IT'S NEVER COLD IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

 

 I've taken an unedited chapter from my unpublished memoirs. It describes one of my memorable Christmas Eves in Los Angeles when I was in my very early 20's.

Every word of this is the raw truth. Could be offensive to some. Sorry.  Most every aspect of life is offensive.

Jon

An annual event was a very popular  Christmas Eve concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center. The concert began at 3:00 p.m. and lasted until 9:00 p.m. and the entire six hours were broadcast on live television. The musical participants came from schools, colleges, churchs, and other organizations.

Since I was a member of a chamber ensemble at Cypress College, I participated at the live concert. There was nothing spectacular with our group. Five instruments playing music by  baroque composers. Telemann, Corelli, Handel. I was accompaniest on piano. Should have been harpsichord, but I was subtle and soft-pedaled.

Performing on TV was no big deal. My nerves were reinforced by the hash that me and Randy the cellist were smoking beforehand. We did the same thing before two previous concerts we gave at UCLA.

Afterwards, backstage, I was stunned to receive a quick thank you from Dorothy Chandler herself. She was a legend back then, the main force that devised and built the Music Center. Wife of the L.A. Times publisher Norman Chandler.

After the concert, the L.A. night was like a cool glittering afterthought. My good clothes became a burden. My regular attire - corduroy coat, Stetson hat, Levis, boots - were in my car. I quickly changed in a gas station rest room.

Typical shoddy unkempt rest room. On the graffiti covered wall a condom vending machine. Above, a hand-painted sign proclaiming

JESUS LOVES YOU

Christmas Eve. What to do? The notorious City of Angels was all decked out with colored lights and sparkling holiday attire. A glittering facsimile of ancient Babylon. 

Unusually chilly in the place that's never cold. Walking back to my car, a spectacular sunset was glowing in the distance - - the sky a fiery sea of blood red in a surrealistic display.

Why did that sunset inflict me with sadness, emptiness, hollow loneliness? As the brilliant light slowly melted away, so did the spirit in my soul.

Perhaps because this night is Christmas Eve. Lonely, painfully lonely. Every one I know is busy with their families. Every one. 

My parents were in Las Vegas - - at the persistent invitation of Uncle Frank, my father's brother. My mother didn't want to go. Frank was obnoxious, boisterous, and usually trouble. Rich? Hell, yes. I knew firsthand the stories that he and his thriving New Jersey business were deeply entwined with the Jersey Mob. This got him into trouble later in life. I've seen things firsthand when I recently visited Jersey. I wouldn't dare say more.

Tonight I desperately wanted Greg. More than anyone. We would have definitely been together, if he hadn't been forced to spend Christmas with his parents in their posh mountain cabin at Big Bear. Nice to be wealthy.

The sunset is waning, as it vanished the night became unusually cold. Nearly 32 degrees Fahrenheit - - damn teeth - rattling cold in L.A.

Greg, a pianist like myself. Our secret ongoing torrid relationship was carefully kept from his ex-professional singer psycho mother, who did everything possible to thwart his sexual predilection. I have no doubt she would hire a hit man to oust me away from her son. My love for Gregory was fierce and undaunting. Nothing could come between us.

An incredibly ugly scene. She claimed he was insane. The police smashed down his bedroom door. He was dragged to some kind of an institution. This long-ago diabolical ploy didn't work. He was released in three days.....

I shuddered thinking about it in the cold.

Nothing can bannish true love. We valiantly fought the obstacles.

Merry Christmas, City of Tarnished Angels.

Downtown L.A. is a haphazard, tawdry, dangerous place to be - - even on Christmas Eve.

Got into my car. Headed to Hollywood.  Dangerous, of course. But I knew the place very well and always feel safe there - - despite the hustlers, hookers, muggers, druggies...... and ubiquitous vice cops. All imperative players part of the after-dark scene.

I drink an intruguing amount of Bacardi Rum in my car. It gives me the mellow high that I want. Better with Coca-Cola, but sufficiently effective without it.

Hollywood Boulevard. Shimmering and sparkling holiday decor. The annoying star struck tourists will soon diminish. Not too many tonight. Xmas Eve.

