We Come to Our Senses (5 page)

SUBPLOT:
I can't believe there aren't automatic car washes at the filling stations in this town. In the seven months separating the South from Southern California I haven't seen one. Not
one
, among the endless pimples of gas pumps. And everyone here loves cars like money and breathing smog and driving slowly, stuttering through the near-dead breeze, primping in the Prozacian semi-heat, banging their
monotonous remixes at you. And the cars are always beautiful, and certainly more important than the squat buildings that define the majority of Southern California. And despite the whole “green” thing, most of the cars still run on fuel. And they
do
make gas stations with attached car washes, elsewhere in the United States. My father owned one, and growing up I worked there every summer, and by worked there I mean I learned how to work. Yet here in Los Angeles, no.

“
POINT
being, you've gotta think like a modern chick,” the Producer said, his lips launching a fleck of spittle. He then fumbled with a crystal paperweight worth more than my car. “Hey? The war thing is money right now. And your dialogue, themes and stakes are good. But they're dated, kid. This is yesteryear shit—only not in the period-piece sense.” He checked his watch.

“But,” I said.

“But women are more
human
than that, you know? Women
want
. They're empowered and sexy and smart, and, hey? They've sure got us by the balls, right?”

This isn't an important film. Not a period piece or art film. Not even a chick flick, really. It's a romantic heart-tugger written to attract hyper-consumer, disposable-income teen girls. It's as dense as popcorn, maybe lighter. A squishy wartime anecdote. Looking at the Producer I wanted to scream that he was missing it all. Adulterating the fantasy, sodomizing innocence. Yet because I am so tired of this exchange, so
tired of how these things starve out, I just said, “Yeah, by the balls. I'm with you, and I'll revisit immediately. Rewrite's not a problem. In terms of basic plot, though, I think I can still keep the kiss, only add—”

He stabbed his finger into the black orb. “Marcy? Marcy, hop down here for a sec, will ya?”

SUBPLOT:
Though
vital
is defined as time inside the stucco offices of Hollywood or Beverly Hills,
affordable
is Roscoe crossing Sepulveda, in the Valley. It is a confederacy of low-rider VW Beetles and drag-modified Japanese cars. It is bilingual title loans and barred windows, and windowless bars whose daytime clientele loiter in the parking lots, smoking joints, their backs against the pastel-colored beaches of mural-covered walls.

On the street in front of my rented duplex, near Roscoe and Sepulveda, statuesque black boys swagger by after school, their white uniform shirts slung over their bare, muscled shoulders. Among other glories, there is brilliance in the way they launch a seamless “fuck you” or “bitch ass” bark into the meter of their conversation, precisely as they pass me by, in order to showcase aggression, to let me know who owns the space.

At Roscoe and Sepulveda exist endless chop shops and immigration consultant offices and Kountry Kitchen restaurants and titty bars and grit on the curb, and sublime Mexican food and hot, dry heat, radiated by street signs and strip malls and gas stations with no car washes.

MARCY
, in a black Italian suit, was quite sexy in that vague, TV way. She bit the side of her thick bottom lip and gave this snappy introduction that I will no doubt remember later, wondering where, amid the blur of boy sluts and beggars, poseur glamour and chrome, I heard it. The Producer provided her a six-second coverage of my entire story, before asking, “So you tell me, Marse. As a woman, are you satisfied by a flimsy kissing bout?”

In the notch between his question and her answer I thought of my pocket watch. Imagining the cadence of its second hand conjured my grandmother's yawning drawl. In memory, she told me, again, the story of she and my Poppum's first hours of love, just before he shipped for Europe, and later the Pacific theater. “We's just a sliver past twenty,” G-ma said, noting the fitted grasp of their palms, “like a rhyme.” She told me that the night before he deployed, the Carolina moon shot through the trees, and lit up the ground in a jigsaw of leaf shadow. Unable to afford a phonograph, she said they waltzed to the croon of cicada, to slow, sidereal measure, the July humidity held at bay by the salty coastline breeze.

My grandparents, as their forebears had been, and as their children would be, were created by pending and consequent separation. They were sprung from a chasm generated by conflict. By man by woman by war—the end. There can be no other southern narrative.

As Marcy spoke I could almost feel the sublime, sticky heat
of home: How it slicks your body, driving you to the honest edge of tolerance. How it begs you to dive down, beneath the cold convicted waters of the dead green Atlantic. True heat is at least substantial and wet, at least passionate.

“Osculation,” Marcy said, pulling me back. “I understand where you're trying to go. The whole, like, woman-on-a-pedestal vibe? But listen to me—now. And remember this if you remember nothing else: that's
chauvinism
, man, not chivalry. Period.” She stared at me for impact, then continued. “In reality? From the standpoint of both woman and viewer? After two acts loaded with the thrust of a countdown romance, I'd better be getting the love fucked out of me.”

My dear god, I wanted to fuck the love
into
her the instant her rose lips rested—but just as quickly realized my selfishness, and once more reiterated my opinion. My code.

That's the fundamental difference out here. They have simply forgotten the past.

I
drag to a stop at the multi-pumps outside a Gas-N-Save, prepared to part with this new, last ten bucks. The script falls quiet. The reflection of the watch hits the windshield. Pizza thaws, beer drips. A clutter of loitering little
vatos
in wife-beater T's prop up on the far end of the store wall, burning cigs mixed with weed, their chests bowed out.

