Spaceship Elementary

(Governor Tom's Note: This is a little homage to the imagination I wrote during my junior year of college.)

________________

Nine-year-old Fred Firestead sat at his desk, a string of saliva hanging from his agape mouth. He stared blankly at the gray-haired Miss Blankenhagen as she snowed her classroom under clouds of chalk dust. She would occasionally stop writing on the board and turn to the class, gazing out over them as if she were an undead demon goddess about to recite a damnation, her large circular glasses magnifying her eyes by five times. Fred wiped the saliva from his chin and watched in amusement as Miss Blankenhagen turned back to the board and started writing again, her quick arm movements quaking the fat on her hips. He turned to the window and frowned at the iron-gray beast of winter looming outside, sharpening the air with its chill while he pleaded silently for sunlight. Soon realizing the sun wasn’t going to appear any time soon, Fred turned back to the classroom. Miss Blankenhagen was still droning.

He sighed and looked down at his desk. He adjusted his notebook so it was directly in front of him, the keyboard of black and red buttons glistening neatly on top of it. His fingers danced rapidly as he punched in the code to initiate the launch sequence. A woman’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. "Launch sequence initiated. Countdown at your command."

"Roger that," Fred said, staring at the number ten displayed in red on his console. "Begin countdown." The ten went backwards towards one in synch with the voice.

"...three, two, one...launch!" the woman said.

The building rumbled as the thrusters kicked in. Fred turned to the window and saw the city growing smaller. The clouds flew past the panes before the ship came clear of them into the blue. The blue faded slowly to a navy before becoming completely black as the ship exited the Earth’s atmosphere. Fred punched the accelerator, the distant white stars zooming by. After passing through three galaxies, he decreased the speed until the ship was almost still. "Computer," he said. "Activate autopilot. Just let it coast for a while."

"Negative!" the voice said. Fred’s console started to beep. "Ship has been boarded by a foreign party."

"What!" he said, sitting up. "Can you identify the foreign party?"

There was silence for a moment. Then the computer said, "The forms appear to be chalkalkaloids and erasines."

No sooner had the voice said this than a trio of chalkalkaloids stormed into the room, demolishing the door in their path. They were each seven feet tall, milky white and widely cylindrical in shape, their lanky limbs stemming from their bodies like serpentine tumors. As they drew closer, growling incoherent threats, Fred could make out the network of ice-blue veins pulsating beneath their skin. Behind them he could see a trio of erasines enter the room, their dark forms dragging along the floor. Even though the erasines didn’t have mouths, he could hear them whimpering.

Just as Fred jumped out of his seat, pencil in hand, one of the chalkalkaloids grabbed him by the neck. The cold leathery three-fingered claw lifted him high into the air. His head starting hammering as the oxygen was cut off. His strength lessening by the second and the world around him starting to blur, Fred dropped the pencil and grabbed hold of the arm. He yanked it as hard as he cold, disconnecting it from the socket. After landing on the ground, he threw the arm away and retrieved his pencil, the wounded chalkalkaloid roaring in pain as the ice-blue blood gushed from its torn socket. The two remaining chalkalkaloids were about to avenge their wounded comrade when Fred pointed his pencil at them. "Think again, chalk-suckers," he said before firing a graphite ray into one of them. The ray flew directly into the chalkalkaloid’s face, blasting it into countless shreds. He fired a second ray into the other one with the same results.

The three erasines began whimpering with ear-ringing shrieks, almost forcing Fred to shield his ears. These creatures had no limbs. They were short stumpy rectangular black blocks sliding along the floor, leaving a trail of thick lumpy slime behind them. Their shrieks had already started to crack the windows when Fred pointed his pencil at them. "Come and get it, you cry babies!" He fired three quick shots, all three graphite rays finding their respective targets, but he had to shield himself from the wet black flesh raining on him.

"Puny human!" came a snarl from outside the door. The speaker soon appeared, its twelve-foot figure clogging the doorway. Fred knew who this was.

"Blankenhagen!" he said, his teeth clenched in disgust. Blankenhagen’s eyes were enormous glassy orbs protruding from a small cubical head topped by a tangled arrangement of gray hair. When it spoke, he could see the rows of razor-sharp teeth in its mouth. "I should have known you were behind this."

"It’s time to die, Firestead," it said in its guttural voice.

"Think again--"

Fred couldn’t finish his repartee before Blankenhagen strode across the room and grabbed him by the arms. Fred struggled to free himself, but Blankenhagen’s grip was at least ten times stronger than the chalkalkaloid’s had been. "Can you fly?" Blankenhagen said as it carried Fred to the window. "I’ve always wanted to see someone fly through space." Just as it was about to throw the boy out, Fred managed to free one of his arms. He grabbed one of Blankenhagen’s eyes and ripped it from its socket. Blankenhagen let him go as it reeled in pain. Fred quickly shoved it through the window. He laughed hysterically as Blankenhagen drifted helplessly into space.

He turned from the window to see Miss Blankenhagen putting her chalk down. "All right, class," she said. "It’s time for lunch." Fred eagerly snatched his lunch box from the floor and joined the rest of the class as they flocked to the cafeteria.

Jellwagger - Episode 8: Kit Figures

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Reflecting on Ten Years

Chapter One: Happy Decennial!
Sunday, August 16, 1998.

That was the date, ten years ago this week, when I arrived in Los Angeles to start my new life.

Ostensibly I came to pursue my masters in creative writing at the University of Southern California. I’m not sure how, but I knew my stay here would be permanent. Well, I might know how I knew. In addition to writing novels, I also had—and still have—designs on being a screenwriter. And while novelists can pretty much be successful wherever they live, for screenwriters it’s sort of an unwritten rule that you need to live in the City of (Fallen) Angels. In other words, if you want to be on Broadway, you can’t live in Utah, know what I mean? The movie business—and therefore the business of writing them—is here.

In honor of the decennial anniversary (that’s the first time I’ve ever used the word “decennial” in a sentence!), I thought I’d write what I suppose amounts to a rambling memoir about the past ten years. I’m not just talking a simple journal documenting my experiences. That would bore you to tears. Like most adults, I spend the majority of my time parked in a cubicle getting zapped by fluorescent lights. Who the hell wants to read about that? Besides, Scott Adams has long since cornered the absurdity of that whole scene with Dilbert. Nah, I guess what I want to do is take this opportunity to reflect not just on what’s been going on with me in the outside world, but what’s been going on with me inwardly. In other words, who exactly is the 32-year-old Tom? And how is he different from version 22.0?

Before moving out here, I’d only been to L.A. once. Just five months earlier, during spring break of my final semester at Temple University, I flew out here to scope out both the USC and UC Irvine campuses. At this point I’d already been accepted to USC but hadn’t yet heard back from Irvine. The latter has a much smaller creative writing program and therefore accepts far fewer students than SC, which has the third largest graduate writing program in the country (Irvine ended up rejecting me). I stayed at the house of a pen pal I’d met through the Clive Barker fan club. She lived in Sylmar, which could’ve been Timbuktu for all I knew. I was so dazed by the experience of being out here. That’s why it barely counted as having been a visit to Los Angeles. Only two months shy of graduating from college and therefore on the cusp of becoming an adult whether I liked that idea or not, I didn’t come within a light year of appreciating anything L.A. had to offer at that time. Simply put, I came out, my pen pal chauffeured me to SC and Irvine, and whenever I caught a moment of downtime, I had a Roman history midterm to study for. Now that I know this area like the back of my hand, I’m very grateful to Laryssa for having driven me all over the damned place. Dear heart. And she was so tactful about it. Not once did she ever betray to me that she was piling on so many more miles to her odometer than she was accustomed to.

Of my 22 years, I’d spent a dozen of them in South Jersey. The other decade was split between the D.C. suburb of Kensington, Maryland, and the Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. Born in Washington, D.C., for all intents and purposes I’m a Jersey native. Bigger picture wise, I’d spent those 22 years on the east coast. That was the only part of the country I knew. And now I was going out to the opposite side of the country, what the more politically conservative members of my family deride as the Left Coast. That didn’t bug me too much. I was—and still am—fairly apolitical.


Chapter Two: Do You Guys Carry Chocolate Lawyers?
In May of 1997, the week after I finished my junior year at Temple, I started working at this huge 200-plus-attorney law firm at 21st and Market in downtown Philly. I continued working there through my senior year and into the following summer. My job there was data entry for the marketing department, entering endless streams of contact information for clients and prospects. If this job sounds brain-numbingly dull, that’s because it was. There I’d sit at a workstation next to all these older gals who typed like the wind for their lawyer bosses. And we had no Internet access! You have to remember that the ol’ Internet was only just then becoming mainstream. Sure, Stradley Ronon had an internal e-mail program through which I received almost all of my decrees, but that was about it. At home in Jersey, I had a dial-up connection with a 14.4 external modem which came with a free copy of AOL 2.0. In hindsight, I have no idea how I survived the law firm gig. Seriously. No music, no Internet. Just me and this proprietary data entry software. I came in decked out in a shirt and tie (unfathomable at Yahoo!) and sat there in total silence. Well, not total. Don’t forget all that machine-gun typing going on around me. If you’ve kept up at all with my Jellwagger serial, then no doubt it’s blindingly obvious that this job served as quite the inspiration.

In spite of my bitching, the data entry gig was better suited to my introverted nature, and it was diametrically opposed to the job I’d had for my first three years at Temple. Just a month into my freshman year I started a nighttime gig at the Boscov’s department store in the Moorestown Mall, ‘bout ten or so miles down the road from our house in South Jersey. Based in Reading, PA, Boscov’s is a chain of thirty or so department stores throughout the Delaware Valley. Coincidentally they’ve been a high-spending advertiser for years at Yahoo!. Again, in hindsight, I haven’t a clue how I survived there. This job required constant interaction with customers. It required me to be on my feet at all times no matter what. The damned place could be a ghost ship for all anyone cared, which it sometimes was during those summer nights, and it didn’t matter. Don’t let those black hemispheres protruding from the ceiling like shiny cysts catch you slacking on the job. And also, don’t let them catch you sneaking a piece of chocolate or two back in the stockroom. Yes, I worked in the candy department. And this came after I’d spent a good deal of my high school years shedding upwards of fifty pounds. Now here I was, newly fit and trim….working in a department fully stocked with every kind of candy and chocolate humankind has invented during the past four thousand years. Most of the time I’d be fine. But occasionally I’d sneak the odd sample. Or not sneak it, as the case may be. I know the security cameras saw me, but I suppose I didn’t do it enough to warrant any reprimand.

Even winning Employee of the Month didn’t change the fact that constant customer interaction never found favor with me. Of even less favor was the lousy pay. When I started at Boscov’s, I took in $5.15. By the time I left 31 months and three raises later, I was making….(wait for it)….$5.75. At Stradley Ronon I started at $7 an hour and stayed there. Not having to interact with anyone besides the head of marketing (my boss) was just gravy. I worked there from May of ’97 until July 31, 1998. July 31 was conveniently a Friday that year.

I suppose I went into the history of my part-time employment for a few reasons. One, they both helped me, if not break, then at least crack the shell of what could be an almost paralyzing shyness. I grew up the youngest of seven half- and stepsiblings and was for the most part always reminded that I was the youngest. If you get my drift. By the time I got to high school, I would just assume spend lunch in the library than in the cafeteria. Besides, with whom would I sit in the cafeteria? By senior year I did at least sort of semi-belong to a small clique, enough so that I could sit over at those huge round tables in the carpeted area with the rest of the seniors. So there was that. Still, for most of high school I was a shy, eye contact-avoiding, overweight, acne-riddled video gaming shut-in. I’m happy to say that by the time I finished Temple, I was trim, mostly acne free, and not quite as shy.

These thankless jobs also built up the ol’ stamina. Remember that I was a full-time college student, taking 16- and 17-credit semesters. When my classes were done for the day, I’d have a brief space in which to breathe before it was off to work. I didn’t work every night, but I did try to clock in at least 20 or so hours a week. During my freshman year at Temple, I honestly didn’t know if I’d be able to pull it off. My second semester was particularly grueling. Eventually, though, the schedule of getting up at 6 a.m. and pretty much going full throttle until midnight or so became second nature.

