Literacy and Longing in L. A.

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Literacy and Longing in L. A. Page 6

by Jennifer Kaufman


  The house was located in the kind of bedraggled mountain neighborhood where there were no sidewalks and people’s lawns were cluttered with rusted swing sets, mattresses with springs poking through, Big Wheels, firewood, tires, and other junk that usually is hidden away in garages. Her next-door neighbor had an enormous RV parked on the lawn that was painted an alarming shade of teal and had blotches of seascapes and seals camouflaging a fading paint job. Our morning walks along weed-lined streets ended up on the main drag where we’d get breakfast at a diner connected to a Gas-and-Shop and watch the kids in the back make gray slushy snowballs. The area had its share of beer-bellied bikers and scuzzy, scratch-assed locals who were still lit at nine a.m. when we’d order our eggs and juice. There is something depressing about a place where life just doesn’t shape up.

  I meet her on the beach outside her apartment building, which is advertised as ocean view, but can only be called ocean view if you stand in a corner and look over her neighbor’s garage. Her unit is a one bedroom that faces the street, and whenever I duck in there to use the bathroom, it’s always cluttered with catalogs and paraphernalia from her latest project. Right now the apartment contains sample light fixtures and synthetic rug swatches, not to mention undecipherable blueprints that apparently came with the chalet-building kit.

  Last year, Darlene supposedly made a bundle selling porno vampire-themed movie posters over the Internet. She mentioned it a few times, but I always changed the subject. Too weird. In addition, there’s her dog, Brawley, an overweight Rottweiler, who always rushes me for attention or a walk. Darlene only walks him at dawn or at dusk because the dog regularly pees on people instead of the usual lampposts or hydrants.

  A few years ago, Darlene underwent a life crisis. Her husband, Mel, got hit by the proverbial lightning bolt one day at the precinct when he first spotted Detective Maria Gonzales, a member of the Bicycle Co-ordination Unit (BCU) of the Venice Beach Patrol. She was raven-haired, perky, and ambitious, with killer calves. She had an AA degree from Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, north of L.A., and was in line for a promotion to the central bureau. She had her eye on Mel from the moment she met him as he was racing down the stairs to assist her with a homeless drunk perp who was feeling her up as she was taking him down. She was sweet and bubbly to Mel and a bitch to everyone else.

  Mel and Darlene were about to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary when he announced he’d fallen for someone else. “I felt as if my body was taking a punch,” she told me. She begged him to stay, told him she’d change. All to no avail. There was a period of emotional wrangling, but he was out of there by Christmas.

  Darlene went into a funk, which lasted six months. Classifieds gave her too much empty time to think, so she quit her job at the Times and through a friend of a friend got into the Teamsters, where she is now a driver for the studios. During this period, she met me for a drink a couple of times a week and cried in her beer. The Teamster job is great for her. She went from “Please come back” to “Drop dead.” The pay is terrific and she gets to drive the stars around. But both of us know that, deep down, she’d return it all to have Mel back again.

  On her last job, she drove a famous male action star, and Darlene was flattered instead of insulted when he greeted her every morning with “nice tits.” She’s one of the few people who knows My Big Freeway Secret. Sometimes when I’m desperate and she’s not working, she’ll offer to be my driver. She’s given me several freeway lessons, which have all ended disastrously. The last one we just said “Fuck it,” and ended up in some bar off the 405 swilling beer and laughing uproariously.

  That’s the thing about Darlene. She thinks the best of everyone. In fact, I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone. She’s still best friends with Mel and I hear that Detective Gonzales is long gone—maybe at some point she and Mel will get back together. At the moment, she likes cute, young guys she meets at Hollywood clubs who are totally inappropriate for her. I’m hoping it’s a passing phase, because inevitably she gets jilted, not to mention the danger factor. Currently, she’s still mooning over her latest disaster.

  “He was so gorgeous and awesome Saturday night. He loved my outfit—you know, that yellow miniskirt. But he hasn’t called since he left Sunday morning. I just can’t believe he hasn’t called me.”

  “You pick him up in a bar. You bring him home. He hasn’t called? You’re lucky you’re alive.”

  “Oh, Dora. You don’t understand. He really liked me.”

  I always try to be kind when we get to this point in the conversation, and there is just no good way to say it. She’s almost forty. They’re twenty-five. They like her in the nightclub lights and they come to their senses in the morning. But why bother trying to tell her this. “Darlene, maybe he has a girlfriend and thought better of it the next day. Why can’t you just give someone your own age a chance?”

  “You know I don’t like older men, Dora. I don’t find them attractive. They’re so uncool. I’d rather just have moments with someone I’m into than a long, drawn-out relationship with someone who leaves me cold. Anyway, I don’t need a man to support me. I’m just fine the way I am.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s nice to have someone to come home to.”

  “I could say the same thing to you, Dora.”

  “Okay. Forget it.”

  We decide to drive back into town, stopping by McKenzie’s first because Darlene wants to get another one of her dumb fantasies that the library doesn’t carry.

