The Battle of Los Angeles Part 6: LA Woman

  This is not a love story. 

            When the rewrite money ran out and THE ART OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY didn’t sell I realized I had to get a real job type job. I wanted something which would allow me to have days free to go on meetings and write, so I applied at a liquor store in West Hollywood, across the street from Fuse Entertainment. The liquor store was somewhat ironically a drug free work place. Even though my cocaine days were behind me, I was still a regular weed smoker so I needed to find a solution. I asked myself “What would George Costanza do?” I figured he’d get some clean piss. Well, as luck would have it, Maloney didn’t party and he might love SEINFELD as much as me. So, when I asked if I could use his ‘sample’ for some sitcomesque hijinks, his exact response was “My heart and bladder are full.” I walked into the testing facility with two small squeeze bottles of Maloney’s pee tucked into my pants, one behind my belt buckle at my waist, one tucked underneath my junk, held securely in place by snug boxer briefs. Every sign in the testing facility was in Korean, but I eventually found the office. They asked me to have a seat and wait and I lowered myself gingerly so as not to smash the bottle full of another man’s urine I had secretly tucked under my balls. They called me up and a guy went into the bathroom with me. He ushered me to a stall and showed me the fill line on the cup. I had to use both bottles. He left the stall, I unzipped my pants, removed the bottles and squeezed the sample into the cups. The noise sounded exactly like I was peeing into them, but the splash-back was not easy to control. “I got it all over my hands!” I screamed. “It happens,” the orderly replied before I vigorously washed up. That night, my friend Michael’s band was playing at the Wiltern, which was a short walk from my Koreatown studio, so some people came over to pregame and a buddy ended up crashing on my couch cuz he was too drunk to drive. When I woke up, he was gone but I had an apologetic text from him.  He had drunkenly pissed all over my couch. On no other day in my life have I had to handle so much of my friends’ urine. 

            Let’s check in for a second, Dear Reader.  If you’re thinking something like ‘that was kind of a graphic and gross story and Nathan sure was self-destructive in it,’ you’re right.  You also should be aware that, in terms of this entry, the above story is about as tame as things are going to get. So, if you were squeamish or put off by my Tinkle Tale, there’s a whole Internet out there for you to explore and I won’t feel bad if you stop reading this section of it. 

            When I started at the liquor store I met a girl. And listen, if you are that girl, thanks for reading, but please know that you don’t have to read this story. I’m gonna talk about a time that was really difficult for both of us, and if you’d rather not relive it, I won’t feel bad, Shithead. Also, for any other women reading this entry and thinking it might be about you, a good way to know for sure is if you were offended just now when I called you Shithead, you are not the woman I’m talking about. She was Shithead, I was Butt Toucher or Booger Breath. We were not mature. For the purposes of this entry, I’m gonna call her Tank Girl in the hopes it will make up for naming the story of our disaster after a fucking Doors song. 

 

Tank Girl was a foul-mouthed, tattooed ginger with a quick sense of humor, extensive knowledge of beers, wines and spirits and a great ass, so I never had a choice in the matter, I was going to fall in love toward her, but this is not a love story. In those first few weeks together, she was my biggest help in the liquor store, telling me where bottles were, how things operated and who was a hard worker and who wasn’t. We were both hard workers and were tasked with setting up a holiday display. I’ve never had so much fun at work. We giggled and gave each other shit as we stocked shelves with eggnog mix and peppermint liqueur chocolates. “Why is this like the funnest thing in the world?” she asked, our faces red from laughing. If anyone gave me shit about my albinism, Tank Girl had my back. When a douche bag customer once badmouthed me, she told him to get the fuck out of her store.  When another asked what my deal was, she accidentally dropped his bottle of Pinot, spilling red wine all over his white shoes. It turned out her parents were legally blind, so she could help me see things while I drove, like when we went to In N Out together on our lunch breaks. We smoked cigarettes after our shifts and she talked to me about how much she liked riding her fixed gear bicycle and got me into riding a bike, which I hadn't done since the sixth grade. I thought we were meant to be together. Obviously, she had a boyfriend. He was a Heavy Metal Dude who grew up in the same part of Virginia as me and went to a rival high school, a high school where many of the fuck-heads I went to middle school with ended up going. My body could not hold all the jealousy and resentment I felt toward him. You know this part of the story: she complained about him to me and I listened and nodded along, playing the role of the sweet guy, waiting, hoping, praying (perhaps preying? I’m so fucking clever) they’d break up.  