And finally, maintaining a schedule like this for four solid years did wonders for my time management, and therefore project management, skills. I tell ya, there’s nothin’ like having to prepare for five finals given in the same three or so days, while polishing up a few term papers, while holding down a job. And I did it well, too, if I may say so myself. I finished Temple with a 3.9 GPA. Can anyone say summa cum laude?

But it didn’t make me perfect (darn it!). One unfortunate side-effect was that I could be scatterbrained, which of course precipitates forgetfulness. Toward the end of my freshman year, and consistent with my mission to stop being so shy, I inquired into joining Temple’s student-run film and video club. I met with the guy running it and we talked and all that. He was sort of, well, different. He wore his hair greasy and long, dressed like a schlub, spoke in a sort of deadpan voice and, while “interviewing” me, forked spaghetti out of this rather gargantuan Styrofoam container. Nonetheless, he was a nice guy. We got along fine. He invited me to show up at the next meeting, which was held, of all times, during finals week. As I said above, the spring ’95 semester forced a harsh schedule on me. I literally did have five finals to gear up for in short succession. The end result? While I got straight As for the semester, I completely forgot about the Temple Film and Video Association. I’m not sure how much time passed. I think I was well into summer vacation before I was like: “Holy shit. I never did show up for that one meeting, did I?” To this day I feel a pang of guilt for standing up that guy.

Chapter Three: The Little Sentra That Could
And now we arrive at the cross-country drive. After finishing up at Stradley Ronon on Friday, July 31, I spent a good bit of the weekend packing. I also spent a good bit of it at the movies, going to the two theaters that were my second homes. I suppose, in my own way, I was saying good-bye to them. Anyway, before I get too sappy, I packed as much as possible into that little black Nissan Sentra, which got me through four years of commuting to Temple. Suffice it to say that I had to leave a good bit of stuff behind. I finally took off on Tuesday, August 4. It was a nice day. I vividly remember my father walking me out to the Sentra, shaking my hand, and saying, “The end of an epoch.”

First stop? Chapel Hill, North Carolina to pick up Mom. While I wasn’t worried about making the drive alone, my father thought it prudent that someone go with me. As he was in the middle of teaching summer school, my mom kindly volunteered. So I went down there and stayed at her place for a couple days. She wanted to work one more day, that Wednesday, and then we’d set out on Thursday. While she was at work, I unpacked my Nintendo 64 and played GoldenEye. Yes, maybe I should admit here that I was, and still very much am, a bit of a Bond nut. One of the duffels I packed for the journey was bulging with James Bond films on VHS, from Doctor No all the way to Tomorrow Never Dies, the newest one at that time. Did I mention I was a bit of a fan? So anyway…

Mom and I hit the proverbial road on Thursday, August 6. Next stop? The Smokies! The previous summer, we spent a few days in Asheville, three or so hours west of Chapel Hill. On our last day, we drove an hour further west into the North Carolina mountains and did a wee bit of hiking in Great Smokey Mountain National Park, a huge zillion-acre park straddling the North Carolina-Tennessee border. It was such a pleasant day that we promised ourselves we’d go back. And now we were. The last hour of that four-or-so-hour drive involved a lot of tough inclines for my poor wittle Sentra, but we made it. We drove well into the park until we got to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

We stayed at the Days Inn in Gatlinburg from Thursday to Sunday. On our first day there, we were pretty wiped out from the drive to do any hiking. We did make time for that skylift, though. I know it’s such a cheesy, touristy thing, but how could we resist? It carried us up the mountainside, affording us postcard views of the town. As we neared the top, I heard this high-pitched male clownish voice that told me to look at the camera and smile. Just as I noticed the camera slightly above and ahead of us, it was too late. My mom saw it soon enough and raised her hand in greeting. To this day I still have that photo included in the rogue’s gallery next to my couch.

Another thing I remember from that first night was how ravenous I was. Walking along Gatlinburg’s main strip, we hopped into a steak house and promptly made our mark there.

I don’t remember too much about the trails we hiked throughout the weekend. With one big exception. During the previous summer’s jaunt, I bought a poster from the souvenir shop that showed a small waterfall curtaining a wall of rocks. On the back of the poster it explains that you can find this waterfall at the end of such-and-such trail. So now during this trip, Mom and I made it a point to find this trail and hike it so we could see the blasted waterfall in person. I’d been looking at it in my bedroom in Jersey for a year at that point. Obviously I was all primed to see it. While I enjoyed getting to see it close up, I remember feeling a small pang of disappointment. It didn’t look nearly as gorgeous (Photoshopped?) as it did on that poster. By the way, this poster survived the cross-country trip and still adorns my bedroom door in Van Nuys.

The only other image that really sits with me to this day is on the morning we left: Sunday, August 9. As she did the other mornings, my mom arose before me and went to the hotel dining room to collect a few things from the continental breakfast to bring back to the room. On this morning for me, that meant Frosted Flakes. I remember quite vividly sitting out on the balcony of our room, which was fairly high up and offered a bucolic view of the rear courtyard, monopolized by those ubiquitous Carolina pines. I could see other hotel guests well below and on the other side of the courtyard. And I also remember having that U.S. map in my hands. After I polished off the cereal, I looked at that map for a good half-hour or so, marveling over the fact that Mom and I were about to cover that whole width. How far would we get that day?

We left later that morning and made it to Clarksville, Arkansas by 6 p.m. The Hampton Inn we stayed in was only a mile or so down the road from a movie theater. My mom’s no less a movie nut than I am (where do you think I get it from?), so after dinner, we drove on down and caught a show of Saving Private Ryan. I’d already seen it that June when it came out, but my mom hadn’t gotten around to it. It’s such a downer that when it was over, I got the feeling she wished she still hadn’t gotten around to it.

On Monday we drove from Clarksville to Amarillo, Texas. It rained so hard as soon as we got there that I’m sure Heaven was parched afterward. The sun came back out just in time to set when my mom and I grabbed a bite at the Olive Garden.

From here on out our drives only lasted half a day. We were in no hurry to finish this trip. So on Tuesday (August 11, my birthday) we drove as far as Albuquerque, only five hours or so. I’d actually been here once before, back in August of 1992, when I turned 16. My dad took me to New Mexico for a Billy the Kid research adventure. I had a real Billy the Kid fixation back then thanks mainly to the Young Guns movies. I had designs on writing a play about the Kid that would be more historically accurate. The only thing I remember from this second visit was that my mom and I stopped into a mall to stay cool and ended up seeing Snake Eyes, Nicolas Cage’s new and not-so-great flick. Happy Birthday to me!

The next day’s five-hour jaunt took us to Flagstaff, Arizona. From here we planned to take a detour to the Grand Canyon to see what that whole fuss was about. But that was tomorrow. For today, we took our time settling in and then tried to catch an early evening show of Lethal Weapon 4. As with Saving Private Ryan, I’d seen this already, but I didn’t mind another go-around so Mom could see it. When we got to the theater, we were an hour early. That was my fault. I thought Arizona was on Mountain Time. It is, but only during Daylight Standard (October to April). Arizonans never change their clocks, so during Savings their time is of the Pacific variety. No problem. There was a Fuddrucker’s not far away. We hadn’t had dinner yet, so we grabbed a bite there. Mom enjoyed Lethal Weapon 4 much more than Saving Private Ryan.

First thing next morning we drove the hour or so north to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon. Our home base was the Holiday Inn Express just outside the park entrance. I shall never forget the first glimpses I caught of the Canyon as we entered the park. I was sitting in the passenger seat, looking to the right, peering through all that shrubbery. Man, if the sight of it didn’t drop my jaw and jolt my guts. It was like when a plane suddenly loses altitude.

We hiked the Canyon both that day as well as the day after. One thing that struck me was the sheer amount of foreigners, especially Germans. I couldn’t help but notice them since I’d just finished studying their language for seven years. Seriously, though, and without exaggeration, you would not be out of order to nickname the Grand Canyon Little Germany. At one point we stopped into the visitor center to get a drink. While my mom stood smack in front of the soda machine trying to decide on her beverage of choice, a thirtysomething German mom cut right in front of her. She basically stuck her arm out in front of my mom’s face to drop in the quarters and make her selection. While my mom was a bit taken aback by that rudeness, I told her she better start taking it in stride if she was going to survive the Canyon. Oh I’m just jesting. Of course we survived! And I’m determined to get back there someday. The best writer on the friggin’ planet couldn’t do justice to the natural majesty of that place. At times I would just stand there and gaze down into the thing. Where else and when else for the rest of my life was I ever going to lay eyes on such a multilayered masterwork? Seriously, I felt like if I stood there long enough, it would’ve elucidated my whole raison d’être.

But who’s got that kind of time, right? So on Saturday morning we took off for our last stop before L.A.: Phoenix. It was only a three-or-so-hour drive. We wound our way back to Flagstaff along the same small road, and from there we hopped onto I-17. It’s interesting. The difference between northern and southern Arizona is day and night. Northern Arizona has a much higher altitude and a climate that’s not much different from the northeast. It’s cold and snowy in the winter, hot and muggy in the summer. Southern Arizona, in stark contrast, has that hot dry climate you think of when you think of the southwest. It’s just plain hot and cactus laden whatever month you decide to pay a look-see.

I’m not entirely clear why we stopped in Phoenix. Well, for one thing, it wasn’t all that far. We weren’t planning to spend more than a day there. And it’s not like we had a pending deadline to reach L.A. Plus, and this might be the biggest reason, I’d spent a good deal of my high school and college years mythologizing southern Arizona in my mind because that’s where I set the first two novels I ever wrote.

Okay, a quick primer. In the summer of 1990, just before starting my freshman year in high school, I decided I wanted to be a writer. To that end, I immediately set pencil to notebook paper on what I assumed would be a dark fantasy short story. End result? By that Christmas I had the first draft of a dark fantasy….novel! The story took place in a fictional town called Whitepalm, located in that desert limbo between Phoenix and Tucson. In college I wrote a sequel. Actually, it was supposed to be a full-fledged trilogy, but I never did get around to part three. I finished part two by the end of my Temple years, and by that time I’d had such a horrible experience with the first one and this crooked-ass literary agent that I figured the best way to wash my hands of the whole experience was to treat my move to L.A. as a fresh start. Thus, my third novel, which was my master’s thesis for USC, was in a completely different vein—well, sort of—from the derivative dark fantasy hogwash I’d slaved over as a teenager.

Okay. So. After two novels and eight years of imagining southern Arizona, I suppose I was jacked up to see the arid place with my own eyes. Hence, I’m sure it was my idea to drop by Phoenix before making the final westward beeline for the Left Coast.

It’s ironic as hell, but I don’t remember much of anything about our day there. I think we drove around Scottsdale, which is basically that area’s answer to Beverly Hills. But that’s about it. We had a nice dinner somewhere. Damn, I can’t remember where, though. I think it was a Mexican joint. No, I’m not just saying that because of where we were. We really did have Mexican food that night, and it was quite yummy. As for what I thought of the area after having imagined it for so long, I wasn’t disillusioned or anything. It was just….weird, actually being there. I remember appreciating how nice and spread out Phoenix was. Camelback Mountain sticks out most in my mind. On a map I bought while there, I noticed a few towns in the southern half of the state, surrounded by desert, that could’ve passed for real-life Whitepalms. Maybe someday I’ll have the time to go check them out.

Chapter Four: Tom’s House of Seven Gables
What I remember most about the six-hour-ish drive from Phoenix to L.A. was passing through that veritable forest of colossal windmills in the southeastern California desert, not far from Palm Springs. Speaking of that town, I don't remember seeing much of it from the 10 freeway. Amazingly, while I've been to Vegas more than a dozen times since moving here, I haven't once found the time to visit Palm Springs.

I suppose it was appropriate, if not a bit inauspicious, that the first emotion either of us felt upon entering L.A.'s labyrinth of freeways was a whole lotta stress. Especially Mom, as she was the one at the wheel while I was trying to read the Trip Tick that her local AAA office in Chapel Hill had prepared for us. In hindsight, what we had to do was fairly simple: Just take the 10 to the 110 Harbor southbound and exit at Exposition Blvd. Et voila! But ya know, if you're a virgin L.A. freeway driver, it can be kind of brutal. All those lanes! Okay, exit's coming up. Work your way over to the right-most lane. Hurry! There's the friggin' exit!

