Thelma, Louise and That Girl, Part 3. Notebooks and Blue the Boy Toy

Thelma, Louise and That Girl
The Notebook and Blue the Boy Toy
Part III
(c) 2009 - LKD

Any Ladies Only road trip requires a notebook and a black marker. On the open road, you never know the opportunities that may arise and how else can one communicate car to car?

We had some standard templates:

“Loser”
“You know where you can put that finger.”
“So Fine! Whatz ure number?”
“Kiss 'That Girl'. Wait till you see her tongue.”
“We didn't ask to see your ass.”
“Meet you in Malibu, Ken.”
“Sorry, I'm Mormon.”

and, of course,
“4:20 911!!!!!!”

Roaring down the PCH, we put them to good use on the way to La Jolla. (There are too many men in the world that think making the universal 'do you give head?' sign is a good car to car conversation starter. And why after the rather rude introduction do they always cringe and get offended when you return the sign with the added bonus of biting it off?)

Before These Crowded Streets had come out that year and thumped from my busted speakers on random. Dipping down to Northern Diego was TG's idea. She claimed to have been invited to the party of a lifetime complete with fine men, fine wine and a multi-million dollar beach house. Our ultimate destination for the day was Vegas, but a beach party seemed like a reasonable detour as I'd always wanted to see what one of them La Jolla pads looked like on the inside.

TG has sadly overstated the event in question. Rather than a party, we got two guys. Rather than fine wine, they had a bottle of Jack and some Dixie cups. Rather than sweet beach digs, they were waiting for their 'friend' to get back who owned the house. The only thing I remember about either one of them was the penchant for popped collar polo's (shit one of them was double decking it). And we all know that popped collar cool left the vicinity around the same time we found out George Michael was, indeed, gay. Popped collar cool speaks of a certain kind of desperation or a poor cover up for a grizzly thatch of back hair.




TG was stubborn that something would come of it (I think maybe money had been promised if we stayed), but we dragged her by her blonde locks and got back on the road.

Somewhere in Central California, the notebook flirting paid off and we joined a caravan of stoners making their way to Mayberry. Before your instincts kick in about stranger danger, keep in mind I speak stoner, it's a third language (second is pig Latin). I sussed out the situation upon arrival.

'Dude?'
'Totally Dude!'
'Right on!'
(that meant – are you cool, safe and sane humans? yes we are! thank god, I was worried.)

Ah, Mayberry. We whistled the Andy Griffin theme song, took pictures at the big town sign, scored some cheap, yet passable Mexican skunk and I adopted a Boy Toy named Blue.

Blue was adorable and maybe all of nineteen. He carried our bags, follow us where ever we roamed and paid for soda's with a crumpled ten spot he got from his mom. Three woman in a car and he was in post puberty nirvana. As the self-proclaimed rebirth of Randy Rhodes, we didn't have the heart to tell him that minus an amp, the electric guitar he'd brought didn't carry much sound over the wind whipping through the car.

Vegas here we come!

About fifty miles out of Mayberry, the initial buzz wore off and Laura had an epiphany.

“Uh, Sarah. How are we going to get him in the casino?”
“Who?”
“Blue! I don't think he's even old enough to vote.”
“Nah. It'll be okay.”
“Fine. But I ain't babysitting.”

Which got me to thinking. Did I want my movements restricted? He was cute, he was eager. Alas, he had a liability negating the status of Boy Toy. The downgrade from Boy Toy to the level below doesn't have a name, more a shrug and the noise 'eh' said at the same time.

We left Blue on the side of the road with a twenty spot and lipstick marks all over his face for being such a good sport.

A couple of hours later, I realized I had driven us to Palm Springs. These are the dangers of driving high. My subconscious wanted the erotic thump of the windmills, yet consciously I really wanted the all-you-could-eat crab leg buffet at Caesar's. Weed can reek havoc with the priorities.

Management level decisions were made. Maps were consulted. It was time for Laura to drive and time for TG to navigate. We could still make the Vegas night life on time if we cut through 29 Palms.

Though TG had been a source of comedy and a bit of a liability so far in the trip, when we got pulled over by the Marine MP's for driving 90 mph on base property with one headlight - while I concealed an ounce of weed under my ass - she proved her extreme value to the trip.....

Thelma, Louise and That Girl, Part 2. Decorated Lightpoles

(repost from The Ark and Vloggerheads)

Thelma, Louise and That Girl
June 1998
Decorated Light poles
Venice and Echo Park, California

Hitting the road at the ass crack of dawn put us at the California state line at breakfast time. For the obligatory ‘crossing the state line picture’ of course. I also recall stopping in a parking lot full of fake dinosaurs and equally fake turquoise jewelry. That Girl was duly impressed with this odd assortment of tourist attractions and insisted on seeing the whole thing. Later adorning herself in the kind of gear that screams, ‘never traveled to the southwest before!’....I’m surprised she got out of there without buying a DiGrazio.

We arrived in Echo Park around lunchtime and after a quick greeting to my ex father in law (who is the kind of man that doesn’t bat an eye when the overnight guest count suddenly triples) and made a beeline for the beach. Venice Beach. There is something to be said for being 27 years old. It was a period of time in my life where I could wear a bathing suit under my clothes, walk to a spot on the beach, remove said clothes without a second thought and drop to the sand for rays. It was a few years later (and another child) when I discovered the joy of needing to change in the bathroom, double checking that all loose bits are squarely tucked in, and bemoan the ass to stomach ratio that a faltering metabolism suddenly brings about. Alas, on this day, no such worries occurred to me. And while the beach was beautiful and the sand castles plentiful, Laura and I both agree that it would have been so much better with weed.

