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a Jason Meyers experience
Friday, December 11 1998
I don't understand the way my workplace operates. I don't understand the setting of impossible, discouraging goals. That's not motivation, it's counter-productive and does nothing for morale. I don't understand rushing to create big new things and then not taking the time to maintain them adequately. I'd like to work at a place which occasionally stopped and honed its product instead of rushing about chaotically, talking endlessly about being in some kind of race. Thoughts like this were going through my mind at lunch today as I was walking down to the river with my two 99 cents Jumbo Jacks. The plump spotted alley cat was again lounging on the rocks sunning herself. Coots swam somewhat aimlessly in the water, wondering half-heartedly if I would throw them any food.
In the evening, Rory (who'd spent the night at Dave's house) joined me on a run to get some microbrew. Kim gave me thee task of throwing out a large box of styrofroam popcorn, so of course I simply brought it along, intending to just leave it outside the Appletree supermarket. Thinking myself very clever, I tore all incriminating labels from the box first, and I balled these up and threw them away. Soon thereafter I realized I'd tossed out a twenty dollar bill along with the labels. Rory fished the money out of the trash for me.
My old buddy from Oberlin, Jason Meyers, was scheduled to be coming down from Los Angeles this evening and I thought it prudent to prepare my friends for an evening of pottymouthed sexual frustration, movie quotes, sampled nostalgia and other such Jason Meyers staples.
Suddenly, there he was, Jason Meyers, who I haven't seen since 1993, "Hey!" (said with a New Jersey accent). For old time's sake, Jason put on a tape of the Mentors, the San Diego shock-metal band for which he once served as guest vocalist.
...Let me tell you all a righteous story
Of how the Mentors got all their glory
I took a girl back to my room for a ball
And tossed her purse to the boys in the hall
Kim adapted surprisingly well to the sudden low-level of discourse, contributing her own amusing comments to the barrage of rapid-fire sexist music and sub-banal conversation. It was fun and refreshing to be free to say just anything, no matter how distateful, but after awhile the absolute lack of intellectual depth made me grow weary of my laughing.
We all sat around smoking an enormous amount of marijuana and then headed down to Newport Street, ending up in a bar called Pacific Shores, recommended by Scott, the guy who sold us one of our cabinets. Inside, the place was lit along one side by a flourescent chalk mural of underwater life. It glowed with such intensity under the blacklight that it resembled daytime creeping into a basement from high windows. Rory was very stoned by this point and remarked that we must be underwater in a daylit time zone.
The customers in Pacific Shores were decidedly among that group loosely defined by such meaningless words as "punk rock," "rave," "retro," and "alternative." One of the bartenders looked like a Jessika - Nancy Firedrake hybrid. She fixed me three vodka drinks with astounding efficiency and speed, belying all superficial Jessika resemblances. It was a memorable event.
Outside the Pacific Shores, Rory came across some fast friends he'd made the other day somewhere along the beach, a small group of bohemian Italians known as "the Italians." The girl among them was small, sharp-featured, and spoke with a perfect upper-class English accent. She looked like a hybrid of Jatasya and my old girlfriend Leslie Montalto. But she couldn't comprehend any comparison of Pacific Shores with an underwater experience in New Zealand. "It's a little slice of another time zone right here in San Diego!" I pleaded, to no avail.
Knowing Jason's fondness for tittie bars, porno and other such mens' entertainment, Kim took us guys on a field trip to Deja Vu, the Point Loma strip club where her friend Steph works. We were pretty drunk by this point, so the prospect of drinking pineapple juice in a room full of gorgeous skantilly-clad girls wasn't as discouraging as it might have otherwise been. We considered trying to smuggle a small flask of Jim Beam in with us, but it was good that we didn't since we were all patted down at the door.
Being a Friday Night, Deja Vu was a full house tonight. Most of the heads in the audience were close-cropped and serious-faced, belonging to young navy boys. Here and there in this throng I could see "lap dances" happening. A lap dancer rubs her breasts and crotch against a client, and in exchange he pays her $15. It's a form of legal prostitution, and must be rather humiliating for the lap dancer. At some point in the evening, one of the navy guys was tied to a chair on stage and all the dancers in the house got in line and each gave him a brief lap dance. It was payment for some sort of award or perhaps the winning of a lottery. It was a bit of a shock to see Steph, who I actually know in real life, up there participating in this sordid display.
Before she recognized me and my contingent, Steph came up to Rory and asked him if he'd like a lap dance, no doubt hoping to rub her body against something other than a navy hunk for just once in her career. She was dressed in a long white dress slit up to her hip and with her shyly sultry demeanor, she must have been difficult to turn down. But Rory, who knows nothing about such things, was completely confused by the question. About that time some other girl grabbed my ass.
Kim decided tonight that she no longer has any desire to work as a stripper. These poor girls don't make nearly as much as she does for legitimate therapeutic (or at least semi-legitimate, semi-therapeutic) massage. Kim can't see herself demeaning herself against so many sleazy customers every night for a mere $15 a pop.
A little while later Rory, Jason and I headed back to the car to sneak a drink. Unfortunately, the bouncer came out just ahead of us and made a big show of picking up bottles in the parking lot. We were forced to drive around the block to do our drinking.
After the Deja Vu, we all came home and hung out for a brief time before passing out. Jason kept trying to interest us in going other places and doing more things, but no one had any energy. Eventually he went to his friend's house where he'd be staying. The friend's name is "Ba-ba-Booey."
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