Anyway. So we made it sans mishap to the Radisson Hotel across from USC on the corner of Exposition and Figueroa. We checked in and then wasted no time in going to the USC housing office to get the keys to my little studio apartment. We didn't move anything in that night, but we did go over to the building, called Seven Gables, on 30th St. just west of Fig (three or so blocks north of the Radisson). I chose it because it was strictly for grad students and had its own parking lot, two things most USC dorm/apartment buildings couldn't claim.

Talk about rough starts. Early the next morning I woke up and puked my guts out. What happened was, I woke up when it was still dark and saw the room spinning. My eyes were roaming every which way as if I'd just stepped off a turbo carousel or something. When my vision settled, though, my stomach remained very much unsettled. I made it into the john just in time to hurl. Mom, being a mom 'n all, got up and decided to summon the hotel's in-house medic (I never knew hotels had those, but I guess it makes sense). I'm not sure if this young Indian guy was an actual MD, but it doesn't matter 'cause that needle he jabbed into my ass cheek sure curtailed the nausea. Nonetheless I was in no shape to go out for the time being. So while Mom went to Target and Ralphs and stocked up on essentials, I languished in the hotel room all morning and into the early afternoon.

That workhorse accomplished quite a bit. At Target she got a 19" TV, a microwave, toaster, and one of those oscillating fans, which came in handy right away as L.A. was just then succumbing to a heat wave that made Mercury look downright wintery. All of those I still have, too. That microwave gets a daily workout courtesy of my addiction to popcorn. And that TV's the perfect size for my bedroom. She also went to Ralphs (a local chain of grocery stores for you non-L.A.ers) and got about a week’s worth of food for me. She went to Seven Gables to put away the groceries but left all the bigger Target items in the car. Sick or not, I had to help. No problem. I mean, I wasn’t a hundred percent just yet, but that shot in the ass had done the trick. I never did puke again. As for what was wrong with me in the first place, ‘best Mom and I could figure, I had a case of altitude sickness. Blast you, Grand Canyon!

And so for the next couple days Mom helped me get settled into my tiny little coffin-sized studio. We set up a checking account for me at the USC Federal Credit Union, walked around campus, got to know the lay of the land, all that stuff. We kept so busy that it never occurred to me what life would be like after she left.

Chapter Five: The Single Scariest Day of My Life
On Wednesday, August 19, 1998, exactly ten years ago today, my new life began. That was the morning when the Super Shuttle came to pick up my mom at the Radisson. Burned forever in my brain is the image of her getting into the van. She whipped her head around and saw the one or two others sitting behind her, then turned back to face the front, her pony tail barely able to keep up. And then the van drove off.

I was officially on my own.

It’s extremely difficult to verbalize the emotions that coursed through me that day. The closest I can get is “terrified beyond measure.” Not betraying an iota of emotion, though, I strolled into the parking lot behind the Radisson, hopped into my Sentra, and drove over to Seven Gables.

What? The hell? Was I going to do with myself?

I had started a screenplay not long before I left Jersey, and I told myself I’d take advantage of the two-week buffer between when I arrived and when classes began to polish off the first draft. I did eventually do that, to the tune of ten pages per night. But on this day I just couldn’t sit still. I can’t tell you how many times I walked to and from my apartment and the campus for one reason or another. At least one time I had to go to the credit union. Another time I decided to stop by the student union to peruse campus jobs. Funds were limited and I didn’t want to rely completely on government loans. When my mom called me that night after getting home, she said it had been an equally bummer of a day for her. On the flight home they showed the new Nicolas Cage movie (another one!) City of Angels. That movie was far too depressing for her to deal with after leaving her youngest three thousand miles from the rest of his family. I still haven’t seen City of Angels, but I know it’s a remake of the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire, which I saw in one of my Temple classes. So yes, if it’s anything like that, then it’s most definitely a downer. While I didn’t touch my script that first day, at least I did eventually sit still enough that night to watch The Living Daylights.

Chapter Six: Westwood, Ho!
The next day I felt much better. With parents who divorced when I was six, and having hopped a few addresses during my youth, I did have some practice with adjusting to new environments. And I adjusted to this soon enough. I found a student job in short order, got cracking on my script, and hopped in my Sentra to explore my environs. Within a week I had my California driver’s license, I found the house in Westwood where my mom grew up, and I found an AMC 20 multiplex a few miles south in Torrance that became my second home during my USC days.

Are you starting to see how those four years of working part-time had made me decidedly less shy?

To help settle myself even more, I quickly established a tradition: Pizza Fridays! Just about every Friday without fail, throughout my SC days and even beyond, Friday nights would see me order a pizza and watch a movie. That first Friday, August 21, I watched GoldenEye.

Another routine I started and continue to this day is eating breakfast. Sound weird? Well, permit me the wee bit of backstory. When I dropped that fifty or so pounds during high school, one of the ways I did it was not only to eliminate snacks but to skip meals. Seriously, I’d skip breakfast and lunch and have just an apple and a Diet Coke when I got home from school. Can you say determined? Dinner became the only meal I treated like a meal. This became a habit during my Temple years. I was paranoid that if I had three squares a day, I’d gain back at least some of the weight I’d lost. Rarely during my four years of Temple did I actually eat breakfast. I know it sounds bizarre, but if you can grasp how dedicated I’d been to losing that weight, then you might be able to get how that no-breakfast rule might carry over like a hangover.

During the cross-country with Mom, we had breakfast every day. Ya know, she’s normal, she eats breakfast. I considered the trip a vacation, so my discipline promptly melted. I ate breakfast too! Upon starting my new life out there, I continued eating breakfast. You can’t stop my march to becoming normal. I’m proud to report that breakfast is still a part of my day. Thanks, Mom!

I’ll never forget my first day of class. It was Wednesday, September 2. I only had one class that day, a short story workshop taught by Aram Saroyan, son of William Saroyan. As with all the classes, it didn’t start until the late afternoon. Thanks both to my nerves and my proximity to campus, I was the first one there. The second student who showed up, I should point out, was a young African-American gal named Gabrielle Piña. Since those days, Gabrielle has gone on to become a published novelist who also teaches both at this program as well as Pasadena City College. I bought copies of both her novels and had her sign them for me at the L.A. Times Festival of Books this past April. Her nerves that first day of class must’ve been more rattled than mine. Her mom came with her and helped her find the classroom. I thought that was cute.

For whatever reason, I sort of withdrew back into my shyness shell a bit. While I was friendly with everyone, I didn’t exactly forge any lasting friendships. One time I was invited to drinks after class with some of the students, but I wasn’t a big drinker at that point. That was a very awkward night.

I landed a part-time student job in the Humanities Building tech department. I was one of those guys who went to classrooms ahead of time to set up projectors and what have you. My boss, this Italian guy named Joseph, didn’t like me at all from the get-go, which makes me wonder why he hired me. I never took it personally, though. He pretty much didn’t like Americans in general. I was one of only two in the department. By February of ’99, he was thoroughly tired enough of me to suspend me for two weeks because I’d sent a harsh e-mail to a professor for forgetting to return some of our equipment. In hindsight it was a very stupid thing of me to do, although I think a two-week suspension was overkill. All Joseph had to do was read me the Riot Act and that would’ve more than sufficed. No matter. Things happen for a reason, right? So while I was on my two-week leave, I scored an internship at a literary agency. Fuck you, Signore Scarpine!

Just to show you that assholes can be relative in their degree of assholeness, my boss at the literary agency was hardly better than Joseph. Charlotte Gusay runs a boutique literary agency out of her backyard studio in the Rancho Park neighborhood of West L.A. She’s still there and, since she represents both novelists as well as screenwriters, I send her the occasional query letter. Well, I’ve sent her one query letter so far, about two years ago, which she rejected. And well before that I convinced her to represent a spec I’d written for Star Trek: Voyager. Okay, so she’s not all bad. But that carrot top could be downright cutting at times. As I get older and wiser, I suppose I begrudge her less and less her venting onto me the stress she felt pretty much twenty-four-seven. Working for Charlotte didn’t help me come back out of the shell very much. The only other intern working for her at the time was this Ichabod Crane-lookin’ dude named Mike. He was a few years older than me and had even worse people skills than I did. I remember getting really mad at him this one Monday after 60 Minutes interviewed George Lucas and a bunch of other peeps from Lucasfilm in anticipation of The Phantom Menace. Okay, so The Phantom Menace ending up sucking mud, but who was this lanky fuck to mess with my hopes like that? I came into work the next morning and that goofy bastard didn’t waste a minute. He was like, “Did you see that bullshit interview last night?!” I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day.

Chapter Seven: Best Summer Ever
That internship got me through the spring of 1999. The summer of that year remains perhaps the most memorable of my so-called life. Several months earlier I’d applied for and been accepted into a four-week poetry seminar in Prague helmed by the chair of USC’s writing program. He was of Czech descent and was fluent in the language. Every June he was the writer in residence at Karlovy University in Prague, the third oldest university in Europe.

As a lover of history, Prague was heaven. If I knew anything about architecture, I’m sure I’d’ve loved it even more, for many of the buildings, especially those near the center of town, were stunning to behold. That castle, anyone? The big turn-off was that the restaurants try to rip you off by giving you stuff Americans take for granted as complimentary (e.g. bread, butter, mustard) and then charge you for it on the bill. They put it on the table and don’t tell you that you’ll have to pay for it ‘cause they know you’ll think it’s free. It happened so many times that, after four weeks, I was so ready to get the hell out of there.

Perhaps the biggest reason this summer was so memorable was because it marked the first time in my life I got drunk. After the second week of class, a few of the students and I took a weekend jaunt up to Poland, specifically Krakow and Warsaw. That first night in Krakow saw us going on a pub crawl. First up was this pub that was underground and had an Internet café attached. So I went down with one of my female classmates, gal named Ryan, and we had a few rounds of White Russians. I remember just loving the way those creamy concoctions glided down my throat. By the time I pulled the plug, it was far too late. For the very first time in my life, I’d drunk to excess.

That’s when I figured it was just a good a time as any to send some e-mails to family back home. Barely able to stand, I staggered up the stairs to the Internet café, about halfway between the pub downstairs and the front door leading out to Old Town Square, and shot a few slurred messages to Mom, Dad, and one or two of my siblings. The next morning I actually didn’t feel all that shitty. We had breakfast at a café on the square. I remember having sausages that looked and tasted an awful lot like Oscar Mayer weenies.

Our main point in staying in Krakow was to use it as a home base for a field trip to Auschwitz. Talk about sobering up. I don’t think any single phrase could exorcise the drunk beast out of you quicker than Arbeit Machts Frei. What struck me most about the camp was its suburban environment. You’ve got these housing developments literally within a stone’s throw that looked like the development where my dad and stepmom live in Jersey. What if you lived in one of those houses and were giving directions to someone coming to visit you for the first time? “So yeah, just head down such-and-such street and swing a right at the death camp…”

After the third week of class, Ryan and I took a trip to Budapest. That was a pretty cool city. I wish we’d had more time. What I remember most was that one jazz club we went to as well as the Turkish bath. Actually, the Turkish bath was kind of awkward. It requires you to show a bit more skin in public than I’m used to. By far the most memorable part of that trip was an overnight side trip we took to this town called Eger, ‘bout two hours by train east of Budapest. We did some touristy sober stuff during the day, like visiting this massive church. Toward dusk we trekked to the west end of town where we found a grassy little valley called the Valley of the Beautiful Women. I forget where the name comes from, but a more apt moniker would’ve been Valley of the Unbelievable Potent Wine Samples. This was a Sunday. According to the guidebook, every Sunday sees the two dozen or so wine cellars built into the hillsides of this little valley holding free tastings. Suffice it to say that I could barely handle ten of the samples before I was plastered off my Jersey-bred bee-hind. We spent the night in the guest house of this wealthy old couple over toward the east end of town. I have no idea how, but somehow we managed to walk on our drunken feet from that valley all the way back to this guy’s house. At one point we had to stop at that massive church and take a load off on the front steps while we straightened our bearings. And just to show you how tiny our world truly is, the guy we stayed with had a brother who lived in Florida just a few miles from my brother.