 

            Tank Girl didn’t come to my 30th birthday party because she was back home in Michigan. That night, hanging at the bar, waiting for the rest of my friends to show up, I reached my hand into the seat cushions and felt something odd. I pulled out a small red pill with a devil on it. Never one to pass up an adventure, I took the pill. As it turned out, it was ecstasy and I had one of the best birthdays I can remember, from what I can remember. After that experience, I got it in my head that I needed to take more chances in my life. When Tank Girl got back from Michigan a few days after my birthday, she called me and said she was dumping her boyfriend. “You can stay with me,” I heard myself saying.  

 

            I knew, obviously, that I was being opportunistic, but I was trying very hard not to be a total dirt bag. She had nowhere else to turn, so Tank Girl moved some things in and stayed at my place for a couple weeks or maybe a month, sleeping on the new couch I’d made my pee pal buy me. It was all very platonic and very, very domestic. Tank Girl felt bad for imposing, so she cooked meals for us and every time I came home from work she’d cleaned my apartment. I didn’t try anything physical or romantic, I tried to give her space. Eventually, she found an apartment over on Vermont. It was an enormous studio they could’ve called a micro-loft and it was only $700 a month. We moved her clothes in, then I drove her up to Burbank to get the rest of her stuff from Heavy Metal Dude. It was surreal to share a pizza with him while taking a break from carrying Tank Girl’s stuff from his apartment to my car. We talked about the shooting that took place at my high school when I was a senior. I was honestly expecting to fight him, but he was pretty cool, all things considered. As we loaded her stuff into her new apartment, we got a sense of the building. Every other tenant in the building spoke Spanish and many of the tenants were families of four or more, all living in the same size large studio Tank Girl was renting. The elevator looked like if a prison cell and an outhouse had a miscarriage. She painted her new place and used her tax refund to buy some Ikea furniture. She found a couch in the hallway and took it into her apartment. A couple days after she moved into her own place, we made out for the first time. A week later we slept together. We had real chemistry, like a fountain full of pennies and a crackling bolt of lightning.

            Let’s talk about sex, baby, let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be without getting too graphic or NSFW.  While I had dated some sexually liberated women, I had never slept with anyone who liked rough sex and it was sometimes very fun and sometimes very, very confusing. It had never occurred to me to spit on or slap someone I was sleeping with, but these are things I was asked to do to someone I thought I loved at the time. Given the muddling of pleasure and pain, I couldn’t tell sounds of joy from sounds of suffering, especially when the suffering supposedly brought joy. It became difficult to distinguish good pain from bad and Tank Girl seemed turned on by aggression, which I’d always been told was unattractive. The entirety of our relationship existed in this murky gray area, lacking any clarity or definition. To be completely honest, I wasn’t ready for any of it.  

            Even though Tank Girl was vocal about not wanting a relationship or boyfriend, I thought I could find a way to convince her of otherwise. By sheer force of my own charisma, sexual prowess, wit or wisdom, I thought I could make her love me the way I needed her to love me, a way she was not capable of or interested in loving me at the time. Just like writing, I thought I could make something real out of nothing. If this notion sounds romantic to you, it absolutely should not. This is not a love story. It felt romantic to me at the time, but that’s not at all what was happening. I was playing White Knight, but I needed Tank Girl way more than she needed me. I think I knew I had ‘seen the moment of my greatness flicker’ in terms of Hollywood and I thought Tank Girl would, could and should save me. I’m embarrassed to say, I saw her then as my prize. Meeting THE ONE felt like the only thing that could make up for the failure of not selling a script, The Love of My Life could make all my sadness seem worth it, so I projected all kinds of feelings onto this poor girl who was just looking for some security while she figured out her life, her sexuality, what she wanted and how to get it. I don’t want to call my behavior abusive, but that’s probably what I’d call it if someone else behaved as I was behaving, so that’s probably what it was. I continued to try to enforce my will on our relationship, tried to control things and blatantly ignored Tank Girl’s warnings and requests about keeping my emotional distance. I thought the world owed me something. Soon, I'd get just what I deserved. 

 The unit that became available in Tank Girl’s building was bigger and cheaper than my current apartment. Back during My Hollywood Romance, I enjoyed going across the street to get laid, so I thought I’d love just walking downstairs. The Tony Orlando song "Knock Three Times" was on the playlist at work. It's about a guy starting a relationship with the girl who lives below him and every time it played over the loudspeakers, Tank Girl and I smiled at each other.  We joked about the living situation being great, we joked about it being awful. Somehow, I convinced myself it was smart to move into the same building as the woman I was sleeping with even though she was vocal about not wanting to be my girlfriend. Then again, after I moved in, one night Tank Girl knocked on my door wearing make-up and a long jacket with nothing underneath. That was as good as it ever got, though. A week later, bug bites appeared on her legs. Turned out the couch she brought into her apartment from the building’s hallway was lousy with them. We didn’t know what to do. We put all her clothes in the laundry, threw the couch out, wrapped her bed up in plastic wrap so the bugs in there couldn’t escape and she moved into my apartment upstairs.  

