Monthly Archives: July 2013

Plumbing

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So the boss comes by my desk and says you better run upstairs to the 19th floor and see what the hell is going on up there. It sounds like the ceiling over the men’s room is gonna explode. I ducked into the 18th floor john and sure enough there was an ungodly racket coming from above. Loud, vibrating, scary and potentially disgusting. I’d once had a very traumatic moment in the building when I was trapped by a volcanic toilet and came close to dying a horrible death, or at least having to buy new shoes. It just began welling up from one of the empty stalls, gurgling and splashing and trapped me in a corner behind the sink.It was a very long few seconds there, the foul tide rising and rising till I could back up no further and my mind was filled with really nasty scenarios. St. Crispin had mercy on me and interceded, the tide retreated, and I washed my hands with a violent intensity that made no sense at all. They were clean. I stood in the men’s room, remembering all this and staring at my shoes on the shiny floor. It began rumbling again upstairs. OK, let’s roll.

I took the elevator up to the 19th floor to investigate. It was a tonier floor than our humble 18th floor, with better, newer carpeting and not a hint of napwear. The furniture in the lobby looked new. The plants were so perfect they looked artificial. The elevator closed and slid away behind me and all was silence. Not a voice, not a rumble. Found the men’s room. All was peaceful inside. Flushed a toilet…the water splashed, rushed away, and all was silence. As I stepped back out into the hall suddenly there it was, an enormous roar, seismic even, you could feel the floor rumble. It filled up all that silence like the end of the world. Then it stopped, suddenly. Nothing. Since the world was still here, it had to be the plumbing. I stood in the hallway wondering when it began again, huge and loud and menacing. I’d never heard anything like it. Then the door of the ladies room opened, and I could hear it, the flush from hell. Pipes vibrated and roared, and out walked a very pretty blonde. Just lovely. She lowered her eyes as she passed, the door swung closed behind her. The noise abated.

Oh.

Transformation

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(2011)

Today the wife and I were running about town doing errands and decided to stop for lunch at some Mexican place in Echo Park we’d never been to. It’s off Sunset, a bit hidden, and you descend into the place from a rear entrance. Not a window in the joint, it was probably a speakeasy in the twenties. Very cool little spot. The room was intimate, the bar ample, the service great, the food delicious and it just oozed an Echo Park hipness, not yet discovered by the outsiders.  We’d picked a booth at the back with a view of the bar, and we’re being waited on hand and foot….it was obvious the elite dropped in regularly, and they treated every customer as a member, just in case. Basically a fun scene.

My phone rang.  It was a dude who wants me to write some elaborate liner notes. He pitched me, we went back and forth on what ‘s needed, and when, and how much money he was offering. The food came, I nodded at the waiter and he brought another Tecate, I mouthed “con limon” and he bought a beautiful dish of freshly sliced lemons. He silently refilled my water glass as I chattered loudly into the phone, I nodded thanks while laughing into the phone, he poured my beer and dropped in two slices of lemon as I gestured broadly at the guy I was talking on the phone to, who could not see me, and went back and forth over the money.  The waiter—his name was Miguel—slipped away silently. My food sizzled on the platter as the guy on the phone kissed my ass. I nodded. Finally I said OK, the food’s here and getting cold, and I could hear him grow nervous on the phone that I might bail because the temperature of my huevos had dropped a degree or two, so I said I’m aboard on the project, he said excellent, so we can work out the details later? I said sure, and he said ciao. I didn’t say ciao back, but said cool, which is basically jazz-speak for ciao. I put down my cell on the table like it might ring  again any second and took a sip of my ice cold beer and realized, damn, I was just one of those assholes who talks loudly on a cellphone in a Hollywood restaurant, making a deal. It doesn’t get more show biz than that.

Scary. Since writing for the L.A. Weekly I had changed. Little by little, but still, five years before that wasn’t me. Not even a little bit.

It bugged me enough to write it all down.

[I quit the Weekly a month later.]

Elevator

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Did I ever tell you about the time a lady took off her jeans, pulled on some panty hose and a skirt while I was with her in the elevator? Gorgeous blonde she was, too. Executive secretary.  She said pardon me as she pulled off her jeans. I said no problem as she slipped on the panty hose. She tugged and straightened and ran her hands up from toes to up there. I looked away. There were pumps in her purse. We got to her floor. She smiled and was gone.

That was so long ago, but I still think about it sometimes. Not often, maybe once or twice a year. But I’ll think about that elevator ride and I’ll smile, knowing no one really believes that story but me.