As much fun as I had during those jaunts, it was the trip I took after the four-week seminar was over that stands out to this day as the single most memorable adventure I’ve ever taken. The last day of class was the third Friday in June. When it was over, I wasn’t ready to head back to the States just yet. First thing Saturday morning I was on a train to Vienna, which is about three or so hours from Prague. I spent all day there Saturday and Sunday. Saturday saw me visit the cemetery where I got to see the graves of a lot of famous composers including Schoenberg. They also had this memorial to Mozart. That night I located this underground jazz club featuring a band from San Francisco. The foreman’s name was Allan Smith.

Sunday was quite the action-packed day. During the day I visited the Shoenbrünn palace, which had been the summer home of the Hapsburg family. The term summer home doesn’t quite do the place justice. Nor does the word palace. The thing’s an entire planet unto itself and has sprawling Eden-like grounds all over. By the way, this is where Mozart gave a concert when he was six. It was in the Salon of Mirrors, one of the innumerable rooms in the main house. When the concert was over, he got up and then tripped and fell. The Empress’ young daughter, Marie Antoinette (yes, that Marie Antoinette), also six, helped Mozart to his feet. And Mozart said something like, “I want you to marry me!”

At around five that afternoon I attended a production of Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Vienna Opera Ball in the city center, about a block or so down the street from the music school dorm where I was staying. When the opera was over, I went to the Hotel Sachentorte across the street, the café which is the birthplace of the famous Sachentorte cake. I had a slice of that. What followed is fairly embarrassing, but I’ll admit it anyway since it’s too long ago to make me cringe. That much.

From the Hotel Sachentorte I decided to take a stroll around the city center. Soon enough I saw these little flyers advertising a strip club called Hollywood GoGo. I found it and ducked in. Sitting through a five-hour opera had earned me this right, don’t you think? Me too. I struck it up with a stripper from Slovakia who worked at this joint in the summers to earn money for school. She didn’t speak English, nor of course do I speak a lick of Slovakian, but we both spoke German. I bought her one of those horrifically overpriced mini bottles of wine. We chatted a bit. She gave me a private dance. And then I left. In just a few hours I had to catch a train to Salzburg.

I stayed in Mozart’s hometown Monday and Tuesday, staying at the private residence of a middle-aged spinster who lived in this cul-de-sac just outside and on a hill high above the town proper. Among the highlights was—well what do you think?—the house Mozart grew up in. I was in dude’s bedroom. I saw where his domineering father Leopold instructed him in the arts of both the piano and the violin. The streets in that part of town are beyond narrow. Walking along them makes you feel like the head of a needle weaving a very fine cobblestoned thread. I also remember the very comfortable quilted bed I slept in at the cul-de-sac house. The window above the headboard afforded me the most gorgeous view of the Austrian Alps. Even though it was June, Salzburg’s high elevation made it feel like a cool crispy November. And you wanna hear bizarre? How’s this for a highlight? To my dying day I’ll remember this. So after dinner one evening, right? I stopped into an Internet café. It was pretty quiet, just a few others in there, none of them American. Mounted in this bracket hanging from the ceiling was a TV that was showing the Alicia Silverstone movie Clueless. Dubbed in German. It was still early in the film, when Cher and Dion take an afterschool shopping excursion to the Westside Pavilion Mall in West L.A. I’d been to that mall several times during my internship at the literary agency, which was only a few blocks away from the mall. I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of homesickness as I watched Alicia and her pal shooting the shit in German. How weird, feeling homesick for a city I hadn’t been living in for a year.

For the final three days of my European adventure I went to the town of Weimar, Germany. Weimar was one of Europe’s cultural capitals that year, mainly because it had been a hotbed of German Classicism in the nineteenth century. The two pillars of that literary movement were Goethe and Schiller, commonly regarded as the twin Shakespeares of German lit. Having studied the language for nearly a decade, I was quite familiar with both of them. One of the first places I visited in town was the crypt where they’re both buried. I also saw the houses they lived in. The main theater in town was showing Schiller’s play Don Carlos. I saw that, although I couldn’t understand quite everything. Weimar is also known for a couple other, less glamorous, reasons. During the 1920s it was the birthplace of the Weimar Republic, the government that ruled Germany between the two World Wars. And then during WWII the Nazis ran a concentration on the hill above the town called Buchenwald. On my last day in Weimar, I paid a visit to this camp. I was too late to take any of the guided tours, so I took all five of the self-guided ones. It took hours and liquefied my legs, but I did it. After the fifth and final tour, I walked over to the far side of the grounds, which features a promenade to the nations who lost Jewish citizens at Buchenwald. Along this promenade are a bunch of benches for you to sit and take in the views of the Thuringian countryside.

Never in my life before or since have I encountered so much irony. There I was, right? Taking a load off on the site where genocide had taken place half a century earlier. And this very place was giving me some of the most stunning vistas. The German state of Thuringia is in the former East and includes a good chunk of farmland. The sprawling plains before me were a colossal checker board of farms literally as far as the eye could see. We’re talking vast squares of land, each a slight variation of green or yellow. I must’ve sat there for at least thirty minutes or so. I’ll never forget it. Nor will I ever forget the elderly woman who sat a few benches away. I don’t remember what she looked like. But I remember what she sounded like. She was crying her eyes out. I’ll never forget that sound.

When I left Buchenwald, I took the bus only as far as the train station in the center of town. That was the one and only place in all of Weimar that had an Internet café. When you go in, the train station proper is dead ahead, but on your left is an actual café that reminded me of those Johnny Rockets 1950s–style diners. Each booth had a computer. So I hopped in, ordered a soda, and sent a few e-mails to various and sundry relatives. This was my last night in Weimar. Tomorrow I’d be on a train to Paris, where the morning after I’d catch a British Airways flight to Newark.

While in Weimar I decided to splurge on an honest-to-God hotel, in lieu of the dorms and private residences I’d stayed in while in Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and Salzburg. I remember how awesome it was to have such a huge, clean bathroom to myself, even if it meant I had to pay for it with my credit card instead of my American Express travelers checks.

Those seven days in Vienna, Salzburg, and Weimar remain by far and away the most memorable seven days of my life. I was by myself the whole time and racked up more experiences in those seven days than most people get in a year. I also, by the way, did more walking than most people do in a year. Seriously, I walked my ass to the ivory bone.

So why did I book my flight out of Paris? Well, when I booked this whole trip in the spring, I thought I’d have time to see Paris before coming home. I could’ve made a reservation change to fly out of Frankfurt. I can’t remember why I didn’t do that. I’m sure it would’ve cost me a healthy reservation change fee to do so. I just figured to heck with it and took the nine-hour train ride from Weimar to Paris. I got there Saturday evening. My flight back to Jersey wasn’t set to leave til Sunday morning. I got off the train at the Paris Ost station and caught the Metro to Charles de Gaul. I had less than ten bucks to my name. My credit card was maxed out. I was exhausted as all get-out but couldn’t afford a hotel room. I located a café inside the terminal where, as it turned out, a whole bunch of English and Americans were chilling out while waiting for the morning flight. I tried to sleep with my head down on the table, but this chubby American guy was yakking away at the next table with his friend. He pissed me off simply because he was wide awake while I felt miserable. At some point I went into the men’s room and locked myself in the spacious handicapped stall. In one of my duffels was a bath towel I’d taken with me to Prague because I’d been warned our dorms would have no linens. I fished it out and spread it across the cold tiled floor and lay down to catch some Zs.

The reality is I didn’t catch much more than jack shit. No matter. I went back out, bought a chocolate bar and an espresso, and soon enough it was time to check in. The flight home wasn’t so bad. I remember having a stop in London, but it wasn’t for very long.

By the time I got to Dad’s place in Jersey, most of the day was given back to me. I left Paris in the morning. When I landed in Newark, it was early afternoon. Did I mention I was a movie nut? Well, no sooner did we get back to the house than I looked in the newspaper to see what was playing at the local movie theater that had been my second home. I ended up seeing Austin Powers 2. It was weird how it seemed like I’d never left. I know it was only a year and that’s not much in the great scheme of things. But I’d experienced so many new things since my father wished me farewell with his “End of an epoch!” End of an epoch?! Homestead reunion! Nothing had changed. Within a day or two of getting there, my dad ordered me to box up all the shit I couldn’t bring with me the summer before. He was planning to ship it all to me, one or two boxes at a time, over the next few months.

I stayed there for two weeks, and then went down to stay with Mom in North Carolina for another two weeks. By the time I got back to L.A., I’d been gone for exactly nine weeks to the day. I got back to Seven Gables around eleven at night to find a letter in my mailbox from Charlotte Gusay: I wouldn’t be coming back that fall to continue my internship. It wasn’t ‘cause I sucked at the monotony of reading query letters, but because she wasn’t making enough money to pay me the pennies I would’ve otherwise earned. Times couldn’t’ve been that tough, though. She’s not only in business today but has signed some pretty awesome clients.

Chapter Eight: Mad Woman
I began temping at law firms. They only care about how fast you type. I can churn out a good hundred words per minute without many mistakes. Barely a month into the fall semester, I landed a temp gig at this health website called A Doctor In Your House. Their whole thing was raising awareness about diseases by using celebrity spokespeople. When I joined, they were doing a gastric bypass surgery program with Carnie Wilson, formerly of Wilson Philips and the daughter of Beach Boy Brian Wilson. I remember being so thrilled to join this company. For one thing, I only had to temp for them for about a week before they made me a permanent employee. The department I worked in was called Internet Community. We were the ones responsible for the live chats with celebrities and doctors as well as the online support group forums. Sheila, the woman who headed the department, worked out of her house in the West Valley suburb of Tarzana.

In November of ’99 I ditched Seven Gables for an apartment in the Valley. On Yahoo! Classifieds I snagged a 2+2 apartment with about 1,200 square feet with a starting rent of $710. This is the apartment where I live today. It’s located in Van Nuys, a central Valley community about fifteen minutes east of Tarzana. No, it’s not the best area to live in. Far from it. Even after nine years, though, the rent’s still only $900, extremely low relative to L.A.’s average.

So I toiled for Sheila at A Doctor In Your House into the new millennium. Whenever we did those online celebrity chats, who do you think did the typing for the celebrities while they rambled? By the way, who were these celebs? Don’t worry, we never did get anyone of any significant wattage. You had Carnie Wilson, Miss America 1999, Kathy Ireland, and Loni Anderson. We got John Stossel from 20/20 to talk about stuttering this one time. I booked a good deal of these celebs, by the way. There I was, 23 years of age, being thrown into this whole business utterly blind.

Oh yeah, and this was my last semester at USC. Talk about anticlimax, my thesis advisor sucked! He advised me on all of two things: jack and shit. Because my focus in the program was fiction, my thesis was to be either a collection of short stories or a novel. I chose the latter. This old coot was supposed to be mentoring me, reading chapters, giving me feedback on how to get this sucker polished and publishable. I don't remember, but I think he looked at it once, and even then it was only cursory. Then he had the nerve to complain to me that he wasn't getting paid enough to justify doing what was expected of him as a thesis advisor. Christ! Was my focus in this program fiction or fuck-shun? Whatever. I finished the novel, didn't have much hope for it, and immediately started writing another one.

After finishing in December of '99, I started working full-time at A Doctor In Your House. That is, I'd commute from my Central Valley apartment to Sheila’s West Valley condo. At first, Sheila, who was on the cusp of 45, was awesome. As a former musician who even cut a few albums, she loved playing music and encouraged a laid-back cool vibe with flex hours and all that good stuff. Even after the company got a big new office in Century City, which meant Sheila and her crew would actually have to work in the office instead of out of her home, it was still a cool job. The people were nice. Except for this one former Marine with ice-white hair and Godzilla-sized gut and all-black wardrobe. I swear he was nuts. All he did was get pissed off.

And then, in May of 2000, Sheila and her department (i.e. me and this one other guy) were let go. It was the second Monday in May. Sheila and I had been working on a project all weekend. We got to work at 9 or so that morning, and were on our way home in an hour. I remember that day so clearly. I suppose we all remember those days when our lives are drastically altered without warning. Sheila and I went back to her house where she told me to chin up, that I could work for her out of her house again like the old days. Only I'd just be her general assistant, and she could match my salary from A Doctor In Your House out of her own savings that she'd built up from all her music royalties.