  I debate whether to tell her anything about Fred. She’d be too enthusiastic, too encouraging, the exact opposite of everyone else in my life. So I say nothing. Really, there is nothing to say anyway.

  As soon as we walk into the place, Darlene starts bitching about how expensive all the books are and that anyone knows you can go to Costco and get the same books a lot cheaper. I immediately look around to see if Fred is nearby and if anyone has overheard. Fred is, in fact, across the room helping a flirtatious woman with a book club selection.

  Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of this whole phenomenon of book clubs, although the concept is appealing—deep and incisive conversations on the merits of a certain turn of a phrase or an unexpected plot twist. But nobody I know reads the same books I do. They read self-helps and thrillers and bios of movie stars. There’s no end to the crap that’s around. This same crap is made into movies and pretty soon they won’t even read the crap anymore. So joining one of my friends’ book clubs is out.

  I have this fantasy book club in my mind where other people feel as passionately as I do about reading. As if it were a really good kiss. The sheer pleasure and intimacy of having a relationship with a novelist and all the characters is transcendent—even sensual. Certain passages keep resonating in my head long after I’ve closed the book, and I often can’t wait to get back to the story, as if it were a secret lover.

  When I tell Virginia this, she thinks it’s all too extreme. She reads, she tells me, to find out what happens. And she doesn’t get half as caught up with the language and the stories behind the stories.

  But for me, reading is so much more. Books teach you how other people think, and what they’re feeling, and how they change from ordinary beings to extraordinary ones. Often they are so appealing and intelligent, you’d rather spend time reading about them than doing anything else.

  And unlike life, if you don’t like what you’re reading, you can slam the book shut and then…peace. That friendly, cajoling voice is cut off until you decide to open the book again. Which is why I may not be the best candidate for book clubs. I like to read on my own terms, in my own time. And the same goes for in-depth discussions. I’m just too opinionated and outspoken. I’d alienate everyone in the room. No one would like me. They’d kick me out.

  My least favorite time to discuss books is on vacation. Why is it when you are lazing by a pool, in the middle of a tropical paradise, and enjoying your solitude with a great book, someone inevitably has the urge
to break into your reverie with “Is that any good? What’s it about?” My inclination is to stalk off, but I give them an uninviting smile and tell them I just started it even if I’m halfway through.

  It all reminds me of the time Palmer and I were lounging by the pool in Cabo and spied a couple on the other side reading, sort of, while they lunched and snoozed. When they left to go talk to another couple, Palmer casually walked over to the empty chairs and moved the man’s bookmark about fifty pages or so backward.

  “Ha ha,” I whispered, “very funny.” But when they got back, the man settled happily in his chair and resumed reading as if it were right where he left off. Palmer kept nudging me and winking. I miss those things about him.

  When Palmer and I first started dating we used to joke about the unspoken hierarchy of readers and the private way in which they tackle a book. At the top of the heap are the purists—people who read to soak up the elegantly constructed literary style and savor the brilliant metaphors, inventive characters, breathtaking imagery, and sparkling dialogue. The story is beside the point. I had a lit prof once who preached that one should always read the end of a novel first so the plot won’t be a distraction.

  Not far behind are the academics—readers who never quite got over how they read a book in their freshman English class, underlining or highlighting, turning down pages, looking up words they’re not familiar with, and scribbling pithy comments in the margins.

  The book worshipers come next. They keep their books covered (and not because they’re romance novels), use bookmarks, and absolutely never let the book touch the floor. They look at the book as a sentient being, a living, breathing object of desire that needs to be treated with absolute respect. They read every word, even the footnotes.

  Then there are the readers who just want a good old-fashioned story and make no bones about it. They skip over long descriptive passages, skim though digressions, and zero in on who, what, and where to the nth degree. A subcategory of this is people who read books for sex, violence, or any other particular proclivity, and speed-read passages that don’t interest them.

  Or how about the multitask readers, those who read while cooking, cleaning, talking on the phone, or driving. Which is stupid—not that I haven’t done it.

  The bottom-feeders come next and include the status readers, a group of wannabes who don’t really want to read the book at all but want to be seen with it, like arm candy, the proverbial young blonde on the arm of a tycoon. They skim the book for plot and carry it around like a designer bag. Even worse are the people who listen to audio books, the new version of condensed books, or read novelizations of current movies. These people consider themselves readers, but they’re not. What’s most annoying is when they join in a conversation and act as though they’ve actually read it. I group the narcoleptic readers in this nonreader category. People who use books as Ambien and have had the same book sitting on their bedside table for the last six months. Also the bathroom readers—you know, the ones with the magazine racks near their toilets that hold old New Yorkers, Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and dog-eared collections of dirty jokes. I have never personally engaged in this activity because my mother insists that it gives you hemorrhoids. And who would want THAT?

  Then there are the readers who like to hang out in bookstore cafés nursing tepid cappuccinos, hogging the table for hours while they leisurely read unpurchased books, leaving them in piles on the table for the salespeople to put away.

