Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility (35 page)

Daniel's new L.A. gallery has select pieces of furniture from the
Eames era interspersed throughout the space, showcased like the marvels in design that they are. Some of them could have actually come
from my mother's living room for all I know, as we didn't live far from
here when I'd helped catapult these classics out of our lives. I'd love
to get them back, of course, but I inevitably wonder what, exactly,
I'm hoping to re-create-my old living room or my old life. In either
case it's impossible. In either case the pursuit deflects from what I do
have-an exacerbating life full of accidents, some happy and some
not-so, that led the four of us here to L.A. to sell a television show-so
I try not to be so quick to catapult things from my life anymore. I try
not to be so blind to their value.

I CANNOT BELIEVE LARY DIDN'T GET A MEXICAN vasectomy when he
had the chance. He and Grant had already ditched Daniel in San
Diego on their way to Tijuana, and Grant was off in some skank-ass
Latin gay bar with his hands down a Mexican man's pants, so it's not
like those two were there to hold Lary back or anything, not that they
would.

"You're right there," I said. He'd called me while standing there
right outside the clinic; if I was next to him, I'd have pushed him
inside. "Whats stopping you?"

"A flesh-eating staph infection," he answered.

Firm in my conviction that not everyone should propagate, I
responded, "Get yet ass in that clinic, or I'll castrate you myself."

To be fair, though, Lary did not go to Tijuana to get a vasectomy, he went there to get drugs-your basic assload of pain relievers,
antipsychotics, and other generic-brand mood-morphing substances.
The big bag of inhalers, like the possible vasectomy, was an impulse
purchase, as was the other asthma medication. Not that any of them
have asthma. Lary's cancer-stricken friend, the one from whom Lary
usually procures his drugs, has either passed away or, worse, passed so
far into the realm of present-day depleted medical care that he can no
longer afford to share his drug supply with Lary. So Lary decided to
take things into his own hands with the Tijuana drugstore drill.

The side trip to Tijuana was an impulse in itself, as it was the only
way I could talk Lary into coming to California with us. For months I'd planned to storm Hollywood studios regarding an idea for a new
series, and Jesus Christ wouldn't you know they, like, let me in. They
scheduled me some actual goddamn appointments! The first thing
I did was call Lary. I cannot possibly go to Hollywood for a meeting with television executives without bringing Lary and the rest of
the boys to properly pollinate the air with their craziness molecules.
"What's your fucking credit card number?" I yelled when he finally
picked up the phone, as I'd already pulled up the airline Web site.
But it wasn't until I suggested the Tijuana drug drill that Lary finally
coughed up his account information. Daniel, of course, didn't hesitate. The boy is more broke than a beggar in Bangladesh, but credit
companies keep sending him cards.

The day after we got to California, everybody scattered like freshly
hatched spiders. The first thing those three did was ditch me in Hollywood, but to be fair I guess they had no choice, seeing as how I had
those meetings and all. Then they took my rental car and headed for
the border. When they called me a few hours later, drunk and screaming from inside a Tijuana cantina, I asked them to please pass the phone
to someone sober. "Put Daniel on the line," I said, spending a patient
moment of silence gazing at Milly's photo on my cell phone.

And then they told me they'd ditched Daniel in San Diego.

Crap, I thought, because between those three, Daniel is the only
one with a legitimate need for prescription drugs. So I hung up on
Lary and called Daniel, who was sitting under a tree in Balboa Park,
all serene and perfectly trusting in his belief that Grant and Lary
would come back for him. I put my head in my hands and wished I'd accepted that handful of generic Valium my flight-attendant friend
offered me after her trip to Lima last month.

Because, seriously, I'm amazed I don't do drugs. I'm amazed I
don't just soak in a Jacuzzi of narcotics every night. When I was in college, it certainly seemed I was headed that direction, but then college
itself is what stopped me when I realized I couldn't afford my tuition
if I continued to blow my earnings on blow. Then after college, what
stopped me was my airline job, since the easiest way to pass a drug test
was to not take drugs.

Now here I was talking to Lary again, this time as he stood outside a Tijuana clinic wondering if he should get a quickie vasectomy
while he waits for Grant to finish groping Mexicans. "What's stopping
you?" I asked again.

"What's stopping you?" he countered, referring to the drugs. "You
always have some excuse."

Sugar is my drug of choice these days-and I can proudly say there
have been whole periods that lasted almost entire
weekends when I don't touch the stuff.
Alcohol is a much more fun addictionyou get to have indiscriminant sex as a
side effect and everything-while sugar
is just ... sugar. People feed it to their
kids, for chrissakes.