This is when the facade of her coolness cracked and crumbled to reveal the stark raving Lady Macbeth beneath. The longer I worked for her, the nuttier she became. Gee, the way I wrote that makes it seem like it's my fault she took a nosedive off the deep end. But how can that be? I busted my ass for that drug-addicted alcoholic whack job. I obeyed her every God damned whim. Other employees didn't last nearly as long as I did. I mean shit, I was even doing stuff like going to Rite Aid to get the refills on the Xanax and Ambien she was addicted to. I put up with her micromanaging me while she drank booze like it was her life’s calling. I'd get to her place around noon or so, when she preferred me to get there, and she'd be passed out most of the day. Some things that made that job more interesting than necessary weren't her fault, such as this one middle-aged washed up guitar player who stalked her. Still, it would’ve helped if she didn’t have this knack for inviting the dregs of the dregs into her life. Whether she was looking for another gopher like myself or someone specifically for the music side of things, such as a sound engineer or a guitar player, she always gravitated toward these characters who were so obviously as screwed up as her. And then when nothing constructive could get accomplished, she’d be sincerely confused as to why.

Seriously, you should've seen some of these biological mistakes who passed through her front door. You'd've thought Sheila had designs on transforming her condo into the Valley branch of the Bates Motel. And actually, any moniker with "motel" would've been appropriate, as a lot of the time these circus performers would stay the night after working on the music. You had this one gray-haired guy in a robe who could've been Obi-Wan Kenobi's pot-smoking twin. Then there was this diminutive little twentysomething who kept saying he wanted to make Sheila's music studio happy. On guitar was another youngster with long hair who drove a motorcycle and whose biggest contribution to the team was that he knew where to score pot. Jesus, man, I don't know what to tell you. There I sat at Sheila's computer most the day, responding to e-mails on her behalf, answering the phone and lying to most everyone who asked for her. She almost never left that frickin' place, yet she insisted I tell everyone she wasn't available. Her reasoning was that she had to get her music done somehow. Yet, whenever she had the chance, she'd mess it up. She'd either be out cold or drinking or getting high. I suggested she just turn off the ringers on her phone and let her voicemail collect the messages. Sure as hell beats lying to everyone, but nah, that would’ve been too normal, and normal was antithetical to everything in Sheila's being.

I didn't fit in with this gang at all. I was and still am far too much of a straight shooter. Deceiving others as well as myself just doesn't jive with who I am. I grew up in Jersey, hoss. You gonna be phony 24/7? You wouldn't last five minutes in the gorgeous Garden State. I busted my ass in college, graduated summa cum laude, came out to Californ-I-A to try to be a writer....only to end up working for this fuckin' nutjob? Nah-uh, not gonna fly.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Sheila was trying to kick off a website of her own that was basically derivative of A Doctor In Your House. She'd try to rope in celebrities with diseases who would speak out about what was wrong with them. So far as I know, the one and only sick human she got was Maurice White, frontman of that seventies sensation Earth, Wind & Fire. Apparently they were pals and had a semblance of a working relationship from when Sheila was still in the music biz. I have no idea in what capacity, nor do I care. Nor did Maurice White care. He had designs on marrying Sheila and even proposed to her while I was still working for her. Sheila could say nothing bad about this guy. Well before Maurice made any romantic overtures, Sheila always went on and on about what a sweet gentle man he was. At some point, as was par for Sheila's course, her relationship with him took a nosedive off the deep end with no water in the pool. She dictated this letter to me once. I can't remember if it was an e-mail or what, or to whom we were sending it. But the gist of it was quite nasty at Maurice's expense. I have a feeling it was all a bunch of lies. Sheila could lie to your face without blinking. In this instance, I'm fairly certain she was bitter 'cause Maurice wasn't giving her enough attention. We all know hell hath no fury.

Indeed, the summer of 2000 still ranks as perhaps my worst summer ever. Believe it or not, working for Sheila was only one reason. Another reason was that on Saturday, June 3rd of that year, I got into a pretty bad car accident on the 405 freeway. I'd gone down to Santa Monica to see an early afternoon matinee of that new modern-day version of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke (and Bill Murray!). On my way home afterward, going northbound on the 405, traffic stopped suddenly and I rear-ended the white Chevy Blazer in front of me. Totally my fault. Thanks in part to my airbag (my first airbag experience!), I didn't get hurt except for some burns on my hands from said airbag. As for the Brazilian gal driving the Blazer, she wasn't so much as fazed. Nor was her Blazer. Amazing really, 'cause the hood of my Sentra pretty much folded up like a piece of paper. Several people took a look at it while we were on the shoulder squaring things away with the insurance information and the CHP dudes. And then they'd look at me and be like, "Wow, man, you okay?"

What made this accident extra inconvenient was that it came on the day when I was supposed to start house sitting for Sheila. She and this older attorney she had an on-again/off-again thing with named Mickey had gone to Greece. Moronically, I'd agreed to live in Sheila's condo during her absence. How long would she be absent, you might wonder? She wouldn't tell me. I agree to put my life on hold so as to keep her life going, and she won't tell me how long I'd have to do it. You believe that shit? Is that not bizarre or what? But I did it. I lived in her condo, kept the Persian cats company, and only went home a couple times a week to pay bills and keep my mailbox from overflowing. She ended up being gone for a good two and a half weeks. Again moronically, I had somehow let it into my head that she might compensate me for having gone out of my way like that. Stupid me! I clearly remember what she said: "Why would I pay you above and beyond what I already do?" She asked me this two or three times. I was so dumbstruck, I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing. Part of me thinks she wasn't doing it to be evil, but that she was actually fucking dumb enough to think that it was no big thing to keep her home front going at the expense of mine. And when you're in your mid forties like she was, and still that dumb, there's just no fucking hope. So why should I bother trying to elucidate her on common sense and decency? This was around the time I started temping again.

In the late summer I registered with a whole fleet of temp agencies in the Valley, hoping like mad that one of them could find me an assignment that would lead to a permanent gig. None did. I did land some law firm gigs where my fast typing came in handy. No, the way I finally escaped the maws of that mad bitch was by perusing Monster.com. I'll never forget it. It was the second Sunday in October, late at night, like 11 p.m. or so. I was about ready to hit the sack but thought I'd take another look at Monster. It had been at least a day or two since I was on it. Sure enough, a search engine in Old Town Pasadena called GoTo.com was looking for editors. I wasn’t quite sure how editing would apply to a search engine, but what the heck, right? I e-mailed them my resume. And you know what? 'Round 9 a.m. the next day I got a call from one of their recruiters wanting to know if I'd like to come in for an interview. Can I get a "Hell yeah!"? I went the next day for what was a very rigorous four- or five-hour interview process that involved talking with a bunch of people and taking a bunch of tests. I was offered the job soon after and started on Monday, October 23. So long, Sheila!

Chapter Nine: Sad Woman
Actually, not quite. Believe it or not, I remained with Sheila on a part-time capacity until the following June. No, it wasn't out of self-loathing. I was poor! Between USC student loans and my credit card, I'd racked up nearly $60k in debt in the barely two years I'd been living out here. So I worked the traditional 9-5 during the week at GoTo while putting in a full eight-hour day at Sheila’s on Saturday. I tell ya, I couldn’t’ve gotten out at a better time, as the downward spiral into mental oblivion continued unabated for the old Sheilster. As I said above, she had an issue with men who stalked her (rest assured that I was not one of them). This one Charles Manson-lookin’ dude she hired ‘round the time I started at GoTo was a guitar player and vocalist from England whose first name I think was Paul. More than once I got to see him and Sheila charge each other’s throats, to the tune of him banging on her bedroom door and then going outside to sit in his car by the curb literally for hours and hours. It reached a point where Sheila suffered panic attacks that she’d mistake for heart attacks and accordingly had me dial emergency. Over time we actually got to know the same three or four medics from the Tarzana branch of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Meantime my career at GoTo was thriving to such an extent that, less than six months after starting, I applied for and was accepted into the brand new International department. Just before I was hired, GoTo started going international by launching a site for Great Britain. When I was hired, they already had designs on making Germany their second foreign market. Having studied German for many years, this got me kind of psyched, as I never thought my German schooling would have any practical application in the real world, and certainly not in Los Angeles, where Spanish is almost on equal footing with English. This city doesn’t exactly scream out “German opportunities!” if you know what I’m sayin’.

When I started in the International department the first week of April 2001, they still had ten months to go before Germany went live. No matter, I could get my foot in the door now and hit the ground running when it came time for my language skills to come into use. By far the biggest adjustment to this department wasn’t working in two languages, but working graveyard shift. The UK is eight hours ahead of Pacific Time, and the rest of Europe is nine hours ahead. That meant International had to be on duty when it was daytime over yonder. So my new hours? Twelve-thirty a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Wonderful, eh? It was nuts! I remember vividly my first day—I mean, night—with this team. It was the first Monday in April. Technically it was Monday, true, but it was also Sunday night. Just when I was ready to crash, I realized I had to stay up a little bit longer…and then go to work.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that my first night was an interminable one.

So here’s how this zombie established his routine. I'd put in the graveyard hours Sunday night through Friday morning. Depending on how desperate I was for cash, sometimes on Friday mornings I’d GoTo Sheila's place and put in a full eight hours there, followed by another eight hours on Saturday. Or I'd take it easy on Friday and just put in eight hours on Saturday.

And her downward spiral continued. One time, I think it was a Friday, I went to work and had to make sure Sheila's bills were paid (really, I don't think that woman has ever written a check in her life). But then, for some unfathomable reason, she got it into her head that the money in her checking account wasn't safe. So she, the Obi-Wan Kenobi guy, one of her other assistants, and myself hopped into her white SUV (like the one I rear-ended, but unfortunately not the same one) and went off to the bank. 'Only problem was, despite the fact that it was pushing five in the p.m., Sheila hadn't taken the trouble to get dressed yet. Or brush her hair. Or do much of anything to promote personal hygiene. She led us into the bank in her salmon bathrobe and her hair hanging unbound past her shoulders, all greasy and knotted 'n shit. She found the nearest banker at a desk, sat down, and calmly requested to withdraw all of her money. Mind you, she had something on the order of $20K in her checking account. It may have even been more. However much it was, the bank refused to let her take out the entire amount because it was just too much. Or something like that. Some rule meant they couldn't accommodate her psychotic request (boy, could I empathize!), which made Sheila pick up the phone on the banker's desk so she could call the police. In the end she never did. She left with her booze-addled tail between her unstable legs while I was wishing like mad that I was anywhere but here.

It took a while, but I soon got my wish. My last weekend with Sheila, the last time I ever saw her, was the first weekend in June of 2001. I actually went in that Sunday to get some extra hours in, and from there went straight to work to start the graveyard Monday. When I left that night, the same four medics from the fire department were carrying Sheila out on a gurney because she was having another o' those severe anxiety attacks. And that was that. She did call me at some point. I think she was still at the hospital. The gist of it was she wanted me to send some e-mail or make sure such-and-such was being handled or whatever. I forget. After that Sunday, I was done. Kaput. I never did call her back. And apparently my silence rang loud and clear 'cause she never called me back. I did talk to her on the phone a couple more times over the next couple of years. She wanted me to come back and work for her of course. One time she called after she got back from her hometown of Edmonton, where she’d convalesced and cleaned up her act. She left a message saying she was back (obviously I never knew nor cared that she'd been gone) and wondered if I'd consider coming back on a part-time basis. My response? Silence.

I can't be all negative about the Sheila experience. It certainly opened the eyes of this naive calf about the kinds of weird people out there and that sometimes you might pause before trusting someone blindly. Seriously, in hindsight, I was so trusting and wide eyed and innocent (no, really, I was innocent!) when I started working for Sheila in the fall of '99. By the time I quit in June of '01, I was most definitely a different person. Not cynical. I suppose I became wiser, better at separating true sincerity from the false kind.

Chapter Ten: Going Global
While I was thrilled at having shed that gig, I still needed supplemental income. Indeed, 2001 still ranks as the most difficult year of my life in terms of making ends meet. Luckily, and to prove yet again that it's all in who you know, I landed a new part-time gig no more than two weeks after leaving Sheila.

