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Mongos at Mohawk Bend
Thursday, April 21 2016
location: West Hollywood, California
This morning at the makeshift IT office in the condemned faux New-Orleans-by-way-of-Cherokee-Art-Deco building, I finally had to have Da help me with the vexing task I'd been assigned, which had turned out to be mostly a CSS problem. After nearly 20 years of web work (from before there were style sheets), I have a lot of CSS experience and can even pull off complicated stunts using it, but there are many things about it I do not know, and Da is clearly a CSS expert. My problem today was that I needed to set an anchor's display property to block, which immediately fixed most of my problems. I told Jo (the guy who used to be the one-man IT department) that CSS isn't really my strong suite and that I'm better applied to backend issues. So after another quick lunch at the nearby Whole Foods, Jo gave me and Da a tour of "the Database," which is just one of several database-based applications. This one contained information about The Organization's donors, and so I jokingly said something about maybe finding out how much my wife has given over the years. "Let's find out!" said Jo, and he pulled up her record, which he combined with mine as a "household" (since that hadn't been done). It turned out that Gretchen had given enough money to buy a lightly-used mid-range Japanese automobile. Wow! I knew she liked The Organization, but I didn't know she liked it that much. (Though Jo emphasized that The Database contains secret information, I feel comfortable revealing that much about what is partly my own money donated to an organization I am not naming.)
At some point in the course of the afternoon, Da looked at his phone and announced that Prince had died. Based on the absence of their responses to the news, it didn't seem like anyone besides Da and I even knew who exactly Prince was.
By this point I'd taken fifty milligrams of Vyvanse, which was giving me great focus and interest in everything Jo was saying. I was genuinely excited when he gave me my first assignment, which I began working on immediately.
After work, I walked back to the intern apartment with Da and we chatted endlessly about both the challenges of our workplace and the details of our lives. His go-go-go conversational style was a lot easier to handle while on a prescription attention deficit disorder medication, and the couple hours we spent just shooting the shit seemed like a really good ritual of employee bonding. I began feeling more empathy for his plight than I had before. He was, after all, hired to be the human interface for Jo, who has the social skills of an autistic Meerkat. And the problem with that is that is not that he has to deal with other people but that, increasingly alone, he has to deal with an autistic Meerkat.
The most amusing thing that came up in our conversation was the fact that Da had no idea where in the world he happened to be. When I said we were in "Southern California," he acted like that was revelation. "Yeah," I explained, "we're only two hours from Mexico."
I'd arranged with my other Los Angeles web development connections for a social call at Mohawk Bend, and, on Mike's recommendation, I'd installed Uber on my smartphone to enable easy transportation to and from places of potential intoxication. Neither Da nor I had ever used Uber, so he stood by as I went through the process of calling up a driver and waiting for his arrival. The car arrived out in front only four minutes later, and I said goodbye to Da and climbed into the back. The driver was Ernesto and I told him this was my first Uber. Ernesto was awesome, talking a little now and then but allowing long stretches of silence for me to watch the world go by. The half hour ride only cost a little over $7, so I don't know how the driver made any money.
At Mohawk Bend, I soon learned that everyone else was running a half hour late and that Mike (whose father is in the hospital) wouldn't be able to make it. That just left me, Marc, and Galax. I eventually inserted myself between two different groups in front of the gas-lit fire in the porch area out front, a maneuver made much easier by the fact that I had a smartphone as a companion. From there, I ordered a Mongo IIPA randomly from the beer menu, and when it proved excellent, I stuck with it for the rest of the night. Galax was the second to arrive, and, since the only other African American in the joint was a waitress, I found an opportunity to say, "This place is very white." But as a black web developer, Galax said that finding himself in white environments was normal for him.
When Marc arrived, we ordered snacks such as cauliflower, fries, and a middle eastern plate. Conversation was easy and jovial, and Marc even gave me a long-awaited check for $1625. At the end, Marc picked up the tab, which was for somewhat less than $90.
After saying goodbye to Galax, Marc drove me back to West Hollywood in his surprisingly sporty Subaru.
Back in the intern apartment, I found the whole crew there hanging out. With the waning effects of 50 milligrams of Vyvanse, three Mongos, and not much food in my system, I proceeded to tell crazy stories from back when I lived in Los Angeles. Among the stories was the fact that my old girlfriend Bathtubgirl was a massage therapist who eventually became a "goddess" and somehow earned $900/hr from Chinese businessmen. "What did she do?" the assembled wanted to know. "I'm not sure," I said, "she was bringing home $900/hr, so I didn't ask."
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