So, as a substitute we decided to scope out the Muscle Beach section of the boardwalk and contemplate new body decorations to commemorate the trip.

We played, ‘Who get’s the first phone number?’ - which was Laura by way of a Fabio look-alike that found forming numbers to be quite the intellectual challenge (but he gladly posed for pictures). Then we played, ‘Let’s get pierced’.

I thought I was going for the height of daring when deciding to get the belly button bejeweled, but That Girl would not be outdone (which came to be another prevailing theme) and announced that she was going for broke and getting her tongue done.

I’ve watched a lot of horror movies in my life, but none quite so profound as being within a six foot proximity to a tongue piercing. That linguistic muscle looks like steak tartar when pulled out as far from the maw as it can go and then held firmly with forceps. (Also a great reminder to brush the back of ones tongue more often...as shit tends to accumulate). That’s still not quite as bad as the jabbing stick going through at what appeared to be super slow motion speed and That Girl attempting to scream without benefit of the vibratory conduciveness of her tongue.

Ten minutes later, two professional piercers and one person sitting on her legs, they managed to get the barbell in place. She stood up stiffly, the swelling in her throat already apparent, shaking her dignity together and announcing, ‘That wasn’t that bad’.

Returning to Echo Park, the belly buttons presented to the awaiting family were pronounced, ‘cute’....the tongue then presented was rebutted with, ‘please put that away, we don’t know you that well.’

Fortified on a healthy organic meal and an interesting conversation with the lady of the house on the merits of going Buddhist, we decided to pick up the mission of the earlier hours and find out if weed was to be had.

A few cheap bottles of strawberry wine and aimless walking over the hills that echoed with a Dodgers game several miles away, we found a rave pole. A light pole festooned with streamers, ribbons and whatnot to indicate an underground party was occurring somewhere. The problem is that rave poles don’t come with directional signs ....the perk is that Echo Park has great acoustics and the bump and thump of the music wasn’t too difficult to track down.

Having never been to a rave before, I assumed a seedy underground dance floor, sex, drugs and latex clothing (see what movies do to you, kids)....instead we found a bunch of college students sitting on their front porch, dressed in military camo, with their boom box going and smoking dope. Yeah, maybe a little Charles Manson for my tastes, but a party is a party.

Wine was easily traded for smoke, introductions were plentiful (well except That Girl...the tongue had grown to twice its normal size). We came to find that the host of the party had acquired some kickin’ night vision goggles to which the group wanted to play hide and go seek. We all played, we all laughed. Especially at the part where That Girl didn’t want to be outdone and proceeded to put on the night vision goggles and stand in front of a Rather Bright Light.

She stopped seeing spots about the time we tumbled back to base camp and crashed.

Thelma, Louise and That Girl, Part 1. Who's That Girl?

(reposted from The Ark and Vloggerheads)

Thelma, Louise and That Girl
June 1998
Part One - Who’s That Girl?
(c) 2009 - LDK

In the summer of 1998, I was young, free and single (if not a little haggard by the previous eight years of ball and chainery). My son was offered a trip with his grandparents - two weeks on Los Angeles, then a three week tour along the Oregon and Washington coast. Whoa, a month to myself to do as I pleased. So, with out Daddy, Boyfriend, Boss or Husband - it was time to hit the open road. But who wants to do that alone? So I called up Laura (now living in Kansas and well recovered from her own Compound Desert Cove experience) and invited her along. Not one to pass up a good time, she immediately booked tickets to come and join me in Phoenix.

I have no idea which one of us would be Thelma or Louise. Both of us back then wanted equal dibs on the alluring combination of Brad Pitt and a sturdy set of chest of drawers. Though I have the better southern accent - so yeah, I woulda been Gena Davis (as evidenced later in the tale).

I was also in my interwebz infancy at the time - six months of finding out that java script chat rooms, MIRC and usenet was full of perverts and wackjobs. I’d found a small corner of my own in cyberspace, in a chat room by the name of the Sports Bar. Once a cybersex brothel with “OhmesoHard” and variations therein shouting to anyone regardless of which gender they were pretending to be, ‘WANNA CYBER? ’. I learned that javascript had an easy BOOT FROM ROOM command. A small group of us started showing up there during morning coffee and sorta made it home. One of the regulars was That Girl. TG had introduced me to her boyfriend (that her hubby didn’t know anything about), who turned out to be a Really Rich Guy who wanted to make a buck on the whole Dot Com Boom (and hey, he wanted to invest in me!), so in the interest of Investor Relations, I also invited That Girl to join us.

TG was rather hormonally fit and proceeded to rattle off the potential ‘hook ups’ from San Diego running at regular northern intervals along the Pacific Coast Highway. Laura and I were little more laid back in our approach. A bucket of party sounded good enough for us.

Laura arrived at Sky Harbor first and we had a couple of hours wait for TG’s flight to arrive. So we made for the closest bar and started a tab. Eventually there were several married couples and business men with equal amounts of time to kill that joined us. I think the human animal can smell freedom in the air and likes it...*S* We didn’t manage to meet TG at the gate, but with the instincts of a homing pigeon, she eventually found us. (it wouldn’t be the first time) And I think she even had to drive us home.

At the crack of dawn the next morning - large sunglasses and itty bitty summer attire donned...we three and Froo climbed into my beat up Toyota and headed for Los Angeles.