First, let's go back to March. Sometime in the middle of March, after I'd been accepted into International but a couple weeks before I started, I hired a German tutor in Burbank who helped me brush up on the language, as it had been a good two years--the Prague trip in '99--since I'd used it in any way, shape, or form. I found her thanks to the L.A. branch of the Goethe Institute. She was a sweet blonde gal named Eva. She was in her late thirties, originally from Hesse, and had been living in the States, and the Valley in particular, since her college days at Cal State Northridge. I only met with her for one hour per week, but in between I'd have plenty of reading comprehension and vocab work to keep me occupied. The way her classes usually worked was that we'd start by conversing in German. We'd talk about anything. It didn't matter so long as I kept the talk in German to get warmed up for the rest of the class. Well, as the whole Sheila fiasco was reaching a head, I took advantage of these warm-up sessions to ask Eva if she knew anyone who was looking for part-time work. As it turns out, she did! Not only that, but the particular friend she had in mind was an independent filmmaker named Bill, same age as her, who worked out of his house in Sherman Oaks. In other words, this guy was in a line of business that was right up my alley. I do have a degree in film, after all. He needed someone for ten hours a week. He paid me only a bit more than Sheila did, but it made a huge difference, as did the stress level. That is to say, there was none. This guy was as laid back and loose as Sheila was wound up like a circus high wire. The gist of the gig was that I was his gopher. Every day was different. On some days I'd run errands, on other days I'd browse the Web to do research. Or, my favorite thing to do, I'd help him write something. It could be anything, a letter, a synopsis for a script he was working on, whatever. I'd go there every morning after nightshift and put in a couple hours or so. He was flexible about when I worked so long as I clocked in ten hours per week.

Things only continued to get better. That October my supervisor told me that if I wanted, I could choose to switch from graveyard to working from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. 'Course, that kind of schedule sounds just as bad as graveyard does to some people, but to me it sounded like getting promoted from hell to heaven. I can't tell you how ecstatic I was to get yanked out of the graveyard. I'd've done cartwheels if I'd known I wouldn't've snapped my neck. The reasoning was that most of my work was for the editorial side of things, which didn't necessitate being on the clock during Europe's daylight hours. The people who had to keep those hours were those less into editorial and more into customer service, answering the phone to field concerns of our advertisers. Obviously they needed to be on the graveyard clock. And I did do that work to some extent, and continued doing it when I took the day shift, but that only constituted about a third or so of my duties. Whatever. 'Point being, after six and a half months of living the life of a pale blood sucker, I was human again!

As for my gig at Bill's, obviously my hours there had to change. Again, not that he cared so long as I put in the ten as promised. Also, instead of putting in two or three hours a day and having to go there nearly every single day of the week, I stacked the hours toward the front of the week. Monday and Tuesday I'd work there from 3:30-7:30 p.m., and then only till 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays. After a while at that schedule, Thursdays and Fridays began to seem like part of the weekend. Working twelve hours or more burns the oil after a while, know what I mean? Luckily, though, I pretty much hit the ground running. I'd kept even worse hours during my Temple years.

More change came about in the fall of '01. By this time I'd been taking German lessons with Eva for a good seven months or so. I decided that was enough. Besides the fact that I felt ready to take on GoTo Germany, which was going live in only four short months, I was trying to trim the ol’ budget. Her lessons were costing me $50 a week. And that was just for one hour of her time. I'd gotten a good raise when joining GoTo International, and Bill was paying me more than Sheila had. With my income going up, why not do more and lower my overhead?

It was also during this time that GoTo decided to change its name to Overture. I'm still not clear why, but from what I recall, with their coffers getting fuller and having become a profitable company in the second quarter of that year, and with search partnerships being signed with other companies, they wanted to project a more corporate image. To that end, they figured Overture was a more corporate name, and that blue and white were more corporate colors (GoTo had been green and yellow).

Best of all, I actually started making friends. International was growing like gangbusters. The UK marketplace turned out to be more profitable than anyone had anticipated, and more German speakers (most of them native Germans) were being hired. What’s more, they started hiring French speakers. With Germany not even out of the gates, Overture was already eyeing the September '02 launch of the French market. Yes, we were getting pretty big for our virtual britches. It's interesting, ya know? In no time International went from this tiny, barely-ten-person team working graveyard to about thirty or forty people split evenly between the graveyard customer service reps and the dayside editors. In spite of our growth spurt and the fact that we had so much potential for culture clash (among our new hires were this Haitian-born, New York-raised French-speaking dude, a German-born Filipino, and a half-German half-Syrian gal from Hamburg), we became a close-knit team. Or maybe we did so because of those two things. Actually, I should say we became two close-knit teams: the daysiders and the zombies.

We daysiders went to lunch together every Friday. The rule was we couldn't go to the same restaurant two Fridays in a row. With all the great places to eat in Old Town Pasadena, that was a pretty easy rule to abide by. We'd also have informal get-togethers at people’s houses. I don't think any of us had to host a party twice. Probably the best team activity we did was a Vegas weekend. I'll never forget it. To this day it ranks as one of the best Vegas experiences I've ever had. It was the second Friday of July '02. We rented a big white van from the nearby Hertz. And then we all packed ourselves in and just drove to Vegas, baby, Vegas! Even some of the graveyard zombies, after having left at the end of their shift that morning at 9:30, came back when our shift ended at 3 p.m. so they could go with us. I didn't win a dime in video poker (my money drainer of choice), but we did do lots of clubbing. I even danced in a cage!

The subject of Vegas is the perfect segue into how my two and a half years in International changed me, and it has just about everything to do with my coworkers. Not surprisingly, the ones I grew closest to were, as Reagan said, my fellow Americans. They included this rotund semi-pro football player and aspiring comedian from Iowa named Darren, and a six-foot-tall brunette from Ohio named Gretchen. The dynamic between us became a bit awkward later on 'cause Darren developed an insatiable crush on Gretchen. Understandable 'n all, seeing's how she was gorgeous, but come on. If it's someone you work with, behave yourself! Don't screw the crew! Whatever. Like I said, that came later. Meantime, we hung out a lot, and being around them helped further crack the shyness shell. Darren in particular was a fan of a very raunchy kind of humor that could leave you drop-jawed. Amazing, really, that his Hollywood career hasn't taken off yet. Whether or not you're a prude, you couldn't help being reduced to stitches by the guy.

Indeed, it was thanks to these two that I had my first Vegas experience, and props have to go to Darren for setting it up. In hindsight, I think the only person he wanted to go was Gretchen. This was early on, though, so I guess he wasn't ready to let loose his feelings. It was late October of '01, just a week or two after Gretchen and I moved to dayside (Darren was offered dayside but preferred graveyard so he'd have time for auditions during the day). The four of us--Darren, his roommate Ray, Gretchen, and I--stayed at the Rio, which is barely a mile off the Strip. The full name of the joint is the Rio All-Suites. Yes, I can confirm that every room is a suite. We booked their cheapest room, and it was huge. We didn't get there until ten or eleven that night, but that's a pretty young night in Vegas time. We went to our room to drop off what little baggage we had and then headed straight up to the Voodoo nightclub on the Rio's roof. Words can't describe what a blast that was.

In addition to making me get out more, working around such a diverse bunch really amped up my cultural awareness. I came out the other side of that experience much more into international current events than I was going in. Whenever I meet someone from another country, I find myself asking questions that relate to that country's culture and customs and so forth. Right now I'm working with a gal from Bangalore. She's actually in Bangalore. I've never met her in person. We IM now and then, and I always like to see what she's up to outside of work. Interestingly enough, this particular gal, while Indian born, is of Chinese descent. Perhaps the biggest thing working with so many Europeans did for me, which I thought was impossible, was make me a fan of soccer. Le scandale!

On the professional side of things, joining International was the best thing for my career path. On July 1, 2002, I was promoted to what was called a Relevance Coach. In English that means I was THE guru for all things quality control on the editorial side of the UK and German markets. I monitored and scored the work of all the editors for both markets. I was the trainer. I handled escalated complaints from the graveyard CSRs. You name it, I did it, 'cause I was the only one of that rank. I had to shadow my U.S. counterparts for my first week on the job so that I wouldn't be flying too blindly. In case you're thinking that being slightly elevated above my International peers strained our camaraderie, think again. It was two weeks after my promotion that we took the van to Vegas.

I shouldered a ton of responsibility and made a dozen decisions a day that had far-reaching ramifications in two marketplaces that were growing at an exponential clip. Yeah, I know it sounds like I'm tooting the ol' horn, but I'm actually trying to convey less that I was hot shit and more that I was having a blast. Don't get me wrong. It was scary at first, but after a while I really started thriving in this position. Working with so many interesting people constituted a good 50% of the fun. As gravy, the job itself was one of those jobs where no two days were alike.

Chapter Eleven: Going Green
It all came to a head early the following year. International, as far as Pasadena was concerned, was going the way of punk. In an effort to streamline things before they expanded into even more European markets, Overture decided to relocate all European operations to a big brand new office in Dublin. What did that mean for all of us? Simple: Quit or join the ranks of U.S. market editors. 'Course, that was sort of a step back down for me, just when my career was really catching fire. Those on the team who were European born had a third option not available to us Yanks: Move to Europe. That is, apply to be a part of the Dublin office or part of one of our in-market offices (e.g. London, Munich, Paris). As it happened, most everyone took the U.S. option. I mean, they'd come all this way to Southern California, toiled long and hard to establish lives and livelihoods here. Why throw all that out and go back?

The awesome thing was that, before I had to say good-bye to my upwardly mobile career path, I was offered the chance to spend six weeks in the Dublin office, the first six weeks this office would be open, training the hordes of new editors and CSRs. I don't need to tell you that I freakin' jumped at the chance. Gretchen and Darren were also given the offer. Gretchen accepted, but only for two weeks.

Darren and I, meanwhile, shared this awesome brand new two-bedroom apartment that came complete with a dishwasher, washer/dryer, the works. We each had our own bathroom. I was even able to maintain my morning ritual of working on my writing. Indeed, at this time I was working on a comic novel of Euro-American bonding that was directly influenced by my International experiences.

The new recruits were for the most part from Ireland. A few were from the UK, and just about all of the editors and CSRs for Germany and France were native to those countries. They relocated to Dublin specifically for this job. The newbies spent the first two weeks in the training room getting tag teamed by Gretchen, Darren, and myself. I have to say, I really took to this whole teacher thing. Training was only one of several things I had to do back in Pasadena, and the classes were smaller. Here you had over 50 or so people. Indeed, it was my idea to give these kats a comprehensive final exam at the end of the two weeks. I created the exam and graded them all myself. The grades had no impact on their jobs. They'd already been hired. But at least it gave them an idea of what to work on. Do you think they hated me? Nah. Why? 'Cause we didn't tell 'em the final was an idea I cooked up only days before. 'Far as they knew, a giant fifty-page final exam was part of the regimen all along.

For the ensuing four weeks, the newbies were at their desks while we grizzled vets were running around like the busiest waiters in the world. It was great fun. The days went by too quickly. Easily the greatest perk of this whole gig was that, in the center of the massive office campus, there stood a restaurant that was a great place to eat lunch during the day and an even better place to get a drink after work.

That leads me to the topic of Guinness. I have no idea why, but the Guinness over there tastes millions of times better than it does here. It has the same ingredients wherever you drink it, so I can’t explain it. Anyway Dublin, you may not be surprised to learn, has more awesome little dive pubs than you can shake a tap at. There's a section of Dublin called Temple Bar, just south and west of the city center, which is where most of Dublin's night life happens. So guess which area of town became my second home? In hindsight I can't believe the number of times I stayed out after work to get drunk. Back in the States I'm pretty much the opposite. Maybe that's because at the end of the workday I'm in no mood to drive. Driving is a fact of life in L.A. No car? You don't exist. Dublin, meanwhile, is much more of a town than a city. It's very walkable. Everyone walks there, which is why hardly anyone on Eire is overweight. Worse comes to worst, they have an extensive network of these double-decker buses. Three or four different lines intersected outside our apartment in the Clontarf neighborhood, so after a night of carousing in the Bar, it was nearly impossible to screw up the whole getting-home-in-one-piece deal.

