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THE GRASS IS BROWN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE
HOMICIDE
part 4
LOS ANGELES
Next day I flew to Los Angeles. I struck up a conversation with the passenger next to me. During it, I became aware that it was the final of some huge baseball game and that Hotel vacancies would be hard to come by. I resisted the offer of the fold-out couch at his place, sensing that he might be exaggerating about the lack of accommodation available. He wasn’t. Accommodation proved to be scarce, and as I was in LA for the first time, I had no idea of where to go. The only place that I knew was Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. So, I got a Taxi there and sat on my up-ended suitcase, trying to figure out what to do next. I started to feel as if I was living a nightmare. Los Angeles looked like it was on fire. The pollution was overwhelming and seeing a sun that you could stare at without blinking really threw me. It looked like earth’s last day, and that the planet couldn’t possibly handle what I could now see being pumped into the atmosphere. And that was just what I saw that day. To think that this was a day’s worth, and that it had been going on like that for God knows how long in the past, as well as into the future, was worrying. I suddenly felt very scared, very vulnerable and very out of place.
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was across the road from me and as luck would have it, they had a room cancellation. Culture shock was now playing hopscotch with my psyche and I thought a walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard might help. It didn’t. It was downright dangerous and I was glad to retreat back to my room.
When I returned to Australia, I told Australian actor Michael Pate (1920 – 2008) where I had stayed. Mike, who had carved a solid career in Hollywood decades earlier, was quite taken back and said - ‘Christ, I wouldn’t have stayed there when I went over in 1948.’
DISNEYLAND
The Boulevard was not as bad during the day, but even so, it whittled away at my sense of self. I wondered if all of Los Angeles was like this. I thought Disneyland would rescue me and distract me from my escalating sense of apprehension. But the comfort of Mickey Mouse didn’t work either; I hated the place and felt that it was offering just another ride on the road to hell.
Walt Disney. If nothing else, he had an anal fixation. Drop anything, a ticket, a cigarette butt, a lolly paper, it was gone. Instantly swept away into the hand-held rubbish receptor that had a hair-trigger flap on its base. There was not one mark, scuff or flaw anywhere to be seen, and this was a place that thousands of people flocked to every day. There were lots of Disney characters walking around. I heard one Goofy speaking through the mesh on his chest to a mate who was on broom and spring-loaded rubbish duty, saying that there were some shit jobs in Disneyland and he had one of them.
My sense of apprehension was building. I had now noticed that I was holding my airline bag to my chest like it was going to be stolen. I ended up spending a lot of time riding up and down Main Street seated on a dray pulled by two magnificent draft horses. Why? Because I wanted the satisfaction of seeing a horse shit on this pristine, anal-retentive Fun Park. It must happen sooner or later, or so I thought. An hour later it still hadn’t and doubting that it ever would, I climbed up next to the driver of the horses to ask what happened when such an event occurred. He told me that it never did. Every morning the horses were injected in the anus to ensure that it stayed shut. After the horses returned at night they were given another injection that would open the orifice, and then everyone would get well out of the way. Information that fitted my suspicions.
MELTDOWN
Attending a screening of Deep Throat on Hollywood Boulevard was also a shock. I like to be titillated and I, as you know, have been a dreadful perv in my time. But that film was just plain crude and it felt like LA’s pollution was being pumped directly into the theatre.
I needed fresh air and as there was none to be found outside, I went back to my Hotel Room where I realised that I was now in deep trouble. I was weeping and shaking and any bandaids that I had tried to apply to my psyche were now just flapping around, unable to contain rational thought. That doesn’t mean that one’s insight is impaired. Quite the reverse - it’s heightened - but that doesn’t mean it’s comfortable or controllable.
I knew that Americans drove on the other side of the road and steering wheels are on the other
side of the car.
But it doesn’t stop there. Light switches, up is on, and down is off.
A bathroom tap, you turn in reverse to down under. When you pull the plug out, the water goes down the hole the
other way.
I’ve crossed over into a fourth dimension. If someone spoke to me would it come out backwards?
Hey wait a minute, there is more - by coming to America, I had gained a day. If I ring home it will
be yesterday, if someone rings me, it will be tomorrow.
So time is a place. Does that mean that it’s possible to fix the past? If so I’ll go back and apologize
for the things I have done. And also kick the shit out of someone who deserves it. And God knows there were some
people that I wanted to have that talk to.
