Beth and I drove to Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 6th because her film (co-written with Frazer Bradshaw) Sinking State was playing at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. I am not linking to the festival because I am not so cruel as to waste your time with things that can be accomplished just as easily by wrapping your lips around the spout of a helium tank. Beware, brain: my favorite way to have you is the feel of defeating you and rendering you useless through the use of a simple gas. Naturally the drive down was splendid in that it’s impossible to do much but hang out and listen to podcasts. Long drives are the only time the voice in my head saying, “WHY AREN’T YOU TRAINING HARDER?” stops for the duration.
What you should know about Beth is that she is the best driver on the road today. She has a Marine’s respect for order and efficiency when at the wheel, only using the left lane for passing and traveling at a rapid clip. Sadly this commitment to excellence invariably means wincing at the glare of imperfect minivan drivers everywhere. We repeatedly and relentlessly encountered slow-moving vehicles trundling along in the left lane as though it were a place to contemplate your Funyuns and remind your oafish passenger to rent Meet the Fockers. We found the lack of commitment to superior highway traffic flow appalling, and if you know me at all, you know my enthusiasm for feeling disgusted is unparalleled, except maybe by my love for romance or joy. But the opportunities to be disgusted were many and sizable and we availed ourselves each time of the chance to feel shock, anger and disdain.
We arrived in Los Angeles. First stop, as always, was BabyCakes gluten-free bakery. I am not a woman who can buy only one or two cupcakes. I need closer to six. When Beth suggested I share a box with her I was genuinely confused, trying to sort out in my mind how the sheer volume of cupcakes I needed could fit with someone else’s, and why would anyone get so few that they could share a box? This is the same mentality behind how I used to buy twenty big bars of dark chocolate at a time, and whenever I went on a trip I would bring bars for my companions. They did not want them. I was giving them what I wanted. I remember repeatedly saying, “I brought you one too” and having whomever, usually Beth or Michelle, say, “Oh that’s okay.” And I felt dirty like I was trying to hassle a sober person into just a few bumps with me just this once.
After BabyCakes we stopped by Beth’s friend’s house where we were staying and changed clothes for the festival. Beth put on a nice dress. I put on jeans. We drove to the weird office building where the screening was happening, which felt more like a holding tank for people’s bad idea businesses that hadn’t gone under yet, like a poster framing business or a gadget-development lab or a special kind of golf club.
We parked underground and walked into the reception area. I immediately felt like a man because of my pants even though they were lady jeans and my shirt was flouncy and flower-y. But the broads in this joint were at a fever pitch of femalia that makes people like Beth and I either true women or not women at all. It makes the category of “woman” seem entirely arbitrary if you can do that many things with it. It erases the idea of gender as much as any queer thing I’ve been part of or seen. It appeared that no one’s face had ever gone rosy with a breeze. The ladies’ faces were doing things it takes trees hundreds of years to accomplish. I can understand if there are some women like this but generally there is also a rainbow of possibilities besides the paved-over immobile faces and distorted lip lines, stupid cheeks and hair that always looked like a wig from a store catering to humans (like Beth and I) with modest wig budgets. Do I need to describe the dresses? Do you have a Foxy Lady in your town or a casino/strip club with a novelty store behind it that sells poppers and clothes? They were just a boring collection of black tiny dresses with rhinestones and five-inch heels. Except one lady who was in banana yellow. It would have been more cool if she drove up in a banana yellow Corvette. But the lady in the short banana yellow dress had the weird thing of the dress also has a long train which looked exactly like a slip-n-slide so she had a friend to carry it for her. Oh to be the friend. To be the one accepting her station in life that night.
We had a drink then went in to watch the movie. Sinking State is excellent and it got good laughs. I saw the bartender guy from Shameless, the pregnant lady from United States of Tara, the lead from Office Space, and some other folks. The film that played after Sinking State did not please me. It was all about couples having babies. There was one lesbian couple out of nine couples and they were the only ones who didn’t hardcore screw in the whole film. The fake dagger with long hair, eyeliner and a leather vest gave her frumpy girlfriend a foot massage. I recognize these as viable life choices, but I dispute their overall quality. Beth and I got up to go to the bathroom and entered a single stall right outside the theater. When we locked the door we noticed two purses sitting on the counter next to the sink, plus a curling and flattening iron plugged into the wall. I looked into a big brown leather purse with gold studs and saw rhinestone-encrusted flats, a giant bottle of perfume and a pack of Marlboro lights. The smaller, red purse had a ton of make-up and hair stuff in it. We walked out and were physically blocked into the hall by a security guard who said we couldn’t leave until the woman who left her purses in the can checked to be sure we didn’t steal anything. We were merely dressed in our film finery, so we couldn’t have been holding anything, but facts don’t matter in a humiliation ritual. We waited and the lady, who had most surely been pushed through a Russian-izing machine, came out and told the security dude through immobile lips slathered in silver-y purple lipstick that it was okay to let us go. We returned to the film and gladly, unbelievably the fire alarm went off. We assumed the lady set her hair on fire but we don’t know. We walked out into the atrium where people were having their photos taken. Gary Busey and Jon Voight were being interviewed by press and the women looked all busted up in fake high glamour. We chose not to get our picture taken to avoid seeing the press people realize we weren’t celebrities and choose not to take our picture. And for a few billion other reasons around the whole ritual. We had another drink and went to dinner. At some point though I think the next day we realized that we had both been aware of having the smallest boobs in the room.
I’m too tired to finish this, more later! Also more no-sex narratives coming down the pike…
Hooray for gluten-free cupcakes!