            This is not a love story but our stuff looked so fucking cute together and I LOVED paying $350 a month in rent, even if we had roaches. We slept in the same bed. We worked together. She taught me how to ride a bike in the streets. California changed the rules for who was eligible for a medical marijuana prescription and I needed to get a CA Drivers License. The requirements for driving with my bioptic telescopic lenses vary by state and California's were a little stricter than Virginia's, so I did not qualify to drive there. I sold my car and she helped me pick out a bike I still ride. I rode all over LA and truly felt free for maybe the first time I can remember. There’s no better way to traverse the streets of LA than on a bicycle, unless you have a meeting to attend at which you can’t be sweaty. We bought groceries and she taught me how to eat better and budget. I lost weight and have never been hotter. I turned down all kinds of action from customers at the liquor store. We had people over for game night and they said we sure didn’t seem like just friends. A week after she moved in we went to lunch at Denny’s because it was close and we both hated ourselves. We came back to find her cat meowing and our apartment in disarray. The thieves stole both my laptops, my backup USB drive with all my files, my electric razor, my iPod, Tank Girl’s digital camera, all my nice watches, a case full of guitar pedals I was keeping safe for Michael, my buddy from the band, and I can’t even remember what else. Every script I’d ever written was gone. Every novel, ever document, journal entry, false start, every outline, every piece of brainstorming, it was all gone. Pictures from grad school, pictures from college, pictures from years of my life vanished. 80 gigs of music disappeared forever, some of which was stuff from friends’ bands that I literally cannot replace. “For a minute there, I lost myself.” I’d turned down renter’s insurance the week before we were robbed.

 

            After that I was anxious all the time. The night of the robbery I went to sleep and found the tool they’d used to break into our apartment in our bed. Worse, my entire career had been pilfered. Worst, I knew the truth about me and Tank Girl. I knew we had the semblance of a happy relationship, but deep inside myself, I knew this arrangement wasn’t what she wanted and was built on rotten supports. She’d dumped Heavy Metal Dude to find freedom; instead, she was trapped with a guy she didn’t want to be with again. Word got around work that we were dating, even though we were explicitly not dating, and management brought us in to discuss the situation, as if paying us $8 an hour entitled the company to any say in our sex lives. We said nothing was going on between us, but when Tank Girl said it, she meant it. I kept thinking we would one day just work out, kept hoping she’d have some awakening and love me the same way I thought I loved her. That’s what would’ve happened in a movie. But this is not a love story.

My best friend’s wedding was coming up in October and I’d said Tank Girl was coming with me, but this started to become a bone of contention for us. “I don’t want to have to explain our relationship to everyone,” she said. I thought I’d convince her anyway. I went to Virginia for a different friend’s wedding in May and Tank Girl went out for drinks with Katie in LA. I texted Katie, asking her to try to find some subtle way to tell Tank Girl I loved her. But I was drunk, so the text had typos. Katie showed it to Tank Girl, looking for clarity in what I might have been trying to say. Tank Girl must’ve figured it out because our relationship was never the same after I got back to LA. That probably sounds tragic until you consider I hooked up with a girl in Virginia at the wedding. After all, Tank Girl and I weren’t dating. Have you ever wondered what your life might be like if you were just a little bit better looking?  Thanks to the weight I’d lost riding my bike around LA, I got to find out. I’ve never been hotter. Because I was getting laid regularly, I was a charismatic blond guy with the confidence to talk to just about any girl. My albinism was not a factor at all and when it was, I used it to my advantage.  “Got a little albino in you?  Want some?” 

            “What’s the worst news I could give you?” Tank Girl said to me maybe two weeks after I got back from the wedding.

            “You’re pregnant?” I joked. 

