The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (8 page)

The Australian grabbed a slice of lemon from the bar, tilted his head back and opened his eyes wide. “First, you squirt the lemon in your eye.” He did so, without even wincing. I winced for him.

“Then,”—he picked up a drinking straw and a salt shaker, pouring a line of salt onto the bar—“you snort the salt …”

Snnniiiiiffff …

Jesus Christ.

“And then … you drink the tequila.”

“AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE!”

Slam.

Now, come on, Michael—your turn. Might help you grow some balls.”

Michael smiled again. “Maybe later.”

Two hours later and the toga party was in full thrust.

As anticipated, we’d almost been turned away at the door by the two burly security guards hired to keep the likes of us well away from these poor, impressionable girls. But Sandi and Mandy had spotted us and dragged us inside. “Come on! Janet is dying
²⁴
to meet you.”

We followed Mandy and Sandi to the buffet table and free bar where Janet—an older woman wearing what was clearly a professionally made toga, rented for the occasion—was standing with a group of
other tutors. They looked like serious people; we’d have to bring our A-game.

And how the lies flowed. No, we didn’t know much about hair ourselves—our friend Robert took care of that side of things—we were more the business people; the brains who kept everything on track. “He cuts hair, we cut costs,” I joked and we all laughed. Seriously, where was this shit coming from? And it got worse.

“Paul and I would love to visit your school,” I heard Michael saying.

And then I was nodding: “A guest lecture? We could definitely do that, couldn’t we, Michael?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“This coming April? Perfect.”

Sandi and Mandy were standing a couple of feet away, lapping it up. We finished talking to Janet and got her business card—which I’ve carried in my wallet ever since, just to prove to myself and anyone else that it really happened—and promised to call to arrange the lecture.

Then, after promising Mandy and Sandi that we wouldn’t leave without them—as if—we’d grabbed a couple of ridiculous Hawaiian cocktail things and headed towards the dance floor.

“So,” said Michael, “what do you think about the road trip idea now? This could be us every night in LA and San Diego. Bullshitting our way into parties at night and working hard all day.”

Frankly, at this stage of the evening I couldn’t have given less of a shit about work. I’d figure that out later. All I could think about were the possibilities this party had shown me; how ridiculous life could be with a little bit of effort. Thanks to our ability to lie convincingly, but basically harmlessly, Michael and I were drinking free booze in Las Vegas, surrounded by hundreds of beautiful girls dressed only in bed sheets. We were the only straight men in the room.

There was a very real chance I’d be taking either Mandy or Sandi
back to my spa bath tonight: in the room that was costing me the exact same as my apartment in London. Why the hell would I ever want to go back to that life? If it wasn’t for the fact that the Hawaiian punch was my first drink of the day—I’d been too hung-over until then—I’d think it was the booze talking. But it wasn’t. This was a totally sober epiphany.

What if I didn’t ever go back? What if I stopped thinking of this as a one-year experiment with a neatly defined goal at the end and just made it my life? Living in hotels, talking my way into adventures and supporting myself with freelance gigs?

If tonight was anything to go by, I’d hardly be short of things to write about: surely at least one editor would be interested in the story of me, Michael and a few hundred girls in togas? I’d been telling myself that I had to cut down on drinking and figure out my life before I was thirty—but why?

I remembered Michael’s earlier allusion to Hunter S. Thompson. Like most young ego-driven writers, I’m a ridiculous gonzo fanboy, but the fact remained that Thompson—and writers like him—had shown the world that it was entirely possible to spend your whole life drinking and partying and having ridiculous adventures and yet still somehow survive. Hell, when Thompson shot himself he was nearly seventy.

What was it he always said? “Buy the ticket, take the ride”? Michael was still waiting for me to answer his question.

“So? LA? Shall we go?”

“What a ridiculous question,” I said. “Of course we shall.”

We bumped fists—the ironic post-Obama handshake—necked our ridiculous drinks and trod carefully across the dance floor towards the
door, all too aware that one misplaced step could trigger a wardrobe malfunction of epic proportions.

We could quite happily have stayed in that room all night—all week, even—but Mandy and Sandi were ready to leave and we didn’t want to let them out of our sights. All being well, we’d see the rest of these amazing girls in April when we visited the Paul Mitchell school in San Diego to deliver our acclaimed lecture (with PowerPoints) on the Business of Hair. The fact that our lecture didn’t exist and that neither Michael nor I knew the first thing about opening a hair salon was a trivial detail.

“I mean,” I said, as we walked past the bouncer, who was busy explaining to a giant Australian drunk that he wasn’t his “mate,” “it’s only hair. How much can there be to know about hair?”

“Well, exactly—that’s what Wikipedia’s for, right?”

“Good morning, gentlemen.” Ten a.m., and the parking valet outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel was grinning, as well he might. The jet-black Mustang convertible that Michael had rented earlier that morning, using my credit card, was a beast of a car—with gleaming chrome wheels and a V8 engine. None of that power would be much use in Los Angeles traffic, of course, but that problem was six hours and an entire desert away. Right now, all I cared about was that I was about to get behind the wheel of a car that made me drool.

