- Call them Less Than Satisfying Encounters With Humanity,
or LTSEWH, just to create a particularly stupid and unpronounceable acronym.
All names have been included whenever possible in order to ensure fullest
humiliation, though in some cases the more hapless have been spared out
of compassion, and the interests of sparing The Rip Post lawsuits.
-
- LTSEWH #1 - Butting In
-
- You know, my memory is just shot. I'm sorry. I forget
that the world is a toilet, and a dumpster, and a spittoon, and an ashtray.
God, no wonder I'm so bothered all the time. Most everybody else realizes
these obvious things, while I'm forever worrying about ways to discreetly
and benignly dispose of things that need disposing.
-
- Silly me!
-
- I'm ridiculously, anachronistically proper, that's all.
I'm like the guy in the Extreme Fighting crowd who says, "Excuse me,
please," the guy who buys a hundred bucks worth of groceries and then
tells the clerk, "thank you." I just bought $100 in groceries---why
am I thanking them?
-
- I shouldn't even be writing about this as if it's unusual,
but I can't help myself. I'm just constantly astounded at how alien my
respect for "the environment" is. Even the term, "the environment,"
amuses me. As if it is some separate thing that exists independently of
humans.
-
- Anyhow, all this throat-clearing is about a very tiny
incident, but one so big in implication that I am still reeling.
-
- There I was. . .
-
- Walking down Veteran Avenue in Westwood one delicate
pre-fall afternoon. Just the usual passing parade of good citizens driving
as if late for appointments with hookers. My headphones pumped Bob Dylan,
my feet pushed my old bones into a good pace, my face dripped sweat.
-
- The cigarette butt was still smoking as it landed in
front of me.
-
- That's correct, a smoking cigarette butt flew from out
of the sky and dropped just short of me, on the sidewalk. I stopped. I
stepped on it. I looked up. Did God smoke?
-
- Well, probably. But in this case, it was just a punk.
-
- He was a youngish---twentysomething, I suppose---male
humanoid with unkempt curly locks, requisite three-day beard, T-shirt,
cargo pants. He stood in a second story window of a nondescript beige apartment
building, eyeing me. He had just flicked the remains of his carcinogenic,
highly addictive tube of nicotine-jazzed tobacco and chemical additives
out the window of his apartment. Whether or not he was trying to hit me,
I don't know. I spoke.
-
- "Nice!" I said.
-
- His expression didn't change at all. He just walked away.
He probably wondered why I had spoken at all. He probably did not differentiate
between me and "squirrel" or "tree." He probably had
no comprehension whatsoever as to the relationship between flicking a lighted
cigarette butt out the window at a passer-by and the passer-by's reaction.
-
- As I said, he understood something that I don't. The
world is his ashtray. I just live in it.
-
-
- LTSEWH #2 - Be CIA'ing You
-
- The pedestrian stood on the corner of the intersection.
The light was red. He waited patiently, automatically, for it to change.
When that happened, he would step off the curb and into the crosswalk and
negotiate Barrington Avenue in West L.A.. Safely, legally, routinely, casually.
-
- Except. . .
-
- The light changed, the pedestrian stepped off the curb,
and a Sherman tank-sized, dust-laden, black pick-up truck with black tinted
windows hauled a quick right.
-
- The pedestrian stopped in his tracks. He thought, "What
in the hell?"
-
- I know that he thought this, you see, because the pedestrian
was me. Inside the tank-er, truck---through the black tinted windows, I
could see two hulking male figures with short hair and dark glasses. One
of them waved at me, and laughed. I could only think of the rather happy
fact that I still had toes.
-
- As the truck drove away, I saluted it with the decorous
raised third-finger so popular and perfect for such circumstances. In response,
the driver waved merrily in his rear-view mirror.
-
- Then it all hit me. The black truck, the tinted windows,
the twin hulks with dark glasses. . .
-
- CIA. An obvious warning. Next time, Rense, we get your
toes.
-
-
- LTSEWH #3 - Side-By-Side
-
- Now, I realize I have written of this sort of thing before,
but it is phenomenal, I believe, and so I will write of it again. I think
I'm on to a brand new trend in territorial aggression. I think we are very
soon to hear and read daily reports of "sidewalk rage."
-
- Yet I am so dumbfounded, so brain-frozen blood-dancingly
dazzled by this matter that I have not been quite sure whether I can trust
my senses. So on this occasion, I was extra careful to pay attention to
every detail, just to confirm the reality, or surreality, of the situation.
-
- I was walking north, and the young couple was walking
south. I was on the extreme right side of the sidewalk, taking up about
two-thirds of my half---especially when you included my canvas laptop bag.
The young couple took up the entire sidewalk, she on the left, he on the
right. They walked casually, with a kind of pride of ownership about them,
as if perhaps they had paid for and poured the concrete on which they lazily
stepped.
-
- As they made standard-procedure eye contact with me,
I shifted my computer bag to my right side, obviously in order to give
them more room to pass.