So here I was, no longer being regularly
drug tested, and I thought for one gleeful moment that maybe I could
test my toe in those waters again. Maybe I will snork a couple of bong bowls when the boys get back. Then we can all lie around laughing
until we cough up our own shoes. Why not?

But as I was about to say this to Lary, I saw Milly's picture again,
right there on my cell phone.

It made me think of a time not too long ago in Atlanta when I was
late to lunch again, which was no big surprise. Grant and Lary always
acted affronted by this, as if I was applying for a job with them rather
than showing up for my normal dose of denigration. They should
be more like Daniel, I say, whose practice is to just go about lunch
as though he didn't have a date with me at all; then when I finally do
appear, he's super happy to see me. "Why can't you two blowfish be
more like Daniel?" I griped as I sat down, which gave them the cue to
rise as though lunch were over.

"At least you made it in time to say goodbye," Grant quipped,
rising to leave.

"Sit down, Lord Jesus God," I hollered, and they did, but not
because I begged them to. The real reason is because there was still a
drop or two left in their cocktail glasses. "I'm sorry I'm late," I sighed,
"The city is laying new roads and the asphalt is all torn up like pork
chops after a pit-bull attack."

This is not the real reason, but one that will do. The real reason is
that I spent the morning rummaging through my closet to find clothes
to fit my mom-body, something these two cinder blocks will never
understand. By the time I finished wailing and got dressed, I was so late
for lunch that the kitchen was closed and Lary had to begrudgingly let
me nibble on his leftovers. Not that he wanted them for himself. No, the real reason is he likes to take any opportunity to point out that,
unlike me, he has not gained one single pound since we met fifteen
years ago.

"Look, loser," I tell him, "when I want to sign up for the Lary
Blodgett coffee-enema-and-Internet-amphetamine diet, I'll make sure
to tell you so we can shop for matching hospital gowns. But for now
I'd like to live, so fork over the tuna roll, turdball."

"Bitch, have a cocktail," Grant insisted. It's been years since I
quit drinking, but Grant acts like this is just a phase, as though it's
just a matter of catching me in the right mood and I'll have my shirt
open demanding people suck body shots off my hooters like half his
customers at closing time. I think it must be because my drinking
didn't go out with a bang. There was no DUI or twelve-step program
or regrettable binge when I woke up in bed with three bullwhips and a
colostomy bag or anything. I simply lost my taste for alcohol one day
and stopped drinking it, that's all.

Of course, though all that is true, it's not the real reason. Whenever I try to explain the real reason to these guys, they wave me off like
an annoying gnat. Maybe Grant does get it a little, because he's a parent and sometimes I think he understands. Because the real reason I
don't drink is because I have a kid now, and I have already made things
hard enough by publishing a book with the word "Bitch" in the title,
which, let's face it, revels in the debauchery of my youth. All it took
was one verbally abusive parent at my daughter's preschool, armed
with a complete inability to put things in proper context, and before I
knew it my girl and I were ostracized to playdate wasteland.

Now, as I've always told Milly, "Judgment is more revealing of the
person passing it than the person receiving it." But that's not a lot of
comfort to a kid when the other kids can't come over because their parents have been told her mom is a wild partier. Maybe I could have stood
on principle and ended my abstinence to drink moderately like the other
parents, but all I know is that my principles can't climb the monkey bars
with my kid. So I wish I could give you a super colorful reason for why
I don't drink-like how I woke up in jail in a puddle of some post-op
tranny prostitute's vomit or something, but that is not the real reason.

"C'mon, have a margarita," Grant joked.

"Can't. Gotta work," I said. Again, not the real reason, but one
that would do.

Now the boys are down in Mexico, or scattered in that direction,
anyway, beckoning me to party with them, and I have to admit it's
tempting. My girl is safe somewhere else, cared for by family members
so I could be free to make this sojourn back to my California roots
on the wave of my success; what better way to celebrate the full circle
than to revel a little in the same debauchery that made up most of the
material that got me here?

"What's stopping you?" Lary asked again, hollering over the mariachi music in the background. "You better pick up Daniel on your way
back," I told Lary instead, "or I'll personally rip out your kidneys."

At that I hung up but kept the phone open and gazed at Milly's
face. When I look at her face, I practically want to fall over backward
and fling my arms out with pride. Her face. Her little face. It is so
unfailingly dear to me it stops my breath, among other things.