Archive Project - Previously Unpublished Work #2 - Lost Angeles

Archive Project - Previously Unpublished Work #2 - Lost Angeles

Lost Angeles is a short story that might someday see print, but that I have decided to post here as it is something I still kind of like that I have written, and that does not happen very often. I am possibly going to include or reference Lost Angeles in some form in the Oxymoron project.

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Lost Angeles, A Short Story ©1996

Being lost stinks. Men hate to admit this because it might mean that it's our fault or that we can't find our own way. It's probably some sort of evolutionary byproduct from our drag-the-women-around-by-the-hair-and-make-ugh-noises phase of development. Two men in a car that are lost might even be worse, where we still can't admit it while driving lest we risk emasculating ourselves in front of one of our brethren.
We were lost.
Lost Angeles has a way of doing that to a driver with its mish-mash and criss-cross of highways. Of course, we might as well as been lost in Bologna, Italy or some place like that, since neither of us had a clue about either place. At least we were in the US. It's not like we were sitting on a train in the middle of #*(%ing Switzerland with a bunch of drunk German soccer fans singing songs at 4AM and buying more beer at every stop.
Cigarette smoke so thick I'd smoked a pack just breathing normally.
"No thanks, I've already smoked two #*(%ing packs tonight!" I should have said to the guy the third time he offered me a smoke. No, I had to be the polite tourist. Besides, aren't people supposed to bum smokes off of others and not peddle them. You'd think the guy was a Tobacco Industry guy or some damn thing. Naw, he didn't look that sleazy.
We were just two guys lost while driving in LA and breathing its air.
It seemed like as good an excuse as any to get to see the area. A warm summer evening driving about as tourists. There wasn't a real agenda that night so why not?
Why not?
Los Angeles ...
... and man were we lost. The testosterone level in the car wouldn't allow us to confront the issue though.
"Only a few more minutes," my friend said.
Uh huh, I thought, a few more minutes to where?
"You're the driver," was all I replied.
That must have pissed him off. Next exit we pulled off and he headed on a beeline toward the nearest convenience store. We were on a tight budget, so he couldn't afford to pay for anything we could get elsewhere. Not at convenience store prices. It looked like it was the only place stupid enough to be open at this time of night in this neighborhood.
LA is supposed to be a hip hop happening place but nothing was going on. Hell, there should have been some gang fights in the streets or something if the tv reports up north were as accurate and trustworthy as they claimed to be. After watching my local news I should have been scared to think of LA, let alone travel there. I looked around, it was like the world's most heavily populated ghost town, at least where we were.
I remarked this brilliant observation to my friend.
He must have still been pissed off at me for knowing that we were lost and pointing it out to him despite the unwritten rules of masculinity.
This neighborhood had residents. There were lights on all over, window shades drawn, walls around homes. The places were like luxury fortresses.
"They're prisoners," my friend finally replied as we pulled up to the little store.
I didn't ask him exactly what he meant. There are such things as stupid questions after all, the people who think otherwise are wrong.
For some reason I decide to wait in the car. Like it might be gone if we turn our backs on it. I hate to wait in the car, it's like I'm helpless or in trouble or something.
"Wait in the car," my friend hadn't actually said it but these things can still be heard through the silence of a pissed off buddy's aura.
I spin the dial looking for English language stations. The Spanish stations are fun to listen to but I flunked French in High School and not Spanish so I can't understand a word. Sometimes though I think I get the point anyway, but that's another story.
There comes a point in your life when you realize that the rest of the world really doesn't speak English and talking really loud and really slow to these people simply does not help bridge the communications gap. It's a frightening moment of realization about the world. Especially when you are in the midst of these people and at their collective mercy. Moments like that and you'll wish you were bilingual. There's a lot more of them than there are of us. Suddenly, not flunking French makes a lot more sense than it did when I was seventeen. Hell, I have a hard enough time some days with English and I think in that language and have spoken it my whole life.
Amazingly, there are at least four stations playing the same hot hit hip song at the same time. The song doesn't get any better by the fourth station so I end up listening to a Dodger game for a minute. My friend hops back in the car by this point, changes the station back to that damn song - on a different station no less - and we head off again.
He didn't seem to have purchased anything and he's far too strait to have held up the place so he must have asked for direction. I smugly sit in silence, enduring the Top 40 crap my friend is so suddenly so interested in.
A few blocks later we pull over and stop on the side of the road. My friend gets out of the car and pops the hatch. For a little car with a hatch and a zillion miles per gallon it's surprisingly comfortable. The Japanese should be commended for such craftsmanship.
"The guy in the store threatened to shoot me," my friend says as he hops back in the car. I can't imagine that this is the first time he's been threatened like that in his life, I almost tell him but bite my tongue. He looks seriously agitated.
"What's with the sandles?" I actually do ask.
"The guy kept staring at my shoes and asking me if I was in a gang."
"At least he spoke English," I remark.
My friend does not laugh.
"Change your #*(%ing shoes at the next stop," my friend does not seem to be asking.
It seems like a long time until that next stop. In retrospect, those drunk, chain smoking German soccer fans were a lot less threatening. I just couldn't understand what they were saying other than some names. Rowdy enthusiasm from soccer fans in Europe would at first glance seem like a suicidal predicament. I heard later that their team had won and I felt better for the train crew who had to take them back. Of course, it took me two weeks to cough up all that shit out of my lungs. I really miss those people right now.
Too bad I didn't get any addresses. They can't complain that I don't write.
The names even escape me. They told and I was able to figure that out, like I said, since charades is the universal language.
The switch to sandles is made. I was better off travelling as a vagrant in a land where I didn't speak the language. They were a lot nicer to this English as an only language speaker over there than they are over here.
We pull into a motel.
Places like this are educational. You see them dimly lit in movies and everybody just knows that they are bad. the roaches scurry as the light goes on, which is enough reason to leave. Of course, we couldn't. Well, we wouldn't anyway, we just couldn't get our money back and didn't have enough money to go elsewhere. The little guy at the front desk said he could sell us some roach spray before disappearing into a back room.
"We're staying?" I dare ask.
"For eight hours."
"Eight?"
"This is an hourly place."
"Oh."
"What?"
"We bought eight hours ... we must look like a cute couple to that guy."
"No."
"I'll bet that crossed his mind."
"Don't let it cross yours."
There is no way I should dignify that with a response. So I do it anyway, "Yeah ... ight."
"I mean it."
"I know."
There is no reason whatsoever that I should have had to answer that question twice.
"This is twice in a row that we've gone to bed before ten. We're getting fucking old," I say.
The next day we get up early and cruise about town. We go to a soccer game there in LA. Other than us there were like three other people there who spoke English. I felt better.
The trick was to get back up North without getting lost again. Home to my familiar dangers ...
... where I don't need no stinking directions and can wear my shoes into a store in peace.