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fumble in Lush
Friday, March 9 2001
We all piss in showers, we all eat our scabs, though these are things we do not often discuss with each other. Gretchen is a refined, dignified woman and she admits to eating her scabs. John admits to eating his scabs, but somehow I'm not terribly surprised. Scab eating must be a primitive need; I know this because whenever I've been picking at one of Sophie the Schnauzer's scabs and then pull my hand away, she's suddenly alert and demanding, wanting to know if I got anything loose and if I did can she please eat it now?
In the evening John was tutoring Farley, our charmingly hapless friend who happens to be the son of a billionaire. After the tutoring was done, Farley invited us all to go out to dinner with his billionaire father. The place was the Grill in Beverly Hills, the fancy meat & potatoes joint we'd been to the last time we'd dined with Farley's father. For those who don't remember, Farley's father is little gnomish red-cheeked man with an H. Ross Perot voice and who can usually be found wearing subtly mismatched suits in just the wrong shades of light blue. Tonight over dinner he casually mentioned he'd be flying into Washington, DC tomorrow to pay a call on the son of his old buddy George. He calls this particular son "Little George," and he's the current President of the United States. It's all starting to make sense: the billions of dollars, the hapless son in need of tutoring, the ear of a hapless president of a hapless (though unusually lucky) nation.
Most of the dinner conversation actually focused on Farley's ADD medication, and whether or not he could ever be weaned off it. John suggested a regime of exercise and mentally-stimulating employment, neither of which have so far characterized Farley's life of ease.
The side for all our dishes consisted of ludicrous quantities of steamed broccoli, something the waiter evidently didn't didn't find especially appetizing because he always mentioned the side dish semi-apologetically. But broccoli was exactly what all of us wanted for our side dishes. For my main course I ordered the lamb. It's been a very long time since I've eaten dead baby sheep and Jesus is it ever tender, at least at the Grill in Beverly Hills. Fernando showed up late, but ate a full meal all the same.
Later on, back at our house, Fernando, Farley, John and I were sitting around wondering how to spend our Friday night. The others sort of wanted to go see the movie Pollack (Fernando pronounced it as it was the variety of joke told about people of Polish extraction), but I told the boys that I sure as hell didn't want to get stuck in a pattern of watching movies on Friday nights.
So we decided to go out to a bar instead, preferably a mellow place with lots of hot chicks (not that bars meeting either description exist anywhere in Los Angeles). So we set out in Fernando's Cressida towards Venice, intent on going to the Circle Bar, a hip modern place with a jukebox full of trendy electronica. The whole drive there, John was plagued by the most singularly poisonous gas problem I've ever had to experience second hand. Every few minutes he'd sound the alarm and we'd have to roll down the windows to let in the fresh air. There was nothing else we could do about it but laugh our heads off, which we did, continuously. "I'm 27 years old and farts are still funny for me!" John declared with glee. Evidently John had been eating some sort of concentrated whey protein powder, and his semi-lactose-intolerant digestive system could do nothing more with it than break it into rude gaseous molecules, most of which smelled exactly like laboratory-grade hydrogen sulfide and brimstone.
When we saw a line outside the Circle Bar, we decided to drive back to Santa Monica and try out the place called Lush, which John sold to Farley and Fernando as being a place where he and I have "consistently batted 100" with respect to the chicks. (This is sort of true; the last time I was there Linda made it clear that she didn't want to play the role of being my boss anymore.)
As we were being assayed by the the big burly black bouncer, he made a negative comment about Farley's sneakers and blue jeans, telling him "you have to dress it up here!" But he let us all in anyway. Evidently my battered combat boots were irreproachable because I received no lecture for my garb. That's the thing about Farley; he often gets singled-out for abuse simply because of the pleasantly naïve way with which he comports himself.
While Farley sat by himself and was miserable, and while I waded through the crowds solo, John and Fernando stuck together as mutually-reinforcing team, which is always the best approach when you're trying to pick up the ladies. The place may bot have been "mellow" as Farley would have preferred, but it was crawling with young unattached women and the air stunk of estrogen. If a guy couldn't get some digits here he probably couldn't get them anywhere.
Lots of time passed, I drank some whiskey, I danced with a circle of flirtatious Philippina chicks, and eventually John came to get me to tell me it was time to go.
The whole drive home, John and Fernando were critiquing what had just gone wrong with a near-score. Apparently a blond and a brunette had aggressively dragged them both onto the dance floor, at which point John had freaked out for fear that he can't dance (this isn't true, but all that mattered was what he thought). This had made him so ill at ease that he'd completely fumbled the call and response of aggressiveness and indifference necessary with every seduction. He and and Fernando had departed the bar feeling thoroughly humiliated.
Back at the house, after Farley had left (taking his benchwarmer vibe with him), we considered going back to Lush to give it another try, but it was already too late.
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