  And let’s not forget the hopeless unfinishers—people who like choosing books, buying books, starting books, but the one thing they can’t seem to do is finish books. They continually deceive themselves, thinking this is the one book they are going to read all the way through, and I do think they are well-intentioned, but like diets and New Year’s resolutions, the will to persevere usually fades. I must confess that sometimes I fall into this category.

  The most frustrating category of all includes people who read a book and just don’t get it. I know, I’m a snob. I admit it. But once they tell you their analysis, there is really nothing you can do except change the subject. A few years ago, one of my good friends read Atonement and told me how much she loved it. When I casually mentioned that most of the action in the book took place in the mind of Briony, she was at first surprised, and then bereft at her lack of comprehension. I hate when I do that.

  Palmer used to tell me that I was my own worst enemy, grouping people in clichéd categories and never giving anyone a chance. He argued that the only people I could tolerate were “stray dogs,” like Darlene, who are so far outside the mainstream as to be unclassifiable and thus interesting only to me. He’d sometimes add with an arched eyebrow, “Is there any place in your world, Dora, for the nonweird?”

  I look around. Fred is still dealing with the book-club lady when Darlene breezes past them and says, “How do you find anything in this place?” Sara appears and asks Darlene if she needs help.

  Darlene is now looking for a vampire romance and Sara suggests Pam Keesey’s collection of lesbian vampire stories. Sara goes on to explain that the women in these stories are sexy, potent symbols of feminist power but the X-rated dialogue and erotic rhetoric narrows their appeal to the general public. Darlene gives me a look that says it all and tells Sara, “Maybe just a Nora Roberts.” As Sara turns to find her the books, Darlene does that sophisticated gesture of finger in a circle around her brain to suggest this girl’s fucking nuts.

  Meanwhile, I wander aimlessly down another aisle, wondering how to approach Fred, and start to read the off-the-wall reviews attached to McKenzie’s Staff Picks of the Week books. The one attached to Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories reads, “A romantic mama’s boy collection of enigmatic parables.” There’s also an assortment of books by Graham Greene, who is this month’s featured author. The note on The End of the Affair is a winner: “Here’s a blatant, chauvinistic take on a tortured love affair by a famous philandering, superstitious atheist.”

  “I didn’t write that,” Fred says from somewhere behind me in a dusky voice.

  “That’s good,” I laugh, “because it doesn’t exactly make me want to read it. Anyway, I’ve already seen the movie so I know how it all comes out.” (Great, now talk about the movie when I’ve actually read the book three times. That’ll impress him.)

  “Any other suggestions?” I ask casually. “How about something pithy I can read at two in the morning?”

  He looks at me with a sly grin. “Give me a few minutes to think about it.”

  “Sure,” I counter, but he’s already walked off.

  I see him conferring with the other employees and I strain to hear what they are saying. The last few times I stopped in here I noticed I was eavesdropping on his conversations. He always has something interesting, even provocative, to say and the banter back and forth makes my day. Occasionally the whole bunch of them will exchange hyperintellectual in-jokes and it’s at that point that I think to myself, “Geez, do people actually talk like that?” They’ll collapse into gales of laughter and I feel like someone seated at the wrong table at a dinner party.

  The other day they were talking about the French novelist Georges Perec, who wrote a postmodern mystery filled with literary puzzles and wordplay. The idea is to figure out why the main character, Anton Vowl, has disappeared along with the letter e. The e-less book is called La Disparition and there is no “here” or “there,” no “sleep,” no “sex,” no “love,” no “life.” I guess you could substitute words like fornication and copulation, but somehow it’s just not the same. If this wasn’t insanely esoteric enough, they then gushed over Perec’s most well-known classic (right!), Life: A User’s Manual. At first I thought it was one of those self-help, rehab books. But no. It’s a book that takes the blueprints of a Paris apartment building, cuts it into a grid that represents a hundred different rooms, and elaborates on one room per chapter, portraying the events that take place there. The game goes on because this, in turn, corresponds to a hypo
thetical chessboard. Alas, Perec only gets to the ninety-ninth floor/square/chapter because, as one of the kids joyfully points out, this is an unsuccessful quest for perfection. And, like the knight’s tour, it is naturally doomed for failure.

  It’s at this point I’m thinking, “Gee, why don’t they all just read Cervantes’ Don Quixote (with an e) if they want a simple but brilliant tale about a delusional knight on a hapless quest?” I’m also thinking that kids in the chess club should never mix with English lit students.

  They went on to discuss the relative merits of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy about his life, The Rosy Crucifixion. Fred said he liked the trilogy best because it’s all about Miller’s debaucherous, bohemian, absolutely beat-ass lifestyle, but one of the girls sneered that Miller was just another dirty writer who used women for personal indulgence and literary material. The only thing I remember about Henry Miller was flipping through the chapters looking for sex. Isn’t that what everyone did?

 

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