There Are No Angels, Only Fake Breasts
by Ben Brown (ben@benbrown.com)
I've barely touched my feet to solid ground before Chester lights a cigarette, puts it in my mouth, and wraps a Triple5Soul coat around my shoulders. This is why I hired him as my agent -- he knows how to treat someone like me, someone special and charmed, someone who has certain needs which need to be sated. Yes, Chester is a good agent.
We get into the back seat of a limo which is idling illegally in the drop-off zone. A chilled flute of robotussin is waiting for me, as well as the last week's newspapers, stacked neatly on the tiny table in the middle of the passenger compartment. I point at them. "Summarize!"
Chester clears his throat. "There's some shit going on in Israel, something something genocide, something something America is paying, something something. I think we're killing more brown people, but that's not really a surprise, is it? I think that one guy, or maybe that other guy, they're gonna drop a bomb or something. Or maybe drop boxes full of guns. Something like that. As far as I can tell, a bunch of little kids were tossing rocks around, and they must have broken a really expensive window, because now we have to kill them. I know! I know! What could little kids do that's so bad? They must be pretty dangerous because we're shooting at them from helicopters, is all I know. I'm sure they deserve it. Oh! You were voted the hippest guy in Texas, but again, no surprise. I clipped that article for you, it's in here..." He hands me a velum envelope, which I tuck into the breast pocket of my jacket.
"I've been on the phone with the people who own that abandoned nut house that you want to buy. They're still holding out for more money and an equity stake in whatever it is you do with it. Oh, and there are a bunch of half-naked teenaged girls waiting at your place. I told them they could stay if they cleaned the place a bit, 'cause I know that Ani's arriving soon and you want the place to look good."
I nod.
"So tell me," says Chester, "how was your trip to the city of angels?"
Oh, I say. Los Angeles. Yes.
I am like a mercenary soldier, you see. My ninja-like coding skills are available to the highest bidder, and even in the heat of start-up battle, I am willing to cross from one side to the other with nary a moral or ethical question bubbling to the surface of my finely tuned and drug-streamlined brain. The front-lines are where I am the most comfortable -- if I do not cut myself on the bleeding edge, I might as well hang up my coding dukes and retire to the Midwest and raise a family of chubby, chipmunk-cheeked toddlers. In fact, I am so intrinsically linked to the art of code-jujitsu that if I am not actively involved in software development projects, my skin develops a terrible rash and I begin to turn green. Did you know that? I don't imagine you knew that.
And, as you may have guessed by now, that highest bidder might very well be in, as you said, the city of angels, although I did not see any of these fabled angels. Hookers, fake breasts, overly coifed gay men? I saw these in great numbers, but there was not a feathered wing in site! Not even a small one attached to a pigeon, which only now strikes me as extremely odd, and perhaps related to the fact that, as I sat, smoking a cigarette on the balcony of the company that was so kind as to fly me to their 90210 office, yes, their balcony (or perhaps their balcony), I was struck very suddenly with the horrifying revelation that out over the city, I could actually see the air which appeared to be a hazy yellowish mist hanging above the trees! The clean perfect air that I was supposed to be inhaling into my lungs between deep drags off my unfiltered, imported French cigarette was not clean, not perfect, and very possibly, not even air! Was there a bird, flitting gently from branch to branch in this toxic sludge of an atmosphere? No there was not!
Later that night, with my legs spread wide and wrapped around my good friend Tine's hips (the only safe way for a passenger to ride on a motorcycle), I wept for the sparrows, finches, and peacocks who must be hiding away in tiny condominium apartments which hide behind innocent looking bends in tree branches, tinier oxygen masks strapped to each insectivore beak. These beaks were not made for oxygen masks, Chester! They were made for catching and tearing apart tough shelled insects!
"You poor bastard," says Chester. "Here, let me pour you another 'tussin. So off to Lala land for us, is it? Do they know how to treat an author of your delicate sensibilities?"
Indeed they do, I say. While I wept onto his broad shoulders, Tine was navigating his lime-green Triumph through the throngs of artificially-accented pedestrians to a small, independent book seller where we stumbled into fellow author of delicate sensibilities, Neal Pollack. We sat in on his reading, calling out for the reading of my favorite essay, The Burden Of Internet Celebrity, which may or may not have subconsciously influenced my online 'persona' which everyone has grown to love and to whom oral sex is offered on a regular basis. I was delighted to discover that the hordes of literary groupies that flocked to his manly presence were not only more attractive than the oft-unshaven groupies present in Austin, but had also arranged to rent out a bar for an after-reading party. So you see, they do know how to treat me, and I am sure that I will also have a party thrown in a fancy bar with velour couches.
Of course, I did not attend the party, as I was afraid that I would overshadow Mr. Pollack at his own party because of my superior facial hair grooming skills. Moustaches are so 1984, you know? Of course you do.
"Of course," says Chester, smoothing down an errant hair in his moustache. "As your agent, I think I need to ask you this, though I'm not sure if I'm actually legally bound or if it's just professional courtesy, but you did use the line I gave you, didn't you? It's very important that you used the line."
Indeed I did, and it worked like a charm. At some point, during every conversation I had, I pulled my partner aside and told him (or her) that the real reason that I was coming to LA was to become an actor and to write screenplays. And like you said, each and every one of them was immediately struck with a look of horror and pity, and offered to buy me dinner. Never before has any one phrase resulted in so much alcohol, so many offers of food, drugs and sex -- such an outpouring of sympathetic affection.
If they only knew the truth -- that I am coming to LA, in fact, that my entire circle of literary compatriots is coming to LA to mis ourselves en scene as it were, to stage a literary uprising at the very heart of our dead culture...
"In the form of new-modern novels based loosely on your drug addled late-adolescences? Genius!"