Being in any European country, of course, means you’re near a whole bunch of other European countries. So the temptation to do a little continent trekking on the weekends was irresistible, made all the more so by Overture’s very generous per diem. Like my Prague trip in ’99, after the first week we just sort of stuck around and continued getting used to the place. After the second week, though, we didn’t waste a minute. Literally right after work that Friday, while Gretchen prepared to fly back to the States the next day, Darren and I caught a cab to the airport and flew to London. As luck would have it, this Australian gal we worked with during graveyard two years earlier was working in Overture’s London office. She shared this huge house with four or so other flatmates in Kensington. And they still had room for Darren and me. I’m sure we saved a bundle on accommodation, as London can give New York and Los Angeles a run for their cost-of-living money. As it was, I still spent a pretty penny to take in a play in the West End and do shameless touristy stuff like the London Dungeons and the Eye.

A week later, we took another Friday-night-to-Sunday-morning trip, this time to Paris. We stayed with yet another coworker we’d worked with in Pasadena, a Frenchman named Sebastien, but whom everyone called Sea Bass. He and his girlfriend had a small flat that they nicely shared with us. I mean really, this place was tiny, but we sufficed. I embarrassed myself Saturday morning taking a fifteen-minute shower. Apparently that took Sea Bass way off-guard. Does that mean our Gallic brethren don’t bathe as much as we do? Or that I was being overindulgent? Or both? Darren, like your average insecure actor, had no intention of embarrassing himself and so didn’t take a shower that entire weekend.

As with London, we did a bunch of touristy stuff, starting off Saturday morning at Montmartre, where I serendipitously came across the café that was featured quite prominently in one of my favorite French films ever, Amelie. As it happened, this café was right around the corner from the Moulin Rouge. After reaching the tops of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, we found our way to the oldest bar in Paris, Café Procope. You see that photo of me on this blog? That was taken right there, on this day: Saturday, March 8, 2003.

After that, we met up with another former coworker and her female companion. By this point it was pretty late, like nine or ten o’clock or so, but that’s when they normally have dinner in Paris. The length of the meal was unfathomable. We were there until past midnight.

The following weekend was a three-day because Monday was Saint Patrick’s Day. Whereas in the States it’s just an excuse to wear green, on Eire it’s a national holiday. Saturday we took a train to Galway and saw the castle and kissed the stone. The less I think about that, the better (really, how many people do you reckon have pressed their lips to that rock?). Sunday was awesome. We toured the Guinness Brewery, Jameson’s Distillery, and toured the Writer’s Museum.

That leads me to Monday: St. Paddy’s Day. Literally the entire town became one huge raucous party. Everyone’s out on the streets pretending to care about the parade that makes its way down the downtown drag while shamrocking their green asses off. Darren, the poor bastard, came down with gout that weekend, so he took in the parade, tried and failed to get into a Gaelic football match, and went home early. It was a sad irony that he had the worst St. Paddy’s Day of his life….on the very island where the day originated. Meanwhile an Austrian coworker and I did some pub crawling until after sundown.

Chapter Twelve: Going Dutch
With one more weekend left to us, we decided to give Amsterdam a go. This was an even quicker trip. Instead of Friday night, we flew first thing Saturday and came back first thing Sunday. Not only did we make the most of this one, but these 24 Dutch hours provided me with one of my single greatest travel memories, hands down.

As soon as we were settled at the hotel on the outskirts of town, we took a taxi to the city center and grabbed a tall one of Heineken at Karpershoek, which at the time we understood to be the oldest pub in Amsterdam. Since then we’ve learned that it’s “only” the second oldest, having opened as “recently” as 1630. Still, it’s a pretty cool little dive.

My brother-in-law is the son of a Dutch immigrant and so accordingly takes the occasional trek over there to visit extended family. He said a hearty meal at any of the innumerable Indonesian eateries is not to be missed. Since it was about lunchtime by the time we finished our beers, we decided to make that the first order of business.

The meal was tasty, but it was what we did afterward that made the most lasting mark on this particular noggin: What else?! The Heineken Brewery! We caught a streetcar to the brewery and did the ol’ tour. Like the Guinness Brewery, it’s a self-guided tour for the most part, with interactive exhibits and displays and so forth. Also like Guinness, and I’m sure every brewery for that matter, we scored free pints of the sudsy stuff. We’d already had one or so by the time we reached the rec room in the center of the brewery. This is where I had one of the greatest moments of my life. It doesn’t sound that way when I put it in words, but maybe that’s the point. Aren’t some of the most memorable moments of our lives those that could also be categorized as the simplest? In this instance, all I did was play foosball. There I was, buzzed on free Heineken, which I drank from Heineken’s Queen Mother tap, playing foosball. I couldn’t score a goal to save my life (see my remark about being buzzed). But even as Darren was waxing the floor with me, I said to him at one point, “You know what? I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life.” Think about it, right? I was drunk on free beer. Playing foosball. In Amsterdam. In the heart of Heineken. Jesus, how could life possibly be better?

Believe it or not, I haven’t even gotten to the really exciting stuff yet. For it was after the brewery that Darren and I paid a visit to one of this town’s innumerable and infamous “coffee shops.” For you non-initiated folk, a coffee shop in Amsterdam is where the last thing you’ll do is drink coffee. What you do instead is get high on pot. Believe it or not, they actually have menus. Darren and I picked one called Double Bubble Gum. We couldn’t even come close to finishing it. For my part, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve smoked a joint, so in no time I was coughing up everything short of a lung. Darren, meanwhile, who had a bit more experience, was sucking the smoke through that black glass bong like it was his job. I was more interested in having the guy who ran the joint (pun intended) bring me as many bottles of Coke as possible. My throat felt like the Sun. While Darren and I felt our brains blasting off to space, some youngster who looked barely drinking age came by and tried to sell us cocaine. He never made in the door before Boss Man chased him away.

Suddenly we were famished. We found our way to a diner and gorged ourselves on French fries with peanut sauce and mayo. My brother-in-law had actually told me about this delicacy ahead of time, so I wasn’t that freaked out. Nah, what freaked me out came next. When I got up to ask the guy behind the counter where the restroom was, he said upstairs. That’s all he said, upstairs. So I went up one level. I didn’t see it. I went up another level. Still no bathroom. Finally I reached the fourth floor and saw an open door. I went in and found a bathroom on my left.

Just as I unzipped, this voice behind me goes, “HEY!”

I spun around and lost my jaw as this thirtysomething guy marched up to me and demanded to know, in fluent English I might add, what in Christ I was doing trying to take a whizz in his flat. I can’t remember what I said. He showed me the word “PRIVATE” written on a fairly large sign outside his door. To be fair to me, though, the door was wide open when I got up there, so that sign was facing the wall. Nonetheless, his three or four house guests were rolling on their Dutch asses, and I felt humiliated.

When I got back to the table downstairs, I stared at Darren for about five minutes before his pot-addled brain registered the fact that I was staring at him. “What?” he said.

My fried green tomato brain took a good five or so minutes to digest his query before allowing me to say, “I broke into someone’s apartment to take a piss.”

Darren (after another five minutes): “What?”

And so on.

Eventually we left and parked ourselves on a public bench near the city center. I swear, we must’ve sat there on our vegetative asses, while our brains flirted with the International Space Station, for an hour or more. My memory’s understandably hazy, but I do remember the sun sinking out of view behind those Medieval row houses, the sky getting darker, and the air getting brisk and breezy. Finally I snapped at Darren that I was tired of sitting there freezing to death.

We found our way to the Red Light District. Man, talk about feeling like you’re on another planet. I swear to God, you had these gorgeous, near-naked babes behind these glass doors, each with a red light glowing above, staring out at the people walking by. I’d say at least half of them tapped their nails against the glass to get my attention. Did I ever acknowledge the tapping, you might wonder? That, my friend, is for another time, another place.

Ahem.

And the next morning, Darren and I flew back to Dublin for our last week of training the younglings.

Chapter Thirteen – Rain Man
As it turned out, that was the last week I had a job that I would characterize as interesting. When I got back to Pasadena, I was allowed to remain in what was left of International and audit the editors from across the pond while they built up enough experience to form an audit team of their own. This lasted until Thanksgiving. On the Monday following Thanksgiving (December 1, as it turned out), I joined the audit team in the U.S. market. I almost didn’t. Most of my fellow International brethren were absorbed into the huge U.S. editorial department. As luck would have it, though, about a month before I was due to do the same, one of the U.S. auditors resigned from the company. I applied and got the position. At the time, I was pretty happy not to have fallen back down the ladder into editorial.

As it turned out, though, maybe that’s what I should have done. It’s been nearly five years since I joined this God-forsaken team….and here I am, still there, still an auditor, my career path more frozen than the surface of Pluto. Meanwhile, many of those same International peeps who resigned themselves to becoming editors have since ascended the ladder, some of them well past me. Sometimes, if I simmer over this too long, I feel embarrassed, sometimes downright humiliated. I mean, here I am, thirty-two, and I have in no way, shape, or form built upon or augmented the skills with which I arrived on this team on December 1, 2003. The blame for this must lie partly with me. I could be more aggressive in pursuing career opportunities. Sometimes I am. Once, another candidate was picked over me. Two other times, the positions I applied for were rescinded when Yahoo! realized it didn’t have the budget to fill them.

Another chunk of the blame lies with my supervisor. This guy, man. To label his management style as passive or reactionary would give him far too much credit. Vegetative, on the other hand, would be much more accurate. For starters, even though I arrived on his team with over three years’ company experience, including a year and half of experience as the quality control guru for two countries, this weirdo would talk down to me like I was a baby. At first—and he admitted this—he thought I was brand new to the company. Now why would he think that? Didn’t he interview me for this position? As it turns out, no. I was interviewed by his predecessor. And then when I started on this team, the manager who’d interviewed me had taken a higher-up position while this Swiss cheese-brained nutjob, whom I’ll call Rain Man, assumed his position. Rain Man had formerly been one of the auditors on the team. I haven’t the slightest idea what got him the promotion. The more time goes on, the more of a mystery it remains.

In about a week’s time it became painfully obvious that as an auditor on the U.S. team, my responsibilities wouldn’t hold a candle to those I’d shouldered for International. Do you think that mattered? Do you think that gave me an edge at all, whatsoever, in the eyes of Rain Man? Nope.

None.

The fact is, even though no one came close to having the experience I had, they were earmarked for promotions before me. They’re still on the team, but they’re now known as Senior Analysts, whereas I’m still listed as Associate Analyst III, or some such nonsense.

Oh, but wait. It gets even better. One of the people who was already on the team when I joined was this petit gal named…what should I call her?...Player. My God, if there was ever someone with her face so far up her boss’s crack… Check it out. Player used Instant Messenger like it was her job. And a great deal of her IMing was with Rain Man. But when it came time for her to work, her wrists would hurt. Her wrists tormented her to the tune of several months’ absence at a time. Then she’d come back and “work” half-days (she really didn’t do shit, ever) while Rain Man played along with this farce. Indeed, many Fridays saw Rain Man going over to her house for fuckin’ bingo night. Bingo night!

But wait, it gives even better. Oh yes, dear reader. So, so, so much better. What I’m about to tell you will sound so outrageous, but please take my word for it: It’s all true. Indeed, as creative a writer as I like to fancy myself, what I’m about to relate to you is so God damned outrageous, I couldn’t have made it up if I'd strained every creative muscle in my body.

Chapter Fourteen: The People versus Larry Flynt
In July of 2004 we hired this little gremlin-lookin' fuck whom I'll call Larry Flynt. He was short and pudgy with spiky hair that was a different color every week, or at least every month. And he didn’t laugh so much as cackle. Larry Flynt had already been with the company three years at this point, working his way around various sections of editorial. Talk about ironic as all get-out, the last team he was on before ours was the fraud team. You'll get the irony of that in due course.

Within a week of joining our team, Larry Flynt had to take a two-month leave for back surgery, something he'd neglected to tell Rain Man during the interview process. Tick that off as red flag number one. When he returned that fall, we had to train him all over again so he could do his work. When he was there, that is. Yes, dear friend, in no time at all it became apparent that Larry Flynt was gaming the sick time policy like no one I'd ever known. No exaggeration, kids: Larry Flynt would take one sick day a week on average. The company has no limit to how many sick days we can take (obviously!). Larry Flynt took full advantage of that, knowing full well Rain Man wouldn’t call him on it.

