White Bullets. I have one, then another. I have another. We eat. A little wine with dinner. We finish eating, decide what to do. I am not tired. It’ s the booze. It masks the fatigue—and other things as well—-common sense. On to Dontes, a jazz club in North Hollywood. We visit this place on a regular basis. There is no cover, cheap drinks and I know a musician, Don Menza, playing tonight. I know Don from Buffalo. We went to high school. What Don was doing at Tech high-- vocational type institution where you studied things like foundry, sheet metal fabrication, mechanical drawing and so forth—is a good question. Don was a musician, beginning at age 5, on piano and tenor sax. At 8 he was writing charts. He was on the road at 15. Tonight he has Blue Mitchell along, trumpet player and ex-member of the Jazz Messengers, the Art Blakey band. They work over a few tunes, including Equinox, the Coltrane piece, that always reminds me of New York, drinking and chasing women, including my wife, a virgin, and when we finished, 4 minutes later, she said: is that it? So it goes, a few more tunes and Menza calls out a tune, Red Clay, the Freddie Hubbard tune, that I sometimes request. The set ends, the musicians leave the stage, into the kitchen and back out the kitchen into the yard for some fresh air, check out the stars and pass around the dope. I was there one night with Menza. The coke was being passed around like party dip. Later we wound up at the drummers girlfriends pad listening to Clifford Brown records. The second set begins, a few more tunes, including—Donna Lee—-Charlie Parker piece—-written for a woman, heiress to a wholesale food chain, also an amateur hooker who was a regular at Birdland in those days. Bird banged her a few times and she would lay bread on him to get high, etc, etc. More music, more drinking, and I am starting to fade. Also—my wifes job. We split, back over the hill into town. I have a habit, when drinking, of drving fast. But not with this car, a 65 flesh colored Datsun with diseased pistons that can do 50 mph. I smash the accelerator to the floor. The car slowly begins to pick up speed. We’re doing 50 and that’s it. “MOTHERFUCKING FOUR CYLINDER NO COMPRESSION SIX VOLT JAP MOTHERFUCKER!” We exit the freeway onto Vermont. There is a small hill between Beverly and Third. Going down it I get the car up to 60. “Jack! Please!” We make it to the apt. Im feeling better due to the drive. There is a bottle of bourbon on the table. I take a pop. My wife is looking at me. Now what? I kiss my wife. I take out my dick. She sucks my dick. We do it on the floor. She sucks my dick, I eat her pussy, we fuck, I pass out. |
| The Coach and Horses Sunset Blvd Los Angeles |