            But she wasn’t smiling. She had taken a couple of tests over the last few days, hiding the boxes and results in Jack in the Box wrappers before throwing them in the trashcan. I’ll spare you the specifics, but it was decidedly my fault she got pregnant. For about a week we considered keeping it but Planned Parenthood was literally a block up the street and we called each other Shithead and Butt Toucher, what the fuck would we have done with a baby? She made the appointment. Meanwhile, in Northern California, my uncle got blackout drunk and fell in his bathroom, cutting himself up badly. My mom thought it would be a good idea for all of us to go up there and see him, just to let him know we cared about and loved him, hoping he’d sober up, trying to make something real out of nothing. On July 4, Tank Girl and I stood on the roof of our building and watched fireworks crackle and sparkle around the city. My flight was July 5. My trip was terrible. I got back July 7 or 8. On July 9 it was done, which, I suppose, is a pretty glib and convenient way for me to describe an abortion procedure which was not performed on my body. Three days later we took LA’s public transit subway system to a sushi joint in little Tokyo. Tank Girl returned from the bathroom pallid. “I’m bleeding.  Like… a lot.” We stopped at every other stop between downtown and the Santa Monica and Vermont station so Tank Girl could find a bathroom in which to clean up. She left a trail as we ran down Vermont to our apartment and then ran down the hall. She rinsed herself off in the bathtub and we both burst out laughing because there seemed no other way to respond.

            A couple weeks later, I threw her a surprise birthday party, arranging for some friends we shared and some friends of hers from work to meet at a sushi restaurant and surprise her. It seemed sweet of me the same way saccharin seems sweet until you learn it causes cancer. I’ve told you a million times this isn’t a love story. I hoped Tank Girl would enjoy her birthday, but I hoped more we’d start sleeping together again. She seemed happy to see everyone but me. Whatever we were was breathing its last breaths. Michael’s new band came through town and we let them crash at our place. Tank Girl made them all breakfast and they all stared at her ass the whole time. One of the guys in the band I didn’t know that well said he needed to go meet women wherever I went to meet women and I told him Tank Girl wasn’t my girlfriend. He seemed as confused by the situation as me. One day, I came home from work and I just decided it was time to deal with the fact it was over. I couldn’t even tell you why I picked that day, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were July 27. I sat in the kitchen by myself, smoking cigarettes while Tank Girl sat on the couch in the living room, waiting for me to come out. “Everything all right in there?” she dared me to bring it up. She was as ready as I was stop trying to make something fake real. The fight was so bad I stormed out of my own apartment and smoked so many cigarettes I almost threw up. But neither of us had anywhere to go, so even though we weren’t sleeping together anymore, we still lived together. We set up some ground rules, like no sleeping in the same bed. It was probably the worst six or eight weeks of my life and I remember next to none of it. It was like if Ernest Hemingway or Charles Bukowski wrote that movie THE BREAK UP.  One night, my buddy Jordan remarked to me, “Man, Nate, I always knew you were tough, but watching you go through this? Shit man. I’d be thinking about killing myself. You’re a tough motherfucker.”

            I went home to Virginia for two weeks for my best friend’s bachelor party and wedding while Tank Girl moved out. She’d found a place with some girls from work. She found a new job, too. In Virginia, I slept around to make myself feel better; after all, I’d never been hotter. But it didn’t really work and my confidence was waning. When I got back to LA, I opened the door and Tank Girl’s stuff was gone. Her key was on the carpet, having been slid under the door. Our place looked so empty with just my things. I didn’t make things as easy on her as Heavy Metal Dude had made them. I hassled her friends about what she was up to or who she was seeing. One day, she called, hoping to get access to my apartment to pick up a couple things she’d forgotten. I sat against the wall smoking cigarettes, the shades drawn, and acted like I wasn’t home. I was living in the same apartment we’d shared, sleeping in the bed we’d shared, riding the bike she helped me pick out all over town and working at the liquor store where we met. Even though she was gone, she was Everywhere. I tried to write myself out of it but nothing sold. Maloney and I started a podcast about the industry, which at least took my mind off my misery a few hours a week. I tried to create other relationships at work but they all blew up in my face. I have never been more helpless. I was so helpless, I didn’t even know I was helpless, I was devoid of help. After six months of misery, I’d gained back most of the weight and I started vaguely applying myself at work and was pretty quickly promoted to Shift Manager at a different store. But the store was in Glendale and it wasn’t as fun as the West Hollywood location, plus it was a much longer bike ride, uphill both ways. When the email came asking if I wanted to come teach one class, I thought about it for half a day and agreed to try it. There was no other way to stop feeling as bad as I felt except to leave town.

Most Hollywood stories start out with a character arriving at a shitty apartment and end up with the character living in some sunny place with a view of the Hollywood Sign. My LA story was the opposite, which I suppose is very George Costanza of me. When I returned to LA three years later, I finally came to understand why things had gone so wrong. 



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