Indeed, Larry Flynt's reputation for truancy preceded him when he joined our team. Had Rain Man checked his references? I can't imagine that he did. Or maybe he did but didn't care. Who in Christ knows at this point? At any rate, Larry Flynt took one, sometimes two, sick days a week. And lest you think I'm being paranoid, it was proven time and again that he really wasn't sick for most, if not all, of the innumerable sick days he took. That was proven, of all people, by Larry Flynt himself. I remember this time, during the week leading up to Easter in '06, where Larry Flynt called in sick both Tuesday and Wednesday. And then at our Friday meeting he admitted point blank that he and the wife had spent those days preparing this huge Easter feast. "Happy Easter! And fuck you very much!" Also that year, Larry and Mrs. Flynt opened up their own goth store in Pasadena. If I had a nickel for every time Larry Flynt called in sick so he could go work at the store, I could open a goth store of my own. Seriously, it became a running joke. Whenever he called in sick, one of us would call the store for shits and giggles and then giggle some more after the voice on the other end answered with, "This is Larry, how may I be of goth assistance?" And so on.

Even when Larry Flynt did bother showing up at the office, he didn't do any work. Just about everyone else on the team, at one point or another, had to help shoulder his dead weight while he surfed porn. Yes, you read that right: Larry Flynt was a porn addict. I shit you not. This is why I'm calling him Larry Flynt, by the by. Dude would sit there in his cubicle, mere feet from Rain Man, and peruse gallery after gallery of barely legal beaver. No joke! He'd spend hours looking at the trim. And everyone could see it. I mean everyone. The cubicle walls aren't very high. So you'd have everyone and their cousin walk by over time and see King Perv browsing the taco. And then they'd go back and tell their friends and coworkers. In time, this God-forsaken team became less of a team and more of a punch line to a bad joke. The reputation that suffered the most, of course, was Rain Man's. He's the boss of this team. Larry Flynt's porn surfing on company time wasn't a problem in and of itself. It was more like a symptom. The illness itself was--and still is--the complete lack of leadership. Again, if Rain Man had a modicum of leadership ability, there isn't a straight man's chance in a lesbian bar that Larry Flynt would have lasted a year on this team, let alone the three and half years during which he not only survived, but thrived.

At one point I was so livid that I went to Rain Man's boss as well as HR to see if I could blow the roof off this nuthouse once and for all. I tell ya, I'd’ve been better off smacking a tennis ball against a brick wall. No one did dick about it (pun intended). The insanity continued. We have two women on our team (Player had resigned by this time). They could have gone to HR screaming sexual harassment. Neither of them did.

Six months ago Larry Flynt went the way of punk courtesy of the company layoffs. Yahoo! laid off about a thousand or so people worldwide during the second week of February. About a hundred of those people were in the Burbank office where I work. And Larry Flynt, thank fucking Judas, was one of them. I'd've done cartwheels if I knew I wouldn't break my neck. The glee was short lived, of course. He was a symptom of the problem. Not the problem itself. The fact remains that I still work on a team that has no leadership to speak of. My career path continues to stagnate.

Chapter Fifteen: I’m Not Athletic So Deal with It!
Besides wasting my life on a bad joke of a team, the past five years have seen me writing my ass off while sinking in the bullshit waters of the L.A. dating scene. Do I sound bitter to you? That’s ‘cause I most definitely am. Hey, what do you expect? My two aspirations outside of work are: A) Become a published novelist/produced screenwriter; and B) Find a woman with whom I can enter into a long-term relationship that will ultimately lead to marriage and babies. I was in my mid twenties when I set out on these two paths. And now here I am, just turned thirty-two, still standing at the heads of both paths. Pathetic, isn’t it? Without my best friend Netflix, I don’t know what I’d do.

For the whole dating thing, I’ve tried a good share of those online deals. I’m talking Match.com, Yahoo! Personals, eHarmony, Cupid.com, HurryDate. You name the absurd shit, I’ve tried it. I’ve created innumerable online profiles, I’ve set up dates with people whose profiles were deemed a good match, I’ve done those speed dating thingamabobs. Don’t you dare think I’m picky either. I’ve met several women through all those sites with whom I thought there was potential. So why didn’t any of them pan out? How in Christ do I know? Well, I mean I guess I do know. I didn’t float their proverbial boats.

As with most things, there are two sides to this. On the one hand, I just wasn’t what those women were looking for. If I had a nickel for every woman’s profile that said they were looking for someone athletic, I could buy my own army of trainers to make me the most athletic bastard this side of the Pecos. On the other hand, I have an idea that some of the women I met didn’t have a freakin’ clue what they wanted. For many of the ones I met in person, I fit the “Looking for” part of their profile to the T. But then after an hour or so of chatting, usually at some Starbucks somewhere, they’d turn tepid. I dunno. I guess I can’t blame them. It’s all about chemistry, right? Either it’s there or it isn’t.

‘Only thing for it, as Socrates used to say, is to keep on keepin’ on. I’ll find her someday. Right? Right?!

Last December, an interesting plot twist developed in the relationship story. I was contacted through Facebook by a gal I used to know back in high school. Her name's Patricia. We were really close friends during sophomore year. Mind you, it was never anything more than that, but the following year, when she was dating someone else, she signed my yearbook saying she'd been in love with me. Since then I'd have these moments now and again where I'd kick myself in the pants for letting her get away. Well, son of a gun, now here she was on Facebook! She flew out to visit me in April of this year, and then all of three weeks later I went to her place in Philly. Since then we've been keeping in touch mostly via e-mail. Will this lead anywhere? Hard to say. At the very least we'll resume the whole being pals thing. But our two visits this year had a romantic layer to them that suggests this might go even further. 'Course, that would mean either my relocating to Philly or her starting a new life out here. It's very hard to predict at this stage, but it's exciting all the same that we reconnected.

Chapter Sixteen: Mad Hatter
Now what about my writing? The lack of commercial success on this front is mostly my fault. It’s not that I haven’t been writing. Quite the contrary, I’ve been writing my ass off. I’m a veritable machine, man. Check it out: In the ten years I've lived out here, I’ve churned out four novels in addition to three screenplays. I’ve finished first drafts of my fourth and fifth screenplays and will have them polished up by this time next year. Nah, productivity isn’t my problem. It's the whole trying-to-sell-them thing, about which I haven't been very proactive. I don’t know anyone in the business, so the only way I can get people’s attention is by sending out query letters. So why haven't I been doing more of that, you might ask? Because I've been busy doing the actual writing, silly! When you're writing a novel, right? Or a script? You're wearing what I like to call the creative hat. But when you're trying to craft a decent query letter and synopsis, you're wearing the marketing hat. You're supposed to switch completely from being an introverted artist to this slickster pitch man. Well, you know what? That's kind of hard to do at the same time. I mean, I admit I have a big head, but it's not big enough to wear two diametrically opposed hats.

That's actually a bullshit excuse. Of course it's big enough to wear two hats. Shit, I could wear five. Bring 'em on! And that's why this spring, at long last, I began the painfully monotonous exercise of querying while maintaining my productivity. For the most part. I admit the querying's been sort of going in fits and starts, but at least I'm doing it. And I've actually gotten some requests to read material. Remember, a query is a simple one-page pitch letter. It doesn't summarize the plot, but simply introduces the prospective agent to the story with a hook and the gist of the story's main conflict (but not how it ends, that's for the synopsis....if they ask for that). The vast majority of the time, as a matter of course, all you're going to get back is a form rejection letter. If you get back a personalized letter asking for more material, such as the first few chapters or what have you, that's pretty cool. In barely three months of doing this, I've already gotten a couple requests. Woo hoo! They didn't like the chapters, though, and so they ended up as rejections anyway. Damn! Nonetheless, I'm glad to see I'm getting the whole querying thing right so soon. In fact, last week I got yet another request for chapters. I just sent that out the other day with the reminder not to get my hopes up too high.

But wait. I'm not being completely honest. There's actually one more reason why I procrastinated to the bejesus with the whole querying thing. I think that--subconsciously or whatever--I'm so scared of being a failed (read: unpublished/unproduced) writer that I didn't even want to put my material out there and deal with all the inevitable rejection. As every successful writer and their cousins will tell you, rejection truly is inevitable. You have to accept it as a matter of course. Writing is such an ungodly subjective business that what elicits a cold non-reaction from one agent could just as well be welcomed with open arms by another. I mean shit. We've all heard about that one guy who typed up The Yearling, right? So this dude in Florida, who obviously had way too much time on his hands but was nonetheless bound and determined to make a point, took that novel The Yearling and transcribed it word for word on his computer. Then he queried agents and publishers as if it were his own novel. I assume he gave it a different title. Anyway, point is, it was rejected by everyone. Mind you, this was a novel that won the Pulitzer. Did I mention this business was subjective?

You know, in a way it's kinda like dating in that it's a numbers game. With dating, I just need to keep putting myself out there until I meet that one gal with whom I just click. Same with writing. I need to keep putting myself out there, learn to don a thick rhino skin, and weather the rejections like so many arrows bouncing off my hide. And hope--pray! plead with the heavens!--that I don't find myself in old age with a not a single piece of writing sold.

Chapter Seventeen: See You at the Vigentennial!
Whelp! That about does 'er. Sorta wraps 'er all up.

What have I gotten out of the last ten years? Is it like that Merle Travis song where I'm another day older and deeper in debt? Maybe if I were a Kentucky coalminer, which is what that song's about, I would be. I'm not saying that working a dead-end shit job is all that much different from mining coal, I'm just saying I'm not that cynical. Yet.

As I said at the beginning, I wanted there to be a point to writing all this. I suppose my main point was to try to figure out how I've changed/grown/evolved as a result of all the experiences I've documented here. If were to go back to 1998 and meet myself, have a couple beers with myself, and then come back to 2008 and do the same with my present-day self, no doubt I would come away thinking: "Yep, he sure has changed." But in what ways?

This might sound trite as all here, but here goes.

I'm definitely more patient. At the same time, though, I'm less timid about going after what I want. Shit, I mean, a year and a half ago, when I had my focal employee review for 2006, I was so indignant with the feedback that I went to Rain Man's boss as well as to HR to lodge a complaint that Rain Man was defrauding me of a career path. The focal was a sham based on no solid evidence whatsoever, whereas in my appeal I was very careful to go by the data and not be too inflammatory. It accomplished nothing, but I never would have had a big enough pair to try something like that this time last decade.

Speaking of confrontational, I've gotten less so, appealing my focal notwithstanding. No, really, I've gotten a million times better about letting it go if I feel offended or slighted or ridiculed. Traveling helped with that. The best way to achieve and maintain an even temperament is to get out there and see what's going on in the world. No doubt you'll come upon people who are shouldering problems and stresses that make your life look like a picnic.

But also, I don't think I've changed completely. Indeed, I think there's always a part of your personality or temperament that's fully developed by high school and then never leaves you no matter what experiences you have. You know? For instance, let's say you have this sixteen-year-old who's prone to interrupt people during conversations. He doesn’t do it to be mean, it’s just his nature to jump in before you’re finished. Well, this might get tempered temporarily at various stages of his life, but by the time he's, say, seventy-six, at least a part of that nature will remain. So if he meets a high school chum he hasn't seen in sixty years, that chum might be like, "Yeah, you've changed in some ways, but you still cut me off!"

For my part, when I was in high school, I was painfully shy about approaching women. Today? I've gotten better at overcoming my shyness, suppressing it when I need to, but that fundamental timidity is still there. And it probably always will be.

Another thing I've gotten better at doing is being grateful for what I have: The ol' good health; a low-stress job with decent pay and benefits and no dress code to speak of (hello, boxers and flip-flops!); a huge apartment for relatively low rent; a broad cultural palette that allows me to enjoy a wide range of books, movies, and theater; a quick flight to Vegas; a new home town where the weather is awesome nearly every day of the freakin' year; a family back east with whom I get along famously and whom I get to visit every year. Ya know. Stuff like that. I've gotten better at focusing on the good stuff rather than brooding and sulking that my writing hasn't caught fire yet, or that I can’t find the right gal.

That leads me to the single greatest lesson the past ten years have taught me: Life is short. It's very, very short, far too short to let little arrows stay lodged in my gut. You know how Einstein said it was impossible for anything to travel faster than light? I disagree. There is one thing that goes faster. It's called time.