A kid, maybe sixteen, asks if I want to buy some Blue Blotter. LSD? Hell, no. I don't like hallucinogenics. I prefer to be in the familiar custody of 80 proof. Or 45. Whatever.  I have a handful of quaaludes in my pocket. And a small whiskey bottle that I occasionally swig.

I'm feeling pleasantly inebriated. The holiday decorations sprawl above Hollywood Boulevard, glittering and shivering in the cold breeze.

Goddamn the holidays. The most annoying and loneliest time of the year. That's when acute sentimentality accosts you.

Getting colder. The frigid dampness is fighting to get through my coat and start rattling my bones. A passerby said it's 32 degrees. Freezing mode. Almost unheard of in L.A.

Male hustlers are looking miserable and annoyed. They're anxiously waiting for some desperate tourist who will eagerly go into an alley with them, and pay 20 bucks for a quick.......whatever. 

Be on the lookout for the vice cops. Maybe not too many on a cold Christmas Eve. I escaped from them on numerous occasions in the past.

I'm remembering the notorious Drake Theater on Melrose. A hotbed of debauchery after dark. One of my regular haunts. Nude male dancers on stage (I knew one of them). Rampant illicit sex in the backrooms. 

One night, a massive police raid at the Drake....determined to arrest everyone. An incredible fluke of good fortune. Since I was only seated doing absolutely nothing illegal (a rarity) the cops let me go!

Just a fleeting memory. Vice cops. My vices were profound, but my record was clean.

The biting cold seemed to slowly eradicate the people wandering on the Boulevard. They eventually dwindled to nearly nothing. Nothing left but the hardcore creatures of the dark. A few shivering male hustlers, a few homeless victims sleeping in doorways until the cops kick them out. A few random wanderers, so intensely plied with drugs that they have no clue where they might be.

Merry Christmas, dark angels of the night. Sweet fallen angels who have descended into the abyss.

Raw, undiluted Life is the real abyss.

I saw him walking towards me, unexpectedly interrupting my thoughts. One of the lone, scarce night creatures on Hollywood Boulevard.

He looked at me before passing, and when he passed I glanced back and he stopped and walked up to me.

On only a brief surveillance, I assumed he was a decade older than myself. Long hair and a stylishly short beard gave him the appearance of a saint.

He drew a cigarette from his pocket.

"Have a light?" he asked. That was an old ploy. I gave him my book of matches. He lit his cigarette.

"It's a bad habit," he said.

"I have lots of bad habits," I replied, knowing he would understand the connotation.

"They're the greatest pleasures of life," he said.

We were walking together on the deserted  Hollywood walk of stars. Casually glancing in the unlighted windows of the closed shops.

We suddenly were in the dusky alcove of a bookstore. I tried to read the titles of books in the windows, but it was too dark.

Very unexpectedly, he tossed the cigarette, extinguised it with his foot, and kissed me - with impressive expertise.

"Wanna come to my place?" he asked. "It's warmer than here."

"Why not?" I heard my words like a distant admission.

And an instant flash went through my inebriated mind. 

I'm remembering the final scene of the German 1929 film Pandora's Box. Louise Brooks is a prostitute on the London streets. On Christmas Eve she invites a man into her shabby room. They light a candle. She sits on his lap. He holds mistletoe over her head, asks for a kiss. As she complies, he grabs a knife from the table....and murders her.

Just a fleeting thought on a lonely Christmas Eve.

"I live on Ivar," he said.

We headed east on Hollywood Boulevard, turned left on Ivar, going past the ancient Knickerbocker Hotel.

His place was in a run down apartment building, third floor. It was intriguingly warm in his living room- - no mistletoe...but a few haphazard strings of colored Christmas lights.

We smoked a couple of mild joints. It trasported me to a mellow, congenial distant realm. The Christmas lights assumed enormous preportions. The deep kisses were lingering intimacies of ecstasy. The moment transported us to other, more intimate realms.

Just before dawn, while he was sleeping, I dressed and quietly left. The cold dampness awakened my muddled, aching hangover.

As I walked to Gower, where my car was parked, the faint glow of dawn was rising in the east.

Among the apathetic drowsy palmtrees I saw traces of frost on shrubs and grass.

The world would assume an optimistic glimmer as the sun came up with reassuring warmth.

Merry Christmas, city of lost angels.

Jon, a chapter from my  memoirs