I walk over to prepay but freeze up when an enormous gold 1970-something Cadillac convertible squeals onto the lot. The velocity and violence feel like an ambush.

“
HEY?
Look, kid,” the Producer said. “Normally, I'd thank you and tell you I'd be in touch—and basically flush you out of this office, with more concern for my freakin' ficus tree. But I like you. Really do. Your style's strong and you've got germs of good ideas. So, hey? Let me impart some key advice. Get a grip on your audience. Translate your talent into something more modern.”

He excused himself briefly. Touched the black orb, and he commanded (to an assistant? to Marcy?), “On second thought, put a hold on the Argyle. Fuck the fusty Chateau.”

He kept calling me kid. He's my age. Went to college with my cousin.

“What was I . . . ?” he asked. “Oh, yeah. Hey? I know what you're thinking:
This asshole's asking me to sell out
.”

“No,” I said. “I wasn't.”

“Yeah, I know. The big bad
sellout
of your ideals. Christ, how often do I hear it? I'll tell you how often. Every day, all day.”

“Really, I wasn't—”

“But listen.
You're not selling out if you cater to what people want
. Are you? Are you selling out if you're sharing real emotions with a real audience?”

How can this be? I'm sold. So sold. Oversold. I couldn't possibly sell more on this thing.

IF.

If you met someone who chose to live of, but beyond, the façade of dogwood-flowered, South Battery coastline; of, but
beyond, the high-heel click on terra-cotta patio and lime-rind-and-seersucker; if she chose to move beyond historic district fund-raising and neo-southern cuisine . . . and who instead sought out the cracked concrete back porch of a Gullah-owned shrimp shack; who found inspiration in a shrimp burger with a side of under-the-table, Styrofoam-cupped American beer—would you leave her?

Could you? If she knew how to overthrow the manicured ritual of a Kiawah Island wedding weekend, where paunchy young men in Brooks Brothers knits drain designer beers at every emerald putting green, while their counterpart women, women whose southern lips have grown thin from years of décor-smiling, sit bunched up in air-conditioned villas, sipping premix mojitos? If. If she could be
of
this culture, yet scoff it all off for a midnight drunken joyride over marsh road? If her brown hair flew out the window, fanlike, as the two of you traded hard opinions of Paris '68, of F. Scott v. Hemingway, or for that matter of the Only Ernest that Really Matters Anyway—Ernest Tubb? If your collective ceremonial garb was balled up on the backseat; if you had nine bucks between you for beer, gas and adventure? If you wound up chilly and huddled together on the predawn beach, wrapped up in a cocoon of musty, wedding-band quilt?

Could you leave her? And if you could, how on earth would you get over it?

GAS-N-SAVE
is out of Winstons, so I buy a pack of generics. Give up the ten bucks and get the balance in fuel. I scan the door-side magazine rack while the clerk rings me up. The cover of a woman's
journal pimps a vibrant nineteen-year-old actress whose name we all know. Her pout and airbrushed flesh support the headlines “Sex Quiz: Rate Your Mate” and “Seductive Lingerie for Bedroom-Bound Babes.” I wonder if I need to start reading these things, to grow.

At the pump adjacent my car a young
pachuco
and his girlfriend—the passengers of the golden Cadillac convertible—yell at each other. He is wiry and postured, wearing baggy khakis, black kung-fu slippers and a white muscle shirt. Not American, perhaps not even a man; I look at him and critique this stereotype, as if he's been snatched off the street by Production.

She, however, is radiant and original. Uncommonly tall. The sun is sheeny in her cascading black hair. Her skin color is somewhere between chocolate and butter, and I imagine her of royal lineage (Oaxacan being the only identifier I am familiar with). The syllables her wine-colored lips splay, the intermittent “fuck you's” and “bastard's,” as churned within glorious Spanish, crescendo over him with feminine mastery.

“
HEY?
” the Producer asked. “I mean, really, kid, why do you create?”

“Who knows anymore?” I replied.

“To
connect
, right? Right?”

“Yeah, sure.” I'd had enough. By that point I no longer bore an awareness of anything, save the platinum letter opener he used to pick at his fingernails. And the fact that I wished Marcy would come back.

“‘
Yeah, sure
,'” he mocked me. “That's what all you cred-heads say:
‘
I write in order to connect with people
,' or ‘
Because I want to share in our universal human emotion
,' or some other humble horseshit. But, hey? Interview over, these darlings don't really care about the Everyman. They're too intellectual, too precious with their ‘art.'” He paused for effect, then pointed at me. “Now, THAT, kid, is selling out.”

“I'm listening to you. Now you listen to me. This script is—”

“Quit trying to be high-minded and slick. Focus on telling a
story
.”

THE
pending violence between the Mexican couple is too real. I dive into myopic action: remove the hose from the pump, select the gas grade, unlock the gas cap, insert the spout. Remember a pitch I overheard, somewhere, about a band of Communists in the twenties who stormed the offices of the
Los Angeles Times
, slaughtering everyone on site. I think of the unassailable truth locked inside Marcy. Beneath the saline monuments in her chest she knew the idealism I was pitching, and she knew it wasn't some elitist avoidance of sex or combat. Because I do know chicks. I do I do I do.

Maricón! Puto! You're no man, you limp pendejo motherfucker
.