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.

The Titanic and Other Great Parties

The Titanic and other great parties.
(c) 2009 - LKD

Owing to living in a country with a good bit of coastline, a large portion of the employment opportunities are water based ones. One such gig, made through the friend of a friend, might come my way (nobody turns down the opportunity of 12 months of pay for 6 months of work). The caveat is taking some of the prerequisite classes necessary to work on an ocean going vessel.

One is your standard safety class. AKA, 'You've been dumped in the North Atlantic...just how fucked are you?' They stick you in a wet suit, flip you round and round a bit and dump you in the water to see if you can save yourself. Having been a pretty damn strong swimmer under myriad of conditions in all different kinds of water, I'm not too worried about that. The only close call that tested my swimming mettle was gaining consciousness, under water, in the family pool, after huffing gasoline in my Dad's garden shed and promptly blacking out as my brain cells expired in a lemming-like mass exodus over a cliff. (Remind me not to talk about that one in class)

The other class, however, is called Passenger Safety. The essentials of evacuating a boat full of people.







The concept got me to thinking of how I've handled previous emergencies in my life and what my sick imagination conceives in the event of a sea going calamity.

In the past, my reactions have been all over the map:

Can command the attention of emergency services and others in cases of fire or flood with a voice akin to an oxen experiencing the twisting of the testicles. Lacking in sentence structure and enunciation, but urgent nonetheless.

The calm and focused Formula One driver getting myself or other occupants to the aid they needed. Downtown Atlanta, 150 mph. No problem.

The crazed lunatic who fires weapons erratically or throws things like a cross-eyed girl to thwart danger at a distance.

The erector set whose central nervous system thinks simultaneously that right and left are good ideas.

The sprinter who can launch herself over fences, walls, and other obstructions because the adrenaline allows it and doesn't realize that all manners of cuts and broken bones acquired while getting over those obstructions eventually lead to blood loss and howls of pain. Minus the adrenaline, only then conceives that such extreme measures are not all that proportionate to, say, for example, a police officer merely asking for a name and address.

The application of these impulses to being stuck on a ship, leaves a number of possibilities.

The boat is full, the alarm is sounded:

I'm seen running naked down the deck, waving arms and screaming 'I'll lighten the load!'. And only after launching myself over the railing realize the boat had just run out of gas.

Calmly going from person to person asking for a violin in order to give a proper send off.

Deciding that clipping my toenails in the thin rubber life boat is a grooming imperative, just to see how everyone reacts to the rushing sound of air and me saying, 'Oops.'

With bullhorn in hand, deciding my own evacuation priorities. 'Hot guys first! Women and children in the back of the line!'

Convinced of my superior concepts of physics and water displacement, push aside the qualified personnel in order to Captain the ship via the 'we can outrun the water rushing into the hull' method.

Carefully studying a map, while others pray for rescue, and announcing, 'Gee, the Bermuda Triangle is quite a bit off course.'

Maybe this is why they require training in the first place.
I'll let you know how it goes. Or you'll read about it in the paper.

Terminally Unique Versus Uniquely Terminal

Bear with me, this is a free form thought process. I keep seeing a pattern that enrages me, so I'm trying to point the finger inward.

In quitting hard drugs in my youth, the people who I THOUGHT helped me the most were those left with little choice but to butt their heads against the walls of my ego and defenses in an attempt to get through. All those constructs I had built (many of which remain) were toxic processes of separation. I operated on the level that I needed nothing from humanity and it needed nothing from me.

For every valid argument on why joining the human race in some level of usefulness was necessary if I was to survive, I had my own opposing view, 'Yeah, but it's different for me, because....'. Terminal Uniqueness to the detriment of my own life, soul and mental health. In that capacity, in that fucked up frame of thinking, getting hammered over and over again with the opposite message was necessary and it saved my life. You ain't Unique

My bouts of sniveling self-pity generally had (have) no bearing on humility. It's more a passive aggressive ego driven temper tantrum bemoaning that which IS, as NOT what SHOULD be. These professional 'people savers' knew that. Their job was to retool that ego driven separation into something a tad bit more down to earth and real. And they did a good job. And got paid for it – both in cash and self gratification.

But I don't think I walked away from that experience regarding those people as friends. Teachers at the right place and at the right time, sure...but friends??? Fuck no.

In the opposite context, I ask myself...Do I send my daughter off to school every day saying 'Have a great day sweetie. I love you. Remember, you are nothing special.'? Of course not.

Everyone we care about, to some degree or another, operates with a personality blinder of one type or another:
The girlfriend who thinks she's fat.
The guy friend who fears asking out the lady he has a crush on based on not feeling good enough.
The friend who drinks over much.
The sister who could stand to lower her voice a bit if she wants her kids to hear her more.

I've tested the mettle of several people close to me with alarming behavior, self destruction and what likely seems like unending sadness. And that's just in the last six months.

Everyone. All of us. We are a fabric of blinders, faux pas, and alien perceptions.

I think it's pretty natural to want something better, more or wonderful for those we love, especially when they are hurting. Sometimes, its frustrating enough to want to jump up and down waving your arms screaming, 'Why can't you see this?!?!?!'

I don't think it translates well into becoming the self-appointed task master. The concept itself is ego driven, the actions themselves are ones of separation. I'm real sensitive to it now. Maybe because of being guilty of doing it myself and also being on the receiving end when it wasn't fucking asked for.

Ah, the guiding hands of those that 'know better'. To demand change without changing ones own perceptions, to guilt out trust instead of handing it over freely. I cringe at the horrifying examples of how I have done this to others. I cringe when I see it in the most obvious and un-elegant of offhand action.

The greatest gifts my friends and loved ones have given me IS encouragement, love and acceptance when I am at my MOST unacceptable. They could have given two shits about teaching a lesson, passing on a wise gem or making sure not to 'pad my ass' (I've come to hate that expression)

Instead, they say things like:

“I don't see the scars, never have.”
“I don't give a shit if you hack up babies for a living, you are my sister and I love you.”
“You're my best friend, Mom. It'll always be that way.”
“There is nothing wrong with you.”
“You rock!”
“They ain't got a color for you in the Crayola box.”

It doesn't get more blessed than that. Those angels in action who see, don't care about the blinders and stand firmly entrenched as scaffolding at the weakest points. Whatever they see, they find unique and special enough to praise. Often it may not be what I see, but their ACTIONS say I should believe them. So I do. The more I believe, the better I become and hopefully give back.

I wonder then if they are the more valid teachers than those who purported to save me? Most certainly more valid than the task master 'friends'. It's been interesting in this stage of development to shuck this wheat and see what lands on that which truly matters:

May they know they are loved. May they grow and flower on their own clock and may I be blessed enough to be there for the dark times and the light. What I think I know is likely bullshit and should be regarded as such when 'handing out' advise. (I need to have that last sentence tattoo'd on my ass)

Terminal Uniqueness can destroy a person on the inside; it's likely the worst wall I'll ever have to climb and it will remain a struggle till I croak.

Uniquely Terminal, however, I believe I can embrace that. In myself and, most especially, in others.

(p.s. where the FUCK is the schwa on a Norse keyboard?)

Side note: I'm still suffering from HORRIBLE dog with drawl. I'm a terrible cat owner. In an effort to quell this problem, the cat 'becomes' a different pet every day. Today is he is ferret. Yesterday, he was a Panda. He doesn't seem to mind.