Insights insights insights - I’m flying. How did I get here? Qantas. To get here I had climbed into the steel shaft
of one of their aeroplanes. Flames had shot out of the rear of it as it had flown in a straight line from point
A to point B. Hundreds of us strapped into that metal cylinder, eating four course meals and drinking piss. Then
the rush to do number two’s - feed it back into those little crap compacter cubicles so it could be blasted
out into a fine mist, which would be then be picked up by the four winds to land on everything from the back of a
cow in Finland, to the sandwich of a secretary having her lunch in the Myer Mall.
No! No! It’s bird’s that fly, we just fuck around.
Now I’m looking for a seam in the Hotel’s wall-to-wall carpet. There has to be a seam
somewhere, but I can’t find it. Seam come out come out wherever you are.
Up the hallways I go, sometimes crawling, ‘Come out come out wherever you are’, into the expanded
areas where the elevators were. ‘There has to be a seam,’ I scream. Fuck this, get the fuck out of
Los Angeles. I have to get out of Los Angeles.
I grab my suitcase and hail a cab that takes me to the Airport. I give the driver money. All American bank notes look the same and there had to have been a hundred or two in there somewhere, because for an LA cabbie to forget to put in the clutch before he changed gear was, I thought, unusual. Then when he does utilise the clutch he takes off like a rocket.
Jesus take it easy. People will think you are nuts. Good boy simmer down.
How long I was in the queue to change my flight at the Air New Zealand counter, I don’t know. The woman who I finally dealt with was helpful, and all was going well, until she realized my ticket had an embargo on it that meant at the time of purchase I had agreed to be in America for a guaranteed two weeks. As I had all but just arrived, this meant that I couldn’t fly out for over a week.
I started to shake. Don’t lose it. Zippadee do da. Zippiddy Day
So I tell her gently that I am suffering from some sort of Culture Shock and that I couldn’t possibly go back out into that LA mayhem. She is genuinely sympathetic, and I can see that she can see that I’m struggling to keep the lid on what it is that’s troubling me. She arranges for me to see her superior. He too can see that I was somewhat unravelled, but is hardnosed enough not to allow the ticket to be changed. The ticket lady, who knows I’m in worse shape than her boss realises, recommends that I book into an Airport Hotel she knows, to chill out for a couple of days. Then if things haven’t improved I’m to come back, and she will see what she could do about the situation.
I followed her advice and when I was in the safety of my room I took stock of myself. I felt exhausted and ashamed and fell into a welcome deep sleep. The phone was ringing. Although I awoke with a jolt, I could tell that my sleep had had a therapeutic effect. I answered the phone to find the sympathetic ticket lady on the line. She had rung me because it was New Year’s Eve, and as she and other work colleagues were getting together for a few drinks, she said that I was welcome to join them. While I certainly appreciated the gesture, I declined. I knew I wasn’t up to it and I also didn’t want to be in a group who were privy to my implosion at the ticket counter. When I thanked her for the thought, she said that she would be back on duty on the Monday, and to come and see her then. A nice lady.
I felt a lot better and while not wanting to venture far, thought that as it was New Year’s Eve, I might be able to hold it together long enough to have a drink in the entertainment lounge. I didn’t last long. There was an eight-piece band featuring a girl singer all dressed in white. She could not keep her eyes off her reflection in the mirrored wall that was opposite her, and in front of me, behind the bar. I couldn’t escape her - if I turned around on my barstool there she was in person. If I faced the other way there was the reflection of her. Either way, there she was, riveted on herself. At some point, you would think she would have to look at me or the only other patron sitting about six barstools to my left or right, depending which way I sitting on mine. He had a festive New Year’s paper hat on. I had declined to put mine on although there was one available to me. It was next to one of those paper whistles that you blew into, so that it rolled out in front of you like a tongue with a feather attached to the end. Everything around me was insane enough without me road testing one of those. I watched the female singer, mike in hand, sing two numbers to the reflection of her perceived magnificence. Even the guy in the paper hat’s sudden outburst couldn’t break her fixation. Unable to contain some inner frustration, he - to no-one in particular - let rip with ‘So what am I supposed do, blow into this fucking thing.’ He then picked up the whistle with the feather and blew into it so hard that it burst. He then went back to staring morosely at the umbrella in his drink. ‘Well past my bedtime,’ I thought as I crept quietly out of the Entertainment Lounge and back to the sanctity of my room.
The next morning I woke up feeling fine, so much so, that I caught a flight to Las Vegas. My previous erratic behaviour and thoughts were now non-existent. Where they had disappeared to I didn’t know and didn’t care, because it felt like they now belonged to the past. I now felt well and confident that everything was now going to be all right.
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