With a satisfying clunk of the release mechanism and a whir of hydraulics, the roof of the Mustang slid back. Michael threw his duffel bag into the back, tipped the valet the last of his poker winnings and leapt,
Dukes of Hazzard
-style, into the passenger seat beside me. I tried to do the same thing, but hadn’t bargained for the steering wheel.

Now we just had to locate Michelle. She was supposed to meet us outside the hotel at 9:30, but was already half an hour late. We called her cell phone, and her room at the Excalibur, but there was no answer at either. We were just starting to get worried, when finally she emerged, blinking at the sunshine, hair pulled under a baseball cap that we’d never seen before, pulling her suitcase along behind her. She was clearly wearing last night’s clothes. And a huge grin.

“Good night, dear?” I asked as she scrambled over Michael’s bag into the car’s tiny back seat, wedging her suitcase in beside her.

“Oh my GOD yes!”

“You didn’t seem to be in your room when we called earlier,” Michael said, with a smile.

Michelle’s grin broadened. “I met someone last night. He was amazing!”

“We probably don’t need to hear the details,” said Michael, trying to figure out how to get some music out of the satellite radio. But Michelle couldn’t help herself.

“Oh my God, babes, I’m not kidding, he was so hot. And he had these amazing arms. He just picked me up and threw me around the bed like a rag doll. It was the best sex I’ve ever had. I think he was Australian—Nikki and I met him in the hotel bar. You won’t believe what he was drinking … He put this line of salt on the bar and … what?”

With a screech of expensive tires, I gunned the Mustang out onto the Strip, Michael gripping the armrest with both hands.

“You have driven on the right before, haven’t you?” he yelled, with only a hint of panic.

“The right? Oh, yeah—shit—thanks.”

Even when lurching across four lanes of traffic to avoid a head-on collision with a stretch Hummer, the Mustang V8 handles like a dream. After only a couple of wrong turnings and a misunderstanding involving a stop light and some more oncoming traffic, we were
soon heading toward Interstate 15, on the correct side of the road.

In a few hours we’d be in Los Angeles. The City of Angels—where every day a dozen dreams are realized and a thousand are shattered; where every cab driver has a screenplay on the passenger seat and all the waiters are just “resting”; where even the dorky girls are ten feet tall and where they sell casting couches in Ikea. And where I’d decided to open up the throttle on my new life as a permanent, hotel-dwelling nomad. A man bouncing from adventure to adventure, supporting himself through a combination of writing gigs and bullshit.

A man with no responsibilities, just a determination never to get stuck in a rut again. A man without a plan. Ticket bought, let the ride begin.

F
ADE IN …

OPENING CREDITS—A MONTAGE OF SCENES FROM A ROAD TRIP

 

A rented black convertible Mustang tears along a desert road. PAUL is driving, MICHAEL is in the passenger seat while MICHELLE sleeps on the back seat, a ridiculous grin on her face. For some reason.

They arrive in LA, three hours late, after sitting in ten miles of traffic outside the city. MICHAEL leaves the car and walks into his luxury hotel in downtown LA, paid for by the company he’s meeting in town. The hotel has no more vacancies.

PAUL and MICHELLE drive around for another hour before, battered by tiredness, PAUL insists they check into the next hotel they see: the Super 8 Motel. The Hollywood sign can be seen in the distance.

 

INT. HOTEL ROOM—NIGHT

 

PAUL and MICHELLE sit in their hotel room. It’s like the inside of every motel room you’ve ever seen: two double beds with faded top sheets, a small bathroom with a bare light bulb. The Wi-Fi is broken.
Paul is hunched over, trying to check his email on his phone while Michelle eats the yogurt that she insisted PAUL stop to buy even though she knew he was fucking exhausted and just wanted a beer.

PAUL looks up from his phone and we see he has a thick stripe of sunburn running, like an angry red sweatband, across the top of his forehead. He does look ridiculous.

PAUL picks up the baseball cap, pulls it over his burnt forehead and heads for the door.

SLAM. PAUL closes the door behind him.

FADE OUT.

I called Michael. It went straight to voicemail; either his meeting had run very late, or he had decided to crash early too. Lightweights, both of them.

Ah well, I’d just find a bar, text him the address and see if he turned up. I walked the length of the street—something unheard of in LA—but could only find one place that looked like a bar; literally a hole in the wall with an old Mexican man selling beer to patrons sitting on plastic stools.

I decided instead to rely on the old taxi driver recommendation trick. I hailed the next cab that passed and hopped in the back. The clock on the dashboard said 11 p.m.

“Hi, I’m looking for somewhere to get a drink—something not too touristy. Where do people go around here?”

The cab driver looked at me through the rear-view mirror. “What you like? You like girls?”

“Not if I have to pay for them. I just want a bar that stays open late.”

“Everywhere shuts at two a.m.—California licensing laws. But I know a good place.”