-
- Well, I thought it was obvious, anyhow.
-
- If you think the male half of the couple gave any ground,
shifted even an inch to the left in order to accommodate my apparent course,
you probably believe that Texas is another country. Well, actually---oh,
you get the idea.
-
- I kept my head up, looking straight, waiting for the
guy to move slightly aside. Single file, I knew, was far too much to imagine
possible. I might as well have waited for the sun to sing "That Lucky
Old Sun." I'd say the guy was about 25, maybe six-six, with shoulders
were no wider than Sen. Larry Craig's bathroom "stance."
-
- Bang. His left side plowed into my left side. Not a glancing
blow, not a shirt-to-shirt fender-bender, but a full-blown wham-o bone-to-bone
smash-up. I had been expecting it, and was braced. I kept walking, though
I turned to see his reaction.
-
- He had also turned, to see my reaction. I think he looked
surprised. A why-did-that-guy-hit-me look, mixed with the white eyeball
of burgeoning anger.
-
- Once again, I am reminded of David Letterman's remark
in describing the barely audible grunt he received from a blank-stared
young woman he had greeted with a "Good morning:"
-
- "What are you, feral?"
-
- Sidewalk rage. I tell you, it's coming.
-
-
- LTSEWH #4 - Cardio Infraction
-
- I'm in favor of exercising. I applaud the
city of L.A. for even considering the ban on fast-food in south-central,
to combat obesity there. I think it should be extended to the country.
Aerobics, si, Whopper, no.
-
- I am not alone in this sentiment, either. The fabulously
entertaining SF Chronicle, Mark Morford,
wrote of it recently, "It's like a giant middle finger to your heart."
-
- Hell, I think there should be tax breaks for people
who exercise regularly, who don't smoke, who drink in moderation, who don't
say "cool," who do not use cell phones on sidewalks, and who
never watch Larry King.
-
- But, well, I don't know. Here I go again. I am laboring
under this misconception, this wild delusion, that we all live together
and share this place, and we must make certain compromises and accommodations
in order to get along.
-
- No, no---that's not it. I'm flattering myself.
-
- The truth is that I'm the only one here who does not
realize that other people think they own this town. Stupid me! You know
that guy on the sidewalk in LTSEWH # 3? He thinks the city belongs to him.
LTSEWH # 1? Same thing. He owns the place, and can flick his butts where
he chooses. LTSEWH # 2? Well, no, that was an attempted CIA hit.
-
- And the guy I'm about to tell you about---who scared
the diesel exhaust right out of my lungs while he was "exercising"---also
correctly realized that he owns the city, and that I do not, and that therefore
he takes priority.
-
- Let me ask you something. When you are alone on a deserted
sidewalk, sauntering along on a benign Sunday afternoon with your spousal
unit, taking in local gardens, and trying to pretend that L.A. is not hell
on earth, and suddenly you hear someone right behind you---Imeanthisclose---and
you go instinctively into self-protection mode because your body tells
you that you are about to be mugged. . .what do you do?
-
- That's right, you spin around quickly---no, you practically
levitate and jump around, ready to defend yourself, body-block, tuck-and-roll,
whatever.
-
- And that's what I did. I heard loud footsteps---from
out of nowhere---as close to me as the guy in the prison shower when you
bend over for the soap. Along with the footsteps, there was a kind of huffing,
grunting. As I said, I spun around. As did my walking partner, Annie.
-
- We were, in a word, frightened.
-
- There he was. The Owner of Los Angeles. A pasty-complexioned
guy in walking shorts, T-shirt, sunglasses, gym-bag in hand. Maybe 45 or
50. And he announced his business:
-
- "Pardon me, guys!" he shouted. "I'm on
my cardio!"
-
- And he walked right between us! Causing us to stop, step
aside, and stare in disbelief.
-
- Yessir. The Owner of L.A. was on his cardio, and we were
in his way! How dare us not have anticipated his presence! We should have
been grateful that he was "polite." The funny thing was, he was
on one lame cardio, walking plenty fast to compete in a senior Olympics.
-
- I mean, what do I expect? That he could have---gasp---walked
around us, so as not to startle? Sure, I would have done that, but then,
that's the difference between me and the Owner of L.A.
-
- My associate, Annie, did not quite understand the Owner's
position in all this, though, and I had to stop her from speaking.
-
- I believe the sentence she was about to shout was:
-
- "Why should I give a f--- that you are on your f---ing
cardio, a---e?"
-
- Oh, my, what a breach of etiquette that would have been.
-
- I figured it was best to let the Owner go on his way.
If you're the Owner of L.A., after all, you are certainly armed.
-
- ________
-
- For more LTSEWH's, watch this space---or better yet,
buy Less Than Satisfying Encounters
With Humanity, The Illustrated book. Send your own LTSEWH's and we'll
post them at http://lessthansatisfying.com
|